IV

TO MY surprise, two or three days after I lunched with Alroy Kear I

received a letter from Edward Driffield’s widow. It ran as follows:

DEAR FRIEND,

_I hear that you had a long talk with Roy last week about Edward

Driffield and I am so glad to know that you spoke of him so

nicely. He often talked to me of you. He had the greatest

admiration for your talent and he was so very pleased to see you

when you came to lunch with us. I wonder if you have in your

possession any letters that he wrote to you and if so whether

you would let me have copies of them. I should be very pleased

if I could persuade you to come down for two or three days and

stay with me. I live very quietly now and have no one here, so

please choose your own time. I shall be delighted to see you

again and have a talk of old times. I have a particular service

I want you to do me and I am sure that for the sake of my dear

dead husband you will not refuse._

_Yours ever sincerely_,

AMY DRIFFIELD.

I had seen Mrs. Driffield only once and she but mildly interested me; I

do not like being addressed as “dear friend”; that alone would have been

enough to make me decline her invitation; and I was exasperated by its

general character which, however ingenious an excuse I invented, made

the reason I did not go quite obvious, namely, that I did not want to. I

had no letters of Driffield’s. I suppose years ago he had written to me

several times, brief notes, but he was then an obscure scribbler and

even if I ever kept letters it would never have occurred to me to keep

his. How was I to know that he was going to be acclaimed as the greatest

novelist of our day? I hesitated only because Mrs. Driffield said she

wanted me to do something for her. It would certainly be a nuisance, but

it would be churlish not to do it if I could, and after all her husband

was a very distinguished man.

The letter came by the first post and after breakfast I rang up Roy. As

soon as I mentioned my name I was put through to him by his secretary.

If I were writing a detective story I should immediately have suspected

that my call was awaited, and Roy’s virile voice calling hullo would

have confirmed my suspicion. No one could naturally be quite so cheery

so early in the morning.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” I said.

“Good God, no.” His healthy laugh rippled along the wires. “I’ve been up

since seven. I’ve been riding in the park. I’m just going to have

breakfast. Come along and have it with me.”

“I have a great affection for you, Roy,” I answered, “but I don’t think

you’re the sort of person I’d care to have breakfast with. Besides, I’ve

already had mine. Look here, I’ve just had a letter from Mrs. Driffield

asking me to go down and stay.”

“Yes, she told me she was going to ask you. We might go down together.

She’s got quite a good grass court and she does one very well. I think

you’d like it.”

“What is it that she wants me to do?”

“Ah, I think she’d like to tell you that herself.”

There was a softness in Roy’s voice such as I imagined he would use if

he were telling a prospective father that his wife was about to gratify

his wishes. It cut no ice with me.

“Come off it, Roy,” I said. “I’m too old a bird to be caught with chaff.

Spit it out.”

There was a moment’s pause at the other end of the telephone. I felt

that Roy did not like my expression.

“Are you busy this morning?” he asked suddenly. “I’d like to come and

see you.”

“All right, come on. I shall be in till one.”

“I’ll be round in about an hour.”

I replaced the receiver and relit my pipe. I gave Mrs. Driffield’s

letter a second glance.

I remembered vividly the luncheon to which she referred. I happened to

be staying for a long week-end not far from Tercanbury with a certain

Lady Hodmarsh, the clever and handsome American wife of a sporting

baronet with no intelligence and charming manners. Perhaps to relieve

the tedium of domestic life she was in the habit of entertaining persons

connected with the arts. Her parties were mixed and gay. Members of the

nobility and gentry mingled with astonishment and an uneasy awe with

painters, writers, and actors. Lady Hodmarsh neither read the books nor

looked at the pictures of the people to whom she offered hospitality,

but she liked their company and enjoyed the feeling it gave her of being

in the artistic know. When on this occasion the conversation happened to

dwell for a moment on Edward Driffield, her most celebrated neighbour,

and I mentioned that I had at one time known him very well she proposed

that we should go over and lunch with him on Monday when a number of her

guests were going back to London. I demurred, for I had not seen

Driffield for five and thirty years and I could not believe that he

would remember me; and if he did (though this I kept to myself) I could

not believe that it would be with pleasure. But there was a young peer

there, a certain Lord Scallion, with literary inclinations so violent

that, instead of ruling this country as the laws of man and nature have

decreed, he devoted his energy to the composition of detective novels.

His curiosity to see Driffield was boundless and the moment Lady

Hodmarsh made her suggestion he said it would be too divine. The star

guest of the party was a big young fat duchess and it appeared that her

admiration for the celebrated writer was so intense that she was

prepared to cut an engagement in London and not go up till the

afternoon.

“That would make four of us,” said Lady Hodmarsh. “I don’t think they

could manage more than that. I’ll wire to Mrs. Driffield at once.”

I could not see myself going to see Driffield in that company and tried

to throw cold water on the scheme.

“It’ll only bore him to death,” I said. “He’ll hate having a lot of

strangers barging in on him like this. He’s a very old man.”

“That’s why if they want to see him they’d better see him now. He can’t

last much longer. Mrs. Driffield says he likes to meet people. They

never see anybody but the doctor and the parson and it’s a change for

them. Mrs. Driffield said I could always bring anyone interesting. Of

course she has to be very careful. He’s pestered by all sorts of people

who want to see him just out of idle curiosity, and interviewers and

authors who want him to read their books, and silly hysterical women.

But Mrs. Driffield is wonderful. She keeps everyone away from him but

those she thinks he ought to see. I mean, he’d be dead in a week if he

saw everyone who wants to see him. She has to think of his strength.

Naturally we’re different.”

Of course I thought I was; but as I looked at them I perceived that the

duchess and Lord Scallion thought they were too; so it seemed best to

say no more.

We drove over in a bright yellow Rolls. Ferne Court was three miles from

Blackstable. It was a stucco house built, I suppose, about 1840, plain

and unpretentious, but substantial; it was the same back and front, two

large bows on each side of a flat piece in which was the front door, and

there were two large bows on the first floor. A plain parapet hid the

low roof. It stood in about an acre of garden, somewhat overgrown with

trees, but neatly tended, and from the drawing room window you had a

pleasant view of woods and green downland. The drawing room was

furnished so exactly as you felt a drawing room in a country house of

modest size should be furnished that it was slightly disconcerting.

Clean bright chintzes covered the comfortable chairs and the large sofa,

and the curtains were of the same bright clean chintz. On little

Chippendale tables stood large Oriental bowls filled with pot-pourri. On

the cream-coloured walls were pleasant water colours by painters well

known at the beginning of this century. There were great masses of

flowers charmingly arranged, and on the grand piano in silver frames

photographs of celebrated actresses, deceased authors, and minor

royalties.

It was no wonder that the duchess cried out that it was a lovely room.

It was just the kind of room in which a distinguished writer should

spend the evening of his days. Mrs. Driffield received us with modest

assurance. She was a woman of about five and forty, I judged, with a

small sallow face and neat, sharp features. She had a black cloche hat

pressed tight down on her head and wore a gray coat and skirt. Her

figure was slight and she was neither tall nor short, and she looked

trim, competent, and alert. She might have been the squire’s widowed

daughter, who ran the parish and had a peculiar gift for organization.

She introduced us to a clergyman and a lady, who got up as we were shown

in. They were the Vicar of Blackstable and his wife. Lady Hodmarsh and

the duchess immediately assumed that cringing affability that persons of

rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not

for a moment aware that there is any difference of station between them.

Then Edward Driffield came in. I had seen portraits of him from time to

time in the illustrated papers but it was with dismay that I saw him in

the flesh. He was smaller than I remembered and very thin, his head was

barely covered with fine silvery hair, he was clean-shaven, and his skin

was almost transparent. His blue eyes were very pale and the rims of his

eyelids red. He looked an old, old man, hanging on to mortality by a

thread; he wore very white false teeth and they made his smile seem

forced and stiff. I had never seen him but bearded and his lips were

thin and pallid. He was dressed in a new, well-cut suit of blue serge

and his low collar, two or three sizes too large for him, showed a

wrinkled, scraggy neck. He wore a neat black tie with a pearl in it. He

looked a little like a dean in mufti on his summer holiday in

Switzerland.

Mrs. Driffield gave him a quick glance as he came in and smiled

encouragingly; she must have been satisfied with the neatness of his

appearance. He shook hands with his guests and to each one said

something civil. When he came to me he said:

“It’s very good of a busy and successful man like you to come all this

way to see an old fogey.”

I was a trifle taken aback, for he spoke as though he had never seen me

before, and I was afraid my friends would think I had been boasting when

I claimed at one time to have known him intimately. I wondered if he had

completely forgotten me.

“I don’t know how many years it is since we last met,” I said, trying to

be hearty.

He looked at me for what I suppose was no more than a few seconds, but

for what seemed to me quite a long time, and then I had a sudden shock;

he gave me a little wink. It was so quick that nobody but I could have

caught it, and so unexpected in that distinguished old face that I could

hardly believe my eyes. In a moment his face was once more composed,

intelligently benign, and quietly observant. Luncheon was announced and

we trooped into the dining room.

This also was in what can only be described as the acme of good taste.

On the Chippendale sideboard were silver candlesticks. We sat on

Chippendale chairs and ate off a Chippendale table. In a silver bowl in

the middle were roses and round this were silver dishes with chocolates

in them and peppermint creams; the silver salt cellars were brightly

polished and evidently Georgian. On the cream-coloured walls were

mezzotints of ladies painted by Sir Peter Lely and on the chimney-piece

a garniture of blue delft. The service was conducted by two maids in

brown uniform and Mrs. Driffield in the midst of her fluent conversation

kept a wary eye on them. I wondered how she had managed to train these

buxom Kentish girls (their healthy colour and high cheek bones betrayed

the fact that they were “local”) to such a pitch of efficiency. The

lunch was just right for the occasion, smart but not showy, fillets of

sole rolled up and covered with a white sauce, roast chicken, with new

potatoes and green peas, asparagus and gooseberry fool. It was the

dining room and the lunch and the manner which you felt exactly fitted a

literary gent of great celebrity but moderate wealth.

Mrs. Driffield, like the wives of most men of letters, was a great

talker and she did not let the conversation at her end of the table

flag; so that, however much we might have wanted to hear what her

husband was saying at the other, we had no opportunity. She was gay and

sprightly. Though Edward Driffield’s indifferent health and great age

obliged her to live most of the year in the country, she managed

notwithstanding to run up to town often enough to keep abreast of what

was going on and she was soon engaged with Lord Scallion in an animated

discussion of the plays in the London theatres and the terrible crowd at

the Royal Academy. It had taken her two visits to look at all the

pictures and even then she had not had time to see the water colours.

She liked water colours so much; they were unpretentious; she hated

things to be pretentious.

So that host and hostess should sit at the head and foot of the table,

the vicar sat next to Lord Scallion and his wife next to the duchess.

The duchess engaged her in conversation on the subject of working-class

dwellings, a subject on which she seemed to be much more at home than

the parson’s lady, and my attention being thus set free I watched Edward

Driffield. He was talking to Lady Hodmarsh. She was apparently telling

him how to write a novel and giving him a list of a few that he really

ought to read. He listened to her with what looked like polite interest,

putting in now and then a remark in a voice too low for me to catch, and

when she made a jest (she made them frequently and often good ones) he

gave a little chuckle and shot her a quick look that seemed to say: this

woman isn’t such a damned fool after all. Remembering the past, I asked

myself curiously what he thought of this grand company, his neatly

turned out wife, so competent and discreetly managing, and the elegant

surroundings in which he lived. I wondered if he regretted his early

days of adventure. I wondered if all this amused him or if the amiable

civility of his manner masked a hideous boredom. Perhaps he felt my eyes

upon him, for he raised his. They rested on me for a while with a

meditative look, mild and yet oddly scrutinizing, and then suddenly,

unmistakably this time, he gave me another wink. The frivolous gesture

in that old, withered face was more than startling, it was embarrassing;

I did not know what to do. My lips outlined a dubious smile.

But the duchess joining in the conversation at the head of the table,

the vicar’s wife turned to me.

“You knew him many years ago, didn’t you?” she asked me in a low tone.

“Yes.”

She gave the company a glance to see that no one was attending to us.

“His wife is anxious that you shouldn’t call up old memories that might

be painful to him. He’s very frail, you know, and the least thing upsets

him.”

“I’ll be very careful.”

“The way she looks after him is simply wonderful. Her devotion is a

lesson to all of us. She realizes what a precious charge it is. Her

unselfishness is beyond words.” She lowered her voice a little more. “Of

course he’s a very old man and old men sometimes are a little trying;

I’ve never seen her out of patience. In her way she’s just as wonderful

as he is.”

These were the sort of remarks to which it was difficult to find a

reply, but I felt that one was expected of me.

“Considering everything I think he looks very well,” I murmured.

“He owes it all to her.”

At the end of luncheon we went back into the drawing room and after we

had been standing about for two or three minutes Edward Driffield came

up to me. I was talking with the vicar and for want of anything better

to say was admiring the charming view. I turned to my host.

“I was just saying how picturesque that little row of cottages is down

there.”

“From here.” Driffield looked at their broken outline and an ironic

smile curled his thin lips. “I was born in one of them. Rum, isn’t it?”

But Mrs. Driffield came up to us with bustling geniality. Her voice was

brisk and melodious.

“Oh, Edward, I’m sure the duchess would like to see your writing room.

She has to go almost immediately.”

“I’m so sorry, but I must catch the three-eighteen from Tercanbury,”

said the duchess.

We filed into Driffield’s study. It was a large room on the other side

of the house, looking out on the same view as the dining room, with a

bow window. It was the sort of room that a devoted wife would evidently

arrange for her literary husband. It was scrupulously tidy and large

bowls of flowers gave it a feminine touch.

“This is the desk at which he’s written all his later works,” said Mrs.

Driffield, closing a book that was open face downward on it. “It’s the

frontispiece in the third volume of the _edition de luxe_. It’s a period

piece.”

We all admired the writing table and Lady Hodmarsh, when she thought no

one was looking, ran her fingers along its under edge to see if it was

genuine. Mrs. Driffield gave us a quick, bright smile.

“Would you like to see one of his manuscripts?”

“I’d love to,” said the duchess, “and then I simply must bolt.”

Mrs. Driffield took from a shelf a manuscript bound in blue morocco, and

while the rest of the party reverently examined it I had a look at the

books with which the room was lined. As authors will, I ran my eye round

quickly to see if there were any of mine, but could not find one; I saw,

however, a complete set of Alroy Kear’s and a great many novels in

bright bindings, which looked suspiciously unread; I guessed that they

were the works of authors who had sent them to the master in homage to

his talent and perhaps the hope of a few words of eulogy that could be

used in the publisher’s advertisements. But all the books were so neatly

arranged, they were so clean, that I had the impression they were very

seldom read. There was the Oxford Dictionary and there were standard

editions in grand bindings of most of the English classics, Fielding,

Boswell, Hazlitt, and so on, and there were a great many books on the

sea; I recognized the variously coloured, untidy volumes of the sailing

directions issued by the Admiralty, and there were a number of works on

gardening. The room had the look not of a writer’s workshop, but of a

memorial to a great name, and you could almost see already the desultory

tripper wandering in for want of something better to do and smell the

rather musty, close smell of a museum that few visited. I had a

suspicion that nowadays if Driffield read anything at all it was the

_Gardener’s Chronicle_ or the _Shipping Gazette_, of which I saw a

bundle on a table in the corner.

When the ladies had seen all they wanted we bade our hosts farewell. But

Lady Hodmarsh was a woman of tact and it must have occurred to her that

I, the excuse for the party, had scarcely had a word with Edward

Driffield, for at the door, enveloping me with a friendly smile, she

said to him:

“I was so interested to hear that you and Mr. Ashenden had known one

another years and years ago. Was he a nice little boy?”

Driffield looked at me for a moment with that level, ironic gaze of his.

I had the impression that if there had been nobody there he would have

put his tongue out at me.

“Shy,” he replied. “I taught him to ride a bicycle.”

We got once more into the huge yellow Rolls and drove off.

“He’s too sweet,” said the duchess. “I’m so glad we went.”

“He has such nice manners, hasn’t he?” said Lady Hodmarsh.

“You didn’t really expect him to eat his peas with a knife, did you?” I

asked.

“I wish he had,” said Scallion. “It would have been so picturesque.”

“I believe it’s very difficult,” said the duchess. “I’ve tried over and

over again and I can never get them to stay on.”

“You have to spear them,” said Scallion.

“Not at all,” retorted the duchess. “You have to balance them on the

flat, and they roll like the devil.”

“What did you think of Mrs. Driffield?” asked Lady Hodmarsh.

“I suppose she serves her purpose,” said the duchess.

“He’s so old, poor darling, he must have someone to look after him. You

know she was a hospital nurse?”

“Oh, was she?” said the duchess. “I thought perhaps she’d been his

secretary or typist or something.”

“She’s quite nice,” said Lady Hodmarsh, warmly defending a friend.

“Oh, quite.”

“He had a long illness about twenty years ago, and she was his nurse

then, and after he got well he married her.”

“Funny how men will do that. She must have been years younger than him.

She can’t be more than—what?—forty or forty-five.”

“No, I shouldn’t think so. Forty-seven, say. I’m told she’s done a great

deal for him. I mean, she’s made him quite presentable. Alroy Kear told

me that before that he was almost too bohemian.”

“As a rule authors’ wives are odious.”

“It’s such a bore having to have them, isn’t it?”

“Crushing. I wonder they don’t see that themselves.”

“Poor wretches, they often suffer from the delusion that people find

them interesting,” I murmured.

We reached Tercanbury, dropped the duchess at the station, and drove on.

V

IT WAS true that Edward Driffield had taught me to bicycle. That was

indeed how I first made his acquaintance. I do not know how long the

safety bicycle had been invented, but I know that it was not common in

the remote part of Kent in which I lived and when you saw someone

speeding along on solid tires you turned round and looked till he was

out of sight. It was still a matter for jocularity on the part of

middle-aged gentlemen who said Shank’s pony was good enough for them,

and for trepidation on the part of elderly ladies who made a dash for

the side of the road when they saw one coming. I had been for some time

filled with envy of the boys whom I saw riding into the school grounds

on their bicycles, and it gave a pretty opportunity for showing off when

you entered the gateway without holding on to the handles. I had

persuaded my uncle to let me have one at the beginning of the summer

holidays, and though my aunt was against it, since she said I should

only break my neck, he had yielded to my pertinacity more willingly

because I was of course paying for it out of my own money. I ordered it

before school broke up and a few days later the carrier brought it over

from Tercanbury.

I was determined to learn to ride it by myself and chaps at school had

told me that they had learned in half an hour. I tried and tried and at

last came to the conclusion that I was abnormally stupid (I am inclined

now to think that I was exaggerating), but even after my pride was

sufficiently humbled for me to allow the gardener to hold me up I seemed

at the end of the first morning no nearer to being able to get on by

myself than at the beginning. Next day, however, thinking that the

carriage drive at the vicarage was too winding to give a fellow a proper

chance, I wheeled the bicycle to a road not far away which I knew was

perfectly flat and straight and so solitary that no one would see me

making a fool of myself. I tried several times to mount, but fell off

each time. I barked my shins against the pedals and got very hot and

bothered. After I had been doing this for about an hour, though I began

to think that God did not intend me to ride a bicycle, but was

determined (unable to bear the thought of the sarcasms of my uncle, his

representative at Blackstable) to do so all the same, to my disgust I

saw two people on bicycles coming along the deserted road. I immediately

wheeled my machine to the side and sat down on a stile, looking out to

sea in a nonchalant way as though I had been for a ride and were just

sitting there wrapped in contemplation of the vasty ocean. I kept my

eyes dreamily averted from the two persons who were advancing toward me,

but I felt that they were coming nearer, and through the corner of my

eye I saw that they were a man and a woman. As they passed me the woman

swerved violently to my side of the road and, crashing against me, fell

to the ground.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I knew I should fall off the moment I saw

you.”

It was impossible under the circumstances to preserve my appearance of

abstraction and, blushing furiously, I said that it didn’t matter at

all.

The man had got off as she fell.

“You haven’t hurt yourself?” he asked.

“Oh, no.”

I recognized him then as Edward Driffield, the author I had seen walking

with the curate a few days before.

“I’m just learning to ride,” said his companion. “And I fall off

whenever I see anything in the road.”

“Aren’t you the vicar’s nephew?” said Driffield. “I saw you the other

day. Galloway told me who you were. This is my wife.”

She held out her hand with an oddly frank gesture and when I took it

gave mine a warm and hearty pressure. She smiled with her lips and with

her eyes and there was in her smile something that even then I

recognized as singularly pleasant. I was confused. People I did not know

made me dreadfully self-conscious, and I could not take in any of the

details of her appearance. I just had an impression of a rather large

blond woman. I do not know if I noticed then or only remembered

afterward that she wore a full skirt of blue serge, a pink shirt with a

starched front and a starched collar, and a straw hat, called in those

days, I think, a boater, perched on the top of a lot of golden hair.

“I think bicycling’s lovely, don’t you?” she said, looking at my

beautiful new machine which leaned against the stile. “It must be

wonderful to be able to ride well.”