“I think in future,” said my uncle, “you would be wiser not to consort
with people whom your aunt and I don’t think proper associates for you.”
“One can’t help feeling sorry for all those tradesmen they cheated,”
said my aunt.
“It serves them right,” said my uncle. “Fancy giving credit to people
like that! I should have thought anyone could see they were nothing but
adventurers.”
“I always wonder why they came down here at all.”
“They just wanted to show off, and I suppose they thought as people knew
who they were here it would be easier to get things on credit.”
I did not think this quite reasonable, but was too much crushed to
argue.
As soon as I had the chance I asked Mary-Ann what she knew of the
incident. To my surprise she did not take it at all in the same way as
my uncle and aunt. She giggled.
“They let everyone in proper,” she said. “They was as free as you like
with their money and everyone though they ’ad plenty. It was always the
best end of the neck for them at the butcher’s and when they wanted a
steak nothing would do but the undercut. Asparagus and grapes and I
don’t know what all. They ran up bills in every shop in the town. I
don’t know ’ow people can be such fools.”
But it was evidently of the tradesmen she was speaking and not of the
Driffields.
“But how did they manage to bunk without anyone knowing?” I asked.
“Well, that’s what everybody’s askin’. They do say it was Lord George
’elped them. How did they get their boxes to the station, I ask you, if
’e didn’t take them in that there trap of ’is?”
“What does he say about it?”
“He says ’e knows no more about it than the man in the moon. There was a
rare to-do all over the town when they found out the Driffields had shot
the moon. It made me laugh. Lord George says ’e never knew they was
broke, and ’e makes out ’e was as surprised as anybody. But I for one
don’t believe a word of it. We all knew about ’im and Rosie before she
was married, and between you and me and the gatepost I don’t know that
it ended there. They do say they was seen walkin’ about the fields
together last summer and ’e was in and out of the ’ouse pretty near
every day.”
“How did people find out?”
“Well, it’s like this. They ’ad a girl there and they told ’er she could
go ’ome and spend the night with her mother, but she wasn’t to be back
later than eight o’clock in the morning. Well, when she come back she
couldn’t get in. She knocked and she rung but nobody answered, and so
she went in next door and asked the lady there what she’d better do, and
the lady said she’d better go to the police station. The sergeant come
back with ’er and ’e knocked and ’e rung, but ’_e_ couldn’t get no
answer. Then he asked the girl ’ad they paid ’er ’er wages, and she said
no, not for three months, and then ’e said, you take my word for it,
they’ve shot the moon, that’s what they’ve done. An’ when they come to
get inside they found they’d took all their clothes, an’ their
books—they say as Ted Driffield ’ad a rare lot of books—an’ every
blessed thing that belonged to them.”
“And has nothing been heard of them since?”
“Well, not exactly, but when they’d been gone about a week the girl got
a letter from London, and when she opened it there was no letter or
anything, but just a postal order for ’er wages. An’ if you ask me, I
call that very ’andsome not to do a poor girl out of her wages.”
I was much more shocked than Mary-Ann. I was a very respectable youth.
The reader cannot have failed to observe that I accepted the conventions
of my class as if they were the laws of Nature, and though debts on the
grand scale in books had seemed to me romantic, and duns and money
lenders were familiar figures to my fancy, I could not but think it mean
and paltry not to pay the tradesmen’s books. I listened with confusion
when people talked in my presence of the Driffields, and when they spoke
of them as my friends I said: “Hang it all, I just knew them”; and when
they asked: “Weren’t they fearfully common?” I said: “Well, after all
they didn’t exactly suggest the Vere de Veres, you know.” Poor Mr.
Galloway was dreadfully upset.
“Of course I didn’t think they were wealthy,” he told me, “but I thought
they had enough to get along. The house was very nicely furnished and
the piano was new. It never struck me that they hadn’t paid for a single
thing. They never stinted themselves. What hurts me is the deceit. I
used to see quite a lot of them and I thought they liked me. They always
made one welcome. You’d hardly believe it, but the last time I saw them
when they shook hands with me Mrs. Driffield asked me to come next day
and Driffield said: ‘Muffins for tea to-morrow.’ And all the time they
had everything packed upstairs and that very night they took the last
train to London.”
“What does Lord George say about it?”
“To tell you the truth I haven’t gone out of my way to see him lately.
It’s been a lesson to me. There’s a little proverb about evil
communications which I’ve thought well to bear in mind.”
I felt very much the same about Lord George, and I was a little nervous,
too. If he took it into his head to tell people that at Christmas I had
been going to see the Driffields almost every day, and it came to my
uncle’s ears, I foresaw an unpleasant fuss. My uncle would accuse me of
deceit and prevarication and disobedience and of not behaving like a
gentleman, and I did not at the moment see what answer I could make. I
knew him well enough to be aware that he would not let the matter drop,
and that I should be reminded of my transgression for years. I was just
as glad not to see Lord George. But one day I ran into him face to face
in the High Street.
“Hulloa, youngster,” he cried, addressing me in a way I particularly
resented. “Back for the holidays, I suppose.”
“You suppose quite correctly,” I answered with what I thought withering
sarcasm.
Unfortunately he only bellowed with laughter.
“You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself if you don’t look out,” he answered
heartily. “Well, it looks as if there was no more whist for you and me
just yet. Now you see what comes of living beyond your means. What I
always say to my boys is, if you’ve got a pound and you spend nineteen
and six you’re a rich man, but if you spend twenty shillings and
sixpence you’re a pauper. Look after the pence, young fellow, and the
pounds’ll look after themselves.”
But though he spoke after this fashion there was in his voice no note of
disapproval, but a bubble of laughter as though in his heart he were
tittering at these admirable maxims.
“They say you helped them to bunk,” I remarked.
“Me?” His face assumed a look of extreme surprise, but his eyes
glittered with sly mirth. “Why, when they came and told me the
Driffields had shot the moon you could have knocked me down with a
feather. They owed me four pounds seventeen and six for coal. We’ve all
been let in, even poor old Galloway who never got his muffins for tea.”
I had never thought Lord George more blatant. I should have liked to say
something final and crushing, but as I could not think of anything I
just said that I must be getting along and with a curt nod left him.