NEXT MORNING it was cold and raw, but it was not raining, and I walked
down the High Street toward the vicarage. I recognized the names over
the shops, the Kentish names that have been borne for centuries—the
Ganns, the Kemps, the Cobbs, the Igguldens—but I saw no one that I
knew. I felt like a ghost walking down that street where I had once
known nearly everyone, if not to speak to, at least by sight. Suddenly a
very shabby little car passed me, stopped, and backed, and I saw someone
looking at me curiously. A tall, heavy elderly man got out and came
toward me.
“Aren’t you Willie Ashenden?” he asked.
Then I recognized him. He was the doctor’s son, and I had been at school
with him; we had passed from form to form together, and I knew that he
had succeeded his father in his practice.
“Hullo, how are you?” he asked. “I’ve just been along to the vicarage to
see my grandson. It’s a preparatory school now, you know, and I put him
there at the beginning of this term.”
He was shabbily dressed and unkempt, but he had a fine head and I saw
that in youth he must have had unusual beauty. It was funny that I had
never noticed it.
“Are you a grandfather?” I asked.
“Three times over,” he laughed.
It gave me a shock. He had drawn breath, walked the earth and presently
grown to man’s estate, married, had children and they in turn had had
children; I judged from the look of him that he had lived, with
incessant toil, in penury. He had the peculiar manner of the country
doctor, bluff, hearty, and unctuous. His life was over. I had plans in
my head for books and plays, I was full of schemes for the future; I
felt that a long stretch of activity and fun still lay before me; and
yet, I supposed, to others I must seem the elderly man that he seemed to
me. I was so shaken that I had not the presence of mind to ask about his
brothers whom as a child I had played with, or about the old friends who
had been my companions; after a few foolish remarks I left him. I walked
on to the vicarage, a roomy, rambling house too far out of the way for
the modern incumbent who took his duties more seriously than did my
uncle and too large for the present cost of living. It stood in a big
garden and was surrounded by green fields. There was a great square
notice board that announced that it was a preparatory school for the
sons of gentlemen and gave the name and the degrees of the head master.
I looked over the paling; the garden was squalid and untidy and the pond
in which I used to fish for roach was choked up. The glebe fields had
been cut up into building lots. There were rows of little brick houses
with bumpy ill-made roads. I walked along Joy Lane and there were houses
here too, bungalows facing the sea; and the old turnpike house was a
trim tea shop.
I wandered about here and there. There seemed innumerable streets of
little houses of yellow brick, but I do not know who lived in them for I
saw no one about. I went down to the harbour. It was deserted. There was
but one tramp lying a little way out from the pier. Two or three
sailormen were sitting outside a warehouse and they stared at me as I
passed. The bottom had fallen out of the coal trade and colliers came to
Blackstable no longer.
Then it was time for me to go to Ferne Court and I went back to the Bear
and Key. The landlord had told me that he had a Daimler for hire and I
had arranged that it should take me to my luncheon. It stood at the door
when I came up, a brougham, but the oldest, most dilapidated car of its
make that I had ever seen; it panted along with squeaks and thumps and
rattlings, with sudden angry jerks, so that I wondered if I should ever
reach my destination. But the extraordinary, the amazing thing about it
was that it smelled exactly like the old landau which my uncle used to
hire every Sunday morning to go to church in. This was a rank odour of
stables and of stale straw that lay at the bottom of the carriage; and I
wondered in vain why, after all these years, the motor car should have
it too. But nothing can bring back the past like a perfume or a stench,
and, oblivious to the country I was trundling through, I saw myself once
more a little boy on the front seat with the communion plate beside me
and, facing me, my aunt, smelling slightly of clean linen and eau de
cologne, in her black silk cloak and her little bonnet with a feather,
and my uncle in his cassock, a broad band of ribbed silk round his ample
waist and a gold cross hanging over his stomach from the gold chain
round his neck.
“Now, Willie, mind you behave nicely to-day. You’re not to turn round,
and sit up properly in your seat. The Lord’s House isn’t the place to
loll in and you must remember that you should set an example to other
little boys who haven’t had your advantages.”
When I arrived at Ferne Court Mrs. Driffield and Roy were walking round
the garden and they came up to me as I got out of the car.
“I was showing Roy my flowers,” said Mrs. Driffield, as she shook hands
with me. And then with a sigh: “They’re all I have now.”
She looked no older than when last I saw her six years before. She wore
her weeds with quiet distinction. At her neck was a collar of white
crêpe and at her wrists cuffs of the same. Roy, I noticed, wore with his
neat blue suit a black tie; I supposed it was a sign of respect for the
illustrious dead.
“I’ll just show you my herbaceous borders,” said Mrs. Driffield, “and
then we’ll go in to lunch.”
We walked round and Roy was very knowledgeable. He knew what all the
flowers were called, and the Latin names tripped off his tongue like
cigarettes out of a cigarette-making machine. He told Mrs. Driffield
where she ought to get certain varieties that she absolutely must have
and how perfectly lovely were certain others.
“Shall we go in through Edward’s study?” suggested Mrs. Driffield. “I
keep it exactly as it was when he was here. I haven’t changed a thing.
You’d be surprised how many people come over to see the house, and of
course above all they want to see the room he worked in.”
We went in through an open window. There was a bowl of roses on the desk
and on a little round table by the side of the armchair a copy of the
_Spectator_. In the ash trays were the master’s pipes and there was ink
in the inkstand. The scene was perfectly set. I do not know why the room
seemed so strangely dead; it had already the mustiness of a museum. Mrs.
Driffield went to the bookshelves and with a little smile, half playful,
half sad, passed a rapid hand across the back of half a dozen volumes
bound in blue.
“You know that Edward admired your work so much,” said Mrs. Driffield.
“He reread your books quite often.”
“I’m very glad to think that,” I said politely.
I knew very well that they had not been there on my last visit and in a
casual way I took one of them out and ran my fingers along the top to
see whether there was dust on it. There was not. Then I took another
book down, one of Charlotte Brontë’s, and making a little plausible
conversation tried the same experiment. No, there was no dust there
either. All I learned was that Mrs. Driffield was an excellent
housekeeper and had a conscientious maid.
We went in to luncheon, a hearty British meal of roast beef and
Yorkshire pudding, and we talked of the work on which Roy was engaged.
“I want to spare dear Roy all the labour I can,” said Mrs. Driffield,
“and I’ve been gathering together as much of the material as I could
myself. Of course it’s been rather painful, but it’s been very
interesting, too. I came across a lot of old photographs that I must
show you.”
After luncheon we went into the drawing room and I noticed again with
what perfect tact Mrs. Driffield had arranged it. It suited the widow of
a distinguished man of letters almost more than it had suited the wife.
Those chintzes, those bowls of pot-pourri, those Dresden china
figures—there was about them a faint air of regret; they seemed to
reflect pensively upon a past of distinction. I could have wished on
this chilly day that there were a fire in the grate, but the English are
a hardy as well as a conservative race; and it is not difficult for them
to maintain their principles at the cost of the discomfort of others. I
doubted whether Mrs. Driffield would have conceived the possibility of
lighting a fire before the first of October. She asked me whether I had
lately seen the lady who had brought me to lunch with the Driffields,
and I surmised from her faint acerbity that since the death of her
eminent husband the great and fashionable had shown a distinct tendency
to take no further notice of her. We were just settling down to talk
about the defunct; Roy and Mrs. Driffield were putting artful questions
to incite me to disclose my recollections and I was gathering my wits
about me so that I should not in an unguarded moment let slip anything
that I had made up my mind to keep to myself; when suddenly the trim
parlour-maid brought in two cards on a small salver.
“Two gentlemen in a car, mum, and they say, could they look at the house
and garden?”
“What a bore!” cried Mrs. Driffield, but with astonishing alacrity.
“Isn’t it funny I should have been speaking just now about the people
who want to see the house? I never have a moment’s peace.”
“Well, why don’t you say you’re sorry you can’t see them?” said Roy,
with what I thought a certain cattiness.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that. Edward wouldn’t have liked me to.” She looked
at the cards. “I haven’t got my glasses on me.”
She handed them to me, and on one I read “Henry Beard MacDougal,
University of Virginia”; and in pencil was written: “Assistant professor
in English Literature.” The other was “Jean-Paul Underhill” and there
was at the bottom an address in New York.
“Americans,” said Mrs. Driffield. “Say I shall be very pleased if
they’ll come in.”
Presently the maid ushered the strangers in. They were both tall young
men and broad-shouldered, with heavy, clean-shaven, swarthy faces, and
handsome eyes; they both wore horn-rimmed spectacles and they both had
thick black hair combed straight back from their foreheads. They both
wore English suits that were evidently brand new; they were both
slightly embarrassed, but verbose and extremely civil. They explained
that they were making a literary tour of England and, being admirers of
Edward Driffield, had taken the liberty of stopping off on their way to
Rye to visit Henry James’s house in the hope that they would be
permitted to see a spot sanctified by so many associations. The
reference to Rye did not go down very well with Mrs. Driffield.
“I believe they have some very good links there,” she said.
She introduced the Americans to Roy and me. I was filled with admiration
for the way in which Roy rose to the occasion. It appeared that he had
lectured before the University of Virginia and had stayed with a
distinguished member of the faculty. It had been an unforgettable
experience. He did not know whether he had been more impressed by the
lavish hospitality with which those charming Virginians had entertained
him or by their intelligent interest in art and literature. He asked how
So and So was, and So and So; he had made lifelong friends there, and it
looked as though everyone he had met was good and kind and clever. Soon
the young professor was telling Roy how much he liked his books, and Roy
was modestly telling him what in this one and the other his aim had been
and how conscious he was that he had come far short of achieving it.
Mrs. Driffield listened with smiling sympathy, but I had a feeling that
her smile was growing a trifle strained. It may be that Roy had too, for
he suddenly broke off.
“But you don’t want me to bore you with my stuff,” he said in his loud
hearty way. “I’m only here because Mrs. Driffield has entrusted to me
the great honour of writing Edward Driffield’s Life.”
This of course interested the visitors very much.
“It’s some job, believe me,” said Roy, playfully American. “Fortunately
I have the assistance of Mrs. Driffield, who was not only a perfect
wife, but an admirable amanuensis and secretary; the materials she has
placed at my disposal are so amazingly full that really little remains
for me to do but take advantage of her industry and her—her
affectionate zeal.”
Mrs. Driffield looked down demurely at the carpet and the two young
Americans turned on her their large dark eyes in which you could read
their sympathy, their interest, and their respect. After a little more
conversation—partly literary but also about golf, for the visitors
admitted that they hoped to get a round or two at Rye, and here again
Roy was on the spot, for he told them to look out for such and such a
bunker and when they came to London hoped they would play with him at
Sunningdale; after this, I say, Mrs. Driffield got up and offered to
show them Edward’s study and bedroom, and of course the garden. Roy rose
to his feet, evidently bent on accompanying them, but Mrs. Driffield
gave him a little smile; it was pleasant but firm.
“Don’t you bother to come, Roy,” she said. “I’ll take them round. You
stay here and talk to Mr. Ashenden.”
“Oh, all right. Of course.”
The strangers bade us farewell and Roy and I settled down again in the
chintz armchairs.
“Jolly room this is,” said Roy.
“Very.”
“Amy had to work hard to get it. You know the old man bought this house
two or three years before they were married. She tried to make him sell
it, but he wouldn’t. He was very obstinate in some ways. You see, it
belonged to a certain Miss Wolfe, whose bailiff his father was, and he
said that when he was a little boy his one idea was to own it himself
and now he’d got it he was going to keep it. One would have thought the
last thing he’d want to do was to live in a place where everyone knew
all about his origins and everything. Once poor Amy very nearly engaged
a housemaid before she discovered she was Edward’s great-niece. When Amy
came here the house was furnished from attic to cellar in the best
Tottenham Court Road manner; you know the sort of thing, Turkey carpets
and mahogany sideboards, and a plush-covered suite in the drawing room,
and modern marquetry. It was his idea of how a gentleman’s house should
be furnished. Amy says it was simply awful. He wouldn’t let her change a
thing and she had to go to work with the greatest care; she says she
simply couldn’t have lived in it and she was determined to have things
right, so she had to change things one by one so that he didn’t pay any
attention. She told me the hardest job she had was with his writing
desk. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed the one there is in his study
now. It’s a very good period piece; I wouldn’t mind having it myself.
Well, he had a horrible American roll-top desk. He’d had it for years
and he’d written a dozen books on it and he simply wouldn’t part with
it, he had no feeling for things like that; he just happened to be
attached to it because he’d had it so long. You must get Amy to tell you
the story how she managed to get rid of it in the end. It’s really
priceless. She’s a remarkable woman, you know; she generally gets her
own way.”
“I’ve noticed it,” I said.
It had not taken her long to dispose of Roy when he showed signs of
wishing to go over the house with the visitors. He gave me a quick look
and laughed. Roy was not stupid.
“You don’t know America as well as I do,” he said. “They always prefer a
live mouse to a dead lion. That’s one of the reasons why I like
America.”