WHEN MRS. DRIFFIELD, having sent the pilgrims on their way, came back
she bore under her arm a portfolio.
“What very nice young men!” she said. “I wish young men in England took
such a keen interest in literature. I gave them that photo of Edward
when he was dead and they asked me for one of mine, and I signed it for
them.” Then very graciously: “You made a great impression on them, Roy.
They said it was a real privilege to meet you.”
“I’ve lectured in America so much,” said Roy, with modesty.
“Oh, but they’ve read your books. They say that what they like about
them is that they’re so virile.”
The portfolio contained a number of old photographs, groups of
schoolboys among whom I recognized an urchin with untidy hair as
Driffield only because his widow pointed him out, Rugby fifteens with
Driffield a little older, and then one of a young sailor in a jersey and
a reefer jacket, Driffield when he ran away to sea.
“Here’s one taken when he was first married,” said Mrs. Driffield.
He wore a beard and black-and-white check trousers; in his buttonhole
was a large white rose backed by maidenhair and on the table beside him
a chimney-pot hat.
“And here is the bride,” said Mrs. Driffield, trying not to smile.
Poor Rosie, seen by a country photographer over forty years ago, was
grotesque. She was standing very stiffly against a background of
baronial hall, holding a large bouquet; her dress was elaborately
draped, pinched at the waist, and she wore a bustle. Her fringe came
down to her eyes. On her head was a wreath of orange blossoms, perched
high on a mass of hair, and from it was thrown back a long veil. Only I
knew how lovely she must have looked.
“She looks fearfully common,” said Roy.
“She was,” murmured Mrs. Driffield.
We looked at more photographs of Edward, photographs that had been taken
of him when he began to be known, photographs when he wore only a
moustache and others, all the later ones, when he was clean-shaven. You
saw his face grown thinner and more lined. The stubborn commonplace of
the early portraits melted gradually into a weary refinement. You saw
the change in him wrought by experience, thought, and achieved ambition.
I looked again at the photograph of the young sailorman and fancied that
I saw in it already a trace of that aloofness that seemed to me so
marked in the older ones and that I had had years before the vague
sensation of in the man himself. The face you saw was a mask and the
actions he performed without significance. I had an impression that the
real man, to his death unknown and lonely, was a wraith that went a
silent way unseen between the writer of his books and the fellow who led
his life, and smiled with ironical detachment at the two puppets that
the world took for Edward Driffield. I am conscious that in what I have
written of him I have not presented a living man, standing on his feet,
rounded, with comprehensible motives and logical activities; I have not
tried to: I am glad to leave that to the abler pen of Alroy Kear.
I came across the photographs that Harry Retford, the actor, had taken
of Rosie, and then a photograph of the picture that Lionel Hillier had
painted of her. It gave me a pang. That was how I best remembered her.
Notwithstanding the old-fashioned gown, she was alive there and
tremulous with the passion that filled her. She seemed to offer herself
to the assault of love.
“She gives you the impression of a hefty wench,” said Roy.
“If you like the milkmaid type,” answered Mrs. Driffield. “I’ve always
thought she looked rather like a white nigger.”
That was what Mrs. Barton Trafford had been fond of calling her, and
with Rosie’s thick lips and broad nose there was indeed a hateful truth
in the criticism. But they did not know how silvery golden her hair was,
nor how golden silver her skin; they did not know her enchanting smile.
“She wasn’t a bit like a white nigger,” I said. “She was virginal like
the dawn. She was like Hebe. She was like a white rose.”
Mrs. Driffield smiled and exchanged a meaning glance with Roy.
“Mrs. Barton Trafford told me a great deal about her. I don’t wish to
seem spiteful, but I’m afraid I don’t think that she can have been a
very nice woman.”
“That’s where you make a mistake,” I replied. “She was a very nice
woman. I never saw her in a bad temper. You only had to say you wanted
something for her to give it to you. I never heard her say a
disagreeable thing about anyone. She had a heart of gold.”
“She was a terrible slattern. Her house was always in a mess; you didn’t
like to sit down in a chair because it was so dusty and you dared not
look in the corners. And it was the same with her person. She could
never put a skirt on straight and you’d see about two inches of
petticoat hanging down on one side.”
“She didn’t bother about things like that. They didn’t make her any the
less beautiful. And she was as good as she was beautiful.”
Roy burst out laughing and Mrs. Driffield put her hand up to her mouth
to hide her smile.
“Oh, come, Mr. Ashenden, that’s really going too far. After all, let’s
face it, she was a nymphomaniac.”
“I think that’s a very silly word,” I said.
“Well, then, let me say that she can hardly have been a very good woman
to treat poor Edward as she did. Of course it was a blessing in
disguise. If she hadn’t run away from him he might have had to bear that
burden for the rest of his life, and with such a handicap he could never
have reached the position he did. But the fact remains that she was
notoriously unfaithful to him. From what I hear she was absolutely
promiscuous.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “She was a very simple woman. Her
instincts were healthy and ingenuous. She loved to make people happy.
She loved love.”
“Do you call that love?”
“Well, then, the act of love. She was naturally affectionate. When she
liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She
never thought twice about it. It was not vice; it wasn’t lasciviousness;
it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat
or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to
give pleasure to others. It had no effect on her character; she remained
sincere, unspoiled, and artless.”
Mrs. Driffield looked as though she had taken a dose of castor oil and
had just been trying to get the taste of it out of her mouth by sucking
a lemon.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “But then I’m bound to admit that I
never understood what Edward saw in her.”
“Did he know that she was carrying on with all sorts of people?” asked
Roy.
“I’m sure he didn’t,” she replied quickly.
“You think him a bigger fool than I do, Mrs. Driffield,” I said.
“Then why did he put up with it?”
“I think I can tell you. You see, she wasn’t a woman who ever inspired
love. Only affection. It was absurd to be jealous over her. She was like
a clear deep pool in a forest glade into which it’s heavenly to plunge,
but it is neither less cool nor less crystalline because a tramp and a
gipsy and a gamekeeper have plunged into it before you.”
Roy laughed again and this time Mrs. Driffield without concealment
smiled thinly.
“It’s comic to hear you so lyrical,” said Roy.
I stifled a sigh. I have noticed that when I am most serious people are
apt to laugh at me, and indeed when after a lapse of time I have read
passages that I wrote from the fullness of my heart I have been tempted
to laugh at myself. It must be that there is something naturally absurd
in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine,
unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant
planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an
eternal mind.
I saw that Mrs. Driffield wished to ask me something. It caused her a
certain embarrassment.
“Do you think he’d have taken her back if she’d been willing to come?”
“You knew him better than I. I should say no. I think that when he had
exhausted an emotion he took no further interest in the person who had
aroused it. I should say that he had a peculiar combination of strong
feeling and extreme callousness.”
“I don’t know how you can say that,” cried Roy. “He was the kindest man
I ever met.”
Mrs. Driffield looked at me steadily and then dropped her eyes.
“I wonder what happened to her when she went to America,” he asked.
“I believe she married Kemp,” said Mrs. Driffield. “I heard they had
taken another name. Of course they couldn’t show their faces over here
again.”
“When did she die?”
“Oh, about ten years ago.”
“How did you hear?” I asked.
“From Harold Kemp, the son; he’s in some sort of business at Maidstone.
I never told Edward. She’d been dead to him for many years and I saw no
reason to remind him of the past. It always helps you if you put
yourself in other people’s shoes and I said to myself that if I were he
I shouldn’t want to be reminded of an unfortunate episode of my youth.
Don’t you think I was right?”