24
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.
‘Hallo, 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 today. 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 I last 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 arm-chair 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 re-read 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 Bronte’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 taste 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 potpourri, 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 was 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 l
unch 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 parlourmaid 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, cleanshaven, 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 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.’
25
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 button-hole was a large white rose backed by maidenhair, and on the table beside him was 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 were 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 man 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.