Cakes and Ale

VIII

THE weather broke suddenly; it grew chilly and heavy rain fell. It put an end to our excursions. I was not sorry, for I did not know how I could look Mrs. Driffield in the face now that I had seen her meeting with George Kemp. I was not so much shocked as astonished. I could not understand how it was possible for her to like being kissed by an old man, and the fantastic notion passed through my mind, filled with the novels I had read, that somehow Lord George held her in his power and forced her by his knowledge of some fearful secret to submit to his loathsome embraces. My imagination played with terrible possibilities. Bigamy, murder, and forgery. Very few villains in books failed to hold the threat of exposure of one of these crimes over some hapless female. Perhaps Mrs. Driffield had backed a bill; I never could quite understand what this meant, but I knew that the consequences were disastrous. I toyed with the fancy of her anguish (the long sleepless nights when she sat at her window in her nightdress, her long fair hair hanging to her knees, and watched hopelessly for the dawn) and saw myself (not a boy of fifteen with sixpence a week pocket money, but a tall man with a waxed moustache and muscles of steel in faultless evening dress) with a happy blend of heroism and dexterity rescuing her from the toils of the rascally blackmailer. On the other hand, it had not looked as though she had yielded quite unwillingly to Lord George’s fondling and I could not get out of my ears the sound of her laugh. It had a note that I had never heard before. It gave me a queer feeling of breathlessness.

During the rest of my holidays I only saw the Driffields once more. I met them by chance in the town and they stopped and spoke to me. I suddenly felt very shy again, but when I looked at Mrs. Driffield I could not help blushing with embarrassment, for there was nothing in her countenance that indicated a guilty secret. She looked at me with those soft blue eyes of hers in which there was a child’s playful naughtiness. She often held her mouth a little open, as though it were just going to break into a smile, and her lips were full and red. There was honesty and innocence in her face and an ingenuous frankness and though then I could not have expressed this, I felt it quite strongly. If I had put it into words at all I think I should have said : She looks as straight as a die. It was impossible that she could be “carrying on” with Lord George. There must be an explanation; I did not believe what my eyes had seen.

Then the day came when I had to go back to school. The carter had taken my trunk and I walked to the station by myself. I had refused to let my aunt see me off, thinking it more manly to go alone, but I felt rather low as I walked down the street. It was a small branch line to Tercanbury and the station was at the other end of the town near the beach. I took my ticket and settled myself in the corner of a third-class carriage. Suddenly I heard a voice: “There he is”; and Mr. and Mrs. Driffield bustled gaily up.

“We thought we must come and see you off,” she said. “Are you feeling miserable?”

“No, of course not.”

“Oh, well, it won’t last long. We’ll have no end of a time when you come back for Christmas. Can you skate?”

“No.”

“I can. I’ll teach you.”

Her high spirits cheered me, and at the same time the thought that they had come to the station to say good-bye to me gave me a lump in my throat. I tried hard not to let the emotion I felt appear on my face.

“I expect I shall be playing a lot of football this term,” I said. “I ought to get into the second fifteen.”

She looked at me with kindly shining eyes, smiling with her full red lips. There was something in her smile I had always rather liked, and her voice seemed almost to tremble with a laugh or a tear. For one horrible moment I was afraid that she was going to kiss me. I was scared out of my wits. She talked on, she was mildly facetious as grown-up people are with schoolboys, and Driffield stood there without saying anything. He looked at me with a smile in his eyes and pulled his beard. Then the guard blew a cracked whistle and waved a red flag. Mrs. Driffield took my hand and shook it. Driffield came forward.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Here’s something for you.”

He pressed a tiny packet into my hand and the train steamed off. When I opened it I found that it was two half-crowns wrapped in a piece of toilet paper. I blushed to the roots of my hair. I was glad enough to have an extra five shillings, but the thought that Ted Driffield had dared to give me a tip filled me with rage and humiliation. I could not possibly accept anything from him. It was true that I had bicycled with him and sailed with him, but he wasn’t a sahib (I had got that from Major Greencourt) and it was an insult to me to give me five shillings. At first I thought of returning the money without a word, showing by my silence how outraged I was at the solecism he had committed, then I composed in my head a dignified and frigid letter in which I thanked him for his generosity, but said that he must see how impossible it was for a gentleman to accept a tip from someone who was practically a stranger. I thought it over for two or three days and every day it seemed more difficult to me to part with the two half-crowns. I felt sure that Driffield had meant it kindly, and of course he was very bad form and didn’t know about things; it would be rather hard to hurt his feelings by sending the money back, and finally I spent it. But I assuaged my wounded pride by not writing to thank Driffield for his gift.

When Christmas came, however, and I went back to Blackstable for the holidays, it was the Driffields I was most eager to see. In that stagnant little place they alone seemed to have a connection with the outside world which already was beginning to touch my daydreams with anxious curiosity. But I could not overcome my shyness enough to go to their house and call, and I hoped that I should meet them in the town. But the weather was dreadful, a boisterous wind whistled down the street, piercing you to the bone, and the few women who had an errand were swept along by their full skirts like fishing boats in half a gale. The cold rain scudded in sudden squalls and the sky, which in summer had enclosed the friendly country so snugly, now was a great pall that pressed upon the earth with sullen menace. There was small hope of meeting the Driffields by chance and at last I took my courage in both hands and one day after tea slipped out. As far as the station the road was pitch dark, but there the street lamps, few and dim, made it easier to keep to the pavement. The Driffields lived in a little two-story house in a side street; it was of dingy yellow brick and had a bow window. I knocked and presently a little maid opened the door; I asked if Mrs. Driffield was in. She gave me an uncertain look and, saying she would go and see, left me standing in the passage. I had already heard voices in the next room, but they were stilled as she opened the door and, entering, shut it behind her. I had a faint impression of mystery; in the houses of my uncle’s friends, even if there was no fire and the gas had to be lit as you went in, you were shown into the drawing room when you called. But the door was opened and Driffield came out. There was only a speck of light in the passage and at first he could not see who it was; but in an instant he recognized me.

“Oh, it’s you. We wondered when we were going to see you.” Then he called out: “Rosie, it’s young Ashenden.”

There was a cry and before you could say knife Mrs. Driffield had come into the passage and was shaking my hands.

“Come in, come in. Take off your coat. Isn’t it awful, the weather? You must be perishing.”

She helped me with my coat and took off my muffler and snatched my cap out of my hand and drew me into the room. It was hot and stuffy, a tiny room full of furniture, with a fire burning in the grate; they had gas there, which we hadn’t at the vicarage, and the three burners in round globes of frosted glass filled the room with harsh light. The air was gray with tobacco smoke. At first, dazzled and then taken aback by my effusive welcome, I did not see who the two men were who got up as I came in. Then I saw they were the curate, Mr. Galloway, and Lord George Kemp. I fancied that the curate shook my hand with constraint.

“How are you? I just came in to return some books that Mr. Driffield had lent me and Mrs. Driffield very kindly asked me to stay to tea.”

I felt rather than saw the quizzical look that Driffield gave him. He said something about the mammon of unrighteousness, which I recognized as a quotation, but did not gather the sense of. Mr. Galloway laughed.

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “What about the publicans and sinners?”

I thought the remark in very bad taste, but I was immediately seized upon by Lord George. There was no constraint about him.

“Well, young fellow, home for the holidays? My word, what a big chap you’re growing.”

I shook hands with him rather coldly. I wished I had not come.

“Let me give you a nice strong cup of tea,” said Mrs. Driffield.

“I’ve already had tea.”

“Have some more,” said Lord George, speaking as though he owned the place (that was just like him). “A big fellow like you can always tuck away another piece of bread and butter and jam and Mrs. D. will cut you a slice with her own fair hands.”

The tea things were still on the table and they were sitting round it. A chair was brought up for me and Mrs. Driffield gave me a piece of cake.

“We were just trying to persuade Ted to sing us a song,” said Lord George. “Come on, Ted.”

“Sing, ‘All Through Stickin’ to a Soljer,’ Ted,” said Mrs. Driffield. “I love that.”

“No, sing ‘First We Mopped the Floor with Him.’ ”

“I’ll sing ’em both if you’re not careful,” said Driffield.

He took his banjo, which was lying on the top of the cottage piano, tuned it, and began to sing. He had a rich baritone voice. I was quite used to people singing songs. When there was a tea party at the vicarage, or I went to one at the major’s or the doctor’s, people always brought their music with them. They left it in the hall, so that it should not seem that they wanted to be asked to play or sing; but after tea the hostess asked them if they had brought it. They shyly admitted that they had, and if it was at the vicarage I was sent to fetch it. Sometimes a young lady would say that she had quite given up playing and hadn’t brought anything with her, and then her mother would break in and say that she had brought it. But when they sang it was not comic songs; it was “I’ll Sing Thee Songs of Araby,” or “Good-Night, Beloved,” or “Queen of My Heart.” Once at the annual concert at the Assembly Rooms, Smithson, the draper, had sung a comic song, and though the people at the back of the hall had applauded a great deal, the gentry had seen nothing funny in it. Perhaps there wasn’t. Anyhow, before the next concert he was asked to be a little more careful about what he sang (“Remember there are ladies present, Mr. Smithson”) and so gave “The Death of Nelson.” The next ditty that Driffield sang had a chorus and the curate and Lord George joined in lustily. I heard it a good many times afterward, but I can only remember four lines:

First we mopped the floor with him;

Dragged him up and down the stairs;

Then we lugged him round the room,

Under tables, over chairs.

When it was finished, assuming my best company manners, I turned to Mrs. Driffield.

“Don’t you sing?” I asked.

“I do, but it always turns the milk, so Ted doesn’t encourage me.”

Driffield put down his banjo and lit a pipe.

“Well, how’s the old book getting along, Ted?” said Lord George heartily.

“Oh, all right. I’m working away, you know.”

“Good old Ted and his books,” Lord George laughed. “Why don’t you settle down and do something respectable for a change? I’ll give you a job in my office.”

“Oh, I’m all right.”

“You let him be, George,” said Mrs. Driffield. “He likes writing, and what I say is, as long as it keeps him happy why shouldn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t pretend to know anything about books,” began George Kemp.

“Then don’t talk about them,” interrupted Driffield with a smile.

“I don’t think anyone need be ashamed to have written Fairhaven,” said Mr. Galloway, “and I don’t care what the critics said.”

“Well, Ted, I’ve known you since I was a boy and I couldn’t read it, try as I would.”

“Oh, come on, we don’t want to start talking about books,” said Mrs. Driffield. “Sing us another song, Ted.”

“I must be going,” said the curate. He turned to me. “We might walk along together. Have you got anything for me to read, Driffield?”

Driffield pointed to a pile of new books that were heaped up on a table in the corner.

“Take your pick.”

“By Jove, what a lot!” I said, looking at them greedily.

“Oh, it’s all rubbish. They’re sent down for review.”

“What d’you do with them?”

“Take ’em into Tercanbury and sell ’em for what they’ll fetch. It all helps to pay the butcher.”

When we left, the curate and I, he with three or four books under his arm, he asked me:

“Did you tell your uncle you were coming to see the Driffields?”

“No, I just went out for a walk and it suddenly occurred to me that I might look in.”

This of course was some way from the truth, but I did not care to tell Mr. Galloway that, though I was practically grown up, my uncle realized the fact so little that he was quite capable of trying to prevent me from seeing people he objected to.

“Unless you have to I wouldn’t say anything about it in your place. The Driffields are perfectly all right, but your uncle doesn’t quite approve of them.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s such rot.”

“Of course they’re rather common, but he doesn’t write half badly, and when you think what he came from it’s wonderful that he writes at all.”

I was glad to know how the land lay. Mr. Galloway did not wish my uncle to know that he was on friendly terms with the Driffields. I could feel sure at all events that he would not give me away.

The patronizing manner in which my uncle’s curate spoke of one who has been now so long recognized as one of the greatest of the later Victorian novelists must arouse a smile; but it was the manner in which he was generally spoken of at Blackstable. One day we went to tea at Mrs. Greencourt’s, who had staying with her a cousin, the wife of an Oxford don, and we had been told that she was very cultivated. She was a Mrs. Encombe, a little woman with an eager wrinkled face; she surprised us very much because she wore her gray hair short and a black serge skirt that only just came down below the tops of her square-toed boots. She was the first example of the New Woman that had even been seen in Blackstable. We were staggered and immediately on the defensive, for she looked intellectual and it made us feel shy. (Afterward we all scoffed at her, and my uncle said to my aunt: “Well, my dear, I’m thankful you’re not clever, at least I’ve been spared that”; and my aunt in a playful mood put my uncle’s slippers which were warming for him by the fire over her boots and said: “Look, I’m the new woman.” And then we all said: “Mrs. Greencourt is very funny; you never know what she’ll do next. But of course she isn’t quite quite.” We could hardly forget that her father made china and that her grandfather had been a factory hand.)

But we all found it very interesting to hear Mrs. Encombe talk of the people she knew. My uncle had been at Oxford, but everyone he asked about seemed to be dead. Mrs. Encombe knew Mrs. Humphry Ward and admired Robert Elsmere. My uncle considered it a scandalous work, and he was surprised that Mr. Gladstone, who at least called himself a Christian, had found a good word to say for it. They had quite an argument about it. My uncle said he thought it would unsettle people’s opinions and give them all sorts of ideas that they were much better without. Mrs. Encombe answered that he wouldn’t think that if he knew Mrs. Humphry Ward. She was a woman of the very highest character, a niece of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and whatever you might think of the book itself (and she, Mrs. Encombe, was quite willing to admit that there were parts which had better have been omitted) it was quite certain that she had written it from the very highest motives. Mrs. Encombe knew Miss Broughton too. She was of very good family and it was strange that she wrote the books she did.

“I don’t see any harm in them,” said Mrs. Hayforth, the doctor’s wife. “I enjoy them, especially Red as a Rose is She.”

“Would you like your girls to read them?” asked Mrs. Encombe.

“Not just yet perhaps,” said Mrs. Hayforth. “But when they’re married I should have no objection.”

“Then it might interest you to know,” said Mrs. Encombe, “that when I was in Florence last Easter I was introduced to Ouida.”

“That’s quite another matter,” returned Mrs. Hayforth. “I can’t believe that any lady would read a book by Ouida.”

“I read one out of curiosity,” said Mrs. Encombe. “I must say, it’s more what you’d expect from a Frenchman than from an English gentlewoman.”

“Oh, but I understand she isn’t really English. I’ve always heard her real name is Mademoiselle de la Ramée.”

It was then that Mr. Galloway mentioned Edward Driffield.

“You know we have an author living here,” he said.

“We’re not very proud of him,” said the major. “He’s the son of old Miss Wolfe’s bailiff and he married a barmaid.”

“Can he write?” asked Mrs. Encombe.

“You can tell at once that he’s not a gentleman,” said the curate, “but when you consider the disadvantages he’s had to struggle against it’s rather remarkable that he should write as well as he does.”

“He’s a friend of Willie’s,” said my uncle.

Everyone looked at me, and I felt very uncomfortable.

“They bicycled together last summer, and after Willie had gone back to school I got one of his books from the library to see what it was like. I read the first volume and then I sent it back. I wrote a pretty stiff letter to the librarian and I was glad to hear that he’d withdrawn it from circulation. If it had been my own property I should have put it promptly in the kitchen stove.”

“I looked through one of his books myself,” said the doctor. “It interested me because it was set in this neighbourhood and I recognized some of the people. But I can’t say I liked it; I thought it unnecessarily coarse.”

“I mentioned that to him,” said Mr. Galloway, “and he said the men in the colliers that run up to Newcastle and the fishermen and farm hands don’t behave like ladies and gentlemen and don’t talk like them.”

“But why write about people of that character?” said my uncle.

“That’s what I say,” said Mrs. Hayforth. “We all know that there are coarse and wicked and vicious people in the world, but I don’t see what good it does to write about them.”

“I’m not defending him,” said Mr. Galloway. “I’m only telling you what explanation he gives himself. And then of course he brought up Dickens.”

“Dickens is quite different,” said my uncle. “I don’t see how anyone can object to the Pickwick Papers.”

“I suppose it’s a matter of taste,” said my aunt. “I always found Dickens very coarse. I don’t want to read about people who drop their aitches. I must say I’m very glad the weather’s so bad now and Willie can’t take any more rides with Mr. Driffield. I don’t think he’s quite the sort of person he ought to associate with.”

Both Mr. Galloway and I looked down our noses.