Cakes and Ale

XIII

I LIVED with Mrs. Hudson for nearly two years before I met the Driffields again. My life was very regular. I spent all day at the hospital and about six walked back to Vincent Square. I bought the Star at Lambeth Bridge and read it till my dinner was served. Then I read seriously for an hour or two, works to improve my mind, for I was a strenuous, earnest, and industrious youth, and after that wrote novels and plays till bedtime. I do not know for what reason it was that one day toward the end of June, happening to leave the hospital early, I thought I would walk down the Vauxhall Bridge Road. I liked it for its noisy bustle. It had a sordid vivacity that was pleasantly exciting and you felt that at any moment an adventure might there befall you. I strolled along in a daydream and was surprised suddenly to hear my name. I stopped and looked, and there to my astonishment stood Mrs. Driffield. She was smiling at me.

“Don’t you know me?” she cried.

“Yes. Mrs. Driffield.”

And though I was grown up I was conscious that I was blushing as furiously as when I was sixteen. I was embarrassed. With my lamentably Victorian notions of honesty I had been much shocked by the Driffields’ behaviour in running away from Blackstable without paying their bills. It seemed to me very shabby. I felt deeply the shame I thought they must feel and I was astounded that Mrs. Driffield should speak to someone who knew of the discreditable incident. If I had seen her coming I should have looked away, my delicacy presuming that she would wish to avoid the mortification of being seen by me; but she held out her hand and shook mine with obvious pleasure.

“I am glad to see a Blackstable face,” she said. “You know we left there in a hurry.”

She laughed and I laughed too; but her laugh was mirthful and childlike, while mine, I felt, was strained.

“I hear there was a to-do when they found out we’d skipped. I thought Ted would never stop laughing when he heard about it. What did your uncle say?”

I was quick to get the right tone. I wasn’t going to let her think that I couldn’t see a joke as well as anyone.

“Oh, you know what he is. He’s very old-fashioned.”

“Yes, that’s what’s wrong with Blackstable. They want waking up.” She gave me a friendly look. “You’ve grown a lot since I saw you last. Why, you’re growing a moustache.”

“Yes,” I said, giving it as much of a twirl as its size allowed me. “I’ve had that for ages.”

“How time does fly, doesn’t it? You were just a boy four years ago and now you’re a man.”

“I ought to be,” I replied somewhat haughtily. “I’m nearly twenty-one.”

I was looking at Mrs. Driffield. She wore a very small hat with feathers in it, and a pale gray dress with large leg-of-mutton sleeves and a long train. I thought she looked very smart. I had always thought that she had a nice face, but I noticed now, for the first time, that she was pretty. Her eyes were bluer than I remembered and her skin was like ivory.

“You know we live just round the corner,” she said.

“So do I.”

“We live in Limpus Road. We’ve been there almost ever since we left Blackstable.”

“Well, I’ve been in Vincent Square for nearly two years.”

“I knew you were in London. George Kemp told me so, and I often wondered where you were. Why don’t you walk back with me now? Ted will be so pleased to see you.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

As we walked along she told me that Driffield was now literary editor of a weekly paper; his last book had done much better than any of his others and he was expecting to get quite a bit as an advance on royalties for the next one. She seemed to know most of the Blackstable news, and I remembered how it had been suspected that Lord George had helped the Driffields in their flight. I guessed that he wrote to them now and then. I noticed as we walked along that sometimes the men who passed us stared at Mrs. Driffield. It occurred to me presently that they must think her pretty too. I began to walk with a certain swagger.

Limpus Road was a long wide straight street that ran parallel with the Vauxhall Bridge Road. The houses were all alike, of stucco, dingily painted, solid, and with substantial porticos. I suppose they had been built to be inhabited by men of standing in the city of London, but the street had gone down in the world or had never attracted the right sort of tenant; and its decayed respectability had an air at once furtive and shabbily dissipated, that made you think of persons who had seen better days and now, genteelly fuddled, talked of the social distinction of their youth. The Driffields lived in a house painted a dull red, and Mrs. Driffield letting me into a narrow dark hall, opened a door and said:

“Go in. I’ll tell Ted you’re here.”

She walked down the hall and I entered the sitting room. The Driffields had the basement and the ground floor of the house, which they rented from the lady who lived in the upper part. The room into which I went looked as if it had been furnished with the scourings of auction sales. There were heavy velvet curtains with great fringes, all loops and festoons, and a gilt suite, upholstered in yellow damask, heavily buttoned; and there was a great pouffe in the middle of the room. There were gilt cabinets in which were masses of little articles, pieces of china, ivory figures, wood carvings, bits of Indian brass; and on the walls hung large oil paintings of highland glens and stags and gillies. In a moment Mrs. Driffield brought her husband and he greeted me warmly. He wore a shabby alpaca coat and gray trousers; he had shaved his beard and wore now a moustache and a small imperial. I noticed for the first time how short he was; but he looked more distinguished than he used to. There was something a trifle foreign in his appearance and I thought this was much more what I should expect an author to look like.

“Well, what do you think of our new abode?” he asked. “It looks rich, doesn’t it? I think it inspires confidence.”

He looked round him with satisfaction.

“And Ted’s got his den at the back where he can write, and we’ve got a dining room in the basement,” said Mrs. Driffield. “Miss Cowley was companion for many years to a lady of title and when she died she left her all her furniture. You can see everything’s good, can’t you? You can see it came out of a gentleman’s house.”

“Rosie fell in love with the place the moment we saw it,” said Driffield.

“You did too, Ted.”

“We’ve lived in sordid circumstances so long; it’s a change to be surrounded by luxury. Madame de Pompadour and all that sort of thing.”

When I left them it was with a very cordial invitation to come again. It appeared that they were at home every Saturday afternoon and all sorts of people whom I would like to meet were in the habit of dropping in.