Cakes and Ale

“I think you’d better all the same.”

Mrs. Driffield gave me that peculiar look of hers, mischievous and yet friendly, and I blushed scarlet. I knew that if I asked my uncle he would say no. It would be much better to say nothing about it. But as we rode along I saw coming toward us the doctor in his dogcart. I looked straight in front of me as he passed in the vain hope that if I did not look at him he would not look at me. I was uneasy. If he had seen me the fact would quickly reach the ears of my uncle or my aunt and I considered whether it would not be safer to disclose myself a secret that could no longer be concealed. When we parted at the vicarage gates (I had not been able to avoid riding as far as this in their company) Driffield said that if I found I could come with them next day I had better call for them as early as I could.

“You know where we live, don’t you? Next door to the Congregational Church. It’s called Lime Cottage.”

When I sat down to dinner I looked for an opportunity to slip in casually the information that I had by accident run across the Driffields; but news travelled fast in Blackstable.

“Who were those people you were bicycling with this morning?” asked my aunt. “We met Dr. Anstey in the town and he said he’d seen you.”

My uncle, chewing his roast beef with an air of disapproval, looked sullenly at his plate.

“The Driffields,” I said with nonchalance. “You know, the author. Mr. Galloway knows them.”

“They’re most disreputable people,” said my uncle. “I don’t wish you to associate with them.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I’m not going to give you my reasons. It’s enough that I don’t wish it.”

“How did you ever get to know them?” asked my aunt.

“I was just riding along and they were riding along, and they asked me if I’d like to ride with them,” I said, distorting the truth a little.

“I call it very pushing,” said my uncle.

I began to sulk. And to show my indignation when the sweet was put on the table, though it was raspberry tart which I was extremely fond of, I refused to have any. My aunt asked me if I was not feeling very well.

“Yes,” I said, as haughtily as I could, “I’m feeling all right.”

“Have a little bit,” said my aunt.

“I’m not hungry,” I answered.

“Just to please me.”

“He must know when he’s had enough,” said my uncle.

I gave him a bitter look.

“I don’t mind having a small piece,” I said.

My aunt gave me a generous helping, which I ate with the air of one who, impelled by a stern sense of duty, performs an act that is deeply distasteful to him. It was a beautiful raspberry tart. Mary-Ann made short pastry that melted in the mouth. But when my aunt asked me whether I could not manage a little more I refused with cold dignity. She did not insist. My uncle said grace and I carried my outraged feelings into the drawing room.

But when I reckoned that the servants had finished their dinner I went into the kitchen. Emily was cleaning the silver in the pantry. Mary-Ann was washing up.

“I say, what’s wrong with the Driffields?” I asked her.

Mary-Ann had come to the vicarage when she was eighteen. She had bathed me when I was a small boy, given me powders in plum jam when I needed them, packed my box when I went to school, nursed me when I was ill, read to me when I was bored, and scolded me when I was naughty. Emily, the housemaid, was a flighty young thing, and Mary-Ann didn’t know whatever would become of me if she had the looking after of me. Mary-Ann was a Blackstable girl. She had never been to London in her life and I do not think she had been to Tercanbury more than three or four times. She was never ill. She never had a holiday. She was paid twelve pounds a year. One evening a week she went down the town to see her mother, who did the vicarage washing; and on Sunday evenings she went to church. But Mary-Ann knew everything that went on in Blackstable. She knew who everybody was, who had married whom, what anyone’s father had died of, and how many children, and what they were called, any woman had had.

I asked Mary-Ann my question and she slopped a wet clout noisily into the sink.

“I don’t blame your uncle,” she said. “I wouldn’t let you go about with them, not if you was my nephew. Fancy their askin’ you to ride your bicycle with them! Some people will do anything.”

I saw that the conversation in the dining room had been repeated to Mary-Ann.

“I’m not a child,” I said.

“That makes it all the worse. The impudence of their comin’ ’ere at all!” Mary-Ann dropped her aitches freely. “Takin’ a house and pretendin’ to be ladies and gentlemen. Now leave that pie alone.”

The raspberry tart was standing on the kitchen table and I broke off a piece of crust with my fingers and put it in my mouth.

“We’re goin’ to eat that for our supper. If you’d wanted a second ’elpin’ why didn’t you ’ave one when you was ’avin’ your dinner? Ted Driffield never could stick to anything. He ’ad a good education, too. The one I’m sorry for is his mother. He’s been a trouble to ’er from the day he was born. And then to go an’ marry Rosie Gann. They tell me that when he told his mother what he was goin’ to do she took to ’er bed and stayed there for three weeks and wouldn’t talk to anybody.”

“Was Mrs. Driffield Rosie Gann before she married? Which Ganns were those?”

Gann was one of the commonest names at Blackstable. The churchyard was thick with their graves.