“Yes.”
“That is when he had an apartment somewhere in Lower Belgravia.”
“Well, lodgings in Pimlico.”
Roy smiled drily.
“We won’t quarrel about the exact designation of the quarter of London in which he lived. You were very intimate with him then.”
“Fairly.”
“How long did that last?”
“About a couple of years.”
“How old were you then?”
“Twenty.”
“Now look here, I want you to do me a great favour. It won’t take you very long and it will be of quite inestimable value to me. I want you to jot down as fully as you can all your recollections of Driffield, and all you remember about his wife and his relations with her and so on, both at Blackstable and in London.”
“Oh, my dear fellow, that’s asking a great deal. I’ve got a lot of work to do just now.”
“It needn’t take you very long. You can write it quite roughly, I mean. You needn’t bother about style, you know, or anything like that. I’ll put the style in. All I want are the facts. After all, you know them and nobody else does. I don’t want to be pompous or anything like that, but Driffield was a great man and you owe it to his memory and to English literature to tell everything you know. I shouldn’t have asked you, but you told me the other day that you weren’t going to write anything about him yourself. It would be rather like a dog in a manger to keep to yourself a whole lot of material that you have no intention of using.”
Thus Roy appealed at once to my sense of duty, my indolence, my generosity, and my rectitude.
“But why does Mrs. Driffield want me to go down and stay at Ferne Court?” I asked.
“Well, we talked it over. It’s a very jolly house to stay in. She does one very well, and it ought to be divine in the country just now. She thought it would be very nice and quiet for you if you felt inclined to write your recollections there; of course, I said I couldn’t promise that, but naturally being so near Blackstable would remind you of all sorts of things that you might otherwise forget. And then, living in his house, among his books and things, it would make the past seem much more real. We could all talk about him, and you know how in the heat of conversation things come back. Amy’s very quick and clever. She’s been in the habit of making notes of Driffield’s talk for years, and after all it’s quite likely that you’ll say things on the spur of the moment that you wouldn’t think of writing and she can just jot them down afterward. And we can play tennis and bathe.”
“I’m not very fond of staying with people,” I said. “I hate getting up for a nine-o’clock breakfast to eat things I have no mind to. I don’t like going for walks, and I’m not interested in other people’s chickens.”
“She’s a lonely woman now. It would be a kindness to her and it would be a kindness to me too.”
I reflected.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do : I’ll go down to Blackstable, but I’ll go down on my own. I’ll put up at the Bear and Key and I’ll come over and see Mrs. Driffield while you’re there. You can both talk your heads off about Edward Driffield, but I shall be able to get away when I’m fed up with you.”
Roy laughed good-naturedly.
“All right. That’ll do. And will you jot down anything you can remember that you think will be useful to me?”
“I’ll try.”
“When will you come? I’m going down on Friday.”
“I’ll come with you if you’ll promise not to talk to me in the train.”
“All right. The five-ten’s the best one. Shall I come and fetch you?”
“I’m capable of getting to Victoria by myself. I’ll meet you on the platform.”
I don’t know if Roy was afraid of my changing my mind, but he got up at once, shook my hand heartily, and left. He begged me on no account to forget my tennis racket and bathing suit.
XII
MY PROMISE to Roy sent my thoughts back to my first years in London. Having nothing much to do that afternoon, it occurred to me to stroll along and have a cup of tea with my old landlady. Mrs. Hudson’s name had been given to me by the secretary of the medical school at St. Luke’s when, a callow youth just arrived in town, I was looking for lodgings. She had a house in Vincent Square. I lived there for five years, in two rooms on the ground floor, and over me on the drawing-room floor lived a master at Westminster School. I paid a pound a week for my rooms and he paid twenty-five shillings. Mrs. Hudson was a little, active, bustling woman, with a sallow face, a large aquiline nose, and the brightest, the most vivacious, black eyes that I ever saw. She had a great deal of very dark hair, in the afternoons and all day on Sunday arranged in a fringe on the forehead with a bun at the nape of the neck as you may see in old photographs of the Jersey Lily. She had a heart of gold (though I did not know it then, for when you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right) and she was an excellent cook. No one could make a better
