Cakes and Ale

“Run upstairs, ’Ester, and see if Mr. Graham’s in. If he ain’t, I’m sure ’e wouldn’t mind you ’avin’ a look at them.”

Hester scurried up, and in a moment, slightly breathless, came down again to say that Mr. Graham was out. Mrs. Hudson came with me. The bed was the same narrow iron bed that I had slept in and dreamed in and there was the same chest of drawers and the same washing stand. But the sitting room had the grim heartiness of the athlete; on the walls were photographs of cricket elevens and rowing men in shorts; golf clubs stood in the corner and pipes and tobacco jars, ornamented with the arms of a college, were littered on the chimney-piece. In my day we believed in art for art’s sake and this I exemplified by draping the chimney-piece with a Moorish rug, putting up curtains of art serge and a bilious green, and hanging on the walls autotypes of pictures by Perugino, Van Dyck and Hobbema.

“Very artistic you was, wasn’t you?” Mrs. Hudson remarked, not without irony.

“Very,” I murmured.

I could not help feeling a pang as I thought of all the years that had passed since I inhabited that room, and of all that had happened to me. It was at that same table that I had eaten my hearty breakfast and my frugal dinner, read my medical books and written my first novel. It was in that same armchair that I had read for the first time Wordsworth and Stendhal, the Elizabethan dramatists and the Russian novelists, Gibbon, Boswell, Voltaire, and Rousseau. I wondered who had used them since. Medical students, articled clerks, young fellows making their way in the city, and elderly men retired from the colonies or thrown unexpectedly upon the world by the break up of an old home. The room made me, as Mrs. Hudson would have put it, go queer all over. All the hopes that had been cherished there, the bright visions of the future, the flaming passion of youth; the regrets, the disillusion, the weariness, the resignation; so much had been felt in that room, by so many, the whole gamut of human emotion, that it seemed strangely to have acquired a troubling and enigmatic personality of its own. I have no notion why, but it made me think of a woman at a crossroad with a finger on her lips, looking back and with her other hand beckoning. What I obscurely (and rather shamefacedly) felt, communicated itself to Mrs. Hudson, for she gave a laugh and with a characteristic gesture rubbed her prominent nose.

“My word, people are funny,” she said. “When I think of all the gentlemen I’ve ’ad here, I give you my word you wouldn’t believe it if I told you some of the things I know about them. One of them’s funnier than the other. Sometimes I lie abed thinkin’ of them, and laugh. Well, it would be a bad world if you didn’t get a good laugh now and then, but, lor’, lodgers really are the limit.”

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.