“I think that’s a very silly word,” I said.
“Well, then, let me say that she can hardly have been a very good woman to treat poor Edward as she did. Of course it was a blessing in disguise. If she hadn’t run away from him he might have had to bear that burden for the rest of his life, and with such a handicap he could never have reached the position he did. But the fact remains that she was notoriously unfaithful to him. From what I hear she was absolutely promiscuous.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “She was a very simple woman. Her instincts were healthy and ingenuous. She loved to make people happy. She loved love.”
“Do you call that love?”
“Well, then, the act of love. She was naturally affectionate. When she liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She never thought twice about it. It was not vice; it wasn’t lasciviousness; it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others. It had no effect on her character; she remained sincere, unspoiled, and artless.”
Mrs. Driffield looked as though she had taken a dose of castor oil and had just been trying to get the taste of it out of her mouth by sucking a lemon.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “But then I’m bound to admit that I never understood what Edward saw in her.”
“Did he know that she was carrying on with all sorts of people?” asked Roy.
“I’m sure he didn’t,” she replied quickly.
“You think him a bigger fool than I do, Mrs. Driffield,” I said.
“Then why did he put up with it?”
“I think I can tell you. You see, she wasn’t a woman who ever inspired love. Only affection. It was absurd to be jealous over her. She was like a clear deep pool in a forest glade into which it’s heavenly to plunge, but it is neither less cool nor less crystalline because a tramp and a gipsy and a gamekeeper have plunged into it before you.”
Roy laughed again and this time Mrs. Driffield without concealment smiled thinly.
“It’s comic to hear you so lyrical,” said Roy.
I stifled a sigh. I have noticed that when I am most serious people are apt to laugh at me, and indeed when after a lapse of time I have read passages that I wrote from the fullness of my heart I have been tempted to laugh at myself. It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.
I saw that Mrs. Driffield wished to ask me something. It caused her a certain embarrassment.
“Do you think he’d have taken her back if she’d been willing to come?”
“You knew him better than I. I should say no. I think that when he had exhausted an emotion he took no further interest in the person who had aroused it. I should say that he had a peculiar combination of strong feeling and extreme callousness.”
“I don’t know how you can say that,” cried Roy. “He was the kindest man I ever met.”
Mrs. Driffield looked at me steadily and then dropped her eyes.
“I wonder what happened to her when she went to America,” he asked.
“I believe she married Kemp,” said Mrs. Driffield. “I heard they had taken another name. Of course they couldn’t show their faces over here again.”
“When did she die?”
“Oh, about ten years ago.”
“How did you hear?” I asked.
“From Harold Kemp, the son; he’s in some sort of business at Maidstone. I never told Edward. She’d been dead to him for many years and I saw no reason to remind him of the past. It always helps you if you put yourself in other people’s shoes and I said to myself that if I were he I shouldn’t want to be reminded of an unfortunate episode of my youth. Don’t you think I was right?”
XXVI
MRS. DRIFFIELD very kindly offered to send me back to Blackstable in her car, but I preferred to walk. I promised to dine at Ferne Court next day and meanwhile to write down what I could remember of the two periods during which I had been in the habit of seeing Edward Driffield. As I walked along the winding road, meeting no one by the way, I mused upon what I should say. Do they not tell us that style is the art of omission? If that is so I should certainly write a very pretty piece, and it seemed almost a pity that Roy should use it only as material. I chuckled when I reflected what a bombshell I could throw if I chose. There was one person who could tell them all they wanted to know about Edward Driffield and his first marriage; but this fact I proposed to keep to myself. They thought Rosie was dead; they erred; Rosie was very much alive.
Being in New York for the production of a play and my arrival having been advertised to all and sundry by my manager’s energetic press representative, I received one day a letter addressed in a handwriting I knew but could not place. It was large and round, firm but uneducated. It was so familiar to me that I was exasperated not to remember whose it was. It would have been more sensible to open the letter at once, but instead I looked at the envelope and racked my brain. There are handwritings I cannot see without a little shiver of dismay and some letters that look so tiresome that I cannot bring myself to open them for a week. When at last I tore open the envelope what I read gave me a strange feeling. It began abruptly:
