Cakes and Ale

homage to his talent and perhaps the hope of a few words of eulogy that could be used in the publisher’s advertisements. But all the books were so neatly arranged, they were so clean, that I had the impression they were very seldom read. There was the Oxford Dictionary and there were standard editions in grand bindings of most of the English classics, Fielding, Boswell, Hazlitt, and so on, and there were a great many books on the sea; I recognized the variously coloured, untidy volumes of the sailing directions issued by the Admiralty, and there were a number of works on gardening. The room had the look not of a writer’s workshop, but of a memorial to a great name, and you could almost see already the desultory tripper wandering in for want of something better to do and smell the rather musty, close smell of a museum that few visited. I had a suspicion that nowadays if Driffield read anything at all it was the Gardener’s Chronicle or the Shipping Gazette, of which I saw a bundle on a table in the corner.

When the ladies had seen all they wanted we bade our hosts farewell. But Lady Hodmarsh was a woman of tact and it must have occurred to her that I, the excuse for the party, had scarcely had a word with Edward Driffield, for at the door, enveloping me with a friendly smile, she said to him:

“I was so interested to hear that you and Mr. Ashenden had known one another years and years ago. Was he a nice little boy?”

Driffield looked at me for a moment with that level, ironic gaze of his. I had the impression that if there had been nobody there he would have put his tongue out at me.

“Shy,” he replied. “I taught him to ride a bicycle.”

We got once more into the huge yellow Rolls and drove off.

“He’s too sweet,” said the duchess. “I’m so glad we went.”

“He has such nice manners, hasn’t he?” said Lady Hodmarsh.

“You didn’t really expect him to eat his peas with a knife, did you?” I asked.

“I wish he had,” said Scallion. “It would have been so picturesque.”

“I believe it’s very difficult,” said the duchess. “I’ve tried over and over again and I can never get them to stay on.”

“You have to spear them,” said Scallion.

“Not at all,” retorted the duchess. “You have to balance them on the flat, and they roll like the devil.”

“What did you think of Mrs. Driffield?” asked Lady Hodmarsh.

“I suppose she serves her purpose,” said the duchess.

“He’s so old, poor darling, he must have someone to look after him. You know she was a hospital nurse?”

“Oh, was she?” said the duchess. “I thought perhaps she’d been his secretary or typist or something.”

“She’s quite nice,” said Lady Hodmarsh, warmly defending a friend.

“Oh, quite.”

“He had a long illness about twenty years ago, and she was his nurse then, and after he got well he married her.”

“Funny how men will do that. She must have been years younger than him. She can’t be more than⁠—what?⁠—forty or forty-five.”

“No, I shouldn’t think so. Forty-seven, say. I’m told she’s done a great deal for him. I mean, she’s made him quite presentable. Alroy Kear told me that before that he was almost too bohemian.”

“As a rule authors’ wives are odious.”

“It’s such a bore having to have them, isn’t it?”

“Crushing. I wonder they don’t see that themselves.”

“Poor wretches, they often suffer from the delusion that people find them interesting,” I murmured.

We reached Tercanbury, dropped the duchess at the station, and drove on.

V

It was true that Edward Driffield had taught me to bicycle. That was indeed how I first made his acquaintance. I do not know how long the safety bicycle had been invented, but I know that it was not common in the remote part of Kent in which I lived and when you saw someone speeding along on solid tires you turned round and looked till he was out of sight. It was still a matter for jocularity on the part of middle-aged gentlemen who said Shank’s pony was good enough for them, and for trepidation on the part of elderly ladies who made a dash for the side of the road when they saw one coming. I had been for some time filled with envy of the boys whom I saw riding into the school grounds on their bicycles, and it gave a pretty opportunity for showing off when you entered the gateway without holding on to the handles. I had persuaded my uncle to let me have one at the beginning of the summer holidays, and though my aunt was against it, since she said I should only break my neck, he had yielded to my pertinacity more willingly because I was of course paying for it out of my own money. I ordered it before school broke up and a few days later the carrier brought it over from Tercanbury.

I was determined to learn to ride it by myself and chaps at school had told me that they had learned in half an hour. I tried and tried and at last came to the conclusion that I was abnormally stupid (I am inclined now to think that I was exaggerating), but even after my pride was sufficiently humbled for me to allow the gardener to hold me up I seemed at the end of the first morning no nearer to being able to get on by myself than at the beginning. Next day, however, thinking that the carriage drive at the vicarage was too winding to give a fellow a proper chance, I wheeled the bicycle to a road not far away which I knew was perfectly flat and straight and so solitary that no one would see me making a fool of myself. I tried several times to mount, but fell off each time. I barked my shins against the pedals and got very