VI
I had quite made up my mind that I was going out with the Driffields next morning, but knew that it was no good asking my uncle if I might. If he found out that I had been and made a row it couldn’t be helped, and if Ted Driffield asked me whether I had got my uncle’s permission I was quite prepared to say I had. But I had after all no need to lie. In the afternoon, the tide being high, I walked down to the beach to bathe and my uncle, having something to do in the town, walked part of the way with me. Just as we were passing the Bear and Key, Ted Driffield stepped out of it. He saw us and came straight up to my uncle. I was startled at his coolness.
“Good afternoon, Vicar,” he said. “I wonder if you remember me. I used to sing in the choir when I was a boy. Ted Driffield. My old governor was Miss Wolfe’s bailiff.”
My uncle was a very timid man, and he was taken aback.
“Oh, yes, how do you do? I was sorry to hear your father died.”
“I’ve made the acquaintance of your young nephew. I was wondering if you’d let him come for a ride with me tomorrow. It’s rather dull for him riding alone, and I’m going to do a rubbing of one of the brasses at Ferne Church.”
“It’s very kind of you, but—”
My uncle was going to refuse, but Driffield interrupted him.
“I’ll see he doesn’t get up to any mischief. I thought he might like to make a rubbing himself. It would be an interest for him. I’ll give him some paper and wax so that it won’t cost him anything.”
My uncle had not a consecutive mind and the suggestion that Ted Driffield should pay for my paper and wax offended him so much that he quite forgot his intention to forbid me to go at all.
“He can quite well get his own paper and wax,” he said. “He has plenty of pocket money, and he’d much better spend it on something like that than on sweets and make himself sick.”
“Well, if he goes to Hayward, the stationer’s, and says he wants the same paper as I got and the wax they’ll let him have it.”
“I’ll go now,” I said, and to prevent any change of mind on my uncle’s part dashed across the road.
VII
I do not know why the Driffields bothered about me unless it was from pure kindness of heart. I was a dull little boy, not very talkative, and if I amused Ted Driffield at all it must have been unconsciously. Perhaps he was tickled by my attitude of superiority. I was under the impression that it was condescension on my part to consort with the son of Miss Wolfe’s bailiff, and he what my uncle called a penny-a-liner; and when, perhaps with a trace of superciliousness, I asked him to lend me one of his books and he said it wouldn’t interest me I took him at his word and did not insist. After my uncle had once consented to my going out with the Driffields he made no further objection to my association with them. Sometimes we went for sails together, sometimes we went to some picturesque spot and Driffield painted a little water colour. I do not know if the English climate was better in those days or if it is only an illusion of youth, but I seem to remember that all through that summer the sunny days followed one another in an unbroken line. I began to feel a curious affection for the undulating, opulent, and gracious country. We went far afield, to one church after another, taking rubbings of brasses, knights in armour and ladies in stiff farthingales. Ted Driffield fired me with his own enthusiasm for this naive pursuit and I rubbed with passion. I showed my uncle proudly the results of my industry, and I suppose he thought that whatever my company, I could not come to much harm when I was occupied in church. Mrs. Driffield used to remain in the churchyard while we were at work, not reading or sewing, but just mooning about; she seemed able to do nothing for an indefinite time without feeling bored. Sometimes I would go out and sit with her for a little on the grass. We chattered about my school, my friends there and my masters, about the people at Blackstable, and about nothing at all. She gratified me by calling me Mr. Ashenden. I think she was the first person who had ever done so and it made me feel grown up. I resented it vastly when people called me Master Willie. I thought it a ridiculous name for anyone to have. In fact I did not like either of my names and spent much time inventing others that would have suited me better. The ones I preferred were Roderic Ravensworth and I covered sheets of paper with this signature in a suitably dashing hand. I did not mind Ludovic Montgomery either.
I could not get over what Mary-Ann had told me about Mrs. Driffield. Though I knew theoretically what people did when they were married, and was capable of putting the facts in the bluntest language, I did not really understand it. I thought it indeed rather disgusting and I did not quite, quite believe it. After all, I was aware that the earth was round, but I knew it was flat. Mrs. Driffield seemed so frank, her laugh was so open and simple, there was in her demeanour something so young and childlike, that I could not see her “going with” sailors and above all anyone so gross and horrible as Lord George. She was not at all the type of the wicked woman I had read of
