I wandered about here and there. There seemed innumerable streets of little houses of yellow brick, but I do not know who lived in them for I saw no one about. I went down to the harbour. It was deserted. There was but one tramp lying a little way out from the pier. Two or three sailormen were sitting outside a warehouse and they stared at me as I passed. The bottom had fallen out of the coal trade and colliers came to Blackstable no longer.
Then it was time for me to go to Ferne Court and I went back to the Bear and Key. The landlord had told me that he had a Daimler for hire and I had arranged that it should take me to my luncheon. It stood at the door when I came up, a brougham, but the oldest, most dilapidated car of its make that I had ever seen; it panted along with squeaks and thumps and rattlings, with sudden angry jerks, so that I wondered if I should ever reach my destination. But the extraordinary, the amazing thing about it was that it smelled exactly like the old landau which my uncle used to hire every Sunday morning to go to church in. This was a rank odour of stables and of stale straw that lay at the bottom of the carriage; and I wondered in vain why, after all these years, the motor car should have it too. But nothing can bring back the past like a perfume or a stench, and, oblivious to the country I was trundling through, I saw myself once more a little boy on the front seat with the communion plate beside me and, facing me, my aunt, smelling slightly of clean linen and eau de cologne, in her black silk cloak and her little bonnet with a feather, and my uncle in his cassock, a broad band of ribbed silk round his ample waist and a gold cross hanging over his stomach from the gold chain round his neck.
“Now, Willie, mind you behave nicely today. You’re not to turn round, and sit up properly in your seat. The Lord’s House isn’t the place to loll in and you must remember that you should set an example to other little boys who haven’t had your advantages.”
When I arrived at Ferne Court Mrs. Driffield and Roy were walking round the garden and they came up to me as I got out of the car.
“I was showing Roy my flowers,” said Mrs. Driffield, as she shook hands with me. And then with a sigh: “They’re all I have now.”
She looked no older than when last I saw her six years before. She wore her weeds with quiet distinction. At her neck was a collar of white crêpe and at her wrists cuffs of the same. Roy, I noticed, wore with his neat blue suit a black tie; I supposed it was a sign of respect for the illustrious dead.
“I’ll just show you my herbaceous borders,” said Mrs. Driffield, “and then we’ll go in to lunch.”
We walked round and Roy was very knowledgeable. He knew what all the flowers were called, and the Latin names tripped off his tongue like cigarettes out of a cigarette-making machine. He told Mrs. Driffield where she ought to get certain varieties that she absolutely must have and how perfectly lovely were certain others.
“Shall we go in through Edward’s study?” suggested Mrs. Driffield. “I keep it exactly as it was when he was here. I haven’t changed a thing. You’d be surprised how many people come over to see the house, and of course above all they want to see the room he worked in.”
We went in through an open window. There was a bowl of roses on the desk and on a little round table by the side of the armchair a copy of the Spectator. In the ash trays were the master’s pipes and there was ink in the inkstand. The scene was perfectly set. I do not know why the room seemed so strangely dead; it had already the mustiness of a museum. Mrs. Driffield went to the bookshelves and with a little smile, half playful, half sad, passed a rapid hand across the back of half a dozen volumes bound in blue.
“You know that Edward admired your work so much,” said Mrs. Driffield. “He reread your books quite often.”
“I’m very glad to think that,” I said politely.
I knew very well that they had not been there on my last visit and in a casual way I took one of them out and ran my fingers along the top to see whether there was dust on it. There was not. Then I took another book down, one of Charlotte Brontë’s, and making a little plausible conversation tried the same experiment. No, there was no dust there either. All I learned was that Mrs. Driffield was an excellent housekeeper and had a conscientious maid.
We went in to luncheon, a hearty British meal of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and we talked of the work on which Roy was engaged.
“I want to spare dear Roy all the labour I can,” said Mrs. Driffield, “and I’ve been gathering together as much of the material as I could myself. Of course it’s been rather painful, but it’s been very interesting, too. I came across a lot of old photographs that I must show you.”
After luncheon we went into the drawing room and I noticed again with what perfect tact Mrs. Driffield had arranged it. It suited the widow of a distinguished man of letters almost more than it had suited the wife. Those chintzes, those bowls of potpourri, those Dresden china figures—there was about them a faint
