Chapter I: LOST touch with Driffield. I was too shy to seek him out; I was busy (2)

“Well, I always fancied it. I used to say to George, when we retire we’ll go and live at Yonkers. It’s like a little bit of England to me; you know, Maidstone or Guildford or some place like that.”

I smiled, but I understood what she meant. Notwithstanding its trams and its tootling cars, its cinemas and electric signs, Yonkers, with its winding main street, has a faint air of an English market town gone jazz.

“Of course I sometimes wonder what’s happened to all the folks at Blackstable. I suppose they’re most of them dead by now and I expect they think I am too.”

“I haven’t been there for thirty years.”

I did not know then that the rumour of Rosie’s death had reached Blackstable. I dare say that someone had brought back the news that George Kemp was dead and thus a mistake had arisen.

“I suppose nobody knows here that you were Edward Driffield’s first wife?”

“Oh, no; why, if they had I should have had the reporters buzzing around my apartment like a swarm of bees. You know sometimes I’ve hardly been able to help laughing when I’ve been out somewhere playing bridge and they’ve started talking about Ted’s books. They like him no end in America. I never thought so much of them myself.”

“You never were a great novel reader, were you?”

“I used to like history better, but I don’t seem to have much time for reading now. Sunday’s my great day. I think the Sunday papers over here are lovely. You don’t have anything like them in England. Then of course I play a lot of bridge; I’m crazy about contract.”

I remembered that when as a young boy I had first met Rosie her uncanny skill at whist had impressed me. I felt that I knew the sort of bridge player she was, quick, bold, and accurate: a good partner and a dangerous opponent.

“You’d have been surprised at the fuss they made over here when Ted died. I knew they thought a lot of him, but I never knew he was such a big bug as all that. The papers were full of him, and they had pictures of him and Ferne Court; he always said he meant to live in that house some day. Whatever made him marry that hospital nurse? I always thought he’d marry Mrs. Barton Trafford. They never had any children, did they?”

“No.”

“Ted would have liked to have some. It was a great blow to him that I couldn’t have any more after the first.”

“I didn’t know you’d ever had a child,” I said with surprise.

“Oh, yes. That’s why Ted married me. But I had a very bad time when it came and the doctors said I couldn’t have another. If she’d lived, poor little thing, I don’t suppose I’d ever have run away with George. She was six when she died. A dear little thing she was and as pretty as a picture.”

“You never mentioned her.”

“No, I couldn’t bear to speak about her. She got meningitis and we took her to the hospital. They put her in a private room and they let us stay with her. I shall never forget what she went through, screaming, screaming all the time, and nobody able to do anything.”

Rosie’s voice broke.

“Was it that death Driffield described in _The Cup of Life_?”

“Yes, that’s it. I always thought it so funny of Ted. He couldn’t bear to speak of it, any more than I could, but he wrote it all down; he didn’t leave out a thing; even little things I hadn’t noticed at the time he put in and then I remembered them. You’d think he was just heartless, but he wasn’t, he was upset just as much as I was. When we used to go home at night he’d cry like a child. Funny chap, wasn’t he?”

It was _The Cup of Life_ that had raised such a storm of protest; and it was the child’s death and the episode that followed it that had especially brought down on Driffield’s head such virulent abuse. I remembered the description very well. It was harrowing. There was nothing sentimental in it; it did not excite the reader’s tears, but his anger rather that such cruel suffering should be inflicted on a little child. You felt that God at the Judgment Day would have to account for such things as this. It was a very powerful piece of writing. But if this incident was taken from life was the one that followed it also? It was this that had shocked the public of the ’nineties and this that the critics had condemned as not only indecent but incredible. In _The Cup of Life_ the husband and wife (I forget their names now) had come back from the hospital after the child’s death—they were poor people and they lived from hand to mouth in lodgings—and had their tea. It was latish: about seven o’clock. They were exhausted by the strain of a week’s ceaseless anxiety and shattered by their grief. They had nothing to say to one another. They sat in a miserable silence. The hours passed. Then on a sudden the wife got up and going into their bedroom put on her hat.

“I’m going out,” she said.

“All right.”

They lived near Victoria Station. She walked along the Buckingham Palace Road and through the park. She came into Piccadilly and went slowly toward the Circus. A man caught her eye, paused and turned round.

“Good-evening,” he said.

“Good-evening.”

She stopped and smiled.

“Will you come and have a drink?” he asked.

“I don’t mind if I do.”

They went into a tavern in one of the side streets of Piccadilly, where harlots congregated and men came to pick them up, and they drank a glass of beer. She chatted with the stranger and laughed with him. She told him a cock-and-bull story about herself. Presently he asked if he could go home with her; no, she said, he couldn’t do that, but they could go to a hotel. They got into a cab and drove to Bloomsbury and there they took a room for the night. And next morning she took a bus to Trafalgar Square and walked through the park; when she got home her husband was just sitting down to breakfast. After breakfast they went back to the hospital to see about the child’s funeral.

“Will you tell me something, Rosie?” I asked. “What happened in the book after the child’s death—did that happen too?”

She looked at me for a moment doubtfully; then her lips broke into her still beautiful smile.

“Well, it’s all so many years ago, what odds does it make? I don’t mind telling you. He didn’t get it quite right. You see, it was only guesswork on his part. I was surprised that he knew as much as he did; I never told him anything.”

Rosie took a cigarette and pensively tapped its end on the table, but she did not light it.

“We came back from the hospital just like he said. We walked back; I felt I couldn’t sit still in a cab, and I felt all dead inside me. I’d cried so much I couldn’t cry any more, and I was tired. Ted tried to comfort me, but I said: ‘For God’s sake shut up.’ After that he didn’t say any more. We had rooms in the Vauxhall Bridge Road then, on the second floor, just a sitting room and a bedroom, that’s why we’d had to take the poor little thing to the hospital; we couldn’t nurse her in lodgings; besides, the landlady said she wouldn’t have it, and Ted said she’d be looked after better at the hospital. She wasn’t a bad sort, the landlady; she’d been a tart and Ted used to talk to her by the hour together. She came up when she heard us come in.

“‘How’s the little girl to-night?’ she said.

“‘She’s dead,’ said Ted.

“I couldn’t say anything. Then she brought up the tea. I didn’t want anything, but Ted made me eat some ham. Then I sat at the window. I didn’t look round when the landlady came up to clear away, I didn’t want anyone to speak to me. Ted was reading a book; at least he was pretending to, but he didn’t turn the pages, and I saw the tears dropping on it. I kept on looking out of the window. It was the end of June, the twenty-eighth, and the days were long. It was just near the corner where we lived and I looked at the people going in and out of the public house and the trams going up and down. I thought the day would never come to an end; then all of a sudden I noticed that it was night. All the lamps were lit. There were an awful lot of people in the street. I felt so tired. My legs were like lead.

“‘Why don’t you light the gas?’ I said to Ted.

“‘Do you want it?’ he said.

“‘It’s no good sitting in the dark,’ I said.

“He lit the gas. He began smoking his pipe. I knew that would do him good. But I just sat and looked at the street. I don’t know what came over me. I felt that if I went on sitting in that room I’d go mad. I wanted to go somewhere where there were lights and people. I wanted to get away from Ted; no, not so much that, I wanted to get away from all that Ted was thinking and feeling. We only had two rooms. I went into the bedroom; the child’s cot was still there, but I wouldn’t look at it. I put on my hat and a veil and I changed my dress and then I went back to Ted.

“‘I’m going out,’ I said.

“Ted looked at me. I dare say he noticed I’d got my new dress on and perhaps something in the way I spoke made him see I didn’t want him.

“‘All right,’ he said.

“In the book he made me walk through the park, but I didn’t do that really. I went down to Victoria and I took a hansom to Charing Cross. It was only a shilling fare. Then I walked up the Strand. I’d made up my mind what I wanted to do before I came out. Do you remember Harry Retford? Well, he was acting at the Adelphi then, he had the second comedy part. Well, I went to the stage door, and sent up my name. I always liked Harry Retford. I expect he was a bit unscrupulous and he was rather funny over money matters, but he could make you laugh and with all his faults he was a rare good sort. You know he was killed in the Boer War, don’t you?”

“I didn’t. I only knew he’d disappeared and one never saw his name on playbills; I thought perhaps he’d gone into business or something.”

“No, he went out at once. He was killed at Ladysmith. After I’d been waiting a bit he came down and I said: ‘Harry, let’s go on the razzle to-night. What about a bit of supper at Romano’s?’ ‘Not ’alf,’ he said. ‘You wait here and the minute the show’s over and I’ve got my make-up off I’ll come down.’ It made me feel better just to see him; he was playing a racing tout and it made me laugh just to look at him in his check suit and his billycock hat and his red nose. Well, I waited till the end of the show and then he came down and we walked along to Romano’s.

“‘Are you hungry?’ he said to me.

“‘Starving,’ I said; and I was.

“‘Let’s have the best,’ he said, ‘and blow the expense. I told Bill Terris I was taking my best girl out to supper and I touched him for a couple of quid.’

“‘Let’s have champagne,’ I said.

“‘Three cheers for the widow!’ he said.

“I don’t know if you ever went to Romano’s in the old days. It was fine. You used to see all the theatrical people and the racing men, and the girls from the Gaiety used to go there. It was _the_ place. And the Roman. Harry knew him and he came up to our table; he used to talk in funny broken English; I believe he put it on because he knew it made people laugh. And if someone he knew was down and out he’d always lend him a fiver.

“‘How’s the kid?’ said Harry.

“‘Better,’ I said.

“I didn’t want to tell him the truth. You know how funny men are; they don’t understand some things. I knew Harry would think it dreadful of me to come out to supper when the poor child was lying dead in the hospital. He’d be awfully sorry and all that, but that’s not what I wanted; I wanted to laugh.”

Rosie lit the cigarette that she had been playing with.

“You know how when a woman is having a baby, sometimes the husband can’t stand it any more and he goes out and has another woman. And then when she finds out, and it’s funny how often she does, she kicks up no end of a fuss; she says, that the man should go and do it just then, when she’s going through hell, well, it’s the limit. I always tell her not to be silly. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her, and isn’t terribly upset, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just nerves; if he weren’t so upset he wouldn’t think of it. I know, because that’s how I felt then.

“When we’d finished our supper Harry said: ‘Well, what about it?’

“‘What about what?’ I said.

“There wasn’t any dancing in those days and there was nowhere we could go.

“‘What about coming round to my flat and having a look at my photograph album?’ said Harry.

“‘I don’t mind if I do,’ I said.

“He had a little bit of a flat in the Charing Cross Road, just two rooms and a bath and a kitchenette, and we drove round there, and I stayed the night.

“When I got back next morning the breakfast was already on the table and Ted had just started. I’d made up my mind that if he said anything I was going to fly out at him. I didn’t care what happened. I’d earned my living before, and I was ready to earn it again. For two pins I’d have packed my box and left him there and then. But he just looked up as I came in.

“‘You’ve just come in time,’ he said. ‘I was going to eat your sausage.’

“I sat down and poured him out his tea. And he went on reading the paper. After we’d finished breakfast we went to the hospital. He never asked me where I’d been. I didn’t know what he thought. He was terribly kind to me all that time. I was miserable, you know. Somehow I felt that I just couldn’t get over it, and there was nothing he didn’t do to make it easier for me.”

“What did you think when you read the book?” I asked.

“Well, it did give me a turn to see that he did know pretty well what had happened that night. What beat me was his writing it at all. You’d have thought it was the last thing he’d put in a book. You’re queer fish, you writers.”

At that moment the telephone bell rang. Rosie took up the receiver and listened.

“Why, Mr. Vanuzzi, how very nice of you to call me up! Oh, I’m pretty well, thank you. Well, pretty and well, if you like. When you’re my age you take all the compliments you can get.”

She embarked upon a conversation which, I gathered from her tone, was of a facetious and even flirtatious character. I did not pay much attention, and since it seemed to prolong itself I began to meditate upon the writer’s life. It is full of tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world’s indifference; then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit with a good grace to its hazards. He depends upon a fickle public. He is at the mercy of journalists who want to interview him and photographers who want to take his picture, of editors who harry him for copy and tax gatherers who harry him for income tax, of persons of quality who ask him to lunch and secretaries of institutes who ask him to lecture, of women who want to marry him and women who want to divorce him, of youths who want his autograph, actors who want parts and strangers who want a loan, of gushing ladies who want advice on their matrimonial affairs and earnest young men who want advice on their compositions, of agents, publishers, managers, bores, admirers, critics, and his own conscience. But he has one compensation. Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as the theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man.

Rosie put back the receiver and turned to me.

“That was one of my beaux. I’m going to play bridge to-night and he rang up to say he’d call round for me in his car. Of course he’s a Wop, but he’s real nice. He used to run a big grocery store down town, in New York, but he’s retired now.”

“Have you never thought of marrying again, Rosie?”

“No.” She smiled. “Not that I haven’t had offers. I’m quite happy as I am. The way I look on it is this, I don’t want to marry an old man, and it would be silly at my age to marry a young one. I’ve had my time and I’m ready to call it a day.”

“What made you run away with George Kemp?”

“Well, I’d always liked him. I knew him long before I knew Ted, you know. Of course I never thought there was any chance of marrying him. For one thing he was married already and then he had his position to think of. And then when he came to me one day and said that everything had gone wrong and he was bust and there’d be a warrant out for his arrest in a few days and he was going to America and would I go with him, well, what could I do? I couldn’t let him go all that way by himself, with no money perhaps, and him having been always so grand and living in his own house and driving his own trap. It wasn’t as if I was afraid of work.”

“I sometimes think he was the only man you ever cared for,” I suggested.

“I dare say there’s some truth in that.”

“I wonder what it was you saw in him.”

Rosie’s eyes travelled to a picture on the wall that for some reason had escaped my notice. It was an enlarged photograph of Lord George in a carved gilt frame. It looked as if it might have been taken soon after his arrival in America; perhaps at the time of their marriage. It was a three-quarter length. It showed him in a long frock coat, tightly buttoned, and a tall silk hat cocked rakishly on one side of his head; there was a large rose in his buttonhole; under one arm he carried a silver-headed cane and smoke curled from a big cigar that he held in his right hand. He had a heavy moustache, waxed at the ends, a saucy look in his eye, and in his bearing an arrogant swagger. In his tie was a horseshoe in diamonds. He looked like a publican dressed up in his best to go to the Derby.

“I’ll tell you,” said Rosie. “He was always such a perfect gentleman.”

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

[The end of _Cakes and Ale_ by W. Somerset Maugham]