initial commit of ebook 9967HEADmain

1 files changed, 9131 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/9967-8.txt b/9967-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..482481f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/9967-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9131 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Waddington of Wyck, by May Sinclair
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mr. Waddington of Wyck
+
+Author: May Sinclair
+
+Posting Date: November 12, 2011 [EBook #9967]
+Release Date: February, 2006
+First Posted: November 5, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. WADDINGTON OF WYCK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Dmitriy Genzel and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         MR. WADDINGTON OF WYCK
+
+                             BY MAY SINCLAIR
+
+                                  1921
+
+
+
+
+MR. WADDINGTON OF WYCK
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+1
+
+Barbara wished she would come back. For the last hour Fanny Waddington
+had kept on passing in and out of the room through the open door into
+the garden, bringing in tulips, white, pink, and red tulips, for the
+flowered Lowestoft bowls, hovering over them, caressing them with her
+delicate butterfly fingers, humming some sort of song to herself.
+
+The song mixes itself up with the Stores list Barbara was making: "Two
+dozen glass towels. Twelve pounds of Spratt's puppy biscuits. One dozen
+gent.'s all-silk pyjamas, extra large size" ... "A-hoom--hoom,
+a-hoom--hoom" (that _Impromptu_ of Schubert's), and with the notes
+Barbara was writing: "Mrs. Waddington has pleasure in enclosing...."
+Fanny Waddington would always have pleasure in enclosing something....
+"A ho-om--boom, hoom, hee." A sound so light that it hardly stirred the
+quiet of the room. If a butterfly could hum it would hum like Fanny
+Waddington.
+
+Barbara Madden had not been two days at Lower Wyck Manor, and already
+she was at home there; she knew by heart Fanny's drawing-room with the
+low stretch of the Tudor windows at each end, their lattices panelled by
+the heavy mullions, the back one looking out on to the green garden
+bordered with wallflowers and tulips; the front one on to the round
+grass-plot and the sundial, the drive and the shrubbery beyond, down the
+broad walk that cut through it into the clear reaches of the park. She
+liked the interior, the Persian carpet faded to patches of grey and fawn
+and old rose, the port-wine mahogany furniture, the tables thrusting out
+the brass claws of their legs, the latticed cabinets and bookcases, the
+chintz curtains and chair-covers, all red dahlias and powder-blue
+parrots on a cream-coloured ground. But when Fanny wasn't there you
+could feel the room ache with the emptiness she left.
+
+Barbara ached. She caught herself listening for Fanny Waddington's feet
+on the flagged path and the sound of her humming. As she waited she
+looked up at the picture over the bureau in the recess of the
+fireplace, the portrait in oils of Horatio Bysshe Waddington, Fanny's
+husband.
+
+He was seated, heavily seated with his spread width and folded height,
+in one of the brown-leather chairs of his library, dressed in a tweed
+coat, putty-coloured riding breeches, a buff waistcoat, and a grey-blue
+tie. The handsome, florid face was lifted in a noble pose above the
+stiff white collar; you could see the full, slightly drooping lower lip
+under the shaggy black moustache. There was solemnity in the thick,
+rounded salient of the Roman nose, in the slightly bulging eyes, and in
+the almost imperceptible line that sagged from each nostril down the
+long curve of the cheeks. This figure, one great thigh crossed on the
+other, was extraordinarily solid against the smoky background where the
+clipped black hair made a watery light. His eyes were not looking at
+anything in particular. Horatio Bysshe Waddington seemed to be absorbed
+in some solemn thought.
+
+His wife's portrait hung over the card-table in the other recess.
+
+Barbara hoped he would be nice; she hoped he would be interesting, since
+she had to be his secretary. But, of course, he would be. Anybody so
+enchanting as Fanny could never have married him if he wasn't. She
+wondered how she, Barbara Madden, would play her double part of
+secretary to him and companion to her. She had been secretary to other
+men before; all through the war she had been secretary to somebody, but
+she had never had to be companion to their wives. Perhaps it was a good
+thing that Fanny, as she kept on reminding her, had "secured" her first.
+She was glad he wasn't there when she arrived and wouldn't be till the
+day after to-morrow (he had wired that morning to tell them); so that for
+two days more she would have Fanny to herself.
+
+
+2
+
+"Well, what do you think of him?"
+
+Fanny had come back into the room; she was hovering behind her.
+
+"I--I think he's jolly good-looking."
+
+"Well, you see, that was painted seventeen years ago. He was young
+then."
+
+"Has he changed much since?"
+
+"Dear me, no," said Fanny. "He hasn't changed at all."
+
+"No more have you, I think."
+
+"Oh, _me_--in seventeen years!"
+
+She was still absurdly like her portrait, after seventeen years, with
+her light, slender body, poised for one of her flights, her quick
+movements of butterfly and bird, with her small white face, the terrier
+nose lifted on the moth-wing shadows of her nostrils, her dark-blue
+eyes, that gazed at you, close under the low black eyebrows, her brown
+hair that sprang in two sickles from the peak on her forehead, raking up
+to the backward curve of the chignon, a profile of cyclamen. And her
+mouth, the fine lips drawn finer by her enchanting smile. All these
+features set in such strange, sensitive unity that her mouth looked at
+you and her eyes said things. No matter how long she lived she would
+always be young.
+
+"Oh, my dear child," she said, "you are so like your mother."
+
+"Am I? Were you afraid I wouldn't be?"
+
+"A little, just a little afraid. I thought you'd be modern."
+
+"So I am. So was mother."
+
+"Not when I knew her."
+
+"Afterwards then." A sudden thought came to Barbara. "Mrs. Waddington,
+if mother was your dearest friend why haven't you known me all this
+time?"
+
+"Your mother and I lost sight of each other before you were born."
+
+"Mother didn't want to."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"Mother would have hated you to think she did."
+
+"I never thought it. She must have known I didn't."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Did we lose sight?"
+
+"Yes, why? People don't, if they can help it, if they care enough. And
+mother cared."
+
+"You're a persistent little thing, aren't you? Are you trying to make
+out that I didn't care?"
+
+"I'm trying to make you see that mother did."
+
+"Well, my dear, we both cared, but we _couldn't_ help it. We married,
+and our husbands didn't hit it off."
+
+"Didn't they? And daddy was so nice. Didn't you know how nice he was?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I knew. My husband was nice, too, Barbara; though you mightn't
+think it."
+
+"Oh, but I do. I'm sure he is. Only I haven't seen him yet."
+
+"So nice. But," said Fanny, pursuing her own thought, "he never made a
+joke in his life, and your father never _made_ anything else."
+
+"Daddy didn't 'make' jokes. They came to him."
+
+"I've seen them come. He never sent any of them away, no matter how
+naughty they were, or how expensive. I used to adore his jokes.... But
+Horatio didn't. He didn't like my adoring them, so you see--"
+
+"I see. I wonder," said Barbara, looking up at the portrait again,
+"what he's thinking about?"
+
+"I used to wonder."
+
+"But you know now?"
+
+"Yes, I know now," Fanny said.
+
+"What'll happen," said Barbara, "if _I_ make jokes?"
+
+"Nothing. He'll never see them."
+
+"If he saw daddy's--"
+
+"Oh, but he didn't. That was me."
+
+Barbara was thoughtful. "I daresay," she said, "you won't keep me long.
+Supposing I can't do the work?"
+
+"The _work_?" Fanny's eyes were interrogative and a little surprised, as
+though they were saying, "Who said work? What work?"
+
+"Well, Mr. Waddington's work. I've got to help him with his book,
+haven't I?"
+
+"Oh, his book, yes. _When_ he's writing it. He isn't always. Does he
+look," said Fanny, "like a man who'd always be writing a book?"
+
+"No. I can't say he does, exactly." (What _did_ he look like?)
+
+"Well, then, it'll be all right. I mean _we_ shall be."
+
+"I only wondered whether I could really do what he wants."
+
+"If Ralph could," said Fanny, "you can."
+
+"Who's Ralph?"
+
+"Ralph is my cousin. He _was_ Horatio's secretary."
+
+"_Was_." Barbara considered it. "Did _he_ make jokes, then?"
+
+"Lots. But that wasn't why he left.... It was an awful pity, too;
+because he's most dreadfully hard up."
+
+"If he's hard up," Barbara said, "I couldn't bear to think I've done him
+out of a job."
+
+"You haven't. He had to go."
+
+Fanny turned again to her flowers and Barbara to her Stores list.
+
+"Are you sure," Fanny said suddenly, "you put 'striped'?"
+
+"Striped? The pyjamas? No, I haven't."
+
+"Then, for goodness' sake, put it. Supposing they sent those awful
+Futurist things; why, he'd frighten me into fits. Can't you see Horatio
+stalking in out of his dressing-room, all magenta blobs and forked
+lightning?"
+
+"I haven't seen him at all yet," said Barbara.
+
+"Well, you wait.... Does my humming annoy you?"
+
+"Not a bit. I like it. It's such a happy sound."
+
+"I always do it," said Fanny, "when I'm happy."
+
+You could hear feet, feet in heavy soled boots, clanking on the drive
+that ringed the grass-plot and the sundial; the eager feet of a young
+man. Fanny turned her head, listening.
+
+"There _is_ Ralph," she said. "Come in, Ralph!"
+
+The young man stood in the low, narrow doorway, filling it with his
+slender height and breadth. He looked past Fanny, warily, into the far
+corner of the room, and when his eyes found Barbara at her bureau they
+smiled.
+
+"Oh, _come_ in," Fanny said. "He isn't here. He won't be till Friday.
+This is Ralph Bevan, Barbara; and this is Barbara Madden, Ralph."
+
+He bowed, still smiling, as if he saw something irrepressibly amusing in
+her presence there.
+
+"Yes," said Fanny to the smile. "Your successor."
+
+"I congratulate you, Miss Madden."
+
+"Don't be an ironical beast. She's just said she couldn't bear to think
+she'd done you out of your job."
+
+"Well, I couldn't," said Barbara.
+
+"That's very nice of you. But you didn't do me out of anything. It was
+the act of God."
+
+"It was Horatio's act. Not that Miss Madden meant any reflection on his
+justice and his mercy."
+
+"I don't know about his justice," Ralph said. "But he was absolutely
+merciful when he fired me out."
+
+"Is it so awfully hard then?" said Barbara.
+
+"You may not find it so."
+
+"Oh, but I'm going to be Mrs. Waddington's companion, too."
+
+"You'll be all right then. They wouldn't let _me_ be that."
+
+"He means you'll be safe, dear. You won't be fired out whatever
+happens."
+
+"Whatever sort of secretary I am?"
+
+"Yes. She can be any sort she likes, in reason, can't she?"
+
+"She can't be a worse one than I was, anyhow."
+
+Barbara was aware that he had looked at her, a long look, half
+thoughtful, half amused, as if he were going to say something different,
+something that would give her a curious light on herself, and had
+thought better of it.
+
+Fanny Waddington was protesting. "My dear boy, it wasn't for
+incompetence. She's simply dying to know what you _did_ do."
+
+"You can tell her."
+
+"He wanted to write Horatio's book for him, and Horatio wouldn't let
+him. That was all."
+
+"Oh, well, _I_ shan't want to write it," Barbara said.
+
+"We thought perhaps you wouldn't," said Fanny.
+
+But Barbara had turned to her bureau, affecting a discreet absorption in
+her list. And presently Ralph Bevan went out into the garden with Fanny
+to gather more tulips.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+1
+
+She _had_ been dying to know what he had done, but now, after Ralph had
+stayed to lunch and tea and dinner that first day, after he had spent
+all yesterday at the Manor, and after he had turned up to-day at ten
+o'clock in the morning, Barbara thought she had made out the history,
+though they had been very discreet and Fanny had insisted on reading
+"Tono-Bungay" out loud half the time.
+
+Ralph, of course, was in love with his cousin Fanny. To be sure, she
+must be at least ten years older than he was, but that wouldn't matter.
+And, of course, it was rather naughty of him, but then again, very
+likely he couldn't help it. It had just come on him when he wasn't
+thinking; and who could help being in love with Fanny? You could be in
+love with people quite innocently and hopelessly. There was no sin where
+there wasn't any hope.
+
+And perhaps Fanny was innocently, ever so innocently, in love with him;
+or, if she wasn't, Horatio thought she was, which came to much the same
+thing; so that anyhow poor Ralph had to go. The explanation they had
+given, Barbara thought, was rather thin, not quite worthy of their
+admirable intelligence.
+
+It was Friday, Barbara's fifth day. She was walking home with Ralph
+Bevan through the Waddingtons' park, down the main drive that led from
+Wyck-on-the-Hill to Lower Wyck Manor.
+
+It wouldn't be surprising, she thought, if Fanny were in love with her
+cousin; he was, as she put it to herself, so distinctly
+"fallable-in-love-with." She could see Fanny surrendering, first to his
+sudden laughter, his quick, delighted mind, his innocent, engaging
+frankness. He would, she thought, be endlessly amusing, endlessly
+interesting, because he was so interested, so amused. There was
+something that pleased her in the way he walked, hatless, his head
+thrown back, his shoulders squared, his hands thrust into his coat
+pockets, safe from gesture; something in the way he spun round in his
+path to face her with his laughter. He had Fanny's terrier nose with the
+ghost of a kink in it; his dark hair grew back in a sickle on each
+temple; it wouldn't lie level and smooth like other people's, but sprang
+up, curled from the clipping. His eyes were his own, dappled eyes, green
+and grey, black and brown, sparkling; so was his mouth, which was
+neither too thin nor too thick--determination in the thrusting curve of
+that lower lip--and his chin, which was just a shade too big for it, a
+shade too big for his face. His cheeks were sunburnt, and a little
+shower of ochreish freckles spread from the sunburn and peppered the
+slopes of his nose. She wanted to sketch him.
+
+"Doesn't Mrs. Waddington ever go for walks?" she said.
+
+"Fanny? No. She's too lazy."
+
+"Lazy?"
+
+"Too active, if you like, in other ways.... How long have you known
+her?"
+
+"Just five days."
+
+"Five _days_?"
+
+"Yes; but, you see, years ago she was my mother's dearest friend. That's
+how I came to be their secretary. When she saw my name in the
+advertisement she thought it must be me. And it was me. They hadn't seen
+each other for years and years. My father and Mr. Waddington didn't hit
+it off together, I believe."
+
+"You haven't seen him yet?"
+
+"No. There seems to be some mystery about him."
+
+"Mystery?"
+
+"Yes. What is it? Or mayn't you tell?"
+
+"I _won't_ tell. It wouldn't be kind."
+
+"Then don't--don't. I didn't know it was that sort of thing."
+
+Ralph laughed. "It isn't. I meant it wouldn't be kind to you. I don't
+want to spoil him for you."
+
+"Then there _is_--tell me one thing: Shall I get on with him all right?"
+
+"Don't ask me _that_."
+
+"I mean, will he be awfully difficult to work with?"
+
+"Because he sacked me? No. Only you mustn't let on that you know better
+than he does. And if you want to keep your job, you mustn't contradict
+him."
+
+"Now you've made me want to contradict him. Whatever he says I shall
+have to say the other thing whether I agree with him or not."
+
+"Don't you think you could temporize a bit? For her sake."
+
+"Did _you_ temporize?"
+
+"Rather. I was as meek and servile as I knew how."
+
+"As you knew how. Do you think I shall know better?"
+
+"Yes, you're a woman. You can get on the right side of him. Will you try
+to, because of Fanny? I'm most awfully glad she's got you, and I want
+you to stay. Between you and me she has a very thin time with
+Waddington."
+
+"There it is. I know--I know--I _know_ I'm going to hate him."
+
+"Oh, no, you're not. You can't _hate_ Waddington."
+
+"_You_ don't?"
+
+"Oh, Lord, no. I wouldn't mind him a bit, poor old thing, if he wasn't
+Fanny's husband."
+
+He had almost as good as owned it, almost put her in possession of their
+secret. She conceived it--his secret, Fanny's secret--as all innocence
+on her part, all chivalry on his; tender and hopeless and pure.
+
+
+2
+
+They had come to the white gate that led between the shrubberies and the
+grass-plot with the yellow-grey stone house behind it.
+
+It was nice, she thought, of Fanny to make Mr. Bevan take her for these
+long walks when she couldn't go with them; but Barbara felt all the time
+that she ought to apologize to the young man for not being Fanny,
+especially when Mr. Waddington was coming back to-day by the three-forty
+train and this afternoon would be their last for goodness knew how long.
+And as they talked--about Ralph's life before the war and the jobs he
+had lost because of it (he had been a journalist), and about Barbara's
+job at the War Office, and air raids and the games they both went in
+for, and their favourite authors and the room he had in the White Hart
+Inn at Wyck--as they talked, fluently, with the ease of old
+acquaintances, almost of old friends, Barbara admired the beauty of Mr.
+Bevan's manners; you would have supposed that instead of suffering, as
+he must be suffering, agonies of impatience and irritation, he had never
+enjoyed anything in his life so much as this adventure that was just
+coming to an end.
+
+He had opened the gate for her and now stood with his back to it,
+holding out his hand, saying "Good-bye."
+
+"Aren't you coming in?" she said. "Mrs. Waddington expects you for tea."
+
+"No," he said, "she doesn't. She knows I can't come if he's there."
+
+He paused. "By the way, that book of his, it's in an appalling muddle. I
+hadn't time to do much to it before I left. If you can't get it straight
+you must come to me and I'll help you."
+
+"That's very good of you."
+
+"Rather not. It _was_ my job, you know."
+
+He was backing through the gate, saluting as he went. And now he had
+turned and was running with raking, athletic paces up the grass border
+of the park.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+1
+
+"Tea is in the library, miss."
+
+This announcement, together with Partridge's extraordinary increase of
+importance, would have told her that the master had returned, even if
+she had not seen, through the half-open door of the cloak-room, Mr.
+Waddington's overcoat hanging by its shoulders and surmounted by his
+grey slouch hat.
+
+With a rapid, furtive movement the butler closed the door on these
+sanctities; and she noted the subdued quiet of his footsteps as he led
+the way down the dark oak-panelled corridor, through the smoke-room, and
+into the library beyond. She also caught a surprising sight of her own
+face in the glass over the smoke-room chimneypiece, her dark eyes
+shining, the cool, wind-beaten flush on her young cheeks, the curled
+mouth flowering, geranium red on rose white.
+
+This Barbara of the looking-glass smiled at her in passing with such
+gay, irresponsible amusement that it fairly took her breath away. Its
+origin became clear to her as Ralph Bevan's words shot into her mind:
+"I don't want to spoil him for you." She foresaw a possible intimacy in
+which Horatio Bysshe Waddington would become the unique though
+unofficial tie between them. She was aware that it pleased her to share
+a secret jest with Ralph Bevan.
+
+She found Fanny established behind her tea-table in the low room, dim
+with its oak panelling above the long lines of the bookcases, where
+Fanny's fluttering smile made movement and a sort of light.
+
+Her husband sat facing her in his brown leather chair and in the pose,
+the wonderful pose of his portrait; only the sobriety of his navy-blue
+serge had fined it down, giving him a factitious slenderness. He hadn't
+seen her come in. He sat there in innocence and unawareness; and
+afterwards it gave her a little pang of remorse remembering how innocent
+he had then seemed to her and unaware.
+
+"This is my husband, Barbara. Horatio, you haven't met Miss Madden."
+
+His eyes bulged with the startled innocence of a creature taken unaware.
+He had just lifted his face, with its dripping moustache, from his
+teacup, and though he carried off this awkwardness with an unabashed
+sweep of his pocket-handkerchief, you could see that he was sensitive;
+he hated you to catch him in any gesture that was less than noble. All
+his gestures were noble and his attitudes. He was noble as he got up,
+slowly, unfolding his great height, tightening by a movement of his
+shoulders his great breadth. He looked down at her superbly and held out
+his hand; it closed on hers in a large genial clasp.
+
+"So this is my secretary, is it?"
+
+"Yes. And don't forget she's my companion as well as your secretary."
+
+"I never forget anything that you wish me to remember." (Only he said
+"nevah" and "remembah"; he bowed as he said it in a very courtly way.)
+
+Barbara noticed that his black hair and moustache were lightly grizzled,
+there was loose flesh about his eyelids, his chin had doubled, and his
+cheeks were sagging from the bone, otherwise he was exactly like his
+portrait; these changes made him look, if anything, more incorruptibly
+dignified and more solemn. He had remained on his feet (for his breeding
+was perfect), moving between the tea-table and Barbara, bringing her
+tea, milk and sugar, and things to eat. Altogether he was so simple, so
+genial and unmysterious that Barbara could only suppose that Ralph had
+been making fun of her, of her wonder, her curiosity.
+
+"My dear, what a colour you've got!"
+
+Fanny put up her hands to her own cheeks to draw attention to Barbara's.
+"You _are_ growing a country girl, aren't you? You should have seen her
+white face when she came, Horatio."
+
+"What has she been doing to herself?" He had settled again into his
+chair and his attitude.
+
+"She's been out walking with Ralph."
+
+"With Ralph? Is _he_ here still?"
+
+"Why shouldn't he be?"
+
+Mr. Waddington shrugged his immense shoulders. "It's a question of
+taste. If he _likes_ to hang about the place after his behaviour--"
+
+"Poor boy! whatever has he done? 'Behaviour' makes it sound as if it had
+been something awful."
+
+"We needn't go into it, I think."
+
+"But you _are_ going into it, darling, all the time. Do you mean to keep
+it up against him for ever?"
+
+"I'm not keeping anything up. What Ralph Bevan does is no concern of
+mine. Since I'm not to be inconvenienced by it--since Miss Madden has
+come to my rescue so charmingly--I shall not give it another thought."
+
+He turned to Barbara as to a change of subject. "Had you any
+difficulty"--(his voice was measured and important)--"in finding your
+way here?"
+
+"None at all."
+
+"Ah, that one-thirty train is excellent. Excellent. But if you had not
+told the guard to stop at the Hill you would have been carried on to
+Cheltenham. Which would have been very awkward for you. Very awkward
+indeed."
+
+"My dear Horatio, what did you suppose she _would_ do?"
+
+"My dear Fanny, there are many things she might have done. She might
+have got into the wrong coach at Paddington and been carried on to
+Worcester."
+
+"And that," said Barbara, "would have been much worse than Cheltenham."
+
+"The very thought of it," said Fanny, "makes me shudder. But thank God,
+Barbara, you didn't do any of those things."
+
+Mr. Waddington shifted the crossing of his legs as a big dog shifts his
+paws when you laugh at him; the more Fanny laughed the more dignified
+and solemn he became.
+
+"You haven't told me yet, Horatio, what you did in London."
+
+"I was just going to tell you when Miss Madden--so delightfully--came
+in."
+
+At that Barbara thought it discreet to dismiss herself, but Fanny called
+her back. "What are you running away for? He didn't do anything in
+London he wouldn't like you to hear about."
+
+"On the contrary, I particularly wish Miss Madden to hear about it. I
+am starting a branch of the National League of Liberty in Wyck. You may
+have heard of it?"
+
+"Yes. I've _heard_ of it. I've even seen the prospectus."
+
+"Good. Well, Fanny, I lunched yesterday with Sir Maurice Gedge, and he's
+as keen as mustard. He agrees with me that the League will be no good,
+no good at all, until it's taken up strong in the provinces. He wants me
+to start at once. Just as soon as I can get my Committee."
+
+"My dear, if you've got to have a Committee first you'll never start."
+
+"It depends altogether on who I get. And it'll be _my_ Committee. Sir
+Maurice was very emphatic about that. He agrees with me that if you want
+a thing done, and done well, you must do it yourself. There can only be
+_one_ moving spirit. The Committee will have nothing to do but carry out
+my ideas."
+
+"Then be sure you get a Committee that hasn't any of its own."
+
+"That will not be difficult," said Mr. Waddington, "in Wyck.... The
+first thing is the prospectus. That's where you come in, Miss Madden."
+
+"You mean the first thing is that Barbara draws up the prospectus."
+
+"Under my supervision."
+
+"The next thing," Fanny said, "is to conceal your prospectus from your
+Committee till it's in print. You come to your Committee with your
+prospectus. You don't offer it for discussion."
+
+"Supposing," Barbara said, "they insist on discussing it?"
+
+"They won't," said Fanny, "once it's printed, especially if it's paid
+for. You must get Pyecraft to send in his bill at once. And if they _do_
+start discussing you can put them off with the date and place of the
+meeting and the wording of the posters. That'll give them something to
+talk about. I suppose you'll be chairman."
+
+"Well, I think, in the circumstances, they could hardly appoint anybody
+else."
+
+"I don't know. Somebody might suggest Sir John Corbett."
+
+Mr. Waddington's face sagged with dismay as Fanny presented this
+unpleasant possibility.
+
+"I don't think Sir John would care about it. I shall suggest it to him
+myself; but I don't think--."
+
+After all, Sir John Corbett was a lazy man.
+
+"When you've roused Sir John, if you ever _do_ rouse him, then you'll
+have to round up all the towns and villages for twenty miles. It's a
+pity you can't have Ralph; he would have rounded them for you in no time
+on his motor-bike."
+
+"I am quite capable of rounding them all up myself, thank you."
+
+"Well, dear," said Fanny placably, "it'll keep you busy for the next six
+months, and that'll be nice. You won't miss the war then so much, will
+you?"
+
+"_Miss the war_?"
+
+"Yes, you do miss it, darling. He was a special constable, Barbara; and
+he sat on tribunals; and he drove his motor-car like mad on government
+service. He had no end of a time. It's no use your saying you didn't
+enjoy it, Horatio, for you did."
+
+"I was glad to be of service to my country as much as any soldier, but
+to say that I enjoyed the war--"
+
+"If there hadn't been a war there wouldn't have been any service to be
+glad about."
+
+"My dear Fanny, it's a perfectly horrible suggestion. Do you mean to say
+that I would have brought about that--that infamous tragedy, that I
+would have sent thousands and thousands of our lads to their deaths to
+get a job for myself? If I thought for one moment that you were
+serious--"
+
+"You don't like me to be anything else, dear."
+
+"I certainly don't like you to joke about such subjects."
+
+"Oh, come," said Fanny, "we all enjoyed our war jobs except poor Ralph,
+who got gassed first thing, and _then_ concussed with a shell-burst."
+
+"Oh, did he?" said Barbara.
+
+"He did. And don't you think, Horatio, considering the rotten time he's
+had, and that he lost a lucrative job through the war, and that you've
+done him out of his secretaryship, don't you think you might forgive
+him?"
+
+"Of course," said Horatio, "I forgive him."
+
+He had got up to go and had reached the door when Fanny called him back.
+"And I can write and ask him to come and dine to-morrow night, can't I?
+I want to be quite sure that he _does_ dine."
+
+"I have never said or implied," said Horatio, "that he was not to come
+and dine."
+
+With that he left them.
+
+"The beautiful thing about Horatio," said Fanny, "is that he never bears
+a grudge against people, no matter what he's done to them. I've no doubt
+that Ralph was excessively provoking and put him in the wrong, and yet,
+though he was in the wrong, and knows he was in it, he doesn't resent
+it. He doesn't resent it the least little bit."
+
+
+2
+
+Barbara wondered how and where she would be expected to spend her
+evenings now that Fanny's husband had come home. Being secretary to Mr.
+Waddington and companion to Fanny wouldn't mean being companion to both
+of them at once. So when Horatio appeared in the drawing-room after
+coffee, she asked if she might sit in the morning-room and write
+letters.
+
+"Do you want to sit in the morning-room?" said Fanny.
+
+"Well, I ought to write those letters."
+
+"There's a fire in the library. You can write there. Can't she,
+Horatio?"
+
+Mr. Waddington looked up with the benign expression he had had when he
+came on Barbara alone in the drawing-room before dinner, a look so
+directed to her neck and shoulders that it told her how well her low-cut
+evening frock became her.
+
+"She shall sit anywhere she likes. The library is hers whenever she
+wants to use it."
+
+Barbara thought she would rather like the library. As she went she
+couldn't help seeing a look on Fanny's face that pleaded, that would
+have kept her with her. She thought: She doesn't want to be alone with
+him.
+
+She judged it better to ignore that look.
+
+She had been about an hour in the library; she had written her letters
+and chosen a book and curled herself up in the big leather chair and was
+reading when Mr. Waddington came in. He took no notice of her at first,
+but established himself at the writing-table with his back to her. He
+would, of course, want her to go. She uncurled herself and went quietly
+to the door.
+
+Mr. Waddington looked up.
+
+"You needn't go," he said.
+
+Something in his face made her wonder whether she ought to stay. She
+remembered that she was Mrs. Waddington's companion.
+
+"Mrs. Waddington may want me."
+
+"Mrs. Waddington has gone to bed.... Don't go--unless you're tired. I'm
+getting my thoughts on paper and I may want you."
+
+She remembered that she was Mr. Waddington's secretary.
+
+She went back to her chair. It was only his face that had made her
+wonder. His great back, bent to his task, was like another person there;
+absorbed and unmoved, it chaperoned them. From time to time she heard
+brief scratches of his pen as he got a thought down. It was ten o'clock.
+
+When the half-hour struck Mr. Waddington gave a thick "Ha!" of
+irritation and got up.
+
+"It's no use," he said. "I'm not in form to-night. I suppose it's the
+journey."
+
+He came to the fireplace and sat down heavily in the opposite chair.
+Barbara was aware of his eyes, considering, appraising her.
+
+"My wife tells me she has had a delightful time with you."
+
+"I've had a delightful time with her."
+
+"I'm glad. My wife is a very delightful woman; but, you know, you
+mustn't take everything she says too seriously."
+
+"I won't. I'm not a very serious person myself."
+
+"Don't say that. Don't say that."
+
+"Very well. I think, if you don't want me, I'll say good night."
+
+"Seriously?"
+
+"Seriously."
+
+He had risen as she rose and went to open the door for her. He escorted
+her through the smoke-room and stood there at the further door, holding
+out his hand, benignant and superbly solemn.
+
+"Good night, then," he said.
+
+She told herself that she was wrong, quite wrong about his poor old
+face. There was nothing in it, nothing but that grave and unadventurous
+benignity. His mood had been, she judged, purely paternal. Paternal and
+childlike, too; pathetic, if you came to think of it, in his clinging to
+her presence, her companionship. "It must have been my little evil
+mind," she thought.
+
+
+3
+
+As she went along the corridor she remembered she had left her knitting
+in the drawing-room. She turned to fetch it and found Fanny still there,
+wide awake with her feet on the fender, and reading "Tono-Bungay."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Waddington, I thought you'd gone to bed."
+
+"So did I, dear. But I changed my mind when I found myself alone with
+Wells. He's too heavenly for words."
+
+Barbara saw it in a flash, then. She knew what she, the companion and
+secretary, was there for. She was there to keep him off her, so that
+Fanny might have more time to find herself alone in.
+
+She saw it all.
+
+"'Tono-Bungay,'" she said. "Was _that_ what you sent me out with Mr.
+Bevan for?"
+
+"It was. How clever of you, Barbara."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+1
+
+Mr. Waddington closed the door on Miss Madden slowly and gently so that
+the action should not strike her as dismissive. He then turned on the
+lights by the chimneypiece and stood there, looking at himself in the
+glass. He wanted to know exactly how his face had presented itself to
+Miss Madden. It would not be altogether as it appeared to himself; for
+the glass, unlike the young girl's clear eyes, was an exaggerating and
+distorting medium; he had noticed that his wife's face in the smoke-room
+glass looked a good ten years older than the face he knew; he
+calculated, therefore, that this faint greenish tint, this slightly
+lop-sided elderly grimace were not truthful renderings of his complexion
+and his smile. And as (in spite of these defects, which you could put
+down to the account of the glass) the face Mr. Waddington saw was still
+the face of a handsome man, he formed a very favourable opinion of the
+face Miss Madden had seen. Handsome, and if not in his first youth, then
+still in his second. Experience is itself a fascination, and if a man
+has any charm at all his second youth should be more charming, more
+irresistibly fascinating than his first.
+
+And the child had been conscious of him. She had betrayed uneasiness, a
+sense of danger, when she had found herself alone with him. He recalled
+her first tentative flight, her hesitation. He would have liked to have
+kept her there with him a little longer, to have talked to her about his
+League, to have tested by a few shrewd questions her ability.
+
+Better not. Better not. The child was wise and right. Her wisdom and
+rectitude were delicious to Mr. Waddington, still more so was the
+thought that she had felt him to be dangerous.
+
+He went back into his library and sat again in his chair and meditated:
+This experiment of Fanny's now; he wondered how it would turn out,
+especially if Fanny really wanted to adopt the girl, Frank Madden's
+daughter. That impudent social comedian had been so offensive to Mr.
+Waddington in his life-time that there was something alluring in the idea
+of keeping his daughter now that he was dead, seeing the exquisite
+little thing dependent on him for everything, for food and frocks and
+pocket-money. But no doubt they had been wise in giving her the
+secretaryship before committing themselves to the irrecoverable step;
+thus testing her in a relation that could be easily terminated if by any
+chance it proved embarrassing.
+
+But the relation in itself was, as Mr. Waddington put it to himself, a
+little difficult and delicate. It involved an intimacy, a closer
+intimacy than adoption: having her there in his library at all hours to
+work with him; and always that little uneasy consciousness of hers.
+
+Well, well, he had set the tone to-night for all their future
+intercourse; he had in the most delicate way possible let her see. It
+seemed to him, looking back on it, that he had exercised a perfect tact,
+parting from her with that air of gaiety and light badinage which his
+own instinct of self-preservation so happily suggested. Yet he smiled
+when he recalled her look as she went from him, backing, backing, to the
+door; it made him feel very tender and chivalrous; virtuous too, as if
+somehow he had overcome some unforeseen and ruinous impulse. And all the
+time he hadn't had any impulse beyond the craving to talk to an
+intelligent and attractive stranger, to talk about his League.
+
+Mr. Waddington went to bed thinking about it. He even woke his wife up
+out of her sleep with the request that she would remind him to call at
+Underwoods first thing in the morning.
+
+
+2
+
+As soon as he was awake he thought of Underwoods. Underwoods was
+important. He had to round up the county, and he couldn't do that
+without first consulting Sir John Corbett, of Underwoods. As a matter
+of form, a mere matter of form, of course, he would have to consult him.
+
+But the more he thought about it the less he liked the idea of
+consulting anybody. He was desperately afraid that, if he once began
+letting people into it, his scheme, his League, would be taken away from
+him; and that the proper thing, the graceful thing, the thing to which
+he would be impelled by all his instincts and traditions, would be to
+stand modestly back and see it go. Probably into Sir John Corbett's
+hands. And he couldn't. He couldn't. Yet it was clear that the League,
+just because it was a League, must have members; even if he had been
+prepared to contribute all the funds himself and carry on the whole
+business of it single-handed, it couldn't consist solely of Mr.
+Waddington of Wyck. His problem was a subtle and difficult one: How to
+identify himself with the League, himself alone, in a unique and
+indissoluble manner, and yet draw to it the necessary supporters? How to
+control every detail of its intricate working (there would be endless
+wheels within wheels), and at the same time give proper powers to the
+inevitable Committee? If he did not put it quite so crudely as Fanny in
+her disagreeable irony, his problem resolved itself into this: How to
+divide the work and yet rake in all the credit?
+
+He was saved from its immediate pressure by the sight of the envelope
+that waited for him on the breakfast-table, addressed in a familiar
+hand.
+
+"Mrs. Levitt--" His emotion betrayed itself to Barbara in a peculiar
+furtive yet triumphant smile.
+
+"Again?" said Fanny. (There was no end to the woman and her letters.)
+
+Mrs. Levitt requested Mr. Waddington to call on her that morning at
+eleven. There was a matter on which she desired to consult him. The
+brevity of the note revealed her trust in his compliance, trust that
+implied again a certain intimacy. Mr. Waddington read it out loud to
+show how harmless and open was his communion with Mrs. Levitt.
+
+"Is there any matter on which she has not consulted you?"
+
+"There seems to have been one. And, as you see, she is repairing the
+omission."
+
+A light air, a light air, to carry off Mrs. Levitt. The light air that
+had carried off Barbara, that had made Barbara carry herself off the
+night before. (It had done good. This morning the young girl was all
+ease and innocent unconsciousness again.)
+
+"And I suppose you're going?" Fanny said.
+
+"I suppose I shall have to go."
+
+"Then I shall have Barbara to myself all morning?"
+
+"You will have Barbara to yourself all day."
+
+He tried thus jocosely to convey, for Barbara's good, his indifference
+to having her. All the same, it gave him pleasure to say her name like
+that: "Barbara."
+
+He was not sure that he wanted to go and see Mrs. Levitt with all this
+business of the League on hand. It meant putting off Sir John. You
+couldn't do Sir John _and_ Mrs. Levitt in one morning. Besides, he
+thought he knew what Mrs. Levitt wanted, and he said to himself that
+this time he would be obliged, for once, to refuse her.
+
+But it was not in him to refuse to go and see her. So he went.
+
+As he walked up the park drive to the town he recalled with distinctly
+pleasurable emotion the first time he had encountered Mrs. Levitt, the
+vision of the smart little lady who had stood there by the inner gate,
+the gate that led from the park into the grounds, waiting for his
+approach with happy confidence. He remembered her smile, an affair of
+milk-white teeth in an ivory-white face, and her frank attack: "Forgive
+me if I'm trespassing. They told me there was a right of way." He
+remembered her charming diffidence, the naïve reverence for his
+"grounds" which had compelled him to escort her personally through them;
+her attitudes of admiration as the Manor burst on her from its bay in
+the beech trees; the interest she had shown in its date and
+architecture; and how, spinning out the agreeable interview, he had gone
+with her all the way to the farther gate that led into Lower Wyck
+village; and how she had challenged him there with her "You must be Mr.
+Waddington of Wyck," and capped his admission with "I'm Mrs. Levitt." To
+which he had replied that he was delighted.
+
+And the time after that--Partridge had discreetly shown her into the
+library--when she had called to implore him to obtain exemption for her
+son Toby; her black eyes, bright and large behind tears; and her cry:
+"I'm a war widow, Mr. Waddington, and he's my only child;" the flattery
+of her belief that he, Mr. Waddington of Wyck, had the chief power on
+the tribunal (and indeed it would have been folly to pretend that he had
+not power, that he could not "work it" if he chose). And the third time,
+after he had "worked it," and she had come to thank him. Tears again;
+the pressure of a plump, ivory-white hand; a tingling, delicious memory.
+
+After that, his untiring efforts to get a war job for Toby. There had
+been difficulties, entailing many visits to Mrs. Levitt in the little
+house in the Market Square of Wyck-on-the-Hill; but in the end he had
+had the same intoxicating experience of his power, all obstructions
+going down before Mr. Waddington of Wyck.
+
+And this year, when Toby was finally demobilized, it was only natural
+that she should draw on Mr. Waddington's influence again to get him a
+permanent peace job. He had got it; and that meant more visits and more
+gratitude; till here he was, attached to Mrs. Levitt by the unbreakable
+tie of his benefactions. He was even attached to her son Toby, whose
+continued existence, to say nothing of his activity in Mr. Bostock's
+Bank at Wyck, was a perpetual tribute to his power. Mr. Waddington had
+nothing like the same complacence in thinking of his own son Horace; but
+then Horace's existence and his activity were not a tribute but a
+menace, a standing danger, not only to his power but to his fascination,
+his sense of himself as a still young, still brilliant and effective
+personality. (Horace inherited his mother's deplorable lack of
+seriousness.) And it was in Mrs. Levitt's society that Mr. Waddington
+was most conscious of his youth, his brilliance and effect. With an
+agreeable sense of anticipation he climbed up the slopes of Sheep Street
+and Park Street, and so into the Square.
+
+The house, muffled in ivy, hid discreetly in the far corner, behind the
+two tall elms on the Green. Mrs. Trinder, the landlady, had a sidelong
+bend of the head and a smile that acknowledged him as Mr. Waddington of
+Wyck and Mrs. Levitt's benefactor.
+
+And as he waited in the low, mullion-darkened room he reminded himself
+that he had come to refuse her request. If, as he suspected, it was the
+Ballingers' cottage that she wanted. To be sure, the Ballingers had
+notice to quit in June, but he couldn't very well turn the Ballingers
+out if they wanted to stay, when there wasn't a decent house in the
+place to turn them into. He would have to make this very clear to Mrs.
+Levitt.
+
+Not that he approved of Ballinger. The fellow, one of his best farm
+hands, had behaved infamously, first of all demanding preposterous
+wages, and then, just because Mr. Waddington had refused to be
+brow-beaten, leaving his service for Colonel Grainger's. Colonel
+Grainger had behaved infamously, buying Foss Bank with the money he had
+made in high explosives, and then letting fly his confounded Socialism
+all over the county. Knowing nothing, mind you, about local conditions,
+and actually raising the rate of wages without consulting anybody, and
+upsetting the farm labourers for miles round. At a time when the
+prosperity of the entire country depended on the farmers. Still, Mr.
+Waddington was not the man to take a petty revenge on his inferiors. He
+didn't blame Ballinger; he blamed Colonel Grainger. He would like to see
+Grainger boycotted by the whole county.
+
+The door opened. He strode forward and found himself holding out a
+sudden, fervid hand to a lady who was not Mrs. Levitt. He drew up,
+turning his gesture into a bow, rather unnecessarily ceremonious; but he
+could not annihilate instantaneously all that fervour.
+
+"I am Mrs. Levitt's sister, Mrs. Rickards. Mr. Waddington, is it not?
+I'll tell Elise you're here. I know she'll be glad to see you. She has
+been very much upset."
+
+She remained standing before him long enough for him to be aware of a
+projecting bust, of white serge, of smartness, of purplish copper hair,
+a raking panama's white brim, of eyebrows, a rouged smile, and a smell
+of orris root. Before he could grasp its connexion with Mrs. Levitt this
+amazing figure had disappeared and given place to a tapping of heels and
+a furtive, scuffling laugh on the stairs outside. A shriller laugh--that
+must be Mrs. Rickards--a long Sh-sh-sh! Then the bang of the front door
+covering the lady's retreat, and Mrs. Levitt came in, stifling merriment
+under a minute pocket-handkerchief.
+
+He took it in then. They were sisters, Mrs. Rickards and Elise Levitt.
+Elise, if you cared to be critical, had the same defects: short legs,
+loose hips; the same exaggerations: the toppling breasts underpinned by
+the shafts of her stays. Not Mr. Waddington's taste. And yet--and yet
+Elise had contrived a charming and handsome effect out of black eyes and
+the milk-white teeth in the ivory-white face. The play of the black
+eyebrows distracted you from the equine bend of the nose that sprang
+between them; the movements of her mouth, the white flash of its smile,
+made you forget its thinness and hardness and the slight heaviness of
+its jaw. Something foreign about her. Something French. Piquant. And
+then, her clothes. Mrs. Levitt wore a coat and skirt, her sister's white
+serge with a distinction, a greyish stripe or something; clean
+straightness that stiffened and fined down her exuberance. One jewel,
+one bit of gold, and she might have been vulgar. But no. He thought: she
+knows what becomes her. Immaculate purity of white gloves, white shoes,
+white panama; and the black points of the ribbon, of her eyebrows, her
+eyes and hair. After all, the sort of woman Mr. Waddington liked to be
+seen out walking with. She made him feel slender.
+
+"My _dear_ Mr. Waddington, how good of you!"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Levitt--always delighted--when it's possible--to do
+anything."
+
+As she covered him with her brilliant eyes he tightened his shoulders
+and stood firm, while his spirit braced itself against persuasion. If it
+was the Ballingers' cottage--
+
+"I really am ashamed of myself. I never seem to send for you unless I'm
+in trouble."
+
+"Isn't that the time?" His voice thickened. "So long as you do send--"
+He thought: It isn't the Ballingers' cottage then.
+
+"It's your own fault. You've always been so good, so kind. To my poor
+Toby."
+
+"Nothing to do with Toby, I hope, the trouble?"
+
+"Oh, no. No. And yet in a way it has. I'm afraid, Mr. Waddington, I may
+have to leave."
+
+"To leave? Leave Wyck?"
+
+"Leave dear Wyck."
+
+"Not seriously?"
+
+He wasn't prepared for that. The idea hit him hard in a place that he
+hadn't thought was tender.
+
+"Quite seriously."
+
+"Dear me. This is very distressing. Very distressing indeed. But you
+would not take such a step without consulting your friends?"
+
+"I _am_ consulting you."
+
+"Yes, yes. But have you thought it well over?"
+
+"Thinking isn't any use. I shall have to, unless something can be done."
+
+He thought: "Financial difficulties. Debts. An expensive lady. Unless
+something could be done?" He didn't know that he was exactly prepared to
+do it. But his tongue answered in spite of him.
+
+"Something must be done. We can't let you go like this, my dear lady."
+
+"That's it. I don't see how I _can_ go, with dear Toby here. Nor yet how
+I'm to stay."
+
+"Won't you tell me what the trouble is?"
+
+"The trouble is that Mrs. Trinder's son's just been demobilized, and she
+wants our rooms for his wife and family."
+
+"Come--surely we can find other rooms."
+
+"All the best ones are taken. There's nothing left that I'd care to live
+in.... Besides, it isn't rooms I want, Mr. Waddington, it's a house."
+
+It was, of course, the Ballingers' cottage. But she couldn't have it.
+She couldn't have it.
+
+"I wouldn't mind how small it was. If only I had a little home of my
+own. You don't know, Mr. Waddington, what it is to be without a home of
+your own. I haven't had a home for years. Five years. Not since the
+war."
+
+"I'm afraid," said Mr. Waddington, "at present there isn't a house for
+you in Wyck."
+
+He brooded earnestly, as though he were trying to conjure up, to create
+out of nothing, a house for her and a home.
+
+"No. But I understand that the Ballingers will be leaving in June. You
+said that at any time, if you had a house, I should have it."
+
+"I said a house, Mrs. Levitt, not a cottage."
+
+"It's all the same to me. The Ballingers' cottage could be made into an
+adorable little house."
+
+"It could. With a few hundred pounds spent on it."
+
+"Well, you'd be improving your property, wouldn't you? And you'd get it
+back in the higher rent."
+
+"I'm not thinking about getting anything back. And nothing would please
+me better. Only, you see, I can't very well turn Ballinger out as long
+as he behaves himself."
+
+"I wouldn't have him turned out for the world.... But do you consider
+that Ballinger _has_ behaved himself?"
+
+"Well, he played me a dirty trick, perhaps, when he went to Grainger;
+but if Grainger can afford to pay for him I've no right to object to his
+being bought. It isn't a reason for turning the man out."
+
+"I don't see how he can expect you to refuse a good tenant for him."
+
+"I must if I haven't a good house to put him into."
+
+"He doesn't expect it, Mr. Waddington. Didn't you give him notice in
+December?"
+
+"A mere matter of form. He knows he can stay on if there's nowhere else
+for him to go to."
+
+"Then why," said Mrs. Levitt, "does he go about saying that he dares you
+to let the cottage over his head?"
+
+"Does he? Does he say that?"
+
+"He says he'll pay you out. He'll summons you. He was most abusive."
+
+Mr. Waddington's face positively swelled with the choleric flush that
+swamped its genial fatuity.
+
+"It seems somebody told him you were going to do up the cottage and let
+it for more rent."
+
+"I don't know who could have spread that story."
+
+"I assure you, Mr. Waddington, it wasn't me!"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Levitt, of course.... I won't say I wasn't thinking of it,
+and that I wouldn't have done it, if I could have got rid of
+Ballinger...." He meditated.
+
+"I don't see why I shouldn't get rid of him. If he dares me, the
+scoundrel, he's simply asking for it. And he shall have it."
+
+"Oh, but I wouldn't for worlds have him turned into the street. With his
+wife and babies."
+
+"My dear lady, I shan't turn them into the street. I shouldn't be
+allowed to. There's a cottage at Lower Wyck they can go into. The one he
+had when he first came to me."
+
+He wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. It wasn't, as it stood,
+a decent cottage; but if he was prepared to spend fifty pounds or so on
+it, it could be made habitable; and, by George, he _was_ prepared, if it
+was only to teach Ballinger a lesson. For it meant that Ballinger would
+have to walk an extra mile up hill to his work every day. Serve him
+right, the impudent rascal.
+
+"Poor thing, he won't," said Mrs. Levitt, "have his nice garden."
+
+"He won't. Ballinger must learn," said Mr. Waddington with magisterial
+severity, "that he can't have everything. He certainly can't have it
+both ways. Abuse and threaten me and expect favours. He may go ... to
+Colonel Grainger."
+
+"If it really _must_ happen," said Mrs. Levitt, "do you mean that I may
+have the house?"
+
+"I shall be only too delighted to have such a charming tenant."
+
+"Well, I shan't threaten and abuse you and call you every nasty name
+under the sun. And you won't, you _won't_ turn me out when my lease is
+up?"
+
+He bowed over the hand she held out to him.
+
+"You shall never be turned out as long as you want to stay."
+
+By twelve o'clock they had arranged the details; Mr. Waddington was to
+put in a bathroom; to throw the two rooms on the ground floor into one;
+to build out a new sitting-room with a bedroom over it; and to paint and
+distemper the place, in cream white, throughout. And it was to be called
+the White House. By the time they had finished with it Ballinger's
+cottage had become the house Mrs. Levitt had dreamed of all her life,
+and not unlike the house Mr. Waddington had dreamed of that minute
+(while he planned the bathroom); the little bijou house where an
+adorable but not too rigorously moral lady--He stopped with a mental
+jerk, ashamed. He had no reason to suppose that Elise was or would
+become such a lady.
+
+And the poor innocent woman was saying, "Just one thing, Mr. Waddington,
+the rent?"
+
+(No earthly reason.) "We can talk about that another time. I shan't be
+hard on you."
+
+No. He wouldn't be hard on her. But in that other case there wouldn't
+have been any rent at all.
+
+As he left the house he could see Mrs. Rickards hurrying towards it
+across the square.
+
+"She waddles like a duck," he thought. The movement suggested a plebeian
+excitement and curiosity that displeased him. He recalled her face. Her
+extraordinary face. "Quite enough," he thought, "to put all that into my
+head. Poor Elise"
+
+He liked to think of her. It made him feel what he had felt last night
+over Barbara Madden--virtuous--as though he had struggled and got the
+better of an impetuous passion. He was so touched by his own beautiful
+renunciation that when he found Fanny working in the garden he felt a
+sudden tenderness for her as the cause of it. She looked up at him from
+her pansy bed and laughed. "What are you looking so sentimental for, old
+thing?"
+
+
+3
+
+Mrs. Levitt's affair settled, he could now give his whole time to the
+serious business of the day.
+
+He was exceedingly anxious to get it over. Nothing could be more
+disturbing than Fanny's suggestion that the name of Sir John Corbett
+might carry more weight with his Committee than his own. The Waddingtons
+of Wyck had ancestry. Waddingtons had held Lower Wyck Manor for ten
+generations, whereas Sir John Corbett's father had bought Underwoods and
+rebuilt it somewhere in the 'seventies. On the other hand Sir John was
+the largest and richest landowner in the place. He could buy up
+Wyck--on--the--Hill to--morrow and thrive on the transaction. He
+therefore represented the larger vested interest And as the whole
+object of the League was the safeguarding of vested interests, in other
+words, of liberty, that British liberty which is bound up with law and
+order, with private property in general and landownership in particular;
+as the principle of its very being was the preservation of precisely
+such an institution as Sir John himself, the Committee of the Wyck
+Branch of the League could hardly avoid inviting him to be its
+president. There was no blinking the fact, and Fanny hadn't blinked it,
+that Sir John was the proper person. Most of Fanny's suggestions had a
+strong but unpleasant element of common sense.
+
+But the more interest he took in the League, the more passionately he
+flung himself into the business of its creation, the more abhorrent to
+Mr. Waddington was the thought that the chief place in it, the
+presidency, would pass over his head to Sir John.
+
+His only hope was in Sir John's well-known indolence and
+irresponsibility. Sir John was the exhausted reaction from the efforts
+of a self-made grandfather and of a father spendthrift in energy; he had
+had everything done for him ever since he was a baby, and consequently
+was now unable or unwilling to do anything for himself or other people.
+You couldn't see him taking an active part in the management of the
+League, and Mr. Waddington couldn't see himself doing all the work and
+handing over all the glory to Sir John. Still, between Mr. Waddington
+and the glory there was only this supine figure of Sir John, and Sir
+John once out of the running he could count without immodesty on the
+unanimous vote of any committee he formed in Wyck.
+
+It was possible that even a Sir John Corbett would not really carry it
+over a Waddington of Wyck, but Mr. Waddington wasn't taking any risks.
+What he had to do was to suggest the presidency to Sir John in such a
+way that he would be certain to refuse it.
+
+He had the good luck to find Sir John alone in his library at tea-time,
+eating hot buttered toast.
+
+There was hope for Mr. Waddington in Sir John's attitude, lying back and
+nursing his little round stomach, hope in the hot, buttery gleam of his
+cheeks, in his wide mouth, lazy under the jutting grey moustache, and in
+the scrabbling of his little legs as he exerted himself to stand
+upright.
+
+"Well, Waddington, glad to see you."
+
+He was in his chair again. With another prodigious effort he leaned
+forward and rang for more tea and more toast.
+
+"Did you walk?" said Sir John. His little round eyes expressed horror at
+the possibility.
+
+"No, I just ran over in my car."
+
+"Drove yourself?"
+
+"No. Too much effort of attention. I find it interferes with my
+thinking."
+
+"Interferes with everything," said Sir John. "'Spect you drove enough
+during the war to last you for the rest of your life."
+
+"Ah, Government service. A very different thing. That reminds me; I've
+come to-day to consult you on a matter of public business."
+
+"Business?" (He noted Sir John's uneasy pout.) "Better have some tea
+first." Sir John took another piece of buttered toast.
+
+If only Sir John would go on eating. Nothing like buttered toast for
+sustaining that mood of voluptuous inertia.
+
+When Mr. Waddington judged the moment propitious he began. "While I was
+up in London I had the pleasure of lunching with Sir Maurice Gedge. He
+wants me to start a branch of the National League of Liberty here."
+
+"Liberty? Shouldn't have thought that was much in your line. Didn't
+expect to see you waving the red flag, what? Why didn't you put him on
+to our friend Grainger?"
+
+"My dear Corbett, what are you thinking of? The object of the League is
+to put down all that sort of thing--Socialism--Bolshevism--to rouse the
+whole country and get it to stand solid for order and good government."
+
+"H'm. Is it? Queer sort of title for a thing of that sort--League of
+Liberty, what?"
+
+Mr. Waddington raised a clenched fist. Already in spirit he was on his
+platform. "Exactly the title that's needed. The people want liberty,
+always have wanted it. We'll let 'em have it. True liberty. British
+liberty. I tell you, Corbett, we're out against the tyranny of Labour
+minorities. You and I and every man that's got any standing and any
+influence, we've got to see to it that we don't have a revolution and
+Communism and a Soviet Government here."
+
+"Come, you don't think the Bolshies are as strong as all that, do you?"
+
+Mr. Waddington brought his fist down on the arm of his chair. "I _know_
+they are," he said. "And look here--if they get the upper hand, it's the
+great capitalists, the great property holders, the great _land_owners
+like you and me, Corbett, who'll be the first to suffer.... Why, we're
+suffering as it is, here in Wyck, with just the little that fellow
+Grainger can do. The time'll come, mark my words, when we shan't be able
+to get a single labourer to work for us for a fair wage. They'll bleed
+us white, Corbett, before they've done with us, if we don't make a
+stand, and make it now.
+
+"That's what the League's for, to set up a standard, something we can
+point to and say: These are the principles we stand for. Something you
+can rally the whole country round. We shall want your support--"
+
+"I shall be very glad--anything I can do--"
+
+Mr. Waddington was a little disturbed by this ready acquiescence.
+
+"Mind you, it isn't going to end here, in Wyck. I shall start it in Wyck
+first; then I shall take it straight to the big towns, Gloucester,
+Cheltenham, Cirencester, Nailsworth, Stroud. We'll set 'em going till
+we've got a branch in every town and every village in the county."
+
+He thought: "That ought to settle him." He had created a vision of
+intolerable activity.
+
+"Bless me," said Sir John, "you've got your work cut out for you."
+
+"Of course I shall have to get a local committee first. I can't take a
+step like that without consulting you."
+
+Sir John muttered something that sounded like "Very good of you, I'm
+sure."
+
+"No more than my duty to the League. Now, the point is, Sir Maurice was
+anxious that _I_ should be president of this local branch. It needs
+somebody with energy and determination--the president's work, certainly,
+will be cut out for him--and I feel very strongly, and I think that my
+Committee will feel that _you_, Corbett, are the proper person."
+
+"H'm--m."
+
+"I didn't think I should be justified in going further without first
+obtaining your consent."
+
+"We-ell--"
+
+Mr. Waddington's anxiety was almost unbearable. The programme had
+evidently appealed to Sir John. Supposing, after all, he accepted?
+
+"I wouldn't ask you to undertake anything so--so arduous, but that it'll
+strengthen my hands with my Committee; in fact, I may get a much
+stronger and more influential Committee if I can come to them, and tell
+them beforehand that you have consented to be president."
+
+"I don't mind being president," said Sir John, "if I haven't got to do
+anything."
+
+"I'm afraid--I'm _afraid_ we couldn't allow you to be a mere
+figurehead."
+
+"But presidents always are figureheads, aren't they?"
+
+There was a bantering gleam in Sir John's eyes that irritated Mr.
+Waddington. That was the worst of Corbett; you couldn't get him to take
+a serious thing seriously.
+
+"'T any rate," Sir John went on, "there's always some secretary johnnie
+who runs round and does the work."
+
+So that was Corbett's idea: to sit in his armchair and bag all the
+prestige, while he, Waddington of Wyck, ran round and did the work.
+
+"Not in this case. In these small local affairs you can't delegate
+business. Everything depends on the personal activity of the president."
+
+"The deuce it does. How do you mean?"
+
+"I mean this. If Sir John Corbett asks for a subscription he gets it.
+We've got to round up the whole county and all the townspeople and
+villagers. It's no use shooting pamphlets at 'em from a motor-car. They
+like being personally interviewed. If Sir John Corbett comes and talk to
+them and tells them they must join, ten to one they will join.
+
+"And there isn't any time to be lost if we want to get in first before
+other places take it up. It'll mean pretty sharp work, day in and day
+out, rounding them all up."
+
+"Oh, Lord, Waddington, _don't_. I'm tired already with the bare idea of
+it."
+
+"Come, we can't have you tired, Corbett. Why, it won't be worse, it
+won't be half as bad as a season's hunting. You're just the man for it.
+Fit as fit."
+
+"Not half as fit as I look, Waddington."
+
+"There's another thing--the meetings. If the posters say Sir John
+Corbett will address the meeting people'll come. If Sir John Corbett
+speaks they'll listen."
+
+"My dear fellow, that settles it. I can't speak for nuts. You _know_ I
+can't. I can introduce a speaker and move a vote of thanks, and that's
+about all I _can_ do. It's your show, not mine. _You_ ought to be
+president, Waddington. You'll enjoy it and I shan't."
+
+"I don't know at all about enjoying it. It'll be infernally hard work."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"You don't mean, Corbett, that you won't come in with us? That you won't
+come on the Committee?"
+
+"I'll come on all right if I haven't got to speak, and if I haven't got
+to do anything. I shan't be much good, but I could at least propose you
+as president. You couldn't very well propose yourself."
+
+"It's very good of you."
+
+Mr. Waddington made his voice sound casual and indifferent, so that he
+might appear to be entertaining the suggestion provisionally and under
+protest. "There'll have to be one big meeting before the Committee's
+formed or anything. If I let you off the presidency," he said playfully,
+"will you take the chair?"
+
+"For that one evening?"
+
+"That one evening only."
+
+"You'll do all the talking?"
+
+"I shall have to."
+
+"All right, my dear fellow. I daresay I can get my wife to come on your
+committee, too. That'll help you to rope in the townspeople.... And now,
+supposing we drop it and have a quiet smoke."
+
+He roused himself to one more effort. "Of course, we'll send you a
+subscription, both of us."
+
+Mr. Waddington drove off from Underwoods in a state of pleasurable
+elation. He had got what he wanted without appearing--without appearing
+at all to be playing for it. Corbett had never spotted him.
+
+There he was wrong. At that very moment Sir John was relating the
+incident to Lady Corbett.
+
+"And you could see all the time the fellow wanted it himself. I put him
+in an awful funk, pretending I was going to take it."
+
+All the same, he admitted very handsomely that the idea of the League
+was "topping," and that Waddington was the man for it. And the
+subscription that he and Lady Corbett sent was very handsome, too.
+Unfortunately it obliged Mr. Waddington to contribute a slightly larger
+sum, by way of maintaining his ascendancy.
+
+
+4
+
+On his way home he called at the Old Dower House in the Square to see
+his mother. He had arranged to meet Fanny and Barbara Madden there and
+drive them home.
+
+The old lady was sitting in her chair, handsome, with dark eyes still
+brilliant in her white Roman face, a small imperious face, yet soft,
+soft in its network of fine grooves and pittings. An exquisite old lady
+in a black satin gown and white embroidered shawl, with a white
+Chantilly scarf binding rolled masses of white hair. She had been a Miss
+Postlethwaite, of Medlicott.
+
+"My dear boy--so you've got back?"
+
+She turned to her son with a soft moan of joy, lifting up her hands to
+hold his face as he stooped to kiss her.
+
+"How well you look," she said. "Is that London or coming back to Fanny?"
+
+"It's coming back to you."
+
+"Ah, she hasn't spoilt you. You know how to say nice things to your old
+mother."
+
+She looked up at him, at his solemn face that simmered with excited
+egoism. Barbara could see that he was playing--playing in his
+ponderous, fatuous way, at being her young, her not more than
+twenty-five years old son. He turned with a sudden, sportive, caracoling
+movement, to find a chair for himself. He was sitting on it now, close
+beside his mother, and she was holding one of his big, fleshy hands in
+her fragile bird claws and patting it.
+
+From her study of the ancestral portraits in the Manor dining-room
+Barbara gathered that he owed to his mother the handsome Roman structure
+that held up his face, after all, so proudly through its layers of
+Waddington flesh. He had the Postlethwaite nose. The old lady looked at
+her, gratified by the grave attention of her eyes.
+
+"Miss Madden can't believe that a little woman like me could have such a
+great big son," she said. "But, you see, he isn't big to me. He'll never
+be any older than thirteen."
+
+You could see it. If he wasn't really thirteen to her he wasn't a day
+older than twenty-five; he was her young grown-up son whose caresses
+flattered her.
+
+"She spoils me, Miss Madden."
+
+You could see that it pleased him to sit close to her knees, to have his
+hand patted and be spoilt.
+
+"Nonsense. Now tell me what happened at Underwoods. Is it to be John
+Corbett or you?"
+
+"Corbett says it's to be me."
+
+"I'm glad he's had that much sense. Well--and now tell me all about this
+League of yours."
+
+He told her all about it, and she sat very quietly, listening, nodding
+her proud old head in approval. He talked about it till it was time to
+go. Then the old lady became agitated.
+
+"My dear boy, you mustn't let Kimber drive you too fast down that hill.
+Fanny, will you tell Kimber to be careful?"
+
+Her face trembled with anxiety as she held it to him to be kissed. At
+that moment he was her child, escaping from her, going out rashly into
+the dangerous world.
+
+"I like going to see Granny," said Fanny as Kimber tucked them up
+together in the car. "She makes me feel young."
+
+"You may very well feel it," said Mr. Waddington. "It's only my mother's
+white hair, Miss Madden, that makes her look old."
+
+"I thought," said Barbara, "she looked ever so much younger"--she was
+going to say, "than she is"--"than most people's mothers."
+
+"You will have noticed," Fanny said, "that my husband is younger than
+most people."
+
+Barbara noticed that he had drawn himself up with an offended air,
+unnaturally straight. He didn't like it, this discussion about ages.
+
+They were running out of the Square when Fanny remembered and cried out,
+"Oh, stop him, Horatio. We must go back and see if Ralph's coming to
+dinner."
+
+But at the White Hart they were told that Mr. Bevan had "gone to Oxford
+on his motor-bike" and was not expected to return before ten o'clock.
+
+"Sorry, Barbara."
+
+"I don't see why you should apologize to Miss Madden, my dear. I've no
+doubt she can get on very well without him."
+
+"She may want something rather more exciting than you and me,
+sometimes."
+
+"I'm quite happy," Barbara said.
+
+"Of course you're happy. It isn't everybody who enjoys Ralph Bevan's
+society. I daresay you're like me; you find him a great hindrance to
+serious conversation."
+
+"That's why _I_ enjoy him," Fanny said. "We'll ask him for to-morrow
+night."
+
+Barbara tucked her chin into the collar of her coat. The car was running
+down Sheep Street into Lower Wyck. She stared out abstractedly at the
+eastern valley, the delicate green cornfields and pink fallows, the
+muffling of dim trees, all washed in the pale eastern blue, rolling out
+and up to the blue ridge.
+
+It made her happy to look at it. It made her happy to think of Ralph
+Bevan coming to-morrow. If it had been to-night it would have been all
+over in three hours. And something--she was not sure what, but felt that
+it might be Mr. Waddington--something would have cut in to spoil the
+happiness of it. But now she had it to think about, and her thoughts
+were safe. "What are you thinking about, Barbara?"
+
+"The view," said Barbara. "I want to sketch it."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+1
+
+Mr. Waddington was in his library, drawing up his prospectus while Fanny
+and Barbara Madden looked on. At Fanny's suggestion (he owned
+magnanimously that it was a good one) he had decided to "sail in," as
+she called it, with the prospectus first, not only before he formed his
+Committee, but before he held his big meeting. (They had fixed the date
+of it for that day month, Saturday, June the twenty-first.)
+
+"You come before them from the beginning," she said, "with something
+fixed and definite that they can't go back on." And by signing the
+prospectus, Horatio Bysshe Waddington, he identified it beyond all
+contention with himself.
+
+It was at this point that Barbara had blundered.
+
+"Why," she had said, "should we go to all that bother and expense? Why
+can't we send out the original prospectus?"
+
+"My dear Barbara, the original prospectus isn't any good."
+
+"Why isn't it?"
+
+"Because it isn't Horatio's prospectus."
+
+Barbara looked down and away from the dangerous light in Fanny's eyes.
+
+"But it expresses his views, doesn't it?"
+
+"That's no good when he wants to express them himself."
+
+And so far from being any good, the original prospectus was a positive
+hindrance to Mr. Waddington. It took all the wind out of his sails; it
+took, as he justly complained, the very words out of his mouth and the
+ideas out of his head; it got in his way and upset him at every turn.
+Somehow or other he had got to stamp his personality upon this thing.
+"It's no good," he said; "if they can't recognize it as a personal
+appeal from ME." And here it was, stamped all over, and indelibly, with
+the personalities of Sir Maurice Gedge and his London Committee. And he
+couldn't depart radically from the lines they had laid down; there were
+just so many things to be said, and Sir Maurice and his Committee had
+contrived to say them all.
+
+But, though the matter was given him, Mr. Waddington, before he actually
+tackled his prospectus, had conceived himself as supplying his own fresh
+and inimitable manner; the happy touch, the sudden, arresting turn. But
+somehow it wasn't working out that way. Try as he would, he couldn't
+get away from the turns and touches supplied by Sir Maurice Gedge.
+
+"It would have been easy enough," he said, "to draw up the original
+prospectus. I'd a thousand times rather do that than write one on the
+top of it."
+
+Fanny agreed. "It's got to _look_ different," she said, "without _being_
+different."
+
+"Couldn't we," said Barbara, "turn it upside down?"
+
+"Upside down?" He stared at her with great owl's eyes, offended,
+suspecting her this time of an outrageous levity.
+
+"Yes. Really upside down. You see, the heads go in this order--Defence
+of Private Property; Defence of Capital; Defence of Liberty; Defence of
+Government; Defence of the Empire; Danger of Revolution, Communism and
+Bolshevism; Every Man's Duty. Why not reverse them? Every Man's Duty;
+Danger of Bolshevism, Communism and Revolution; Defence of the Empire;
+Defence of Government; Defence of Liberty; Defence of Capital; Defence
+of Private Property."
+
+"That's an idea," said Fanny.
+
+"Not at all a bad idea," said Mr. Waddington. "You might take down the
+heads in that order."
+
+Barbara took them down, and it was agreed that they presented a very
+original appearance thus reversed; and, as Barbara pointed out, the one
+order was every bit as logical as the other; and though Mr. Waddington
+objected that he would have preferred to close on the note of Government
+and Empire, he was open to the suggestion that, while this might appeal
+more to the county, with the farmers and townspeople, capital and
+private property would strike further home. And by the time he had
+changed "combat the forces of disorder" to "take a stand against anarchy
+and disruption," and "spirit of freedom in this country" to "British
+genius for liberty," and "darkest hour in England's history" to
+"blackest period in the history of England," he was persuaded that the
+prospectus was now entirely and absolutely his own.
+
+"But I think we must sound the note of hope to end up with. My own
+message. How about 'We must remember that the darkest hour comes before
+dawn'?"
+
+"My dear Horatio, if you inflate yourself so over your prospectus,
+you'll have no wind left when you come to speak. Be as wildly original
+as you please, but _don't_ be wasteful and extravagant."
+
+"All right, Fanny. I will reserve the dawn. Please make a note of that,
+Miss Madden. Speech. 'Blackest'--or did I say 'darkest'?--'hour before
+dawn.'"
+
+"You'd better reserve all you can," said Fanny.
+
+When Barbara had typed the prospectus, Mr. Waddington insisted on taking
+it to Pyecraft himself. He wanted to insure its being printed without
+delay, and to arrange for the posters and handbills; he also wanted to
+see the impression it would make on Pyecraft and on the young lady in
+Pyecraft's shop. He liked to think of the stir in the composing room
+when it was handed in, and of the importance he was conferring on
+Pyecraft.
+
+"You haven't said what you think of the prospectus," said Fanny, as they
+watched him go.
+
+"I haven't said what I think of the League of Liberty."
+
+"What _do_ you think of it?"
+
+"I think it looks as if somebody was in an awful funk; and I don't see
+that there's going to be much liberty about it."
+
+"That," said Fanny, "is how it struck me. But it'll keep Horatio quiet
+for the next six months."
+
+"_Quiet_? And afterwards?"
+
+"Oh, afterwards there'll be his book."
+
+"I'd forgotten his book."
+
+"That'll keep him quieter than anything else; if you can get him to
+settle down to it."
+
+
+2
+
+That evening Barbara witnessed the reconciliation of Mr. Waddington and
+Ralph Bevan. Mr. Waddington made a spectacle of it, standing, majestic
+and immovable, by his hearth and holding out his hand long before Ralph
+had got near enough to take it.
+
+"Good evening, Ralph. Glad to see you here again."
+
+"Good of you to ask me, sir."
+
+Barbara thought he winced a little at the "sir." He had a distaste for
+those forms of deference which implied his seniority. You could see he
+didn't like Ralph. His voice was genial, but there was no light in his
+bulging stare; the heavy lines of his face never lifted. She wondered:
+Was it Ralph's brilliant youth that had offended him, reminding him,
+even when he refused to recognize his fascination? For you could see
+that he did refuse, that he regarded Ralph Bevan as an inferior,
+insignificant personality. Barbara had to revise her theory. He wasn't
+jealous of him. It would never occur to him that Fanny, or Barbara for
+that matter, could find Ralph interesting. Nothing could disturb for a
+moment his immense satisfaction with himself. He conducted dinner with a
+superb detachment, confining his attention to Fanny and Barbara, as if
+he were pretending that Ralph wasn't there, until suddenly he heard
+Fanny asking him if he knew anything about the National League of
+Liberty and what he thought of it.
+
+"Mr. Waddington doesn't want to know what I think of it."
+
+"No, but we want to."
+
+"My dear Fanny, any opinion, any honest opinion--"
+
+"Oh, Ralph's opinion will be honest enough."
+
+"Honest, I daresay," said Mr. Waddington.
+
+"Well, if you really want to know, I think it's a pathological symptom."
+
+"A what?" said Mr. Waddington, startled into a show of interest.
+
+"Pathological symptom. It's all funk. Blue funk. True blue funk."
+
+"That's what Barbara says."
+
+The young man looked at Barbara as much as to say, "I knew I could trust
+you to take the only intelligent view."
+
+"It's run," he said, "by a few imbeciles, like Sir Maurice Gedge.
+They're scared out of their lives of Bolshevism."
+
+"Do you mean to say that Bolshevism isn't dangerous?"
+
+"Not in this country."
+
+"Perhaps, then, you'd like to see a Soviet Government in this country?"
+
+"I didn't say so."
+
+"But I understand that you uphold Bolshevism?"
+
+"I don't uphold funk. But," said Ralph, "there's rather more in it than
+that. It's being engineered. It's a deliberate, dishonest, and malicious
+attempt to discredit Labour."
+
+"Absurd," said Mr. Waddington. "You show that you are ignorant of the
+very principles of the League."
+
+If he recognized Ralph's youth, it was only to despise it as crude and
+uninformed.
+
+"It is--the--National--League--of Liberty."
+
+"Well, that's about all the liberty there is in it--liberty to suppress
+liberty."
+
+"You may not know that I'm starting a branch of the League in Wyck."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir. I did not know. Fanny, why did you lay that trap for
+me?"
+
+"Because I wanted your real opinion."
+
+"Before you set up an opinion, you had better come to my meeting on the
+twenty-first. Then perhaps you'll learn something about it."
+
+Fanny changed the subject to Sir John Corbett's laziness.
+
+"A man," said Mr. Waddington, "without any seriousness, any sense of
+responsibility."
+
+After coffee Mr. Waddington removed Fanny to the library to consult with
+him about the formation of his Committee, leaving Barbara and Ralph
+Bevan alone. Fanny waved her hand to them from the doorway, signalling
+her blessing on their unrestrained communion.
+
+"It's deplorable," said Ralph, "to see a woman of Fanny's intelligence
+mixing herself up with a rotten scheme like that."
+
+"Poor darling, she only does it to keep him quiet."
+
+"Oh, yes, I admit there's every excuse for her."
+
+They looked at each other and smiled. A smile of delicious and secret
+understanding.
+
+"Isn't he wonderful?" she said.
+
+"I thought you'd like him.... I say, you know, I _must_ come to his
+meeting. He'll be more wonderful than ever there. Can't you see him?"
+
+"I can. It's almost _too_ much--to think that I should be allowed to
+know him, to live in the same house with him, to have him turning
+himself on by the hour together. What have I done to deserve it?"
+
+"I see," he said, "you _have_ got it."
+
+"Got what?"
+
+"The taste for him. The genuine passion. I had it when I was here. I
+couldn't have stood it if I hadn't."
+
+"I know. You must have had it. You've got it now."
+
+"And I don't suppose I've seen him anything like at his best. You'll get
+more out of him than I did."
+
+"Oh, do you think I shall?"
+
+"Yes. He may rise to greater heights."
+
+"You mean he may go to greater lengths?"
+
+"Perhaps. I don't know. You'd have, of course, to stop his lengths,
+which would he a pity. I think of him mostly in heights. There's no
+reason why you shouldn't let him soar.... But I mustn't discuss him.
+I've just eaten his dinner."
+
+"No, we mustn't," Barbara agreed. "That's the worst of dinners."
+
+"I say, though, can't we meet somewhere?"
+
+"Where we _can?_"
+
+"Yes. Where we can let ourselves rip? Couldn't we go for more walks
+together?"
+
+"I'm afraid there won't be time."
+
+"There'll be loads of time. When he's off in his car 'rounding up the
+county.'"
+
+"When he's 'off,' I'm 'on' as Mrs. Waddington's companion."
+
+"Fanny won't mind. She'll let you do anything you like. At any rate,
+she'll let _me_ do anything _I_ like."
+
+"Will you ask her?"
+
+"Of course I shall."
+
+So they settled it.
+
+
+3
+
+When Barbara said to herself that Mr. Waddington would spoil her evening
+with Ralph Bevan, she had judged by the change that had come over the
+house since the return of its master. You felt it first in the depressed
+faces of the servants, of Partridge and Annie Trinder. A thoughtful
+gloom had settled even on Kimber. Worse than all, Fanny Waddington had
+left off humming. Barbara missed that spontaneous expression of her
+happiness.
+
+She thought: "What is it he does to them?" And yet it was clear that he
+didn't do anything. They were simply crushed by the sheer mass and
+weight of his egoism. He imposed on them somehow his incredible
+consciousness of himself. He left an atmosphere of uneasiness. You felt
+it when he wasn't there; even when Fanny had settled down in the
+drawing-room with "Tono-Bungay" you felt her fear that at any minute the
+door would open and Horatio would come in.
+
+But Barbara wasn't depressed. She enjoyed the perpetual spectacle he
+made. She enjoyed his very indifference to Ralph, his refusal to see
+that he could command attention, his conviction of his own superior
+fascination. She knew now what Ralph meant when he said it would be
+unkind to spoil him for her. He was to burst on her without preparation
+or description. She was to discover him first of all herself. First of
+all. But she could see the time coming when her chief joy would be their
+making him out, bit by bit, together. She even discerned a merry devil
+in Fanny that amused itself at Horatio's expense; that was aware of
+Barbara's amusement and condoned it. There were ultimate decencies that
+prevented any open communion with Fanny. But beyond that refusal to
+smile at Horatio after eating his dinner, she could see no decencies
+restraining Ralph. She could count on him when her private delight
+became intolerable and must be shared.
+
+But there were obstacles to their intercourse. Mr. Waddington couldn't
+very well start on what he called his "campaign" until he was armed with
+his prospectus, and Pyecraft took more than a week to print it. And
+while she sat idle, thinking of her salary, the fiend of conscience
+prompted Barbara to ask him for work. Wasn't there his book?
+
+"My book? My Cotswold book?" He pretended he had forgotten all about it.
+He waved it away. "The book is only a recreation, an amusement. Plenty
+of time for that when I've got my League going. Still, I shall be glad
+when I can settle down to it, again.".... He was considering it now with
+reminiscent affection.... "If it would amuse you to look at it--"
+
+He began a fussy search in his bureau.
+
+"Ah, here we are!"
+
+He unearthed two piles of manuscript, one typed, the other written, both
+scored with erasures, with almost illegible corrections and insertions.
+
+"It's in a terrible mess," he said.
+
+She saw what her work would be: to cut a way through the jungle, to make
+clearings.
+
+"If I were to type it all over again, you'd have a clean copy to work on
+when you were ready."
+
+"If you _would_ be so good. It's that young rascal Ralph. He'd no
+business to leave it in that state."
+
+Her scruple came again to Barbara.
+
+"Mr. Waddington, you'd take him on again for your secretary if he'd come
+back?"
+
+"He'd come back all right. Trust him."
+
+"And you'd take him?"
+
+"My dear young lady, why should I? I don't want _him_; I want _you_."
+
+"And _I_ don't want to stand in his way."
+
+"You needn't worry about that."
+
+"I can't help worrying about it. You'd take him back if I wasn't here."
+
+"You _are_ here."
+
+"But if I weren't?"
+
+"Come, come. You mustn't talk to me like that."
+
+She went away and talked to Fanny.
+
+"I can't bear doing him out of his job. If he'll come back--"
+
+"My dear, you don't know Ralph. He'd die rather than come back. They've
+made it impossible between them."
+
+"Mr. Waddington says he'd take him back if I wasn't here."
+
+"He wouldn't. He only thinks he would, because it makes him feel
+magnanimous. He offered Ralph half a year's salary if he'd go at once.
+And Ralph went at once and wouldn't touch the salary. That made him come
+out top dog, and Horatio didn't like it. Not that he supposed he could
+score off Ralph with money. He isn't vulgar."
+
+No. He wasn't vulgar. But she wondered how he would camouflage it to
+himself--that insult to his pride. And there was Ralph's pride that was
+so fiery and so clean. Yet--
+
+"Yet Mr. Bevan comes and dines," she said.
+
+"Yes, he comes and dines. He'll always be my cousin, though he won't be
+Horatio's secretary. He's got a very sweet nature and he keeps the
+issues clear."
+
+"But what will he _do_? He can't live on his sweet nature."
+
+"Oh, he's got enough to live on, though not enough to--to do what he
+wants on. But he'll get a job all right. You needn't bother your dear
+little head about Ralph."
+
+Fanny said to herself: "I'll tell him, then he'll adore her more than
+ever. If only he adores her _enough_ he'll buck up and get something to
+do."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+1
+
+Mr. Waddington did not approve of Mrs. Levitt's intimacy with her
+sister, Bertha Rickards.
+
+He would have approved of it still less if he had heard the conversation
+which Mrs. Trinder heard and reported to Miss Gregg, the governess at
+the rectory, who told the Rector's wife, who told the Rector, who told
+Colonel Grainger, who told Ralph Sevan, who kept it to himself.
+
+"What did you say to the old boy, Elise?"
+
+"Don't ask me what I _said_!"
+
+"Well--have you got the cottage?"
+
+"Of course I've got it, silly cuckoo. I can get anything out of him I
+like. He wasn't going to turn those Ballingers out, but I made him."
+
+"Did he say when Mrs. Waddington was going to call?"
+
+Bertha couldn't resist the temptation of pinching where she knew the
+flesh was tender.
+
+"I didn't ask him."
+
+"She can't very well be off it, now he's your landlord."
+
+That was what Mrs. Levitt thought. And if Mrs. Waddington called, Lady
+Corbett couldn't very well be off it either. They were the only ones in
+Wyck who had not called; but it would be futile to pretend that they
+didn't matter, that they were not the ones who mattered more than
+anybody.
+
+The net she had drawn round Mr. Waddington was tightening, though he was
+as yet unaware of his entanglement. First of all, the Lower Wyck cottage
+was put into thorough repair; and if the plaster was not quite dry when
+the Ballingers moved into it, that was not Mr. Waddington's concern. He
+had provided them with a house, which was all that the law could
+reasonably require him to do. Clearly it was Hitchin, the builder, who
+should be held responsible for the plaster, not he. As for the
+rheumatism Mrs. Ballinger got, supposing it could be put down to the
+damp plaster and not to some inherent defect in Mrs. Ballinger's
+constitution, clearly that was not Mr. Waddington's concern either. If
+anybody was responsible for Mrs. Ballinger's rheumatism, it was Hitchin.
+
+Mr. Waddington did not approve of Hitchin. Hitchin was a Socialist who
+followed Colonel Grainger's lead in overpaying his workmen, with
+disastrous consequences to other people; for over and above the general
+upsetting caused by this gratuitous interference with the prevailing
+economic system, Mr. Hitchin was in the habit of recouping himself by
+monstrous overcharges. And Mr. Hitchin was not only the best builder in
+the neighbourhood, but the only builder and stonemason in
+Wyck-on-the-Hill, so that he had you practically at his mercy.
+
+And operations at the Sheep Street cottage were suspended while Mr.
+Waddington disputed Mr. Hitchin's estimate bit by bit, from the total
+cost of building the new rooms down to the last pot of enamel paint and
+his charge per foot for lead piping. June was slipping away while they
+contended, and there seemed little chance of Mrs. Levitt's getting into
+her house before Michaelmas, if then.
+
+So that on the morning of the nineteenth, two days before the meeting,
+Mr. Waddington found another letter waiting for him on the
+breakfast-table.
+
+Fanny was looking at him, and he sought protection in an affectation of
+annoyance.
+
+"Now what can Mrs. Levitt find to write to me about?"
+
+"I wouldn't set any limits to her invention," Fanny said.
+
+"And what do you know about Mrs. Levitt?"
+
+"Nothing. I only gather from what you say yourself that she is--fertile
+in resource."
+
+"Resource?"
+
+"Well, in creating opportunities."
+
+"Opportunities, now, for what?"
+
+"For you to exercise your Christian charity, my dear. When are you going
+to let me call on her?"
+
+"I am not going to let you call on her at all."
+
+"Is that Christian charity?"
+
+"It's anything you please." He was absorbed in his letter. Mrs. Levitt
+had been obliged to move from Mrs. Trinder's in the Square to inferior
+rooms in Sheep Street, and she was sorry for herself.
+
+"But surely, when you're always calling on her yourself--"
+
+"I am not always calling on her. And if I were, there are some things
+which are perfectly proper for me to do which would not be proper for
+you."
+
+"It sounds as if Mrs. Levitt wasn't."
+
+He looked up as sharply as his facial curves permitted. "Nothing of the
+sort. She's simply not the sort of person you _do_ call on; and I don't
+mean you to begin."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you're my wife and you have a certain position in the county.
+That's why."
+
+"Rather a snobby reason, isn't it? You said I might call on anybody I
+liked."
+
+"So you may, in reason, provided you don't begin with Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"I may have to end with her," said Fanny.
+
+Mr. Waddington had many reasons for not wishing Fanny to call on Mrs.
+Levitt. He wanted to keep his wife, because she was his wife, in a place
+apart from Mrs. Levitt and above her, to mark the distance and
+distinction that there was between them. He wanted to keep himself, as
+Fanny's husband, apart and distant, by way of enhancing his male
+attraction. And he wanted to keep Mrs. Levitt apart, to keep her to
+himself, as the hidden woman of passionate adventure. Hitherto their
+intercourse had had the charm, the unique, irreplaceable charm of things
+unacknowledged and clandestine. Mrs. Levitt was unique; irreplaceable.
+He couldn't think of any other woman who would be a suitable substitute.
+There was little Barbara Madden; she had been afraid of him; but his
+passions were still too young to be stirred by the crudity of a girl's
+fright; if it came to that, he preferred the reassuring ease of Mrs.
+Levitt.
+
+And he didn't mean it to come to that.
+
+But though Mr. Waddington did not actually look forward to a time when
+he would be Mrs. Levitt's lover, he had visions of the pure fancy in
+which he saw himself standing on Mrs. Levitt's doorstep after dark; say,
+once a fortnight, on her servant's night out; he would sound a muffled
+signal on the knocker and the door would he half-opened by Elise. Elise!
+He would slip through in a slender and mysterious manner; he would go on
+tip-toe up and down her stairs, recapturing a youthful thrill out of the
+very risks they ran, yet managing the affair with a consummate delicacy
+and discretion.
+
+At this point Mr. Waddington's fancy heard another door open down the
+street; somebody came out and saw him in the light of the passage;
+somebody went by with a lantern; somebody timed his comings and goings.
+He felt the palpitation, the cold nausea of detection. No. You couldn't
+do these things in a little place like Wyck-on-the-Hill, where everybody
+knew everybody else's business. And there was Toby, too.
+
+Sometimes, perhaps, on a Sunday afternoon, when Toby and the servant
+would be out. Yes. Sunday afternoon between tea-time and church-time.
+
+Or he could meet her in Oxford or Cheltenham or in London. Wiser.
+Week-ends. More satisfactory. Risk of being seen there too, but you must
+take some risks. Surprising how these things _were_ kept secret.
+
+Birmingham now. Birmingham would be safer because more unlikely. He
+didn't know anybody in Birmingham. But the very thought of Mrs. Levitt
+calling at the Manor on the same commonplace footing, say, as Mrs.
+Grainger, was destruction to all this romantic secrecy.
+
+Also he was afraid that if Mrs. Levitt were really that sort of woman,
+Fanny's admirable instinct would find her out and scent the imminent
+affair. Or if Fanny remained unsuspicious and showed plainly her sense
+of security, Elise might become possessive and from sheer jealousy give
+herself away. Mr. Waddington said to himself that he knew women, and
+that if he were a wise man, and he _was_ a wise man, he would arrange
+matters so that the two should never meet. Fanny was docile, and if he
+said flatly that she was not to call on Mrs. Levitt, she wouldn't.
+
+
+2
+
+There was another thing that Mr. Waddington dreaded even more than that
+dangerous encounter: Fanny's knowing that he had turned the Ballingers
+out. As he would have been very unwilling to admit that Mrs. Levitt had
+forced his hand there, he took the whole of the responsibility for that
+action. But, inevitable and justifiable as it was, he couldn't hope to
+carry it off triumphantly with Fanny. It was just, but it was not
+magnanimous. Therefore, without making any positively untruthful
+statement, he had let her think that Ballinger had given notice of his
+own accord. The chances, he thought, were all against Fanny ever hearing
+the truth of the matter.
+
+If only the rascal hadn't had a wife and children, and if only his
+wife--but, unfortunately for Mr. Waddington, his wife was Susan Trinder,
+Mrs. Trinder's husband's niece, and Susan Trinder had been Horace's
+nurse; and though they all considered that she had done for herself when
+she married that pig-headed Ballinger, Fanny and Horace still called her
+Susan-Nanna. And Susan-Nanna's niece, Annie Trinder, was parlourmaid at
+the Manor. So Mr. Waddington had a nasty qualm when Annie, clearing away
+breakfast, asked if she might have a day off to look after her aunt,
+Mrs. Ballinger, who was in bed with the rheumatics.
+
+To his horror he heard Fanny saying: "She wouldn't have had the
+rheumatics if they'd stayed in Sheep Street."
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+Annie's eyes were clear and mendacious.
+
+"He never ought to have left it," said Fanny.
+
+"No, ma'am. No more he oughtn't."
+
+"Isn't she very sorry about it?"
+
+(Why couldn't Fanny leave it alone?)
+
+"Yes, m'm. She's frettin' something awful. You see, 'tesn't so much the
+house, though 'tes a better one than the one they're in, 'tes the
+garden. All that fruit and vegetable what uncle he put in himself, and
+them lavender bushes. Aunt, she's so fond of a bit of lavender. I dunnow
+I'm sure how she'll get along."
+
+Annie knew. He could tell by her eyes that she knew. There was nothing
+but Annie's loyalty between him and that exposure that he dreaded. He
+heard Fanny say that she would go and see Susan to-morrow. There would
+be nothing but Susan's loyalty and Ballinger's magnanimity. It would
+amount to that if they spared him for Fanny's sake. He had been
+absolutely right, and Ballinger had brought the whole trouble on
+himself; but you could never make Fanny see that. And Ballinger
+contrived to put him still further in the wrong. The next day when Fanny
+called at the cottage she found it empty. Ballinger had removed himself
+and his wife and family to Susan's father's farm at Medlicott, a good
+two and a half miles from his work on Colonel Grainger's land, thus
+providing himself with a genuine grievance.
+
+And Fanny would keep on talking about it at dinner.
+
+"Those poor Ballingers! It's an awful pity he gave up the Sheep Street
+cottage. Didn't you tell him he was a fool, Horatio?"
+
+Mercifully Annie Trinder had left the room. But there was Partridge by
+the sideboard, listening.
+
+"I'm not responsible for Ballinger's folly. If he finds himself
+inconvenienced by it, that's no concern of mine."
+
+"Well, Ballinger's folly has been very convenient for Mrs. Levitt."
+
+Mr. Waddington tried to look as if Mrs. Levitt's convenience were no
+concern of his either.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+1
+
+The handbills and posters had been out for the last week. Their
+headlines were very delightful to the eye with their enormous capitals
+staring at you in Pyecraft's royal blue print.
+
+           NATIONAL LEAGUE OF LIBERTY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                    A MEETING
+            IN AID OF THE ABOVE LEAGUE
+                WILL BE HELD IN THE
+            TOWN HALL, WYCK-ON-THE-HILL,
+           _Saturday, June 21st, 8 p.m._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          _Chairman_: SIR JOHN CORBETT,
+                       OF
+            UNDERWOODS, WYCK-ON-THE-HILL.
+                   _Speaker_:
+          HORATIO BYSSHE WADDINGTON, ESQ.,
+                      OF THE
+             MANOR HOUSE, LOWER WYCK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          YOU ARE EARNESTLY REQUESTED TO
+                     ATTEND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                 GOD SAVE THE KING!
+
+Only one thing threatened Mr. Waddington's intense enjoyment of his
+meeting: his son Horace would be there. Young Horace had insisted on
+coming over from Cheltenham College for the night, expressly to attend
+the meeting. And though Mr. Waddington had pointed out that the meeting
+could very well take place without him, Fanny appeared to be backing
+young Horace up in his impudent opinion that it couldn't. This he found
+excessively annoying; for, though for worlds he wouldn't have owned it,
+Mr. Waddington was afraid of his son. He was never the same man when he
+was about. The presence of young Horace--tall for sixteen and developing
+rapidly--was fatal to the illusion of his youth. And Horace had a way of
+commenting disadvantageously on everything his father said or did; he
+had a perfect genius for humorous depreciation. At any rate, he and his
+mother behaved as if they thought it was humorous, and many of his
+remarks seemed to strike other people--Sir John and Lady Corbett, for
+example, and Ralph Bevan--in the same light. Over and over again young
+Horace would keep the whole table listening to him with unreasoning and
+unreasonable delight, while his father's efforts to converse received
+only a polite and perfunctory attention. And the prospect of having
+young Horace's humour let loose on his meeting and on his speech at the
+meeting was distinctly disagreeable. Fanny oughtn't to have allowed it
+to happen. He oughtn't to have allowed it himself. But short of writing
+to his Head Master to forbid it, they couldn't stop young Horace coming.
+He had only to get on his motor-bicycle and come.
+
+Barbara came on him in the drawing-room before dinner, sitting in an
+easy chair and giggling over the prospectus.
+
+He jumped up and stood by the hearth, smiling at her.
+
+"I say, did my guv'nor really write this himself?"
+
+"More or less. Did you really come over for the meeting?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+His smile was wilful and engaging.
+
+"You _are_ enthusiastic about the League."
+
+"Enthusiastic? We-ell, I can't say I know much about it. Of course, I
+know the sort of putrid tosh he'll sling at them, but what I want is to
+_see_ him doing it."
+
+He had got it too, that passion of interest and amusement, hers and
+Ralph's. Only it wasn't decent of him to show it; she mustn't let him
+see she had it. She answered soberly:
+
+"Yes, he's awfully keen."
+
+"_Is_ he? I've never seen him really excited, worked up, except once or
+twice during the war."
+
+As he stood there, looking down, smiling pensively, he seemed to brood
+over it, to anticipate the joy of the spectacle.
+
+He had an impudent, happy face, turned and coloured like his mother's;
+he had Fanny's blue eyes and brown hair. All that the Waddingtons and
+Postlethwaites had done to him was to raise the bridge of his nose, and
+to thicken his lips slightly without altering their wide, vivacious
+twirl. He considered Barbara.
+
+"You're going to help him to write his book, aren't you?"
+
+"I hope so," said Barbara.
+
+"You've got a nerve. He pretty well did for Ralph Bevan. He's worse than
+shell-shock when he once gets going."
+
+"I expect I can stand him. He can't be worse than the War Office."
+
+"Oh, isn't he? You wait."
+
+At that moment his father came in, late, and betraying the first
+symptoms of excitement. Barbara saw that the boy's eyes took them in. As
+they sat down to dinner Mr. Waddington pretended to ignore Horace. But
+Horace wouldn't be ignored. He drew attention instantly to himself.
+
+"Don't you think it's jolly decent of me, pater, to come over for your
+meeting?"
+
+"I shouldn't have thought," said Mr. Waddington, "that politics were
+much in your line. Not worth spoiling a half-holiday for."
+
+"I don't suppose I shall care two fags about your old League. What I've
+come for is to see you, pater, getting up on your hind legs and giving
+it them. I wouldn't miss that for a million half-holidays."
+
+"If that's all you've come for you might have saved yourself the
+trouble."
+
+"Trouble? My dear father, I'd have taken _any_ trouble."
+
+You could see he was laughing at him. And he was talking at Barbara,
+attracting her attention the whole time; with every phrase he shot a
+look at her across the table. Evidently he was afraid she might think he
+didn't know how funny his father was, and he had to show her. It wasn't
+decent of him. Barbara didn't approve of young Horace; yet she couldn't
+resist him; his eyes and mouth were full, like Ralph's, of such
+intelligent yet irresponsible joy. He wanted her to share it. He was an
+egoist like his father; but he had something of his mother's charm,
+something of Ralph Bevan's.
+
+"Nothing," he was saying, "nothing would have kept me away."
+
+"You're very good, sir." Horace could appreciate that biting sarcasm.
+
+"Not at all. I say, I wish you'd let me come on the platform."
+
+"What for? You don't propose yourself as a speaker, do you?"
+
+"Rather not. I simply want to be somewhere where I can see your face and
+old Grainger's at the same time, and Hitchin's, when you're going for
+their Socialism."
+
+"You shall certainly not come on the platform. And wherever you sit I
+must request you to behave yourself--if you can. You may not realize it,
+but this is going to be a serious meeting."
+
+"I know _that_. It's just the--the seriousness that gets me." He
+giggled.
+
+Mr. Waddington shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, if you've no sense of
+responsibility--if you choose to go on like an ill-bred schoolboy--but
+don't be surprised if you're reprimanded from the chair."
+
+"What? Old Corbett? I should like to see him.... Don't you worry, pater,
+I'll behave a jolly sight better than anybody else will. You see if I
+don't."
+
+"How did you suppose he'd behave, Horatio?" said Fanny. "When he's come
+all that way and given up a picnic to hear you."
+
+"Pater'll be a picnic, if you like," said Horace.
+
+Mr. Waddington waved him away with a gesture as if he flicked a teasing
+fly, and went out to collect his papers.
+
+Fanny turned to her son. "Horry dear, you mustn't rag your father like
+that. You mustn't laugh at him. He doesn't like it."
+
+"I can't help it," Horry said. "He's so furiously funny. He _makes_ me
+giggle."
+
+"Well, whatever you do, don't giggle at the meeting, or you'll give him
+away."
+
+"I won't, mater. Honour bright, I won't. I'll hold myself in like--like
+anything. Only you mustn't mind if I burst."
+
+
+2
+
+Mr. Waddington had spoken for half an hour, expounding, with some
+necessary repetitions, the principles and objects of the League.
+
+He was supported on the platform by his Chairman, Sir John Corbett, and
+by the other members of his projected Committee: by Lady Corbett, by
+Fanny, by the Rector, by Mr. Thurston of the Elms, Wyck-on-the-Hill; by
+Mr. Bostock of Parson's Bank; Mr. Jackson, of Messrs. Jackson, Cleaver
+and Co., solicitors; Major Markham of Wyck Wold, Mr. Temple of
+Norton-in-Mark, and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott; and by his secretary,
+Miss Barbara Madden. The body of the hall was packed. Beneath him, in
+the front row, he had the wives and daughters of his committeemen; in
+its centre, right under his nose, he was painfully aware of the presence
+of young Horace and Ralph Bevan. Colonel Grainger sat behind them,
+conspicuous and, Mr. Waddington fancied, a little truculent, with his
+great square face and square-clipped red moustache, and on each side of
+Colonel Grainger and behind him were the neighbouring gentry and the
+townspeople of Wyck, the two grocers, the two butchers, the drapers and
+hotel keeper, and behind them again the servants of the Manor and a
+crowd of shop assistants; and further and further back, farm labourers
+and artisans; among these he recognized Ballinger with several of
+Colonel Grainger's and Hitchin's men. A pretty compact group they made,
+and Mr. Waddington was gratified by their appearance there.
+
+And well in the centre of the hall, above the women's hats, he could see
+Mr. Hitchin's bush of hair, his shrewd, round, clean-shaven and rosy
+face, his grey check shoulders and red tie. Mr. Hitchin had the air of
+being supported by the entire body of his workmen. Mr. Waddington was
+gratified by Mr. Hitchin's appearance, too, and he thought he would
+insert some expression of that feeling in his peroration.
+
+He was also profoundly aware of Mrs. Levitt sitting all by herself in an
+empty space about the middle of the third row.
+
+From time to time Ralph Bevan and young Horace fixed on Fanny Waddington
+and Barbara delighted eyes in faces of a supernatural gravity. Young
+Horace was looking odd and unlike himself, with his jaws clamped
+together in his prodigious effort not to giggle. Whenever Barbara's eyes
+met his and Ralph's, a faint smile quivered on her face and flickered
+and went out.
+
+Once Horace whispered to Ralph Bevan: "Isn't he going it?" And Ralph
+whispered back: "He's immense."
+
+He was. He felt immense. He felt that he was carrying his audience with
+him. The sound of his own voice excited him and whipped him on. It was a
+sort of intoxication. He was soaring now, up and up, into his
+peroration.
+
+"It is a gratification to me to see so many working men and women here
+to-night. They are specially welcome. We want to have them with us. Do
+not distrust the working man. The working man is sound at heart. Sound
+at head too, when he is let alone and not carried away by the
+treacherous arguments of ignorant agitators. We--myself and the
+founders of this League--have not that bad opinion of the working man
+which his leaders--his misleaders, I may call them--appear to have. We
+believe in him, we know that, if he were only let alone, there is no
+section of the community that would stand more solid for order and good
+government than he."
+
+"Hear! Hear!" from Colonel Grainger. Ralph whispered, "Camouflage!" to
+Horace, who nodded.
+
+"There is nothing in the aims of this League contrary to the interests
+of Labour. On the contrary"--he heard, as if somebody else had
+perpetrated it, the horrible repetition--"I mean to say--" His brain
+fought for another phrase madly and in vain. "On the contrary, it exists
+in order to safeguard the true interests, the best interests, of every
+working man and woman in the country."
+
+"Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett. Mr. Waddington smiled.
+
+"President Wilson"--he became agitated and drank water--"President
+Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy. Well, if we,
+you and I, all of us, don't take care, the world won't be safe for
+anything else. It certainly won't be safe for the middle classes, for
+the great business and professional classes, for the class to which I,
+for one, belong: the class of English gentlemen. It won't be safe for
+_us_.
+
+"Not that I propose to make a class question of it. To make a class
+question of it would be more than wrong. It would be foolish. It would
+be a challenge to revolution, the first step towards letting loose,
+unchaining against us, those forces of disorder and destruction which we
+are seeking to keep down. I am not here to insist on class differences,
+to foment class hatred. Those differences exist, they always will exist;
+but they are immaterial to our big purpose. This is a question of
+principle, the great principle of British liberty. Are we going to
+submit to the tyranny of one class over all other classes, of one
+interest over all other interests in the country? Are we going to knock
+under, I say, to a minority, whether it is a Labour minority or any
+other?
+
+"Are--we--going--to tolerate Bolshevism and a Soviet Government here? If
+there are any persons present who think that that is our attitude and
+our intention, I tell them now plainly--it is _not_. In their own
+language, in our good old county proverb: 'As sure as God's in
+Gloucester,' it is not and never will be. The sooner they understand
+that the better. I do not say that there are any persons present who
+would be guilty of so gross an error. I do not believe there are. I do
+not believe that there is any intelligent person in this room who will
+not agree with me when I say that, though it is just and right that
+Labour should have a voice in the government, it is not just and it is
+not right that it should be the only voice.
+
+"It has been the only voice heard in Russia for two years, and what is
+the consequence? Bloodshed. Anarchy and bloodshed. I don't _say_ that we
+should have anarchy and bloodshed here; England, thank God, is not
+Russia. But I do not say that we shall _not_ have them. And I _do_ say
+that it rests with us, with you and me, ladies and gentlemen, to decide
+whether we shall or shall not have them. It depends on the action we
+take to-night with regard to this National League of Liberty, on the
+action taken on--on other nights at similar meetings, all over this
+England of ours; it depends, in two words, on our _united action_,
+whether we shall have anarchy or stable government, whether this England
+of ours shall or shall not continue to be a free country.
+
+"Remember two things: the League is National, and it is a League of
+Liberty. It would not be one if it were not the other.
+
+"You will say, perhaps many of you _are_ saying: 'This League is all
+very well, but what can _I_ do?' Perhaps you will even say: 'What can
+Wyck do? After all, Wyck is a small place. It isn't the capital of the
+county.'"
+
+"Well, I can tell you what Wyck can do. It can be--it _is_ the first
+town in Gloucestershire, the first provincial town in England to start a
+National League of Liberty. They've got a League in London, the parent
+League; they may have another branch League anywhere any day, but I hope
+that--thanks to the very noble efforts of those ladies and gentlemen who
+have kindly consented to serve on my Committee--I hope that before long
+we shall have started Leagues in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Cirencester,
+Nailsworth and Stroud; in every town, village and hamlet in the county.
+I hope, thanks to your decision to-night, ladies and gentlemen, to be
+able to say that Wyck--little Wyck--has got in first. All round us, for
+fifteen--twenty miles round, there are hamlets, villages and towns that
+haven't got a League, that know nothing about the League.
+Wyck-on-the-Hill will be the centre of the League for this part of the
+Cotswolds.
+
+"It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the principle at
+stake. Impossible, therefore, to exaggerate the importance of this
+League, therefore impossible to exaggerate the importance of this
+meeting, of every man and woman who has come here to-night. And when
+you rise from your seats and step up to this platform to enroll your
+names as members of the National League of Liberty, I want you to feel,
+every one of you, that you will be doing an important thing, a thing
+necessary to the nation, a thing in its way every bit as necessary and
+important as the thing the soldier does when he rises up out of his
+trench and goes over the top."
+
+It was then, and then only, that young Horace giggled. But he covered
+his collapse with a shout of "Hear! Hear!" that caused Fanny and Barbara
+to blow their noses simultaneously. As for Ralph, he hid his face in his
+hands.
+
+"Like him," said Mr. Waddington, "you will be helping to save England.
+And what can any of us do more?"
+
+He sat down suddenly in a perfect uproar of applause, and drank water.
+In spite of the applause he was haunted by a sense of incompleteness.
+There was something he had left out of his speech, something he had
+particularly wanted to say. It seemed to him more vital, more important,
+than anything he _had_ said.
+
+A solitary pair of hands, Mrs. Levitt's hands, conspicuously lifted,
+were still clapping when Mr. Hitchin's face rose like a red moon behind
+and a little to the left of her; followed by the grey check shoulders
+and red tie. He threw back his head, stuck a thumb in each armhole of
+his waistcoat, and spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen. The speaker has quoted
+President Wilson about the world being made safe for democracy. He seems
+to be concerned about the future, to be, if I may say so, in a bit of a
+funk about the future. But has he paid any attention to the past? Has he
+considered the position of the working man in the past? Has he even
+considered the condition of many working men at the present time, for
+instance, of the farm labourer now in this country? If he had, if he
+knew the facts, if he cared about the facts, he might admit that,
+whether he's going to like it or not, it's the working man's turn. Just
+about his turn.
+
+"I needn't ask Mr. Waddington if he knows the parable of Dives and
+Lazarus. But I should like to say to him what Abraham said to the rich
+man: 'Remember that thou in thy life-time receivedst thy good things,
+and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art
+tormented.'
+
+"I don't want Mr. Waddington to be tormented. To be tormented too much.
+Not more than is reasonable. A little torment--say, his finger scorched
+for the fraction of a second in that hot, unpleasant place--would be
+good for him if it made him think. I say I don't want to torment him,
+but I'll just ask him one question: Does he think that a world where
+it's possible for a working man, just because he _is_ a working man and
+not an English gentleman, a world where it's still possible for him, and
+his wife and his children, to be turned out of house and home to suit
+the whim of an English gentleman; does he think that a world where
+things like that can happen is a safe place for anybody?
+
+"I can tell him it isn't safe. It isn't safe for you and me. And if it
+isn't safe for you and me, it isn't safe for the people who make these
+things happen; and it isn't any safer for the people who stand by and
+let them happen.
+
+"And if the Socialist--if the Bolshevist is the man who's going to see
+to it that they don't happen, if a Soviet Government is the only
+Government that'll see to that, then the Socialist, or the Bolshevist,
+is the man for my money, and a Soviet Government is the Government for
+my vote. I don't say, mind you, that it _is_ the only Government--I say,
+if it were.
+
+"Mr. Waddington doesn't like Bolshevism. None of us like it. He doesn't
+like Socialism. I think he's got some wrong ideas about that. But he's
+dead right when he tells you, if you're afraid of Bolshevism and a
+Soviet Government, that the remedy lies in your own hands. If there ever
+is a day of reckoning, what Mr. Waddington would call a revolution in
+this country, you, we, ay, everyone of us sitting here, will be done
+with according as we do."
+
+He sat down, and Mr. Waddington rose again on his platform, solemn and a
+little pale. He looked round the hall, to show that there was no person
+there whom he was afraid to face. It might have been the look of some
+bold and successful statesman turning on a turbulent House, confident in
+his power to hold it.
+
+"Unless I have misheard him, what Mr. Hitchin has just said, ladies and
+gentlemen, sounded very like a threat. If that is so, we may
+congratulate Mr. Hitchin on providing an unanswerable proof of the need
+for a National League of Liberty."
+
+There were cries of "Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett and from Mr.
+Hawtrey of Medlicott.
+
+Then a horrible thing happened. Slight and rustling at first, then
+gathering volume, there came a hissing from the back rows packed with
+Colonel Grainger's and Mr. Hitchin's men. Then a booing. Then a booing
+and hissing together.
+
+Sir John scrabbled on to his little legs and cried: "Ordah, there!
+Ordah!" Mr. Waddington maintained an indomitably supercilious air while
+Sir John brought his fist down on the table (probably the most energetic
+thing he had ever done in his life), with a loud shout of "Ordah!"
+Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin were seen to turn round in their
+places and make a sign to their men, and the demonstration ceased.
+
+Mr. Waddington then rose as if nothing at all had happened and said,
+"Any ladies and gentlemen wishing to join the League will please come up
+to the platform and give their names to Miss Madden. Any persons wishing
+to subscribe at once, may pay their subscriptions to Miss Madden.
+
+"I will now call your attention to the last item on the programme, and
+ask you all to join with me very heartily in singing 'God Save the
+King.'"
+
+Everybody, except Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin, rose, and everybody,
+except the extremists of the opposition, sang. One voice--it was Mrs.
+Levitt's voice--was lifted arrogantly high and clear above the rest.
+
+"Send--him--vic-torious,
+ Hap-py--and--glorious.
+ Long--to-oo rei-eign overious
+ Gaw-aw-awd--Save--ther King."
+
+Mr. Waddington waited beside Barbara Madden at the table; he waited in a
+superb confidence. After all, the demonstration engineered by Colonel
+Grainger had had no effect. The front and middle rows had risen to their
+feet and a very considerable procession was beginning to file towards
+the platform.
+
+Mr. Waddington was so intent on this procession, Barbara was so busy
+taking down names and entering subscriptions and making out receipts,
+Sir John and Lady Corbett and the rest of the proposed Committee were
+talking to each other so loud and fast, Ralph and Horace were so
+absorbed in looking at Barbara that none of them saw what was happening
+in the body of the hall. Only Fanny caught the signals that passed
+between Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin, and between Mr. Hitchin and
+his men.
+
+Then Colonel Grainger stood up and shouted, "I protest!"
+
+Mr. Hitchin stood up and shouted, "I protest!"
+
+They shouted together, "We protest!"
+
+Sir John Corbett rushed back to his chair and shouted "Ordah!" and the
+back rows, the ranks of Hitchin's men, stood up and shouted, "We won't
+sign!" "We won't sign!" "We won't sign!"
+
+And then young Horace did an unsuspected thing, a thing that surprised
+himself. He leaped on to the front bench and faced the insurgent back
+rows. His face was red with excitement, and with the shame and anger and
+resentment inspired by his father's eloquence. But he was shouting in
+his hoarse, breaking, adolescent voice:
+
+"Look here, you blackguards there at the back. If you don't stop that
+row this minute, I'll jolly well chuck you all out."
+
+Only one voice, the voice of Mr. Hitchin's biggest and brawniest
+quarryman, replied: "Come on, sir!"
+
+Young Horace vaulted lightly over the bench, followed by Ralph, and the
+two were steeplechasing down the hall when Mr. Hitchin made another of
+his mysterious signals and the men filed out, obediently, one by one.
+
+Ralph and Horace found themselves in the middle of the empty benches
+laughing into each other's faces. Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin stood
+beside them, smiling with intolerable benevolence.
+
+Mr. Hitchin was saying: "The men are all right, Mr. Bevan. They don't
+mean any harm. They just got a bit out of hand."
+
+Horace saw that they were being magnanimous, and the thought maddened
+him. "I don't blame the men," he said, "and I don't blame you, Hitchin.
+You don't know any better. But Colonel Grainger ought to be damned well
+ashamed of himself, and I hope he is."
+
+Colonel Grainger laughed. So did Mr. Hitchin, throwing himself back and
+swaying from side to side as his mirth shook him.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Hitchin--"
+
+"That'll do, Horry," said Ralph. He led him gently down a side aisle
+and through a swing door into the concealed corridor beside the
+platform. There they waited.
+
+"Don't imagine for one moment," said young Horry, "that I agree with all
+that tosh he talked. But, after all, he's got a perfect right to make a
+fool of himself if he chooses. And he's _my_ father."
+
+"I know. From first to last, Horry, you behaved beautifully."
+
+"Well, what would _you_ do if your father made an unholy ass of himself
+in public?"
+
+"My father doesn't."
+
+"No, but if he did?"
+
+"I'd do what you did. Sit tight and try and look as if he didn't."
+
+"Then," said Horace, "you look as big a fool yourself."
+
+"Not quite. You don't say anything. Besides, your father isn't as big a
+fool as those London Leaguers who started the silly show. Sir Maurice
+Gedge and all that crowd. He didn't invent the beastly thing."
+
+"No," said Horace mournfully, "he hasn't even the merit of originality."
+
+He meditated, still mournful.
+
+"Look here, Ralph, what did that blackguard Hitchin mean?"
+
+"He isn't a blackguard. He's a ripping good sort. I can tell you, if
+every employer in this confounded commercial country was as honest as
+old Hitchin, there wouldn't be any labour question worth talking about."
+
+"Damn his honesty. What did he _mean_? Was it true what he said?"
+
+"Was what true?"
+
+"Why, that my father turned the Ballingers out?"
+
+"Yes; I'm afraid it was."
+
+"I say, how disgusting of him. You know I always thought he was a bit of
+a fool, my father; but I didn't know he was that beastly kind of fool."
+
+"He isn't," said Ralph. "He's just--a fool."
+
+"I know. Did you ever hear such putrid rot as he talked?"
+
+"I don't know. For the kind of silly thing it was, his speech wasn't
+half bad."
+
+"What? About going over the top? Oh, Lord! And after turning the
+Ballingers out, too."
+
+Ralph was silent.
+
+"What's happened to him? He didn't use to be like that. He must be mad,
+or something."
+
+Ralph thought of Mrs. Levitt.
+
+"He's getting old and he doesn't like it. That's what's the matter with
+him."
+
+"But hang it all, Ralph, that's no excuse. It really isn't."
+
+"I believe Ballinger gave him some provocation."
+
+"I don't care what he gave him. He'd no earthly business to take
+advantage of it. Not with that sort of person. Besides, it wouldn't
+matter about Ballinger so much, but there's old Susan and the
+kiddies.... He doesn't see how perfectly sickening it is for _me_."
+
+"It isn't very nice for your mother."
+
+"No; it's jolly hard on the poor mater.... Well, I can't stick it much
+longer. I'm just about fed up with Horatio Bysshe. I shall clear out
+first thing in the morning before he's down. I don't care if I never see
+him or speak to him again."
+
+"I say, I say, how about the midsummer holidays?"
+
+"Oh, damn the midsummer holidays!"
+
+"Isn't it rather rotten to take a line you can't possibly keep up?"
+
+"That's all right. Whatever I may do in the future," said young Horace
+magnificently, "I've got to give him his punishment _now_."
+
+Ralph laughed. Young Horace was as big an egoist as his father, but with
+these differences: his blood was hot instead of cold, he had his
+mother's humour, and he was not a fool. Ralph wondered how he would
+have felt if he had realized Mrs. Levitt's part in the Ballinger
+affair.
+
+
+3
+
+Mr. Waddington remained standing on his platform. They were coming round
+him now, grasping him by the hand, congratulating him: Sir John Corbett,
+the Rector, Major Markham of Wyck Wold and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott.
+
+"Capital speech, Waddington, capital."
+
+"Best speech made in the Town Hall since they built it."
+
+"Splendid. You landed them one every time."
+
+"No wonder you drew them down on to you."
+
+"That was a disgraceful business," said Sir John. "Disgraceful."
+
+"Nothing of the sort ever happened in Wyck before," said the Rector.
+
+"Nobody ever made a speech like Waddington's before," said Major Markham
+of Wyck Wold.
+
+"Oh, you always get a row if you drag in politics," Mr. Hawtrey said.
+
+"I don't know," said Sir John. "That was a put-up job between Hitchin
+and Grainger."
+
+"Struck me it had every appearance of a spontaneous outburst," Major
+Markham said.
+
+"I've no doubt the rowdy element was brought in from the outside," said
+the Rector. "Hardly one of Hitchin's workpeople is a Wyck man. Otherwise
+I should have to apologize to Waddington for my parishioners."
+
+"You needn't. There was nothing personal to me in it. Nothing personal
+at all. Even Hitchin wouldn't have had the impudence to oppose me on my
+own platform. It was the League they were going for. Bit too big for
+'em. If you come out with a large, important thing like that there's
+sure to be some opposition just at first till it gets hold of 'em."
+
+"Glad you can see it that way," said Sir John.
+
+"My dear fellow, that's the way to see it. It's the right way; the big
+impersonal way."
+
+"You've taken it in the proper spirit, Waddington," said the Rector.
+"None of those fellows meant any real harm. All good fellows.... By the
+way, is it true that the Ballingers have moved to Lower Wyck?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Dear me, what on earth possessed them?"
+
+"Some fad of Ballinger's, I fancy."
+
+"That reminds me, I must go and see Mrs. Ballinger."
+
+"You won't find them there, sir. They've moved again to her father's at
+Medlicott."
+
+"You don't say so. I wonder now what they've done that for."
+
+"They complained of the house being damp for one thing. If it was, that
+was Hitchin's fault, not mine."
+
+Was everybody in a plot to badger him about those wretched Ballingers?
+He was getting sick of it. And he wanted to speak a word to Mrs. Levitt.
+
+Mrs. Levitt had come up in the tail of the procession. She had given in
+her name and her subscription to Barbara Madden; but she lingered,
+waiting no doubt for a word with him. If only Corbett and the rest of
+them would go.
+
+"Of course. Of course it was Hitchin's fault," said the Rector, with
+imperishable geniality. "Well.... Good night, Waddington, and thank you
+for a most--a most stimulating evening."
+
+They had gone now, all but Sir John and Lady Corbett. (He could hear her
+talking to Fanny at the back of the platform.) Mrs. Levitt was gathering
+her scarf round her; in another minute she would be gone. And Corbett
+wouldn't go.
+
+"I say, Waddington, that's a splendid young cub of yours. See him go
+over the top? He'd have taken them all on. Licked 'em, too, I shouldn't
+wonder."
+
+Mr. Waddington resented this diversion of the stream of admiration. And
+he was acutely aware of Mrs. Levitt standing there, detached but
+waiting.
+
+"Was I really all right, Corbett?" He wasn't satisfied with his speech.
+If only he could remember what he had left out of it.
+
+"Absolutely, my dear chap. Absolutely top-hole. You ought to make that
+boy a soldier."
+
+He wished that young Horace could be a soldier at that moment, stationed
+in a remote part of the Empire, without any likelihood of leave for the
+next five years. He wanted--he wanted intolerably to speak to Mrs.
+Levitt, to spread himself voluptuously in her rejuvenating smile.
+
+Sir John retreated before his manifest indifference. He could hear him
+at the back of the platform, congratulating Fanny.
+
+Mrs. Levitt advanced towards him.
+
+"At last," she said, "I may add my congratulations. That speech was
+magnificent."
+
+"Nothing, my dear lady, nothing but a little necessary plain speaking."
+
+"Oh, but you were wonderful. You carried us off our feet."
+
+"I hope," he said, "we've enrolled you as a member?" (He knew they had.)
+
+"Of course I'm enrolled. And I've paid in my poor little guinea to that
+delightful Miss Madden."
+
+"Ah, that is _too_ good of you."
+
+It was. The amount of the subscription was purely a matter of individual
+fancy.
+
+"It's the least I could do in such a splendid cause."
+
+"Well, dear Mrs. Levitt, we're delighted to have you with us.
+Delighted."
+
+There was a pause. He was looking down at her from the height of his six
+feet. The faint, sweet scent of orris root rose up from her warm skin.
+She was very attractive, dressed in a low-necked gown of that dull,
+satiny stuff women were wearing now. A thin band of white net was
+stretched across the top of her breasts; through it he could see the
+shadowy, arrow-headed groove between; her pendant--pearl bistre and
+paste--pointed, pointed down to it.
+
+He was wrong about Elise and jewellery. That was a throat for pearls and
+for diamonds. Emeralds. She would be all black and white and sparkling
+green. A necklace, he thought, wouldn't hang on her; it would be laid
+out, exposed on that white breast as on a cushion. You could never tell
+what a woman was really like till you'd seen her in a low-necked gown.
+It made Mrs. Levitt ten times more alluring. He smiled at her, a tender,
+brooding, rather fatuous smile.
+
+Mrs. Levitt saw that her moment had come. It would be now or never. She
+must risk it.
+
+"I wish," she said, "you'd introduce me to your wife."
+
+It was a shock, a horrid blow. It showed plainly that Elise had
+interests beyond him, that she was not, like him, all for the secret,
+solitary adventure.
+
+Yet perhaps--perhaps--she had planned it; she thought it would be safer
+for them, more discreet.
+
+She looked up at him with the old, irrefutable smile.
+
+"Will you?" she pleaded.
+
+"Well--I'm not sure that I know where my wife _is_. She was here a
+minute ago, talking to Lady Corbett."
+
+He looked round. A wide screen guarded the door on to the platform. He
+could see Lady Corbett and Fanny disappearing behind it.
+
+"I--I'll go and look for her," he said. He meditated treachery.
+Treachery to poor Elise.
+
+He followed them through the door and down the steps into the concealed
+corridor. He found Ralph Bevan there. Horace had gone.
+
+"I say, Ralph, I wish you'd take Fanny home. She's tired. Get her out of
+this. I shall be here quite half an hour longer; settling up accounts.
+You might tell Kimber to come back for me and Miss Madden."
+
+Now to get to the entrance you had to pass through the swing door into
+the hall and down the side aisle to the bottom, so that Mrs. Levitt
+witnessed Mrs. Waddington's exit with Ralph Bevan. Mr. Waddington.
+waited till the hall doors had closed on them before he returned.
+
+"I can't find my wife anywhere," he said. "She wasn't in the cloak-room,
+so I think she must have gone back with Horace."
+
+Mrs. Levitt would think that Fanny had disappeared while he was looking
+for her, honourably, in the cloak-room.
+
+"I saw her go out," said Mrs. Levitt coldly, "with Mr. Bevan."
+
+"I suppose he's taking her home," he said vaguely. His best policy was
+vagueness. "And now, my dear lady, I wish I could take _you_ home. But I
+shall be detained here some little time. Still, if you don't mind
+waiting a minute or two till Kimber comes back with the car, he shall
+drive you."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Waddington, I'm afraid I've waited quite long enough. It
+isn't worth while troubling Kimber to drive me a hundred yards."
+
+It gave her pleasure to inflict that snub on Mr. Waddington in return
+for his manoeuvre. As the meeting had now broken up, and there wouldn't
+be anybody to witness her departure in the Waddingtons' car, Mrs.
+Levitt calculated that she could afford that little gratification of her
+feelings. They were intensified by Mr. Waddington's very evident
+distress. He would have walked home with her the hundred yards to Sheep
+Street, but she wouldn't hear of it. She was perfectly capable of seeing
+herself home. Miss Madden was waiting for him. Good night.
+
+
+4
+
+Eleven o'clock. In the library where Mr. Waddington was drinking his
+whisky and water, Fanny had been crying. Horry had stalked off to his
+bedroom without saying good night to anybody. Barbara had retired
+discreetly. Ralph Bevan had gone. And when Fanny thought of the lavender
+bags Susan-Nanna sent every year at Christmas, she had cried.
+
+"How could you _do_ it, Horatio? How _could_ you?"
+
+"There was nothing else to be done. You can't expect me to take your
+sentimental, view of Ballinger."
+
+"It isn't Ballinger. It's poor Susan-Nanna and the babies, and the
+lavender bags."
+
+Mr. Waddington swayed placably up and down on the tips of his toes. "It
+serves poor Susan-Nanna right for marrying Ballinger."
+
+"Oh--I suppose it serves _me_ right, too--"
+
+Though she clenched her hands tight, tight, she couldn't keep back that
+little spurt of anger.
+
+He was smiling his peculiar, voluptuous smile. "Serves you right? For
+spoiling everybody in the village? It does indeed."
+
+"You don't in the least see what I mean," said Fanny.
+
+But, after all, she was glad he hadn't seen it.
+
+He hadn't seen anything. He hadn't seen that she had been crying. It had
+never dawned on him that she might care about Susan-Nanna, or that the
+Ballingers might love their home, their garden and their lavender
+bushes. He was like that. He didn't see things, and he didn't care.
+
+He was back in his triumph of the evening, going over the compliments
+and congratulations, again and again--"Best speech ever made in the Town
+Hall--" But there was something--something he had left out.
+
+"Did it never dawn on you--" said Fanny.
+
+Ah, _now_ he had it.
+
+"There!" he said. "I knew I'd forgotten something. I never put in that
+bit about the darkest hour before dawn."
+
+Fanny's mind had wandered from what she had been going to say. "Did you
+see what Horry did?" she said instead.
+
+"Everybody could see it. It was most unnecessary."
+
+"I don't care. Think, Horatio. Think of his sticking up for you like
+that. He was going to fight them, the dear thing, all those great rough
+men. To fight them for _you_. He said he'd behave better than anybody
+else, and he did."
+
+"Yes, yes. He behaved very well." Now that she put it to him that way he
+was touched by Horace's behaviour. He could always be touched by the
+thought of anything you did for _him_.
+
+But Ralph Bevan could have told Fanny she was mistaken. Young Horace
+didn't do it altogether for his father; he did it for himself, for an
+ideal of conduct, an ideal of honour that he had, to let off steam, to
+make a sensation in the Town Hall, to feel himself magnificent and
+brave; because he, too, was an egoist, though a delightful one.
+
+Mr. Waddington returned to his speech. "I can't think what made me leave
+out that bit about the dawn."
+
+"Oh, bother your old dawn," said Fanny. "I'm going to bed."
+
+She went, consoled. "Dear Horry," she thought, "I'm glad he did that."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+1
+
+The Ballinger affair did not end with the demonstration in the Town
+Hall. It had unforeseen and far-reaching consequences.
+
+The first of these appeared in a letter which Mr. Waddington received
+from Mr. Hitchin:
+
+"DEAR SIR,--
+
+"_Re_ my estimate for decoration and additional building to Mrs.
+Levitt's house, I beg to inform you that recent circumstances have
+rendered it impossible for me to take up the contract. I must therefore
+request you to transfer your esteemed order to some other firm.
+
+"Faithfully yours,
+
+"THOMAS HITCHIN."
+
+Mr. Hitchin expressed his attitude even more clearly to the foreman of
+his works. "I'm not going to build bathrooms and boudoirs and bedrooms
+for that--" the word he chose completed the alliteration. So that Mr.
+Waddington was compelled to employ a Cheltenham builder whose estimate
+exceeded Mr. Hitchin's estimate by thirty pounds.
+
+And Mr. Hitchin's refusal was felt, even by people who resented his
+estimates, to be a moral protest that did him credit. It impressed the
+popular imagination. In the popular imagination Mrs. Levitt was now
+inextricably mixed up with the Ballinger affair. Public sympathy was all
+with Ballinger, turned out of his house and forced to take refuge with
+his wife's father at Medlicott, forced to trudge two and a half miles
+every day to his work and back again. The Rector and Major Markham of
+Wyck Wold, meditating on the Ballinger affair as they walked back that
+night from the Town Hall, pronounced it a mystery.
+
+"It wasn't likely," Major Markham said, "that Ballinger, of his own
+initiative, would leave a comfortable house in Sheep Street for a damp
+cottage in Lower Wyck."
+
+"Was it likely," the Rector said, "that Waddington would turn him out?"
+He couldn't believe that old Waddington would do anything of the sort.
+
+"Unless," Major Markham suggested, "he's been got at. Mrs. Levitt may
+have got at him." He was a good sort, old Waddy, but he would be very
+weak in the hands of a clever, unscrupulous woman.
+
+The Rector said he thought there was no harm in Mrs. Levitt, and Major
+Markham replied that he didn't like the look of her.
+
+A vague scandal rose in Wyck-on-the-Hill. It went from mouth to mouth in
+bar parlours and back shops; Major Markham transported it in his
+motor-car from Wyck Wold to the Halls and Manors of Winchway and Chipping
+Kingdon and Norton-in-Mark. It got an even firmer footing in the county
+than in Wyck, with the consequence that one old lady withdrew her
+subscription to the League, and that when Mr. Waddington started on his
+campaign of rounding up the county the county refused to be rounded up.
+And the big towns, Gloucester, Cheltenham and Cirencester, were
+singularly apathetic. It was intimated to Mr. Waddington that if the
+local authorities saw fit to take the matter up no doubt something would
+be done, but the big towns were not anxious for a National League of
+Liberty imposed on them from Wyck-on-the-Hill.
+
+The League did not die of Mrs. Levitt all at once. Very soon after the
+inaugural meeting the Committee sat at Lower Wyck Manor and appointed
+Mr. Waddington president. It arranged a series of monthly meetings in
+the Town Hall at which Mr. Waddington would speak ("That," said Fanny,
+"will give you something to look forward to every month.") Thus, on
+Saturday, the nineteenth of July, he would speak on "The Truth about
+Bolshevism." It was also decided that the League could be made very
+useful during by-elections in the county, if there ever were any, and
+Mr. Waddington prepared in fancy a great speech which he could use for
+electioneering purposes.
+
+On July the nineteenth, seventeen people, counting Fanny and Barbara,
+came to the meeting: Sir John Corbett (Lady Corbett was unfortunately
+unable to attend), the Rector without his wife, Major Markham of Wyck
+Wold, Mr. Bostock of Parson's Bank, Kimber and Partridge and Annie
+Trinder from the Manor, the landlady of the White Hart, the butcher, the
+grocer and the fishmonger with whom Mr. Waddington dealt, three farmers
+who approved of his determination to keep down wages, and Mrs. Levitt.
+When he sat down and drank water there was a feeble clapping led by Mrs.
+Levitt, Sir John and the Rector. On August the sixteenth, the audience
+had shrunk to Mrs. Levitt, Kimber and Partridge, the butcher, one of the
+three farmers, and a visitor staying at the White Hart. Mr. Waddington
+spoke on "What the League Can Do." Owing to a sudden unforeseen shortage
+in his ideas he was obliged to fall back on his electioneering speech
+and show how useful the League would be if at any time there were a
+by-election in the county. The pop-popping of Mrs. Levitt's hands burst
+into a silent space. Nobody, not even Kimber or Partridge, was going to
+follow Mrs. Levitt's lead.
+
+"You'll have to give it up," Fanny said. "Next time there won't be
+anybody but Mrs. Levitt." And with the vision before him of all those
+foolish, empty benches and Mrs. Levitt, pop-popping, dear brave woman,
+all by herself, Mr. Waddington admitted that he would have to give it
+up. Not that he owned himself beaten; not that he gave up his opinion of
+the League.
+
+"It's a bit too big for 'em," he said. "They can't grasp it. Sleepy
+minds. You can't rouse 'em if they won't be roused."
+
+He emerged from his defeat with an unbroken sense of intellectual
+superiority.
+
+
+2
+
+Thus the League languished and died out; and Mr. Waddington, in the
+absence of this field for personal activity, languished too. In spite of
+his intellectual superiority, perhaps because of it, he languished till
+Barbara pointed out to him that the situation had its advantages. At
+last he could go on with his book.
+
+"If you can only start him on it and keep him at it," Fanny said, "I'll
+bless you for ever."
+
+But it was not easy either to start him or to keep him at it. To begin
+with, as Ralph had warned her, the work itself, _Ramblings Through the
+Cotswolds_, was in an appalling mess, and Mr. Waddington seemed to have
+exhausted his original impetus in getting it into that mess. He had set
+out on his ramblings without any settled plan. "A rambler," he said,
+"shouldn't have a settled plan." So that you would find Mr. Waddington,
+starting from Wyck-on-the-Hill and arriving at Lechford in the Thames
+valley, turning up in the valley of the Windlode or the Speed. You would
+find him on page twenty-seven drinking ale at the Lygon Arms in Chipping
+Kingdon, and on page twenty-eight looking down on the Evesham plain from
+the heights south of Cheltenham. He would turn from this prospect and,
+without traversing any intermediate ground, be back again, where you
+least expected him, in his Manor under Wyck-on-the-Hill. For though he
+had no fixed plan, he had a fixed idea, and however far he rambled he
+returned invariably to Wyck. To Mr. Waddington Wyck-on-the-Hill was the
+one stable, the one certain spot on the earth's surface, and this led to
+his treating the map of Gloucestershire entirely with reference to
+Wyck-on-the-Hill, so that all his ramblings were complicated by the
+necessity laid on him of starting from and getting back to it.
+
+So much Barbara made out after she had copied the first forty pages,
+making the first clearing in Mr. Waddington's jungle. The clearings,
+she explained to Ralph, broke your heart. It wasn't till you'd got the
+thing all clean and tidy that you realized the deep spiritual confusion
+that lay behind it.
+
+After that fortieth page the Ramblings piled and mixed themselves in
+three interpenetrating layers. First there was the original layer of
+Waddington, then a layer of Ralph superimposed on Waddington and
+striking down into him; then a top layer of Waddington, striking down
+into Ralph. First, the primeval chaos of Waddington; then Ralph's spirit
+moving over it and bringing in light and order; then Waddington again,
+invading it and beating it all back to darkness and confusion. From the
+moment Ralph came into it the progress of the book was a struggle
+between these two principles, and Waddington could never let Ralph be,
+so determined was he to stamp the book with his own personality.
+
+"After all," Ralph said, "it _is_ his book."
+
+"If he could only get away from Wyck, so that you could see where the
+other places _are_," she moaned.
+
+"He can't get away from it because he can't get away from himself. His
+mind is egocentric and his ego lives in Wyck."
+
+Barbara had had to ask Ralph to help her. They were in the library
+together now, working on the Ramblings during one of Mr. Waddington's
+periodical flights to London.
+
+"He thinks he's rambling round the country but he's really rambling
+round and round himself. All the time he's thinking about nothing but
+his blessed self."
+
+"Oh, come, he thought a lot about his old League."
+
+"No, the League was only an extension of his ego."
+
+"That must have been what Fanny meant. We were looking at his portrait
+and I said I wondered what he was thinking about, and she said she used
+to wonder and now she knew. Of course, it's Himself. That's what makes
+him look so absurdly solemn."
+
+"Yes, but think of it. Think. That man hasn't ever cared about anything
+or anybody but himself."
+
+"Oh--he cares about Fanny."
+
+"No. No, he doesn't. He cares about his wife. A very different thing."
+
+"Well--he cares about his old mother. He really cares."
+
+"Yes, and you know why? It's only because she makes him feel young. He
+hates Horry because he can't feel young when he's there."
+
+"Why, oh why, did that angel Fanny marry him?"
+
+"Because she isn't an angel. She's a mortal woman and she wanted a
+husband and children."
+
+"Wasn't there anybody else?"
+
+"I believe not--available. The man she ought to have married was
+married already."
+
+"Did my mother marry him?"
+
+"Yes. And _my_ mother married the next best one.... It was as plain and
+simple as all that. And you see, the plainer and simpler it was, the
+more she realized why she was marrying Horatio, the more she idealized
+him. It wanted camouflage."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Then you must remember her people were badly off and he helped them. He
+was always doing things for them. He managed all Fanny's affairs for her
+before he married her."
+
+"Then--he does kind things."
+
+"Lots. When he wants to get something. He wanted to get Fanny....
+Besides, he does them to get power, to get a hold on you. It's really
+for himself all the time. It gives him a certain simplicity and purity.
+He isn't a snob. He doesn't think about his money or his property, or
+his ancestors--he's got heaps--quite good ones. They don't matter.
+Nothing matters but himself."
+
+"How about his book? Doesn't that matter?"
+
+"It does and yet again it doesn't. He pretends he's only doing it to
+amuse himself, but it's really a projection of his ego into the
+Cotswolds. On the other hand, he'd hate it if you took him for a
+writing man when he's Horatio Bysshe Waddington. That's how he's got it
+into such a mess, because he can't get away from himself and his Manor."
+
+"Proud of his Manor, anyhow."
+
+"Oh, yes. Not, mind you, because it's perfect Tudor of the sixteenth
+century, _nor_ because the Earl of Warwick gave it to his
+great-grandfather's great-great-grandfather, but because it's his Manor.
+Horatio Bysshe Waddington's Manor. Of course, it's got to be what it is
+because any other sort of Manor wouldn't be good enough for Bysshe."
+
+"It's an extension of his ego, too?"
+
+"Yes. Horatio's ego spreading itself in wings and bursting into
+ball-topped gables and overflowing into a lovely garden and a park.
+There isn't a tree, there isn't a flower that hasn't got bits of Horatio
+in it."
+
+"If I thought that I should never want to see roses and larkspurs
+again."
+
+"It only happens in Horatio's mind. But it does happen."
+
+So, between them, bit by bit, they made him out.
+
+And they made out the book. Here and there, on separate slips, were
+great outlying tracts of light, contributed by Ralph, to be inserted,
+and sketches of dark, undeveloped stuff, sprung from Waddington, to be
+inserted too. Neither Ralph nor Barbara could make them fit. The only
+thing was to copy it out clear as it stood and arrange it afterwards.
+And presently it appeared that two pages were missing.
+
+One evening, the evening of Mr. Waddington's return, looking for the
+lost pages, Barbara made her great discovery: a sheaf of manuscript, a
+hundred and twenty pages in Ralph's handwriting, hidden away at the back
+of the bureau, crumpled as if an inimical hand had thrust it out of
+sight. She took it up to bed and read it there.
+
+A hundred and twenty pages of pure Ralph without any taint of
+Waddington. It seemed to be part of Mr. Waddington's book, and yet no
+part of it, for it was inconceivable that it should belong to anything
+but itself. Ralph didn't ramble; he went straight for the things he had
+seen. He saw the Cotswolds round Wyck-on-the-Hill, he made you see them,
+as they were: the high curves of the hills, multiplied, thrown off, one
+after another; the squares and oblongs and vandykes and spread fans of
+the fields; and their many colours; grass green of the pastures, emerald
+green of the young wheat, white green of the barley; shining, metallic
+green of the turnips; the pink, the brown, the purple fallows, the sharp
+canary yellow of the charlock. And the trees, the long processions of
+trees by the great grass-bordered roads; trees furring the flanks and
+groins of the parted hills, dark combs topping their edges.
+
+Ralph knew what he was doing. He went about with the farmers and farm
+hands; he followed the ploughing and sowing and the reaping, the feeding
+and milking of the cattle, the care of the ewes in labour and of the
+young lambs. He went at night to the upland folds with the shepherds; he
+could tell you about shepherds. He sat with the village women by their
+firesides and listened to their talk; he could tell you about village
+women. Mr. Waddington did not tell you about anything that mattered.
+
+She took the manuscript to Ralph at the White Hart with a note to say
+how she had found it. He came running out to walk home with her.
+
+"Did you know it was there?" she said.
+
+"No. I thought I'd lost it. You see what it is?"
+
+"Part of your book."
+
+"Horatio's book."
+
+"But you wrote it."
+
+"Yes. That's what he fired me out for. He got tired of the thing and
+asked me to go on with it. He called it working up his material. I went
+on with it like that, and he wouldn't have it. He said it was badly
+written--jerky, short sentences--he'd have to re-write it. Well--I
+wouldn't let him do that, and he wouldn't have it as it stood."
+
+"But--it's beautiful--alive and real. What more does he want?"
+
+"The stamp of his personality."
+
+"Oh, he'd _stamp_ on it all right."
+
+"I'm glad you like it."
+
+"_Like_ it. Don't you?"
+
+Ralph said he thought he'd liked it when he wrote it, but now he didn't
+know.
+
+"You'll know when you've finished it."
+
+"I don't suppose I shall finish it," he said.
+
+"But you must. You can't _not_ finish a thing like that."
+
+"I own I'd like to. But I can't publish it."
+
+"Why ever not?"
+
+"Oh, it wouldn't be fair to poor old Waddy. After all, I wrote it for
+him."
+
+"What on earth does that matter? If he doesn't want it. Of course you'll
+finish it, and of course you'll publish it."
+
+"Well, but it's all Cotswold, you see. And _he's_ Cotswold. If it _is_
+any good, you know, I shouldn't like to--to well, get in his way. It's
+his game. At least he began it."
+
+"It's a game two can play, writing Cotswold books."
+
+"No. No. It isn't. And he got in first."
+
+"Well, then, let him get in first. You can bring your book out after."
+
+"And dish his?"
+
+"No, let it have a run first. Perhaps it won't have any run."
+
+"Perhaps mine won't."
+
+"_Yours_. That heavenly book? And his tosh--Don't you see that you
+_can't_ get in his way? If anybody reads him they won't be the same
+people who read you."
+
+"I hope not. All the same it would be rather beastly to cut him out; I
+mean to come in and do it better, show how bad he is, how frightful. It
+would rub it in, you know."
+
+"Not with him. You couldn't."
+
+"You don't know. Some brute might get up and hurt him with it."
+
+"Oh, you _are_ tender to him."
+
+"Well, you see, I did let him down when I left him. Besides, it isn't
+altogether him. There's Fanny."
+
+"Fanny? She'd love you to write your book."
+
+"I know she'd think she would. But she wouldn't like it if it made
+Horatio look a fool."
+
+"But he's bound to look a fool in any case."
+
+"True. I might give him a year, or two years."
+
+"Well, then, _my_ work's cut out for me. I shall have to make Horatio go
+on and finish quick, so as not to keep you waiting."
+
+"He'll get sick of it. He'll make you go on with it."
+
+"_Me?_"
+
+"Practically, and quarrel with every word you write. Unless you can
+write so like Horatio that he'll think he's done it himself. And then,
+you know, he won't have a word of mine left in. You'll have to take me
+out. And we're so mixed up together that I don't believe even he could
+sort us. You see, in order to appease him, I got into the way of giving
+my sentences a Waddingtonian twist. If only I could have kept it up--"
+
+"I'll have to lick the thing into shape somehow."
+
+"There's only one thing you'll have to do. You must make him steer a
+proper course. This is to be _the_ Guide to the Cotswolds. You can't
+have him sending people back to Lower Wyck Manor all the time. You'll
+have to know all the places and all the ways."
+
+"And I don't."
+
+"No. But I do. Supposing I took you on my motor-bike? Would you awfully
+mind sitting on the carrier?"
+
+"Do you think," she said, "he'd let me go?"
+
+"Fanny will."
+
+"I _could_, I think. I work so hard in the mornings and evenings that
+they've given me all the afternoons."
+
+"We might go every afternoon while the weather holds out," he said. And
+then: "I say, he _does_ bring us together."
+
+That was how Barbara's happy life began.
+
+
+3
+
+He did bring them together.
+
+In the terrible months that followed, while she struggled for order and
+clarity against Mr. Waddington, who strove to reinstate himself in his
+obscure confusion, Barbara was sustained by the thought that in working
+for Mr. Waddington she was working for Ralph Bevan. The harder she
+worked for him the harder she worked for Ralph. With all her cunning and
+her little indomitable will she urged and drove him to get on and make
+way for Ralph. Mr. Waddington interposed all sorts of irritating
+obstructions and delays. He would sit for hours, brooding solemnly,
+equally unable to finish and to abandon any paragraph he had once begun.
+He had left the high roads and was rambling now in bye-ways of such
+intricacy that he was unable to give any clear account of himself. When
+Barbara had made a clean copy of it Mr. Waddington's part didn't always
+make sense. The only bits that could stand by themselves were Ralph's
+bits, and they were the bits that Mr. Waddington wouldn't let stand. The
+very clearness of the copy was a light flaring on the hopeless mess it
+was. Even Mr. Waddington could see it.
+
+"Do you think," she said, "we've got it all down in the right order?"
+She pointed.
+
+"_What's_ that?" She could see his hands twitching with annoyance. His
+loose cheeks hung shaking as he brooded.
+
+"That's not as _I_, wrote it," he said at last. "That's Ralph Bevan. He
+wasn't a bit of good to me. There's--there's no end to the harm he's
+done. Conceited fellow, full of himself and his own ideas. Now I shall
+have to go over every line he's written and write it again. I'd rather
+write a dozen books myself than patch up another fellow's bad work....
+We've got to overhaul the whole thing and take out whatever he's done."
+
+"But you're so mixed up you can't always tell."
+
+He looked at her. "You may be sure that if any passage is obscure or
+confused or badly written it isn't mine. The one you've shown me, for
+example."
+
+Then Barbara had another of her ideas. Since they were so mixed up
+together that Mr. Waddington couldn't tell which was which, and since he
+wanted to give the impression that Ralph was responsible for all the bad
+bits, and insisted on the complete elimination of Ralph, she had only
+got to eliminate the bad bits and give such a Waddingtonian turn to the
+good ones that he would be persuaded that he had written them himself.
+
+The great thing was, he said, that the book should be written by
+himself. And once fairly extricated from his own entanglements and set
+going on a clear path, with Barbara to pull him out of all the awkward
+places, Mr. Waddington rambled along through the Cotswolds at a smooth,
+easy pace. Barbara had contrived to break him of his wasteful and
+expensive habit of returning from everywhere to Wyck. All through August
+he kept a steady course northeast, north, northwest; by September he had
+turned due south; he would be beating up east again by October; November
+would find him in the valleys; there was no reason why he shouldn't
+finish in December and come out in March.
+
+Mr. Waddington himself was surprised at the progress he had made.
+
+"It shows," he said, "what we can do without Ralph Bevan."
+
+And Barbara, seated on Ralph's carrier, explored the countryside and
+mapped out Mr. Waddington's course for him.
+
+"She's worth a dozen Ralph Bevins," he would say.
+
+And he would go to the door with her and see her start.
+
+"You mustn't let yourself be victimized by Ralph," he said. He glanced
+at the carrier. "Do you think it's safe?"
+
+"Quite safe. If it isn't it'll only be a bit more thrilling."
+
+"Much better to come in the car with me."
+
+But Barbara wouldn't go in the car with him. When he talked about it she
+looked frightened and embarrassed.
+
+Her fright and her embarrassment were delicious to Mr. Waddington. He
+said to himself: "She doesn't think _that's_ safe, anyhow."
+
+And as he watched her rushing away, swaying exquisitely over a series of
+terrific explosions, he gave a little skip and a half turn, light and
+youthful, in the porch of his Manor.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+1
+
+Sir John Corbett had called in the morning. He had exerted himself to
+that extent out of friendship, pure friendship for Waddington, and he
+had chosen an early hour for his visit to mark it as a serious and
+extraordinary occasion. He sat now in the brown leather armchair which
+was twin to the one Mr. Waddington had sat in when he had his portrait
+painted. His jolly, rosy face was subdued to something serious and
+extraordinary. He had come to warn Mr. Waddington that scandal was
+beginning to attach itself to his acquaintance--he was going to say
+"relations," but remembered just in time that "relations" was a
+question-begging word--to his acquaintance with a certain lady.
+
+To which Mr. Waddington replied, haughtily, that he had a perfect right
+to choose his--er--acquaintance. His acquaintance was, pre-eminently,
+his own affair.
+
+"Quite so, my dear fellow, quite so. But, strictly between ourselves, is
+it a good thing to choose acquaintances of the sort that give rise to
+scandal? As a man of the world, now, between ourselves, doesn't it
+strike you that the lady in question may be that sort?"
+
+"It does not strike me," said Mr. Waddington, "and I see no reason why
+it should strike you."
+
+"I don't like the look of her," said Sir John, quoting Major Markham.
+
+"If you're trying to suggest that she's not straight, you're reading
+something into her look that isn't there."
+
+"Come, Waddington, you know as well as I do that when a man's knocked
+about the world like you and me, he gets an instinct; he can tell pretty
+well by looking at her whether a woman's that sort or not."
+
+"My dear Corbett, my instinct is at least as good as yours. I've known
+Mrs. Levitt for three years, and I can assure she's as straight, as
+innocent, as your wife or mine."
+
+"Clever--clever and a bit unscrupulous." Again Sir John quoted Major
+Markham. "A woman like that can get round simple fellows like you and
+me, Waddington, in no time, if she gives her mind to it. That's why I
+won't have anything to do with her. She may be as straight and innocent
+as you please; but somehow or other she's causing a great deal of
+unpleasant talk, and if I were you I'd drop her. Drop her."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the sort."
+
+"My dear fellow, that's all very well, but when everybody knows your
+wife hasn't called on her--"
+
+"There was no need for Fanny to call on her. My relations with Mrs.
+Levitt were on a purely business footing--"
+
+"Well, I'd leave them there, and not too much footing either."
+
+"What can I do? Here she is, a war widow with nobody but me to look
+after her interests. She's got into the way of coming to me, and I'm not
+going back on the poor woman, Corbett, because of your absurd
+insinuations."
+
+"Not _my_ insinuations."
+
+"Anybody's insinuations then. Nobody has a right to insinuate anything
+about _me_. As for Fanny, she'll make a point of calling on her now. We
+were talking about it not long ago."
+
+"A bit hard on Mrs. Waddington to be let in for that."
+
+"You needn't worry. Fanny can afford to do pretty well what she likes."
+
+He had him there. Sir John knew that this was true of Fanny Waddington,
+as it was not true of Lady Corbett. He could remember the time when
+nobody called on his father and mother; and Lady Corbett could not, yet,
+afford to call on Mrs. Levitt before anybody else did.
+
+"Well," he said, "so long as Mrs. Levitt doesn't expect my wife to
+follow suit."
+
+"Mrs. Levitt's experience can't have led her to expect much in the way
+of kindness here."
+
+"Well, don't be too kind. You don't know how you may be landed. You
+don't know," said Sir John fatally, "what ideas you may have put into
+the poor woman's head."
+
+"I should be very sorry," said Mr. Waddington, "if I thought for one
+moment I had roused any warmer feelings--"
+
+But he wasn't sorry. He tried hard to make his face express a chivalrous
+regret, and it wouldn't. It was positively smiling, so agreeable was the
+idea conveyed by Sir John. He turned it over and over, drawing out its
+delicious flavour, while Sir John's little laughing eyes observed his
+enjoyment.
+
+"You don't know," he said, "_what_ you may have roused."
+
+There was something very irritating in his fat chuckle.
+
+"You needn't disturb yourself. These things will happen. A woman may be
+carried away by her feelings, but if a man has any tact and any delicacy
+he can always show her very well--without breaking off all relations.
+That would be clumsy."
+
+"Of course, if you want to keep up with her, keep up with her. Only
+take care you don't get landed, that's all."
+
+"You may be quite sure that for the lady's own sake I shall take care."
+
+They rose; Mr. Waddington stood looking down at Sir John and his little
+round stomach and his little round eyes with their obscene twinkle. And
+for the life of him he couldn't feel the indignation he would like to
+have felt. As his eyes encountered Sir John's something secret and
+primitive in Mr. Waddington responded to that obscene twinkle; something
+reminiscent and anticipating; something mischievous and subtle and
+delightful, subversive of dignity. It came up in his solemn face and
+simmered there. Here was Corbett, a thorough-paced man of the world, and
+he took it for granted that Mrs. Levitt's feelings had been roused; he
+acknowledged, handsomely, as male to male, the fascination that had
+roused them. He, Corbett, knew what he was talking about. He saw the
+whole possibility of romantic adventure with such flattering certitude
+that it was impossible to feel any resentment.
+
+At the same time his interference was a piece of abominable
+impertinence, and Mr. Waddington resented that. It made him more than
+ever determined to pursue his relations with Mrs. Levitt, just to show
+he wasn't going to be dictated to, while the very fact that Corbett saw
+him as a figure of romantic adventure intensified the excitement of the
+pursuit. And though Elise, seen with certainty in the light of Corbett's
+intimations, was not quite so enthralling to the fancy as the Elise of
+his doubt, she made a more positive and formidable appeal to his desire.
+He loved his desire because it made him feel young, and, loving it, he
+thought he loved Elise.
+
+And what Corbett was thinking, Markham and Thurston, and Hawtrey and
+young Hawtrey, and Grainger, would be thinking too. They would all see
+him as the still young, romantic adventurer, the inspirer of passion.
+
+And Bevan--But no, he didn't want Bevan to see him like that. Or rather,
+he did, and yet again he didn't. He had scruples when it came to Bevan,
+because of Fanny. And because of Fanny, while he rioted in visions of
+the possible, he dreaded more than anything an actual detection, the
+raking eyes and furtive tongues of the townspeople. If Fanny called on
+Mrs. Levitt it would stop all the talking.
+
+That was how Fanny came to know Mrs. Levitt, and how Mrs. Levitt (and
+Toby) came to be asked to the September garden party at Lower Wyck
+Manor.
+
+
+2
+
+Mrs. Levitt, of the White House, Wyck-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.
+
+She thought it sounded very well. She had been out, that is to say, she
+had judged it more becoming to her dignity not to be at home when Fanny
+called; and Fanny had been actually out when Mrs. Levitt called, so that
+they met for the first time at the garden party.
+
+"It's absurd our not knowing each other," Fanny said, "when my husband
+knows you so well."
+
+"I've always felt, Mrs. Waddington, that I ought to know you, if it's
+only to tell you how good he's been to me. But, of course, you know it."
+
+"I know it quite well. He's always being good to people. He likes it.
+You must take off some of the credit for that."
+
+She thought: "She has really very beautiful eyes." A lot of credit would
+have to be taken off for her eyes, too.
+
+"But isn't that," said Mrs. Levitt, "what being good _is_? To like being
+it? Only I suppose that's just what lays him open--"
+
+She lowered the eyes whose brilliance had blazed a moment ago on Fanny;
+she toyed with her handbag, smiling a little secret, roguish smile.
+
+"That lays him open?"
+
+Mrs. Levitt looked up, smiling. "To the attacks of unscrupulous people
+like me."
+
+It was risky, but it showed a masterly boldness and presence of mind. It
+was as if she and Fanny Waddington had had their eyes fixed on a live
+scorpion approaching them over the lawn, and Mrs. Levitt had stooped
+down and grasped it by its tail and tossed it into the lavender bushes.
+As if Mrs. Levitt had said, "My dear Mrs. Waddington, we both know that
+this horrible creature exists, but we aren't going to let it sting us."
+As if she knew why Fanny had called on her and was grateful to her.
+
+Perhaps if Mrs. Levitt had never appeared at that garden party, or if,
+having appeared, she had never been introduced, at their own request, to
+Major Markham, Mr. Thurston, Mr. Hawtrey and young Hawtrey and Sir John
+Corbett, Mr. Waddington might never have realized the full extent of her
+fascination.
+
+She had made herself the centre of the party by her sheer power to seize
+attention and to hold it. You couldn't help looking at her, again and
+again, where she sat in a clearing of the lawn, playing the clever,
+pointed play of her black and white, black satin frock, black satin
+cloak lined with white silk, furred with ermine; white stockings and
+long white gloves, the close black satin hat clipping her head; the
+vivid contrast and stress repeated in white skin, black hair, black
+eyes; black eyes and fine mouth and white teeth making a charming and
+perpetual movement.
+
+She had been talking to Major Markham for the last ten minutes,
+displaying herself as the absurdly youthful mother of a grown-up son.
+Toby Levitt, a tall and slender likeness of his mother, was playing
+tennis with distinction, ignoring young Horace, his partner, standing
+well up to the net and repeating the alternate smashing and sliding
+strokes that kept Ralph and Barbara bounding from one end of the court
+to the other. Mrs. Levitt was trying to reconcile the proficiency of
+Toby's play with his immunity from conscription in the late war. The war
+led straight to Major Markham's battery, and Major Markham's battery to
+the battery once commanded by Toby's father, which led to Poona and the
+great discovery.
+
+"You don't mean Frank Levitt, captain in the gunners?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Was he by any chance stationed at Poona in nineteen-ten, eleven?"
+
+"He was."
+
+"But, bless my soul--_he_ was my brother-in-law Dick--Dick Benham's
+best friend."
+
+The Major's slightly ironical homage had given place to a serious
+excitement, a respectful interest.
+
+"Oh--Dicky Benham--is _he_--?"
+
+"Rather. I've heard him talk about Frank Levitt scores of times. Do you
+hear that, Waddington? Mrs. Levitt knows all my sister's people. Why on
+earth haven't we met before?"
+
+Mr. Waddington writhed, while between them they reeled off a long series
+of names, people and places, each a link joining up Major Markham and
+Mrs. Levitt. The Major was so excited about it that he went round the
+garden telling Thurston and Hawtrey and Corbett, so that presently all
+these gentlemen formed round Mrs. Levitt an interested and animated
+group. Mr. Waddington hovered miserably on the edge of it; short of
+thrusting Markham aside with his elbow (Markham for choice) he couldn't
+have broken through. He would give it up and go away, and be drawn back
+again and again; but though Mrs. Levitt could see him plainly, no
+summons from her beautiful eyes invited his approach.
+
+His behaviour became noticeable. It was observed chiefly by his son
+Horry.
+
+Horry took Barbara apart. "I say, have you seen my guv'nor?"
+
+"No. What? Where?"
+
+She could see by his face that he was drawing her into some iniquitous,
+secret by-path of diversion.
+
+"There, just behind you. Turn round--this way--but don't look as if
+you'd spotted him.... Did you ever see anything like him? He's like a
+Newfoundland dog trying to look over a gate. It wouldn't be half so
+funny if he wasn't so dignified all the time."
+
+She didn't approve of Horry. He wasn't decent. But the dignity--it _was_
+wonderful.
+
+Horry went on. "What on earth did the mater ask that woman for? She
+might have known he'd make a fool of himself."
+
+"Oh, Horry, you mustn't. It's awful of you. You really _are_ a little
+beast."
+
+"I'm not. Fancy doing it at his own garden party. He never thinks of
+_us_. Look at the dear little mater, there, pretending she doesn't see
+him. _That's_ what makes me mad, Barbara."
+
+"Well, you ought to pretend you don't see it, too."
+
+"I've been pretending the whole blessed afternoon. But it's no good
+pretending with _you_. You jolly well see everything."
+
+"I don't go and draw other people's attention to it."
+
+"Oh, come, how about Ralph? You know you wouldn't let him miss him."
+
+"Ralph? Oh, Ralph's different. I shouldn't point him out to Lady
+Corbett."
+
+"No more should I. _You_'re different, too. You and Ralph and me are the
+only people capable of appreciating him. Though I wouldn't swear that
+the mater doesn't, sometimes."
+
+"Yes. But you go too far, Horry. You're cruel to him, and we're not."
+
+"It's all very well for you. He isn't your father.... Oh, Lord, he's
+craning his neck over Markham's shoulder now. What his face must look
+like from the other side--"
+
+"If you found your father drunk under a lilac bush I believe you'd go
+and fetch me to look at him."
+
+"I would, if he was as funny as he is now.... But I say, you know, I
+can't have him going on like that. I've got to stop it, somehow. What
+would you do if you were me?"
+
+"Do? I think I should ask him to go and take Lady Corbett in to tea."
+
+"Good."
+
+Horry strode up to his father. "I say, pater, aren't you going to take
+Lady Corbett in to tea?"
+
+At the sheer sound of his son's voice Mr. Waddington's dignity stood
+firm. But he went off to find Lady Corbett all the same.
+
+When it was all over the garden party was pronounced a great success,
+and Mr. Waddington was very agreeably rallied on his discovery, taxed
+with trying to keep it to himself, and warned that, he wasn't going to
+have it all his own way.
+
+"It's our turn now," said Major Markham, "to have a look in."
+
+And their turn was constantly coming round again; they were always
+looking in at the White House. First, Major Markham called. Then Sir
+John Corbett of Underwoods, Mr. Thurston of The Elms, and Mr. Hawtrey of
+Medlicott called and brought their wives. These ladies, however, didn't
+like Mrs. Levitt, and they were not at home when she returned their
+calls. Mrs. Levitt's visiting card had its place in three collections
+and there the matter ended. But Mr. Thurston and Mr. Hawtrey continued
+to call with a delightful sense of doing something that their wives
+considered improper. Major Markham--as a bachelor his movements were
+more untrammelled--declared it his ambition to "cut Waddy out." _He_ was
+everlastingly calling at the White House. His fastidious correctness,
+the correctness that hadn't "liked the look of her," excused this
+intensive culture of Mrs. Levitt on the grounds that she was "well
+connected"; she knew all his sister's people.
+
+And Mrs. Levitt took good care to let Mr. Waddington know of these
+visits, and of her little bridge parties in the evening. "Just Mr.
+Thurston and Mr. Hawtrey and Major Markham and me." He was teased and
+worried by his visions of Elise perpetually surrounded by Thurston and
+Hawtrey and the Major. Supposing--only supposing that--driven by
+despair, of course--she married that fellow Markham? For the first time
+in his life Mr. Waddington experienced jealousy. Elise had ceased to be
+the subject of dreamy, doubtful speculation and had become the object of
+an uneasy passion. He could give her passion, if it was passion that she
+wanted; but, because of Fanny, he could not give her a position in the
+county, and it was just possible that Elise might prefer a position.
+
+And Elise was happy, happy in her communion with Mr. Thurston and Mr.
+Hawtrey and in the thought that their wives detested her; happy in her
+increasing intimacy with Major Markham and in her consciousness of being
+well connected; above all, happy in Mr. Waddington's uneasiness.
+
+Meanwhile Fanny Waddington kept on calling. "If I don't," she said,
+"the poor woman will be done for."
+
+She couldn't see any harm in Mrs. Levitt.
+
+
+3
+
+Barbara and Ralph Bevan had been for one of their long walks. They were
+coming back down the Park when they met, first, Henry, the gardener's
+boy, carrying a basket of fat, golden pears.
+
+"Where are you going with those lovely pears, Henry?"
+
+"Mrs. Levitt's, miss." The boy grinned and twinkled; you could almost
+have fancied that he knew.
+
+Farther on, near the white gate, they could see Mr. Waddington and two
+ladies. He had evidently gone out to open the gate, and was walking on
+with them, unable to tear himself away. The ladies were Mrs. Rickards
+and Mrs. Levitt.
+
+They stopped. You could see the flutter of their hands and faces,
+suggesting a final triangular exchange of playfulness.
+
+Then Mr. Waddington, executing a complicated movement of farewell, a bow
+and a half turn, a gambolling skip, the gesture of his ungovernable
+youth.
+
+Then, as he went from them, the abandonment of Mrs. Rickards and Mrs.
+Levitt to disgraceful laughter.
+
+Mrs. Levitt clutched her sister's arm and clung to it, almost
+perceptibly reeling, as if she said: "Hold me up or I shall collapse.
+It's too much. Too--too--too--too much." They came on with a peculiar
+rolling, helpless walk, rocked by the intolerable explosions of their
+mirth, dabbing their mouths and eyes with their pocket-handkerchiefs in
+a tortured struggle for control.
+
+They recovered sufficiently to pass Ralph and Barbara with serious,
+sidelong bows. And then there was a sound, a thin, wheezing, soaring yet
+stifled sound, the cry of a conquered hysteria.
+
+"Did you see that, Ralph?"
+
+"I did. I heard it."
+
+"_He_ couldn't, could he?"
+
+"Oh, Lord, no.... They appreciate him, too, Barbara."
+
+"That isn't the way," she said. "We don't want him appreciated that way.
+That rich, gross way."
+
+"No. It isn't nearly subtle enough. Any fool could see that his
+caracoling was funny. They don't know him as we know him. They don't
+know what he really is."
+
+"It was an outrage. It's like taking a fine thing and vulgarizing it.
+They'd no _business_. And it was cruel, too, to laugh at him like that
+before his back was turned. When they're going to eat his pears, too."
+
+"The fact is, Barbara, nobody _does_ appreciate him as you and I do."
+
+"Horry?"
+
+"No. Not Horry. He goes too far. Horry's indecent. Fanny, perhaps,
+sometimes."
+
+"Fanny doesn't see one half of him. She doesn't see his Mrs. Levitt
+side."
+
+"Have _you_ seen it, Barbara?"
+
+"Of course I have."
+
+"You never told me. It isn't fair to go discovering things on your own
+and not telling me. We must make a compact. To tell each other the very
+instant we see a thing. We might keep count and give points to which of
+us sees most. Mrs. Levitt ought to have been a hundred to your score."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't score with Mrs. Levitt. You saw that, too."
+
+"It'll be a game for gods, Barbara."
+
+"But, Ralph, there might be things we _couldn't_ tell each other. It
+mightn't be fair to him."
+
+"Telling each other isn't like telling other people. Hang it all, if
+we're making a study of him we're making a study. Science is science.
+We've no right to suppress anything. At any moment one of us might see
+something absolutely vital."
+
+"Whatever we do we musn't be unfair to him."
+
+"But he's ours, isn't he? We can't be unfair to him. And we've got to
+be fair to each other. Think of the frightful advantage you might have
+over me. You're bound to see more things than I do."
+
+"I might see more, but you'll understand more."
+
+"Well, then, you can't do without me. It's a compact, isn't it, that we
+don't keep things back?"
+
+As for Mrs. Levitt's handling of their theme they resented it as an
+abominable profanation.
+
+"Do you think he's in love with her?" Barbara said.
+
+"What _he_ would call being in love and we shouldn't."
+
+"Do you think he's like that--he's always been like that?"
+
+"I think he was probably 'like that' when he was young."
+
+"Before he married Fanny?"
+
+"Before he married Fanny."
+
+"And after?"
+
+"After, I should imagine he went pretty straight. It was only the way he
+had when he was young. Now he's middle-aged he's gone back to it, just
+to prove to himself that he's young still. I take it the poor old thing
+got scared when he found himself past fifty, and he _had_ to start a
+proof. It's his egoism all over again. I don't suppose he really cares a
+rap for Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"You don't think his heart beats faster when he sees her coming?"
+
+"I don't. Horatio's heart beats faster when he sees himself making love
+to her."
+
+"I see. It's just middle age."
+
+"Just middle age."
+
+"Don't you think, perhaps, Fanny does see it?"
+
+"No. Not that. Not that. At least I hope not."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+1
+
+Mr. Waddington's _Ramblings Through the Cotswolds_ were to be profusely
+illustrated. The question was: photographs or original drawings? And he
+had decided, after much consideration, on photographs taken by
+Pyecraft's man. For a book of such capital importance the work of an
+inferior or obscure illustrator was not to be thought of for an instant.
+But there were grave disadvantages in employing a distinguished artist.
+It would entail not only heavy expenses, but a disastrous rivalry. The
+illustrations, so far from drawing attention to the text and fixing it
+firmly there, would inevitably distract it. And the artist's celebrated
+name would have to figure conspicuously, in exact proportion to his
+celebrity, on the title page and in all the reviews and advertisements
+where, properly speaking, Horatio Bysshe Waddington should stand alone.
+It was even possible, as Fanny very intelligently pointed out, that a
+sufficiently distinguished illustrator might succeed in capturing the
+enthusiasm of the critics to the utter extinction of the author, who
+might consider himself lucky if he was mentioned at all.
+
+But Fanny had shown rather less intelligence in using this argument to
+support her suggestion that Barbara Madden should illustrate the book.
+She had more than once come upon the child, sitting on a camp-stool
+above Mrs. Levitt's house, making a sketch of the steep street, all
+cream white and pink and grey, opening out on to the many-coloured
+fields and the blue eastern air. And she had conceived a preposterous
+admiration for Barbara Madden's work.
+
+"It'll be an enchanting book if she illustrates it, Horatio."
+
+"_If_ she illustrates it!"
+
+But when he tried to show Fanny the absurdity of the idea--Horatio
+Bysshe Waddington illustrated by Barbara Madden--she laughed in his face
+and told him he was a conceited old thing. To which he replied, with
+dignified self-restraint, that he was writing a serious and important
+book. It would be foolish to pretend that it was not serious and
+important. He hoped he had no overweening opinion of its merits, but one
+must preserve some sense of proportion and propriety--some sanity.
+
+"Poor little Barbara!"
+
+"It isn't poor little Barbara's book, my dear."
+
+"No," said Fanny. "It isn't."
+
+Meanwhile, if the book was to be ready for publication in the spring,
+the photographs would have to be taken at once, before the light and the
+leaves were gone.
+
+So Pyecraft and Pyecraft's man came with their best camera, and
+photographed and photographed, as long as the fine weather lasted. They
+photographed the Market Square, Wyck-on-the-Hill; they photographed the
+church; they photographed Lower Wyck village and the Manor House, the
+residence--corrected to seat--of Mr. Horatio Bysshe Waddington, the
+author. They photographed the Tudor porch, showing the figures of the
+author and of Mrs. Waddington, his wife, and Miss Barbara Madden, his
+secretary. They photographed the author sitting in his garden; they
+photographed him in his park, mounted on his mare, Speedwell; and they
+photographed him in his motor-car. Then they came in and looked at the
+library and photographed that, with Mr. Waddington sitting in it at his
+writing-table.
+
+"I suppose, sir," Mr. Pyecraft said, "you'd wish it taken from one end
+to show the proportions?"
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Waddington.
+
+And when Pyecraft came the next day with the proofs he said, "I think,
+sir, we've got the proportions very well."
+
+Mr. Waddington stared at the proofs, holding them in a hand that
+trembled slightly with emotion. With a just annoyance. For though
+Pyecraft had certainly got the proportions of the library, Mr.
+Waddington's head was reduced to a mere black spot in the far corner.
+
+If _that_ was what Pyecraft meant by proportion--
+
+"I think," he said, "the--er--the figure is not quite satisfactory."
+
+"The--? I see, sir. I did not understand, sir, that you wished the
+figure."
+
+"We-ell--" Mr. Waddington didn't like to appear as having wished the
+figure so ardently as he did indeed wish it. "If I'm to be there at
+all--"
+
+"Quite so, sir. But if you wish the size of the library to be shown, I
+am afraid the figure must be sacrificed. We can't do you it both ways.
+But how would you think, sir, of being photographed yourself, somewhat
+larger, seated at your writing-table? We could do you that."
+
+"I hadn't thought of it, Pyecraft."
+
+As a matter of fact, he had thought of nothing else. He had the title of
+the picture in his mind: "The Author at Work in the Library, Lower Wyck
+Manor."
+
+Pyecraft waited in deference to Mr. Waddington's hesitation. His man,
+less delicate but more discerning, was already preparing to adjust the
+camera.
+
+Mr. Waddington turned, like a man torn between personal distaste and
+public duty, to Barbara.
+
+"What do _you_ think, Miss Madden?"
+
+"I think the book would hardly be complete without you."
+
+"Very well. You hear, Pyecraft, Miss Madden says I am to be
+photographed."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He wheeled sportively. "Now how am I to sit?"
+
+"If you would set yourself so, sir. With your papers before you, spread
+careless, so. And your pen in your hand, so.... A little nearer,
+Bateman. The figure is important this time.... _Now_, sir, if you would
+be so good as to look up."
+
+Mr. Waddington looked up with a face of such extraordinary solemnity
+that Mr. Pyecraft smiled in spite of his deference.
+
+"A leetle brighter expression. As if you had just got an idea."
+
+Mr. Waddington imagined himself getting an idea and tried to look like
+it.
+
+"Perfect--perfect." Mr. Pyecraft almost danced with excitement. "Keep
+that look on your face, sir, half a moment.... Now, Bateman."
+
+A click.
+
+"_That's_ over, thank goodness," said Mr. Waddington, reluctant victim
+of Pyecraft's and Barbara's importunity.
+
+After that Mr. Pyecraft and his man were driven about the country taking
+photographs. In one of them Mr. Waddington appeared standing outside the
+mediaeval Market Hall of Chipping Kingdon. In another, wearing fishing
+boots, and holding a fishing-rod in his hand, he waded knee deep in the
+trout stream between Upper and Lower Speed.
+
+And after that he said firmly, "I will not be photographed any more.
+They've got enough of me."
+
+
+2
+
+In November, when the photographing was done, Fanny went away to London
+for a fortnight, leaving Barbara, as she said, to take care of Horatio,
+and Ralph Bevan to take care of Barbara.
+
+It was then, in consequence of letters he received from Mrs. Levitt,
+that Mr. Waddington's visits in Sheep Street became noticeably frequent.
+Barbara, sitting on her camp-stool above the White House, noticed them.
+
+She noticed, too, the singular abstraction of Mr. Waddington's manner in
+these days. There were even moments when he ceased to take any interest
+in his Ramblings, and left Barbara to continue them, as Ralph had
+continued them, alone, reserving to himself the authority of
+supervision. She had long stretches of time to herself, when she had
+reason to suspect that Mr. Waddington was driving Mrs. Leavitt to
+Cheltenham or Stratford-on-Avon in his car, while Ralph Bevan obeyed
+Fanny's parting charge to look after Barbara.
+
+Every time Barbara did a piece of the Ramblings she showed it to Ralph
+Bevan. They would ride off together into the open country, and Barbara
+would read aloud to Ralph, sitting by the roadside where they lunched,
+or in some inn parlour where they had tea. They had decided that, though
+it would be dishonourable of Barbara to show him the bits that Mr.
+Waddington had written, there could be no earthly harm in trusting him
+with the bits she had done herself.
+
+Not that you could tell the difference. Barbara had worked hard, knowing
+that the sooner Mr. Waddington's book was finished the sooner Ralph's
+book would come out; and under this agreeable stimulus she had developed
+into the perfect parodist of Waddington. She had wallowed in
+Waddington's style till she was saturated with it and wrote
+automatically about "bold escarpments" and "the rosy flush on the high
+forehead of Cleeve Cloud"; about "ivy-mantled houses resting in the
+shade of immemorial elms"; about the vale of the Windlode, "awash with
+the golden light of even," and "grey villages nestling in the beech-clad
+hollows of the hills."
+
+"'Come with me,'" said Barbara, "'into the little sheltered valley of
+the Speed; let us follow the brown trout stream that goes purling--'"
+
+"Barbara, it's priceless. What made you think of purling?"
+
+"_He'd_ have thought of it. 'Purling through the lush green grass of the
+meadows.'"
+
+Or, "'Let us away along the great high road that runs across the uplands
+that divide the valleys of the Windlode and the Thames. Let us rest a
+moment halfway and drink--no, quaff--a mug of good Gloucestershire ale
+with mine host of the Merry Mouth.'"
+
+Not that Mr. Waddington had ever done such a thing in his life. But all
+the other ramblers through the Cotswolds did it, or said they did it;
+and he was saturated with their spirit, as Barbara was saturated with
+his. He could see them, robust and genial young men in tweed
+knickerbocker suits, tramping their thirty miles a day and quaffing mugs
+of ale in every tavern; and he desired to present himself, like those
+young men, as genial and robust. He couldn't get away from them and
+their books any more than he had got away from Sir Maurice Gedge and his
+prospectus.
+
+And Barbara had invented all sorts of robust and genial things for him
+to do. She dressed him in pink, and mounted him on his mare Speedwell,
+and sent him flying over the stone walls and five-barred gates to the
+baying of "Ranter and Ranger and Bellman and True." He fished and he
+tramped and he quaffed and he tramped again. He did his thirty miles a
+day easily. She set down long conversations between Mr. Waddington and
+old Billy, the Cotswold shepherd, all about the good old Cotswold ways,
+in the good old days when the good old Squire, Mr. Waddington's
+father--no, his grandfather--was alive.
+
+"'I do call to mind, zur, what old Squire did use to zay to me: "Billy,"
+'e zays, "your grandchildren won't be fed, nor they won't 'ave the
+cottages, nor yet the clothes as you 'ave and your children. As zure as
+God's in Gloucester" 'e zays. They was rare old times, zur, and they be
+gawn.'"
+
+"_What_ made you think of it, Barbara? I don't suppose he ever said two
+words to old Billy in his life."
+
+"Of course he didn't. 'But it's the sort of thing he'd like to think he
+did."
+
+"Has he passed it?"
+
+"Rather. He's as pleased as Punch. He thinks he's forming my style."
+
+
+3
+
+Mr. Waddington was rapidly acquiring the habit of going round to Sheep
+Street after dinner. But in those evenings that he did not devote to
+Mrs. Levitt he applied himself to his task of supervision.
+
+On the whole he was delighted with his secretary. There could be no
+doubt that the little thing was deeply attached to him. You could tell
+that by the way she worked, by her ardour and eagerness to please him.
+There could be only one explanation of the ease with which she had
+received the stamp of his personality.
+
+Therefore he used tact. He used tact.
+
+"I'm giving you a great deal of work, Barbara," he would say. "But you
+must look on it as part of your training. You're learning to write good
+English. There's nothing like clear, easy, flowing sentences. You can't
+have literature without 'em. I might have written those passages myself.
+In fact, I can hardly distinguish--" His face shook over it; she
+noticed the tremor of imminent revision. "Still, I _think_ I should
+prefer 'babbling streams' here to 'purling streams.' Shakespearean."
+
+"I _had_ 'babbling' first," said Barbara, "but I thought 'purling' would
+be nearer to what you'd have written yourself. I forgot about
+Shakespeare. And babbling isn't exactly purling, is it?"
+
+"True--true. Babbling is _not_ purling. We want the exact word. Purling
+let it be....
+
+"And 'lush.' Good girl. You remembered that 'lush' was one of my words?"
+
+"I thought it _would_ be."
+
+"Good. You see," said Mr. Waddington, "how you learn. You're getting the
+sense, the _flair_ for style. I shall always be glad to think I trained
+you, Barbara.... And you may be very thankful it _is_ I and not Ralph
+Bevan. Of all the jerky--eccentric--incoherent--"
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+1
+
+It was Monday, the twenty-fourth day of November, in the last week of
+Fanny's fortnight in London.
+
+Barbara had been busy all morning with Mr. Waddington's correspondence
+and accounts. And now, for the first time, she found herself definitely
+on the track of Mrs. Levitt. In checking Palmer and Hoskins's, the
+Cheltenham builders, bill for the White House she had come across two
+substantial items not included in their original estimate: no less than
+fifteen by eight feet of trellis for the garden and a hot water pipe
+rail for the bathroom. It turned out that Mrs. Levitt, desiring the
+comfort of hot towels, and objecting to the view of the kitchen yard as
+seen from the lawn, had incontinently ordered the hot water rail and the
+trellis.
+
+There was that letter from Messrs. Jackson and Cleaver, Mr. Waddington's
+agents, informing him that his tenant, Mrs. Levitt, of the White House,
+Wyck-on-the-Hill, had not yet paid her rent due on the twenty-fifth of
+September. Did Mr. Waddington wish them to apply again?
+
+And there were other letters of which Barbara was requested to make
+copies from his dictation. Thus:
+
+"My Dear Mrs. Levitt" (only he had written "My dear Elise"),--"With
+reference to your investments I do not recommend the purchase, at the
+present moment, of Government Housing Bonds.
+
+"I shall be very glad to loan you the fifty pounds you require to make
+up the five hundred for the purchase of Parson's Provincial and London
+Bank Shares. But I am afraid I cannot definitely promise an advance of
+five hundred on the securities you name. That promise was conditional,
+and you must give me a little time to consider the matter. Meanwhile I
+will make inquiries; but, speaking off-hand, I should say that, owing to
+the present general depreciation of stock, it would be highly
+unadvisable for you to sell out, and my advice to you would be: Hold on
+to everything you've got.
+
+"I am very glad you are pleased with your little house. We will let the
+matter of the rent stand over till your affairs are rather more in order
+than they are at present.--With kindest regards, very sincerely yours,
+
+"HORATIO BYSSHE WADDINGTON.
+
+"P.S.--I have settled with Palmer and Hoskins for the trellis and hot
+water rail."
+
+"_To_ Messrs. Lawson & Rutherford, Solicitors,
+
+"9, Bedford Row, London, W.C.
+
+"Dear Sirs,--Will you kindly advise me as to the current value of the
+following shares--namely:
+
+"Fifty £5 5 per cent. New South American Rubber Syndicate;
+
+"Fifty £10 10 per cent. B Preference Addison Railway, Nicaragua;
+
+"One hundred £1 4 per cent. Welbeck Mutual Assurance Society.
+
+"Would you recommend the holder to sell out at present prices? And
+should I be justified in accepting these shares as security for an
+immediate loan of five hundred?--Faithfully yours,
+
+"HORATIO BYSSHE WADDINGTON."
+
+He was expecting Elise for tea at four o'clock on Wednesday, and Messrs.
+Lawson and Rutherford's reply reached him very opportunely that
+afternoon.
+
+"Dear Sir,--_Re_ your inquiry in your letter of the twenty-fifth instant,
+as to the current value of 5 per cent. New South American Rubber
+Syndicate Shares, 10 per cent. B Preference Addison Railway, and 4 per
+cent. Welbeck Mutual Assurance Society, respectively, we beg to inform
+you that these stocks are seriously depreciated, and we doubt whether
+at the present moment the holder would find a purchaser. We certainly
+cannot advise you to accept them as security for the sum you name.--We
+are, faithfully,
+
+"Lawson & Rutherford."
+
+It was clear that poor Elise--who could never have had any head for
+business--was deceived as to the value of her securities. It might even
+be that with regard to all three of them she might have to cut her
+losses and estimate her income minus the dividends accruing from this
+source. But that only made it the more imperative that she should have
+at least a thousand pounds tucked snugly away in some safe investment.
+Nothing short of the addition of fifty pounds to her yearly income would
+enable Elise to pay her way. The dear woman's affairs ought to stand on
+a sound financial basis; and Mr. Waddington asked himself this question:
+Was he prepared to put them there? All that Elise could offer him,
+failing her depreciated securities, was the reversion of a legacy of
+five hundred pounds promised to her in her aunt's will. She had spoken
+very hopefully of this legacy. Was he prepared to fork out a whole five
+hundred pounds on the offchance of Elise's aunt dying within a
+reasonable time and making no alteration in her will? In a certain
+contingency he _was_ prepared. He was prepared to do all that and more
+for Elise. But it was not possible, it was not decent to state his
+conditions to Elise beforehand, and in any case Mr. Waddington did not
+state them openly as conditions to himself. He allowed his mind to be
+muzzy on this point. He had no doubt whatever about his passion, but he
+preferred to contemplate the possibility of its satisfaction through a
+decent veil of muzziness. When he said to himself that he would like to
+know where he stood before committing himself, it was as near as he
+could get to clarity and candour.
+
+And when he wrote to Elise that his promise was conditional he really
+did mean that the loan would depend on the value of the securities
+offered; a condition that his integrity could face, a condition that, as
+things stood, he had a perfect right to make. While, all the time, deep
+inside him was the knowledge that, if Elise gave herself to him, he
+would not ask for security--he would not make any conditions at all. He
+saw Elise, tender and yielding, in his arms; he saw himself, tender and
+powerful, stooping over her, and he thought, with a qualm of disgust: "I
+wouldn't touch her poor little legacy."
+
+Meanwhile he judged it well to let the correspondence pass, like any
+other business correspondence, through his secretary's hands. It was
+well to let Barbara see that his relations with Mrs. Levitt were on a
+strictly business footing, that he had nothing to hide. It was well to
+have copies of the letters. It was well--Mr. Waddington's instinct, not
+his reason, told him it WA well--to have a trustworthy witness to all
+these transactions. A witness who understood the precise nature of his
+conditions, in the event, the highly unlikely event, of trouble with
+Elise later on. (It was almost as if, secretly, he had a premonition.)
+Also, when his conscience reproached him, as it did, with making
+conditions, with asking the dear woman for security, he was able to
+persuade himself that he didn't really mean it, that all this was clever
+camouflage designed to turn Barbara's suspicions, if she ever had any,
+off the scent. And at the same time he was not sorry that Barbara should
+see him in his rôle of generous benefactor and shrewd adviser.
+
+"I needn't tell you, Barbara, that all this business is strictly
+private. As my confidential secretary, you have to know a great many
+things it wouldn't do to have talked about. You understand?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+She understood, too, that it was an end of the compact with Ralph Bevan.
+She must have foreseen this affair when she said to him there would be
+things she simply couldn't tell. Only she had supposed they would be
+things she would see, reward of clear eyesight, not things she would be
+regularly let in for knowing.
+
+And her clear eyes saw through the camouflage. She had a suspicion.
+
+"I don't see," she said, "why you should have to go without your rent
+just because Mrs. Levitt doesn't want to pay it."
+
+She was sorry for Waddy. He might be ever so wise about Mrs. Levitt's
+affairs; but he was a perfect goose about his own. No wonder Fanny had
+asked her to take care of him.
+
+"I've no doubt," he said, "she _wants_ to pay it; but she's a war widow,
+Barbara, and she's hard up. I can't rush her for the rent."
+
+"She's no business to rush you for trellis work and water pipes you
+didn't order."
+
+"Well--well," he couldn't be angry with the child. She was so loyal, so
+careful of his interests. And he couldn't expect her to take kindly to
+Elise. There would be a natural jealousy. "That's Palmer and Hoskins's
+mistake. I can't haggle with a lady, Barbara. _Noblesse oblige_." But he
+winced under her clear eyes.
+
+She thought: "How about the fifty and the five hundred? At this rate
+_noblesse_ might _oblige_ him to do anything."
+
+She could see through Mrs. Levitt.
+
+Mr. Waddington kept on looking at the clock.
+
+It was now ten minutes to four, and at any moment Elise might be there.
+His one idea was to get Barbara Madden out of the way. Those clear eyes
+were not the eyes he wanted to be looking at Elise, to be looking at him
+when _their_ eyes met. And he understood that that fellow Bevan was
+going to call for her at four. He didn't want _him_ about. "Where are
+you going for your walk?" he said.
+
+"Oh, anywhere. Why?"
+
+"Well, if you happen to be in Wyck, would you mind taking these
+photographs back to Pyecraft and showing him the ones I've chosen? Just
+see that he doesn't make any stupid mistake."
+
+The photographs were staring her in the face on the writing-table, so
+that there was really no excuse for her forgetting them, as she did. But
+Mr. Waddington's experience was that if you wanted anything done you had
+to do it yourself.
+
+
+2
+
+Elise would be taken into the drawing-room. He went to wait for her
+there.
+
+And as he walked up and down, restless, listening for the sound of her
+feet on the gravel drive and the ringing of the bell, at each turn of
+his steps he was arrested by his own portrait. It stared at him from
+its place above Fanny's writing-table; handsome, with its brilliant
+black and carmine, it gave him an uneasy sense of rivalry, as if he felt
+the disagreeable presence of a younger man in the room. He stared back
+at it; he stared at himself in the great looking-glass over the
+chimneypiece beside it.
+
+He remembered Fanny saying that she liked the iron-grey of his moustache
+and hair; it was more becoming than all that hard, shiny black. Fanny
+was right. It _was_ more becoming. And his skin--the worn bloom of it,
+like a delicate sprinkling of powder. Better, more refined than that
+rich, high red of the younger man in the gilt frame. To be sure his
+eyes, blurred onyx, bulged out of creased pouches; but his nose--the
+Postlethwaite nose, a very handsome feature--lifted itself firmly above
+the fleshy sagging of the face. His lips pouted in pride. He could still
+console himself with the thought that mirrors were unfaithful; Elise
+would see him as he really was; not that discoloured and distorted
+image. He pushed out his great chest and drew a deep, robust breath. At
+the thought of Elise the pride, the rich, voluptuous, youthful pride of
+life mounted. And as he turned again he saw Fanny looking at him.
+
+The twenty-year-old Fanny in her girl's white frock and blue sash; her
+tilted, Gainsborough face, mischievous and mocking, smiled as if she
+were making fun of him. His breath caught in his chest. Fanny--Fanny.
+His wife. Why hadn't his wife the loyalty and intelligence of Barbara,
+the enthusiasm, the seriousness of Elise? He needn't have any
+conscientious scruples on Fanny's account; she had driven him to Elise
+with her frivolity, her eternal smiling. Of course he knew that she
+cared for him, that he had power over her, that there had never been and
+never would be any other man for Fanny; but he couldn't go on with
+Fanny's levity for ever. He wanted something more; something sound and
+solid; something that Elise gave him and no other woman. Any man would
+want it.
+
+And yet Fanny's image made him uneasy, watching him there, smiling, as
+if she knew all about Elise and smiled, pretending not to care. He
+didn't want Fanny to watch him with Elise. He didn't want Elise to see
+Fanny. When he looked at Fanny's portrait he felt again his old
+repugnance to their meeting. He didn't want Elise to sit in the same
+room with Fanny, to sit in Fanny's chair. The drawing-room was Fanny's
+room. The red dahlia and powder-blue parrot chintz was Fanny's choice;
+every table, cabinet and chair was in the place that Fanny had chosen
+for it. The book, the frivolous book she had been reading before she
+went away, lay on her little table. Fanny was Fanny and Elise was
+Elise.
+
+He rang the bell and told Partridge to show Mrs. Levitt into the library
+and to bring tea there. The library was _his_ room. He could do what he
+liked in it. The girl Fanny laughed at him out of the corners of her
+eyes as he went. Suddenly he felt tender and gentle to her, because of
+Elise.
+
+When Elise came she found him seated in his armchair absorbed in a book.
+He rose in a dreamy attitude, as if he were still dazed and abstracted
+with his reading.
+
+Thus, at the very start, he gave himself the advantage; he showed
+himself superior to Elise. Intellectually and morally superior.
+
+"You're deep in it? I'm interrupting?" she said.
+
+He came down from his height instantly. He was all hers.
+
+"No. I was only trying to pass the time till you came."
+
+"I'm late then?"
+
+"Ten minutes." He smiled, indulgent
+
+Elise was looking handsomer than ever. The light November chill had
+whipped a thin flush into her face. He watched her as she took off her
+dark skunk furs and her coat.
+
+How delightful to watch a woman taking off her things, the pretty
+gestures of abandonment; the form emerging, slimmer. That was one of the
+things you thought and couldn't say. Supposing he had said it to Elise?
+Would she have minded?
+
+"What are you thinking of?" she said.
+
+"How did you know I was thinking of anything?"
+
+"Your face. It tells tales."
+
+"Only nice ones to you, my dear lady."
+
+"Ah, but you _didn't_ tell--"
+
+"Would you like me to?"
+
+"Not if it's naughty. Your face looks naughty."
+
+He wheeled, delighted. "Now, how does my face look when it's naughty?"
+
+"Oh, that _would_ be telling. It's just as well you shouldn't know."
+
+"Was it as naughty as all that then?"
+
+"Yes. Or as nice."
+
+They kept it up, lightly, till Partridge and Annie Trinder came,
+tinkling and rattling with the tea-things outside the door. As if, Mr.
+Waddington thought, they meant to warn them.
+
+"Partridge," he called, as the butler was going, "Partridge, if Sir John
+Corbett calls you can show him in here; but I'm not at home to anybody
+else."
+
+(Clever idea, that.)
+
+"He isn't coming, is he, the tiresome old thing?"
+
+"No. He isn't. If I thought he was for one minute I wouldn't be at
+home."
+
+"Then why--?"
+
+"Why did I say I would be? Because I wanted to make it safe for you,
+Elise."
+
+Thus tactfully he let it dawn on her that he might be dangerous.
+
+"We don't want to be interrupted, do we?" he said.
+
+"Not by Sir John Corbett."
+
+He drew up the big, padded sofa square before the fire for Elise. All
+his movements were unconscious, innocent of deliberation and design. He
+seated himself top-heavily behind the diminutive gate-legged tea-table;
+the teapot and cups were like dolls' things in his great hands. She
+looked at him, at his slow fingers fumbling with the sugar tongs.
+
+"Would you like me to pour out tea for you?" she said.
+
+He started visibly. He wouldn't like it at all. He wasn't going to allow
+Elise to put herself into Fanny's place, pouring out tea for him as if
+she was his wife. She wouldn't have suggested it if she had had any tact
+or any delicacy.
+
+"No," he said. The "No" sounded hard and ungracious. "You must really
+let me have the pleasure of waiting on you."
+
+The sugar dropped from the tongs; he fumbled again, madly, and Elise
+smiled. "Damn the tongs," he thought; "damn the sugar."
+
+"Take it in your fingers, goose," she said.
+
+Goose! An endearment, a caress. It softened him. His tenderness for
+Elise came back.
+
+"My fingers are all thumbs," he said.
+
+"Your thumbs, then. You don't suppose I mind?"
+
+There was meaning in her voice, and Mr. Waddington conceived himself to
+be on the verge of the first exquisite intimacies of love. He left off
+thinking about Fanny. He poured out tea and handed bread and butter in a
+happy dream. He ate and drank without knowing what he ate and drank. His
+whole consciousness was one muzzy, heavy sense of the fullness and
+nearness of Elise. He could feel his ears go "vroom-vroom" and his voice
+thicken as if he were slightly, very slightly drunk. He wondered how
+Elise could go on eating bread and butter.
+
+He heard himself sigh when at last he put her cup down.
+
+He considered the position of the tea-table in relation to the sofa. It
+hemmed in that part of it where he was going to sit. Very cramping. He
+moved it well back and considered it again. It now stood in his direct
+line of retreat from the sofa to the armchair. An obstruction. If
+anybody were to come in. He moved it to one side.
+
+"That's better," He said. "Now we can get a clear view of the fire. It
+isn't too much for you, Elise?"
+
+He had persuaded himself that he had really moved the tea-table because
+of the fire. As yet he had no purpose and no plan. He didn't know what
+on earth he was going to say to Elise.
+
+He sat down beside her and there was a sudden hushed pause. Elise had
+turned round in her seat and was looking at him; her eyes were steady
+behind the light tremor of their lashes, brilliant and profound. He
+reflected that her one weak point, the shortness of her legs, was not
+noticeable when she was sitting down. He also wondered how he could ever
+have thought her mouth hard. It moved with a little tender, sensitive
+twitch, like the flutter of her eyelids, and he conceived that she was
+drawn to him and held trembling by his fascination.
+
+She spoke first.
+
+"Mr. Waddington, I don't know how to thank you for your kindness about
+the rent. But you know it's safe, don't you?"
+
+"Of course I know it. Don't talk about rent. Don't think about it."
+
+"I can't help it. I can't think of anything else until it's paid."
+
+"I'd rather you never paid any rent at all than that you should worry
+about it like this. I didn't ask you to come here to talk business,
+Elise."
+
+"I'm afraid I must talk it. Just a little."
+
+"Not now," he said firmly. "I won't listen."
+
+It sounded exactly as if he said he wouldn't listen to any more talk
+about rent; but he thought: "I don't know what I shall do if she begins
+about that five hundred. But she hardly can, after that. Anyhow, I shall
+decline to discuss it."
+
+"Tell me what you've been doing with yourself?"
+
+"You can't _do_ much with yourself in Wyck. I trot about my house--my
+dear little house that you've made so nice for me. I do my marketing,
+and I go out to tea with the parson's wife, or the doctor's wife, or
+Mrs. Bostock, or Mrs. Grainger."
+
+"I didn't know you went to the Graingers."
+
+He thought that was not very loyal of Elise.
+
+"You must go somewhere."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And in the evenings we play bridge."
+
+"Who plays bridge?"
+
+"Mr. Hawtrey, or Mr. Thurston, or young Hawtrey, and Toby, and Major
+Markham and me."
+
+"Always Major Markham?"
+
+"Well, he comes a good deal. He likes coming."
+
+"_Does_ he?"
+
+"Do you mind?"
+
+"I should mind very much if I thought it would make any difference."
+
+"Any difference?" She frowned and blinked, as though she were trying
+hard to see what he meant, what he possibly _could_ mean by that.
+"Difference?" she said. "To what?"
+
+"To you and me."
+
+"Of course it doesn't. Not a scrap. How could it?"
+
+"No. How could it? I don't really believe it could."
+
+"But why should it?" she persisted.
+
+"Why, indeed. Ours is a wonderful relation. A unique relation. And I
+think you want as much as I do to--to keep it intact."
+
+"Of course I want to keep it intact. I wouldn't for worlds let anything
+come between us, certainly not bridge." She meditated. "I suppose I do
+play rather a lot. There's nothing else to do, you see, and you get
+carried away."
+
+"I hope, my dear, you don't play for money."
+
+"Oh, well, it isn't much fun for the others if we don't."
+
+"You don't play high, I hope?"
+
+"What do you call high?"
+
+"Well, breaking into pound notes."
+
+"Pound notes! Penny points--well, ten shillings is the very highest
+stake when we're reckless and going it. Besides, I always play against
+Markham and Hawtrey, because I know _they_ won't be hard on me if I
+lose."
+
+"Now, _that's_ what I don't like. I'd a thousand times rather pay your
+gambling debts than have you putting yourself under an obligation to
+those men."
+
+He couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear to think that Elise could bear it.
+
+"You should have come to me," he said.
+
+"I have come to you, haven't I?" She thought of the five hundred pounds.
+
+He thought of them too. "Ah, that's different. Now, about these debts to
+Markham and Hawtrey. How much do they come to--about?"
+
+"Oh, a five-pound note would cover all of it. But I shall only be in
+debt to you."
+
+"We'll say nothing about that. If I pay it, Elise, will you promise me
+you'll never play higher than penny points again?"
+
+"It's too angelic of you, really."
+
+He smiled. He liked paying her gambling debts. He liked the power it
+gave him over her. He liked to think that he could make her promise. He
+liked to be told he was angelic. It was all very cheap at five pounds,
+and it would enable him to refuse the five hundred with a better grace.
+
+"Come, on your word of honour, only penny points."
+
+"On my word of honour.... But, oh, I don't think I can take it."
+
+She thought of the five hundred. When you wanted five hundred it was
+pretty rotten to be put off with a fiver.
+
+"If you can take it from Hawtrey and Markham--"
+
+"That's it. I _can't_ take it from Markham. I haven't done that. I can't
+do it."
+
+"Well, Hawtrey then."
+
+"Hawtrey's different"
+
+"Why is he different?"
+
+A faint suspicion, relating to Markham, troubled him, and not for the
+first time.
+
+"Well, you see, he's a middle-aged married man. He might be my uncle."
+
+He thought: "And Markham--_he_ might be--"
+
+But Elise was not in love with the fellow. No, no. He was sure of Elise;
+he knew the symptoms; you couldn't mistake them. But she might marry
+Markham, all the same. Out of boredom, out of uncertainty, out of
+desperation. He was not going to let that happen; he would make it
+impossible; he would give Elise the certainty she wanted now.
+
+"You said _I_ was different."
+
+Playful reproach. But she would understand.
+
+"So you are. You're a married man, too, aren't you?"
+
+"I thought we'd agreed to forget it."
+
+"Forget it? Forget Mrs. Waddington?"
+
+"Yes, forget her. You knew me long before you knew Fanny. What has she
+got to do with you and me?"
+
+"Just this, that she's the only woman in the county who'll know _me_."
+
+"Because you're my friend, Elise."
+
+"You needn't remind me. I'm not likely to forget that any good thing
+that's come to me here has come through you."
+
+"I don't want anything but good to come to you through me"
+
+He leaned forward.
+
+"You're not very happy in Wyck, are you?"
+
+"Happy? Oh, yes. But it's not what you'd call wildly exciting. And
+Toby's worrying me. He says he can't stand it, and he wants to
+emigrate."
+
+"Well, why not?"
+
+Mr. Waddington's heart gave a great thump of hope. He saw it all
+clearly. Toby was the great obstruction. Elise might have held out for
+ever as long as Toby lived with her. But if Toby went--She saw it
+too; that was why she consented to his going.
+
+"It isn't much of a job for him, Bostock's Bank."
+
+"N-no," she assented, "n-no. I've told him he can go if he can get
+anything."
+
+He played, stroking the long tails of her fur. It lay between them like
+a soft, supine animal.
+
+"Would you like to live in Cheltenham, Elise?"
+
+"Cheltenham?"
+
+"If I took a little house for you?"
+
+(He had calculated that he might just as well lose his rent in
+Cheltenham as in Wyck. Better. Besides, he needn't lose it. He could let
+the White House. It would partly pay for Cheltenham.)
+
+"One of those little houses in Montpelier Place?"
+
+"It's too sweet of you to think of it." She began playing too, stroking
+the fur animal; their hands played together over the sleek softness,
+consciously, shyly, without touching.
+
+"But--why Cheltenham?"
+
+"Cheltenham isn't Wyck."
+
+"No. But it's just as dull and stuffy. Stuffier."
+
+"Beautiful little town, Elise."
+
+"What's the good of that when it's crammed full of school children and
+school teachers, and decayed army people and old maids? I don't _know_
+anybody in Cheltenham."
+
+"Can't you see that that would be the advantage?"
+
+"No. I can't see it. There's only one place I _want_ to live in."
+
+"And that is--?"
+
+"London. And I can't."
+
+"Why not?" After all, London was not such a bad idea. He had thought of
+it before now himself.
+
+"Well--I don't know whether I told you that I'm not on very good terms
+with my husband's people. They haven't been at all nice to me since poor
+Frank's death."
+
+"Poor Elise--"
+
+"They live in London and they want to keep me out of it. My
+father-in-law gives me a small allowance on condition I don't live
+there. They hate me," she said, smiling, "as much as all that."
+
+"Is it a large allowance?"
+
+"No. It's a very small one. But they know I can't get on without it."
+
+"You ought not to be dependent on such people.... Perhaps in a flat--or
+one of those little houses in St. John's Wood--"
+
+"It would be too heavenly. But what's the good of talking about it?"
+
+"You must know what I want to do for you, Elise. I want to make you
+happy, to put you safe above all these wretched worries, to take care of
+you, dear. You _will_ let me, won't you?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Waddington--my dear friend--" The dark eyes brightened.
+She saw a clear prospect of the five hundred. Compared with what old
+Waddy was proposing, such a sum, and a mere loan too, represented
+moderation. The moment had come, very happily, for reopening this
+question. "I can't let you do anything so--so extensive. Really and
+truly, all I want is just a temporary loan. If you really could lend me
+that five hundred. You said--"
+
+"I didn't say I would. And I didn't say I wouldn't. I said it would
+depend."
+
+"I know. But you never said on what. If the securities I offered you
+aren't good enough, there's the legacy."
+
+He was silent. He knew now that his condition had had nothing to do with
+the securities. He must know, he would know, where he stood.
+
+"My aunt," said Elise gently, "is very old."
+
+"I wouldn't dream of touching your poor little legacy." He said it with
+passion. "Won't you drop all this sordid talk about business and trust
+me?"
+
+"I do trust you."
+
+The little white hand left off stroking the dark fur and reached out to
+him. He took it and held it tight. It struggled to withdraw itself.
+
+"You aren't afraid of me?" he said.
+
+"No, but I'm afraid of Partridge coming in and seeing us. He might think
+it rather odd."
+
+"He won't come in. It doesn't matter what Partridge thinks."
+
+"Oh, _doesn't_ it!"
+
+"He won't come in."
+
+He drew a little closer to her.
+
+"He will. He _will_. He'll come and clear away the things. I hear him
+coming."
+
+He got up and went to the door of the smoke-room, to the further door,
+and looked out.
+
+"There's no one there," he said. "They don't come 'till six and it isn't
+five yet.... Elise--abstract your mind one moment from Partridge. If I
+get that little house in London, will you live in it?"
+
+"I can't let you. You make me ashamed, after all you've done for me.
+It's too much."
+
+"It isn't. If I take it, will you let me come and see you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. But--" She shrank, so far as Elise could be said to shrink,
+a little further back into her corner.
+
+"It's rather far from Wyck," he said. "Still, I could run up once
+in"--he became pensive--"in three weeks or so."
+
+"For the day--I should be delighted."
+
+"No. _Not_ for the day." He was irritated with this artificial
+obtuseness. "For the week-end. For the week, sometimes, when I can
+manage it. I shall say it's business."
+
+She drew back and back, as if from his advance, her head tilted, her
+eyes glinting at him under lowered lids, taking it all in yet pretending
+a paralysis of ignorance. She wanted to see--to see how far he would go,
+before she--She wanted him to think she didn't understand him even
+now.
+
+It was this half-fascinated, backward gesture that excited him. He drew
+himself close, close.
+
+"Elise, it's no use pretending. You know what I mean. You know I want
+you."
+
+He stooped over her, covering her with his great chest. He put his arms
+round her.
+
+"In my arms. You _know_ you want _me_--"
+
+She felt his mouth pushed out to her mouth as it retreated, trying to
+cover it, to press down. She gave a cry: "Oh--oh, you--" and struggled,
+beating him off with one hand while the other fumbled madly for her
+pocket-handkerchief. His grip slackened. He rose to his feet. But he
+still stooped over her, penning her in with his outstretched arms, his
+weight propped by his hands laid on the back of the sofa.
+
+"You--old--imbecile--" she spurted.
+
+She could afford it. In one rapid flash of intelligence she had seen
+that, whatever happened, she could never get that five hundred pounds
+_down_. And to surrender to old Waddy without it, to surrender to old
+Waddy at all, when she could marry Freddy Markham, would be too
+preposterous. Even if there hadn't been any Freddy Markham, it would
+have been preposterous.
+
+At that moment as she said it, while he still held her prisoned and they
+stared into each other's faces, she spurting and he panting, Barbara
+came in.
+
+He started; jerked himself upright. Mrs. Levitt recovered herself.
+
+"You silly cuckoo," she said. "You don't know how ridiculous you look."
+
+She had found her pocket-handkerchief and was dabbing her eyes and mouth
+with it, rubbing off the uncleanness of his impact. "How
+ridic--Te-hee--Te-hee--te-hee!" She shook with laughter.
+
+Barbara pretended not to see them. To have gone back at once, closing
+the door on them, would have been to admit that she had seen them.
+Instead she moved, quickly yet abstractedly, to the writing-table, took
+up the photographs and went out again.
+
+Mr. Waddington had turned away and stood leaning against the
+chimneypiece, hiding his head ("Poor old ostrich!") in his hands. His
+attitude expressed a dignified sorrow and a wronged integrity. Barbara
+stood for a collected instant at the door and spoke:
+
+"I'm sorry I forgot the photographs." As if she said: "Cheer up, old
+thing. I didn't really see you."
+
+Through the closed door she heard Mrs. Levitt's laughter let loose,
+malignant, shrill, hysterical, a horrid sound.
+
+"I'm sorry, Elise. But I thought you cared for me."
+
+"You'd no business to think. And it wasn't likely I'd tell you."
+
+"Oh, you didn't tell me, my dear. How could you? But you made me believe
+you wanted me."
+
+"Wanted? Do you suppose I wanted to be made ridiculous?"
+
+"Love isn't ridiculous," said Mr. Waddington.
+
+"It is. It's _the_ most ridiculous thing there is. And when _you_'re
+making it.... If you could have seen your face--Oh, dear!"
+
+"If you wouldn't laugh quite so loud. The servants will hear you."
+
+"I mean them to hear me."
+
+"Confound you, Elise!"
+
+"That's right, swear at me. Swear at me."
+
+"I'm sorry I swore. But, hang it all, it's every bit as bad for me as it
+is for you."
+
+"Worse, I fancy. You needn't think Miss Madden didn't see you, because
+she did."
+
+"It's a pity Miss Madden didn't come in a little sooner."
+
+"Sooner? I think she chose her moment very well."
+
+"If she had heard the whole of our conversation I think she'd have
+realized there was something to be said for me."
+
+"There isn't anything to be said for you. And until you've apologized
+for insulting me--"
+
+"You've heard me apologize. As for insulting you, no decent woman, in
+the circumstances, ever tells a man his love insults her, even if she
+can't return it."
+
+"And even if he's another woman's husband?"
+
+"Even if he's another woman's husband, if she's ever given him the
+right--"
+
+"Right? Do you think you bought the right to make love to me?" She rose,
+confronting him.
+
+"No. I thought you'd given it me.... I was mistaken."
+
+He helped her to put on the coat that she wriggled into with clumsy,
+irritated movements. Clumsy. The woman _was_ clumsy. He wondered how he
+had never seen it. And vulgar. Noisy and vulgar. You never knew what a
+woman was like till you'd seen her angry. He had answered her
+appropriately and with admirable tact. He had scored every point; he was
+scoring now with his cool, imperturbable politeness. He tried not to
+think about Barbara.
+
+"Your fur."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+He rang the bell. Partridge appeared.
+
+"Tell Kimber to bring the car round and drive Mrs. Levitt home."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Waddington, I'd rather walk."
+
+Partridge retired.
+
+She held out her hand. Mr. Waddington bowed abruptly, not taking it. He
+strode behind her to the door, through the smoke-room, to the further
+door. In the hall Partridge hovered. He left her to him.
+
+And, as she followed Partridge across the wide lamp-lighted space, he
+noticed for the first time that Elise, in her agitation, waddled. Like a
+duck--a greedy duck. Like that horrible sister of hers, Bertha
+Rickards.
+
+Then he thought of Barbara Madden.
+
+
+3
+
+When Ralph called for Barbara he told her, first thing, that he had
+heard from Mackintyres, the publishers, about his book. He had sent it
+them two-thirds finished, and Grevill Burton--"Grevill _Burton_,
+Barbara!"--had read it and reported very favourably. Mackintyres had
+agreed to publish it if the end was equal to the beginning and the
+middle.
+
+It was this exciting news, thrown at her before she could get her hat
+on, that had caused Barbara to forget all about Mr. Waddington's
+photographs and Mr. Waddington's book and Mr. Waddington, until she and
+Ralph were half way between Wyck-on-the-Hill and Lower Speed. There was
+nothing for it then but to go on, taking care to get back in time to
+take the photographs to Pyecraft's before the shop closed. There hadn't
+been very much time, but Barbara said she could just do it if she made a
+dash, and it was the dash she made that precipitated her into the scene
+of Mr. Waddington's affair.
+
+Ralph waited for her at the white gate.
+
+"We must sprint," she said, "if we're to be in time."
+
+They sprinted.
+
+As they walked slowly back, Barbara became thoughtful.
+
+As long as she lived she would remember Waddington: the stretched-out
+arms, the top-heavy body bowed to the caress; the inflamed and startled
+face staring at her, like some strange fish, over Mrs. Levitt's
+shoulder, the mouth dropping open as if it called out to her "Go back!"
+What depths of fatuity he must have sunk to before he could have come to
+that! And the sad figure leaning on the chimneypiece, whipped, beaten by
+Mrs. Levitt's laughter--the high, coarse, malignant laughter that had
+made her run to the smoke-room door to shield him, to shut it off.
+
+What wouldn't Ralph have given to have seen him!
+
+It was all very well for Ralph to talk about making a "study" of him; he
+hadn't got further than the merest outside fringe of his great subject.
+He didn't know the bare rudiments of Waddington. He had had brilliant
+flashes of his own, but no sure sight of the reality. And it had been
+given to her, Barbara, to see it, all at once. She had penetrated at one
+bound into the thick of him. They had wondered how far he would go; and
+he had gone so far, so incredibly far above and beyond himself that all
+their estimates were falsified.
+
+And she saw that her seeing was the end--the end of their game, hers
+and Ralph's, the end of their compact, the end of the tie that bound
+them. She found herself shut in with Waddington; the secret that she
+shared with him shut Ralph out. It was intolerable that all this rich,
+exciting material should be left on her hands, lodged with her useless,
+when she thought of what she and Ralph could have made of it together.
+
+If only she could have given it him. But of course she couldn't. She had
+always known there would be things she couldn't give him. She would go
+on seeing more and more of them.
+
+Odd that she didn't feel any moral indignation. It had been too funny,
+like catching a child in some amusing naughtiness; and, as poor Waddy's
+eyes and open mouth had intimated, she had had no business to catch him,
+to know anything about it, no business to be there.
+
+"Ralph," she said, "you must let me off the compact."
+
+He turned, laughing. "Why, have you seen something?"
+
+"It doesn't matter whether I have or haven't."
+
+"It was a sacred compact."
+
+"But if I can only keep it by being a perfect pig--"
+
+He looked down at her face, her troubled, unnaturally earnest face.
+
+"Of course, if you feel like that about it--"
+
+"You'd feel like that if you were his confidential secretary and had
+all his correspondence."
+
+"Yes, yes. I see, Barbara, it won't work. I'll let you off the compact.
+We can go on with him just the same."
+
+"We can't."
+
+"What? Not make a study of him?"
+
+"No. We don't know what we're doing. It isn't safe. We may come on
+things any day."
+
+"Like the thing you came on just now."
+
+"I didn't say I'd come on anything."
+
+"All right, you didn't. He shall be our unfinished book, Barbara."
+
+"He'll be _your_ unfinished book. I've finished mine all right. Anything
+else will be simply appendix."
+
+"You think you've got him complete?"
+
+"Fairly complete."
+
+"Oh, Barbara--"
+
+"Don't tempt me, Ralph."
+
+"After all," he said, "we were only playing with him."
+
+"Well, we mustn't do it again."
+
+"Never any more?"
+
+"Never any more. I know it's a game for gods; but it's a cruel game. We
+must give it up."
+
+"You mean we must give him up?"
+
+"Yes, we've hunted and hounded him enough. We must let him go."
+
+"That's the compact, is it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We shall break it, Barbara; see if we don't. We can't keep off him."
+
+
+4
+
+Mr. Waddington judged that, after all, owing to his consummate tact, he
+had scored in the disagreeable parting with Mrs. Levitt. But when he
+thought of Barbara, little Barbara, a flush mounted to his face, his
+ears, his forehead; he could feel it--wave after wave of hot, unpleasant
+shame.
+
+He went slowly back to the library and shut himself in with the
+tea-table, and the sofa, and the cushions crushed, deeply hollowed with
+the large pressure of Elise. He wondered how much Barbara had taken in,
+at what precise moment she had appeared. He tried to reconstruct the
+scene. He had been leaning over Elise; he could see himself leaning over
+her, enclosing her, and Elise's head, stiffened, drawing back from his
+kiss. Worse than the sting of her repugnance was the thought that
+Barbara had seen it and his attitude, his really very compromising
+attitude. Had she? Had she? The door now, it was at right angles to the
+sofa; perhaps Barbara hadn't caught him fair. He went to the door and
+came in from it to make certain. Yes. Yes. From that point it was no
+good pretending that he couldn't be seen.
+
+But Barbara had rushed in like a little whirlwind, and she had gone
+straight to the writing-table, turning her back. She wouldn't have had
+time to take it in. He was at the chimneypiece before she had turned
+again, before she could have seen him. He must have recovered himself
+when he heard her coming. She couldn't charge in like that without being
+heard. He must have been standing up, well apart from Elise, not leaning
+over her by the time Barbara came in.
+
+He tried to remember what Barbara had said when she went out. She had
+said something. He couldn't remember what it was, but it had sounded
+reassuring. Now, surely if Barbara had seen anything she wouldn't have
+stopped at the door to say things. She would have gone straight out
+without a word. In fact, she wouldn't have come in at all. She would
+have drawn back the very instant that she saw. She would simply never
+have penetrated as far as the writing-table. He remembered how coolly
+she had taken up the photographs and gone out again as if nothing had
+happened.
+
+Probably, then, as far as Barbara was concerned, nothing had happened.
+
+Then he remembered the horrible laughing of Elise. Barbara must have
+heard that; she must have wondered. She might just have caught him with
+the tail of her eye, not enough to swear by, but enough to wonder; and
+afterwards she would have put that and that together.
+
+And he would have to dine with her alone that evening, to face her
+young, clear, candid eyes.
+
+He didn't know how he was going to get through with it, and yet he did
+get through.
+
+To begin with, Barbara was very late for dinner.
+
+She had thought of being late as a way of letting Mr. Waddington down
+easily. She would come in, smiling and apologetic, palpably in the
+wrong, having kept him waiting, and he would be gracious and forgive
+her, and his graciousnees and forgiveness would help to reinstate him.
+He would need, she reflected, a lot of reinstating. Barbara considered
+that, in the matter of punishment, he had had enough. Mrs. Levitt, with
+her "You old imbecile!" had done to him all, and more than all, that
+justice could require; there was a point of humiliation beyond which no
+human creature should be asked to suffer. To be caught making love to
+Mrs. Levitt and being called an old imbecile! And then to be pelted with
+indecent laughter. And, in any case, it was not her, Barbara's, place to
+punish him or judge him. She had had no business to catch him, no
+business, in the first instance, to forget the photographs.
+
+Therefore, as she really wanted him not to know that she had caught him,
+she went on behaving as if nothing had happened. All through dinner she
+turned the conversation on to topics that would put him in a favourable
+or interesting light. She avoided the subject of Fanny. She asked him
+all sorts of questions about his war work.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "some of the things you did when you were a special
+constable."
+
+And he told her his great story. To be sure, she knew the best part of
+it already, because Ralph had told it--it had been one of his scores
+over her--but she wanted him to remember it. She judged that it was
+precisely the sort of memory that would reinstate him faster than
+anything. For really he had played a considerable part.
+
+"Well"--you could see by his face that he was gratified--"one of
+the things we had to do was to drive about the villages and farms
+after dark to see that there weren't any lights showing. It was
+nineteen--yes--nineteen-sixteen, in the winter. Must have been winter,
+because I was wearing my British warm with the fur collar. And there was
+a regular scare on."
+
+"Air raids?"
+
+"No. Tramps. We'd been fairly terrorized by a nasty, dangerous sort of
+tramp. The police were looking for two of these fellows--discharged
+soldiers. We'd a warrant out for their arrest. Robbery and assault."
+
+"With violence?"
+
+"Well, you may call it violence. One of 'em had thrown a pint pot at the
+landlord of the King's Head and hurt him. And they'd bolted with two
+bottles of beer and a tin of Player's Navy Cut. They'd made off,
+goodness knows where. We couldn't find 'em.
+
+"I was driving to Daunton on a very nasty, pitch-black night. You know
+how beastly dark it is between the woods at Byford Park? Well, I'd just
+got there when I passed two fellows skulking along under the wall. They
+stood back--it was rather a near shave with no proper lights on--and I
+flashed my electric torch full on them. Blest if they weren't the very
+chaps we were looking for. And I'd got to run 'em in somehow, all by
+myself. And two to one. It wasn't any joke, I can tell you. Goodness
+knows what nasty knives and things they might have had on 'em."
+
+"What _did_ you do?"
+
+"Do? I drove on fifty yards ahead, and pulled up the car outside the
+porter's lodge at Byford. Then I got out and came on and met 'em. They
+were trying to bolt into the wood when I turned my torch on them again
+and shouted 'Halt!' in a parade voice.
+
+"They halted, hands up to the salute. I thought the habit would be too
+much for 'em when they heard the word of command. I said, 'You've got to
+come along with me.' I didn't know how on earth I was going to take them
+if they wouldn't go. And they'd started dodging. So I tried it on again:
+'Halt!' Regular parade stunt. And they halted again all right. Then I
+harangued them. I said, 'Shun, you blighters! I'm a special constable,
+and I've got a warrant here for your arrest.'
+
+"I hadn't. I'd nothing but an Inland Revenue Income Tax form. But I
+whipped it out of my breast pocket and trained my light on the royal
+arms at the top. That was enough for 'em. Then I shouted again in my
+parade voice, 'Right about face! Quick march!'
+
+"And I got them marching. I marched them the two miles from Byford,
+through Lower Speed, and up the hill to Wyck and into the police
+station. And we ran 'em in for robbery and assault."
+
+"It was clever of you."
+
+"No; nothing but presence of mind and bluff, and showing that you
+weren't going to stand any nonsense. But I don't suppose Corbett or
+Hawtrey or any of those chaps would have thought of it."
+
+Barbara wondered: "Supposing I were to turn on him and say, 'You old
+humbug, you know I don't believe a word of it. You know you didn't march
+them a hundred yards.' Or '_I_ saw you this afternoon.' What would he
+look like?" It was inconceivable that she should say these things. If
+she was to go on with her study of him alone she would go on in the
+spirit they had begun in, she and Ralph. That spirit admitted nothing
+but boundless amusement, boundless joy in him. Moral indignation would
+have been a false note; it would have been downright irreverence towards
+the God who made him.
+
+What if he did omit to mention that the nasty, dangerous fellows turned
+out to be two feeble youths, half imbecile with shell-shock and half
+drunk, and that it was Mr. Hawtrey, arriving opportunely in his car, who
+took them over the last mile to the police station? As it happened Mr.
+Waddington had frankly forgotten these details as inessential to his
+story. (He _had_ marched them a mile.)
+
+After telling it he was so far re-established in his own esteem as to
+propose their working together on the Ramblings after dinner. He even
+ordered coffee to be served in the library, as if nothing had happened
+there. Unfortunately, by some culpable oversight of Annie Trinder's, the
+cushions still bore the imprint of Elise. Awful realization came to him
+when Barbara, with a glance at the sofa, declined to sit on it. He had
+turned just in time to catch the flick of what in a bantering mood he
+had once called her "Barbaric smile." After all, she might have seen
+something. Not Mrs. Levitt's laughter but the thought of what Barbara
+might have seen was his punishment--that and being alone with her,
+knowing that she knew.
+
+
+5
+
+All this happened on a Wednesday, and Fanny wouldn't be back before
+Saturday. He had three whole days to be alone with Barbara.
+
+He had thought that no punishment could be worse than that, but as the
+three days passed and Barbara continued to behave as though nothing had
+happened, he got used to it. It was on a Friday night, as he lay awake,
+reviewing for the hundredth time the situation, that his conscience
+pointed out to him how he really stood. There was a worse punishment
+than Barbara's knowing.
+
+If Fanny knew--
+
+There were all sorts of ways in which she might get to know. Barbara
+might tell her. The two were as thick as thieves. And if the child
+turned jealous and hysterical--She had never liked Elise. Or she might
+tell Ralph Bevan and he might tell Fanny, or he might tell somebody who
+would tell her. There were always plenty of people about who considered
+it their duty to report these things.
+
+Of course, if he threw himself on Barbara's mercy, and exacted a promise
+from her not to tell, he knew she would keep it. But supposing all the
+time she hadn't seen or suspected anything? Supposing her calm manner
+came from a mind innocent of all seeing and suspecting? Then he would
+have given himself away for nothing.
+
+Besides, even if Barbara never said anything, there was Elise. No
+knowing what Elise might do or say in her vulgar fury. She might tell
+Toby or Markham, and the two might make themselves damnably unpleasant.
+The story would be all over the county in no time.
+
+And there were the servants. Supposing one of the women took it into her
+head to give notice on account of "goings on?"
+
+He couldn't live in peace so long as all or any of these things were
+possible.
+
+The only thing was to be beforehand with Barbara and Bevan and Elise and
+Toby and Markham and the servants; to tell Fanny himself before any of
+them could get in first. The more he thought about it the more he was
+persuaded that this was the only right, the only straightforward and
+manly thing to do; at the same time it occurred to him that by
+suppressing a few unimportant details he could really give a very
+satisfactory account of the whole affair. It would not be necessary, for
+instance, to tell Fanny what his intentions had been, if indeed he had
+ever had any. For, as he went again and again over the whole stupid
+business, his intentions--those that related to the little house in
+Cheltenham or St. John's Wood--tended to sink back into the dream state
+from which they had arisen, clearing his conscience more and more from
+any actual offence. He had, in fact, nothing to account for but his
+attitude, the rather compromising attitude in which Barbara had found
+him. And that could be very easily explained away. Fanny was not one of
+those exacting, jealous women; she would be ready to accept a reasonable
+explanation of anything. And you could always appease her by a little
+attention.
+
+So on Friday afternoon Mr. Waddington himself drove the car down to Wyck
+Station and met Fanny on the platform. He made tea for her himself and
+waited on her, moving assiduously, and smiling an affectionate yet
+rather conscious smile. He was impelled to these acts spontaneously,
+because of that gentleness and tenderness towards Fanny which the bare
+thought of Elise was always enough to inspire him with.
+
+Thus, by sticking close to Fanny all the evening he contrived that
+Barbara should have no opportunity of saying anything to her. And in the
+last hour before bed-time, when they were alone together in the
+drawing-room, he began.
+
+He closed the door carefully behind Barbara and came back to his place,
+scowling like one overpowered by anxious thought. He exaggerated this
+expression on purpose, so that Fanny should notice it and give him his
+opening, which she did.
+
+"Well, old thing, what are _you_ looking so glum about?"
+
+"Do I look glum?"
+
+"Dismal. What is it?"
+
+He stood upright before the chinmeypiece, his conscience sustained by
+this posture of rectitude.
+
+"I'm not quite easy about Barbara," he said.
+
+"Barbara? What on earth has _she_ been doing?"
+
+"She's been doing nothing. It's--it's rather what she may do if you
+don't stop her."
+
+"I don't want to stop her," said Fanny, "if you're thinking of Ralph
+Bevan."
+
+"Ralph Bevan? I certainly am not thinking of him. Neither is she."
+
+"Well then, what?"
+
+"I was thinking of myself."
+
+"My dear, you surely don't imagine that Barbara's thinking of you?"
+
+"Not--not in the way you imply. The fact is, I was let in for a--a
+rather unpleasant scene the other day with Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"I always thought," said Fanny, "that woman would let you in for
+something. Well?"
+
+"Well, I hardly know how to tell you about it, my dear."
+
+"Why, was it as bad as all that? Perhaps I'd better not know."
+
+"I want you to know. I'm trying to tell you--because of Barbara."
+
+"I can't see where Barbara comes in."
+
+"She came into the library while it was happening--"
+
+Fanny laughed and it disconcerted him.
+
+"While what was happening?" she said. "You'd better tell me straight
+out. I don't suppose it was anything like as bad as you think it was."
+
+"I'm only afraid of what Barbara might think."
+
+"Oh, you can trust Barbara not to think things. She never does."
+
+Dear Fanny. He would have found his job of explaining atrociously
+difficult with any other woman. Any other woman would have entangled him
+tighter and tighter; but he could see that Fanny was trying to get it
+straight, to help him out with all his honour and self-respect and
+dignity intact. Every turn she gave to the conversation favoured him.
+
+"My dear, I'm afraid she saw something that I must say was open to
+misinterpretation. It wasn't my fault, but--"
+
+No. The better he remembered it the more clearly he saw it was Elise's
+fault, not his. And he could see that Fanny thought it was Elise's
+fault. This suggested the next step in the course that was only not
+perjury because it was so purely instinctive, the subterfuge of
+terrified vanity. It seemed to him that he had no plan; that he followed
+Fanny.
+
+"Upon my word I'd tell you straight out, Fanny, only I don't like to
+give the poor woman away."
+
+"Mrs. Levitt?" said Fanny. "You needn't mind. You may be quite sure that
+she'll give _you_ away if you don't."
+
+She was giving him a clear lead.
+
+When he began he had really had some thoughts of owning, somewhere about
+this point, that he had lost his head; but when it came to the point he
+saw that this admission was unnecessarily quixotic, and that he would
+be far safer if he suggested that Elise had lost hers. In fact, it was
+Fanny who had suggested it in the first place. It might not be
+altogether a fair imputation, but, hang it all, it was the only one that
+would really appease Fanny, and he had Fanny to think of and not Elise.
+He owed it her. For her sake he must give up the personal luxury of
+truthtelling. The thing would go no further with Fanny, and it was only
+what Fanny had believed herself in any case and always would believe.
+Elise would be no worse off as far as Fanny was concerned. So he fairly
+let himself go.
+
+"There's no knowing what she may do," he said. "She was in a thoroughly
+hysterical state. She'd come to me with her usual troubles--not able to
+pay her rent, and so on--and in talking she became very much upset and
+er--er--lost her head and took me completely by surprise."
+
+"That," he thought, "she certainly did."
+
+"You mean you lost yours too?" said Fanny mildly.
+
+"I did nothing of the sort. But I was rather alarmed. Before you could
+say 'knife' she'd gone off into a violent fit of hysterics, and I was
+just trying to bring her round when Barbara came in." His explanation
+was so much more plausible than the reality that he almost believed it
+himself. "I think," he said, pensively, "she _must_ have seen me
+bending over her."
+
+"And she didn't offer to help?"
+
+"No; she rushed in and she rushed out again. She may not have seen
+anything; but in case she did, I wish, my dear, you'd explain."
+
+"I think I'd better not," said Fanny, "in case she didn't."
+
+"No. But it worries me every time I think of it. She came right into the
+room. Besides," he said, "we've got to think of Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"Mrs. Levitt?"
+
+"Yes. Put yourself in her place. She wouldn't like it supposed that I
+was making love to her. She might consider the whole thing made her look
+as ridiculous as it made me."
+
+"I'd forgotten Mrs. Levitt's point of view. You rather gave me to
+understand that was what she wanted."
+
+"I never said anything of the sort." Seeing that the explanation was
+going so well he could afford to be magnanimous.
+
+"I must have imagined it," said Fanny. "She recovered, I suppose, and
+you got rid of her?"
+
+"Yes, I got rid of her all right."
+
+"Well," said Fanny, gathering herself up to go to bed, "I shouldn't
+worry any more about it. I'll make it straight with Barbara."
+
+She went up to Barbara's bedroom, where Barbara, still dressed, sat
+reading over the fire.
+
+"Come in, you darling," Barbara said. She got up and crouched on the
+hearthrug, leaving her chair for Fanny.
+
+Fanny came in and sat down.
+
+"Barbara," she said, "what's all this about Horatio and Mrs. Levitt?"
+
+"I don't know," said Barbara flatly, with sudden presence of mind.
+
+"I said you didn't. But the poor old thing goes on and on about it. He
+thinks you saw something the other day. Something you didn't understand.
+Did you?"
+
+Barbara said nothing. She stared away from Fanny.
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Of course I didn't."
+
+"Of course you did. He says you must have seen. And it's worrying him no
+end."
+
+"I saw something. But he needn't worry. I understood all right"
+
+"What did you see?"
+
+"Nothing. Nothing that mattered."
+
+"It matters most awfully to me."
+
+"I don't think it need," said Barbara.
+
+"But it _does_. In a sense I don't mind what he does, and in a sense I
+do. I still care enough for that."
+
+"I don't think there was anything you need mind so awfully."
+
+"Yes, but there _was_ something. He said there was. He was afraid you'd
+misunderstand it. He said he was bending over her when you came in."
+
+"Well, he _was_ bending a bit."
+
+"What was _she_ doing?"
+
+"She was laughing."
+
+"In hysterics?"
+
+She saw it all.
+
+"I suppose you might call it hysterics. They weren't nice hysterics,
+though. She isn't a nice woman."
+
+"No. But he was making love to her, and she was laughing at him. She was
+nice enough for that."
+
+"If that's nice."
+
+"Why, what else could the poor woman do if she's honest?"
+
+"Oh, she's honest enough in _that_ way," said Barbara.
+
+"And he couldn't see it. He's so intent on his own beautiful
+Postlethwaite nose, he can't see anything that goes on under it....
+Still, honest or not honest, she's a beast, Barbara. When they'd been
+such pals and he'd helped her, to have gone and rounded on the poor
+thing like that. She might just as well have pulled his Postlethwaite
+nose. It couldn't have hurt more."
+
+"Oh, I think he'll get over it."
+
+"I mean it couldn't have hurt _me_ more."
+
+"She _is_ a beast," said Barbara. "I bet you anything you like it's her
+fault. She drove him to it."
+
+"No, Barbara, it was _my_ fault. _I_ drove him. I'm always laughing at
+him, and he can't bear being laughed at. It makes him feel all stuffy
+and middle-aged. He only goes in for passion because it makes him feel
+young."
+
+"It isn't really passion," said Barbara.
+
+"No, you wise thing, it isn't. If it was I could forgive him. I could
+forgive it if he really felt young. It's this ghastly affectation I
+can't stand.... But it's my fault, Barbara, my fault. I should have kept
+him young...."
+
+They sat silent, Barbara at Fanny's feet. Presently Fanny drew the
+girl's head down into her lap.
+
+"You'll never be old, Barbara," she said. "And Ralph won't."
+
+"What made you think of Ralph, Fanny?"
+
+"Horatio, of course."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+1
+
+If any rumour circulated round Wyck-on-the-Hill, sooner or later it was
+bound to reach the old lady at the Dower House. The Dower House was the
+redistributing centre for the news of the district.
+
+Thus Mr. Waddington heard that Mrs. Levitt was talking about letting the
+White House furnished; that she was in debt to all the tradesmen in the
+place; that her rent at Mrs. Trinder's was still owing; that her losses
+at bridge were never paid for. He heard that if Major Markham had been
+thinking of Mrs. Levitt, he had changed his mind; there was even a
+definite rumour about a broken engagement. Anyhow, Major Markham was now
+paying unmistakable attentions to the youngest Miss Hawtrey of
+Medlicott. But as, engagement or no engagement, his attentions to Mrs.
+Levitt had been unmistakable too, their rupture required some
+explanation. It was supposed that the letter which the Major's mother,
+old Mrs. Markham of Medlicott, received from her daughter, Mrs. Dick
+Benham of Tunbridge Wells, did very thoroughly explain it. There had
+been "things" in that letter which Mrs. Markham had not been able to
+repeat, but you gathered from her singular reticence that they had
+something to do with Dick Benham and Mrs. Levitt, and that they showed
+conclusively that Elise was not what old Mrs. Waddington called "a nice
+woman."
+
+"They say she led Frank Levitt an awful life. The Benhams, my dear,
+won't have her in the house."
+
+But all this was trivial compared with the correspondence that now
+passed between Mr. Waddington and Elise. He admitted now that old
+Corbett had known what he was talking about when he had warned him that
+he would be landed--landed, if he didn't take care, to the tune of five
+hundred and fifty-five pounds. His letters to Mrs. Levitt, dictated to
+Barbara Madden, revealed the care he had to take. From motives which
+appeared to him chivalrous he had refrained from showing Barbara Mrs.
+Levitt's letters to him. He left her to gather their crude substance
+from his admirable replies.
+
+"'MY DEAR MRS. LEVITT:
+
+"'I am afraid I must advise you to give up the scheme if it depends on
+my co-operation. I thought I had defined my position--'
+
+"Defined my position is good, I think."
+
+"It sounds good," said Barbara.
+
+"'That position remains what it was. And as your exceptionally fine
+intelligence cannot fail to understand it, no more need be said.
+
+"'At least I hope it is so. I should be sorry if our very pleasant
+relations terminated in disappointment--'"
+
+For one instant she could see him smile, feeling voluptuously the sharp,
+bright edge of his word before it cut him. He drew back, scowling above
+a sudden sombre flush of memory.
+
+"Disappointment--" said Barbara, giving him his cue.
+
+"Disappointment is not quite the word. I want something--something more
+chivalrous."
+
+His eyes turned away from her, pretending to look for it.
+
+"Ah--now I have it. 'Very pleasant relations terminated on a note--on a
+note of--on an unexpected note.
+
+"'With kind regards, very sincerely yours,
+
+"'HORATIO BYSSHE WADDINGTON.'
+
+"You will see, Barbara, that I am saying precisely the same thing, but
+saying it inoffensively, as a gentleman should."
+
+Forty-eight hours later he dictated:
+
+"'DEAR MRS. LEVITT:
+
+"'No: I have no suggestion to make except that you curtail your very
+considerable expenditure. For the rest, believe me it is as disagreeable
+for me to be obliged to refuse your request as I am sure it must be for
+you to make it--'
+
+"H'm. Rest--request. That won't do. 'As disagreeable for me to have to
+refuse as it must be for you to ask.'
+
+"Simpler, that. Never use an elaborate phrase where a simple one will
+do.
+
+"'You are good enough to say I have done so much for you in the past. I
+have done what I could; but you will pardon me if I say there is a limit
+beyond which I cannot go.
+
+"'Sincerely yours,
+
+"'HORATIO B. WADDINGTON.'
+
+"I've sent her a cheque for fifty-five pounds already. That ought to
+have settled her."
+
+"Settled her? You don't mean to say you sent her a _cheque?_"
+
+"I did."
+
+"You oughtn't to have sent her anything at all."
+
+"But I'd promised it, Barbara--"
+
+"I don't care. You ought to have waited."
+
+"I wanted to close the account and have done with her."
+
+"That isn't the way to close it, sending cheques. That cheque will have
+to go through Parson's Bank. Supposing Toby sees it?"
+
+"What if he does?"
+
+"He might object. He might even make a row about it."
+
+"What could I do? I had to pay her."
+
+"You could have made the cheque payable to me. It would have passed as
+my quarter's salary. I could have cashed it and you could have given her
+notes."
+
+"And if Toby remembered their numbers?"
+
+"You could have changed them for ten shilling notes in Cheltenham."
+
+"All these elaborate precautions!"
+
+"You can't be too precautions when you're dealing with a woman like
+that.... Is this all you've given her?"
+
+"All?"
+
+"Yes. Did you ever give her anything any other time?"
+
+"Well--possibly--from time to time--"
+
+"Have you any idea of the total amount?"
+
+"I can't say off-hand. And I can't see what it has to do with it."
+
+"It has everything to do with it. Can you find out?"
+
+"Certainly, if I look up my old cheque books."
+
+"You'd better do that now."
+
+He turned, gloomily, to his writing-table. The cheque books for the
+current year and the year before it betrayed various small loans to Mrs.
+Levitt, amounting in all to a hundred and fifty pounds odd.
+
+"Oh, dear," said Barbara, "all that's down against you. Still--it's all
+ante-Wednesday. What a pity you didn't pay her that fifty-five before
+your interview."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"It's pretty certain she's misinterpreted your paying it now so soon."
+
+"After the interview? Do you really think she misunderstood me,
+Barbara?"
+
+"I think she wants you to think she did."
+
+"You think she's trying--trying--to--"
+
+"To sell you her silence? Yes, I do."
+
+"Good God! I never thought of that. Blackmail."
+
+"I don't suppose for a minute she thinks she's blackmailing you. She's
+just trying it on.... And she may raise her price, too. She won't rest
+till she's got that five hundred out of you."
+
+Mrs. Levitt's next communication would appear to have supported
+Barbara's suspicion, for Mr. Waddington was compelled to answer it thus:
+
+"DEAR MRS. LEVITT:
+
+"You say you were 'right then' and that my 'promises' were
+'conditional'"--
+
+(You could tell where the inverted commas came by the biting clip of his
+tone.)
+
+--"I fail to appreciate the point of this allusion. I cannot imagine
+what conditions you refer to. I made none. As for promises, I am not
+responsible for the somewhat restricted interpretation you see fit to
+put on a friend's general expressions of goodwill.
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"HORATIO BYSSHE WADDINGTON."
+
+His last letter, a day later, never got as far as its signature.
+
+"DEAR MADAM:
+
+"My decision will not be affected by the contingency you suggest. You
+are at perfect liberty to say what you like. Nobody will believe you."
+
+"That, I think, is as far as I can go."
+
+"Much too far," said Barbara.
+
+"And that's taking her too seriously."
+
+"Much. You mustn't send that letter."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it gives you away."
+
+"Gives me away? It seems to me most guarded."
+
+"It isn't. It implies that there _are_ things she might say. Even if you
+don't mind her saying them you mustn't put it in writing."
+
+"Ah-h. There's something in that. Of course, I could threaten her with a
+lawyer's letter. But somehow--The fact is, Barbara, if you're a
+decent man you're handicapped in dealing with a lady. Delicacy. There
+are things that could be said. Material things--most material to the
+case. But I can't say them."
+
+"No. You can't say them. But I can. I think I could stop the whole thing
+in five minutes, if I saw Mrs. Levitt. Will you leave it to me?"
+
+"Come--I don't know--"
+
+"Why not? I assure you it'll be all right."
+
+"Well. Perhaps. It's a matter of business. A pure matter of business."
+
+"It certainly is that. There's no reason why you shouldn't hand it over
+to your secretary."
+
+He hesitated. He was still afraid of what Elise might say to Barbara.
+
+"You will understand that she is in a very unbalanced state. Excitable.
+A woman in that state is apt to put interpretations on the most
+innocent--er--acts."
+
+"She won't be able to put on any after I've done with her. If it comes
+to that, I can put on interpretations too."
+
+Mr. Waddington then, at Barbara's dictation, wrote a short note to Mrs.
+Levitt inviting her to call and see him that afternoon at three o'clock.
+
+
+2
+
+At three o'clock Barbara was ready for her.
+
+She had assumed for the occasion her War Office manner, that firm
+sweetness with which she used to stand between importunate interviewers
+and her chief. It had made her the joy of her department.
+
+"Mr. Waddington is extremely sorry he is not able to see you himself. He
+is engaged with his agent at the moment."
+
+Mr. Waddington had, indeed, created that engagement.
+
+"Engaged? But I have an appointment."
+
+"Yes. He's very sorry. He said if there was anything I could do for
+you--"
+
+"Thank you, Miss Madden. If it's all the same to you, I'd much rather
+see Mr. Waddington himself. I can wait."
+
+"I wouldn't advise you to. I'm afraid he may be a long time. He has some
+very important business on hand just now."
+
+"_My_ business," said Mrs. Levitt, "is very important."
+
+"Oh, if it's only business," Barbara said, "I think we can settle it at
+once. I've had most of the correspondence in my hands and I think I know
+all the circumstances."
+
+"You have had the correspondence in your hands?"
+
+"Well, you see, I'm Mr. Waddington's secretary. That's what I'm here
+for."
+
+"I didn't know he trusted his private business to his secretary."
+
+"He's obliged to. He has so much of it. You surely don't expect him to
+copy out his own letters?"
+
+"I don't expect him to hand over my letters to other people to read."
+
+"I haven't read your letters, Mrs. Levitt. I've merely taken down his
+answers to copy out and file for reference."
+
+"Then, my dear Miss Madden, you don't know all the circumstances."
+
+"At any rate, I can tell you what Mr. Waddington intends to do and what
+he doesn't. You want to see him, I suppose, about the loan for the
+investment?"
+
+Mrs. Levitt was too profoundly disconcerted to reply.
+
+Barbara went on in her firm sweetness. "I know he's very sorry not to be
+able to do more, but, as you know, he did not advise the investment and
+he can't possibly advance anything for it beyond the fifty pounds he has
+already paid you."
+
+"Since you know so much about it," said Mrs. Levitt with a certain calm,
+subdued truculence, "you may as well know everything. You are quite
+mistaken in supposing that Mr. Waddington did not advise the investment.
+On the contrary, it was on his representations that I decided to invest.
+And it was on the strength of the security he offered that my solicitors
+advanced me the money. He is responsible for the whole business; he has
+made me enter into engagements that I cannot meet without him, and when
+I ask him to fulfil his pledges he lets me down."
+
+"I don't think Mr. Waddington knows that your solicitors advanced the
+money. There is no reference to them in the correspondence."
+
+"I think, if you'll look through your _files_, or if Mr. Waddington will
+look through his, you'll find you are mistaken."
+
+"I can tell Mr. Waddington what you've told me and let you know what he
+says. If you don't mind waiting a minute I can let you know now."
+
+She sought out Mr. Waddington in his office--luckily it was situated in
+the kitchen wing, the one farthest from the library. She found him alone
+in it (the agent had gone), sitting in a hard Windsor chair. He knew
+that Elise couldn't pursue him into his office; it was even doubtful
+whether she knew where it was. He had retreated into it as into some
+impregnable position.
+
+Not that he looked safe. His face sagged more than ever, as though the
+Postlethwaite nose had withdrawn its support from that pale flesh of
+funk. If it had any clear meaning at all it expressed a terrified
+expectation of blackmail. His very moustache and hair drooped
+lamentably.
+
+"Are you disengaged?" she said.
+
+"Yes. But for God's sake don't tell her that."
+
+"It's all right. She knows she isn't going to see you."
+
+"Well?"
+
+She felt the queer, pathetic clinging of his mind to her as if it
+realized that she held his honour and Fanny's happiness in her hands.
+
+"She's not going to give up that five hundred without a struggle."
+
+"The deuce she isn't. On what grounds does she claim it?"
+
+"She says you advised her to make a certain investment, and that you
+promised to lend her half the sum she wanted."
+
+"I made no promise. I said, 'Perhaps that sum might be forthcoming.' I
+made it very clear that it would depend on circumstances."
+
+"On circumstances that she understood--knew about?"
+
+"Er--on circumstances that--No. She didn't know about them."
+
+"Still, you made conditions?"
+
+"No. I made--a mental reservation."
+
+"She seems to be aware of the circumstances that influenced you. She
+thinks you've gone back on your word."
+
+"I have gone back on nothing. My word's sacred. The woman lies."
+
+"She sticks to it that the promise was made, that on the strength of it
+she invested a certain sum of money through her solicitors, that they
+advanced the money on that security and you advised the investment."
+
+"I did not advise it. I advised her to give it up. I wrote to her. You
+took down the letter.... No, you didn't. I copied that one myself."
+
+"Have you got it? I'd better show it her."
+
+"Yes. It's--it's--confound it, it's in my private drawer."
+
+"Can't I find it?"
+
+He hesitated. He didn't like the idea of anybody, even little Barbara,
+rummaging in his private drawer, but he had to choose the lesser of two
+evils, and that letter would put the matter beyond a doubt.
+
+"Here's the key," he said, and gave it her. "It's dated October the
+thirtieth or thirty-first. But it's all humbug. I've reason to believe
+that money was never invested at all. It's all debts. She hasn't a leg
+to stand on. Not a leg."
+
+"Not a stump," said Barbara. "Leave her to me."
+
+She went back to the library. Mrs. Levitt's face lifted itself in
+excited questioning.
+
+"One moment, Mrs. Levitt."
+
+After a slightly prolonged search in Mr. Waddington's private drawer she
+found the letter of October tie thirty-first, and returned with it to
+the office. It was very short and clear:
+
+"MY DEAR ELISE:
+
+"I cannot promise anything--it depends on circumstances. But if you sent
+me the name and address of your solicitors it might help."
+
+"Take it," he said, "and show it her."
+
+
+3
+
+Barbara went back again to the library and her final battle with Elise.
+
+This time she had armed herself with the cheque books.
+
+Mrs. Levitt began, "Well--?"
+
+"Mr. Waddington says he is very sorry if there's any misunderstanding. I
+don't know whether you remember getting this letter from him?"
+
+Mrs. Levitt blinked hard as she read the letter.
+
+"Of course I remember."
+
+"You see that he could hardly have stated his position more clearly."
+
+"But--this letter is dated October the thirty-first. The promise I refer
+to was made long after that."
+
+"It doesn't appear so from his letters--all that I've taken down. If you
+can show me anything in writing--"
+
+"Writing? Mr. Waddington is a gentleman and he was my friend. I never
+dreamed of pinning him down to promises in writing. I thought his word
+was enough. I never dreamed of his going back on it. And after
+compromising me the way he's done."
+
+Barbara's eyebrows lifted delicately, innocently. "_Has_ he compromised
+you?"
+
+"He has."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Never mind how. Quite enough to start all sorts of unpleasant stories."
+
+"You shouldn't listen to them. People will tell stories without anything
+to start them."
+
+"That doesn't make them any less unpleasant. I should have thought the
+very least Mr. Waddington could do--"
+
+"Would be to pay you compensation?"
+
+"There can be no compensation in a case of this sort, Miss Madden. I'm
+not talking about compensation. Mr. Waddington must realize that he
+cannot compromise me without compromising himself."
+
+"I should think he would realize it, you know."
+
+"Then he ought to realize that he is not exactly in a position to
+repudiate his engagements."
+
+"Do you consider that _you_ are in a position--exactly--to hold him to
+engagements he never entered into?"
+
+"I've told you already that he has let me in for engagements that I
+cannot meet if he goes back on his word."
+
+"I see. And you want to make it unpleasant for him. As unpleasant as you
+possibly can?"
+
+"I can make it even more unpleasant for him, Miss Madden, than it is for
+me."
+
+"What, after all the compromising?"
+
+"I think so. If, for instance, I chose to tell somebody what happened
+the other day, what you saw yourself."
+
+"_Did_ I see anything?"
+
+"You can't deny that you saw something you were not meant to see."
+
+"You mean Wednesday afternoon? Well, if Mr. Waddington chose to say that
+I saw you in a bad fit of hysterics I shouldn't deny _that_."
+
+"I see. You're well posted, Miss Madden."
+
+"I am, rather. But supposing you told everybody in the place he was
+caught making love to you, what good would it do you?"
+
+"Excuse me, we're not talking about the good it would do me, but the
+harm it would do him."
+
+"Same thing," said Barbara. "Supposing you told everybody and nobody
+believed you?"
+
+"Everybody will believe me. You forget that those stories have been
+going about long before Wednesday."
+
+"All the better for Mr. Waddington and all the worse for you. You were
+compromised before Wednesday. Then why, if you didn't like being
+compromised, did you consent to come to tea alone with him when his wife
+was away?"
+
+"I came on business, _as you know_."
+
+"You came to borrow money from a man who had compromised you? If you're
+so careful of your reputation I should have thought that would have been
+the last thing you'd have done."
+
+"You're forgetting my friendship with Mr. Waddington."
+
+"You said business just now. Friendship or business, or business _and_
+friendship, I don't think you're making out a very good case for
+yourself, Mrs. Levitt. But supposing you did make it out, and supposing
+Mr. Waddington did lose his head and _was_ making love to you on
+Wednesday, do you imagine people here are going to take _your_ part
+against _him_?"
+
+"He's not so popular in Wyck as all that."
+
+"He mayn't be, but his caste is. Immensely popular with the county,
+which I suppose is all you care about. You must remember, Mrs. Levitt,
+that he's Mr. Waddington of Wyck; you're not fighting one Mr.
+Waddington, but three hundred years of Waddingtons. You're up against
+all his ancestors."
+
+"I don't care _that_ for his ancestors," said Mrs. Levitt with a
+gesture of the thumb.
+
+"You may not. I certainly don't. But other people do. Major Markham, the
+Hawtreys, the Thurstons, even the Corbetts, do you suppose they're all
+going to turn against him because he lost his head for a minute on a
+Wednesday? Ten to one they'll all think, and _say_, you made him do it."
+
+"I made him? Preposterous!"
+
+"Not so preposterous as you imagine. You must make allowances for
+people's prejudices. If you wanted to stand clear you shouldn't have
+taken all that money from him."
+
+"All that money indeed! A loan, a mere temporary loan, for an investment
+he recommended."
+
+"Not only that loan, but--" Barbara produced the cheque books with
+their damning counterfoils. "Look here--twenty-five pounds on the
+thirty-first of January. And here--October last year, and July, and
+January before that--More than a hundred and fifty altogether. How
+are you going to account for that?
+
+"And who's going to believe that Mr. Waddington paid all that for
+nothing, if some particularly nasty person gets up and says he didn't?
+You see what a horrible position you'd be in, don't you?"
+
+Mrs. Levitt didn't answer. Her face thickened slightly with a dreadful
+flush. Her nerve was going.
+
+Barbara watched it go. She followed up her advantage. "And supposing I
+were to tell everybody--his friend, Major Markham, say--that you were
+pressing him for that five hundred, immediately _after_ the affair of
+Wednesday, on threats of exposure, wouldn't that look very like
+blackmail?"
+
+"Blackmail? _Really_, Miss Madden--"
+
+"I don't suppose you _mean_ it for blackmail; I'm only pointing out what
+it'll look like. It won't look _well_.... Much better face the facts.
+You _can't_ do Mr. Waddington any real harm, short of forcing his wife
+to get a separation."
+
+There was a black gleam in Mrs. Levitt's eyes. "Precisely. And
+supposing--since we _are_ supposing--I told Mrs. Waddington of his
+behaviour?"
+
+"Too late. Mr. Waddington has told her himself."
+
+"His own version."
+
+"Certainly, his own version."
+
+"And supposing I gave mine?"
+
+"Do. Whatever you say it'll be your word against ours and she won't
+believe you. If she did she'd think it was all your fault.... And
+remember, I have the evidence for your attempts at blackmail.
+
+"I don't think," said Barbara, going to the door and opening it,
+"there's anything more to be said."
+
+Mrs. Levitt walked out with her agitated waddle. Barbara followed her
+amicably to the front door. There Elise made her last stand.
+
+"_Good_ afternoon, Miss Madden. I congratulate Mr. Waddington--on the
+partnership."
+
+Barbara rushed to the relief of the besieged in his office redoubt.
+
+"It's all over!" she shouted at him joyously.
+
+Mr. Waddington did not answer all at once. He was still sitting in his
+uneasy Windsor chair, absorbed in meditation. He had brought out a
+little note from his inmost pocket and as he looked at it he smiled.
+
+It began thus, and its date was the Saturday following that dreadful
+Wednesday:
+
+"MY DEAR MR. WADDINGTON:
+
+"After the way you have stood by me and helped me in the past, I cannot
+believe that it is all over, and that I can come to you, my generous
+friend, and be repulsed--"
+
+He looked up. "How did she behave, Barbara?" "Oh--she wanted to bite--to
+bite badly; but I drew all her teeth, very gently, one by one." Teeth.
+Elise's teeth--drawn by Barbara.
+
+He tore the note into little bits, and, as he watched them flutter into
+the waste-paper basket, he sighed. He rose heavily.
+
+"Let's go and tell Fanny all about it," said Barbara.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+1
+
+"I hope you realize, Horatio, that it was Barbara who got you out of
+that mess?"
+
+"Barbara showed a great deal of intelligence; but you must give me
+credit for some tact and discretion of my own," Mr. Waddington said as
+he left the drawing-room.
+
+"_Was_ he tactful and discreet?"
+
+"His first letters," said Barbara, "were masterpieces of tact and
+discretion. Before he saw the danger. Afterwards I think his nerve may
+have gone a bit. Whose wouldn't?"
+
+"It _was_ clever of you, Barbara. All the same, it must have been rather
+awful, going for her like that."
+
+"Yes."
+
+Now that it was all over Barbara saw that it had been awful; rather like
+a dog-fight. She had been going round and round, rolling with Mrs.
+Levitt in the mud; so much mud that for purposes of sheer cleanliness it
+hardly seemed to matter which of them was top dog at the finish. All she
+could see was that it had to be done and there wasn't anybody else to do
+it.
+
+"You see," Fanny went on, "she had a sort of case. He _was_ making love
+to her and she didn't like it. It doesn't seem quite fair to turn on her
+after that."
+
+"She did all the turning. I wouldn't have said a thing if she hadn't
+tried to put the screw on. Somebody had got to stop it."
+
+"Yes," Fanny said. "Yes. Still, I wish we could have let her go in
+peace."
+
+"There wasn't any peace for her to go in; and she wouldn't have gone.
+She'd have been here now, with his poor thumb in her screw. After all,
+Fanny, I only pointed out how beastly it would be for her if she didn't
+go. And I only did that because he was your husband, and it was your
+thumb, really."
+
+"Yes, darling, yes; I know what you did it for. ... Oh, I wish she
+wasn't so horribly badly off."
+
+"So do I, then it wouldn't have happened. But how can you be such an
+angel to her, Fanny?"
+
+"I'm not. I'm only decent. I hate using our position to break her poor
+back. Telling her we're Waddingtons of Wyck and she's only Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"It was the handiest weapon. And you didn't use it. _I'm_ not a
+Waddington of Wyck. Besides, it's true; she can't blackmail him in his
+own county. You don't seem to realize how horrid she was, and how jolly
+dangerous."
+
+"No," Fanny said, "I don't realize people's horridness. As for danger, I
+don't want to disparage your performance, Barbara, but she seems to me
+to have been an easy prey."
+
+"You _are_ disparaging me," said Barbara.
+
+"I'm not. I only don't like to think of you enjoying that nasty scrap."
+
+"I only enjoyed it on your account."
+
+"And I oughtn't to grudge you your enjoyment when we reap the benefit. I
+don't know what Horatio would have done without you. I shudder to think
+of the mess he'd have made of it himself."
+
+"He was making rather a mess of it," Barbara said, "when I took it on."
+
+"Well," said Fanny, "I daresay I'm a goose. Perhaps I ought to be
+grateful to Mrs. Levitt. If he was on the look-out for adventures, it's
+just as well he hit on one that'll keep him off it for the future. She'd
+have been far more deadly if she'd been a nice woman. If he _must_ make
+love."
+
+"Only then he couldn't very well have done it," Barbara said.
+
+"Oh, couldn't he! You never can tell what a man'll do, once he's begun,"
+said Fanny.
+
+
+2
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Levitt stayed on, having failed to let her house for the
+winter. She seemed to be acting on Barbara's advice and refraining from
+any malignant activity; for no report of the Waddington affair had as
+yet penetrated into the tea-parties and little dinners at
+Wyck-on-the-Hill. Punctually every Friday evening Mr. Thurston of the
+Elms, and either Mr. Hawtrey or young Hawtrey of Medlicott, turned up at
+the White House for their bridge. If Mrs. Dick Benham chose to write
+venomous letters about Elise Levitt to old Mrs. Markham, that was no
+reason why they should throw over an agreeable woman whose hospitality
+had made Wyck-on-the-Hill a place to live in, so long as she behaved
+decently _in_ the place. They kept it up till past midnight now that
+Mrs. Levitt had had the happy idea of serving a delicious supper at
+eleven. (She had paid her debts of honour with Mr. Waddington's five
+pounds; the fifty she reserved, in fancy, for the cost of the chickens
+and the trifles and the Sauterne.) In Mr. Thurston and the Hawtreys the
+bridge habit and the supper habit, and what Billy Hawtrey called the
+Levitty habit, was so strong that it overrode their sense of loyalty to
+Major Markham. The impression created by Mrs. Dick Benham only
+heightened their enjoyment in doing every Friday what Mrs. Thurston and
+Mrs. Hawtrey persisted in regarding as a risky thing. "There was no harm
+in Elise Levitt," they said.
+
+So every Friday, after midnight, respectable householders, sleeping on
+either side of the White House, were wakened by the sudden opening of
+her door, by shrill "Good nights" called out from the threshold and
+answered by bass voices up the street, by the shutting of the door and
+the shriek of the bolt as it slid to.
+
+And the Rector went about saying, in his genial way, that he liked Mrs.
+Levitt, that she was well connected, and that there was no harm in her.
+So long as any parishioner was a frequent attendant at church, and a
+regular subscriber to the coal and blanket club, and a reliable source
+of soup and puddings for the poor, it was hard to persuade him that
+there was any harm in them. Fanny Waddington said of him that if
+Beelzebub subscribed to his coal and blanket club he'd ask him to tea.
+He had a stiff face for uncharitable people; Elise was received almost
+ostentatiously at the rectory as a protest against scandal-mongering;
+and he made a point of stopping to talk to her when he met her in the
+street.
+
+This might have meant the complete rehabilitation of Elise, but that
+the Rector's geniality was too indiscriminate, too perfunctory, too
+Christian, as Fanny put it, to afford any sound social protection; and,
+ultimately, the approval of the rectory was disastrous to Elise, letting
+her in, as she afterwards complained bitterly, for Miss Gregg. Meanwhile
+it helped her with people like Mrs. Bostock and Mrs. Cleaver and Mrs.
+Jackson, who wanted to be charitable and to stand well with the Rector.
+
+Then, in the December following the Waddington affair, Wyck was
+astonished by the friendship that sprang up, suddenly, between Mrs.
+Levitt and Miss Gregg, the governess at the rectory.
+
+There was a reason for it--there always is a reason for these
+things--and Mrs. Bostock named it when she named young Billy Hawtrey.
+Friendship with Mrs. Levitt provided Miss Gregg with, unlimited
+facilities for meeting Billy, who was always running over from Medlicott
+to the White House. Miss Gregg's passion for young Billy hung by so
+slender, so nervous, and so insecure a thread that it required the
+continual support of conversation with an experienced and sympathetic
+friend. Miss Gregg had never known anybody so sympathetic and so
+experienced as Mrs. Levitt. The first time they were alone together she
+had seen by Elise's face that she had some secret like her own (Miss
+Gregg meant Major Markham), and that she would understand. And one
+strict confidence leading to another, before very long Miss Gregg had
+captured that part of Elise's secret that related to Mr. Waddington.
+
+It was through Miss Gregg's subsequent activities that it first became
+known in Wyck that Mrs. Levitt had referred to Mr. Waddington as "that
+horrible old man." This might have been very damaging to Mr. Waddington
+but that Annie Trinder, at the Manor, had told her aunt, Mrs. Trinder,
+that Mr. Waddington spoke of Mrs. Levitt as "that horrible woman," and
+had given orders that she was not to be admitted if she called. It was
+then felt that there might possibly be more than one side to the
+question.
+
+Then, bit by bit, through the repeated indiscretions of Miss Gregg, the
+whole affair of Mrs. Levitt and Mr. Waddington came out. It travelled
+direct from Miss Gregg to the younger Miss Hawtrey of Medlicott, and
+finally reached Sir John Corbett by way of old Hawtrey, who had it from
+his wife, who didn't believe a word of it.
+
+Sir John didn't believe a word of it, either. At any rate, that was what
+he said to Lady Corbett. To himself he wondered whether there wasn't
+"something in it." He would give a good deal to know, and he made up
+his mind that the next time he saw Waddington he'd get it out of him.
+
+He saw him the very next day.
+
+Ever since that dreadful Wednesday an uneasy mind had kept Mr.
+Waddington for ever calling on his neighbours. He wanted to find out
+from their behaviour and their faces whether they knew anything and how
+much they knew. He lived in perpetual fear of what that horrible woman
+might say or do. The memory of what _he_ had said and done that
+Wednesday no longer disturbed his complete satisfaction with himself. He
+couldn't think of Elise as horrible without at the same time thinking of
+himself as the pure and chivalrous spirit that had resisted her.
+Automatically he thought of himself as pure and chivalrous. And in the
+rare but beastly moments when he did remember what he had done and said
+to Elise and what Elise had done and said to him, when he felt again her
+hand beating him off and heard her voice crying out: "You old imbecile!"
+automatically he thought of her as cold. Some women were like
+that--cold. Deficient in natural feeling. Only an abnormal coldness
+could have made her repulse him as she did. She had told him to his
+face, in her indecent way, that love was _the_ most ridiculous thing.
+He couldn't, for the life of him, understand how a thing that was so
+delightful to other women could he ridiculous to Elise; but there it
+was.
+
+Absolutely abnormal, that. His vanity received immense consolation in
+thinking of Elise as abnormal.
+
+His mind passed without a jolt or a jar from one consideration to its
+opposite. Elise was cold and he was normally and nobly passionate Elise
+was horrible and he was chivalrously pure. Whichever way he had it he
+was consoled.
+
+But you couldn't tell in what awful light the thing might present itself
+to other people.
+
+It was this doubt that drove him to Underwoods one afternoon early in
+January, ostensibly to deliver his greetings for the New Year.
+
+After tea Sir John lured him into his library for a smoke. The peculiar
+smile and twinkle at play on his fat face should have warned Mr.
+Waddington of what was imminent.
+
+They puffed in an amicable silence for about two minutes before he
+began.
+
+"Ever see anything of Mrs. Levitt now?"
+
+Mr. Waddington raised his eyebrows as if surprised at this impertinence.
+He seemed to be debating with himself whether he would condescend to
+answer it or not.
+
+"No," he said presently, "I don't."
+
+"Taken my advice and dropped it, have you?"
+
+"I should say, rather, it dropped itself."
+
+"I'm glad to hear that, Waddington; I'm very glad to hear it. I always
+said, you know, you'd get landed if you didn't look out."
+
+"My dear Corbett, I did look out. You don't imagine I was going to be
+let in more than I could help."
+
+"Wise after the event, what?"
+
+Mr. Waddington thought: "He's trying to pump me." He was determined not
+to be pumped. Corbett should not get anything out of him.
+
+"After what event? Fanny's called several times, but she doesn't care to
+keep it up. Neither, to tell the honest truth, do I.... Why?"
+
+Sir John was twinkling at him in his exasperating way.
+
+"Why? Because, my dear fellow, the woman's going about everywhere saying
+she's given _you_ up."
+
+"I don't care," said Mr. Waddington, "what she says. Quite immaterial to
+me."
+
+"You mayn't care, but your friends do, Waddington."
+
+"It's very good of them. But they can save themselves the trouble."
+
+He thought: "He isn't going to get anything out of me."
+
+"Oh, come, you don't suppose we believe a word of it."
+
+They looked at each other. Sir John thought: "I'll get it out of him."
+And Mr. Waddington thought: "I'll get it out of him."
+
+"You might as well tell me what you're talking about," he said.
+
+"My dear chap, it's what Mrs. Levitt's talking about. That's the point."
+
+"Mrs. Levitt!"
+
+"Yes. She's a dangerous woman, Waddington. I told you you were doing a
+risky thing taking up with her like that.... And there's Hawtrey doing
+the same thing, the very same thing.... But he's a middle-aged man, so I
+suppose he thinks he's safe. ... But if he was ten years younger--
+Hang it all, Waddington, if I was a younger man I shouldn't feel safe. I
+shouldn't, really. I can't think what there is about her. There's
+something."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Waddington, "there's something."
+
+Something. He wasn't going to let Corbett think him so middle-aged that
+he was impervious to its charm.
+
+"What is it?" said Sir John. "She isn't handsome, yet she gets all the
+young fellows running after her. There was Markham, and Thurston, and
+there's young Hawtrey. It's only sober old chaps like me who don't get
+landed.... Upon my word, Waddington, I shouldn't blame you if you _had_
+lost your head."
+
+Mr. Waddington felt shaken in his determination not to let Corbett get
+it out of him. It was also clear that, if he did admit to having for one
+wild moment lost his head, Corbett would think none the worse of him. He
+would then be classed with Markham and young Billy, whereas if he denied
+it, he would only rank himself with old fossils like Corbett. And he
+couldn't bear it. There was such a thing as doing yourself an
+unnecessary injustice.
+
+Sir John watched him hovering round the trap he had laid for him.
+
+"Absolutely between ourselves," he said. "_Did_ you?"
+
+Under Mr. Waddington's iron-grey moustache you could see the
+Rabelaisian smile answering the Rabelaisian twinkle. For the life of him
+he couldn't resist it.
+
+"Well--between ourselves, Corbett, absolutely--to be perfectly honest, I
+did. There _is_ something about her.... Just for a second, you know. It
+didn't come to anything."
+
+"Didn't it? She says you made violent love to her."
+
+"I won't swear what I wouldn't have done if I hadn't pulled myself up
+in time."
+
+At this point it occurred to him that if Elise had betrayed the secret
+of his love-making she would also have told her own tale of its repulse.
+That had to be accounted for.
+
+"I can tell you one queer thing about that woman, Corbett. She's
+cold--cold."
+
+"Oh, come, Waddington--"
+
+"You wouldn't think it--"
+
+"I don't," said Sir John, with a loud guffaw.
+
+"But I assure you, my dear Corbett, she's simply wooden. Talk of making
+love, you might as well make love to--to a chair or a cabinet. I can
+tell you Markham's had a lucky escape."
+
+"I don't imagine that's what put him off," said Sir John. "He knew
+something."
+
+"What do you suppose he knew?"
+
+"Something the Benhams told them, I fancy. They'd some queer story.
+Rather think she ran after Dicky, and Mrs. Benham didn't like it."
+
+"Don't know what she wanted with him. Couldn't have been in love with
+him, I will say that for her."
+
+"Well, she seems to have preferred their bungalow to her own. Anyhow,
+they couldn't get her out of it."
+
+"I don't believe that story. We must be fair to the woman, Corbett."
+
+He thought he had really done it very well. Not only had he accounted
+honourably for his repulse, but he had cleared Elise. And he had cleared
+himself from the ghastly imputation of middle-age. Repulse or no
+repulse, he was proud of his spurt of youthful passion.
+
+And in another minute he had persuaded himself that his main motive had
+been the desire to be fair to Elise.
+
+"H'm! I don't know about being fair," said Sir John. "Anyhow, I
+congratulate you on your lucky escape."
+
+Mr. Waddington rose to go. "Of course--about what I told you--you won't
+let it go any further?"
+
+Sir John laughed out loud. "Of course I won't. Only wanted to know how
+far _you_ went. Might have gone farther and fared worse, what?"
+
+He rose, too, laughing. "If anybody tries to pump me I shall say you
+behaved very well. So you did, my dear fellow, so you did. Considering
+the provocation."
+
+He could afford to laugh. He had got it out of poor old Waddington, as
+he said he would. But to the eternal honour of Sir John Corbett, it did
+not go any further. When people tried to get it out of him he simply
+said that there was nothing in it, and that to his certain knowledge
+Waddington had behaved very well. As Barbara had prophesied, nobody
+believed that he had behaved otherwise. It was not for nothing that he
+was Mr. Waddington of Wyck.
+
+And in consequence of the revelations she had made to her friend, Miss
+Gregg, very early in the New Year Elise found other doors closed to her
+besides the Markhams' and the Waddingtons'. And behind the doors on each
+side of the White House respectable householders could sleep in their
+beds on Friday nights without fear of being wakened by the opening and
+shutting of Mrs. Levitt's door and by the shrill "Good nights" called
+out from its threshold and answered up the street The merry bridge
+parties and the little suppers were no more.
+
+Even the Rector's geniality grew more and more Christian and
+perfunctory, till he too left off stopping to talk to Mrs. Levitt when
+he met her in the street.
+
+
+3
+
+Mr. Waddington's confession to Sir John was about the only statement
+relating to the Waddington affair which did not go any further. Thus a
+very curious and interesting report of it reached Ralph Bevan through
+Colonel Grainger, when he heard for the first time of the part Barbara
+had played in it.
+
+In the story Elise had told in strict confidence to Miss Gregg, Mr.
+Waddington had been deadly afraid of her and had beaten a cowardly
+retreat behind Barbara's big guns. Not that either Elise or Miss Gregg
+would have admitted for one moment that her guns were big; Colonel
+Grainger had merely inferred the deadliness of her fire from the
+demoralization of the enemy.
+
+"Your little lady, Bevan," he said, "seems to have come off best in that
+encounter."
+
+"We needn't worry any more about the compact, Barbara, now I know about
+it," Ralph said, as they walked together. Snow had fallen. The Cotswolds
+were all white, netted with the purplish brown filigree-work of the
+trees. Their feet went crunching through the furry crystals of the snow.
+
+"No. That's one good thing she's done."
+
+"Was it very funny, your scrap?"
+
+"It seemed funnier at the time than it did afterwards. It was really
+rather beastly. Fanny didn't like it."
+
+"You could hardly expect her to. There's a limit to Fanny's sense of
+humour."
+
+"There's a limit to mine. Fanny was right. I had to fight her with the
+filthiest weapons. I had to tell her she couldn't do anything because he
+was Waddington of Wyck, and she was up against all his ancestors. I had
+to drag in his ancestors."
+
+"That was bad."
+
+"I know it was. It's what Fanny hated. And no wonder. She made me feel
+such a miserable little snob, Ralph."
+
+"Fanny did?"
+
+"Yes. _She_ couldn't have done it. She'd have let her do her damnedest."
+
+"That's because Fanny's an incurable little aristocrat. She's got more
+Waddington of Wyckedness in her little finger than Horatio has in all
+his ego; and she despises Mrs. Levitt. She wouldn't have condescended to
+scrap with her."
+
+"The horrible thing is, it's true. He can do what he likes and nothing
+happens to him. He can turn the Ballingers out of their house and
+nothing happens. He can make love to a woman who doesn't want to be made
+love to and nothing happens. Because he's Waddington of Wyck."
+
+"He's Waddington of Wyck, but he isn't such a bad old thing, really.
+People laugh at him, but they like him because he's so funny. And
+they've taken Mrs. Levitt's measure pretty accurately."
+
+"You don't think, then, I was too big a beast to her?"
+
+Ralph laughed.
+
+"Somebody had to save him, Ralph. After all, he's Fanny's husband."
+
+"Yes, after all, he's Fanny's husband."
+
+"So you don't--do you?"
+
+"Of course I don't.... What's he doing now?"
+
+"Oh, just pottering about with his book. It's nearly finished."
+
+"You've kept it up?"
+
+"Rather. There isn't a sentence he mightn't have written himself. I
+think I'm going to let him go back to Lower Wyck on the last page and
+end there. In his Manor. I thought of putting something in about
+holly-decked halls and Yule logs on the Christmas hearth. He was
+photographed the other day. In the snow."
+
+"Gorgeous."
+
+"I wonder if he'll really settle down now. Or if he'll do it all over
+again some day with somebody else."
+
+"You can't tell. You can't possibly tell. He may do anything."
+
+"That's what we feel about him," Barbara said.
+
+"Endless possibilities. Yet you'd think he couldn't go one better than
+Mrs. Levitt."
+
+For the next half-mile they disputed whether in the scene with Mrs.
+Levitt he was or was not really funny. Ralph was inclined to think that
+he might have been purely disgusting.
+
+"You didn't _see_ him, Ralph. You've no right to say he wasn't funny."
+
+"No. No. I didn't see him. You needn't rub it in, Barbara."
+
+"We've got to wait and see what he does next. It may be your turn any
+day."
+
+"We can't expect him to do very much for a little while. He must be a
+bit exhausted with this last stunt."
+
+"Yes. And the funny thing is he has moments when you don't laugh at him.
+Moments of calm, beautiful peace.... You come on him walking in his
+garden looking for snowdrops in the snow. Or he's sitting in his
+library, reading Buchan's 'History of the Great War.' Happy. Not
+thinking about himself at all. Then you're sorry you ever laughed at
+him."
+
+"I'm not," Ralph said. "He owes it us. He does nothing else to justify
+his existence."
+
+"Yes. But he exists. He exists. And somehow, it's pretty mysterious
+when you think of it. You wonder whether you mayn't have seen him all
+wrong. Whether all the time he isn't just, a simple old thing. When you
+get that feeling--of his mysteriousness, Ralph--somehow you're done."
+
+"I haven't had it yet."
+
+"Oh, it's there. You'll get it some day."
+
+"You see, Barbara, how right I was? We can't keep off him."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+1
+
+It was Sunday, the last week of Horry's holidays. All through supper he
+had been talking about cycling to Cirencester if the frost held, to
+skate on the canal.
+
+The frost did hold, and in the morning he strapped a cushion on the
+carrier of his bicycle and called up the stairs to Barbara.
+
+"Come along, Barbara, let's go to Cirencester."
+
+Barbara appeared, ready, carrying her skates. Mr. Waddington had let her
+off the Ramblings, yet, all of a sudden, she looked depressed.
+
+"Oh, Horry," she said, "I was going with Ralph."
+
+"You are _not_," said Horry. "You're always going with Ralph. You're
+jolly well coming with me this time."
+
+"But I promised him."
+
+"You'd no business to promise him, when it's the last week of my
+holidays. 'Tisn't fair."
+
+Fanny came out into the hall.
+
+"Horry," she said, "don't worry Barbara. Can't you see she wants to go
+with Ralph?"
+
+"That's exactly," he said, "what I complain of."
+
+She shook her head at him. "You're your father all over again," she
+said.
+
+"I'll swear I'm not," said Horry.
+
+"If you were half as polite as your father it wouldn't be a bad thing."
+
+There was a sound of explosions in the drive. "There's Ralph come to
+settle it himself," said Fanny. And at that point, Mr. Waddington came
+out on them, suddenly, from the cloak-room.
+
+"What's all this?" he said. He looked with disgust at the skates
+dangling from Barbara's hand. He went out into the porch and looked with
+disgust at Ralph and at the motor-bicycles. He thought with bitterness
+of the Cirencester canal. He couldn't skate. Even when he was Horry's
+age he hadn't skated. He couldn't ride a motor-bicycle. When he looked
+at the beastly things and thought of their complicated machinery and
+their evil fascination for Barbara, he hated them. He hated Horry and
+Ralph standing up before Barbara, handsome, vibrating with youth and
+health and energy.
+
+"I won't have Barbara riding on that thing. It isn't safe. If he skids
+on the snow he'll break her neck."
+
+"Much more likely to break his own neck," said Horry.
+
+In his savage interior Mr. Waddington wished he would, and Horry too.
+
+"He won't skid," said Barbara; "if he does I'll hop off."
+
+"We'll come back," said Ralph, "if we don't get on all right."
+
+They started in a duet of explosions, the motor-bicycles hissing and
+crunching through the light snow. Barbara, swinging on Ralph's carrier,
+waved her hand light-heartedly to Mr. Waddington. He hated Barbara; but
+far more than Barbara he hated Horry, and far more than Horry he hated
+Ralph.
+
+"He'd no business to take her," he said. "She'd no business to go."
+
+"You can't stop them, my dear," said Fanny; "they're too young."
+
+"Well, if they come back with their necks broken they'll have only
+themselves to thank."
+
+He took a ferocious pleasure in thinking of Horry and Ralph and Barbara
+with their necks broken.
+
+Fanny stared at him. "I wonder what's made him so cross," she thought.
+"He looks as if he'd got a chill on the liver.".... "Horatio, have you
+got a chill on the liver?"
+
+"Now, what on earth put that into your head?"
+
+"Your face. You look just a little off colour, darling."
+
+At that moment Mr. Waddington began to sneeze.
+
+"There, I knew you'd caught cold. You oughtn't to go standing about in
+draughts."
+
+"I haven't caught cold," said Mr. Waddington.
+
+But he shut himself up in his library and stayed there, huddled in his
+armchair. From time to time he leaned forward and stooped over the
+hearth, holding his chest and stomach as near as possible to the fire.
+Shivers like thin icicles kept on slipping down his spine.
+
+At lunch-time he complained that there was nothing he could eat, and
+before the meal was over he went back to his library and his fire. Fanny
+sat with him there.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't go standing out in the cold," she said. She knew
+that on Saturday he had stood for more than ten minutes in the fallen
+snow of the park to be photographed. And he wouldn't wear his overcoat
+because he thought he looked younger without it, and slenderer.
+
+"No wonder you've got a chill," she said.
+
+"I didn't get it then. I got it yesterday in the garden."
+
+She remembered. He had been wandering about the garden, after church,
+looking for snowdrops in the snow. Barbara had worn the snowdrops in the
+breast of her gown last night.
+
+He nourished his resentment on that memory and on the thought that he
+had got his chill picking snowdrops for Barbara.
+
+At tea-time he drank a little tea, but he couldn't eat anything. He felt
+sick and his head ached. At dinner-time, on Fanny's advice, he went to
+bed and Fanny took his temperature.
+
+A hundred and one. He turned the thermometer in his hand, gazing
+earnestly at the slender silver thread. He was gratified to know that
+his temperature was a hundred and one and that Fanny was frightened and
+had sent for the doctor. He had a queer, satisfied, exalted feeling, now
+that he was in for it. When Barbara came back she would know what he was
+in for and be frightened, too. He would have been still more gratified
+if he had known that without him dinner was a miserable affair. Fanny
+showed that she was frightened, and her fear flattened down the high
+spirits of Ralph and Barbara and Horry, returned from their skating.
+
+"You see, Barbara," said Ralph, when they had left Fanny and Horry with
+the doctor, "we can't live without him."
+
+They listened at the smoke-room door for the sound of Dr. Ransome's
+departure, and Ralph waited while Barbara went back and brought him the
+verdict.
+
+"It's flu, and a touch of congestion of the lungs."
+
+They looked at each other sorrowfully, so sorrowfully that they smiled.
+
+"Yet we can smile," he said.
+
+"You know," said Barbara, "he got it standing in the snow, while
+Pyecraft photographed him."
+
+"It's the way," Ralph said, "he would get it."
+
+And Barbara laughed. But, all the same, she felt a distinct pang at her
+heart every time she went into her bedroom and saw, in its glass on her
+dressing-table, the bunch of snowdrops that Mr. Waddington had picked
+for her in the snow. They made a pattern on her mind; white cones
+hanging down; sharp green blades piercing; green stalks held in the
+crystal of the water.
+
+
+2
+
+"Nobody but a fool," said Horry, "would have stood out in the snow to be
+photographed ... at his age."
+
+"Don't, Horry."
+
+Barbara was in the morning-room, stirring some black, sticky stuff in a
+saucepan over the fire. The black, sticky stuff was to go on Mr.
+Waddington's chest. Horry looked on, standing beside her in an attitude
+of impatience. A pair of boots with skates clipped on hung from his
+shoulders by their laces. He felt that his irritation was justifiable,
+for Barbara had refused to go out skating with him.
+
+"Why 'don't'?" said Horry. "It's obvious."
+
+"Very. But he's ill."
+
+"There can't be much the matter with him or the mater wouldn't look so
+chirpy."
+
+"She likes nursing him."
+
+"Well," Horry said, "_you_ can't nurse him."
+
+"No. But I can stir this stuff," said Barbara.
+
+"I suppose," Horry said, "you'd think me an awful brute if I went?"
+
+"I wish you _would_ go. You're a much more awful brute standing there
+saying things about him and getting in my way."
+
+"All right. I'll get out of it. That's jolly easy."
+
+And he went. But he felt sick and sore. He had tried to persuade himself
+that his father wasn't ill because he couldn't bear to think how ill he
+was; it interfered with his enjoyment of his skating. "If," he said to
+himself, "if he'd only put it off till the ice gave. But it was just
+like him to choose a hard frost."
+
+His anger gave him relief from the sickening anxiety he felt when he
+thought of his father and his father's temperature. It had gone down,
+but not to normal.
+
+Mr. Waddington lay in his bed in Fanny's room. Barbara, standing at the
+open door with her saucepan, caught a sight of him.
+
+He was propped up by his pillows. On his shoulders, over one of those
+striped pyjama suits that Barbara had once ordered from the Stores, he
+wore, like a shawl, a woolly, fawn-coloured motor-scarf of Fanny's. His
+arms were laid before him on the counterpane in a gesture of complete
+surrender to his illness. Fanny was always tucking them away under the
+blankets, but if anybody came in he would have them so. He was sitting
+up, waiting in an adorable patience for something to be done for him.
+His face had the calm, happy look of expectation utterly appeased and
+resigned. It was that look that frightened Barbara; it made her think
+that Mr. Waddington was going to die. Supposing his congestion turned to
+pneumonia? There was so much of him to be ill, and those big men always
+did die when they got pneumonia.
+
+Mr. Waddington could hear Barbara's quiet voice saying something to
+Fanny; he could see her unhappy, anxious face. He enjoyed Barbara's
+anxiety. He enjoyed the cause of it, his illness. So long as he was
+actually alive he even enjoyed the thought that, if his congestion
+turned to pneumonia, he might actually die. There was a dignity, a
+prestige about being dead that appealed to him. Even his high
+temperature and his headache and his shooting pains and his difficulty
+in breathing could not altogether spoil his pleasure in the delicious
+concern of everybody about him, and in his exquisite certainty that, at
+any minute, a moan would bring Fanny to his side. He was the one person
+in the house that counted. He had always known it, but he had never felt
+it with the same intensity as now. The mind of every person in the house
+was concentrated on him now as it had not been concentrated before. He
+was holding them all in a tension of worry and anxiety. He would
+apologize very sweetly for the trouble he was giving everybody,
+declaring that it made him very uncomfortable; but even Fanny could see
+that he was gratified.
+
+And as he got worse--before he became too ill to think about it at
+all--he had a muzzy yet pleasurable sense that everybody in
+Wyck-on-the-Hill and in the county for miles round was thinking of him.
+He knew that Corbett and Lady Corbett and Markham and Thurston and the
+Hawtreys, and the Rector and the Rector's wife and Colonel Grainger had
+called repeatedly to inquire for him. He was particularly gratified by
+Grainger's calling. He knew that Hitchin had stopped Horry in the street
+to ask after him, and he was particularly gratified by that. Old
+Susan-Nanna had come up from Medlicott to see him. And Ralph Bevan
+called every day. That gratified him, too.
+
+The only person who was not allowed to know anything about his illness
+was his mother, for Mr. Waddington was certain it would kill her. Every
+evening at medicine time he would ask the same questions: "My mother
+doesn't know yet?" And: "Anybody called to-day?" And Fanny would give
+him the messages, and he would receive them with a gentle, solemn
+sweetness. You wouldn't have believed, Barbara said to herself, that
+complacency could take so heartrending a form.
+
+And under it all, a deeper bliss in bliss, was the thought that Barbara
+was thinking about him, worrying about him, and being, probably, ten
+times more unhappy about him than Fanny. After working so long by his
+side, her separation from him would be intolerable to Barbara;
+intolerable, very likely, the thought that it was Fanny's turn, now, to
+be by his side. Every day she brought him a bunch of snowdrops, and
+every day, as the door closed on her little anxious face, he was sorry
+for Barbara shut out from his room. Poor little Barbara. Sometimes, when
+he was feeling well enough, he would call to her: "Come in, Barbara."
+And she would come in and look at him and put her flowers into his hand
+and say she hoped he was better. And he would answer: "Not much better,
+Barbara. I'm very ill."
+
+He even allowed Ralph to come and look at him. He would hold his hand in
+a clasp that he made as limp as possible, on purpose, and would say in a
+voice artificially weakened: "I'm very ill, Ralph."
+
+Dr. Ransome said he wasn't; but Mr. Waddington knew better. It was true
+that from time to time he rallied sufficiently to comb his own hair
+before Barbara was let in with her snowdrops, and that he could give
+orders to Partridge in a loud, firm tone; but he was too ill to do more
+than whisper huskily to Barbara and Fanny.
+
+Then when he felt a little better the trained nurse came, and with the
+sheer excitement of her coming Mr. Waddington's temperature leapt up
+again, and the doctor owned that he didn't like that.
+
+And Barbara found Fanny in the library, crying. She had been tidying up
+his writing-table, going over all his papers with a feather brush, and
+she had come on the manuscript of the Ramblings unfinished.
+
+"Fanny--"
+
+"Barbara, I know I'm an idiot, but I simply cannot bear it. It was all
+very well as long as I could nurse him, but now that woman's come
+there's nothing I can do for him.... I've--I've never done anything all
+my life for him. He's always done everything for me. And I've been a
+brute. Always laughing at him.... Think, Barbara, think; for eighteen
+years never to have taken him seriously. Never since I married him.... I
+believe he's going to die. Just--just to punish me."
+
+"He isn't," said Barbara indignantly, as if she had never believed it
+herself. "The doctor says he isn't really very ill. The congestion isn't
+spreading. It was better yesterday."
+
+"It'll be worse to-night, you may depend on it. The doctor doesn't
+_like_ his temperature flying up and down like that."
+
+"It'll go down again," said Barbara.
+
+"You don't know what it'll do," said Fanny darkly. "Did you ever see
+such a lamb, such a _lamb_ as he is when he's ill?"
+
+"No," said Barbara; "he's an angel."
+
+"That's just," said Fanny, "what makes me feel he's going to die.... I
+wish I were you, Barbara."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes. You've really helped him. He could never have written his book
+without you. His poor book."
+
+She sat stroking it. And suddenly a horrible memory overcame her, and
+she cried out:
+
+"Oh, my God! And I've laughed at that, too!"
+
+Barbara put her arm round her. "You didn't, darling. Well, if you
+did--it is a little funny, you know. I'm afraid I've laughed a bit."
+
+"Oh, _you_--that doesn't matter. You helped to write it."
+
+Then Barbara broke out. "Oh, don't, Fanny, don't, _don't_ talk about his
+poor book. I can't _bear_ it."
+
+"We're both idiots," said Fanny. "Imbeciles."
+
+She paused, drying her eyes.
+
+"He liked the snowdrops you brought him," she said.
+
+Barbara thought: "And the snowdrops he brought _me_." He had caught cold
+that day, picking them. They had withered in the glass in her bedroom.
+
+She left Fanny, only to come upon Horry in his agony. Horry stood in the
+window of the dining-room, staring out and scowling at the snow.
+
+"Damn the snow!" he said. "It's killed him."
+
+"It hasn't, Horry," she said; "he'll get better."
+
+"He won't get better. If this beastly frost holds he hasn't got a
+chance."
+
+"Horry dear, the doctor says he's better."
+
+"He doesn't. He says his temperature's got no business to go up."
+
+"All the same--"
+
+"Supposing he does think him better. Supposing he doesn't know.
+Supposing he's a bleating idiot.... I expect the dear old pater knows
+how he is a jolly sight better than anybody can tell him.... And you
+know you're worrying about him yourself. So's the mater. She's been
+crying."
+
+"She's jealous of the nurse. That's what's the matter with her."
+
+"Jealous? Tosh! That nurse is an idiot. She's sent his temperature up
+first thing."
+
+"Horry, old thing, you must buck up. You mustn't let your nerve go like
+this."
+
+"Nerve? Your nerve would go if you were me. I tell you, Barbara, I
+wouldn't care a hang about his being ill--I mean I shouldn't care so
+infernally if I'd been decent to him. ... But you were right I was a
+cad, a swine. Laughing at him."
+
+"So was I, Horry. I laughed at him. I'd give anything not to have."
+
+"You didn't matter...."
+
+He was silent a moment. Then he swung round, full to her. His face
+burned, his eyes flashed tears; he held his head up to stop them
+falling.
+
+"Barbara--if he dies, I'll kill myself."
+
+That evening Mr. Waddington's temperature went up another point. Ralph,
+calling about nine o'clock, found Barbara alone in the library, huddled
+in a corner of the sofa, with her pocket-handkerchief beside her, rolled
+in a tight, damp ball. She started as he came in.
+
+"Oh," she said, "I thought you were the doctor."
+
+"Do you want him?"
+
+"Yes. Fanny does. She's frightened."
+
+"Shall I go and get him?"
+
+"No. No. They've sent Kimber. Oh, Ralph, I'm frightened, too."
+
+"But he's getting on all right. He is really. Ransome says so."
+
+"I know. I've told them that. But they won't believe it. And _I_ don't
+now. He'll die: you'll see he'll die. Just because we've been such pigs
+to him."
+
+"Nonsense; that wouldn't make him--"
+
+"I'm not so sure. It's awful to see him lying there, like a lamb--so
+good--when you think how we've hunted and hounded him."
+
+"He didn't know, Barbara. We never let him know."
+
+"You don't know what he knew. He must have seen it."
+
+"He never sees anything."
+
+"I tell you, you don't know what he sees.... I'd give anything, anything
+not to have done it."
+
+"So would I."
+
+"It's a lesson to me," she said, "as long as I live, never to laugh at
+anybody again. Never to say cruel things."
+
+"We didn't say cruel things."
+
+"Unkind things."
+
+"Not very unkind."
+
+"We did. I did. I said all the really beastly ones."
+
+"No. No, you didn't. Not half as beastly as I and Horry did."
+
+"That's what Horry's thinking now. He's nearly off his head about it."
+
+"Look here, Barbara; you're simply sentimentalizing because he's ill and
+you're sorry for him.... You needn't be. I tell you, he's enjoying his
+illness. ... I don't suppose," said Ralph thoughtfully, "he's enjoyed
+anything so much since the war."
+
+"Doesn't that show what brutes we've been, that he has to be ill in
+order to enjoy himself?"
+
+"Oh, no. He enjoys himself--himself, Barbara--all the time. He can't
+help enjoying his illness. He likes to have everybody fussing round him
+and thinking about him."
+
+"That's what I mean. We never did think of him. Not seriously. We've
+done nothing--nothing but laugh. Why, you're laughing now. ... It's
+horrible of you, Ralph, when he may be dying. ... It would serve us all
+jolly well right if he did die."
+
+To her surprise and indignation, Barbara began to cry. The hard, damp
+lump of pocket-handkerchief was not a bit of good, and before she could
+reach out for it Ralph's arms were round her and he was kissing the
+tears off one by one.
+
+"Darling, I didn't think you really minded--"
+
+"What d-did you th-think, then?" she sobbed.
+
+"I thought you were playing. A sort of variation of the game."
+
+"I told you it was a cruel game."
+
+"Never mind. It's all over. We'll never play it again. And he'll be well
+in another week. ... Look here, Barbara, can't you leave off thinking
+about him for a minute? You know I love you, most awfully, don't you?"
+
+"Yes. I know now all right."
+
+"And _I_ know."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because, old thing, you've never ceased to hang on to my collar since
+I grabbed you. You can't go back on _that_."
+
+"I don't want to go back on it.... I say, we always said he brought us
+together, and he _has_, this time."
+
+When later that night Ralph told Fanny of their engagement the first
+thing she said was, "You mustn't tell him. Not till he's well again. In
+fact, I'd rather you didn't tell him till just before you're married."
+
+"Why ever not?"
+
+"It might upset him. You see," she said, "he's very fond of Barbara."
+
+The next day Mr. Waddington's temperature went down to normal; and the
+next, when Ralph called, Barbara fairly rushed at him with the news.
+
+"He's sitting up," she shouted, "eating a piece of sole."
+
+"Hooray! Now we can be happy."
+
+The sound of Fanny's humming came through the drawing-room door.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+1
+
+Mr. Waddington was sitting up in his armchair before the bedroom fire.
+By turning his head a little to the right he could command a perfect
+view of himself in the long glass by the window. To get up and look at
+himself in that glass had been the first act of his convalescence. He
+had hardly dared to think what alterations his illness might have made
+in him. He remembered the horrible sight that Corbett had presented
+after _his_ influenza last year.
+
+Looking earnestly at himself in the glass, he had found that his
+appearance was, if anything, improved. Outlines that he had missed for
+the last ten years were showing up again. The Postlethwaite nose was
+cleaner cut. He was almost slender, and not half so weak as Fanny said
+he ought to have been. Immobility in bed, his spiritual attitude of
+complacent acquiescence, and the release of his whole organism from the
+strain of a restless intellect had set him up more than his influenza
+had pulled him down; and it was a distinctly more refined and youthful
+Waddington that Barbara found sitting in the armchair, wearing a royal
+blue wadded silk dressing-gown and Fanny's motor-scarf, with a grey
+mohair shawl over his knees.
+
+Mr. Waddington's convalescence was altogether delightful to him,
+admitting, as it did, of sustained companionship with Barbara. As soon
+as it reached the armchair stage she sat with him for hours together.
+She had finished the Ramblings, and at his request she read them aloud
+to him all over again from beginning to end. Mr. Waddington was much
+gratified by the impression they made recited in Barbara's charming
+voice; the voice that trembled a little now and then with an emotion
+that did her credit.
+
+"'Come with me into the little sheltered valley of the Speed. Let us
+follow the brown trout stream that goes purling through the lush green
+grass of the meadows--'"
+
+"I'd no idea," said Mr. Waddington, "it was anything like so good as it
+is. We may congratulate ourselves on having got rid of Ralph Bevan."
+
+And in February, when the frost broke and the spring weather came, and
+the green and pink and purple fields showed up again through the mist on
+the hillsides, he went out driving with Barbara in his car. He wanted
+to look again at the places of his _Ramblings_, and he wanted Barbara to
+look at them with him. It was the reward he had promised her for what he
+called her dreary, mechanical job of copying and copying.
+
+Barbara noticed the curious, exalted expression of his face as he sat up
+beside her in the car, looking noble. She put it down partly to that
+everlasting self-satisfaction that made his inward happiness, and partly
+to sheer physical exhilaration induced by speed. She felt something like
+it herself as they tore switchbacking up and down the hills: an
+excitement whipped up on the top of the deep happiness that came from
+thinking about Ralph. And there was hardly a moment when she didn't
+think about him. It made her eyes shine and her mouth quiver with a
+peculiarly blissful smile.
+
+And Mr. Waddington looked at Barbara where she sat tucked up beside him.
+He noticed the shining and the quivering, and he thought--what he always
+had thought of Barbara. Only now he was certain.
+
+The child loved him. She had been fascinated and frightened, frightened
+and fascinated by him from the first hour that she had known him. But
+she was not afraid of him any more. She had left off struggling. She was
+giving herself up like a child to this feeling, the nature of which, in
+her child's innocence, she did not yet know. But he knew. He had always
+known it.
+
+So much one half of Mr. Waddington's mind admitted, while the other half
+denied that he had known it with any certainty. It went on saying to
+itself: "Blind. Blind. Yet I might have known it," as if he hadn't.
+
+He had, of course, kept it before him as a possibility (no part of him
+denied that). And he had used tact. He had handled a delicate situation
+with a consummate delicacy. He had done everything an honourable man
+could do. But there it was. There it had been from the day that he had
+come into the house and found her there. And the thing was too strong
+for Barbara. Poor child, he might have known it would be. And it was too
+strong for Mr. Waddington. It wasn't his fault. It was Fanny's fault,
+having the girl there and forcing them to that dangerous intimacy.
+
+Before his illness Mr. Waddington had resisted successfully any little
+inclination he might have had to take advantage of the situation. He
+conceived his inner life for the last nine months as consisting of a
+series of resistances. He conceived the episode of Elise as a safety
+valve, natural but unpleasant, for the emotions caused by Barbara: the
+substitution of a permissible for an impermissible lapse. It had been
+incredible to him that he should make love to Barbara.
+
+But one effect of his influenza was apparent. It had lowered his
+resistance, and, lowering it, had altered his whole moral perspective
+and his scale of values, till one morning in April, walking with Barbara
+in the garden that smelt of wallflowers and violets, he became aware
+that Barbara was as necessary to him as he was to Barbara.
+
+Her easel stood in a corner of the lawn with an unfinished water-colour
+drawing of the house on it. He paused before it, smiling his tender,
+sentimental smile.
+
+"There's one thing I regret, Barbara--that I didn't have your drawings
+for my Cotswold book."
+
+The _Ramblings_, thanks to unproclaimed activities of Ralph Bevan, were
+at that moment in the press.
+
+"Why should you," she said, "if you didn't care about them?"
+
+"It's inconceivable that I shouldn't have cared. ... I was blind. Blind.
+... Well, some day, if we ever have an _édition de luxe_, they shall
+appear in that."
+
+"Some day!"
+
+She hadn't the heart to tell him that the drawings had another
+destination, for as yet the existence of Ralph's took was a secret.
+They had agreed that nothing should disturb Mr. Waddington's pleasure in
+the publication of his Ramblings--his poor Ramblings.
+
+"One has to pay for blindness in this world," he said.
+
+"A lot of people'll be let in at that rate. I don't suppose five will
+care a rap about my drawings."
+
+"I wasn't thinking only of your drawings, my dear." He pondered. ...
+"Fanny tells me you're going to have a birthday. You're quite a little
+April girl, aren't you?"
+
+
+2
+
+It was Barbara's twenty-fourth birthday, and the day of her adoption. It
+had begun, unpropitiously, with something very like a dispute between
+Horatio and Fanny.
+
+Mr. Waddington had gone up to London the day before, and had returned
+with a pearl pendant for Fanny, and a green jade necklace for Barbara
+(not yet presented) and a canary yellow waistcoat for himself.
+
+And not only the waistcoat--
+
+On the birthday morning Fanny had called out to Barbara as she passed
+her bedroom door:
+
+"Barbara, come here."
+
+Fanny was staring, fascinated, at four pairs of silk pyjamas spread out
+before her on the bed. Remarkable pyjamas, of a fierce magenta with
+forked lightning in orange running about all over them.
+
+"Good God, Fanny!"
+
+"You may well say 'Good God.' What would you say if you'd got to...?
+I'm not a nervous woman, but--"
+
+"It's a mercy he didn't get them eighteen years ago," said Barbara, "or
+Horry might have been born an idiot."
+
+"Yellow waistcoats are all very well," said Fanny. "But what _can_ he
+have been thinking of?"
+
+"I don't know," said Barbara. Somehow the pattern called up,
+irresistibly, the image of Mrs. Levitt.
+
+"Perhaps," she said, "he thinks he's Jupiter."
+
+"Well, I'm not What's-her-name, and I don't want to be blasted. So I'll
+put them somewhere where he can't find them."
+
+At that moment they had heard Mr. Waddington coming through his
+dressing-room and Barbara had run away by the door into the corridor.
+
+"Who took those things out of my wardrobe?" he said. He was gazing,
+dreamily, affectionately almost, at the pyjamas.
+
+"I did."
+
+"And what for?"
+
+"To look at them. Can you wonder? Horatio, if you wear them I'll apply
+for a separation."
+
+"You needn't worry."
+
+There was a queer look in his face, significant and furtive. And Fanny's
+mind, with one of its rapid flights, darted off from the pyjamas.
+
+"What are you going to do about Barbara?" she said.
+
+"_Do_ about her?"
+
+"Yes. You know we were going to adopt her if we liked her enough. And we
+do like her enough, don't we?"
+
+"I have no paternal feeling for Barbara," said Mr. Waddington. "The
+parental relation does not appeal to me as desirable or suitable."
+
+"I should have thought, considering her age and your age, it was very
+suitable indeed."
+
+"Not if it entails obligations that I might regret."
+
+"You're going to provide for her, aren't you? That isn't an obligation,
+surely, you'll regret?"
+
+"I can provide for her without adopting her."
+
+"How? It's no good just leaving her something in your will."
+
+"I shall continue half her salary," said Mr. Waddington, "as an
+allowance."
+
+"Yes. But will you give her a marriage portion if she marries?"
+
+He was silent. His mind reeled with the blow.
+
+"If she marries," he said, "with my consent and my approval--yes."
+
+"If that isn't a parental attitude! And supposing she doesn't?"
+
+"She isn't thinking of marrying."
+
+"You don't know what she's thinking of."
+
+"Neither, I venture to say, do you."
+
+"Well--I don't see how I can adopt her, if you don't."
+
+"I didn't say I wouldn't adopt her."
+
+"Then you will?"
+
+He snapped back at her with an incredible ferocity.
+
+"I suppose I shall have to. Don't _worry_ me!"
+
+He then lifted up the pyjamas from the bed and carried them into his
+dressing-room. Through the open door she saw him, mounted on a chair,
+laying them out, tenderly, on the top shelf of the wardrobe: as if he
+were storing them for some mysterious and romantic purpose in which
+Fanny was not included.
+
+"Perhaps, after all," she thought, "he only bought them because they
+make him feel young."
+
+All the morning, that morning of Barbara's birthday and adoption Mr.
+Waddington's thoughtful gloom continued. And in the afternoon he shut
+himself up in his library and gave orders that he was not to be
+disturbed.
+
+
+3
+
+Barbara was in the morning-room.
+
+They had given her the morning-room for a study, and she was alone in
+it, amusing herself with her pocket sketch-book.
+
+The sketch-book was Barbara's and Ralph's secret. Sometimes it lived for
+days with Ralph at the White Hart. Sometimes it lived with Barbara, in
+her coat pocket, or in her bureau under lock and key. She was obsessed
+with the fear that some day she would leave it about and Fanny would
+find it, or Mr. Waddington. Or any minute Mr. Waddington might come on
+her and catch her with it. It would be awful if she were caught. For
+that remarkable collection contained several pen-and-ink drawings of Mr.
+Waddington, and Barbara added to their number daily.
+
+But at the moment, the long interval between an unusually early birthday
+tea and an unusually late birthday dinner, she was safe. Fanny had gone
+over to Medlicott in the car. Mr. Waddington was tucked away in his
+library, reading in perfect innocence and simplicity and peace. It
+wasn't even likely that Ralph would turn up, for he had gone over to
+Oxford, and it was on his account that the birthday dinner was put off
+till half-past eight. There would be hours and hours.
+
+She had just finished the last of three drawings of Mr. Waddington: Mr.
+Waddington standing up before the long looking-glass in his new pyjamas;
+Mr. Waddington appearing in the doorway of Fanny's bedroom as Jupiter,
+with forked lightning zig-zagging out of him into every corner; Mr.
+Waddington stooping to climb into his bed, a broad back view with
+lightnings blazing out of it.
+
+And it was that moment that Mr. Waddington chose to come in to present
+the green jade necklace. He was wearing his canary yellow waistcoat.
+
+Barbara closed her sketch-book hurriedly and laid it on the table. She
+kept one arm over it while she received and opened the leather case
+where the green necklace lay on its white cushion.
+
+"For _me_? Oh, it's too heavenly. How awfully sweet of you."
+
+"Do you like it, Barbara?"
+
+"I love it."
+
+Compunction stung her when she thought of her drawings, especially the
+one where he was getting into bed. She said to herself: "I'll never do
+it again. Never again.... And I won't show it to Ralph."
+
+"Put it on," he commanded, "and let me see you in it."
+
+She lifted it from the case. She raised her arms and clasped it round
+her neck; she went to the looking-glass. And, after the first rapt
+moment of admiration, Mr. Waddington possessed himself of the uncovered
+sketch-book. Barbara saw him in the looking-glass. She turned, with a
+cry:
+
+"You mustn't! You mustn't look at it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I don't let anybody see my sketches."
+
+"You'll let _me_."
+
+"I _won't_!" She dashed at him, clutching his arm and hanging her weight
+on it. He shook himself free and raised the sketch-book high above her
+head. She jumped up, tearing at it, but his grip held.
+
+He delighted in his power. He laughed.
+
+"Give it me this instant," she said.
+
+"Aha! She's got her little secrets, has she?"
+
+"Yes. Yes. They're all there. You've no business to look at them."
+
+He caracoled heavily, dodging her attack, enjoying the youthful violence
+of the struggle.
+
+"Come," he said, "ask me nicely."
+
+"Please, then. _Please_ give it me."
+
+He gave it, bowing profoundly over her hand as she took it.
+
+"I wouldn't look into your dear little secrets for the world," he said.
+
+They sat down amicably.
+
+"You'll let me stay with you a little while?"
+
+"Please do. Won't you have one of my cigarettes?"
+
+He took one, turning it in his fingers and smiling at it--a lingering,
+sentimental smile.
+
+"I think I know your secret," he said presently.
+
+"Do you?" Her mind rushed to Ralph.
+
+"I think so. And I think you know mine."
+
+"Yours?"
+
+"Yes. Mine. We can't go on living like this, so close to each other,
+without knowing. We may try to keep things from each other, but we
+can't. I feel as if you'd seen everything."
+
+She said to herself: "He's thinking of Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"I don't suppose I've seen anything that matters," she said.
+
+"You've seen what my life is here. You can't have helped seeing that
+Fanny and I don't hit it off very well together."
+
+"Fanny's an angel."
+
+"You dear little loyal thing.... Yes, she's an angel. Too much of an
+angel for a mere man. I made my grand mistake, Barbara, when I married
+her."
+
+"She doesn't think so, anyhow."
+
+"I'm not so sure. Fanny knows she's got hold of something that's
+too--too big for her. What's wrong with Fanny is that she can't grasp
+things. She's afraid of them. And she can't take serious things
+seriously. It's no use expecting her to. I've left off expecting."
+
+"You don't understand Fanny one bit."
+
+"My dear child, I've been married to her more than seventeen years, and
+I'm not a fool. You've seen for yourself how she takes things. How she
+belittles everything with her everlasting laugh, laugh, laugh. In time
+it gets on your nerves."
+
+"It would," said Barbara, "if you don't see the fun of it."
+
+"You can't expect me to see the fun of my own funeral."
+
+"Funeral? Is it as bad as all that?"
+
+"It has been as bad as all that--Barbara."
+
+He brooded.
+
+"And then you came, with your sweetness. And your little serious face--"
+
+"_Is_ my face serious?"
+
+"Very. To me. Other people may think you frivolous and amusing. I
+daresay you are amusing--to them."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"You hope so because you want to hide your real self from them. But you
+can't hide it from me. I've seen it all the time, Barbara."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Quite, quite sure."
+
+"I wish I knew what it looked like."
+
+"That's the beauty and charm of you, my dear, that you don't know."
+
+"What a nice waistcoat you've got on," said Barbara.
+
+He looked gratified. "I'm glad you like it I put it on for your
+birthday."
+
+"You mean," she said, "my adoption day."
+
+He winced.
+
+"It _is_ good," she said, "of you and Fanny to adopt me. But it won't be
+for very long. And I want to earn my own living all the same."
+
+"I can't think of letting you do that."
+
+"I must. It won't make any difference to my adoption."
+
+He scowled. So repugnant to him was this subject that he judged it
+would be equally distasteful to Barbara.
+
+"It was Fanny's idea," he said.
+
+"I thought it would be."
+
+"You didn't expect me to have paternal feelings for you, Barbara?"
+
+"I didn't _expect_ you to have any feelings at all."
+
+The wound made him start. "My poor child, what a terrible thing for you
+to say."
+
+"Why terrible?"
+
+"Because it shows--it shows--And it isn't true. Do you suppose I don't
+know what's been going on inside you? I was blind to myself, my dear,
+but I saw through you."
+
+"Saw through me?" She thought again of Ralph.
+
+"Through and through."
+
+"I didn't know I was so transparent. But I don't see that it matters
+much if you did."
+
+He smiled at her delicious naivete.
+
+"No. Nothing matters. Nothing matters, Barbara, except our caring. At
+least we're wise enough to know that."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought," she said, "it would take much wisdom."
+
+"More than you think, my child; more than you think. You've only got to
+be wise for yourself. I've got to be wise for both of us."
+
+She thought: "Heavy parent. That comes of being adopted."
+
+"When it comes to the point," she said, "one can only be wise for
+oneself."
+
+"I'm glad you see that. It makes it much easier for me."
+
+"It does. You mustn't think you're responsible for me just because
+you've adopted me."
+
+"Don't talk to me about adoption! When you know perfectly well what I
+did it for."
+
+"Why--what _did_ you do it for?"
+
+"To make things safe for us. To keep Fanny from knowing. To keep myself
+from knowing, Barbara. To keep you.... But it's too late to camouflage
+it. We know where we stand now."
+
+"I don't think _I_ do."
+
+"You do. You do."
+
+Mr. Waddington tossed his cigarette into the fire with a passionate
+gesture of abandonment. He came to her. She saw his coming. She saw it
+chiefly as the approach of a canary yellow waistcoat. She fixed her
+attention on the waistcoat as if it were the centre of her own mental
+equilibrium.
+
+There was a bend in the waistcoat. Mr. Waddington was stooping over her
+with his face peering into hers. She sat motionless, held under his face
+by curiosity and fear. The whole phenomenon seemed to her incredible.
+Too incredible as yet to call for protest. It was as if it were not
+happening; as if she were merely waiting to see it happen before she
+cried out. Yet she was frightened.
+
+This state lasted for one instant. The next she was in his arms. His
+mouth, thrust out under the big, rough moustache, was running over her
+face, like--like--while she pressed her hands hard against the canary
+yellow waistcoat, pushing him off, her mind disengaged itself from the
+struggle and reported--like a vacuum cleaner. That was it. Vacuum
+cleaner.
+
+He gave back. There was no evil violence in him, and she got on her
+feet.
+
+"How could you?" she cried. "How could you be such a perfect pig?"
+
+"_Don't_ say that to me, Barbara. Even in fun.... You know you love
+me."
+
+"I don't. I don't."
+
+"You do. You know you do. You know you want me to take you in my arms.
+Why be so cruel to yourself?"
+
+"To myself? I'd kill myself before I let you.... Why, I'd kill you."
+
+"No. No. No. You only think you would, you little spitfire."
+
+He had given back altogether and now leaned against the chimneypiece,
+not beaten, not abashed, but smiling at her in a triumphant certitude.
+For so long the glamour of his illusion held him.
+
+"Nothing you can say, Barbara, will persuade me that you don't care for
+me."
+
+"Then you must be mad. Mad as a hatter."
+
+"All men go mad at times. You must make allowances. Listen--"
+
+"I won't listen. I don't want to hear another word."
+
+She was going.
+
+He saw her intention; but he was nearer to the door than she was, and by
+a quick though ponderous movement he got there first. He stood before
+her with his back to the door. (He had the wild thought of locking it,
+but chivalry forbade him.)
+
+"You can go in a minute," he said. "But you've got to listen to me
+first. You've got to be fair to me. I may be mad; but if I didn't care
+for you--madly--I wouldn't have supposed for an instant that you cared
+for me. I wouldn't have thought of such a thing."
+
+"But I _don't_, I tell you."
+
+"And I tell you, you do. Do you suppose after all you've done for
+me--"
+
+"I haven't done anything."
+
+"Done? Look at the way you've worked for me. I've never known anything
+like your devotion, Barbara."
+
+"Oh, _that_! It was only my job."
+
+"Was it your job to save me from that horrible woman?"
+
+"Oh, yes; it was all in the day's work."
+
+"My dear Barbara, no woman ever does a day's work like that for a man
+unless she cares for him. And unless she wants him to care for her."
+
+"As it happens, it was Fanny I cared for. I was thinking of Fanny all
+the time.... If _you'd_ think about Fanny more and about Mrs. Levitt and
+people less, it would be a good thing."
+
+"It's too late to think about Fanny now. That's only your sweetness and
+goodness."
+
+"Please don't lie. If you really thought me sweet and good you wouldn't
+expect me to be a substitute for Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"Don't talk about Mrs. Levitt. Do you suppose I think of you in the same
+sentence? That was a different thing altogether."
+
+"Was it? Was it so very different?"
+
+He saw that she remembered. "It was. A man may lose his head ten times
+over without losing his heart once. If it's Mrs. Levitt you're thinking
+about, you can put that out of your mind for ever."
+
+"It isn't only Mrs. Levitt. There's Ralph Bevan. You've forgotten Ralph
+Bevan."
+
+"What has Ralph Bevan got to do with it?"
+
+"Simply this, that I'm engaged to be married to him."
+
+"To be married? To be married to Ralph Bevan? Oh, Barbara, why didn't
+you tell me?"
+
+"Ralph didn't want me to, till nearer the time."
+
+"The time.... Did it come to that?"
+
+"It did," said Barbara.
+
+He moved from the doorway and began walking up and down the room. She
+might now have gone out, but she didn't go. She _had_ to see what he
+would make of it.
+
+At his last turn he faced her and stood still.
+
+"Poor child," he said, "so that's what I've driven you to?"
+
+Amazement kept her silent.
+
+"Sit down," he said, "we must go through this together."
+
+Amazement made her sit down. Certainly they must go through it, to see
+what he would look like at the end. He was unsurpassable. She mustn't
+miss him.
+
+"Look here, Barbara." He spoke in a tone of forced, unnatural calm. "I
+don't think you quite understand the situation. I'm sure you don't
+realize for one moment how serious it is."
+
+"I don't. You mustn't expect me to take it seriously."
+
+"That's because you don't take yourself seriously enough, dear. In some
+ways you're singularly humble. I don't believe you really know how deep
+this thing has gone with me, or you wouldn't have talked about Mrs.
+Levitt....
+
+"... It's life and death, Barbara. Life and death.... I'll make a
+confession. It wasn't serious at first. It wasn't love at first sight.
+But it's gone all the deeper for that. I didn't know how deep it was
+till the other day. And I had so much to think of. So many claims.
+Fanny--"
+
+"Yes. Don't forget Fanny."
+
+"I am not forgetting her. Fanny isn't going to mind as you think she
+minds. As you would mind yourself if you were in her place. Things don't
+go so deep with Fanny as all that.... And she isn't going to hold me
+against my will. She's not that sort.... Listen, now. Please listen."
+
+Barbara sat still, listening. She would let him go to the end of his
+tether.
+
+"I'll confess. In the beginning I hadn't thought of a divorce. I
+couldn't bear the idea of going through all that unpleasantness. But I'd
+go through it ten times over rather than that you should marry Ralph
+Bevan.... Wait now.... Before I spoke to you to-day I'd made up my
+mind to ask Fanny to divorce me. I know she'll do it. Your name shan't
+be allowed to appear. The moment I get her consent we'll go off together
+somewhere. Italy or the Riviera. I've got everything planned, everything
+ready. I saw to that when I was in London. I've bought everything--"
+
+She saw forked lightnings on a magenta Waddington.
+
+"What are you laughing at, Barbara?"
+
+He stood over her, distressed. Was _Barbara_ going to treat him to a fit
+of hysterics?
+
+"Don't laugh. Don't be silly, child."
+
+But Barbara went on laughing, with her face in the cushions, abandoned
+to her vision. From far up the park they heard the sound of Kimber's
+hooter, then the grinding of the car, with Fanny in it, on the gravel
+outside. Barbara sat up suddenly and dried her eyes.
+
+They stared at each other, the stare of accomplices.
+
+"Come, child," he said, "pull yourself together."
+
+Barbara got up and looked in the glass and saw the green jade necklace
+hanging on her still. She took it off and laid it on the table beside
+the forgotten sketch-book.
+
+"I think," she said, "you must have meant this for Mrs. Levitt. But you
+may thank your stars it's only me, this time."
+
+He pretended not to hear her, not to see the necklace, not to know that
+she was going from him. She stood a moment with her back to the door,
+facing him. It was her turn to stand there and be listened to.
+
+"Mr. Waddington," she said, "some people might think you wicked. I only
+think you funny."
+
+He drew himself up and looked noble.
+
+"Funny? If that's your idea of me, you had better marry Ralph Bevan."
+
+"I almost think I had."
+
+And she laughed again. Not Mrs. Levitt's laughter, gross with
+experience. He had borne that without much pain. Girl's laughter it was,
+young and innocent and pure, and ten times more cruel.
+
+"You don't know," she said, "you don't know how funny you are," and left
+him.
+
+Mr. Waddington took up the necklace and kissed it. He rubbed it against
+his cheek and kissed it. A slip of paper had fallen from the table to
+the floor. He knew what was written on it: "From Horatio Bysshe
+Waddington to his Little April Girl." He took it up and put it in his
+pocket. He took up the sketch-book.
+
+"The little thing," he thought. "Now, if it hadn't been for her
+ridiculous jealousy of Elise--if it hadn't been for Fanny--if it hadn't
+been for the little thing's sweetness and goodness--" Her goodness. She
+was a saint. A saint. It was Barbara's virtue, not Barbara, that had
+repulsed him.
+
+This was the only credible explanation of her behaviour, the only one he
+could bear to live with.
+
+He opened the sketch-book.
+
+It was Fanny, coming in that instant, who saved him from the worst.
+
+When she had restored the sketch-book to its refuge in the bureau and
+locked it in, she turned to him.
+
+"Horatio," she said, "as Ralph's coming to dinner to-night I'd better
+tell you that he and Barbara are engaged to be married."
+
+"She has told me herself.... That child, Fanny, is a saint. A little
+saint."
+
+"How did you find that out? Do you think it takes a saint to marry
+Ralph?"
+
+"I think it takes a saint to--to marry Ralph, since you put it that
+way."
+
+
+4
+
+"Dearest Fanny:
+
+"I'm sorry, but Mr. Waddington and I have had a scrap. It's made things
+impossible, and I'm going to Ralph. He'll turn out for me, so there
+won't be any scandal.
+
+"You know how awfully I love you, that's why you'll forgive me if I
+don't come back.
+
+"Always your loving
+
+"Barbara."
+
+"P.S.--I'm frightfully sorry about my birthday dinner. But I don't feel
+birthdayish or dinnerish, either. I want Ralph. Nothing but Ralph."
+
+That would make Fanny think it was Ralph they had quarrelled about.
+Barbara put this note on Fanny's dressing-table. Then she went up to the
+White Hart, to Ralph Bevan. She waited in his sitting-room till he came
+back from Oxford.
+
+"Hallo, old thing, what are _you_ doing here?"
+
+"Ralph--do you awfully mind if we don't dine at the Manor?"
+
+"If we don't--why?"
+
+"Because I've left them. And I don't want to go back. Do you think I
+could get a room here?"
+
+"What's up?"
+
+"I've had a simply awful scrap with Waddy, and I can't stick it there.
+Between us we've made it impossible."
+
+"What's he been up to?"
+
+"Oh, never mind."
+
+"He's been making love to you."
+
+"If you call it making love."
+
+"The old swine!"
+
+As he said it, he felt the words and his own fury fall short of the
+fantastic quality of Waddington.
+
+"No. He isn't." (Barbara felt it.) "He was simply more funny than you
+can imagine.... He had on a canary yellow waistcoat."
+
+In spite of his fury he smiled.
+
+"I think he'd bought it for that."
+
+"Oh, Barbara, what he must have looked like!"
+
+"Yes. If only you could have seen him. But that's the worst of all his
+best things. They only happen when you're alone with him."
+
+"You remember--we wondered whether he'd do it again, whether he'd go one
+better?"
+
+"Yes, Ralph. We little thought it would be me."
+
+"How he does surpass himself!"
+
+"The funniest thing was he thought I was in love with _him_."
+
+"He didn't!"
+
+"He did. Because of the way I'd worked for him. He thought that proved
+it."
+
+"Yes. Yes. I suppose he _would_ think it.... Look here--he didn't do
+anything, did he?"
+
+"He kissed me. _That_ wasn't funny."
+
+"The putrid old sinner. If he _wasn't_ so old I'd wring his neck for
+him."
+
+"No, no. That's all wrong. It's not the way we agreed to take him. We'd
+think it funny enough if he'd done it to somebody else. It's pure
+accident that it's me."
+
+"No doubt that's the proper philosophic view. I wonder whether Mrs.
+Levitt takes it."
+
+"Ralph--it wasn't a bit like his Mrs. Levitt stunt. The awful thing was
+he really meant it. He'd planned it all out. We were to go off together
+to the Riviera, and he was to wear his canary waistcoat."
+
+"Did he say that?"
+
+"No. But you could see he thought it. And he was going to get Fanny to
+divorce him."
+
+"Good God! He went as far as that?"
+
+"As far as that. He was so cocksure, you see. I'm afraid it's been a bit
+of a shock to him."
+
+"Well, it's a thundering good thing I've got a job at last."
+
+"_Have_ you?"
+
+"Yes. We can get married the day after tomorrow if we like.
+Blackadder's given me the editorship of the _New Review_."
+
+"No? Oh, Ralph, how topping."
+
+"That's what I ran up to Oxford for, to see him and settle everything.
+It's a fairly decent screw. The thing's got no end of hacking, and it's
+up to me to make it last."
+
+"I say--Fanny'll he pleased."
+
+As they were talking about it, the landlady of the White Hart came in to
+tell them that Mrs. Waddington was downstairs and wanted to speak to
+Miss Madden.
+
+"All right," Ralph said. "Show Mrs. Waddington up. I'll clear out."
+
+"Oh, Ralph, what am I to say to her?"
+
+"Tell her the truth, if she wants it. She won't mind."
+
+"She will--frightfully."
+
+"Not so frightfully as you think."
+
+"That's what _he_ said."
+
+"Well, he's right there, the old beast."
+
+
+5
+
+"Barbara _dear_," said Fanny when they were alone together, "what on
+earth has happened?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. We just had a bit of a tiff, that's all."
+
+"About Ralph? He told me it was Ralph."
+
+"You might say it was Ralph. He came into it."
+
+"Into what?"
+
+"Oh, the general situation."
+
+"Nonsense. Horatio was making love to you. I could see by his face....
+You needn't mind telling me straight out I've seen it coming."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+"I don't know. It must have begun long before I saw it."
+
+"How long do you think?"
+
+"Oh, before Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"Mrs. Levitt?"
+
+"She may have been only a safety valve. That's why I made him adopt you.
+I thought it would stop it. In common decency. But it seems it only
+brought it to a head."
+
+"No. It was his canary waistcoat did that, Fanny."
+
+The ghost of dead mirth rose up in Fanny's eyes.
+
+"You're muddling cause and effect, my dear. He wasn't in love because he
+bought the waistcoat. He bought the waistcoat because he was in love.
+And those other things--the romantic pyjamas--because he thought they'd
+make him look younger."
+
+"Well then," said Barbara, "it was a vicious circle. The waistcoat put
+it into his head that afternoon."
+
+"It doesn't much matter how it happened."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Fanny. I wouldn't have let it happen for the world,
+if I'd known it was going to. But who could have known?"
+
+"My dear, it wasn't your fault."
+
+"Do you mind frightfully?"
+
+Fanny looked away.
+
+"It depends," she said. "What did you say to him?"
+
+"I said a lot of things, but they weren't a bit of good. Then I'm afraid
+I laughed."
+
+"You laughed at him?"
+
+"I couldn't help it, Fanny. He was so funny."
+
+"Oh!" Fanny caught her breath back on a sob. "That's what I can't bear,
+Barbara--his being laughed at."
+
+"I know," said Barbara.
+
+"By the way, when you're dying dear, if you should be dying at any time,
+it'll be a consolation to you to know that he didn't see your
+drawings--"
+
+"Did _you_ see them?"
+
+"Only the one he was looking at when I came in."
+
+"Was it--was it the one where he was getting into bed?"
+
+"No. He was only hunting."
+
+"God has been kinder to me than I deserve then."
+
+"He's been kinder to him, too, I fancy."
+
+She went on. "I want you to see this thing straight. Understand. I don't
+mind his being in love with you. I knew he was. Head over ears in love.
+And I didn't mind a bit."
+
+"I think he was reckoning on that. He knew you'd forgive him."
+
+"Forgive him? It wasn't even a question of forgiveness. I was _glad_. I
+thought: If only he could have one real feeling. If only he could care
+for something or somebody that wasn't himself.... I think he cared for
+you, Barbara. It wasn't just himself. And I loved him for it."
+
+"You darling! And you don't hate me?"
+
+"You know I don't But I'd love you even more if you'd loved him."
+
+"If I'd loved him?"
+
+"Yes. If you'd gone away with him and made him happy. If you hadn't
+laughed at him, Barbara."
+
+"I know. It was awful of me. But what could I do?"
+
+"What could you do? We all do it. I do it. Mrs. Levitt did it."
+
+"I didn't do it like Mrs. Levitt."
+
+"No. But you were just one more. Think of it. All his life to be laughed
+at. And when he was making love, too; the most serious thing, Barbara,
+that anybody can do. I tell you I can't bear it. I'd have given him to
+you ten times first."
+
+"Then," said Barbara, "you _have_ got to forgive me."
+
+"If I don't, it's because it's my own sin and I can't forgive myself....
+
+"... Besides, I let it happen. Because I thought it would cure him."
+
+"Of falling in love?"
+
+"Of trying to be young when he didn't feel it. I thought he'd see how
+impossible it was. But that's the sad part of it. He _would_ have felt
+young, Barbara, if you'd loved him. If I'd loved him I could have kept
+him young. I told you," she said, "it was all my fault."
+
+"You told me Ralph and I would never be old. Is that what you meant?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They sat silent a moment, looking down through Ralph's window into the
+Market Square.
+
+And presently they saw Mr. Waddington pass the corner of the Town Hall
+and cross the wide, open space to the Dower House.
+
+"You must come back with me, Barbara. If you don't everybody'll know
+what's happened."
+
+"I can't, Fanny."
+
+"He won't be there. You won't see him till your wedding day. He's going
+to stay with Granny. He says she isn't very well."
+
+"I'm sorry she isn't well."
+
+"She's perfectly well. That isn't what he's going for."
+
+Across the Square they could see the door of the Dower House open and
+receive him. Fanny smiled.
+
+"He's going back to his mother to be made young again," she said.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Waddington of Wyck, by May Sinclair
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. WADDINGTON OF WYCK ***
+
+***** This file should be named 9967-8.txt or 9967-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/9/9/6/9967/
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Dmitriy Genzel and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.