Chapter 10

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?"