Chapter 15

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.