Chapter 8

"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 L5 5 per cent. New South American Rubber Syndicate;

"Fifty L10 10 per cent. B Preference Addison Railway, Nicaragua;

"One hundred L1 4 per cent. Welbeck Mutual Assurance Society.