Chapter 9

"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 role 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."