A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Mr. Waddington of Wyck

M >> May Sinclair >> Mr. Waddington of Wyck




"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.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.