Mr. Waddington of Wyck by May Sinclair
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May Sinclair >> Mr. Waddington of Wyck
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14 Produced by Suzanne Shell, Dmitriy Genzel and PG Distributed Proofreaders
MR. WADDINGTON OF WYCK
BY MAY SINCLAIR
1921
MR. WADDINGTON OF WYCK
I
1
Barbara wished she would come back. For the last hour Fanny Waddington
had kept on passing in and out of the room through the open door into
the garden, bringing in tulips, white, pink, and red tulips, for the
flowered Lowestoft bowls, hovering over them, caressing them with her
delicate butterfly fingers, humming some sort of song to herself.
The song mixes itself up with the Stores list Barbara was making: "Two
dozen glass towels. Twelve pounds of Spratt's puppy biscuits. One dozen
gent.'s all-silk pyjamas, extra large size" ... "A-hoom--hoom,
a-hoom--hoom" (that _Impromptu_ of Schubert's), and with the notes
Barbara was writing: "Mrs. Waddington has pleasure in enclosing...."
Fanny Waddington would always have pleasure in enclosing something....
"A ho-om--boom, hoom, hee." A sound so light that it hardly stirred the
quiet of the room. If a butterfly could hum it would hum like Fanny
Waddington.
Barbara Madden had not been two days at Lower Wyck Manor, and already
she was at home there; she knew by heart Fanny's drawing-room with the
low stretch of the Tudor windows at each end, their lattices panelled by
the heavy mullions, the back one looking out on to the green garden
bordered with wallflowers and tulips; the front one on to the round
grass-plot and the sundial, the drive and the shrubbery beyond, down the
broad walk that cut through it into the clear reaches of the park. She
liked the interior, the Persian carpet faded to patches of grey and fawn
and old rose, the port-wine mahogany furniture, the tables thrusting out
the brass claws of their legs, the latticed cabinets and bookcases, the
chintz curtains and chair-covers, all red dahlias and powder-blue
parrots on a cream-coloured ground. But when Fanny wasn't there you
could feel the room ache with the emptiness she left.
Barbara ached. She caught herself listening for Fanny Waddington's feet
on the flagged path and the sound of her humming. As she waited she
looked up at the picture over the bureau in the recess of the
fireplace, the portrait in oils of Horatio Bysshe Waddington, Fanny's
husband.
He was seated, heavily seated with his spread width and folded height,
in one of the brown-leather chairs of his library, dressed in a tweed
coat, putty-coloured riding breeches, a buff waistcoat, and a grey-blue
tie. The handsome, florid face was lifted in a noble pose above the
stiff white collar; you could see the full, slightly drooping lower lip
under the shaggy black moustache. There was solemnity in the thick,
rounded salient of the Roman nose, in the slightly bulging eyes, and in
the almost imperceptible line that sagged from each nostril down the
long curve of the cheeks. This figure, one great thigh crossed on the
other, was extraordinarily solid against the smoky background where the
clipped black hair made a watery light. His eyes were not looking at
anything in particular. Horatio Bysshe Waddington seemed to be absorbed
in some solemn thought.
His wife's portrait hung over the card-table in the other recess.
Barbara hoped he would be nice; she hoped he would be interesting, since
she had to be his secretary. But, of course, he would be. Anybody so
enchanting as Fanny could never have married him if he wasn't. She
wondered how she, Barbara Madden, would play her double part of
secretary to him and companion to her. She had been secretary to other
men before; all through the war she had been secretary to somebody, but
she had never had to be companion to their wives. Perhaps it was a good
thing that Fanny, as she kept on reminding her, had "secured" her first.
She was glad he wasn't there when she arrived and wouldn't be till the
day after to-morrow (he had wired that morning to tell them); so that for
two days more she would have Fanny to herself.
2
"Well, what do you think of him?"
Fanny had come back into the room; she was hovering behind her.
"I--I think he's jolly good-looking."
"Well, you see, that was painted seventeen years ago. He was young
then."
"Has he changed much since?"
"Dear me, no," said Fanny. "He hasn't changed at all."
"No more have you, I think."
"Oh, _me_--in seventeen years!"
She was still absurdly like her portrait, after seventeen years, with
her light, slender body, poised for one of her flights, her quick
movements of butterfly and bird, with her small white face, the terrier
nose lifted on the moth-wing shadows of her nostrils, her dark-blue
eyes, that gazed at you, close under the low black eyebrows, her brown
hair that sprang in two sickles from the peak on her forehead, raking up
to the backward curve of the chignon, a profile of cyclamen. And her
mouth, the fine lips drawn finer by her enchanting smile. All these
features set in such strange, sensitive unity that her mouth looked at
you and her eyes said things. No matter how long she lived she would
always be young.
"Oh, my dear child," she said, "you are so like your mother."
"Am I? Were you afraid I wouldn't be?"
"A little, just a little afraid. I thought you'd be modern."
"So I am. So was mother."
"Not when I knew her."
"Afterwards then." A sudden thought came to Barbara. "Mrs. Waddington,
if mother was your dearest friend why haven't you known me all this
time?"
"Your mother and I lost sight of each other before you were born."
"Mother didn't want to."
"Nor I."
"Mother would have hated you to think she did."
"I never thought it. She must have known I didn't."
"Then why--"
"Did we lose sight?"
"Yes, why? People don't, if they can help it, if they care enough. And
mother cared."
"You're a persistent little thing, aren't you? Are you trying to make
out that I didn't care?"
"I'm trying to make you see that mother did."
"Well, my dear, we both cared, but we _couldn't_ help it. We married,
and our husbands didn't hit it off."
"Didn't they? And daddy was so nice. Didn't you know how nice he was?"
"Oh, yes. I knew. My husband was nice, too, Barbara; though you mightn't
think it."
"Oh, but I do. I'm sure he is. Only I haven't seen him yet."
"So nice. But," said Fanny, pursuing her own thought, "he never made a
joke in his life, and your father never _made_ anything else."
"Daddy didn't 'make' jokes. They came to him."
"I've seen them come. He never sent any of them away, no matter how
naughty they were, or how expensive. I used to adore his jokes.... But
Horatio didn't. He didn't like my adoring them, so you see--"
"I see. I wonder," said Barbara, looking up at the portrait again,
"what he's thinking about?"
"I used to wonder."
"But you know now?"
"Yes, I know now," Fanny said.
"What'll happen," said Barbara, "if _I_ make jokes?"
"Nothing. He'll never see them."
"If he saw daddy's--"
"Oh, but he didn't. That was me."
Barbara was thoughtful. "I daresay," she said, "you won't keep me long.
Supposing I can't do the work?"
"The _work_?" Fanny's eyes were interrogative and a little surprised, as
though they were saying, "Who said work? What work?"
"Well, Mr. Waddington's work. I've got to help him with his book,
haven't I?"
"Oh, his book, yes. _When_ he's writing it. He isn't always. Does he
look," said Fanny, "like a man who'd always be writing a book?"
"No. I can't say he does, exactly." (What _did_ he look like?)
"Well, then, it'll be all right. I mean _we_ shall be."
"I only wondered whether I could really do what he wants."
"If Ralph could," said Fanny, "you can."
"Who's Ralph?"
"Ralph is my cousin. He _was_ Horatio's secretary."
"_Was_." Barbara considered it. "Did _he_ make jokes, then?"
"Lots. But that wasn't why he left.... It was an awful pity, too;
because he's most dreadfully hard up."
"If he's hard up," Barbara said, "I couldn't bear to think I've done him
out of a job."
"You haven't. He had to go."
Fanny turned again to her flowers and Barbara to her Stores list.
"Are you sure," Fanny said suddenly, "you put 'striped'?"
"Striped? The pyjamas? No, I haven't."
"Then, for goodness' sake, put it. Supposing they sent those awful
Futurist things; why, he'd frighten me into fits. Can't you see Horatio
stalking in out of his dressing-room, all magenta blobs and forked
lightning?"
"I haven't seen him at all yet," said Barbara.
"Well, you wait.... Does my humming annoy you?"
"Not a bit. I like it. It's such a happy sound."
"I always do it," said Fanny, "when I'm happy."
You could hear feet, feet in heavy soled boots, clanking on the drive
that ringed the grass-plot and the sundial; the eager feet of a young
man. Fanny turned her head, listening.
"There _is_ Ralph," she said. "Come in, Ralph!"
The young man stood in the low, narrow doorway, filling it with his
slender height and breadth. He looked past Fanny, warily, into the far
corner of the room, and when his eyes found Barbara at her bureau they
smiled.
"Oh, _come_ in," Fanny said. "He isn't here. He won't be till Friday.
This is Ralph Bevan, Barbara; and this is Barbara Madden, Ralph."
He bowed, still smiling, as if he saw something irrepressibly amusing in
her presence there.
"Yes," said Fanny to the smile. "Your successor."
"I congratulate you, Miss Madden."
"Don't be an ironical beast. She's just said she couldn't bear to think
she'd done you out of your job."
"Well, I couldn't," said Barbara.
"That's very nice of you. But you didn't do me out of anything. It was
the act of God."
"It was Horatio's act. Not that Miss Madden meant any reflection on his
justice and his mercy."
"I don't know about his justice," Ralph said. "But he was absolutely
merciful when he fired me out."
"Is it so awfully hard then?" said Barbara.
"You may not find it so."
"Oh, but I'm going to be Mrs. Waddington's companion, too."
"You'll be all right then. They wouldn't let _me_ be that."
"He means you'll be safe, dear. You won't be fired out whatever
happens."
"Whatever sort of secretary I am?"
"Yes. She can be any sort she likes, in reason, can't she?"
"She can't be a worse one than I was, anyhow."
Barbara was aware that he had looked at her, a long look, half
thoughtful, half amused, as if he were going to say something different,
something that would give her a curious light on herself, and had
thought better of it.
Fanny Waddington was protesting. "My dear boy, it wasn't for
incompetence. She's simply dying to know what you _did_ do."
"You can tell her."
"He wanted to write Horatio's book for him, and Horatio wouldn't let
him. That was all."
"Oh, well, _I_ shan't want to write it," Barbara said.
"We thought perhaps you wouldn't," said Fanny.
But Barbara had turned to her bureau, affecting a discreet absorption in
her list. And presently Ralph Bevan went out into the garden with Fanny
to gather more tulips.
II
1
She _had_ been dying to know what he had done, but now, after Ralph had
stayed to lunch and tea and dinner that first day, after he had spent
all yesterday at the Manor, and after he had turned up to-day at ten
o'clock in the morning, Barbara thought she had made out the history,
though they had been very discreet and Fanny had insisted on reading
"Tono-Bungay" out loud half the time.
Ralph, of course, was in love with his cousin Fanny. To be sure, she
must be at least ten years older than he was, but that wouldn't matter.
And, of course, it was rather naughty of him, but then again, very
likely he couldn't help it. It had just come on him when he wasn't
thinking; and who could help being in love with Fanny? You could be in
love with people quite innocently and hopelessly. There was no sin where
there wasn't any hope.
And perhaps Fanny was innocently, ever so innocently, in love with him;
or, if she wasn't, Horatio thought she was, which came to much the same
thing; so that anyhow poor Ralph had to go. The explanation they had
given, Barbara thought, was rather thin, not quite worthy of their
admirable intelligence.
It was Friday, Barbara's fifth day. She was walking home with Ralph
Bevan through the Waddingtons' park, down the main drive that led from
Wyck-on-the-Hill to Lower Wyck Manor.
It wouldn't be surprising, she thought, if Fanny were in love with her
cousin; he was, as she put it to herself, so distinctly
"fallable-in-love-with." She could see Fanny surrendering, first to his
sudden laughter, his quick, delighted mind, his innocent, engaging
frankness. He would, she thought, be endlessly amusing, endlessly
interesting, because he was so interested, so amused. There was
something that pleased her in the way he walked, hatless, his head
thrown back, his shoulders squared, his hands thrust into his coat
pockets, safe from gesture; something in the way he spun round in his
path to face her with his laughter. He had Fanny's terrier nose with the
ghost of a kink in it; his dark hair grew back in a sickle on each
temple; it wouldn't lie level and smooth like other people's, but sprang
up, curled from the clipping. His eyes were his own, dappled eyes, green
and grey, black and brown, sparkling; so was his mouth, which was
neither too thin nor too thick--determination in the thrusting curve of
that lower lip--and his chin, which was just a shade too big for it, a
shade too big for his face. His cheeks were sunburnt, and a little
shower of ochreish freckles spread from the sunburn and peppered the
slopes of his nose. She wanted to sketch him.
"Doesn't Mrs. Waddington ever go for walks?" she said.
"Fanny? No. She's too lazy."
"Lazy?"
"Too active, if you like, in other ways.... How long have you known
her?"
"Just five days."
"Five _days_?"
"Yes; but, you see, years ago she was my mother's dearest friend. That's
how I came to be their secretary. When she saw my name in the
advertisement she thought it must be me. And it was me. They hadn't seen
each other for years and years. My father and Mr. Waddington didn't hit
it off together, I believe."
"You haven't seen him yet?"
"No. There seems to be some mystery about him."
"Mystery?"
"Yes. What is it? Or mayn't you tell?"
"I _won't_ tell. It wouldn't be kind."
"Then don't--don't. I didn't know it was that sort of thing."
Ralph laughed. "It isn't. I meant it wouldn't be kind to you. I don't
want to spoil him for you."
"Then there _is_--tell me one thing: Shall I get on with him all right?"
"Don't ask me _that_."
"I mean, will he be awfully difficult to work with?"
"Because he sacked me? No. Only you mustn't let on that you know better
than he does. And if you want to keep your job, you mustn't contradict
him."
"Now you've made me want to contradict him. Whatever he says I shall
have to say the other thing whether I agree with him or not."
"Don't you think you could temporize a bit? For her sake."
"Did _you_ temporize?"
"Rather. I was as meek and servile as I knew how."
"As you knew how. Do you think I shall know better?"
"Yes, you're a woman. You can get on the right side of him. Will you try
to, because of Fanny? I'm most awfully glad she's got you, and I want
you to stay. Between you and me she has a very thin time with
Waddington."
"There it is. I know--I know--I _know_ I'm going to hate him."
"Oh, no, you're not. You can't _hate_ Waddington."
"_You_ don't?"
"Oh, Lord, no. I wouldn't mind him a bit, poor old thing, if he wasn't
Fanny's husband."
He had almost as good as owned it, almost put her in possession of their
secret. She conceived it--his secret, Fanny's secret--as all innocence
on her part, all chivalry on his; tender and hopeless and pure.
2
They had come to the white gate that led between the shrubberies and the
grass-plot with the yellow-grey stone house behind it.
It was nice, she thought, of Fanny to make Mr. Bevan take her for these
long walks when she couldn't go with them; but Barbara felt all the time
that she ought to apologize to the young man for not being Fanny,
especially when Mr. Waddington was coming back to-day by the three-forty
train and this afternoon would be their last for goodness knew how long.
And as they talked--about Ralph's life before the war and the jobs he
had lost because of it (he had been a journalist), and about Barbara's
job at the War Office, and air raids and the games they both went in
for, and their favourite authors and the room he had in the White Hart
Inn at Wyck--as they talked, fluently, with the ease of old
acquaintances, almost of old friends, Barbara admired the beauty of Mr.
Bevan's manners; you would have supposed that instead of suffering, as
he must be suffering, agonies of impatience and irritation, he had never
enjoyed anything in his life so much as this adventure that was just
coming to an end.
He had opened the gate for her and now stood with his back to it,
holding out his hand, saying "Good-bye."
"Aren't you coming in?" she said. "Mrs. Waddington expects you for tea."
"No," he said, "she doesn't. She knows I can't come if he's there."
He paused. "By the way, that book of his, it's in an appalling muddle. I
hadn't time to do much to it before I left. If you can't get it straight
you must come to me and I'll help you."
"That's very good of you."
"Rather not. It _was_ my job, you know."
He was backing through the gate, saluting as he went. And now he had
turned and was running with raking, athletic paces up the grass border
of the park.
III
1
"Tea is in the library, miss."
This announcement, together with Partridge's extraordinary increase of
importance, would have told her that the master had returned, even if
she had not seen, through the half-open door of the cloak-room, Mr.
Waddington's overcoat hanging by its shoulders and surmounted by his
grey slouch hat.
With a rapid, furtive movement the butler closed the door on these
sanctities; and she noted the subdued quiet of his footsteps as he led
the way down the dark oak-panelled corridor, through the smoke-room, and
into the library beyond. She also caught a surprising sight of her own
face in the glass over the smoke-room chimneypiece, her dark eyes
shining, the cool, wind-beaten flush on her young cheeks, the curled
mouth flowering, geranium red on rose white.
This Barbara of the looking-glass smiled at her in passing with such
gay, irresponsible amusement that it fairly took her breath away. Its
origin became clear to her as Ralph Bevan's words shot into her mind:
"I don't want to spoil him for you." She foresaw a possible intimacy in
which Horatio Bysshe Waddington would become the unique though
unofficial tie between them. She was aware that it pleased her to share
a secret jest with Ralph Bevan.
She found Fanny established behind her tea-table in the low room, dim
with its oak panelling above the long lines of the bookcases, where
Fanny's fluttering smile made movement and a sort of light.
Her husband sat facing her in his brown leather chair and in the pose,
the wonderful pose of his portrait; only the sobriety of his navy-blue
serge had fined it down, giving him a factitious slenderness. He hadn't
seen her come in. He sat there in innocence and unawareness; and
afterwards it gave her a little pang of remorse remembering how innocent
he had then seemed to her and unaware.
"This is my husband, Barbara. Horatio, you haven't met Miss Madden."
His eyes bulged with the startled innocence of a creature taken unaware.
He had just lifted his face, with its dripping moustache, from his
teacup, and though he carried off this awkwardness with an unabashed
sweep of his pocket-handkerchief, you could see that he was sensitive;
he hated you to catch him in any gesture that was less than noble. All
his gestures were noble and his attitudes. He was noble as he got up,
slowly, unfolding his great height, tightening by a movement of his
shoulders his great breadth. He looked down at her superbly and held out
his hand; it closed on hers in a large genial clasp.
"So this is my secretary, is it?"
"Yes. And don't forget she's my companion as well as your secretary."
"I never forget anything that you wish me to remember." (Only he said
"nevah" and "remembah"; he bowed as he said it in a very courtly way.)
Barbara noticed that his black hair and moustache were lightly grizzled,
there was loose flesh about his eyelids, his chin had doubled, and his
cheeks were sagging from the bone, otherwise he was exactly like his
portrait; these changes made him look, if anything, more incorruptibly
dignified and more solemn. He had remained on his feet (for his breeding
was perfect), moving between the tea-table and Barbara, bringing her
tea, milk and sugar, and things to eat. Altogether he was so simple, so
genial and unmysterious that Barbara could only suppose that Ralph had
been making fun of her, of her wonder, her curiosity.
"My dear, what a colour you've got!"
Fanny put up her hands to her own cheeks to draw attention to Barbara's.
"You _are_ growing a country girl, aren't you? You should have seen her
white face when she came, Horatio."
"What has she been doing to herself?" He had settled again into his
chair and his attitude.
"She's been out walking with Ralph."
"With Ralph? Is _he_ here still?"
"Why shouldn't he be?"
Mr. Waddington shrugged his immense shoulders. "It's a question of
taste. If he _likes_ to hang about the place after his behaviour--"
"Poor boy! whatever has he done? 'Behaviour' makes it sound as if it had
been something awful."
"We needn't go into it, I think."
"But you _are_ going into it, darling, all the time. Do you mean to keep
it up against him for ever?"
"I'm not keeping anything up. What Ralph Bevan does is no concern of
mine. Since I'm not to be inconvenienced by it--since Miss Madden has
come to my rescue so charmingly--I shall not give it another thought."
He turned to Barbara as to a change of subject. "Had you any
difficulty"--(his voice was measured and important)--"in finding your
way here?"
"None at all."
"Ah, that one-thirty train is excellent. Excellent. But if you had not
told the guard to stop at the Hill you would have been carried on to
Cheltenham. Which would have been very awkward for you. Very awkward
indeed."
"My dear Horatio, what did you suppose she _would_ do?"
"My dear Fanny, there are many things she might have done. She might
have got into the wrong coach at Paddington and been carried on to
Worcester."
"And that," said Barbara, "would have been much worse than Cheltenham."
"The very thought of it," said Fanny, "makes me shudder. But thank God,
Barbara, you didn't do any of those things."
Mr. Waddington shifted the crossing of his legs as a big dog shifts his
paws when you laugh at him; the more Fanny laughed the more dignified
and solemn he became.
"You haven't told me yet, Horatio, what you did in London."
"I was just going to tell you when Miss Madden--so delightfully--came
in."
At that Barbara thought it discreet to dismiss herself, but Fanny called
her back. "What are you running away for? He didn't do anything in
London he wouldn't like you to hear about."
"On the contrary, I particularly wish Miss Madden to hear about it. I
am starting a branch of the National League of Liberty in Wyck. You may
have heard of it?"
"Yes. I've _heard_ of it. I've even seen the prospectus."
"Good. Well, Fanny, I lunched yesterday with Sir Maurice Gedge, and he's
as keen as mustard. He agrees with me that the League will be no good,
no good at all, until it's taken up strong in the provinces. He wants me
to start at once. Just as soon as I can get my Committee."
"My dear, if you've got to have a Committee first you'll never start."
"It depends altogether on who I get. And it'll be _my_ Committee. Sir
Maurice was very emphatic about that. He agrees with me that if you want
a thing done, and done well, you must do it yourself. There can only be
_one_ moving spirit. The Committee will have nothing to do but carry out
my ideas."
"Then be sure you get a Committee that hasn't any of its own."
"That will not be difficult," said Mr. Waddington, "in Wyck.... The
first thing is the prospectus. That's where you come in, Miss Madden."
"You mean the first thing is that Barbara draws up the prospectus."
"Under my supervision."
"The next thing," Fanny said, "is to conceal your prospectus from your
Committee till it's in print. You come to your Committee with your
prospectus. You don't offer it for discussion."
"Supposing," Barbara said, "they insist on discussing it?"
"They won't," said Fanny, "once it's printed, especially if it's paid
for. You must get Pyecraft to send in his bill at once. And if they _do_
start discussing you can put them off with the date and place of the
meeting and the wording of the posters. That'll give them something to
talk about. I suppose you'll be chairman."
"Well, I think, in the circumstances, they could hardly appoint anybody
else."
"I don't know. Somebody might suggest Sir John Corbett."
Mr. Waddington's face sagged with dismay as Fanny presented this
unpleasant possibility.
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