Mr. Waddington of Wyck Part 18

He was wrong about Elise and jewellery. That was a throat for pearls and for diamonds. Emeralds. She would be all black and white and sparkling green. A necklace, he thought, wouldn't hang on her; it would be laid out, exposed on that white breast as on a cushion. You could never tell what a woman was really like till you'd seen her in a low-necked gown.

It made Mrs. Levitt ten times more alluring. He smiled at her, a tender, brooding, rather fatuous smile.

Mrs. Levitt saw that her moment had come. It would be now or never. She must risk it.

"I wish," she said, "you'd introduce me to your wife."

It was a shock, a horrid blow. It showed plainly that Elise had interests beyond him, that she was not, like him, all for the secret, solitary adventure.

Yet perhaps--perhaps--she had planned it; she thought it would be safer for them, more discreet.

She looked up at him with the old, irrefutable smile.

"Will you?" she pleaded.

"Well--I'm not sure that I know where my wife _is_. She was here a minute ago, talking to Lady Corbett."

He looked round. A wide screen guarded the door on to the platform. He could see Lady Corbett and f.a.n.n.y disappearing behind it.

"I--I'll go and look for her," he said. He meditated treachery.

Treachery to poor Elise.

He followed them through the door and down the steps into the concealed corridor. He found Ralph Bevan there. Horace had gone.

"I say, Ralph, I wish you'd take f.a.n.n.y home. She's tired. Get her out of this. I shall be here quite half an hour longer; settling up accounts.

You might tell Kimber to come back for me and Miss Madden."

Now to get to the entrance you had to pa.s.s through the swing door into the hall and down the side aisle to the bottom, so that Mrs. Levitt witnessed Mrs. Waddington's exit with Ralph Bevan. Mr. Waddington.

waited till the hall doors had closed on them before he returned.

"I can't find my wife anywhere," he said. "She wasn't in the cloak-room, so I think she must have gone back with Horace."

Mrs. Levitt would think that f.a.n.n.y had disappeared while he was looking for her, honourably, in the cloak-room.

"I saw her go out," said Mrs. Levitt coldly, "with Mr. Bevan."

"I suppose he's taking her home," he said vaguely. His best policy was vagueness. "And now, my dear lady, I wish I could take _you_ home. But I shall be detained here some little time. Still, if you don't mind waiting a minute or two till Kimber comes back with the car, he shall drive you."

"Thank you, Mr. Waddington, I'm afraid I've waited quite long enough. It isn't worth while troubling Kimber to drive me a hundred yards."

It gave her pleasure to inflict that snub on Mr. Waddington in return for his manoeuvre. As the meeting had now broken up, and there wouldn't be anybody to witness her departure in the Waddingtons' car, Mrs.

Levitt calculated that she could afford that little gratification of her feelings. They were intensified by Mr. Waddington's very evident distress. He would have walked home with her the hundred yards to Sheep Street, but she wouldn't hear of it. She was perfectly capable of seeing herself home. Miss Madden was waiting for him. Good night.

4

Eleven o'clock. In the library where Mr. Waddington was drinking his whisky and water, f.a.n.n.y had been crying. Horry had stalked off to his bedroom without saying good night to anybody. Barbara had retired discreetly. Ralph Bevan had gone. And when f.a.n.n.y thought of the lavender bags Susan-Nanna sent every year at Christmas, she had cried.

"How could you _do_ it, Horatio? How _could_ you?"

"There was nothing else to be done. You can't expect me to take your sentimental, view of Ballinger."

"It isn't Ballinger. It's poor Susan-Nanna and the babies, and the lavender bags."

Mr. Waddington swayed placably up and down on the tips of his toes. "It serves poor Susan-Nanna right for marrying Ballinger."

"Oh--I suppose it serves _me_ right, too--"

Though she clenched her hands tight, tight, she couldn't keep back that little spurt of anger.

He was smiling his peculiar, voluptuous smile. "Serves you right? For spoiling everybody in the village? It does indeed."

"You don't in the least see what I mean," said f.a.n.n.y.

But, after all, she was glad he hadn't seen it.

He hadn't seen anything. He hadn't seen that she had been crying. It had never dawned on him that she might care about Susan-Nanna, or that the Ballingers might love their home, their garden and their lavender bushes. He was like that. He didn't see things, and he didn't care.

He was back in his triumph of the evening, going over the compliments and congratulations, again and again--"Best speech ever made in the Town Hall--" But there was something--something he had left out.

"Did it never dawn on you--" said f.a.n.n.y.

Ah, _now_ he had it.

"There!" he said. "I knew I'd forgotten something. I never put in that bit about the darkest hour before dawn."

f.a.n.n.y's mind had wandered from what she had been going to say. "Did you see what Horry did?" she said instead.

"Everybody could see it. It was most unnecessary."

"I don't care. Think, Horatio. Think of his sticking up for you like that. He was going to fight them, the dear thing, all those great rough men. To fight them for _you_. He said he'd behave better than anybody else, and he did."

"Yes, yes. He behaved very well." Now that she put it to him that way he was touched by Horace's behaviour. He could always be touched by the thought of anything you did for _him_.

But Ralph Bevan could have told f.a.n.n.y she was mistaken. Young Horace didn't do it altogether for his father; he did it for himself, for an ideal of conduct, an ideal of honour that he had, to let off steam, to make a sensation in the Town Hall, to feel himself magnificent and brave; because he, too, was an egoist, though a delightful one.

Mr. Waddington returned to his speech. "I can't think what made me leave out that bit about the dawn."

"Oh, bother your old dawn," said f.a.n.n.y. "I'm going to bed."

She went, consoled. "Dear Horry," she thought, "I'm glad he did that."

VIII

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