Mr. Waddington of Wyck Part 43

She shook her head at him. "You're your father all over again," she said.

"I'll swear I'm not," said Horry.

"If you were half as polite as your father it wouldn't be a bad thing."

There was a sound of explosions in the drive. "There's Ralph come to settle it himself," said f.a.n.n.y. And at that point, Mr. Waddington came out on them, suddenly, from the cloak-room.

"What's all this?" he said. He looked with disgust at the skates dangling from Barbara's hand. He went out into the porch and looked with disgust at Ralph and at the motor-bicycles. He thought with bitterness of the Cirencester ca.n.a.l. He couldn't skate. Even when he was Horry's age he hadn't skated. He couldn't ride a motor-bicycle. When he looked at the beastly things and thought of their complicated machinery and their evil fascination for Barbara, he hated them. He hated Horry and Ralph standing up before Barbara, handsome, vibrating with youth and health and energy.

"I won't have Barbara riding on that thing. It isn't safe. If he skids on the snow he'll break her neck."

"Much more likely to break his own neck," said Horry.

In his savage interior Mr. Waddington wished he would, and Horry too.

"He won't skid," said Barbara; "if he does I'll hop off."

"We'll come back," said Ralph, "if we don't get on all right."

They started in a duet of explosions, the motor-bicycles hissing and crunching through the light snow. Barbara, swinging on Ralph's carrier, waved her hand light-heartedly to Mr. Waddington. He hated Barbara; but far more than Barbara he hated Horry, and far more than Horry he hated Ralph.

"He'd no business to take her," he said. "She'd no business to go."

"You can't stop them, my dear," said f.a.n.n.y; "they're too young."

"Well, if they come back with their necks broken they'll have only themselves to thank."

He took a ferocious pleasure in thinking of Horry and Ralph and Barbara with their necks broken.

f.a.n.n.y stared at him. "I wonder what's made him so cross," she thought.

"He looks as if he'd got a chill on the liver.".... "Horatio, have you got a chill on the liver?"

"Now, what on earth put that into your head?"

"Your face. You look just a little off colour, darling."

At that moment Mr. Waddington began to sneeze.

"There, I knew you'd caught cold. You oughtn't to go standing about in draughts."

"I haven't caught cold," said Mr. Waddington.

But he shut himself up in his library and stayed there, huddled in his armchair. From time to time he leaned forward and stooped over the hearth, holding his chest and stomach as near as possible to the fire.

Shivers like thin icicles kept on slipping down his spine.

At lunch-time he complained that there was nothing he could eat, and before the meal was over he went back to his library and his fire. f.a.n.n.y sat with him there.

"I wish you wouldn't go standing out in the cold," she said. She knew that on Sat.u.r.day he had stood for more than ten minutes in the fallen snow of the park to be photographed. And he wouldn't wear his overcoat because he thought he looked younger without it, and slenderer.

"No wonder you've got a chill," she said.

"I didn't get it then. I got it yesterday in the garden."

She remembered. He had been wandering about the garden, after church, looking for snowdrops in the snow. Barbara had worn the snowdrops in the breast of her gown last night.

He nourished his resentment on that memory and on the thought that he had got his chill picking snowdrops for Barbara.

At tea-time he drank a little tea, but he couldn't eat anything. He felt sick and his head ached. At dinner-time, on f.a.n.n.y's advice, he went to bed and f.a.n.n.y took his temperature.

A hundred and one. He turned the thermometer in his hand, gazing earnestly at the slender silver thread. He was gratified to know that his temperature was a hundred and one and that f.a.n.n.y was frightened and had sent for the doctor. He had a queer, satisfied, exalted feeling, now that he was in for it. When Barbara came back she would know what he was in for and be frightened, too. He would have been still more gratified if he had known that without him dinner was a miserable affair. f.a.n.n.y showed that she was frightened, and her fear flattened down the high spirits of Ralph and Barbara and Horry, returned from their skating.

"You see, Barbara," said Ralph, when they had left f.a.n.n.y and Horry with the doctor, "we can't live without him."

They listened at the smoke-room door for the sound of Dr. Ransome's departure, and Ralph waited while Barbara went back and brought him the verdict.

"It's flu, and a touch of congestion of the lungs."

They looked at each other sorrowfully, so sorrowfully that they smiled.

"Yet we can smile," he said.

"You know," said Barbara, "he got it standing in the snow, while Pyecraft photographed him."

"It's the way," Ralph said, "he would get it."

And Barbara laughed. But, all the same, she felt a distinct pang at her heart every time she went into her bedroom and saw, in its gla.s.s on her dressing-table, the bunch of snowdrops that Mr. Waddington had picked for her in the snow. They made a pattern on her mind; white cones hanging down; sharp green blades piercing; green stalks held in the crystal of the water.

2

"n.o.body but a fool," said Horry, "would have stood out in the snow to be photographed ... at his age."

"Don't, Horry."

Barbara was in the morning-room, stirring some black, sticky stuff in a saucepan over the fire. The black, sticky stuff was to go on Mr.

Waddington's chest. Horry looked on, standing beside her in an att.i.tude of impatience. A pair of boots with skates clipped on hung from his shoulders by their laces. He felt that his irritation was justifiable, for Barbara had refused to go out skating with him.

"Why 'don't'?" said Horry. "It's obvious."

"Very. But he's ill."

"There can't be much the matter with him or the mater wouldn't look so chirpy."

"She likes nursing him."

"Well," Horry said, "_you_ can't nurse him."

"No. But I can stir this stuff," said Barbara.