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.