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.