"It doesn't matter whether I have or haven't."
"It was a sacred compact."
"But if I can only keep it by being a perfect pig--"
He looked down at her face, her troubled, unnaturally earnest face.
"Of course, if you feel like that about it--"
"You'd feel like that if you were his confidential secretary and had
all his correspondence."
"Yes, yes. I see, Barbara, it won't work. I'll let you off the compact.
We can go on with him just the same."
"We can't."
"What? Not make a study of him?"
"No. We don't know what we're doing. It isn't safe. We may come on
things any day."
"Like the thing you came on just now."
"I didn't say I'd come on anything."
"All right, you didn't. He shall be our unfinished book, Barbara."
"He'll be _your_ unfinished book. I've finished mine all right. Anything
else will be simply appendix."
"You think you've got him complete?"
"Fairly complete."
"Oh, Barbara--"
"Don't tempt me, Ralph."
"After all," he said, "we were only playing with him."
"Well, we mustn't do it again."
"Never any more?"
"Never any more. I know it's a game for gods; but it's a cruel game. We
must give it up."
"You mean we must give him up?"
"Yes, we've hunted and hounded him enough. We must let him go."
"That's the compact, is it?"
"Yes."
"We shall break it, Barbara; see if we don't. We can't keep off him."
4
Mr. Waddington judged that, after all, owing to his consummate tact, he
had scored in the disagreeable parting with Mrs. Levitt. But when he
thought of Barbara, little Barbara, a flush mounted to his face, his
ears, his forehead; he could feel it--wave after wave of hot, unpleasant
shame.
He went slowly back to the library and shut himself in with the
tea-table, and the sofa, and the cushions crushed, deeply hollowed with
the large pressure of Elise. He wondered how much Barbara had taken in,
at what precise moment she had appeared. He tried to reconstruct the
scene. He had been leaning over Elise; he could see himself leaning over
her, enclosing her, and Elise's head, stiffened, drawing back from his
kiss. Worse than the sting of her repugnance was the thought that
Barbara had seen it and his attitude, his really very compromising
attitude. Had she? Had she? The door now, it was at right angles to the
sofa; perhaps Barbara hadn't caught him fair. He went to the door and
came in from it to make certain. Yes. Yes. From that point it was no
good pretending that he couldn't be seen.
But Barbara had rushed in like a little whirlwind, and she had gone
straight to the writing-table, turning her back. She wouldn't have had
time to take it in. He was at the chimneypiece before she had turned
again, before she could have seen him. He must have recovered himself
when he heard her coming. She couldn't charge in like that without being
heard. He must have been standing up, well apart from Elise, not leaning
over her by the time Barbara came in.
He tried to remember what Barbara had said when she went out. She had
said something. He couldn't remember what it was, but it had sounded
reassuring. Now, surely if Barbara had seen anything she wouldn't have
stopped at the door to say things. She would have gone straight out
without a word. In fact, she wouldn't have come in at all. She would
have drawn back the very instant that she saw. She would simply never
have penetrated as far as the writing-table. He remembered how coolly
she had taken up the photographs and gone out again as if nothing had
happened.
Probably, then, as far as Barbara was concerned, nothing had happened.
Then he remembered the horrible laughing of Elise. Barbara must have
heard that; she must have wondered. She might just have caught him with
the tail of her eye, not enough to swear by, but enough to wonder; and
afterwards she would have put that and that together.
And he would have to dine with her alone that evening, to face her
young, clear, candid eyes.
He didn't know how he was going to get through with it, and yet he did
get through.
To begin with, Barbara was very late for dinner.
She had thought of being late as a way of letting Mr. Waddington down
easily. She would come in, smiling and apologetic, palpably in the
wrong, having kept him waiting, and he would be gracious and forgive
her, and his graciousnees and forgiveness would help to reinstate him.
He would need, she reflected, a lot of reinstating. Barbara considered
that, in the matter of punishment, he had had enough. Mrs. Levitt, with
her "You old imbecile!" had done to him all, and more than all, that
justice could require; there was a point of humiliation beyond which no
human creature should be asked to suffer. To be caught making love to
Mrs. Levitt and being called an old imbecile! And then to be pelted with
indecent laughter. And, in any case, it was not her, Barbara's, place to
punish him or judge him. She had had no business to catch him, no
business, in the first instance, to forget the photographs.
Therefore, as she really wanted him not to know that she had caught him,
she went on behaving as if nothing had happened. All through dinner she
turned the conversation on to topics that would put him in a favourable
or interesting light. She avoided the subject of Fanny. She asked him
all sorts of questions about his war work.
"Tell me," she said, "some of the things you did when you were a special
constable."
And he told her his great story. To be sure, she knew the best part of
it already, because Ralph had told it--it had been one of his scores
over her--but she wanted him to remember it. She judged that it was
precisely the sort of memory that would reinstate him faster than
anything. For really he had played a considerable part.
"Well"--you could see by his face that he was gratified--"one of
the things we had to do was to drive about the villages and farms
after dark to see that there weren't any lights showing. It was
nineteen--yes--nineteen-sixteen, in the winter. Must have been winter,
because I was wearing my British warm with the fur collar. And there was
a regular scare on."
"Air raids?"
"No. Tramps. We'd been fairly terrorized by a nasty, dangerous sort of
tramp. The police were looking for two of these fellows--discharged
soldiers. We'd a warrant out for their arrest. Robbery and assault."
"With violence?"
"Well, you may call it violence. One of 'em had thrown a pint pot at the
landlord of the King's Head and hurt him. And they'd bolted with two
bottles of beer and a tin of Player's Navy Cut. They'd made off,
goodness knows where. We couldn't find 'em.
"I was driving to Daunton on a very nasty, pitch-black night. You know
how beastly dark it is between the woods at Byford Park? Well, I'd just
got there when I passed two fellows skulking along under the wall. They
stood back--it was rather a near shave with no proper lights on--and I
flashed my electric torch full on them. Blest if they weren't the very
chaps we were looking for. And I'd got to run 'em in somehow, all by
myself. And two to one. It wasn't any joke, I can tell you. Goodness
knows what nasty knives and things they might have had on 'em."
"What _did_ you do?"
"Do? I drove on fifty yards ahead, and pulled up the car outside the
porter's lodge at Byford. Then I got out and came on and met 'em. They
were trying to bolt into the wood when I turned my torch on them again
and shouted 'Halt!' in a parade voice.
"They halted, hands up to the salute. I thought the habit would be too
much for 'em when they heard the word of command. I said, 'You've got to
come along with me.' I didn't know how on earth I was going to take them
if they wouldn't go. And they'd started dodging. So I tried it on again:
'Halt!' Regular parade stunt. And they halted again all right. Then I
harangued them. I said, 'Shun, you blighters! I'm a special constable,
and I've got a warrant here for your arrest.'
"I hadn't. I'd nothing but an Inland Revenue Income Tax form. But I
whipped it out of my breast pocket and trained my light on the royal
arms at the top. That was enough for 'em. Then I shouted again in my
parade voice, 'Right about face! Quick march!'
"And I got them marching. I marched them the two miles from Byford,
through Lower Speed, and up the hill to Wyck and into the police
station. And we ran 'em in for robbery and assault."
"It was clever of you."
"No; nothing but presence of mind and bluff, and showing that you
weren't going to stand any nonsense. But I don't suppose Corbett or
Hawtrey or any of those chaps would have thought of it."
Barbara wondered: "Supposing I were to turn on him and say, 'You old
humbug, you know I don't believe a word of it. You know you didn't march
them a hundred yards.' Or '_I_ saw you this afternoon.' What would he
look like?" It was inconceivable that she should say these things. If
she was to go on with her study of him alone she would go on in the
spirit they had begun in, she and Ralph. That spirit admitted nothing
but boundless amusement, boundless joy in him. Moral indignation would
have been a false note; it would have been downright irreverence towards
the God who made him.
What if he did omit to mention that the nasty, dangerous fellows turned
out to be two feeble youths, half imbecile with shell-shock and half
drunk, and that it was Mr. Hawtrey, arriving opportunely in his car, who
took them over the last mile to the police station? As it happened Mr.
Waddington had frankly forgotten these details as inessential to his
story. (He _had_ marched them a mile.)
After telling it he was so far re-established in his own esteem as to
propose their working together on the Ramblings after dinner. He even
ordered coffee to be served in the library, as if nothing had happened
there. Unfortunately, by some culpable oversight of Annie Trinder's, the
cushions still bore the imprint of Elise. Awful realization came to him
when Barbara, with a glance at the sofa, declined to sit on it. He had
turned just in time to catch the flick of what in a bantering mood he
had once called her "Barbaric smile." After all, she might have seen
something. Not Mrs. Levitt's laughter but the thought of what Barbara
might have seen was his punishment--that and being alone with her,
knowing that she knew.
5
All this happened on a Wednesday, and Fanny wouldn't be back before
Saturday. He had three whole days to be alone with Barbara.
He had thought that no punishment could be worse than that, but as the
three days passed and Barbara continued to behave as though nothing had
happened, he got used to it. It was on a Friday night, as he lay awake,
reviewing for the hundredth time the situation, that his conscience
pointed out to him how he really stood. There was a worse punishment
than Barbara's knowing.