As he walked up the park drive to the town he recalled with distinctly pleasurable emotion the first time he had encountered Mrs. Levitt, the vision of the smart little lady who had stood there by the inner gate, the gate that led from the park into the grounds, waiting for his approach with happy confidence. He remembered her smile, an affair of milk-white teeth in an ivory-white face, and her frank attack: "Forgive me if I"m trespa.s.sing. They told me there was a right of way." He remembered her charming diffidence, the nave reverence for his "grounds" which had compelled him to escort her personally through them; her att.i.tudes of admiration as the Manor burst on her from its bay in the beech trees; the interest she had shown in its date and architecture; and how, spinning out the agreeable interview, he had gone with her all the way to the farther gate that led into Lower Wyck village; and how she had challenged him there with her "You must be Mr.
Waddington of Wyck," and capped his admission with "I"m Mrs. Levitt." To which he had replied that he was delighted.
And the time after that--Partridge had discreetly shown her into the library--when she had called to implore him to obtain exemption for her son Toby; her black eyes, bright and large behind tears; and her cry: "I"m a war widow, Mr. Waddington, and he"s my only child;" the flattery of her belief that he, Mr. Waddington of Wyck, had the chief power on the tribunal (and indeed it would have been folly to pretend that he had not power, that he could not "work it" if he chose). And the third time, after he had "worked it," and she had come to thank him. Tears again; the pressure of a plump, ivory-white hand; a tingling, delicious memory.
After that, his untiring efforts to get a war job for Toby. There had been difficulties, entailing many visits to Mrs. Levitt in the little house in the Market Square of Wyck-on-the-Hill; but in the end he had had the same intoxicating experience of his power, all obstructions going down before Mr. Waddington of Wyck.
And this year, when Toby was finally demobilized, it was only natural that she should draw on Mr. Waddington"s influence again to get him a permanent peace job. He had got it; and that meant more visits and more grat.i.tude; till here he was, attached to Mrs. Levitt by the unbreakable tie of his benefactions. He was even attached to her son Toby, whose continued existence, to say nothing of his activity in Mr. Bostock"s Bank at Wyck, was a perpetual tribute to his power. Mr. Waddington had nothing like the same complacence in thinking of his own son Horace; but then Horace"s existence and his activity were not a tribute but a menace, a standing danger, not only to his power but to his fascination, his sense of himself as a still young, still brilliant and effective personality. (Horace inherited his mother"s deplorable lack of seriousness.) And it was in Mrs. Levitt"s society that Mr. Waddington was most conscious of his youth, his brilliance and effect. With an agreeable sense of antic.i.p.ation he climbed up the slopes of Sheep Street and Park Street, and so into the Square.
The house, m.u.f.fled in ivy, hid discreetly in the far corner, behind the two tall elms on the Green. Mrs. Trinder, the landlady, had a sidelong bend of the head and a smile that acknowledged him as Mr. Waddington of Wyck and Mrs. Levitt"s benefactor.
And as he waited in the low, mullion-darkened room he reminded himself that he had come to refuse her request. If, as he suspected, it was the Ballingers" cottage that she wanted. To be sure, the Ballingers had notice to quit in June, but he couldn"t very well turn the Ballingers out if they wanted to stay, when there wasn"t a decent house in the place to turn them into. He would have to make this very clear to Mrs.
Levitt.
Not that he approved of Ballinger. The fellow, one of his best farm hands, had behaved infamously, first of all demanding preposterous wages, and then, just because Mr. Waddington had refused to be brow-beaten, leaving his service for Colonel Grainger"s. Colonel Grainger had behaved infamously, buying Foss Bank with the money he had made in high explosives, and then letting fly his confounded Socialism all over the county. Knowing nothing, mind you, about local conditions, and actually raising the rate of wages without consulting anybody, and upsetting the farm labourers for miles round. At a time when the prosperity of the entire country depended on the farmers. Still, Mr.
Waddington was not the man to take a petty revenge on his inferiors. He didn"t blame Ballinger; he blamed Colonel Grainger. He would like to see Grainger boycotted by the whole county.
The door opened. He strode forward and found himself holding out a sudden, fervid hand to a lady who was not Mrs. Levitt. He drew up, turning his gesture into a bow, rather unnecessarily ceremonious; but he could not annihilate instantaneously all that fervour.
"I am Mrs. Levitt"s sister, Mrs. Rickards. Mr. Waddington, is it not?
I"ll tell Elise you"re here. I know she"ll be glad to see you. She has been very much upset."
She remained standing before him long enough for him to be aware of a projecting bust, of white serge, of smartness, of purplish copper hair, a raking panama"s white brim, of eyebrows, a rouged smile, and a smell of orris root. Before he could grasp its connexion with Mrs. Levitt this amazing figure had disappeared and given place to a tapping of heels and a furtive, scuffling laugh on the stairs outside. A shriller laugh--that must be Mrs. Rickards--a long Sh-sh-sh! Then the bang of the front door covering the lady"s retreat, and Mrs. Levitt came in, stifling merriment under a minute pocket-handkerchief.
He took it in then. They were sisters, Mrs. Rickards and Elise Levitt.
Elise, if you cared to be critical, had the same defects: short legs, loose hips; the same exaggerations: the toppling b.r.e.a.s.t.s underpinned by the shafts of her stays. Not Mr. Waddington"s taste. And yet--and yet Elise had contrived a charming and handsome effect out of black eyes and the milk-white teeth in the ivory-white face. The play of the black eyebrows distracted you from the equine bend of the nose that sprang between them; the movements of her mouth, the white flash of its smile, made you forget its thinness and hardness and the slight heaviness of its jaw. Something foreign about her. Something French. Piquant. And then, her clothes. Mrs. Levitt wore a coat and skirt, her sister"s white serge with a distinction, a greyish stripe or something; clean straightness that stiffened and fined down her exuberance. One jewel, one bit of gold, and she might have been vulgar. But no. He thought: she knows what becomes her. Immaculate purity of white gloves, white shoes, white panama; and the black points of the ribbon, of her eyebrows, her eyes and hair. After all, the sort of woman Mr. Waddington liked to be seen out walking with. She made him feel slender.
"My _dear_ Mr. Waddington, how good of you!"
"My dear Mrs. Levitt--always delighted--when it"s possible--to do anything."
As she covered him with her brilliant eyes he tightened his shoulders and stood firm, while his spirit braced itself against persuasion. If it was the Ballingers" cottage--
"I really am ashamed of myself. I never seem to send for you unless I"m in trouble."
"Isn"t that the time?" His voice thickened. "So long as you do send--"
He thought: It isn"t the Ballingers" cottage then.
"It"s your own fault. You"ve always been so good, so kind. To my poor Toby."
"Nothing to do with Toby, I hope, the trouble?"
"Oh, no. No. And yet in a way it has. I"m afraid, Mr. Waddington, I may have to leave."
"To leave? Leave Wyck?"
"Leave dear Wyck."
"Not seriously?"
He wasn"t prepared for that. The idea hit him hard in a place that he hadn"t thought was tender.
"Quite seriously."
"Dear me. This is very distressing. Very distressing indeed. But you would not take such a step without consulting your friends?"
"I _am_ consulting you."
"Yes, yes. But have you thought it well over?"
"Thinking isn"t any use. I shall have to, unless something can be done."
He thought: "Financial difficulties. Debts. An expensive lady. Unless something could be done?" He didn"t know that he was exactly prepared to do it. But his tongue answered in spite of him.
"Something must be done. We can"t let you go like this, my dear lady."
"That"s it. I don"t see how I _can_ go, with dear Toby here. Nor yet how I"m to stay."
"Won"t you tell me what the trouble is?"
"The trouble is that Mrs. Trinder"s son"s just been demobilized, and she wants our rooms for his wife and family."
"Come--surely we can find other rooms."
"All the best ones are taken. There"s nothing left that I"d care to live in.... Besides, it isn"t rooms I want, Mr. Waddington, it"s a house."
It was, of course, the Ballingers" cottage. But she couldn"t have it.
She couldn"t have it.
"I wouldn"t mind how small it was. If only I had a little home of my own. You don"t know, Mr. Waddington, what it is to be without a home of your own. I haven"t had a home for years. Five years. Not since the war."
"I"m afraid," said Mr. Waddington, "at present there isn"t a house for you in Wyck."
He brooded earnestly, as though he were trying to conjure up, to create out of nothing, a house for her and a home.
"No. But I understand that the Ballingers will be leaving in June. You said that at any time, if you had a house, I should have it."
"I said a house, Mrs. Levitt, not a cottage."
"It"s all the same to me. The Ballingers" cottage could be made into an adorable little house."
"It could. With a few hundred pounds spent on it."
"Well, you"d be improving your property, wouldn"t you? And you"d get it back in the higher rent."
"I"m not thinking about getting anything back. And nothing would please me better. Only, you see, I can"t very well turn Ballinger out as long as he behaves himself."
"I wouldn"t have him turned out for the world.... But do you consider that Ballinger _has_ behaved himself?"
"Well, he played me a dirty trick, perhaps, when he went to Grainger; but if Grainger can afford to pay for him I"ve no right to object to his being bought. It isn"t a reason for turning the man out."