Then Colonel Grainger stood up and shouted, "I protest!"
Mr. Hitchin stood up and shouted, "I protest!"
They shouted together, "We protest!"
Sir John Corbett rushed back to his chair and shouted "Ordah!" and the back rows, the ranks of Hitchin's men, stood up and shouted, "We won't sign!" "We won't sign!" "We won't sign!"
And then young Horace did an unsuspected thing, a thing that surprised himself. He leaped on to the front bench and faced the insurgent back rows. His face was red with excitement, and with the shame and anger and resentment inspired by his father's eloquence. But he was shouting in his hoarse, breaking, adolescent voice:
"Look here, you blackguards there at the back. If you don't stop that row this minute, I'll jolly well chuck you all out."
Only one voice, the voice of Mr. Hitchin's biggest and brawniest quarryman, replied: "Come on, sir!"
Young Horace vaulted lightly over the bench, followed by Ralph, and the two were steeplechasing down the hall when Mr. Hitchin made another of his mysterious signals and the men filed out, obediently, one by one.
Ralph and Horace found themselves in the middle of the empty benches laughing into each other's faces. Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin stood beside them, smiling with intolerable benevolence.
Mr. Hitchin was saying: "The men are all right, Mr. Bevan. They don't mean any harm. They just got a bit out of hand."
Horace saw that they were being magnanimous, and the thought maddened him. "I don't blame the men," he said, "and I don't blame you, Hitchin. You don't know any better. But Colonel Grainger ought to be damned well ashamed of himself, and I hope he is."
Colonel Grainger laughed. So did Mr. Hitchin, throwing himself back and swaying from side to side as his mirth shook him.
"Look here, Mr. Hitchin—"
"That'll do, Horry," said Ralph. He led him gently down a side aisle and through a swing door into the concealed corridor beside the platform. There they waited.
"Don't imagine for one moment," said young Horry, "that I agree with all that tosh he talked. But, after all, he's got a perfect right to make a fool of himself if he chooses. And he'smyfather."
"I know. From first to last, Horry, you behaved beautifully."
"Well, what wouldyoudo if your father made an unholy ass of himself in public?"
"My father doesn't."
"No, but if he did?"
"I'd do what you did. Sit tight and try and look as if he didn't."
"Then," said Horace, "you look as big a fool yourself."
"Not quite. You don't say anything. Besides, your father isn't as big a fool as those London Leaguers who started the silly show. Sir Maurice Gedge and all that crowd. He didn't invent the beastly thing."
"No," said Horace mournfully, "he hasn't even the merit of originality."
He meditated, still mournful.
"Look here, Ralph, what did that blackguard Hitchin mean?"
"He isn't a blackguard. He's a ripping good sort. I can tell you, if every employer in this confounded commercial country was as honest as old Hitchin, there wouldn't be any labour question worth talking about."
"Damn his honesty. What did hemean? Was it true what he said?"
"Was what true?"
"Why, that my father turned the Ballingers out?"
"Yes; I'm afraid it was."
"I say, how disgusting of him. You know I always thought he was a bit of a fool, my father; but I didn't know he was that beastly kind of fool."
"He isn't," said Ralph. "He's just—a fool."
"I know. Did you ever hear such putrid rot as he talked?"
"I don't know. For the kind of silly thing it was, his speech wasn't half bad."
"What? About going over the top? Oh, Lord! And after turning theBallingers out, too."
Ralph was silent.
"What's happened to him? He didn't use to be like that. He must be mad, or something."
Ralph thought of Mrs. Levitt.
"He's getting old and he doesn't like it. That's what's the matter with him."
"But hang it all, Ralph, that's no excuse. It really isn't."
"I believe Ballinger gave him some provocation."
"I don't care what he gave him. He'd no earthly business to take advantage of it. Not with that sort of person. Besides, it wouldn't matter about Ballinger so much, but there's old Susan and the kiddies…. He doesn't see how perfectly sickening it is forme."
"It isn't very nice for your mother."
"No; it's jolly hard on the poor mater…. Well, I can't stick it much longer. I'm just about fed up with Horatio Bysshe. I shall clear out first thing in the morning before he's down. I don't care if I never see him or speak to him again."
"I say, I say, how about the midsummer holidays?"
"Oh, damn the midsummer holidays!"
"Isn't it rather rotten to take a line you can't possibly keep up?"
"That's all right. Whatever I may do in the future," said young Horace magnificently, "I've got to give him his punishmentnow."
Ralph laughed. Young Horace was as big an egoist as his father, but with these differences: his blood was hot instead of cold, he had his mother's humour, and he was not a fool. Ralph wondered how he would have felt if he had realized Mrs. Levitt's part in the Ballinger affair.
3
Mr. Waddington remained standing on his platform. They were coming round him now, grasping him by the hand, congratulating him: Sir John Corbett, the Rector, Major Markham of Wyck Wold and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott.
"Capital speech, Waddington, capital."
"Best speech made in the Town Hall since they built it."
"Splendid. You landed them one every time."
"No wonder you drew them down on to you."
"That was a disgraceful business," said Sir John. "Disgraceful."
"Nothing of the sort ever happened in Wyck before," said the Rector.
"Nobody ever made a speech like Waddington's before," said Major Markham of Wyck Wold.
"Oh, you always get a row if you drag in politics," Mr. Hawtrey said.
"I don't know," said Sir John. "That was a put-up job between Hitchin and Grainger."
"Struck me it had every appearance of a spontaneous outburst," MajorMarkham said.
"I've no doubt the rowdy element was brought in from the outside," said the Rector. "Hardly one of Hitchin's workpeople is a Wyck man. Otherwise I should have to apologize to Waddington for my parishioners."
"You needn't. There was nothing personal to me in it. Nothing personal at all. Even Hitchin wouldn't have had the impudence to oppose me on my own platform. It was the League they were going for. Bit too big for 'em. If you come out with a large, important thing like that there's sure to be some opposition just at first till it gets hold of 'em."
"Glad you can see it that way," said Sir John.
"My dear fellow, that's the way to see it. It's the right way; the big impersonal way."
"You've taken it in the proper spirit, Waddington," said the Rector. "None of those fellows meant any real harm. All good fellows…. By the way, is it true that the Ballingers have moved to Lower Wyck?"
"I believe so."
"Dear me, what on earth possessed them?"
"Some fad of Ballinger's, I fancy."
"That reminds me, I must go and see Mrs. Ballinger."
"You won't find them there, sir. They've moved again to her father's atMedlicott."
"You don't say so. I wonder now what they've done that for."
"They complained of the house being damp for one thing. If it was, that was Hitchin's fault, not mine."
Was everybody in a plot to badger him about those wretched Ballingers?He was getting sick of it. And he wanted to speak a word to Mrs. Levitt.
Mrs. Levitt had come up in the tail of the procession. She had given in her name and her subscription to Barbara Madden; but she lingered, waiting no doubt for a word with him. If only Corbett and the rest of them would go.
"Of course. Of course it was Hitchin's fault," said the Rector, with imperishable geniality. "Well…. Good night, Waddington, and thank you for a most—a most stimulating evening."
They had gone now, all but Sir John and Lady Corbett. (He could hear her talking to Fanny at the back of the platform.) Mrs. Levitt was gathering her scarf round her; in another minute she would be gone. And Corbett wouldn't go.
"I say, Waddington, that's a splendid young cub of yours. See him go over the top? He'd have taken them all on. Licked 'em, too, I shouldn't wonder."
Mr. Waddington resented this diversion of the stream of admiration. And he was acutely aware of Mrs. Levitt standing there, detached but waiting.
"Was I really all right, Corbett?" He wasn't satisfied with his speech.If only he could remember what he had left out of it.
"Absolutely, my dear chap. Absolutely top-hole. You ought to make that boy a soldier."
He wished that young Horace could be a soldier at that moment, stationed in a remote part of the Empire, without any likelihood of leave for the next five years. He wanted—he wanted intolerably to speak to Mrs. Levitt, to spread himself voluptuously in her rejuvenating smile.
Sir John retreated before his manifest indifference. He could hear him at the back of the platform, congratulating Fanny.
Mrs. Levitt advanced towards him.
"At last," she said, "I may add my congratulations. That speech was magnificent."
"Nothing, my dear lady, nothing but a little necessary plain speaking."
"Oh, but you were wonderful. You carried us off our feet."
"I hope," he said, "we've enrolled you as a member?" (He knew they had.)
"Of course I'm enrolled. And I've paid in my poor little guinea to that delightful Miss Madden."
"Ah, that istoogood of you."
It was. The amount of the subscription was purely a matter of individual fancy.
"It's the least I could do in such a splendid cause."
"Well, dear Mrs. Levitt, we're delighted to have you with us.Delighted."
There was a pause. He was looking down at her from the height of his six feet. The faint, sweet scent of orris root rose up from her warm skin. She was very attractive, dressed in a low-necked gown of that dull, satiny stuff women were wearing now. A thin band of white net was stretched across the top of her breasts; through it he could see the shadowy, arrow-headed groove between; her pendant—pearl bistre and paste—pointed, pointed down to it.
He was wrong about Elise and jewellery. That was a throat for pearls and for diamonds. Emeralds. She would be all black and white and sparkling green. A necklace, he thought, wouldn't hang on her; it would be laid out, exposed on that white breast as on a cushion. You could never tell what a woman was really like till you'd seen her in a low-necked gown. It made Mrs. Levitt ten times more alluring. He smiled at her, a tender, brooding, rather fatuous smile.
Mrs. Levitt saw that her moment had come. It would be now or never. She must risk it.
"I wish," she said, "you'd introduce me to your wife."
It was a shock, a horrid blow. It showed plainly that Elise had interests beyond him, that she was not, like him, all for the secret, solitary adventure.
Yet perhaps—perhaps—she had planned it; she thought it would be safer for them, more discreet.
She looked up at him with the old, irrefutable smile.
"Will you?" she pleaded.
"Well—I'm not sure that I know where my wifeis. She was here a minute ago, talking to Lady Corbett."
He looked round. A wide screen guarded the door on to the platform. He could see Lady Corbett and Fanny disappearing behind it.
"I—I'll go and look for her," he said. He meditated treachery.Treachery to poor Elise.
He followed them through the door and down the steps into the concealed corridor. He found Ralph Bevan there. Horace had gone.
"I say, Ralph, I wish you'd take Fanny home. She's tired. Get her out of this. I shall be here quite half an hour longer; settling up accounts. You might tell Kimber to come back for me and Miss Madden."
Now to get to the entrance you had to pass through the swing door into the hall and down the side aisle to the bottom, so that Mrs. Levitt witnessed Mrs. Waddington's exit with Ralph Bevan. Mr. Waddington. waited till the hall doors had closed on them before he returned.
"I can't find my wife anywhere," he said. "She wasn't in the cloak-room, so I think she must have gone back with Horace."
Mrs. Levitt would think that Fanny had disappeared while he was looking for her, honourably, in the cloak-room.
"I saw her go out," said Mrs. Levitt coldly, "with Mr. Bevan."
"I suppose he's taking her home," he said vaguely. His best policy was vagueness. "And now, my dear lady, I wish I could takeyouhome. But I shall be detained here some little time. Still, if you don't mind waiting a minute or two till Kimber comes back with the car, he shall drive you."
"Thank you, Mr. Waddington, I'm afraid I've waited quite long enough. It isn't worth while troubling Kimber to drive me a hundred yards."
It gave her pleasure to inflict that snub on Mr. Waddington in return for his manoeuvre. As the meeting had now broken up, and there wouldn't be anybody to witness her departure in the Waddingtons' car, Mrs. Levitt calculated that she could afford that little gratification of her feelings. They were intensified by Mr. Waddington's very evident distress. He would have walked home with her the hundred yards to Sheep Street, but she wouldn't hear of it. She was perfectly capable of seeing herself home. Miss Madden was waiting for him. Good night.
4
Eleven o'clock. In the library where Mr. Waddington was drinking his whisky and water, Fanny had been crying. Horry had stalked off to his bedroom without saying good night to anybody. Barbara had retired discreetly. Ralph Bevan had gone. And when Fanny thought of the lavender bags Susan-Nanna sent every year at Christmas, she had cried.
"How could youdoit, Horatio? Howcouldyou?"
"There was nothing else to be done. You can't expect me to take your sentimental, view of Ballinger."
"It isn't Ballinger. It's poor Susan-Nanna and the babies, and the lavender bags."
Mr. Waddington swayed placably up and down on the tips of his toes. "It serves poor Susan-Nanna right for marrying Ballinger."
"Oh—I suppose it servesmeright, too—"
Though she clenched her hands tight, tight, she couldn't keep back that little spurt of anger.
He was smiling his peculiar, voluptuous smile. "Serves you right? For spoiling everybody in the village? It does indeed."
"You don't in the least see what I mean," said Fanny.
But, after all, she was glad he hadn't seen it.
He hadn't seen anything. He hadn't seen that she had been crying. It had never dawned on him that she might care about Susan-Nanna, or that the Ballingers might love their home, their garden and their lavender bushes. He was like that. He didn't see things, and he didn't care.
He was back in his triumph of the evening, going over the compliments and congratulations, again and again—"Best speech ever made in the Town Hall—" But there was something—something he had left out.
"Did it never dawn on you—" said Fanny.
Ah,nowhe had it.
"There!" he said. "I knew I'd forgotten something. I never put in that bit about the darkest hour before dawn."
Fanny's mind had wandered from what she had been going to say. "Did you see what Horry did?" she said instead.
"Everybody could see it. It was most unnecessary."
"I don't care. Think, Horatio. Think of his sticking up for you like that. He was going to fight them, the dear thing, all those great rough men. To fight them foryou. He said he'd behave better than anybody else, and he did."
"Yes, yes. He behaved very well." Now that she put it to him that way he was touched by Horace's behaviour. He could always be touched by the thought of anything you did forhim.
But Ralph Bevan could have told Fanny she was mistaken. Young Horace didn't do it altogether for his father; he did it for himself, for an ideal of conduct, an ideal of honour that he had, to let off steam, to make a sensation in the Town Hall, to feel himself magnificent and brave; because he, too, was an egoist, though a delightful one.
Mr. Waddington returned to his speech. "I can't think what made me leave out that bit about the dawn."
"Oh, bother your old dawn," said Fanny. "I'm going to bed."
She went, consoled. "Dear Horry," she thought, "I'm glad he did that."
1
The Ballinger affair did not end with the demonstration in the TownHall. It had unforeseen and far-reaching consequences.
The first of these appeared in a letter which Mr. Waddington received from Mr. Hitchin:
"Remy estimate for decoration and additional building to Mrs. Levitt's house, I beg to inform you that recent circumstances have rendered it impossible for me to take up the contract. I must therefore request you to transfer your esteemed order to some other firm.
"Faithfully yours,
Mr. Hitchin expressed his attitude even more clearly to the foreman of his works. "I'm not going to build bathrooms and boudoirs and bedrooms for that—" the word he chose completed the alliteration. So that Mr. Waddington was compelled to employ a Cheltenham builder whose estimate exceeded Mr. Hitchin's estimate by thirty pounds.
And Mr. Hitchin's refusal was felt, even by people who resented his estimates, to be a moral protest that did him credit. It impressed the popular imagination. In the popular imagination Mrs. Levitt was now inextricably mixed up with the Ballinger affair. Public sympathy was all with Ballinger, turned out of his house and forced to take refuge with his wife's father at Medlicott, forced to trudge two and a half miles every day to his work and back again. The Rector and Major Markham of Wyck Wold, meditating on the Ballinger affair as they walked back that night from the Town Hall, pronounced it a mystery.
"It wasn't likely," Major Markham said, "that Ballinger, of his own initiative, would leave a comfortable house in Sheep Street for a damp cottage in Lower Wyck."
"Was it likely," the Rector said, "that Waddington would turn him out?"He couldn't believe that old Waddington would do anything of the sort.
"Unless," Major Markham suggested, "he's been got at. Mrs. Levitt may have got at him." He was a good sort, old Waddy, but he would be very weak in the hands of a clever, unscrupulous woman.
The Rector said he thought there was no harm in Mrs. Levitt, and MajorMarkham replied that he didn't like the look of her.
A vague scandal rose in Wyck-on-the-Hill. It went from mouth to mouth in bar parlours and back shops; Major Markham transported it in his motor-car from Wyck Wold to the Halls and Manors of Winchway and Chipping Kingdon and Norton-in-Mark. It got an even firmer footing in the county than in Wyck, with the consequence that one old lady withdrew her subscription to the League, and that when Mr. Waddington started on his campaign of rounding up the county the county refused to be rounded up. And the big towns, Gloucester, Cheltenham and Cirencester, were singularly apathetic. It was intimated to Mr. Waddington that if the local authorities saw fit to take the matter up no doubt something would be done, but the big towns were not anxious for a National League of Liberty imposed on them from Wyck-on-the-Hill.
The League did not die of Mrs. Levitt all at once. Very soon after the inaugural meeting the Committee sat at Lower Wyck Manor and appointed Mr. Waddington president. It arranged a series of monthly meetings in the Town Hall at which Mr. Waddington would speak ("That," said Fanny, "will give you something to look forward to every month.") Thus, on Saturday, the nineteenth of July, he would speak on "The Truth about Bolshevism." It was also decided that the League could be made very useful during by-elections in the county, if there ever were any, and Mr. Waddington prepared in fancy a great speech which he could use for electioneering purposes.
On July the nineteenth, seventeen people, counting Fanny and Barbara, came to the meeting: Sir John Corbett (Lady Corbett was unfortunately unable to attend), the Rector without his wife, Major Markham of Wyck Wold, Mr. Bostock of Parson's Bank, Kimber and Partridge and Annie Trinder from the Manor, the landlady of the White Hart, the butcher, the grocer and the fishmonger with whom Mr. Waddington dealt, three farmers who approved of his determination to keep down wages, and Mrs. Levitt. When he sat down and drank water there was a feeble clapping led by Mrs. Levitt, Sir John and the Rector. On August the sixteenth, the audience had shrunk to Mrs. Levitt, Kimber and Partridge, the butcher, one of the three farmers, and a visitor staying at the White Hart. Mr. Waddington spoke on "What the League Can Do." Owing to a sudden unforeseen shortage in his ideas he was obliged to fall back on his electioneering speech and show how useful the League would be if at any time there were a by-election in the county. The pop-popping of Mrs. Levitt's hands burst into a silent space. Nobody, not even Kimber or Partridge, was going to follow Mrs. Levitt's lead.
"You'll have to give it up," Fanny said. "Next time there won't be anybody but Mrs. Levitt." And with the vision before him of all those foolish, empty benches and Mrs. Levitt, pop-popping, dear brave woman, all by herself, Mr. Waddington admitted that he would have to give it up. Not that he owned himself beaten; not that he gave up his opinion of the League.
"It's a bit too big for 'em," he said. "They can't grasp it. Sleepy minds. You can't rouse 'em if they won't be roused."
He emerged from his defeat with an unbroken sense of intellectual superiority.
2
Thus the League languished and died out; and Mr. Waddington, in the absence of this field for personal activity, languished too. In spite of his intellectual superiority, perhaps because of it, he languished till Barbara pointed out to him that the situation had its advantages. At last he could go on with his book.
"If you can only start him on it and keep him at it," Fanny said, "I'll bless you for ever."
But it was not easy either to start him or to keep him at it. To begin with, as Ralph had warned her, the work itself,Ramblings Through the Cotswolds, was in an appalling mess, and Mr. Waddington seemed to have exhausted his original impetus in getting it into that mess. He had set out on his ramblings without any settled plan. "A rambler," he said, "shouldn't have a settled plan." So that you would find Mr. Waddington, starting from Wyck-on-the-Hill and arriving at Lechford in the Thames valley, turning up in the valley of the Windlode or the Speed. You would find him on page twenty-seven drinking ale at the Lygon Arms in Chipping Kingdon, and on page twenty-eight looking down on the Evesham plain from the heights south of Cheltenham. He would turn from this prospect and, without traversing any intermediate ground, be back again, where you least expected him, in his Manor under Wyck-on-the-Hill. For though he had no fixed plan, he had a fixed idea, and however far he rambled he returned invariably to Wyck. To Mr. Waddington Wyck-on-the-Hill was the one stable, the one certain spot on the earth's surface, and this led to his treating the map of Gloucestershire entirely with reference to Wyck-on-the-Hill, so that all his ramblings were complicated by the necessity laid on him of starting from and getting back to it.
So much Barbara made out after she had copied the first forty pages, making the first clearing in Mr. Waddington's jungle. The clearings, she explained to Ralph, broke your heart. It wasn't till you'd got the thing all clean and tidy that you realized the deep spiritual confusion that lay behind it.
After that fortieth page the Ramblings piled and mixed themselves in three interpenetrating layers. First there was the original layer of Waddington, then a layer of Ralph superimposed on Waddington and striking down into him; then a top layer of Waddington, striking down into Ralph. First, the primeval chaos of Waddington; then Ralph's spirit moving over it and bringing in light and order; then Waddington again, invading it and beating it all back to darkness and confusion. From the moment Ralph came into it the progress of the book was a struggle between these two principles, and Waddington could never let Ralph be, so determined was he to stamp the book with his own personality.
"After all," Ralph said, "itishis book."
"If he could only get away from Wyck, so that you could see where the other placesare," she moaned.
"He can't get away from it because he can't get away from himself. His mind is egocentric and his ego lives in Wyck."
Barbara had had to ask Ralph to help her. They were in the library together now, working on the Ramblings during one of Mr. Waddington's periodical flights to London.
"He thinks he's rambling round the country but he's really rambling round and round himself. All the time he's thinking about nothing but his blessed self."
"Oh, come, he thought a lot about his old League."
"No, the League was only an extension of his ego."
"That must have been what Fanny meant. We were looking at his portrait and I said I wondered what he was thinking about, and she said she used to wonder and now she knew. Of course, it's Himself. That's what makes him look so absurdly solemn."
"Yes, but think of it. Think. That man hasn't ever cared about anything or anybody but himself."
"Oh—he cares about Fanny."
"No. No, he doesn't. He cares about his wife. A very different thing."
"Well—he cares about his old mother. He really cares."
"Yes, and you know why? It's only because she makes him feel young. He hates Horry because he can't feel young when he's there."
"Why, oh why, did that angel Fanny marry him?"
"Because she isn't an angel. She's a mortal woman and she wanted a husband and children."
"Wasn't there anybody else?"
"I believe not—available. The man she ought to have married was married already."
"Did my mother marry him?"
"Yes. Andmymother married the next best one…. It was as plain and simple as all that. And you see, the plainer and simpler it was, the more she realized why she was marrying Horatio, the more she idealized him. It wanted camouflage."
"I see."
"Then you must remember her people were badly off and he helped them. He was always doing things for them. He managed all Fanny's affairs for her before he married her."
"Then—he does kind things."
"Lots. When he wants to get something. He wanted to get Fanny…. Besides, he does them to get power, to get a hold on you. It's really for himself all the time. It gives him a certain simplicity and purity. He isn't a snob. He doesn't think about his money or his property, or his ancestors—he's got heaps—quite good ones. They don't matter. Nothing matters but himself."
"How about his book? Doesn't that matter?"
"It does and yet again it doesn't. He pretends he's only doing it to amuse himself, but it's really a projection of his ego into the Cotswolds. On the other hand, he'd hate it if you took him for a writing man when he's Horatio Bysshe Waddington. That's how he's got it into such a mess, because he can't get away from himself and his Manor."
"Proud of his Manor, anyhow."
"Oh, yes. Not, mind you, because it's perfect Tudor of the sixteenth century,norbecause the Earl of Warwick gave it to his great-grandfather's great-great-grandfather, but because it's his Manor. Horatio Bysshe Waddington's Manor. Of course, it's got to be what it is because any other sort of Manor wouldn't be good enough for Bysshe."
"It's an extension of his ego, too?"
"Yes. Horatio's ego spreading itself in wings and bursting into ball-topped gables and overflowing into a lovely garden and a park. There isn't a tree, there isn't a flower that hasn't got bits of Horatio in it."
"If I thought that I should never want to see roses and larkspurs again."
"It only happens in Horatio's mind. But it does happen."
So, between them, bit by bit, they made him out.
And they made out the book. Here and there, on separate slips, were great outlying tracts of light, contributed by Ralph, to be inserted, and sketches of dark, undeveloped stuff, sprung from Waddington, to be inserted too. Neither Ralph nor Barbara could make them fit. The only thing was to copy it out clear as it stood and arrange it afterwards. And presently it appeared that two pages were missing.
One evening, the evening of Mr. Waddington's return, looking for the lost pages, Barbara made her great discovery: a sheaf of manuscript, a hundred and twenty pages in Ralph's handwriting, hidden away at the back of the bureau, crumpled as if an inimical hand had thrust it out of sight. She took it up to bed and read it there.
A hundred and twenty pages of pure Ralph without any taint of Waddington. It seemed to be part of Mr. Waddington's book, and yet no part of it, for it was inconceivable that it should belong to anything but itself. Ralph didn't ramble; he went straight for the things he had seen. He saw the Cotswolds round Wyck-on-the-Hill, he made you see them, as they were: the high curves of the hills, multiplied, thrown off, one after another; the squares and oblongs and vandykes and spread fans of the fields; and their many colours; grass green of the pastures, emerald green of the young wheat, white green of the barley; shining, metallic green of the turnips; the pink, the brown, the purple fallows, the sharp canary yellow of the charlock. And the trees, the long processions of trees by the great grass-bordered roads; trees furring the flanks and groins of the parted hills, dark combs topping their edges.
Ralph knew what he was doing. He went about with the farmers and farm hands; he followed the ploughing and sowing and the reaping, the feeding and milking of the cattle, the care of the ewes in labour and of the young lambs. He went at night to the upland folds with the shepherds; he could tell you about shepherds. He sat with the village women by their firesides and listened to their talk; he could tell you about village women. Mr. Waddington did not tell you about anything that mattered.
She took the manuscript to Ralph at the White Hart with a note to say how she had found it. He came running out to walk home with her.
"Did you know it was there?" she said.
"No. I thought I'd lost it. You see what it is?"
"Part of your book."
"Horatio's book."
"But you wrote it."
"Yes. That's what he fired me out for. He got tired of the thing and asked me to go on with it. He called it working up his material. I went on with it like that, and he wouldn't have it. He said it was badly written—jerky, short sentences—he'd have to re-write it. Well—I wouldn't let him do that, and he wouldn't have it as it stood."
"But—it's beautiful—alive and real. What more does he want?"
"The stamp of his personality."
"Oh, he'dstampon it all right."
"I'm glad you like it."
"Likeit. Don't you?"
Ralph said he thought he'd liked it when he wrote it, but now he didn't know.
"You'll know when you've finished it."
"I don't suppose I shall finish it," he said.
"But you must. You can'tnotfinish a thing like that."
"I own I'd like to. But I can't publish it."
"Why ever not?"
"Oh, it wouldn't be fair to poor old Waddy. After all, I wrote it for him."
"What on earth does that matter? If he doesn't want it. Of course you'll finish it, and of course you'll publish it."
"Well, but it's all Cotswold, you see. Andhe'sCotswold. If itisany good, you know, I shouldn't like to—to well, get in his way. It's his game. At least he began it."
"It's a game two can play, writing Cotswold books."
"No. No. It isn't. And he got in first."
"Well, then, let him get in first. You can bring your book out after."
"And dish his?"
"No, let it have a run first. Perhaps it won't have any run."
"Perhaps mine won't."
"Yours. That heavenly book? And his tosh—Don't you see that youcan'tget in his way? If anybody reads him they won't be the same people who read you."
"I hope not. All the same it would be rather beastly to cut him out; I mean to come in and do it better, show how bad he is, how frightful. It would rub it in, you know."
"Not with him. You couldn't."
"You don't know. Some brute might get up and hurt him with it."
"Oh, youaretender to him."
"Well, you see, I did let him down when I left him. Besides, it isn't altogether him. There's Fanny."
"Fanny? She'd love you to write your book."
"I know she'd think she would. But she wouldn't like it if it madeHoratio look a fool."
"But he's bound to look a fool in any case."
"True. I might give him a year, or two years."
"Well, then,mywork's cut out for me. I shall have to make Horatio go on and finish quick, so as not to keep you waiting."
"He'll get sick of it. He'll make you go on with it."
"Me?"
"Practically, and quarrel with every word you write. Unless you can write so like Horatio that he'll think he's done it himself. And then, you know, he won't have a word of mine left in. You'll have to take me out. And we're so mixed up together that I don't believe even he could sort us. You see, in order to appease him, I got into the way of giving my sentences a Waddingtonian twist. If only I could have kept it up—"
"I'll have to lick the thing into shape somehow."
"There's only one thing you'll have to do. You must make him steer a proper course. This is to betheGuide to the Cotswolds. You can't have him sending people back to Lower Wyck Manor all the time. You'll have to know all the places and all the ways."
"And I don't."
"No. But I do. Supposing I took you on my motor-bike? Would you awfully mind sitting on the carrier?"
"Do you think," she said, "he'd let me go?"
"Fanny will."
"Icould, I think. I work so hard in the mornings and evenings that they've given me all the afternoons."
"We might go every afternoon while the weather holds out," he said. And then: "I say, hedoesbring us together."
That was how Barbara's happy life began.
3
He did bring them together.
In the terrible months that followed, while she struggled for order and clarity against Mr. Waddington, who strove to reinstate himself in his obscure confusion, Barbara was sustained by the thought that in working for Mr. Waddington she was working for Ralph Bevan. The harder she worked for him the harder she worked for Ralph. With all her cunning and her little indomitable will she urged and drove him to get on and make way for Ralph. Mr. Waddington interposed all sorts of irritating obstructions and delays. He would sit for hours, brooding solemnly, equally unable to finish and to abandon any paragraph he had once begun. He had left the high roads and was rambling now in bye-ways of such intricacy that he was unable to give any clear account of himself. When Barbara had made a clean copy of it Mr. Waddington's part didn't always make sense. The only bits that could stand by themselves were Ralph's bits, and they were the bits that Mr. Waddington wouldn't let stand. The very clearness of the copy was a light flaring on the hopeless mess it was. Even Mr. Waddington could see it.
"Do you think," she said, "we've got it all down in the right order?"She pointed.
"What'sthat?" She could see his hands twitching with annoyance. His loose cheeks hung shaking as he brooded.
"That's not asI, wrote it," he said at last. "That's Ralph Bevan. He wasn't a bit of good to me. There's—there's no end to the harm he's done. Conceited fellow, full of himself and his own ideas. Now I shall have to go over every line he's written and write it again. I'd rather write a dozen books myself than patch up another fellow's bad work…. We've got to overhaul the whole thing and take out whatever he's done."
"But you're so mixed up you can't always tell."
He looked at her. "You may be sure that if any passage is obscure or confused or badly written it isn't mine. The one you've shown me, for example."
Then Barbara had another of her ideas. Since they were so mixed up together that Mr. Waddington couldn't tell which was which, and since he wanted to give the impression that Ralph was responsible for all the bad bits, and insisted on the complete elimination of Ralph, she had only got to eliminate the bad bits and give such a Waddingtonian turn to the good ones that he would be persuaded that he had written them himself.
The great thing was, he said, that the book should be written by himself. And once fairly extricated from his own entanglements and set going on a clear path, with Barbara to pull him out of all the awkward places, Mr. Waddington rambled along through the Cotswolds at a smooth, easy pace. Barbara had contrived to break him of his wasteful and expensive habit of returning from everywhere to Wyck. All through August he kept a steady course northeast, north, northwest; by September he had turned due south; he would be beating up east again by October; November would find him in the valleys; there was no reason why he shouldn't finish in December and come out in March.
Mr. Waddington himself was surprised at the progress he had made.
"It shows," he said, "what we can do without Ralph Bevan."
And Barbara, seated on Ralph's carrier, explored the countryside and mapped out Mr. Waddington's course for him.
"She's worth a dozen Ralph Bevins," he would say.
And he would go to the door with her and see her start.
"You mustn't let yourself be victimized by Ralph," he said. He glanced at the carrier. "Do you think it's safe?"
"Quite safe. If it isn't it'll only be a bit more thrilling."
"Much better to come in the car with me."
But Barbara wouldn't go in the car with him. When he talked about it she looked frightened and embarrassed.
Her fright and her embarrassment were delicious to Mr. Waddington. He said to himself: "She doesn't thinkthat'ssafe, anyhow."
And as he watched her rushing away, swaying exquisitely over a series of terrific explosions, he gave a little skip and a half turn, light and youthful, in the porch of his Manor.
1
Sir John Corbett had called in the morning. He had exerted himself to that extent out of friendship, pure friendship for Waddington, and he had chosen an early hour for his visit to mark it as a serious and extraordinary occasion. He sat now in the brown leather armchair which was twin to the one Mr. Waddington had sat in when he had his portrait painted. His jolly, rosy face was subdued to something serious and extraordinary. He had come to warn Mr. Waddington that scandal was beginning to attach itself to his acquaintance—he was going to say "relations," but remembered just in time that "relations" was a question-begging word—to his acquaintance with a certain lady.
To which Mr. Waddington replied, haughtily, that he had a perfect right to choose his—er—acquaintance. His acquaintance was, pre-eminently, his own affair.
"Quite so, my dear fellow, quite so. But, strictly between ourselves, is it a good thing to choose acquaintances of the sort that give rise to scandal? As a man of the world, now, between ourselves, doesn't it strike you that the lady in question may be that sort?"
"It does not strike me," said Mr. Waddington, "and I see no reason why it should strike you."
"I don't like the look of her," said Sir John, quoting Major Markham.
"If you're trying to suggest that she's not straight, you're reading something into her look that isn't there."
"Come, Waddington, you know as well as I do that when a man's knocked about the world like you and me, he gets an instinct; he can tell pretty well by looking at her whether a woman's that sort or not."
"My dear Corbett, my instinct is at least as good as yours. I've known Mrs. Levitt for three years, and I can assure she's as straight, as innocent, as your wife or mine."
"Clever—clever and a bit unscrupulous." Again Sir John quoted Major Markham. "A woman like that can get round simple fellows like you and me, Waddington, in no time, if she gives her mind to it. That's why I won't have anything to do with her. She may be as straight and innocent as you please; but somehow or other she's causing a great deal of unpleasant talk, and if I were you I'd drop her. Drop her."
"I shall do nothing of the sort."
"My dear fellow, that's all very well, but when everybody knows your wife hasn't called on her—"
"There was no need for Fanny to call on her. My relations with Mrs.Levitt were on a purely business footing—"
"Well, I'd leave them there, and not too much footing either."
"What can I do? Here she is, a war widow with nobody but me to look after her interests. She's got into the way of coming to me, and I'm not going back on the poor woman, Corbett, because of your absurd insinuations."
"Notmyinsinuations."
"Anybody's insinuations then. Nobody has a right to insinuate anything aboutme. As for Fanny, she'll make a point of calling on her now. We were talking about it not long ago."
"A bit hard on Mrs. Waddington to be let in for that."
"You needn't worry. Fanny can afford to do pretty well what she likes."
He had him there. Sir John knew that this was true of Fanny Waddington, as it was not true of Lady Corbett. He could remember the time when nobody called on his father and mother; and Lady Corbett could not, yet, afford to call on Mrs. Levitt before anybody else did.
"Well," he said, "so long as Mrs. Levitt doesn't expect my wife to follow suit."
"Mrs. Levitt's experience can't have led her to expect much in the way of kindness here."
"Well, don't be too kind. You don't know how you may be landed. You don't know," said Sir John fatally, "what ideas you may have put into the poor woman's head."
"I should be very sorry," said Mr. Waddington, "if I thought for one moment I had roused any warmer feelings—"
But he wasn't sorry. He tried hard to make his face express a chivalrous regret, and it wouldn't. It was positively smiling, so agreeable was the idea conveyed by Sir John. He turned it over and over, drawing out its delicious flavour, while Sir John's little laughing eyes observed his enjoyment.
"You don't know," he said, "whatyou may have roused."
There was something very irritating in his fat chuckle.
"You needn't disturb yourself. These things will happen. A woman may be carried away by her feelings, but if a man has any tact and any delicacy he can always show her very well—without breaking off all relations. That would be clumsy."
"Of course, if you want to keep up with her, keep up with her. Only take care you don't get landed, that's all."
"You may be quite sure that for the lady's own sake I shall take care."
They rose; Mr. Waddington stood looking down at Sir John and his little round stomach and his little round eyes with their obscene twinkle. And for the life of him he couldn't feel the indignation he would like to have felt. As his eyes encountered Sir John's something secret and primitive in Mr. Waddington responded to that obscene twinkle; something reminiscent and anticipating; something mischievous and subtle and delightful, subversive of dignity. It came up in his solemn face and simmered there. Here was Corbett, a thorough-paced man of the world, and he took it for granted that Mrs. Levitt's feelings had been roused; he acknowledged, handsomely, as male to male, the fascination that had roused them. He, Corbett, knew what he was talking about. He saw the whole possibility of romantic adventure with such flattering certitude that it was impossible to feel any resentment.
At the same time his interference was a piece of abominable impertinence, and Mr. Waddington resented that. It made him more than ever determined to pursue his relations with Mrs. Levitt, just to show he wasn't going to be dictated to, while the very fact that Corbett saw him as a figure of romantic adventure intensified the excitement of the pursuit. And though Elise, seen with certainty in the light of Corbett's intimations, was not quite so enthralling to the fancy as the Elise of his doubt, she made a more positive and formidable appeal to his desire. He loved his desire because it made him feel young, and, loving it, he thought he loved Elise.
And what Corbett was thinking, Markham and Thurston, and Hawtrey and young Hawtrey, and Grainger, would be thinking too. They would all see him as the still young, romantic adventurer, the inspirer of passion.
And Bevan—But no, he didn't want Bevan to see him like that. Or rather, he did, and yet again he didn't. He had scruples when it came to Bevan, because of Fanny. And because of Fanny, while he rioted in visions of the possible, he dreaded more than anything an actual detection, the raking eyes and furtive tongues of the townspeople. If Fanny called on Mrs. Levitt it would stop all the talking.
That was how Fanny came to know Mrs. Levitt, and how Mrs. Levitt (andToby) came to be asked to the September garden party at Lower WyckManor.
2
Mrs. Levitt, of the White House, Wyck-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.
She thought it sounded very well. She had been out, that is to say, she had judged it more becoming to her dignity not to be at home when Fanny called; and Fanny had been actually out when Mrs. Levitt called, so that they met for the first time at the garden party.
"It's absurd our not knowing each other," Fanny said, "when my husband knows you so well."
"I've always felt, Mrs. Waddington, that I ought to know you, if it's only to tell you how good he's been to me. But, of course, you know it."
"I know it quite well. He's always being good to people. He likes it.You must take off some of the credit for that."
She thought: "She has really very beautiful eyes." A lot of credit would have to be taken off for her eyes, too.
"But isn't that," said Mrs. Levitt, "what being goodis? To like being it? Only I suppose that's just what lays him open—"
She lowered the eyes whose brilliance had blazed a moment ago on Fanny; she toyed with her handbag, smiling a little secret, roguish smile.
"That lays him open?"
Mrs. Levitt looked up, smiling. "To the attacks of unscrupulous people like me."
It was risky, but it showed a masterly boldness and presence of mind. It was as if she and Fanny Waddington had had their eyes fixed on a live scorpion approaching them over the lawn, and Mrs. Levitt had stooped down and grasped it by its tail and tossed it into the lavender bushes. As if Mrs. Levitt had said, "My dear Mrs. Waddington, we both know that this horrible creature exists, but we aren't going to let it sting us." As if she knew why Fanny had called on her and was grateful to her.
Perhaps if Mrs. Levitt had never appeared at that garden party, or if, having appeared, she had never been introduced, at their own request, to Major Markham, Mr. Thurston, Mr. Hawtrey and young Hawtrey and Sir John Corbett, Mr. Waddington might never have realized the full extent of her fascination.
She had made herself the centre of the party by her sheer power to seize attention and to hold it. You couldn't help looking at her, again and again, where she sat in a clearing of the lawn, playing the clever, pointed play of her black and white, black satin frock, black satin cloak lined with white silk, furred with ermine; white stockings and long white gloves, the close black satin hat clipping her head; the vivid contrast and stress repeated in white skin, black hair, black eyes; black eyes and fine mouth and white teeth making a charming and perpetual movement.
She had been talking to Major Markham for the last ten minutes, displaying herself as the absurdly youthful mother of a grown-up son. Toby Levitt, a tall and slender likeness of his mother, was playing tennis with distinction, ignoring young Horace, his partner, standing well up to the net and repeating the alternate smashing and sliding strokes that kept Ralph and Barbara bounding from one end of the court to the other. Mrs. Levitt was trying to reconcile the proficiency of Toby's play with his immunity from conscription in the late war. The war led straight to Major Markham's battery, and Major Markham's battery to the battery once commanded by Toby's father, which led to Poona and the great discovery.
"You don't mean Frank Levitt, captain in the gunners?"
"I do."
"Was he by any chance stationed at Poona in nineteen-ten, eleven?"
"He was."
"But, bless my soul—hewas my brother-in-law Dick—Dick Benham's best friend."
The Major's slightly ironical homage had given place to a serious excitement, a respectful interest.
"Oh—Dicky Benham—ishe—?"
"Rather. I've heard him talk about Frank Levitt scores of times. Do you hear that, Waddington? Mrs. Levitt knows all my sister's people. Why on earth haven't we met before?"
Mr. Waddington writhed, while between them they reeled off a long series of names, people and places, each a link joining up Major Markham and Mrs. Levitt. The Major was so excited about it that he went round the garden telling Thurston and Hawtrey and Corbett, so that presently all these gentlemen formed round Mrs. Levitt an interested and animated group. Mr. Waddington hovered miserably on the edge of it; short of thrusting Markham aside with his elbow (Markham for choice) he couldn't have broken through. He would give it up and go away, and be drawn back again and again; but though Mrs. Levitt could see him plainly, no summons from her beautiful eyes invited his approach.
His behaviour became noticeable. It was observed chiefly by his sonHorry.
Horry took Barbara apart. "I say, have you seen my guv'nor?"
"No. What? Where?"
She could see by his face that he was drawing her into some iniquitous, secret by-path of diversion.
"There, just behind you. Turn round—this way—but don't look as if you'd spotted him…. Did you ever see anything like him? He's like a Newfoundland dog trying to look over a gate. It wouldn't be half so funny if he wasn't so dignified all the time."
She didn't approve of Horry. He wasn't decent. But the dignity—itwaswonderful.
Horry went on. "What on earth did the mater ask that woman for? She might have known he'd make a fool of himself."
"Oh, Horry, you mustn't. It's awful of you. You reallyarea little beast."
"I'm not. Fancy doing it at his own garden party. He never thinks ofus. Look at the dear little mater, there, pretending she doesn't see him.That'swhat makes me mad, Barbara."
"Well, you ought to pretend you don't see it, too."
"I've been pretending the whole blessed afternoon. But it's no good pretending withyou. You jolly well see everything."
"I don't go and draw other people's attention to it."
"Oh, come, how about Ralph? You know you wouldn't let him miss him."
"Ralph? Oh, Ralph's different. I shouldn't point him out to LadyCorbett."
"No more should I.You're different, too. You and Ralph and me are the only people capable of appreciating him. Though I wouldn't swear that the mater doesn't, sometimes."
"Yes. But you go too far, Horry. You're cruel to him, and we're not."
"It's all very well for you. He isn't your father…. Oh, Lord, he's craning his neck over Markham's shoulder now. What his face must look like from the other side—"
"If you found your father drunk under a lilac bush I believe you'd go and fetch me to look at him."
"I would, if he was as funny as he is now…. But I say, you know, I can't have him going on like that. I've got to stop it, somehow. What would you do if you were me?"
"Do? I think I should ask him to go and take Lady Corbett in to tea."
"Good."
Horry strode up to his father. "I say, pater, aren't you going to takeLady Corbett in to tea?"
At the sheer sound of his son's voice Mr. Waddington's dignity stood firm. But he went off to find Lady Corbett all the same.
When it was all over the garden party was pronounced a great success, and Mr. Waddington was very agreeably rallied on his discovery, taxed with trying to keep it to himself, and warned that, he wasn't going to have it all his own way.
"It's our turn now," said Major Markham, "to have a look in."
And their turn was constantly coming round again; they were always looking in at the White House. First, Major Markham called. Then Sir John Corbett of Underwoods, Mr. Thurston of The Elms, and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott called and brought their wives. These ladies, however, didn't like Mrs. Levitt, and they were not at home when she returned their calls. Mrs. Levitt's visiting card had its place in three collections and there the matter ended. But Mr. Thurston and Mr. Hawtrey continued to call with a delightful sense of doing something that their wives considered improper. Major Markham—as a bachelor his movements were more untrammelled—declared it his ambition to "cut Waddy out."Hewas everlastingly calling at the White House. His fastidious correctness, the correctness that hadn't "liked the look of her," excused this intensive culture of Mrs. Levitt on the grounds that she was "well connected"; she knew all his sister's people.
And Mrs. Levitt took good care to let Mr. Waddington know of these visits, and of her little bridge parties in the evening. "Just Mr. Thurston and Mr. Hawtrey and Major Markham and me." He was teased and worried by his visions of Elise perpetually surrounded by Thurston and Hawtrey and the Major. Supposing—only supposing that—driven by despair, of course—she married that fellow Markham? For the first time in his life Mr. Waddington experienced jealousy. Elise had ceased to be the subject of dreamy, doubtful speculation and had become the object of an uneasy passion. He could give her passion, if it was passion that she wanted; but, because of Fanny, he could not give her a position in the county, and it was just possible that Elise might prefer a position.
And Elise was happy, happy in her communion with Mr. Thurston and Mr. Hawtrey and in the thought that their wives detested her; happy in her increasing intimacy with Major Markham and in her consciousness of being well connected; above all, happy in Mr. Waddington's uneasiness.
Meanwhile Fanny Waddington kept on calling. "If I don't," she said, "the poor woman will be done for."
She couldn't see any harm in Mrs. Levitt.
3
Barbara and Ralph Bevan had been for one of their long walks. They were coming back down the Park when they met, first, Henry, the gardener's boy, carrying a basket of fat, golden pears.
"Where are you going with those lovely pears, Henry?"
"Mrs. Levitt's, miss." The boy grinned and twinkled; you could almost have fancied that he knew.
Farther on, near the white gate, they could see Mr. Waddington and two ladies. He had evidently gone out to open the gate, and was walking on with them, unable to tear himself away. The ladies were Mrs. Rickards and Mrs. Levitt.
They stopped. You could see the flutter of their hands and faces, suggesting a final triangular exchange of playfulness.
Then Mr. Waddington, executing a complicated movement of farewell, a bow and a half turn, a gambolling skip, the gesture of his ungovernable youth.
Then, as he went from them, the abandonment of Mrs. Rickards and Mrs.Levitt to disgraceful laughter.
Mrs. Levitt clutched her sister's arm and clung to it, almost perceptibly reeling, as if she said: "Hold me up or I shall collapse. It's too much. Too—too—too—too much." They came on with a peculiar rolling, helpless walk, rocked by the intolerable explosions of their mirth, dabbing their mouths and eyes with their pocket-handkerchiefs in a tortured struggle for control.
They recovered sufficiently to pass Ralph and Barbara with serious, sidelong bows. And then there was a sound, a thin, wheezing, soaring yet stifled sound, the cry of a conquered hysteria.
"Did you see that, Ralph?"
"I did. I heard it."
"Hecouldn't, could he?"
"Oh, Lord, no…. They appreciate him, too, Barbara."
"That isn't the way," she said. "We don't want him appreciated that way.That rich, gross way."
"No. It isn't nearly subtle enough. Any fool could see that his caracoling was funny. They don't know him as we know him. They don't know what he really is."
"It was an outrage. It's like taking a fine thing and vulgarizing it. They'd nobusiness. And it was cruel, too, to laugh at him like that before his back was turned. When they're going to eat his pears, too."
"The fact is, Barbara, nobodydoesappreciate him as you and I do."
"Horry?"
"No. Not Horry. He goes too far. Horry's indecent. Fanny, perhaps, sometimes."
"Fanny doesn't see one half of him. She doesn't see his Mrs. Levitt side."
"Haveyouseen it, Barbara?"
"Of course I have."
"You never told me. It isn't fair to go discovering things on your own and not telling me. We must make a compact. To tell each other the very instant we see a thing. We might keep count and give points to which of us sees most. Mrs. Levitt ought to have been a hundred to your score."
"I'm afraid I can't score with Mrs. Levitt. You saw that, too."
"It'll be a game for gods, Barbara."
"But, Ralph, there might be things wecouldn'ttell each other. It mightn't be fair to him."
"Telling each other isn't like telling other people. Hang it all, if we're making a study of him we're making a study. Science is science. We've no right to suppress anything. At any moment one of us might see something absolutely vital."
"Whatever we do we musn't be unfair to him."
"But he's ours, isn't he? We can't be unfair to him. And we've got to be fair to each other. Think of the frightful advantage you might have over me. You're bound to see more things than I do."
"I might see more, but you'll understand more."
"Well, then, you can't do without me. It's a compact, isn't it, that we don't keep things back?"
As for Mrs. Levitt's handling of their theme they resented it as an abominable profanation.
"Do you think he's in love with her?" Barbara said.
"Whathewould call being in love and we shouldn't."
"Do you think he's like that—he's always been like that?"
"I think he was probably 'like that' when he was young."
"Before he married Fanny?"
"Before he married Fanny."
"And after?"
"After, I should imagine he went pretty straight. It was only the way he had when he was young. Now he's middle-aged he's gone back to it, just to prove to himself that he's young still. I take it the poor old thing got scared when he found himself past fifty, and hehadto start a proof. It's his egoism all over again. I don't suppose he really cares a rap for Mrs. Levitt."