Mr. Waddington of Wyck Part 27

She could see through Mrs. Levitt.

Mr. Waddington kept on looking at the clock.

It was now ten minutes to four, and at any moment Elise might be there.

His one idea was to get Barbara Madden out of the way. Those clear eyes were not the eyes he wanted to be looking at Elise, to be looking at him when _their_ eyes met. And he understood that that fellow Bevan was going to call for her at four. He didn't want _him_ about. "Where are you going for your walk?" he said.

"Oh, anywhere. Why?"

"Well, if you happen to be in Wyck, would you mind taking these photographs back to Pyecraft and showing him the ones I've chosen? Just see that he doesn't make any stupid mistake."

The photographs were staring her in the face on the writing-table, so that there was really no excuse for her forgetting them, as she did. But Mr. Waddington's experience was that if you wanted anything done you had to do it yourself.

2

Elise would be taken into the drawing-room. He went to wait for her there.

And as he walked up and down, restless, listening for the sound of her feet on the gravel drive and the ringing of the bell, at each turn of his steps he was arrested by his own portrait. It stared at him from its place above f.a.n.n.y's writing-table; handsome, with its brilliant black and carmine, it gave him an uneasy sense of rivalry, as if he felt the disagreeable presence of a younger man in the room. He stared back at it; he stared at himself in the great looking-gla.s.s over the chimneypiece beside it.

He remembered f.a.n.n.y saying that she liked the iron-grey of his moustache and hair; it was more becoming than all that hard, s.h.i.+ny black. f.a.n.n.y was right. It _was_ more becoming. And his skin--the worn bloom of it, like a delicate sprinkling of powder. Better, more refined than that rich, high red of the younger man in the gilt frame. To be sure his eyes, blurred onyx, bulged out of creased pouches; but his nose--the Postlethwaite nose, a very handsome feature--lifted itself firmly above the fleshy sagging of the face. His lips pouted in pride. He could still console himself with the thought that mirrors were unfaithful; Elise would see him as he really was; not that discoloured and distorted image. He pushed out his great chest and drew a deep, robust breath. At the thought of Elise the pride, the rich, voluptuous, youthful pride of life mounted. And as he turned again he saw f.a.n.n.y looking at him.

The twenty-year-old f.a.n.n.y in her girl's white frock and blue sash; her tilted, Gainsborough face, mischievous and mocking, smiled as if she were making fun of him. His breath caught in his chest. f.a.n.n.y--f.a.n.n.y.

His wife. Why hadn't his wife the loyalty and intelligence of Barbara, the enthusiasm, the seriousness of Elise? He needn't have any conscientious scruples on f.a.n.n.y's account; she had driven him to Elise with her frivolity, her eternal smiling. Of course he knew that she cared for him, that he had power over her, that there had never been and never would be any other man for f.a.n.n.y; but he couldn't go on with f.a.n.n.y's levity for ever. He wanted something more; something sound and solid; something that Elise gave him and no other woman. Any man would want it.

And yet f.a.n.n.y's image made him uneasy, watching him there, smiling, as if she knew all about Elise and smiled, pretending not to care. He didn't want f.a.n.n.y to watch him with Elise. He didn't want Elise to see f.a.n.n.y. When he looked at f.a.n.n.y's portrait he felt again his old repugnance to their meeting. He didn't want Elise to sit in the same room with f.a.n.n.y, to sit in f.a.n.n.y's chair. The drawing-room was f.a.n.n.y's room. The red dahlia and powder-blue parrot chintz was f.a.n.n.y's choice; every table, cabinet and chair was in the place that f.a.n.n.y had chosen for it. The book, the frivolous book she had been reading before she went away, lay on her little table. f.a.n.n.y was f.a.n.n.y and Elise was Elise.

He rang the bell and told Partridge to show Mrs. Levitt into the library and to bring tea there. The library was _his_ room. He could do what he liked in it. The girl f.a.n.n.y laughed at him out of the corners of her eyes as he went. Suddenly he felt tender and gentle to her, because of Elise.

When Elise came she found him seated in his armchair absorbed in a book.

He rose in a dreamy att.i.tude, as if he were still dazed and abstracted with his reading.

Thus, at the very start, he gave himself the advantage; he showed himself superior to Elise. Intellectually and morally superior.

"You're deep in it? I'm interrupting?" she said.

He came down from his height instantly. He was all hers.

"No. I was only trying to pa.s.s the time till you came."

"I'm late then?"

"Ten minutes." He smiled, indulgent

Elise was looking handsomer than ever. The light November chill had whipped a thin flush into her face. He watched her as she took off her dark skunk furs and her coat.

How delightful to watch a woman taking off her things, the pretty gestures of abandonment; the form emerging, slimmer. That was one of the things you thought and couldn't say. Supposing he had said it to Elise?

Would she have minded?

"What are you thinking of?" she said.

"How did you know I was thinking of anything?"

"Your face. It tells tales."

"Only nice ones to you, my dear lady."

"Ah, but you _didn't_ tell--"

"Would you like me to?"

"Not if it's naughty. Your face looks naughty."

He wheeled, delighted. "Now, how does my face look when it's naughty?"

"Oh, that _would_ be telling. It's just as well you shouldn't know."

"Was it as naughty as all that then?"

"Yes. Or as nice."

They kept it up, lightly, till Partridge and Annie Trinder came, tinkling and rattling with the tea-things outside the door. As if, Mr.

Waddington thought, they meant to warn them.

"Partridge," he called, as the butler was going, "Partridge, if Sir John Corbett calls you can show him in here; but I'm not at home to anybody else."

(Clever idea, that.)

"He isn't coming, is he, the tiresome old thing?"

"No. He isn't. If I thought he was for one minute I wouldn't be at home."

"Then why--?"

"Why did I say I would be? Because I wanted to make it safe for you, Elise."

Thus tactfully he let it dawn on her that he might be dangerous.

"We don't want to be interrupted, do we?" he said.

"Not by Sir John Corbett."

He drew up the big, padded sofa square before the fire for Elise. All his movements were unconscious, innocent of deliberation and design. He seated himself top-heavily behind the diminutive gate-legged tea-table; the teapot and cups were like dolls' things in his great hands. She looked at him, at his slow fingers fumbling with the sugar tongs.

"Would you like me to pour out tea for you?" she said.

He started visibly. He wouldn't like it at all. He wasn't going to allow Elise to put herself into f.a.n.n.y's place, pouring out tea for him as if she was his wife. She wouldn't have suggested it if she had had any tact or any delicacy.

"No," he said. The "No" sounded hard and ungracious. "You must really let me have the pleasure of waiting on you."