Mr. Waddington of Wyck Part 44

"I suppose," Horry said, "you'd think me an awful brute if I went?"

"I wish you _would_ go. You're a much more awful brute standing there saying things about him and getting in my way."

"All right. I'll get out of it. That's jolly easy."

And he went. But he felt sick and sore. He had tried to persuade himself that his father wasn't ill because he couldn't bear to think how ill he was; it interfered with his enjoyment of his skating. "If," he said to himself, "if he'd only put it off till the ice gave. But it was just like him to choose a hard frost."

His anger gave him relief from the sickening anxiety he felt when he thought of his father and his father's temperature. It had gone down, but not to normal.

Mr. Waddington lay in his bed in f.a.n.n.y's room. Barbara, standing at the open door with her saucepan, caught a sight of him.

He was propped up by his pillows. On his shoulders, over one of those striped pyjama suits that Barbara had once ordered from the Stores, he wore, like a shawl, a woolly, fawn-coloured motor-scarf of f.a.n.n.y's. His arms were laid before him on the counterpane in a gesture of complete surrender to his illness. f.a.n.n.y was always tucking them away under the blankets, but if anybody came in he would have them so. He was sitting up, waiting in an adorable patience for something to be done for him.

His face had the calm, happy look of expectation utterly appeased and resigned. It was that look that frightened Barbara; it made her think that Mr. Waddington was going to die. Supposing his congestion turned to pneumonia? There was so much of him to be ill, and those big men always did die when they got pneumonia.

Mr. Waddington could hear Barbara's quiet voice saying something to f.a.n.n.y; he could see her unhappy, anxious face. He enjoyed Barbara's anxiety. He enjoyed the cause of it, his illness. So long as he was actually alive he even enjoyed the thought that, if his congestion turned to pneumonia, he might actually die. There was a dignity, a prestige about being dead that appealed to him. Even his high temperature and his headache and his shooting pains and his difficulty in breathing could not altogether spoil his pleasure in the delicious concern of everybody about him, and in his exquisite certainty that, at any minute, a moan would bring f.a.n.n.y to his side. He was the one person in the house that counted. He had always known it, but he had never felt it with the same intensity as now. The mind of every person in the house was concentrated on him now as it had not been concentrated before. He was holding them all in a tension of worry and anxiety. He would apologize very sweetly for the trouble he was giving everybody, declaring that it made him very uncomfortable; but even f.a.n.n.y could see that he was gratified.

And as he got worse--before he became too ill to think about it at all--he had a muzzy yet pleasurable sense that everybody in Wyck-on-the-Hill and in the county for miles round was thinking of him.

He knew that Corbett and Lady Corbett and Markham and Thurston and the Hawtreys, and the Rector and the Rector's wife and Colonel Grainger had called repeatedly to inquire for him. He was particularly gratified by Grainger's calling. He knew that Hitchin had stopped Horry in the street to ask after him, and he was particularly gratified by that. Old Susan-Nanna had come up from Medlicott to see him. And Ralph Bevan called every day. That gratified him, too.

The only person who was not allowed to know anything about his illness was his mother, for Mr. Waddington was certain it would kill her. Every evening at medicine time he would ask the same questions: "My mother doesn't know yet?" And: "Anybody called to-day?" And f.a.n.n.y would give him the messages, and he would receive them with a gentle, solemn sweetness. You wouldn't have believed, Barbara said to herself, that complacency could take so heartrending a form.

And under it all, a deeper bliss in bliss, was the thought that Barbara was thinking about him, worrying about him, and being, probably, ten times more unhappy about him than f.a.n.n.y. After working so long by his side, her separation from him would be intolerable to Barbara; intolerable, very likely, the thought that it was f.a.n.n.y's turn, now, to be by his side. Every day she brought him a bunch of snowdrops, and every day, as the door closed on her little anxious face, he was sorry for Barbara shut out from his room. Poor little Barbara. Sometimes, when he was feeling well enough, he would call to her: "Come in, Barbara."

And she would come in and look at him and put her flowers into his hand and say she hoped he was better. And he would answer: "Not much better, Barbara. I'm very ill."

He even allowed Ralph to come and look at him. He would hold his hand in a clasp that he made as limp as possible, on purpose, and would say in a voice artificially weakened: "I'm very ill, Ralph."

Dr. Ransome said he wasn't; but Mr. Waddington knew better. It was true that from time to time he rallied sufficiently to comb his own hair before Barbara was let in with her snowdrops, and that he could give orders to Partridge in a loud, firm tone; but he was too ill to do more than whisper huskily to Barbara and f.a.n.n.y.

Then when he felt a little better the trained nurse came, and with the sheer excitement of her coming Mr. Waddington's temperature leapt up again, and the doctor owned that he didn't like that.

And Barbara found f.a.n.n.y in the library, crying. She had been tidying up his writing-table, going over all his papers with a feather brush, and she had come on the ma.n.u.script of the Ramblings unfinished.

"f.a.n.n.y--"

"Barbara, I know I'm an idiot, but I simply cannot bear it. It was all very well as long as I could nurse him, but now that woman's come there's nothing I can do for him.... I've--I've never done anything all my life for him. He's always done everything for me. And I've been a brute. Always laughing at him.... Think, Barbara, think; for eighteen years never to have taken him seriously. Never since I married him.... I believe he's going to die. Just--just to punish me."

"He isn't," said Barbara indignantly, as if she had never believed it herself. "The doctor says he isn't really very ill. The congestion isn't spreading. It was better yesterday."

"It'll be worse to-night, you may depend on it. The doctor doesn't _like_ his temperature flying up and down like that."

"It'll go down again," said Barbara.

"You don't know what it'll do," said f.a.n.n.y darkly. "Did you ever see such a lamb, such a _lamb_ as he is when he's ill?"

"No," said Barbara; "he's an angel."

"That's just," said f.a.n.n.y, "what makes me feel he's going to die.... I wish I were you, Barbara."

"Me?"

"Yes. You've really helped him. He could never have written his book without you. His poor book."

She sat stroking it. And suddenly a horrible memory overcame her, and she cried out:

"Oh, my G.o.d! And I've laughed at that, too!"

Barbara put her arm round her. "You didn't, darling. Well, if you did--it is a little funny, you know. I'm afraid I've laughed a bit."

"Oh, _you_--that doesn't matter. You helped to write it."

Then Barbara broke out. "Oh, don't, f.a.n.n.y, don't, _don't_ talk about his poor book. I can't _bear_ it."

"We're both idiots," said f.a.n.n.y. "Imbeciles."

She paused, drying her eyes.

"He liked the snowdrops you brought him," she said.

Barbara thought: "And the snowdrops he brought _me_." He had caught cold that day, picking them. They had withered in the gla.s.s in her bedroom.

She left f.a.n.n.y, only to come upon Horry in his agony. Horry stood in the window of the dining-room, staring out and scowling at the snow.

"d.a.m.n the snow!" he said. "It's killed him."

"It hasn't, Horry," she said; "he'll get better."

"He won't get better. If this beastly frost holds he hasn't got a chance."

"Horry dear, the doctor says he's better."

"He doesn't. He says his temperature's got no business to go up."

"All the same--"

"Supposing he does think him better. Supposing he doesn't know.

Supposing he's a bleating idiot.... I expect the dear old pater knows how he is a jolly sight better than anybody can tell him.... And you know you're worrying about him yourself. So's the mater. She's been crying."

"She's jealous of the nurse. That's what's the matter with her."

"Jealous? Tos.h.!.+ That nurse is an idiot. She's sent his temperature up first thing."

"Horry, old thing, you must buck up. You mustn't let your nerve go like this."

"Nerve? Your nerve would go if you were me. I tell you, Barbara, I wouldn't care a hang about his being ill--I mean I shouldn't care so infernally if I'd been decent to him. ... But you were right I was a cad, a swine. Laughing at him."

"So was I, Horry. I laughed at him. I'd give anything not to have."

"You didn't matter...."