Mr. Waddington of Wyck | Page 2

somebody, but she had never had to be companion to their wives. Perhaps it was a good thing that Fanny, as she kept on reminding her, had "secured" her first. She was glad he wasn't there when she arrived and wouldn't be till the day after to-morrow (he had wired that morning to tell them); so that for two days more she would have Fanny to herself.
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"Well, what do you think of him?"
Fanny had come back into the room; she was hovering behind her.
"I--I think he's jolly good-looking."
"Well, you see, that was painted seventeen years ago. He was young then."
"Has he changed much since?"
"Dear me, no," said Fanny. "He hasn't changed at all."
"No more have you, I think."
"Oh, _me_--in seventeen years!"
She was still absurdly like her portrait, after seventeen years, with her light, slender body, poised for one of her flights, her quick movements of butterfly and bird, with her small white face, the terrier nose lifted on the moth-wing shadows of her nostrils, her dark-blue eyes, that gazed at you, close under the low black eyebrows, her brown hair that sprang in two sickles from the peak on her forehead, raking up to the backward curve of the chignon, a profile of cyclamen. And her mouth, the fine lips drawn finer by her enchanting smile. All these features set in such strange, sensitive unity that her mouth looked at you and her eyes said things. No matter how long she lived she would always be young.
"Oh, my dear child," she said, "you are so like your mother."
"Am I? Were you afraid I wouldn't be?"
"A little, just a little afraid. I thought you'd be modern."
"So I am. So was mother."
"Not when I knew her."
"Afterwards then." A sudden thought came to Barbara. "Mrs. Waddington, if mother was your dearest friend why haven't you known me all this time?"
"Your mother and I lost sight of each other before you were born."
"Mother didn't want to."
"Nor I."
"Mother would have hated you to think she did."
"I never thought it. She must have known I didn't."
"Then why--"
"Did we lose sight?"
"Yes, why? People don't, if they can help it, if they care enough. And mother cared."
"You're a persistent little thing, aren't you? Are you trying to make out that I didn't care?"
"I'm trying to make you see that mother did."
"Well, my dear, we both cared, but we _couldn't_ help it. We married, and our husbands didn't hit it off."
"Didn't they? And daddy was so nice. Didn't you know how nice he was?"
"Oh, yes. I knew. My husband was nice, too, Barbara; though you mightn't think it."
"Oh, but I do. I'm sure he is. Only I haven't seen him yet."
"So nice. But," said Fanny, pursuing her own thought, "he never made a joke in his life, and your father never made anything else."
"Daddy didn't 'make' jokes. They came to him."
"I've seen them come. He never sent any of them away, no matter how naughty they were, or how expensive. I used to adore his jokes.... But Horatio didn't. He didn't like my adoring them, so you see--"
"I see. I wonder," said Barbara, looking up at the portrait again, "what he's thinking about?"
"I used to wonder."
"But you know now?"
"Yes, I know now," Fanny said.
"What'll happen," said Barbara, "if I make jokes?"
"Nothing. He'll never see them."
"If he saw daddy's--"
"Oh, but he didn't. That was me."
Barbara was thoughtful. "I daresay," she said, "you won't keep me long. Supposing I can't do the work?"
"The _work_?" Fanny's eyes were interrogative and a little surprised, as though they were saying, "Who said work? What work?"
"Well, Mr. Waddington's work. I've got to help him with his book, haven't I?"
"Oh, his book, yes. When he's writing it. He isn't always. Does he look," said Fanny, "like a man who'd always be writing a book?"
"No. I can't say he does, exactly." (What did he look like?)
"Well, then, it'll be all right. I mean we shall be."
"I only wondered whether I could really do what he wants."
"If Ralph could," said Fanny, "you can."
"Who's Ralph?"
"Ralph is my cousin. He was Horatio's secretary."
"Was." Barbara considered it. "Did he make jokes, then?"
"Lots. But that wasn't why he left.... It was an awful pity, too; because he's most dreadfully hard up."
"If he's hard up," Barbara said, "I couldn't bear to think I've done him out of a job."
"You haven't. He had to go."
Fanny turned again to her flowers and Barbara to her Stores list.
"Are you sure," Fanny said suddenly, "you put 'striped'?"
"Striped? The pyjamas? No, I haven't."
"Then, for goodness' sake, put it. Supposing they sent those awful Futurist things; why, he'd frighten me into fits. Can't you see Horatio stalking in out of his dressing-room, all magenta blobs and forked lightning?"
"I haven't seen him at all yet," said Barbara.
"Well, you wait.... Does my humming annoy you?"
"Not a bit. I like it. It's