Mr. Waddington of Wyck | Page 3

such a happy sound."
"I always do it," said Fanny, "when I'm happy."
You could hear feet, feet in heavy soled boots, clanking on the drive that ringed the grass-plot and the sundial; the eager feet of a young man. Fanny turned her head, listening.
"There is Ralph," she said. "Come in, Ralph!"
The young man stood in the low, narrow doorway, filling it with his slender height and breadth. He looked past Fanny, warily, into the far corner of the room, and when his eyes found Barbara at her bureau they smiled.
"Oh, come in," Fanny said. "He isn't here. He won't be till Friday. This is Ralph Bevan, Barbara; and this is Barbara Madden, Ralph."
He bowed, still smiling, as if he saw something irrepressibly amusing in her presence there.
"Yes," said Fanny to the smile. "Your successor."
"I congratulate you, Miss Madden."
"Don't be an ironical beast. She's just said she couldn't bear to think she'd done you out of your job."
"Well, I couldn't," said Barbara.
"That's very nice of you. But you didn't do me out of anything. It was the act of God."
"It was Horatio's act. Not that Miss Madden meant any reflection on his justice and his mercy."
"I don't know about his justice," Ralph said. "But he was absolutely merciful when he fired me out."
"Is it so awfully hard then?" said Barbara.
"You may not find it so."
"Oh, but I'm going to be Mrs. Waddington's companion, too."
"You'll be all right then. They wouldn't let me be that."
"He means you'll be safe, dear. You won't be fired out whatever happens."
"Whatever sort of secretary I am?"
"Yes. She can be any sort she likes, in reason, can't she?"
"She can't be a worse one than I was, anyhow."
Barbara was aware that he had looked at her, a long look, half thoughtful, half amused, as if he were going to say something different, something that would give her a curious light on herself, and had thought better of it.
Fanny Waddington was protesting. "My dear boy, it wasn't for incompetence. She's simply dying to know what you did do."
"You can tell her."
"He wanted to write Horatio's book for him, and Horatio wouldn't let him. That was all."
"Oh, well, I shan't want to write it," Barbara said.
"We thought perhaps you wouldn't," said Fanny.
But Barbara had turned to her bureau, affecting a discreet absorption in her list. And presently Ralph Bevan went out into the garden with Fanny to gather more tulips.

II
1
She had been dying to know what he had done, but now, after Ralph had stayed to lunch and tea and dinner that first day, after he had spent all yesterday at the Manor, and after he had turned up to-day at ten o'clock in the morning, Barbara thought she had made out the history, though they had been very discreet and Fanny had insisted on reading "Tono-Bungay" out loud half the time.
Ralph, of course, was in love with his cousin Fanny. To be sure, she must be at least ten years older than he was, but that wouldn't matter. And, of course, it was rather naughty of him, but then again, very likely he couldn't help it. It had just come on him when he wasn't thinking; and who could help being in love with Fanny? You could be in love with people quite innocently and hopelessly. There was no sin where there wasn't any hope.
And perhaps Fanny was innocently, ever so innocently, in love with him; or, if she wasn't, Horatio thought she was, which came to much the same thing; so that anyhow poor Ralph had to go. The explanation they had given, Barbara thought, was rather thin, not quite worthy of their admirable intelligence.
It was Friday, Barbara's fifth day. She was walking home with Ralph Bevan through the Waddingtons' park, down the main drive that led from Wyck-on-the-Hill to Lower Wyck Manor.
It wouldn't be surprising, she thought, if Fanny were in love with her cousin; he was, as she put it to herself, so distinctly "fallable-in-love-with." She could see Fanny surrendering, first to his sudden laughter, his quick, delighted mind, his innocent, engaging frankness. He would, she thought, be endlessly amusing, endlessly interesting, because he was so interested, so amused. There was something that pleased her in the way he walked, hatless, his head thrown back, his shoulders squared, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, safe from gesture; something in the way he spun round in his path to face her with his laughter. He had Fanny's terrier nose with the ghost of a kink in it; his dark hair grew back in a sickle on each temple; it wouldn't lie level and smooth like other people's, but sprang up, curled from the clipping. His eyes were his own, dappled eyes, green and grey, black and brown, sparkling; so was his mouth, which was neither too thin