Mr. Waddington of Wyck | Page 9

chivalrous; virtuous too, as if somehow he had
overcome some unforeseen and ruinous impulse. And all the time he
hadn't had any impulse beyond the craving to talk to an intelligent and
attractive stranger, to talk about his League.
Mr. Waddington went to bed thinking about it. He even woke his wife
up out of her sleep with the request that she would remind him to call at
Underwoods first thing in the morning.
2
As soon as he was awake he thought of Underwoods. Underwoods was
important. He had to round up the county, and he couldn't do that
without first consulting Sir John Corbett, of Underwoods. As a matter
of form, a mere matter of form, of course, he would have to consult
him.

But the more he thought about it the less he liked the idea of consulting
anybody. He was desperately afraid that, if he once began letting
people into it, his scheme, his League, would be taken away from him;
and that the proper thing, the graceful thing, the thing to which he
would be impelled by all his instincts and traditions, would be to stand
modestly back and see it go. Probably into Sir John Corbett's hands.
And he couldn't. He couldn't. Yet it was clear that the League, just
because it was a League, must have members; even if he had been
prepared to contribute all the funds himself and carry on the whole
business of it single-handed, it couldn't consist solely of Mr.
Waddington of Wyck. His problem was a subtle and difficult one: How
to identify himself with the League, himself alone, in a unique and
indissoluble manner, and yet draw to it the necessary supporters? How
to control every detail of its intricate working (there would be endless
wheels within wheels), and at the same time give proper powers to the
inevitable Committee? If he did not put it quite so crudely as Fanny in
her disagreeable irony, his problem resolved itself into this: How to
divide the work and yet rake in all the credit?
He was saved from its immediate pressure by the sight of the envelope
that waited for him on the breakfast-table, addressed in a familiar hand.
"Mrs. Levitt--" His emotion betrayed itself to Barbara in a peculiar
furtive yet triumphant smile.
"Again?" said Fanny. (There was no end to the woman and her letters.)
Mrs. Levitt requested Mr. Waddington to call on her that morning at
eleven. There was a matter on which she desired to consult him. The
brevity of the note revealed her trust in his compliance, trust that
implied again a certain intimacy. Mr. Waddington read it out loud to
show how harmless and open was his communion with Mrs. Levitt.
"Is there any matter on which she has not consulted you?"
"There seems to have been one. And, as you see, she is repairing the
omission."

A light air, a light air, to carry off Mrs. Levitt. The light air that had
carried off Barbara, that had made Barbara carry herself off the night
before. (It had done good. This morning the young girl was all ease and
innocent unconsciousness again.)
"And I suppose you're going?" Fanny said.
"I suppose I shall have to go."
"Then I shall have Barbara to myself all morning?"
"You will have Barbara to yourself all day."
He tried thus jocosely to convey, for Barbara's good, his indifference to
having her. All the same, it gave him pleasure to say her name like that:
"Barbara."
He was not sure that he wanted to go and see Mrs. Levitt with all this
business of the League on hand. It meant putting off Sir John. You
couldn't do Sir John and Mrs. Levitt in one morning. Besides, he
thought he knew what Mrs. Levitt wanted, and he said to himself that
this time he would be obliged, for once, to refuse her.
But it was not in him to refuse to go and see her. So he went.
As he walked up the park drive to the town he recalled with distinctly
pleasurable emotion the first time he had encountered Mrs. Levitt, the
vision of the smart little lady who had stood there by the inner gate, the
gate that led from the park into the grounds, waiting for his approach
with happy confidence. He remembered her smile, an affair of
milk-white teeth in an ivory-white face, and her frank attack: "Forgive
me if I'm trespassing. They told me there was a right of way." He
remembered her charming diffidence, the naïve reverence for his
"grounds" which had compelled him to escort her personally through
them; her attitudes of admiration as the Manor burst on her from its bay
in the beech trees; the interest she had shown in its