"Don't you think it's jolly decent of me, pater, to come over for your
meeting?"

"I shouldn't have thought," said Mr. Waddington, "that politics were
much in your line. Not worth spoiling a half-holiday for."

"I don't suppose I shall care two fags about your old League. What I've
come for is to see you, pater, getting up on your hind legs and giving
it them. I wouldn't miss that for a million half-holidays."

"If that's all you've come for you might have saved yourself the
trouble."

"Trouble? My dear father, I'd have taken _any_ trouble."

You could see he was laughing at him. And he was talking at Barbara,
attracting her attention the whole time; with every phrase he shot a
look at her across the table. Evidently he was afraid she might think he
didn't know how funny his father was, and he had to show her. It wasn't
decent of him. Barbara didn't approve of young Horace; yet she couldn't
resist him; his eyes and mouth were full, like Ralph's, of such
intelligent yet irresponsible joy. He wanted her to share it. He was an
egoist like his father; but he had something of his mother's charm,
something of Ralph Bevan's.

"Nothing," he was saying, "nothing would have kept me away."

"You're very good, sir." Horace could appreciate that biting sarcasm.

"Not at all. I say, I wish you'd let me come on the platform."

"What for? You don't propose yourself as a speaker, do you?"

"Rather not. I simply want to be somewhere where I can see your face and
old Grainger's at the same time, and Hitchin's, when you're going for
their Socialism."

"You shall certainly not come on the platform. And wherever you sit I
must request you to behave yourself--if you can. You may not realize it,
but this is going to be a serious meeting."

"I know _that_. It's just the--the seriousness that gets me." He
giggled.

Mr. Waddington shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, if you've no sense of
responsibility--if you choose to go on like an ill-bred schoolboy--but
don't be surprised if you're reprimanded from the chair."

"What? Old Corbett? I should like to see him.... Don't you worry, pater,
I'll behave a jolly sight better than anybody else will. You see if I
don't."

"How did you suppose he'd behave, Horatio?" said Fanny. "When he's come
all that way and given up a picnic to hear you."

"Pater'll be a picnic, if you like," said Horace.

Mr. Waddington waved him away with a gesture as if he flicked a teasing
fly, and went out to collect his papers.

Fanny turned to her son. "Horry dear, you mustn't rag your father like
that. You mustn't laugh at him. He doesn't like it."

"I can't help it," Horry said. "He's so furiously funny. He _makes_ me
giggle."

"Well, whatever you do, don't giggle at the meeting, or you'll give him
away."

"I won't, mater. Honour bright, I won't. I'll hold myself in like--like
anything. Only you mustn't mind if I burst."


2

Mr. Waddington had spoken for half an hour, expounding, with some
necessary repetitions, the principles and objects of the League.

He was supported on the platform by his Chairman, Sir John Corbett, and
by the other members of his projected Committee: by Lady Corbett, by
Fanny, by the Rector, by Mr. Thurston of the Elms, Wyck-on-the-Hill; by
Mr. Bostock of Parson's Bank; Mr. Jackson, of Messrs. Jackson, Cleaver
and Co., solicitors; Major Markham of Wyck Wold, Mr. Temple of
Norton-in-Mark, and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott; and by his secretary,
Miss Barbara Madden. The body of the hall was packed. Beneath him, in
the front row, he had the wives and daughters of his committeemen; in
its centre, right under his nose, he was painfully aware of the presence
of young Horace and Ralph Bevan. Colonel Grainger sat behind them,
conspicuous and, Mr. Waddington fancied, a little truculent, with his
great square face and square-clipped red moustache, and on each side of
Colonel Grainger and behind him were the neighbouring gentry and the
townspeople of Wyck, the two grocers, the two butchers, the drapers and
hotel keeper, and behind them again the servants of the Manor and a
crowd of shop assistants; and further and further back, farm labourers
and artisans; among these he recognized Ballinger with several of
Colonel Grainger's and Hitchin's men. A pretty compact group they made,
and Mr. Waddington was gratified by their appearance there.

And well in the centre of the hall, above the women's hats, he could see
Mr. Hitchin's bush of hair, his shrewd, round, clean-shaven and rosy
face, his grey check shoulders and red tie. Mr. Hitchin had the air of
being supported by the entire body of his workmen. Mr. Waddington was
gratified by Mr. Hitchin's appearance, too, and he thought he would
insert some expression of that feeling in his peroration.

He was also profoundly aware of Mrs. Levitt sitting all by herself in an
empty space about the middle of the third row.

From time to time Ralph Bevan and young Horace fixed on Fanny Waddington
and Barbara delighted eyes in faces of a supernatural gravity. Young
Horace was looking odd and unlike himself, with his jaws clamped
together in his prodigious effort not to giggle. Whenever Barbara's eyes
met his and Ralph's, a faint smile quivered on her face and flickered
and went out.

Once Horace whispered to Ralph Bevan: "Isn't he going it?" And Ralph
whispered back: "He's immense."

He was. He felt immense. He felt that he was carrying his audience with
him. The sound of his own voice excited him and whipped him on. It was a
sort of intoxication. He was soaring now, up and up, into his
peroration.

"It is a gratification to me to see so many working men and women here
to-night. They are specially welcome. We want to have them with us. Do
not distrust the working man. The working man is sound at heart. Sound
at head too, when he is let alone and not carried away by the
treacherous arguments of ignorant agitators. We--myself and the
founders of this League--have not that bad opinion of the working man
which his leaders--his misleaders, I may call them--appear to have. We
believe in him, we know that, if he were only let alone, there is no
section of the community that would stand more solid for order and good
government than he."

"Hear! Hear!" from Colonel Grainger. Ralph whispered, "Camouflage!" to
Horace, who nodded.

"There is nothing in the aims of this League contrary to the interests
of Labour. On the contrary"--he heard, as if somebody else had
perpetrated it, the horrible repetition--"I mean to say--" His brain
fought for another phrase madly and in vain. "On the contrary, it exists
in order to safeguard the true interests, the best interests, of every
working man and woman in the country."

"Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett. Mr. Waddington smiled.

"President Wilson"--he became agitated and drank water--"President
Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy. Well, if we,
you and I, all of us, don't take care, the world won't be safe for
anything else. It certainly won't be safe for the middle classes, for
the great business and professional classes, for the class to which I,
for one, belong: the class of English gentlemen. It won't be safe for
_us_.

"Not that I propose to make a class question of it. To make a class
question of it would be more than wrong. It would be foolish. It would
be a challenge to revolution, the first step towards letting loose,
unchaining against us, those forces of disorder and destruction which we
are seeking to keep down. I am not here to insist on class differences,
to foment class hatred. Those differences exist, they always will exist;
but they are immaterial to our big purpose. This is a question of
principle, the great principle of British liberty. Are we going to
submit to the tyranny of one class over all other classes, of one
interest over all other interests in the country? Are we going to knock
under, I say, to a minority, whether it is a Labour minority or any
other?

"Are--we--going--to tolerate Bolshevism and a Soviet Government here? If
there are any persons present who think that that is our attitude and
our intention, I tell them now plainly--it is _not_. In their own
language, in our good old county proverb: 'As sure as God's in
Gloucester,' it is not and never will be. The sooner they understand
that the better. I do not say that there are any persons present who
would be guilty of so gross an error. I do not believe there are. I do
not believe that there is any intelligent person in this room who will
not agree with me when I say that, though it is just and right that
Labour should have a voice in the government, it is not just and it is
not right that it should be the only voice.

"It has been the only voice heard in Russia for two years, and what is
the consequence? Bloodshed. Anarchy and bloodshed. I don't _say_ that we
should have anarchy and bloodshed here; England, thank God, is not
Russia. But I do not say that we shall _not_ have them. And I _do_ say
that it rests with us, with you and me, ladies and gentlemen, to decide
whether we shall or shall not have them. It depends on the action we
take to-night with regard to this National League of Liberty, on the
action taken on--on other nights at similar meetings, all over this
England of ours; it depends, in two words, on our _united action_,
whether we shall have anarchy or stable government, whether this England
of ours shall or shall not continue to be a free country.

"Remember two things: the League is National, and it is a League of
Liberty. It would not be one if it were not the other.

"You will say, perhaps many of you _are_ saying: 'This League is all
very well, but what can _I_ do?' Perhaps you will even say: 'What can
Wyck do? After all, Wyck is a small place. It isn't the capital of the
county.'"

"Well, I can tell you what Wyck can do. It can be--it _is_ the first
town in Gloucestershire, the first provincial town in England to start a
National League of Liberty. They've got a League in London, the parent
League; they may have another branch League anywhere any day, but I hope
that--thanks to the very noble efforts of those ladies and gentlemen who
have kindly consented to serve on my Committee--I hope that before long
we shall have started Leagues in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Cirencester,
Nailsworth and Stroud; in every town, village and hamlet in the county.
I hope, thanks to your decision to-night, ladies and gentlemen, to be
able to say that Wyck--little Wyck--has got in first. All round us, for
fifteen--twenty miles round, there are hamlets, villages and towns that
haven't got a League, that know nothing about the League.
Wyck-on-the-Hill will be the centre of the League for this part of the
Cotswolds.

"It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the principle at
stake. Impossible, therefore, to exaggerate the importance of this
League, therefore impossible to exaggerate the importance of this
meeting, of every man and woman who has come here to-night. And when
you rise from your seats and step up to this platform to enroll your
names as members of the National League of Liberty, I want you to feel,
every one of you, that you will be doing an important thing, a thing
necessary to the nation, a thing in its way every bit as necessary and
important as the thing the soldier does when he rises up out of his
trench and goes over the top."

It was then, and then only, that young Horace giggled. But he covered
his collapse with a shout of "Hear! Hear!" that caused Fanny and Barbara
to blow their noses simultaneously. As for Ralph, he hid his face in his
hands.

"Like him," said Mr. Waddington, "you will be helping to save England.
And what can any of us do more?"

He sat down suddenly in a perfect uproar of applause, and drank water.
In spite of the applause he was haunted by a sense of incompleteness.
There was something he had left out of his speech, something he had
particularly wanted to say. It seemed to him more vital, more important,
than anything he _had_ said.

A solitary pair of hands, Mrs. Levitt's hands, conspicuously lifted,
were still clapping when Mr. Hitchin's face rose like a red moon behind
and a little to the left of her; followed by the grey check shoulders
and red tie. He threw back his head, stuck a thumb in each armhole of
his waistcoat, and spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen. The speaker has quoted
President Wilson about the world being made safe for democracy. He seems
to be concerned about the future, to be, if I may say so, in a bit of a
funk about the future. But has he paid any attention to the past? Has he
considered the position of the working man in the past? Has he even
considered the condition of many working men at the present time, for
instance, of the farm labourer now in this country? If he had, if he
knew the facts, if he cared about the facts, he might admit that,
whether he's going to like it or not, it's the working man's turn. Just
about his turn.

"I needn't ask Mr. Waddington if he knows the parable of Dives and
Lazarus. But I should like to say to him what Abraham said to the rich
man: 'Remember that thou in thy life-time receivedst thy good things,
and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art
tormented.'

"I don't want Mr. Waddington to be tormented. To be tormented too much.
Not more than is reasonable. A little torment--say, his finger scorched
for the fraction of a second in that hot, unpleasant place--would be
good for him if it made him think. I say I don't want to torment him,
but I'll just ask him one question: Does he think that a world where
it's possible for a working man, just because he _is_ a working man and
not an English gentleman, a world where it's still possible for him, and
his wife and his children, to be turned out of house and home to suit
the whim of an English gentleman; does he think that a world where
things like that can happen is a safe place for anybody?

"I can tell him it isn't safe. It isn't safe for you and me. And if it
isn't safe for you and me, it isn't safe for the people who make these
things happen; and it isn't any safer for the people who stand by and
let them happen.

"And if the Socialist--if the Bolshevist is the man who's going to see
to it that they don't happen, if a Soviet Government is the only
Government that'll see to that, then the Socialist, or the Bolshevist,
is the man for my money, and a Soviet Government is the Government for
my vote. I don't say, mind you, that it _is_ the only Government--I say,
if it were.

"Mr. Waddington doesn't like Bolshevism. None of us like it. He doesn't
like Socialism. I think he's got some wrong ideas about that. But he's
dead right when he tells you, if you're afraid of Bolshevism and a
Soviet Government, that the remedy lies in your own hands. If there ever
is a day of reckoning, what Mr. Waddington would call a revolution in
this country, you, we, ay, everyone of us sitting here, will be done
with according as we do."

He sat down, and Mr. Waddington rose again on his platform, solemn and a
little pale. He looked round the hall, to show that there was no person
there whom he was afraid to face. It might have been the look of some
bold and successful statesman turning on a turbulent House, confident in
his power to hold it.

"Unless I have misheard him, what Mr. Hitchin has just said, ladies and
gentlemen, sounded very like a threat. If that is so, we may
congratulate Mr. Hitchin on providing an unanswerable proof of the need
for a National League of Liberty."

There were cries of "Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett and from Mr.
Hawtrey of Medlicott.

Then a horrible thing happened. Slight and rustling at first, then
gathering volume, there came a hissing from the back rows packed with
Colonel Grainger's and Mr. Hitchin's men. Then a booing. Then a booing
and hissing together.

Sir John scrabbled on to his little legs and cried: "Ordah, there!
Ordah!" Mr. Waddington maintained an indomitably supercilious air while
Sir John brought his fist down on the table (probably the most energetic
thing he had ever done in his life), with a loud shout of "Ordah!"
Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin were seen to turn round in their
places and make a sign to their men, and the demonstration ceased.

Mr. Waddington then rose as if nothing at all had happened and said,
"Any ladies and gentlemen wishing to join the League will please come up
to the platform and give their names to Miss Madden. Any persons wishing
to subscribe at once, may pay their subscriptions to Miss Madden.

"I will now call your attention to the last item on the programme, and
ask you all to join with me very heartily in singing 'God Save the
King.'"

Everybody, except Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin, rose, and everybody,
except the extremists of the opposition, sang. One voice--it was Mrs.
Levitt's voice--was lifted arrogantly high and clear above the rest.

"Send--him--vic-torious,
 Hap-py--and--glorious.
 Long--to-oo rei-eign overious
 Gaw-aw-awd--Save--ther King."

Mr. Waddington waited beside Barbara Madden at the table; he waited in a
superb confidence. After all, the demonstration engineered by Colonel
Grainger had had no effect. The front and middle rows had risen to their
feet and a very considerable procession was beginning to file towards
the platform.

Mr. Waddington was so intent on this procession, Barbara was so busy
taking down names and entering subscriptions and making out receipts,
Sir John and Lady Corbett and the rest of the proposed Committee were
talking to each other so loud and fast, Ralph and Horace were so
absorbed in looking at Barbara that none of them saw what was happening
in the body of the hall. Only Fanny caught the signals that passed
between Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin, and between Mr. Hitchin and
his men.

Then Colonel Grainger stood up and shouted, "I protest!"

Mr. Hitchin stood up and shouted, "I protest!"

They shouted together, "We protest!"

Sir John Corbett rushed back to his chair and shouted "Ordah!" and the
back rows, the ranks of Hitchin's men, stood up and shouted, "We won't
sign!" "We won't sign!" "We won't sign!"

And then young Horace did an unsuspected thing, a thing that surprised
himself. He leaped on to the front bench and faced the insurgent back
rows. His face was red with excitement, and with the shame and anger and
resentment inspired by his father's eloquence. But he was shouting in
his hoarse, breaking, adolescent voice:

"Look here, you blackguards there at the back. If you don't stop that
row this minute, I'll jolly well chuck you all out."

Only one voice, the voice of Mr. Hitchin's biggest and brawniest
quarryman, replied: "Come on, sir!"

Young Horace vaulted lightly over the bench, followed by Ralph, and the
two were steeplechasing down the hall when Mr. Hitchin made another of
his mysterious signals and the men filed out, obediently, one by one.

Ralph and Horace found themselves in the middle of the empty benches
laughing into each other's faces. Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin stood
beside them, smiling with intolerable benevolence.

Mr. Hitchin was saying: "The men are all right, Mr. Bevan. They don't
mean any harm. They just got a bit out of hand."

Horace saw that they were being magnanimous, and the thought maddened
him. "I don't blame the men," he said, "and I don't blame you, Hitchin.
You don't know any better. But Colonel Grainger ought to be damned well
ashamed of himself, and I hope he is."

Colonel Grainger laughed. So did Mr. Hitchin, throwing himself back and
swaying from side to side as his mirth shook him.

"Look here, Mr. Hitchin--"

"That'll do, Horry," said Ralph. He led him gently down a side aisle
and through a swing door into the concealed corridor beside the
platform. There they waited.

"Don't imagine for one moment," said young Horry, "that I agree with all
that tosh he talked. But, after all, he's got a perfect right to make a
fool of himself if he chooses. And he's _my_ father."

"I know. From first to last, Horry, you behaved beautifully."

"Well, what would _you_ do if your father made an unholy ass of himself
in public?"

"My father doesn't."

"No, but if he did?"

"I'd do what you did. Sit tight and try and look as if he didn't."

"Then," said Horace, "you look as big a fool yourself."

"Not quite. You don't say anything. Besides, your father isn't as big a
fool as those London Leaguers who started the silly show. Sir Maurice
Gedge and all that crowd. He didn't invent the beastly thing."

"No," said Horace mournfully, "he hasn't even the merit of originality."

He meditated, still mournful.

"Look here, Ralph, what did that blackguard Hitchin mean?"

"He isn't a blackguard. He's a ripping good sort. I can tell you, if
every employer in this confounded commercial country was as honest as
old Hitchin, there wouldn't be any labour question worth talking about."

"Damn his honesty. What did he _mean_? Was it true what he said?"

"Was what true?"

"Why, that my father turned the Ballingers out?"

"Yes; I'm afraid it was."

"I say, how disgusting of him. You know I always thought he was a bit of
a fool, my father; but I didn't know he was that beastly kind of fool."

"He isn't," said Ralph. "He's just--a fool."

"I know. Did you ever hear such putrid rot as he talked?"

"I don't know. For the kind of silly thing it was, his speech wasn't
half bad."

"What? About going over the top? Oh, Lord! And after turning the
Ballingers out, too."

Ralph was silent.

"What's happened to him? He didn't use to be like that. He must be mad,
or something."

Ralph thought of Mrs. Levitt.

"He's getting old and he doesn't like it. That's what's the matter with
him."

"But hang it all, Ralph, that's no excuse. It really isn't."

"I believe Ballinger gave him some provocation."

"I don't care what he gave him. He'd no earthly business to take
advantage of it. Not with that sort of person. Besides, it wouldn't
matter about Ballinger so much, but there's old Susan and the
kiddies.... He doesn't see how perfectly sickening it is for _me_."

"It isn't very nice for your mother."

"No; it's jolly hard on the poor mater.... Well, I can't stick it much
longer. I'm just about fed up with Horatio Bysshe. I shall clear out
first thing in the morning before he's down. I don't care if I never see
him or speak to him again."

"I say, I say, how about the midsummer holidays?"

"Oh, damn the midsummer holidays!"

"Isn't it rather rotten to take a line you can't possibly keep up?"

"That's all right. Whatever I may do in the future," said young Horace
magnificently, "I've got to give him his punishment _now_."

Ralph laughed. Young Horace was as big an egoist as his father, but with
these differences: his blood was hot instead of cold, he had his
mother's humour, and he was not a fool. Ralph wondered how he would
have felt if he had realized Mrs. Levitt's part in the Ballinger
affair.


3

Mr. Waddington remained standing on his platform. They were coming round
him now, grasping him by the hand, congratulating him: Sir John Corbett,
the Rector, Major Markham of Wyck Wold and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott.

"Capital speech, Waddington, capital."

"Best speech made in the Town Hall since they built it."

"Splendid. You landed them one every time."

"No wonder you drew them down on to you."

"That was a disgraceful business," said Sir John. "Disgraceful."

"Nothing of the sort ever happened in Wyck before," said the Rector.

"Nobody ever made a speech like Waddington's before," said Major Markham
of Wyck Wold.

"Oh, you always get a row if you drag in politics," Mr. Hawtrey said.

"I don't know," said Sir John. "That was a put-up job between Hitchin
and Grainger."

"Struck me it had every appearance of a spontaneous outburst," Major
Markham said.

"I've no doubt the rowdy element was brought in from the outside," said
the Rector. "Hardly one of Hitchin's workpeople is a Wyck man. Otherwise
I should have to apologize to Waddington for my parishioners."

"You needn't. There was nothing personal to me in it. Nothing personal
at all. Even Hitchin wouldn't have had the impudence to oppose me on my
own platform. It was the League they were going for. Bit too big for
'em. If you come out with a large, important thing like that there's
sure to be some opposition just at first till it gets hold of 'em."

"Glad you can see it that way," said Sir John.

"My dear fellow, that's the way to see it. It's the right way; the big
impersonal way."

"You've taken it in the proper spirit, Waddington," said the Rector.
"None of those fellows meant any real harm. All good fellows.... By the
way, is it true that the Ballingers have moved to Lower Wyck?"

"I believe so."

"Dear me, what on earth possessed them?"

"Some fad of Ballinger's, I fancy."

"That reminds me, I must go and see Mrs. Ballinger."

"You won't find them there, sir. They've moved again to her father's at
Medlicott."

"You don't say so. I wonder now what they've done that for."

"They complained of the house being damp for one thing. If it was, that
was Hitchin's fault, not mine."

Was everybody in a plot to badger him about those wretched Ballingers?
He was getting sick of it. And he wanted to speak a word to Mrs. Levitt.

Mrs. Levitt had come up in the tail of the procession. She had given in
her name and her subscription to Barbara Madden; but she lingered,
waiting no doubt for a word with him. If only Corbett and the rest of
them would go.

"Of course. Of course it was Hitchin's fault," said the Rector, with
imperishable geniality. "Well.... Good night, Waddington, and thank you
for a most--a most stimulating evening."

They had gone now, all but Sir John and Lady Corbett. (He could hear her
talking to Fanny at the back of the platform.) Mrs. Levitt was gathering
her scarf round her; in another minute she would be gone. And Corbett
wouldn't go.

"I say, Waddington, that's a splendid young cub of yours. See him go
over the top? He'd have taken them all on. Licked 'em, too, I shouldn't
wonder."

Mr. Waddington resented this diversion of the stream of admiration. And
he was acutely aware of Mrs. Levitt standing there, detached but
waiting.

"Was I really all right, Corbett?" He wasn't satisfied with his speech.
If only he could remember what he had left out of it.

"Absolutely, my dear chap. Absolutely top-hole. You ought to make that
boy a soldier."

He wished that young Horace could be a soldier at that moment, stationed
in a remote part of the Empire, without any likelihood of leave for the
next five years. He wanted--he wanted intolerably to speak to Mrs.
Levitt, to spread himself voluptuously in her rejuvenating smile.

Sir John retreated before his manifest indifference. He could hear him
at the back of the platform, congratulating Fanny.

Mrs. Levitt advanced towards him.

"At last," she said, "I may add my congratulations. That speech was
magnificent."

"Nothing, my dear lady, nothing but a little necessary plain speaking."

"Oh, but you were wonderful. You carried us off our feet."

"I hope," he said, "we've enrolled you as a member?" (He knew they had.)

"Of course I'm enrolled. And I've paid in my poor little guinea to that
delightful Miss Madden."

"Ah, that is _too_ good of you."

It was. The amount of the subscription was purely a matter of individual
fancy.

"It's the least I could do in such a splendid cause."

"Well, dear Mrs. Levitt, we're delighted to have you with us.
Delighted."

There was a pause. He was looking down at her from the height of his six
feet. The faint, sweet scent of orris root rose up from her warm skin.
She was very attractive, dressed in a low-necked gown of that dull,
satiny stuff women were wearing now. A thin band of white net was
stretched across the top of her breasts; through it he could see the
shadowy, arrow-headed groove between; her pendant--pearl bistre and
paste--pointed, pointed down to it.

He was wrong about Elise and jewellery. That was a throat for pearls and
for diamonds. Emeralds. She would be all black and white and sparkling
green. A necklace, he thought, wouldn't hang on her; it would be laid
out, exposed on that white breast as on a cushion. You could never tell
what a woman was really like till you'd seen her in a low-necked gown.
It made Mrs. Levitt ten times more alluring. He smiled at her, a tender,
brooding, rather fatuous smile.

Mrs. Levitt saw that her moment had come. It would be now or never. She
must risk it.

"I wish," she said, "you'd introduce me to your wife."

It was a shock, a horrid blow. It showed plainly that Elise had
interests beyond him, that she was not, like him, all for the secret,
solitary adventure.

Yet perhaps--perhaps--she had planned it; she thought it would be safer
for them, more discreet.

She looked up at him with the old, irrefutable smile.

"Will you?" she pleaded.

"Well--I'm not sure that I know where my wife _is_. She was here a
minute ago, talking to Lady Corbett."

He looked round. A wide screen guarded the door on to the platform. He
could see Lady Corbett and Fanny disappearing behind it.

"I--I'll go and look for her," he said. He meditated treachery.
Treachery to poor Elise.

He followed them through the door and down the steps into the concealed
corridor. He found Ralph Bevan there. Horace had gone.

"I say, Ralph, I wish you'd take Fanny home. She's tired. Get her out of
this. I shall be here quite half an hour longer; settling up accounts.
You might tell Kimber to come back for me and Miss Madden."

Now to get to the entrance you had to pass through the swing door into
the hall and down the side aisle to the bottom, so that Mrs. Levitt
witnessed Mrs. Waddington's exit with Ralph Bevan. Mr. Waddington.
waited till the hall doors had closed on them before he returned.

"I can't find my wife anywhere," he said. "She wasn't in the cloak-room,
so I think she must have gone back with Horace."

Mrs. Levitt would think that Fanny had disappeared while he was looking
for her, honourably, in the cloak-room.

"I saw her go out," said Mrs. Levitt coldly, "with Mr. Bevan."

"I suppose he's taking her home," he said vaguely. His best policy was
vagueness. "And now, my dear lady, I wish I could take _you_ home. But I
shall be detained here some little time. Still, if you don't mind
waiting a minute or two till Kimber comes back with the car, he shall
drive you."

"Thank you, Mr. Waddington, I'm afraid I've waited quite long enough. It
isn't worth while troubling Kimber to drive me a hundred yards."

It gave her pleasure to inflict that snub on Mr. Waddington in return
for his manoeuvre. As the meeting had now broken up, and there wouldn't
be anybody to witness her departure in the Waddingtons' car, Mrs.
Levitt calculated that she could afford that little gratification of her
feelings. They were intensified by Mr. Waddington's very evident
distress. He would have walked home with her the hundred yards to Sheep
Street, but she wouldn't hear of it. She was perfectly capable of seeing
herself home. Miss Madden was waiting for him. Good night.


4

Eleven o'clock. In the library where Mr. Waddington was drinking his
whisky and water, Fanny had been crying. Horry had stalked off to his
bedroom without saying good night to anybody. Barbara had retired
discreetly. Ralph Bevan had gone. And when Fanny thought of the lavender
bags Susan-Nanna sent every year at Christmas, she had cried.

"How could you _do_ it, Horatio? How _could_ you?"

"There was nothing else to be done. You can't expect me to take your
sentimental, view of Ballinger."

"It isn't Ballinger. It's poor Susan-Nanna and the babies, and the
lavender bags."

Mr. Waddington swayed placably up and down on the tips of his toes. "It
serves poor Susan-Nanna right for marrying Ballinger."

"Oh--I suppose it serves _me_ right, too--"

Though she clenched her hands tight, tight, she couldn't keep back that
little spurt of anger.

He was smiling his peculiar, voluptuous smile. "Serves you right? For
spoiling everybody in the village? It does indeed."

"You don't in the least see what I mean," said Fanny.

But, after all, she was glad he hadn't seen it.

He hadn't seen anything. He hadn't seen that she had been crying. It had
never dawned on him that she might care about Susan-Nanna, or that the
Ballingers might love their home, their garden and their lavender
bushes. He was like that. He didn't see things, and he didn't care.

He was back in his triumph of the evening, going over the compliments
and congratulations, again and again--"Best speech ever made in the Town
Hall--" But there was something--something he had left out.

"Did it never dawn on you--" said Fanny.

Ah, _now_ he had it.

"There!" he said. "I knew I'd forgotten something. I never put in that
bit about the darkest hour before dawn."

Fanny's mind had wandered from what she had been going to say. "Did you
see what Horry did?" she said instead.

"Everybody could see it. It was most unnecessary."

"I don't care. Think, Horatio. Think of his sticking up for you like
that. He was going to fight them, the dear thing, all those great rough
men. To fight them for _you_. He said he'd behave better than anybody
else, and he did."

"Yes, yes. He behaved very well." Now that she put it to him that way he
was touched by Horace's behaviour. He could always be touched by the
thought of anything you did for _him_.

But Ralph Bevan could have told Fanny she was mistaken. Young Horace
didn't do it altogether for his father; he did it for himself, for an
ideal of conduct, an ideal of honour that he had, to let off steam, to
make a sensation in the Town Hall, to feel himself magnificent and
brave; because he, too, was an egoist, though a delightful one.

Mr. Waddington returned to his speech. "I can't think what made me leave
out that bit about the dawn."

"Oh, bother your old dawn," said Fanny. "I'm going to bed."

She went, consoled. "Dear Horry," she thought, "I'm glad he did that."




VIII


1

The Ballinger affair did not end with the demonstration in the Town
Hall. It had unforeseen and far-reaching consequences.

The first of these appeared in a letter which Mr. Waddington received
from Mr. Hitchin:

"DEAR SIR,--

"_Re_ my estimate for decoration and additional building to Mrs.
Levitt's house, I beg to inform you that recent circumstances have
rendered it impossible for me to take up the contract. I must therefore
request you to transfer your esteemed order to some other firm.

"Faithfully yours,

"THOMAS HITCHIN."

Mr. Hitchin expressed his attitude even more clearly to the foreman of
his works. "I'm not going to build bathrooms and boudoirs and bedrooms
for that--" the word he chose completed the alliteration. So that Mr.
Waddington was compelled to employ a Cheltenham builder whose estimate
exceeded Mr. Hitchin's estimate by thirty pounds.

And Mr. Hitchin's refusal was felt, even by people who resented his
estimates, to be a moral protest that did him credit. It impressed the
popular imagination. In the popular imagination Mrs. Levitt was now
inextricably mixed up with the Ballinger affair. Public sympathy was all
with Ballinger, turned out of his house and forced to take refuge with
his wife's father at Medlicott, forced to trudge two and a half miles
every day to his work and back again. The Rector and Major Markham of
Wyck Wold, meditating on the Ballinger affair as they walked back that
night from the Town Hall, pronounced it a mystery.

"It wasn't likely," Major Markham said, "that Ballinger, of his own
initiative, would leave a comfortable house in Sheep Street for a damp
cottage in Lower Wyck."

"Was it likely," the Rector said, "that Waddington would turn him out?"
He couldn't believe that old Waddington would do anything of the sort.

"Unless," Major Markham suggested, "he's been got at. Mrs. Levitt may
have got at him." He was a good sort, old Waddy, but he would be very
weak in the hands of a clever, unscrupulous woman.

The Rector said he thought there was no harm in Mrs. Levitt, and Major
Markham replied that he didn't like the look of her.

A vague scandal rose in Wyck-on-the-Hill. It went from mouth to mouth in
bar parlours and back shops; Major Markham transported it in his
motor-car from Wyck Wold to the Halls and Manors of Winchway and Chipping
Kingdon and Norton-in-Mark. It got an even firmer footing in the county
than in Wyck, with the consequence that one old lady withdrew her
subscription to the League, and that when Mr. Waddington started on his
campaign of rounding up the county the county refused to be rounded up.
And the big towns, Gloucester, Cheltenham and Cirencester, were
singularly apathetic. It was intimated to Mr. Waddington that if the
local authorities saw fit to take the matter up no doubt something would
be done, but the big towns were not anxious for a National League of
Liberty imposed on them from Wyck-on-the-Hill.

The League did not die of Mrs. Levitt all at once. Very soon after the
inaugural meeting the Committee sat at Lower Wyck Manor and appointed
Mr. Waddington president. It arranged a series of monthly meetings in
the Town Hall at which Mr. Waddington would speak ("That," said Fanny,
"will give you something to look forward to every month.") Thus, on
Saturday, the nineteenth of July, he would speak on "The Truth about
Bolshevism." It was also decided that the League could be made very
useful during by-elections in the county, if there ever were any, and
Mr. Waddington prepared in fancy a great speech which he could use for
electioneering purposes.

On July the nineteenth, seventeen people, counting Fanny and Barbara,
came to the meeting: Sir John Corbett (Lady Corbett was unfortunately
unable to attend), the Rector without his wife, Major Markham of Wyck
Wold, Mr. Bostock of Parson's Bank, Kimber and Partridge and Annie
Trinder from the Manor, the landlady of the White Hart, the butcher, the
grocer and the fishmonger with whom Mr. Waddington dealt, three farmers
who approved of his determination to keep down wages, and Mrs. Levitt.
When he sat down and drank water there was a feeble clapping led by Mrs.
Levitt, Sir John and the Rector. On August the sixteenth, the audience
had shrunk to Mrs. Levitt, Kimber and Partridge, the butcher, one of the
three farmers, and a visitor staying at the White Hart. Mr. Waddington
spoke on "What the League Can Do." Owing to a sudden unforeseen shortage
in his ideas he was obliged to fall back on his electioneering speech
and show how useful the League would be if at any time there were a
by-election in the county. The pop-popping of Mrs. Levitt's hands burst
into a silent space. Nobody, not even Kimber or Partridge, was going to
follow Mrs. Levitt's lead.

"You'll have to give it up," Fanny said. "Next time there won't be
anybody but Mrs. Levitt." And with the vision before him of all those
foolish, empty benches and Mrs. Levitt, pop-popping, dear brave woman,
all by herself, Mr. Waddington admitted that he would have to give it
up. Not that he owned himself beaten; not that he gave up his opinion of
the League.

"It's a bit too big for 'em," he said. "They can't grasp it. Sleepy
minds. You can't rouse 'em if they won't be roused."

He emerged from his defeat with an unbroken sense of intellectual
superiority.


2

Thus the League languished and died out; and Mr. Waddington, in the
absence of this field for personal activity, languished too. In spite of
his intellectual superiority, perhaps because of it, he languished till
Barbara pointed out to him that the situation had its advantages. At
last he could go on with his book.

"If you can only start him on it and keep him at it," Fanny said, "I'll
bless you for ever."

But it was not easy either to start him or to keep him at it. To begin
with, as Ralph had warned her, the work itself, _Ramblings Through the
Cotswolds_, was in an appalling mess, and Mr. Waddington seemed to have
exhausted his original impetus in getting it into that mess. He had set
out on his ramblings without any settled plan. "A rambler," he said,
"shouldn't have a settled plan." So that you would find Mr. Waddington,
starting from Wyck-on-the-Hill and arriving at Lechford in the Thames
valley, turning up in the valley of the Windlode or the Speed. You would
find him on page twenty-seven drinking ale at the Lygon Arms in Chipping
Kingdon, and on page twenty-eight looking down on the Evesham plain from
the heights south of Cheltenham. He would turn from this prospect and,
without traversing any intermediate ground, be back again, where you
least expected him, in his Manor under Wyck-on-the-Hill. For though he
had no fixed plan, he had a fixed idea, and however far he rambled he
returned invariably to Wyck. To Mr. Waddington Wyck-on-the-Hill was the
one stable, the one certain spot on the earth's surface, and this led to
his treating the map of Gloucestershire entirely with reference to
Wyck-on-the-Hill, so that all his ramblings were complicated by the
necessity laid on him of starting from and getting back to it.

So much Barbara made out after she had copied the first forty pages,
making the first clearing in Mr. Waddington's jungle. The clearings,
she explained to Ralph, broke your heart. It wasn't till you'd got the
thing all clean and tidy that you realized the deep spiritual confusion
that lay behind it.

After that fortieth page the Ramblings piled and mixed themselves in
three interpenetrating layers. First there was the original layer of
Waddington, then a layer of Ralph superimposed on Waddington and
striking down into him; then a top layer of Waddington, striking down
into Ralph. First, the primeval chaos of Waddington; then Ralph's spirit
moving over it and bringing in light and order; then Waddington again,
invading it and beating it all back to darkness and confusion. From the
moment Ralph came into it the progress of the book was a struggle
between these two principles, and Waddington could never let Ralph be,
so determined was he to stamp the book with his own personality.

"After all," Ralph said, "it _is_ his book."

"If he could only get away from Wyck, so that you could see where the
other places _are_," she moaned.

"He can't get away from it because he can't get away from himself. His
mind is egocentric and his ego lives in Wyck."

Barbara had had to ask Ralph to help her. They were in the library
together now, working on the Ramblings during one of Mr. Waddington's
periodical flights to London.

"He thinks he's rambling round the country but he's really rambling
round and round himself. All the time he's thinking about nothing but
his blessed self."

"Oh, come, he thought a lot about his old League."

"No, the League was only an extension of his ego."

"That must have been what Fanny meant. We were looking at his portrait
and I said I wondered what he was thinking about, and she said she used
to wonder and now she knew. Of course, it's Himself. That's what makes
him look so absurdly solemn."

"Yes, but think of it. Think. That man hasn't ever cared about anything
or anybody but himself."

"Oh--he cares about Fanny."

"No. No, he doesn't. He cares about his wife. A very different thing."

"Well--he cares about his old mother. He really cares."

"Yes, and you know why? It's only because she makes him feel young. He
hates Horry because he can't feel young when he's there."

"Why, oh why, did that angel Fanny marry him?"

"Because she isn't an angel. She's a mortal woman and she wanted a
husband and children."

"Wasn't there anybody else?"

"I believe not--available. The man she ought to have married was
married already."

"Did my mother marry him?"

"Yes. And _my_ mother married the next best one.... It was as plain and
simple as all that. And you see, the plainer and simpler it was, the
more she realized why she was marrying Horatio, the more she idealized
him. It wanted camouflage."

"I see."

"Then you must remember her people were badly off and he helped them. He
was always doing things for them. He managed all Fanny's affairs for her
before he married her."

"Then--he does kind things."

"Lots. When he wants to get something. He wanted to get Fanny....
Besides, he does them to get power, to get a hold on you. It's really
for himself all the time. It gives him a certain simplicity and purity.
He isn't a snob. He doesn't think about his money or his property, or
his ancestors--he's got heaps--quite good ones. They don't matter.
Nothing matters but himself."

"How about his book? Doesn't that matter?"

"It does and yet again it doesn't. He pretends he's only doing it to
amuse himself, but it's really a projection of his ego into the
Cotswolds. On the other hand, he'd hate it if you took him for a
writing man when he's Horatio Bysshe Waddington. That's how he's got it
into such a mess, because he can't get away from himself and his Manor."

"Proud of his Manor, anyhow."

"Oh, yes. Not, mind you, because it's perfect Tudor of the sixteenth
century, _nor_ because the Earl of Warwick gave it to his
great-grandfather's great-great-grandfather, but because it's his Manor.
Horatio Bysshe Waddington's Manor. Of course, it's got to be what it is
because any other sort of Manor wouldn't be good enough for Bysshe."

"It's an extension of his ego, too?"

"Yes. Horatio's ego spreading itself in wings and bursting into
ball-topped gables and overflowing into a lovely garden and a park.
There isn't a tree, there isn't a flower that hasn't got bits of Horatio
in it."

"If I thought that I should never want to see roses and larkspurs
again."

"It only happens in Horatio's mind. But it does happen."

So, between them, bit by bit, they made him out.

And they made out the book. Here and there, on separate slips, were
great outlying tracts of light, contributed by Ralph, to be inserted,
and sketches of dark, undeveloped stuff, sprung from Waddington, to be
inserted too. Neither Ralph nor Barbara could make them fit. The only
thing was to copy it out clear as it stood and arrange it afterwards.
And presently it appeared that two pages were missing.

One evening, the evening of Mr. Waddington's return, looking for the
lost pages, Barbara made her great discovery: a sheaf of manuscript, a
hundred and twenty pages in Ralph's handwriting, hidden away at the back
of the bureau, crumpled as if an inimical hand had thrust it out of
sight. She took it up to bed and read it there.

A hundred and twenty pages of pure Ralph without any taint of
Waddington. It seemed to be part of Mr. Waddington's book, and yet no
part of it, for it was inconceivable that it should belong to anything
but itself. Ralph didn't ramble; he went straight for the things he had
seen. He saw the Cotswolds round Wyck-on-the-Hill, he made you see them,
as they were: the high curves of the hills, multiplied, thrown off, one
after another; the squares and oblongs and vandykes and spread fans of
the fields; and their many colours; grass green of the pastures, emerald
green of the young wheat, white green of the barley; shining, metallic
green of the turnips; the pink, the brown, the purple fallows, the sharp
canary yellow of the charlock. And the trees, the long processions of
trees by the great grass-bordered roads; trees furring the flanks and
groins of the parted hills, dark combs topping their edges.

Ralph knew what he was doing. He went about with the farmers and farm
hands; he followed the ploughing and sowing and the reaping, the feeding
and milking of the cattle, the care of the ewes in labour and of the
young lambs. He went at night to the upland folds with the shepherds; he
could tell you about shepherds. He sat with the village women by their
firesides and listened to their talk; he could tell you about village
women. Mr. Waddington did not tell you about anything that mattered.

She took the manuscript to Ralph at the White Hart with a note to say
how she had found it. He came running out to walk home with her.

"Did you know it was there?" she said.

"No. I thought I'd lost it. You see what it is?"

"Part of your book."

"Horatio's book."

"But you wrote it."

"Yes. That's what he fired me out for. He got tired of the thing and
asked me to go on with it. He called it working up his material. I went
on with it like that, and he wouldn't have it. He said it was badly
written--jerky, short sentences--he'd have to re-write it. Well--I
wouldn't let him do that, and he wouldn't have it as it stood."

"But--it's beautiful--alive and real. What more does he want?"

"The stamp of his personality."

"Oh, he'd _stamp_ on it all right."

"I'm glad you like it."

"_Like_ it. Don't you?"

Ralph said he thought he'd liked it when he wrote it, but now he didn't
know.

"You'll know when you've finished it."

"I don't suppose I shall finish it," he said.

"But you must. You can't _not_ finish a thing like that."

"I own I'd like to. But I can't publish it."

"Why ever not?"

"Oh, it wouldn't be fair to poor old Waddy. After all, I wrote it for
him."

"What on earth does that matter? If he doesn't want it. Of course you'll
finish it, and of course you'll publish it."

"Well, but it's all Cotswold, you see. And _he's_ Cotswold. If it _is_
any good, you know, I shouldn't like to--to well, get in his way. It's
his game. At least he began it."

"It's a game two can play, writing Cotswold books."

"No. No. It isn't. And he got in first."

"Well, then, let him get in first. You can bring your book out after."

"And dish his?"

"No, let it have a run first. Perhaps it won't have any run."

"Perhaps mine won't."

"_Yours_. That heavenly book? And his tosh--Don't you see that you
_can't_ get in his way? If anybody reads him they won't be the same
people who read you."

"I hope not. All the same it would be rather beastly to cut him out; I
mean to come in and do it better, show how bad he is, how frightful. It
would rub it in, you know."

"Not with him. You couldn't."

"You don't know. Some brute might get up and hurt him with it."

"Oh, you _are_ tender to him."

"Well, you see, I did let him down when I left him. Besides, it isn't
altogether him. There's Fanny."