"I'm not. I'm only decent. I hate using our position to break her poor back. Telling her we're Waddingtons of Wyck and she's only Mrs. Levitt."

"It was the handiest weapon. And you didn't use it. _I'm_ not a Waddington of Wyck. Besides, it's true; she can't blackmail him in his own county. You don't seem to realize how horrid she was, and how jolly dangerous."

"No," f.a.n.n.y said, "I don't realize people's horridness. As for danger, I don't want to disparage your performance, Barbara, but she seems to me to have been an easy prey."

"You _are_ disparaging me," said Barbara.

"I'm not. I only don't like to think of you enjoying that nasty sc.r.a.p."

"I only enjoyed it on your account."

"And I oughtn't to grudge you your enjoyment when we reap the benefit. I don't know what Horatio would have done without you. I shudder to think of the mess he'd have made of it himself."

"He was making rather a mess of it," Barbara said, "when I took it on."

"Well," said f.a.n.n.y, "I daresay I'm a goose. Perhaps I ought to be grateful to Mrs. Levitt. If he was on the look-out for adventures, it's just as well he hit on one that'll keep him off it for the future. She'd have been far more deadly if she'd been a nice woman. If he _must_ make love."

"Only then he couldn't very well have done it," Barbara said.

"Oh, couldn't he! You never can tell what a man'll do, once he's begun,"

said f.a.n.n.y.

2

Meanwhile Mrs. Levitt stayed on, having failed to let her house for the winter. She seemed to be acting on Barbara's advice and refraining from any malignant activity; for no report of the Waddington affair had as yet penetrated into the tea-parties and little dinners at Wyck-on-the-Hill. Punctually every Friday evening Mr. Thurston of the Elms, and either Mr. Hawtrey or young Hawtrey of Medlicott, turned up at the White House for their bridge. If Mrs. d.i.c.k Benham chose to write venomous letters about Elise Levitt to old Mrs. Markham, that was no reason why they should throw over an agreeable woman whose hospitality had made Wyck-on-the-Hill a place to live in, so long as she behaved decently _in_ the place. They kept it up till past midnight now that Mrs. Levitt had had the happy idea of serving a delicious supper at eleven. (She had paid her debts of honour with Mr. Waddington's five pounds; the fifty she reserved, in fancy, for the cost of the chickens and the trifles and the Sauterne.) In Mr. Thurston and the Hawtreys the bridge habit and the supper habit, and what Billy Hawtrey called the Levitty habit, was so strong that it overrode their sense of loyalty to Major Markham. The impression created by Mrs. d.i.c.k Benham only heightened their enjoyment in doing every Friday what Mrs. Thurston and Mrs. Hawtrey persisted in regarding as a risky thing. "There was no harm in Elise Levitt," they said.

So every Friday, after midnight, respectable householders, sleeping on either side of the White House, were wakened by the sudden opening of her door, by shrill "Good nights" called out from the threshold and answered by ba.s.s voices up the street, by the shutting of the door and the shriek of the bolt as it slid to.

And the Rector went about saying, in his genial way, that he liked Mrs.

Levitt, that she was well connected, and that there was no harm in her.

So long as any parishioner was a frequent attendant at church, and a regular subscriber to the coal and blanket club, and a reliable source of soup and puddings for the poor, it was hard to persuade him that there was any harm in them. f.a.n.n.y Waddington said of him that if Beelzebub subscribed to his coal and blanket club he'd ask him to tea.

He had a stiff face for uncharitable people; Elise was received almost ostentatiously at the rectory as a protest against scandal-mongering; and he made a point of stopping to talk to her when he met her in the street.

This might have meant the complete rehabilitation of Elise, but that the Rector's geniality was too indiscriminate, too perfunctory, too Christian, as f.a.n.n.y put it, to afford any sound social protection; and, ultimately, the approval of the rectory was disastrous to Elise, letting her in, as she afterwards complained bitterly, for Miss Gregg. Meanwhile it helped her with people like Mrs. Bostock and Mrs. Cleaver and Mrs.

Jackson, who wanted to be charitable and to stand well with the Rector.

Then, in the December following the Waddington affair, Wyck was astonished by the friendship that sprang up, suddenly, between Mrs.

Levitt and Miss Gregg, the governess at the rectory.

There was a reason for it--there always is a reason for these things--and Mrs. Bostock named it when she named young Billy Hawtrey.

Friendship with Mrs. Levitt provided Miss Gregg with, unlimited facilities for meeting Billy, who was always running over from Medlicott to the White House. Miss Gregg's pa.s.sion for young Billy hung by so slender, so nervous, and so insecure a thread that it required the continual support of conversation with an experienced and sympathetic friend. Miss Gregg had never known anybody so sympathetic and so experienced as Mrs. Levitt. The first time they were alone together she had seen by Elise's face that she had some secret like her own (Miss Gregg meant Major Markham), and that she would understand. And one strict confidence leading to another, before very long Miss Gregg had captured that part of Elise's secret that related to Mr. Waddington.

It was through Miss Gregg's subsequent activities that it first became known in Wyck that Mrs. Levitt had referred to Mr. Waddington as "that horrible old man." This might have been very damaging to Mr. Waddington but that Annie Trinder, at the Manor, had told her aunt, Mrs. Trinder, that Mr. Waddington spoke of Mrs. Levitt as "that horrible woman," and had given orders that she was not to be admitted if she called. It was then felt that there might possibly be more than one side to the question.

Then, bit by bit, through the repeated indiscretions of Miss Gregg, the whole affair of Mrs. Levitt and Mr. Waddington came out. It travelled direct from Miss Gregg to the younger Miss Hawtrey of Medlicott, and finally reached Sir John Corbett by way of old Hawtrey, who had it from his wife, who didn't believe a word of it.

Sir John didn't believe a word of it, either. At any rate, that was what he said to Lady Corbett. To himself he wondered whether there wasn't "something in it." He would give a good deal to know, and he made up his mind that the next time he saw Waddington he'd get it out of him.

He saw him the very next day.

Ever since that dreadful Wednesday an uneasy mind had kept Mr.

Waddington for ever calling on his neighbours. He wanted to find out from their behaviour and their faces whether they knew anything and how much they knew. He lived in perpetual fear of what that horrible woman might say or do. The memory of what _he_ had said and done that Wednesday no longer disturbed his complete satisfaction with himself. He couldn't think of Elise as horrible without at the same time thinking of himself as the pure and chivalrous spirit that had resisted her.

Automatically he thought of himself as pure and chivalrous. And in the rare but beastly moments when he did remember what he had done and said to Elise and what Elise had done and said to him, when he felt again her hand beating him off and heard her voice crying out: "You old imbecile!"

automatically he thought of her as cold. Some women were like that--cold. Deficient in natural feeling. Only an abnormal coldness could have made her repulse him as she did. She had told him to his face, in her indecent way, that love was _the_ most ridiculous thing.

He couldn't, for the life of him, understand how a thing that was so delightful to other women could he ridiculous to Elise; but there it was.

Absolutely abnormal, that. His vanity received immense consolation in thinking of Elise as abnormal.

His mind pa.s.sed without a jolt or a jar from one consideration to its opposite. Elise was cold and he was normally and n.o.bly pa.s.sionate Elise was horrible and he was chivalrously pure. Whichever way he had it he was consoled.

But you couldn't tell in what awful light the thing might present itself to other people.

It was this doubt that drove him to Underwoods one afternoon early in January, ostensibly to deliver his greetings for the New Year.

After tea Sir John lured him into his library for a smoke. The peculiar smile and twinkle at play on his fat face should have warned Mr.

Waddington of what was imminent.

They puffed in an amicable silence for about two minutes before he began.

"Ever see anything of Mrs. Levitt now?"

Mr. Waddington raised his eyebrows as if surprised at this impertinence.

He seemed to be debating with himself whether he would condescend to answer it or not.

"No," he said presently, "I don't."

"Taken my advice and dropped it, have you?"

"I should say, rather, it dropped itself."

"I'm glad to hear that, Waddington; I'm very glad to hear it. I always said, you know, you'd get landed if you didn't look out."

"My dear Corbett, I did look out. You don't imagine I was going to be let in more than I could help."

"Wise after the event, what?"

Mr. Waddington thought: "He's trying to pump me." He was determined not to be pumped. Corbett should not get anything out of him.

"After what event? f.a.n.n.y's called several times, but she doesn't care to keep it up. Neither, to tell the honest truth, do I.... Why?"

Sir John was twinkling at him in his exasperating way.

"Why? Because, my dear fellow, the woman's going about everywhere saying she's given _you_ up."

"I don't care," said Mr. Waddington, "what she says. Quite immaterial to me."

"You mayn't care, but your friends do, Waddington."