Mr. Waddington of Wyck

by May Sinclair

Probably, then, as far as Barbara was concerned, nothing had happened.

Then he remembered the horrible laughing of Elise. Barbara must have heard that; she must have wondered. She might just have caught him with the tail of her eye, not enough to swear by, but enough to wonder; and afterwards she would have put that and that together.

And he would have to dine with her alone that evening, to face her young, clear, candid eyes.

He didn't know how he was going to get through with it, and yet he did get through.

To begin with, Barbara was very late for dinner.

She had thought of being late as a way of letting Mr. Waddington down easily. She would come in, smiling and apologetic, palpably in the wrong, having kept him waiting, and he would be gracious and forgive her, and his graciousnees and forgiveness would help to reinstate him. He would need, she reflected, a lot of reinstating. Barbara considered that, in the matter of punishment, he had had enough. Mrs. Levitt, with her "You old imbecile!" had done to him all, and more than all, that justice could require; there was a point of humiliation beyond which no human creature should be asked to suffer. To be caught making love to Mrs. Levitt and being called an old imbecile! And then to be pelted with indecent laughter. And, in any case, it was not her, Barbara's, place to punish him or judge him. She had had no business to catch him, no business, in the first instance, to forget the photographs.

Therefore, as she really wanted him not to know that she had caught him, she went on behaving as if nothing had happened. All through dinner she turned the conversation on to topics that would put him in a favourable or interesting light. She avoided the subject of Fanny. She asked him all sorts of questions about his war work.

"Tell me," she said, "some of the things you did when you were a special constable."

And he told her his great story. To be sure, she knew the best part of it already, because Ralph had told it—it had been one of his scores over her—but she wanted him to remember it. She judged that it was precisely the sort of memory that would reinstate him faster than anything. For really he had played a considerable part.

"Well"—you could see by his face that he was gratified—"one of the things we had to do was to drive about the villages and farms after dark to see that there weren't any lights showing. It was nineteen—yes—nineteen-sixteen, in the winter. Must have been winter, because I was wearing my British warm with the fur collar. And there was a regular scare on."