Mr. WADDINGTON OF WYCK -- BARBARA wished she would come back. For the last hour Fanny Waddington had kept on passing in and out of the room through the open door into the garden, bringing in tulips, white, pink, and red tulips, for the flowered Lowestoft bowls, hovering over them, caressing them with her delicate butterfly fingers, humming some sort of song to herself. The song mixed itself up with the Stores list Barbara was making Tw dozen glass towels. Twelve pounds of Spratts puppy biscuits. One dozen gent.s all-silk pyjamas, extra large size . . . A-hoom-hoom, a-hoom-hoom that Impromtu of Schuberts, and with the notes Barbara was writing Mrs. Waddington has pleasure in enclos- ing. . . . Fanny Waddington would always have pleasure in enclosing something. . . . l A-hoom- hoom, hoom hee. A sound so light that it hardly stirred the quiet of the room. If a butterfly could hum it would hum like Fanny Waddington. Barbara Madden had not been two days at Lower Wyck Manor, and already she was at home there she Itnew by heart Fannys drawing-room with the low stretch of the Tudor windows at each end, their 1 Mr. Waddington of Wyck lattices panelled by the heavy mullions, the back one looking out on to the green garden bordered with wallflowers and tulips the front one on to the round grass plot and the sundial, the drive and the shrub- bery beyond, down the broad walk that cut through it into the clear reaches of the Park. She liked the interior, the Persian carpet faded to patches of grey and fawn and old rose, the port-wine mahogany furniture, the tables thrusting out the brass claws of their legs, the latticed cabinets and book-cases, the chintz curtains and chair-cors, all red dahlias and powder blue parrots on a cream-coloured ground. But when Fanny wasnt there you could feel the room ache with the emptiness she left. Barbara ached. She caught herself listening for Fariny Waddingtons feet on the flagged path and the sound of her humming.. As she waited she looked up at the picture over the bureau in the recess of the fireplace, the portrait in oils of Horatio Bysshe Waddington, Fannys husband. He was seated, heavily seated with his spread width and folded height, in one of the brown leather chairs of his library, dressed in a tweed coat, putty- coloured riding breeches, a buff waistcoat, and a grey- blue tie. The handsome, florid face was lifted in a noble pose above the stiff white collar you could see the full, slightly drooping lower lip under the shaggy black moustache. There was solemnity in the thick, rounded salient of the Roman nose, in the slightly bulging eyes, and in the almost imperceptible line that sagged from each nostril down the long curve of the cheeks. This figure, one great thigh crossed on the other,, was extraordinarily solid against the smoky background where the clipped black hair made a 2 Mr. Waddington of Wyck watery light. His eyes were not looking at anything in particular. Horatio Bysshe Waddington seemed to be absorbed in some solemn thought. His wifes portrait hung over the card-table in the other recess. Barbara hoped he would be nice she hoped he tvould be interesting, since she had to be his secre- tary. But, of course, he would be. Anybody so enchanting as Fanny could never have married him if he wasnt. She wondered how she, Barbara Madden, would play her double part of secretary to him and companion to her. She had been secre- tary to other men before all through the war she had been secretary to somebody, but she had never had to be companion to their wives. Perhaps it was a good thing that Fanny, as she kept on reminding her, had secured her first...
