Part 19 (1/2)

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 circ.u.mstances 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. .h.i.tCHIN.”

Mr. Hitchin expressed his att.i.tude 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, p.r.o.nounced 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 f.a.n.n.y, ”will give you something to look forward to every month.”) Thus, on Sat.u.r.day, 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 s.p.a.ce. n.o.body, not even Kimber or Partridge, was going to follow Mrs. Levitt's lead.

”You'll have to give it up,” f.a.n.n.y 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,” f.a.n.n.y said, ”I'll bless you for ever.”