Part 21 (1/2)
”f.a.n.n.y? She'd love you to write your book.”
”I know she'd think she would. But she wouldn't like it if it made Horatio look a fool.”
”But he's bound to look a fool in any case.”
”True. I might give him a year, or two years.”
”Well, then, _my_ work's cut out for me. I shall have to make Horatio go on and finish quick, so as not to keep you waiting.”
”He'll get sick of it. He'll make you go on with it.”
”_Me?_”
”Practically, and quarrel with every word you write. Unless you can write so like Horatio that he'll think he's done it himself. And then, you know, he won't have a word of mine left in. You'll have to take me out. And we're so mixed up together that I don't believe even he could sort us. You see, in order to appease him, I got into the way of giving my sentences a Waddingtonian twist. If only I could have kept it up--”
”I'll have to lick the thing into shape somehow.”
”There's only one thing you'll have to do. You must make him steer a proper course. This is to be _the_ Guide to the Cotswolds. You can't have him sending people back to Lower Wyck Manor all the time. You'll have to know all the places and all the ways.”
”And I don't.”
”No. But I do. Supposing I took you on my motor-bike? Would you awfully mind sitting on the carrier?”
”Do you think,” she said, ”he'd let me go?”
”f.a.n.n.y will.”
”I _could_, I think. I work so hard in the mornings and evenings that they've given me all the afternoons.”
”We might go every afternoon while the weather holds out,” he said. And then: ”I say, he _does_ bring us together.”
That was how Barbara's happy life began.
3
He did bring them together.
In the terrible months that followed, while she struggled for order and clarity against Mr. Waddington, who strove to reinstate himself in his obscure confusion, Barbara was sustained by the thought that in working for Mr. Waddington she was working for Ralph Bevan. The harder she worked for him the harder she worked for Ralph. With all her cunning and her little indomitable will she urged and drove him to get on and make way for Ralph. Mr. Waddington interposed all sorts of irritating obstructions and delays. He would sit for hours, brooding solemnly, equally unable to finish and to abandon any paragraph he had once begun.
He had left the high roads and was rambling now in bye-ways of such intricacy that he was unable to give any clear account of himself. When Barbara had made a clean copy of it Mr. Waddington's part didn't always make sense. The only bits that could stand by themselves were Ralph's bits, and they were the bits that Mr. Waddington wouldn't let stand. The very clearness of the copy was a light flaring on the hopeless mess it was. Even Mr. Waddington could see it.
”Do you think,” she said, ”we've got it all down in the right order?”
She pointed.
”_What's_ that?” She could see his hands twitching with annoyance. His loose cheeks hung shaking as he brooded.
”That's not as _I_, wrote it,” he said at last. ”That's Ralph Bevan. He wasn't a bit of good to me. There's--there's no end to the harm he's done. Conceited fellow, full of himself and his own ideas. Now I shall have to go over every line he's written and write it again. I'd rather write a dozen books myself than patch up another fellow's bad work....