§
Mr. Thorpe, being a man accustomed all his life to success in everything
he undertook--except in the case of Annie, but even she had been a
success at first--had spent a week of bitterness.
He was aggrieved, deeply aggrieved; and he hated the hole and corner way
Mrs. Luke had hidden from him, refusing to see him, refusing any sort of
explanation, turning him down with a single letter, and not answering
when he wrote back.
He, who was very well aware that he was conferring everything, that he
was giving her a chance in a million, when he called was shown the door;
and all he had done for her, the affection he had bestowed, the gifts he
had lavished, were as though they had not been. In the sight of South
Winch and of his own household he was humiliated. But it went deeper
than that: he knew himself for kind, and no one wanted his kindness; he
knew himself for generous, and no one wanted his generosity either.
Naturally he was full of resentment; so full, that he hadn’t even gone
to his office regularly that week, but had hung about his house and
grounds instead, fault-finding.
Where he hung about most was that part of his plantations which abutted
on the meadow dividing Abergeldie from Mrs. Luke; and wandering among
his conifers he could see, without himself being seen, anything that
went on in her miserable plot of ground. If he had been told that such
behaviour was undignified he would have replied that dignity be damned;
for not only was he smarting under Mrs. Luke’s ingratitude, not only was
he annoyed beyond measure at not going to get the wife he no longer
really wanted--who would wish to be tied up to a jealous, middle-aged
woman, when there were so many pretty, cheerful girls about?--but he
longed, with a simple longing he hadn’t felt since he first went
sweethearting as a boy, to see Sally again.
He did see her; always, however, arm in arm with Hell’s Fury, as he now
called her who had so recently been his Marge. Then, on this Wednesday
afternoon, more than a week after Mrs. Luke had shown herself in her
true colours--a jolly good thing he had found her out before and not
after marriage, thought Mr. Thorpe, who yet was enraged that he had,--as
he wandered among his conifers after luncheon, nursing his grievances
and glancing every now and then at the little house across the meadow,
so insignificant and cheap and nevertheless able to play such a part in
his life, he saw young beauty at last come out alone, and go round to
the back of the tool-shed, and behave as has been indicated.
For a few minutes Mr. Thorpe stayed where he was, in case the H.F.--so,
for convenience sake, did he abbreviate the rude nickname he had given
Mrs. Luke--should come out too; but when some time had passed and nobody
appeared, he concluded that the two high-brows had gone for a walk, and
Beauty for once was alone. Crying, too. What had they been doing to the
girl, that precious pair of hoity toity treat-you-as-dirters, Mr. Thorpe
asked himself. Then, climbing cautiously over the fence, and crossing
the field close to the belt of firs, he arrived unseen and unheard to
where Sally, her head bowed over her hands, was standing crying.
How kind he was. What a comfort he was. And how clear in his
instructions as to what she was to do. It was quite easy to say things
to Father-in-law; he seemed to understand at once.
Nobody had told Sally he wasn’t her father-in-law. The Lukes’ habit of
silence towards her about their affairs had left her supposing he was
what he said he was, and she herself had heard him not being
contradicted by Mrs. Luke when she came into the drawing-room that day
and he told her he was making friends with his new daughter.
Sally was aware that Jocelyn’s own father was dead, and she had at first
supposed Mr. Thorpe was Mrs. Luke’s second husband. In the confusion of
mind in which she had been since arriving at Almond Tree Cottage, she
had had no thoughts left over for wondering why, if he were, he lived
somewhere else. Dimly the last few days, not having seen him again, she
had begun to think, though with no real interest, that perhaps Mrs. Luke
hadn’t quite married him yet, but only very nearly. Anyhow it didn’t
matter. He said he was her father-in-law, and that was good enough for
her. Such a kind old gentleman. Much older than her own father. Might
easily have been her grandfather, with all that bald head and grey
moustache.
And Mr. Thorpe’s pleasure, nay, delight, at being able to help Beauty
and at the same time give those two high-brows something to talk about,
was very great. This was indeed killing two birds with one stone--and
what birds! He listened attentively to all she brokenly and imperfectly
said; he entirely applauded her idea of going back to her father for a
bit, and assured her there was no place like home; he told her he would
send her there in one of his cars, quite safe from door to door; he
advised her to stay with her father till her husband did his duty, which
was to make a home for her and live with her in it; he asked why she
should allow herself to be deserted, to be left alone with Mrs. Luke,
who would do nothing but try and cram her head with rubbish----
‘Don’t you like ‘er?’ asked Sally, surprised.
‘No,’ said Mr. Thorpe stoutly.
‘But you’re goin’ to marry ‘er,’ said Sally, more surprised.
‘Catch _me_,’ said Mr. Thorpe.
‘But then you ain’t my father-in-law,’ said Sally, more surprised than
ever.
‘Yes I am,’ said Mr. Thorpe hastily. ‘Once a father-in-law always a
father-in-law,’ he assured her,--and hurried her off this subject by
asking her why she should be treated by her husband as if she weren’t
married at all, and by what right young Luke thought he could behave
differently from any husband any one had ever heard of. Scandalous, said
Mr. Thorpe, to leave her. Shocking. Incomprehensible. And that so-called
husband of hers with his marriage vows not yet had time to go cold on
his lips!
In fact, Mr. Thorpe said out loud and beautifully everything Sally had
thought and not been able to get into words.
The result was that, encouraged and supported, indeed urged and driven,
she took one of those desperate steps characteristic of the very meek,
and, acting according to Mr. Thorpe’s clear and precise instructions,
stole out of the house at five next morning--the very day of the party,
from which he, who knew all about it from his housekeeper, and had tried
to console himself by thinking of the piles of strawberries and peaches
and quarts of cream he wasn’t going to send to it, insisted that she
should at all costs escape--carrying only a little bag, with her five
shillings in it and her comb and toothbrush; and, creeping down the
stairs holding her breath, got out without a sound through the kitchen
window, anxiously listening for a moment as she passed the shut
sitting-room door on the other side of which Jocelyn lay
asleep,--Jocelyn, who that night, being still much annoyed with her, had
very fortunately not been upstairs.
At the corner of the road was Mr. Thorpe’s car. He himself remained
discreetly in bed. No use overdoing things. Besides, he could wait. He
knew where to find Beauty when the time came, which was more than those
damned Lukes did; and he had given his chauffeur the necessary orders
the night before, and could rely on their being carried out to the
letter; so that Sally found, when she got into the car, which was more
splendid outside and more soft inside than she could have believed
possible, not only a lovely rug of the silkiest fur, which the
chauffeur, a most attentive young gentleman, wrapped round her legs as
carefully as if they were the Queen’s, but a basket full of everything
for breakfast, even hot coffee, and an enormous box of chocolates which
were for her to keep, the chauffeur said, with Mr. Thorpe’s compliments.
And such was the effect on her of all this moral and physical support
that she no longer, as she was smoothly and deliciously borne along
through sleeping South Winch, across awakening London, past sunshiny
fields and woods just flushing green, on and on, into Essex, into
Cambridgeshire, smooth and swift, with a motion utterly different from
the one Jocelyn’s car made and completely confidence-inspiring, she no
longer felt as if she were doing anything that was frightening, and
also, perhaps, wrong. Could anybody be doing anything very wrong who had
such a splendid car to sit in, and such a respectful and attentive young
gentleman driving it?
§
Mr. Pinner disillusioned her.
For many years he hadn’t tasted such quiet happiness, such contentment
and well-being, as during the four weeks he had been without Sally. Her
marriage to a gentleman, to one of the scholars from Cambridge, was
known to every one in the village, and he was proud of it, very proud.
Sally, besides having been handed over safe and sound to some one else’s
care, had risen in life and was now a lady. He had every reason to be
proud of her, and no further bother. Now for the first time he could
live, after forty years of the other thing, free from females. Was it
sinful, he asked himself occasionally, and at variance with God’s Word,
to be so very happy all alone? He didn’t think it could be. He had
served his time. Forty years in the wilderness he had had--just like the
Israelites, who had come out of it too, just as he had, and enjoyed
themselves too at last, as he was enjoying himself, quietly and nicely.
No husband or father could have been fonder of his wife and daughter
than he had been of his, or done his duty by them more steadily. Surely
now, both of them being safely settled, it couldn’t be wrong to like
having a rest? He loved Sally, but she had been a back-breaking
responsibility. For four weeks now he had enjoyed himself, and with such
relish that when he got up in the morning and thought of the quiet, free
hours ahead of him, he had often quavered into song. Then came the day
when, peacefully dusting the toffee in his window, and thinking how
prettily the birds were singing that fine spring morning, and of the
little bit of mutton he was going to do in capers for his dinner, he saw
an enormous closed car coming down the village street, and with
astonishment beheld it stop in front of his shop, and Sally get out.
Mr. Pinner knew enough of what cars cost to be sure this one wasn’t
anyhow Mr. Luke’s. Things like that cost as much as two of Mr. Luke’s
five hundreds a year; so that the car, of which Sally had been so proud,
far from impressing him only frightened him. And when, after the
chauffeur had handed her a bag, he saw him turn the car round and
disappear, going away again without her while she came running up the
steps, he was more frightened than ever.
What had happened? Not a month married, and back again by herself with a
bag.
‘I come ’ome,’ said Sally in the doorway, still bright with the sheer
enjoyment of the ride, yet, faced by her father’s amazement, conscious
of a slight lowering of her temperature. ‘My! You ain’t ’alf small,
Father,’ she added, surprised, after looking at the tall Jocelyn and the
broad Mr. Thorpe, by how little there was of Mr. Pinner. ‘Almost count
you on the fingers of one ’and,’ she said.
‘Want more fingers than I got to count _you_,’ retorted Mr. Pinner,
retreating behind the counter and feeling that these words somehow
constituted a smart preliminary snub.
He didn’t offer to kiss her. He stood entrenched behind his counter and
stared up at her, struck, after having got out of the habit of her
beauty, into a new astonishment at it. But it gave him no pleasure. It
merely frightened him. For it blew up peace.
‘Where’s your ’usband?’ he inquired, afraid and stern.
‘Oh--_’im_,’ said Sally, trying to look unconcerned, but flushing. ’E’s
with ’is mother, ’e is. Ain’t you pleased to see me, Father?’ she asked,
in an attempt to lead the conversation off husbands at least for a bit;
and tighter to her side she hugged the box of chocolates, because the
feel of it helped her to remember Father-in-law’s approval and
encouragement. And he was a gentleman, wasn’t he? And a lot older even
than Father, so must know what was what.
‘Oh, indeed. With ’is mother, is ’e,’ said Mr. Pinner, ignoring her
question. ‘’Oos car was that?’ he asked.
‘Father-in-law’s,’ said Sally, hugging her chocolates.
‘Oh, indeed. And ’oo may father-in-law be?’
‘The gentleman as is--as was goin’ to marry Mr. Luke’s mother.’
‘Oh, indeed. And you ride about in ’is car meanwhile. _I_ see.’
‘Lent it to me so I can come ’ome.’
‘What do ’e want to send you ’ere for, then?’ asked Mr. Pinner, leaning
on his knuckles, his blue eyes very bright. ‘Ain’t your ’ome where your
’usband’s is? Ain’t that a married woman’s ’ome?’
‘I only come on a visit,’ faltered Sally, whose spirits were by now in
her shoes. Her father had often scolded her, but she had never been
afraid of him. Now there was something in his eye that made her feel
less sure that she had taken, as Mr. Thorpe had told her, the one
possible and completely natural step. ‘I only come for a few days, while
Mr. Luke----’
‘Mr. Luke know you’re ’ere?’ interrupted her father.
‘’E don’t know yet,’ said Sally. ‘But I----’
‘That’s enough,’ said Mr. Pinner, holding up a hand. ‘That’s quite
enough. No need for no more words. You go back right away to your
’usband, my girl. Come to the wrong box, you ’ave, for ’arbourin’
runaway wives.’
‘But, Father--’ she stammered, not yet quite able to believe that in
coming back to him she had only got out of the frying pan into the fire,
‘you got to listen to _why_ I come----’
He held up his hand again, stopping her. He had no need to listen. He
could see for himself that she was a runaway wife, which was against
both man’s and God’s laws.
Sally, however, persisted. She put her bag down on the counter, behind
which he firmly remained, and facing him across it tried to give him an
idea of what had been happening to her, and what had been going to
happen to her much worse if she had stayed.
He refused to be given an idea of it. He turned a deaf ear to all
explanations. And he was merely scandalised when she said, crying by
this time, that she couldn’t, couldn’t be left alone with Mr. Luke’s
mother, for where a husband thinks fit to leave his wife, said Mr.
Pinner, always supposing it is respectable, there that wife must remain
till he fetches her. This he laid down to Sally as a law from which a
married woman departs at her peril, and he laid it down with all the
more emphasis, perhaps, because of knowing how unlikely it was that he
himself would ever have had the courage to enforce it in the case of
Mrs. Pinner, and that, if he had, how certain it was she wouldn’t have
stayed five minutes in any place he tried to leave her in.
Sally was in despair. What was she to do? The little shop looked like
paradise to her, a haven of peaceful bliss after the life she had led
since last she saw it. She cried and cried. She couldn’t believe that
her father, who had always been so kind really, wouldn’t let her stay
with him for the two days till Jocelyn got back to Cambridge.
But not even for one night would Mr. Pinner, who was secretly terrified
of Jocelyn, and sure he would be hot on his wife’s tracks and make a
scene and blame him if he gave her so much as an inch of encouragement,
harbour her. Back she should go by the very next train to her husband
and her duty; and the breaking of marriage vows, and the disregard of
the injunctions in the New Testament which had so much shocked her in
Jocelyn, were now thrown at her by Mr. Pinner, who accused her of
precisely these. Useless for Sally, clinging to the hope of somehow
being able to justify herself and be allowed to stay, to say through her
tears that the Gospel didn’t mention what a woman had to do but only
what a man had to, because to that Mr. Pinner replied that no Gospel
could be expected to mention everything, and that in any case, when it
came to sinning, the sexes couldn’t be kept apart.
§
He walked her off to the little station three miles away. The bag the
respectful chauffeur had wanted to carry for her up those few steps she
now carried three miles herself.
‘Pity you was in such a ’urry to let that there car go,’ Mr. Pinner
remarked sarcastically, as they trudged almost in silence along the
lanes.
Sally gulped; delicately, because even her gulps were little
gulps,--gentle, delicate little things. She didn’t know what was to
become of her, she really didn’t. Go back to that dreadful house, and
arrive in the middle of the party? Face real wrath, real deserved wrath,
from those who even when they were being kind had terrified her? So
thoroughly had Mr. Pinner’s horror at what she had done cleared her mind
of Mr. Thorpe’s points of view that she felt she hadn’t a leg to stand
on, and would do anything, almost, sooner than, covered with shame, go
back to the anger of the Lukes. But what? What could she do except go
back? Yet if she had been miserable there while she was still good, how
was she going to bear it now that she had become wicked? She shuddered
to think of what Mrs. Luke would be like really angry--and Mr. Luke, who
had the right not to leave her alone even at night....
Sadly did Sally gulp from time to time, and every now and then emit a
faint sob, as she walked in silence that morning beside the adamant Mr.
Pinner to the branch-line station. She hadn’t been in the Woodles
district very long, but it seemed to her as she passed along its quiet
lanes that she loved every stick and stone of it. It was what she
understood. It was peace. It was home. Her father went with her as far
as Cambridge, so as to put her safely into the express to Liverpool
Street, and his instructions were, after buying her a first class
ticket--he felt that Mr. Luke would wish her to travel first class, and
it gave him a gloomy pride to buy it--that she was to take a taxi from
Liverpool Street, and go in it all the way to South Winch.
He then, with the ticket, gave her a pound note.
‘It can’t be more than ten miles out,’ said Mr. Pinner, who had never in
his life before squandered money, let alone a pound, on a taxi, but who
tried to console himself with the thought that it would have been well
spent if only it got Sally safe back to where she belonged; and though
he was depressed he was also proud, for it, too, gave him a kind of
sombre satisfaction.
‘Been an expensive day for me, this,’ he said, gloomy, but proud.
Sally gulped.
He kept her in the waiting-room at the station till the last moment, for
she was attracting the usual too well-remembered attention, and beauty
in tears was even more conspicuous than beauty placid, and then he
hurried her along to the front of the train, and put her in a carriage
in which there was only one lady--a real lady, of course, thought Mr.
Pinner, anxiously taking stock of her, or she wouldn’t be travelling
first class.
‘Beg pardon, Madam,’ he said in his best behind-the-counter manner,
taking his hat off. ‘You goin’ to London by any chance?’
Seeing that the train didn’t stop till it got there, the lady couldn’t
say anything but yes; and then Mr. Pinner asked her if she would mind
keeping an eye on his daughter, who, though a married lady too--the
lady made a little bow of acknowledgement of this tribute to her
evidently settled-down appearance, though she was, in fact, a
spinster--yet didn’t know her way about very well.
Then when the train began to move, and Sally’s face, as she leant out of
the window to say goodbye, was a study in despair, Mr. Pinner relented
enough to pat her tear-stained cheek, and running a few steps beside the
carriage bade her not take on any more.
‘What’s done’s done,’ he called out after the train, by way of cheering
her.
And Sally, dropping back into her corner, pulled out her handkerchief
and wept.
§
Yes. What was done was done true enough, she thought, mopping the tears
as they rolled down her face, including her having married Mr. Luke and
his mother; for she now regarded him and his mother as all of a piece.
The lady at the other end of the carriage, who, however hard she tried,
couldn’t take her eyes off her--and she did try very hard, for she hated
staring at grief--ventured after a while to repeat Mr. Pinner’s advice,
and suggested, though in more Luke-like language, that Sally shouldn’t
take on. Whereupon Sally, the voice being sympathetic and the face kind,
took on more than ever.
‘Oh, _please_ don’t,’ said the lady, much concerned, moving up to the
seat opposite her. Such liquefaction she had never seen, nor such
loveliness in spite of it. When she herself cried, which was very
rarely--what was the good?--she became a swollen thing of lumps. ‘You
mustn’t, really,’ she begged. ‘Your eyes--you simply mustn’t do anything
to hurt them. What is it? Can I help at all? I’d love to if I could----’
By the time they were rushing through Bishops Stortford Sally had told
her everything. Incoherent and sobbing at first, there was something
about this lady that comforted her into calmness. She wasn’t at all like
Mr. Thorpe, yet she took his sort of view, not Mr. Pinner’s, and was
even more sympathetic, and even more understanding. It really seemed,
from the questions she asked, as if she must know the Lukes personally.
She said she didn’t, when Sally inquired if this were so, and laughed.
She was very cheerful, and laughed several times, though she was so kind
and sorry about everything.
‘You can’t go back there today, anyhow,’ she said at last. ‘Not into the
middle of that party----’ she laughed and shuddered, for Sally had
explained with a face of horror that nobody at all was going to be at
the party who wasn’t either a lady or a gentleman except herself. ‘You
shall come and stay with me for a few days till your Mr. Luke goes to
Cambridge, and then we’ll see what happens. But I’m not going to let you
go back into the clutches of that Mrs. Luke.’
And she leant forward and took her hand, and smiled so kindly and
cheerfully, and said, ‘You’ll come for a day or two to our house, won’t
you? My father isn’t there just now, and I’ve got it all to myself. Come
till we have made up our minds about what to do next.’
This really seemed too good to be true. Sally turned scarlet. Was she
saved? Saved, at the very last minute, from horror and disgrace?
‘Just for a day or two,’ said her new friend, who couldn’t take her
eyes off Sally’s face, ’till your husband can find somewhere for you to
live. We’ll help him to look. I’ll come with you, and help to find
something. No, it doesn’t matter a bit about your not having any
luggage--I can lend you everything. And we’ll write to him if you like,
and tell him you can’t and won’t stay with his mother. Don’t you think
this is quite the best plan? Don’t you, Sally?’
And she smiled, and asked if she might call her Sally.
‘But,’ hesitated Sally, for she didn’t want to get anybody into
difficulties, ‘Father says I’m a runaway wife, and ’e wouldn’t ’arbour
me ’imself because of that.’
‘Oh, but somebody must. And I’m the very one for it, because I’m so
respectable, and not a wife. Don’t you worry, you lovely thing. We
really must bring your Mr. Luke to his senses. By the way, hasn’t he got
a Christian name?’
‘You never ’_eard_ such a name,’ said Sally earnestly, who felt, to her
own great surprise, almost as comfortable and easy with this strange
lady as she had with Mr. Soper. ‘Outlandish, I call it.’
Her new friend laughed again when she told her it was Jocelyn. ‘Aren’t
you delicious,’ she said, her bright eyes screwed up with laughter.
Sally liked being called delicious. It gave her assurance. Jocelyn had
called her lots of things like that in his red-eared moments, but they
hadn’t done her much good, because they never seemed to go on into next
day. This lady was quite in her ordinary senses, her ears were proper
pale ears, and what she said sounded as though it would last. And how
badly Sally needed reassurance after the things Mr. Pinner had said to
her that morning!
‘Now you come along with me,’ said her friend, jumping up as the train
ran into Liverpool Street, her eyes, which were like little black
marbles, dancing. ‘And please call me Laura, will you? Because it’s my
name.’
She leaned out of the window, and waved. A chauffeur came running down
the platform and opened the door; a car was waiting; and in another
minute Sally was in it, once more sunk in softness, and once more with a
lovely fur rug over her knees, while sitting next to her, talking and
laughing, was her new friend, and sitting opposite her, neither talking
nor laughing, a smart young lady in black, carrying a bag, who had
appeared from nowhere and wasn’t taken any notice of, and who looked
steadily out of the window.
‘What a _day_ I’m ’avin’, thought Sally.
But when presently the car stopped at a big house in a great square with
trees in the middle, and a footman appeared at the door, and in the hall
Sally could see another one just like him, and then another, and yet
another, she was definitely frightened.
‘Oh lor,’ she whispered, shrinking back into the car.
‘No--Laura,’ said her new friend, laughing and taking her hand; and
drawing it through her arm she led her up the steps of the house, and
into the middle of the first real fleshpots of her life.
§
Fleshpots.
She had thought her honeymoon was a honeymoon of fleshpots; she had been
sure Almond Tree Cottage was the very home of them; but now she saw the
real thing: fleshpots _in excelsis_.
Her father had said, ‘Beware of fleshpots,’ when he was expounding the
doings of the Children of Israel to her of a Sunday afternoon, ‘they
don’t do no one no good.’ And she had been brought up so carefully, so
piously, so privately, that she had never come across that literature of
luxury, those epics of fat things, that are lavishly provided for the
poor and skimped. The flunkeys and the frocks, the country castles and
the town palaces, the food, the jewels and the dukes, had remained
outside her imaginative experience. What she had read had been her
Bible, and a few books of her mother’s childhood in which people were
sad, and good and ill, and died saying things that made her cry very
much. There was nothing to set her dreaming in these. Life, she thought,
was like that, except for the lucky ones such as herself, who had kind
parents and a nice back parlour to sit and sew in when their work was
done. There were the gentry, of course; they existed, she knew, but only
knew vaguely. Entirely vague they had been in her mind till she became a
Luke, and found herself engulfed by them; and what an awe-inspiring
engulfing it had seemed to her, with Ammond handing round everything at
meals, and tea on a table you didn’t sit up at!
Now, as her new friend’s arm propelled her past the blank-faced footmen,
across the great marble-floored and columned hall, she realised that
Almond Tree Cottage had been the merest wheelbarrow in size and fittings
compared to this. This was grand. More--this was terrible. It was her
idea of a cathedral or a museum, but not of a place human beings washed
their hands in, and talked out loud.
‘P’raps,’ she murmured to the lady called Laura, holding back as she was
about to be taken into a room which she could see at once she would
never feel comfortable in, and where far away in the distance was
another of those tables with tea on it that one didn’t sit up at,
‘p’raps, if you don’t mind, I’d better be gettin’ along after all----’
for, being polite, she had forced herself to bow with a nervous smile to
a gentleman in black, who was standing about and whose eye had met hers,
and he hadn’t taken any notice but looked as blank-faced as everybody
else, and the rebuff had terribly embarrassed her.
‘Come along,’ was all Laura said to that, calling out over her shoulder
to the same gentleman in black to see that a room was got ready for Mrs.
Luke; and he answered, as polite and mild as milk, ‘Very good,
m’lady----’ so he was a servant, and Laura was one of those ladies
Sally had heard her parents sometimes allude to with awe, who are always
being told they’re ladies every time any one speaks to them, and who
were, so Mr. and Mrs. Pinner declared, the pick of the basket.
‘P’raps,’ murmured Sally again, faintly, for the thought of having got
among the pick of the basket unnerved her, ‘I’d best do what Father
said, and take a taxi....’
‘You shall if you really want to,’ said Laura, ‘but let’s have tea
first. And think of that party! It’s raging at this minute. Oh,
Sally--could you bear it?’
Sally sat down on the chair Laura pushed up for her. She sat down
obediently, but only on the edge of it, her long slender legs tucked
sideways, as one sits who isn’t at ease. No, she couldn’t bear to go
back to that party; nor could she, waiting till it was over, go back
after it and face Mrs. Luke. It was more than flesh and blood could
manage.
Then, that being so, and seeing that her father wouldn’t have her, the
only thing to do was to stay where she was till Usband went to Cambridge
on Saturday, and be thankful she had this kind lady to be with, and try
and swallow all the servants and marble, and do her best to behave
grateful. It was only for a couple of days, for directly Usband got to
Cambridge she would go after him as a wife should. Fallen on her feet
wonderfully she had, Sally anxiously assured herself; but nevertheless,
as she sat on the edge of her chair, and great pictures looked down at
her from vast walls, she felt excessively uneasy.
‘Tell me some more about the Lukes,’ said Laura gaily, arranging a
little table in front of her on which her cup and plate had a nice lot
of room, and nothing got spilt or dropped. ‘I think they’re such fun.’
‘Fun?’ echoed Sally, her lips parting.
She stared at Laura. Fun? The Lukes?
‘I never ’eard of a ’usband bein’ fun,’ she said in a very low voice,
her head drooping.
‘Perhaps that isn’t quite the word,’ said Laura, ‘though I believe it’s
a very good way of approaching them.’ And then she paused, teapot in
hand, her eyes on Sally’s face. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you know you’re
the most utterly beautiful thing?’
Whereupon Sally started, for this was the way Mrs. Luke had begun with
her, and said quickly, even as she had said then, ‘But I can’t ’elp it.’
‘Help it?’ echoed Laura, astonished.
‘People begins,’ said Sally anxiously, ‘with “Oh my, ain’t you
beautiful,” and ends with bein’ angry. It ain’t as if I could ’_elp_
it,’ she said, looking up at her new friend with eyes in which tears
were gathering, for it would be more than she could bear on her empty
stomach--she had had no food since her breakfast in Mr. Thorpe’s car--if
she too were going to be angry with her.
Really such an extraordinary piece of good fortune as this had never yet
come Laura’s way.
§
Now was Sally shovelled up by chance from the bottom of the social
ladder to the top, for Laura was the spinster daughter of a duke. He was
so aged that, by sheer going on living, everything he had ever done,
good and bad, had been forgotten, and at last he had become an object of
universal respect. Ninety-three next birthday; a great age. And his
eldest son, the prospective duke, was sixty-five,--a great age too for
anything that is still prospective. He was a marquis, Sally learned with
surprise presently, when she was having her tea and Laura, who perceived
she needed soothing, was trying to distract her by telling her about her
relations; for she failed to understand why he shouldn’t be a duke.
Pinners produced Pinners; why not dukes dukes?
But Laura said these things couldn’t be explained, and hurried on.
The old duke had married three times, and Laura was the product of what
the neat-phrased French would call the third bed. All the beds, first,
second, and third, had long vanished, and of the third, which had been
very fruitful, Laura, and her brother Charles, and her married sister
Terry, were the only surviving traces. The second bed had been barren;
the first had provided the heir, and three ancient ladies old enough to
be Laura’s mothers, who were scattered over England in varying degrees
of resignation, one being the widow of a bishop, another the widow of a
Cabinet Minister, and the third not yet the widow of a club man and
expert bridge-player, who never came home till next day.
‘Why don’t ’e?’ asked Sally, manners seeming to demand that she should
say something when, for an instant, her friend paused.
But Laura said these things couldn’t be explained, and hurried on.
Much the liveliest of the beds had been the one she herself came out of,
and her blood pressure--except during the last year of the War, when
unceasing hard work, combined with a diet of practically continual
boiled fish, reduced it to a comfortable normal--had always been higher
than was convenient. This led her into excesses. She must be up and
doing; she found it impossible to sit still. Vitality bubbled in her
quick speech and danced in her black eyes. She was now thirty-five,
round and stubby, fleet of foot and swift of reply, and her past was
strewn with charities she had organised, dressmakers she had
established, hat shops she had run, estate agencies she had started,
hospital beds she had endowed, arts she had supported, geniuses she had
discovered, and four lovers.
Four weren’t many, she thought, considering the piles her sister Terry
had got through. Laura’s lovers had come and gone, as lovers do, and she
hadn’t minded much, because neither had they. There was something too
electric about her for love. She seemed to crackle in their very arms.
This disconcerted them; and each in his turn married some one else.
For a long time now she had been bored, and bored violently, and by the
time she came across Sally she had seen everything, been everything,
heard everything and done everything; and the prospect of seeing and
being and hearing and doing over and over again, till her joints cracked
and her hair fell out, was boring her into fits.
Her father’s three wives had been the daughters of millionaires, whose
pride it was to leave them all their money. Her father, rich before, had
thus become incredibly richer. England was full of him. And the war had
only made him richer, because he owned coal mines. Such riches, Laura
considered, were disgusting, and she had plunged into Socialism, and
come up dripping Labour. But whatever she did, whatever she was, her
chief job was to look after her father, and see that his last years were
peaceful; and she had now only left him in Cambridgeshire, where they
had been spending Easter, for a day or two, and rushed up to London
because of being obliged to go to a charity ball of which she was a
patroness, to the first night of a play whose author she was
encouraging, to a bazaar in aid of the Black and Blue League, of which
she was vice-president and whose aims were the assistance of wives, and,
if possible, to look in at a concert being given by a young violinist
she had helped to have trained: and she had been thinking, as she sat in
the empty railway carriage between Crippenham and Cambridge--the
expresses stopped at Crippenham when the Duke was in residence--that all
this was a great bore.
What was the good of it, really? Oughtn’t charity to be approached quite
differently? Weren’t bazaars essentially vicious? Did wives need
assistance more than husbands? And there was her own stupid supper-party
that night after the play, with the author coming to it, and the
leading lady, and Streatley her elder brother, who thought he admired
the leading lady, and Terry her sister, who thought the author admired
her, and Charles her younger brother, who was sure he admired nobody,
and one or two others, including a dramatic critic; and how too
perfectly awful if the play was a failure, and there they all were,
boxed up with the person who had written it.
‘Silly life,’ she had been thinking as the train ran into Cambridge.
‘Round and round in a cage we go, and nothing is ever different except
our whiskers, which keep on getting greyer.’
‘But then,’ she said leaning forward, her eyes twinkling and dancing as
she looked at Sally, who by this time had finished her tea, ‘the door
opened and you got in. Too marvellous, Sally. Divinely beautiful. And
not an h in your whole delicious composition.’
‘Pardon?’ said Sally, who hadn’t quite got that.
§
She hadn’t understood more than a word here and there of all the words
Laura had rattled off at her, and in her heart, while she steadily ate
sandwiches, she had slowly come to the conclusion that the pick of the
basket was a queer fish. An affectionate and friendly fish, but queer
all right, thought Sally; and in spite of the good tea--the best she had
ever had, outdoing the one at Truro, and infinitely better than any at
Mrs. Luke’s,--in spite of the calming and balancing effect of
nourishment after not having had a bite to eat since five o’clock that
morning, in spite of Laura’s kindness and cheerfulness, Sally felt
uneasy.
She oughtn’t to be there. She oughtn’t to have come with Laura. It was
only for two days, but two days were enough to do wrong in. What would
her father say, who thought she was at that moment in a taxi, paid for
by his pound, if he could see her? What would Mrs. Luke say? What was
Mrs. Luke saying, anyhow? As for Mr. Luke, what he would say didn’t so
much matter, because almost before he had finished saying it she would
have joined him in Cambridge, and started acting as a wife should. Of
course he on his side must act as a husband should, and not try and send
her away from him to his mother,--that was only fair, wasn’t it? Sally
anxiously asked herself.
And her uneasiness became acute when Laura, having taken her up a whole
lot of stairs, every one of which looked like pure marble, and into a
room she could only guess was a bedroom because there was a bed in it,
but which was otherwise unidentifiable to Sally as such, sat down at a
table and began telephoning to people to send round somebody at once
with dresses and shoes to be tried on a young lady, who had to wear them
that very evening.
Sally listened in alarm. Impossible not to guess that she was the young
lady; impossible not to gather that there was to be a party, and she was
to be at it. Had she after all only escaped Mrs. Luke’s party to find
herself caught in another? Was Laura, who had so much sympathised with
her earnest wish not to be present at the one, going to plunge her into
the other?
Standing afraid and conscience-stricken in front of the blazing wood
fire, while Laura telephoned--this all came of not obeying her
father--Sally wondered whether anything could save her. Laura had saved
her from Mrs. Luke, but who was going to save her from Laura? Laura
lived in the middle of marble. She had servants at her beck and call,
and could make the gentleman in black do anything she chose. And the
smart young lady, who had sat on the small seat of the car and looked
out of the window, presently, on Laura’s telling her to, crawled round
the floor at Sally’s feet with her mouth full of pins, doing something
to a petticoat of Laura’s that Sally, it seemed, was going to have to
wear that evening.
‘All you’ve got to do, Sally,’ said Laura, having finished telephoning,
and coming briskly over to where her newest discovery was standing
meekly without her frock and hat, while the petticoat was pinned
narrower, ’is to enjoy yourself. Oh, you lovely, _lovely_ thing!’ she
burst out, beating her hands together with delight; for the more one
took off Sally the more exquisite she became.
Enjoy herself? She, a married woman? ‘Wonder ’ow,’ thought Sally.
‘Say what you like, do what you like,’ said Laura, her eyes bulging with
admiration, ‘and don’t care about anybody or anything. Don’t you bother
about h’s, or silly things like that. Just say whatever comes into your
darling, delicious head, and enjoy yourself.’
In the presence of the young lady crawling on the floor, Sally was dumb.
Laura, on the other hand, talked just as if she weren’t there; but when
for a moment Sally found herself alone with Laura, she did make a mild
protest.
‘Might ’ave gone back to that there other party after all,’ she said,
’an’ done what Father tell me, if I got to be at one any’ow.’
‘Oh, but this isn’t a party,’ Laura hastily assured her, for Sally was
distinctly drooping. ‘This is a theatre. You like going to a play, don’t
you, Sally? Of course you do. I simply don’t believe the girl exists who
doesn’t.’
Yes; Sally liked going to a play. She hadn’t ever been to one, and the
idea of a theatre did cheer her up. And Laura said nothing about the
supper afterwards, because why say everything?
§
They went, then, to the first night of Mr. Gillespie’s new play. Sally
was astonished when Laura, and the maid, and the head lady from
Paquille’s and her two assistants, had finished with her and bade her
look at herself in the glass.
‘That me?’ she asked, her lips parting and her eyes widening, for it
might have been a real grand lady. And she added doubtfully, ‘I ain’t
’alf bare.’
Laura, however, was just as bare, and there was ever so much more of her
to be bare with, so she supposed it must be all right; but she did
wonder what her father would say if he could see her now--‘Oh, my
_goodness_,’ shuddered Sally, her mind slinking away from the thought.
They had dressed her in a cloud of blue tulle over a cloud of green
tulle. Her loveliness was startling. It was like nothing either Laura or
the lady from Paquille’s had ever seen, and they had seen most of what
there was of existing beauty. Even the maid, an expert in repression,
showed excitement. And presently when the Paquille lady wrapped the
cloak round her that went with that frock, and, swathed in its green and
silver, she looked like a white flower in a slender sheath of green,
Laura fairly danced with delight to think what Terry would say, who was
used to being so much prettier than anybody else, and what Charles would
say, who long had declared there was no such thing as real beauty, and
Streatley, who said the women nowadays couldn’t hold a candle to the
women of his youth, and everybody.
Such a find, such a haul, such a piece of luck had never yet befallen
Laura. And the mischievous pleasure she took in thinking of the effect
it was going to have on her relations and of the upsetting results it
was going to produce, was all the more surprising because, at the bottom
of her heart, she was devoted to them.
§
Among the opera-glasses that raked Sally as she followed Laura into the
stage box three minutes before the curtain went up on Mr. Gillespie’s
new play, were Terry’s. She was in the stalls, with the young man who
just then was, as the Pinners would have said, walking out with her. He
too was looking at Sally.
‘Laura’s latest,’ remarked Terry, turning to him after a prolonged
incredulous stare at the astonishing contents of the box; for Laura was
well known for her successive discoveries of every kind--saints,
geniuses, rugged men of labour--each of which, after a brief blare of
publicity, disappeared and was not heard of again.
The young man’s face, however, had the kind of expression on it as he
looked at Sally that is apt to annoy the woman one is with; and Terry,
who was strictly monogamous during each of her affairs, and expected the
other person to be so too, didn’t like it.
‘Who is she?’ asked her young friend.
‘God knows,’ said Terry, shrugging her shoulders.
The curtain went up and the lights went down, and Sally disappeared
into the darkness. When next she was visible, Charles Moulsford and Lord
Streatley had joined their sister in the box. They were talking to
Sally. She was politely smiling. The house had eyes for nothing else.
‘Who _is_ she?’ asked Terry’s young friend again, with a warmer
insistence.
‘You’d better go and ask her,’ said Terry, cross.
‘All right, I will,’ said her young friend; and got up and left her; for
by this time she had been monogamous with him for six months, and he
long had wished she would love him less.
The other three acts of the play took place in bright summer weather,
and the glorious sunshine on the stage lit up Sally too in the stage
box. The house had eyes only for her. Mr. Gillespie’s play accordingly
fell flat. Nobody called for him at the end, what applause there was was
absent-minded, and next morning the leading newspaper, after a
perfunctory _résumé_ of that which it unkindly described as the alleged
plot, ended by remarking languidly, ‘Mr. Gillespie must try again.’
It was a strange evening. The actors, who began well, seemed to get more
and more bloodless as the play proceeded. Mr. Gillespie, crouching in
the darkest corner of the box above Laura’s, a shelter out of which
nothing would have dragged him except the most frenzied cries of
enthusiasm, couldn’t imagine what was the matter with his players; but
they had felt almost at once that no notice was being taken of them, and
presently, discovering the reason, a blight settled on them, and its
ravages, as the evening went on, became more marked. By the end there
was practically complete anaemia, and Mr. Gillespie, fleeing from the
theatre before the final curtain so as to see and hear nothing more, so
as to get away, so as to meet neither managers nor actors, so as to wipe
from his mind that he had ever written plays, or ever hoped, or ever
believed, or ever had dreams and ambitions, went straight for comfort to
his friend Lady Laura Moulsford, who had been so kind and encouraging,
and who had told him to come round to her that evening, laughingly
promising to have the laurels ready.
Laurels! Poor Mr. Gillespie now only wanted to hide his head in her kind
lap. He winced to remember how happily he too had laughed, how sure he
had been. But that was because of the great success of his first play;
and this one, his second, was twenty times better, and was going to be
twenty times greater a success.
And so it would have been except for Sally. When, presently, after he
had waited three quarters of an hour alone in the library at Goring
House because Sally was being so much crowded round coming out of the
theatre that it took all that time to extricate her and get her away,
she came in with Laura and Laura’s brothers, he instantly realised what
had happened; and even as Mr. Soper hadn’t grudged her his stew, though
feeling aggrieved, so did Mr. Gillespie, though feeling heartbroken, not
grudge her the laurels that should have been his.
He turned very red; he bent low over her hand when Laura introduced him;
he murmured, ‘I lay my failure at your feet and glory in it,’--this
being the way Mr. Gillespie talked; and Sally, nervous and bewildered,
but indomitably polite, said, ‘Pardon?’
§
She kept on saying ‘Pardon?’ that evening. She found it difficult to
follow the things they all said. They were kind, and seemed to want to
make her happy, but their language was obscure. So was Mr. Luke’s, if it
came to that, only he, except at intervals, wasn’t kind. No, she
couldn’t call Mr. Luke a kind man; but then he was her husband, and
these weren’t, though they all behaved, she thought, rather as if they
would like to be,--that is, there were curious and unmistakable
resemblances between their way of looking at her and speaking to her and
Jocelyn’s when he was courting. Lords, too, two of them. Who would have
thought lords would forget themselves like this? For they knew she was
married, and that it was sheer sin to look at her as though they were
going to be husbands. And they so grand and good in the newspapers,
making speeches, and opening hospitals! Sally was much shocked. One of
them was very old; he couldn’t, she decided, be far off his dying
breath. Oughtn’t he to be thinking what he was going to do about it,
instead of sitting up late at a party behaving as if he would like to be
a husband?
The only thing that comforted her for being at a party after all was
that Jocelyn wasn’t there. She felt she could manage parties much best
single-handed, without him watching and being angry. None of these
people were angry, or minded about how she spoke; on the contrary, they
seemed to like it, and laughed,--except one, the younger lord, who sat
as grave as a church. There was, when all was said and done, a certain
feeling of space in being without one’s husband; and after she had
drunk a little champagne,--a very little, because it was so nasty, and
reminded her of fizzy lemonade gone bad--this feeling of space
increased, and she was able to listen to the things the gentlemen kept
on saying to her with the same mild patience, tinged with regret, with
which on her one visit to the Zoo she had contemplated the behaviour of
the monkeys. Laura’s relations seemed to Sally, as she sat listening to
them, as difficult to account for as the monkeys. One couldn’t account
for them. But even as these, she reminded herself, they belonged to God.
‘They’re God’s,’ Mr. Pinner had said that day at the Zoo, when asked by
her to explain why the monkeys behaved in the way they did; and that
being so there was nothing further to worry about.
As for Laura, whose heart, being a Moulsford’s, was good, though it
sometimes in moments of excitement forgot to be, she had several qualms
during that evening, and soon began to think that perhaps she oughtn’t
to have kidnapped Sally, or, having kidnapped her, ought to have kept
her hidden till she took her to Cambridge and handed her over to her
husband.
Yet she was even more of an overwhelming success than Laura had
expected. Streatley was idiotic about her, Charles had fallen in love at
last, Mr. Gillespie worshipped and forgave, the dramatic critic was
fatuous, Terry was indignant, and the leading lady had been so furious
when she saw Sally in the box, and knew why she herself and the play
were being failures, that she had refused to come round to supper.
‘What a success,’ thought Laura, looking round her table, the vacant
place at which was filled by Lady Streatley, who had drifted in
unexpectedly because she didn’t see why Streatley should make a fool of
himself with that actress woman unchecked. She had come to check him,
and found him needing checking at an entirely different pair of feet.
‘What a _success_,’ thought Laura, suddenly ashamed.
‘And so you ought to be,’ said her brother Charles after supper, when
she--they were great friends--took him aside and told him she somehow
felt ashamed. ‘You’re a little fool, Laura, and never see further than
the end of your silly nose. I should get rid of a few of your good
intentions if I were you.’
‘But she was so unhappy,’ said Laura, trying to justify herself.
‘You wouldn’t have cared in the very least if she had been plain,’ said
Charles.
‘Am I as bad as all that?’ asked Laura.
‘Every bit,’ said Charles, who was annoyed because of the way Sally was
disturbing him.
Indeed, the way Sally was disturbing everybody was most unfortunate.
Here was a united and affectionate family, the three younger ones almost
filially devoted to their elder brother, all four of them with the
warmest hearts, which, though they led them into situations Terry’s
husband and Streatley’s wife might dislike, never for an instant dimmed
their fraternal affections and loyalties. Not one of them would
willingly have hurt the others. All were most goodnatured, doing what
they could to make everybody happy. Laura was really benevolent; Theresa
was really kind; Charles was really unselfish; and Streatley so really
affectionate that he could still, at sixty-five, love several women at
once, including his wife.
How annoying for Charles, for instance, who was so fond of his brother,
and had looked on with bland detachment at his successive infatuations,
suddenly to find he was competing with him. Competing with Streatley!
And not only competing, but saying to himself that he was an ancient
ass. Charles was horrified to find himself thinking Streatley an ancient
ass; but he was even more horrified when he quite soon afterwards
discovered he was definitely desirous of strangling him. That was
because of the way he looked at Sally. It made Charles’s hitherto
affectionate fingers itch to strangle him.
And how annoying for Lady Streatley to see her elderly husband making
yet another fool of himself. He had made so many fools of himself over
women that it was to be supposed she would by now have got used to it.
Not at all. She was each time as profoundly upset as ever. And this time
it was really dreadful, because the girl was hardly more than a child.
Oughtn’t he to be thoroughly ashamed of himself?
‘I wish you could see the expression on your face,’ she murmured acidly
to him, as they got up from the supper-table and gathered round the
fire.
‘Leave my face alone,’ he growled, looking at her furiously; and that
she should be acid and he should growl and look at her furiously was
distressing to Lady Streatley, who was the most amiable of women, and
knew that he was the most naturally kind of men.
And then Terry, so affectionate and faithful to her young friend
Robert,--for her to have to look on while he forgot her very existence
and sat on the floor at somebody else’s feet, his rapt gaze fixed
unswervingly on a face that wasn’t hers, was most annoying. He had
insisted on coming round with her to Laura’s party, though she refused
at first to bring him. So violently determined was he, however, that he
assured her she would never see him again if she didn’t take him round
with her; and Terry, cowed, as many a fond woman had been before her by
this threat, gave in, and spent the evening in a condition of high
indignation.
It was Laura, though, with whom she was indignant,--Laura, the sister
she had always so much loved, who had arranged the whole thing so as to
set everybody by the ears. She forgave Robert--they had got to the stage
when she was continually forgiving him, and he was continually hoping
she wouldn’t--for how could he help it if this artful young woman from
the slums laid herself out to beguile him? It was all Laura’s fault.
Terry couldn’t have believed her goodnatured sister had it in her to be
so wickedly mischievous. What devil had taken possession of her? First
dressing the girl up and spoiling poor Jack Gillespie’s play with her,
and then getting them all there to supper, so as to make fools of
them....
‘I hope you’re pleased with your detestable party,’ she said, leaning
against the chimney piece, staring in wrathful disgust at the circle
round Sally, who, glancing shyly and furtively every now and then at the
lovely dark lady dressed like a rose, thought she must surely be the
most beautiful lady in the whole world, but feeling, judged Sally, a bit
on the sick side that evening,--probably eaten something.
‘I’m not at all pleased,’ snapped Laura, ‘and I wish to goodness you’d
all go home.’
That, however, was exactly what they couldn’t bear to do. Hours passed,
and Laura’s party still went on. The men were unable to tear themselves
away from Sally, whose every utterance--she said as little as possible,
but couldn’t avoid answering direct questions--filled them with fresh
delight, and the two women, Terry and her aggrieved sister-in-law, were
doggedly determined to stay as long as they did.
‘If she weren’t so lovely,’ murmured Lady Streatley to the indignant
Terry, when a roar of laughter, in which the loudest roar was
Streatley’s, succeeded something Sally, tired and bewildered, had said
in answer to a question, ‘I suppose they wouldn’t see anything at all in
that Cockney talk.’
‘They’d think it unendurable,’ said Terry shortly.
‘But you see,’ said Laura, who was cross with Terry, ‘she happens to be
the most beautiful thing any of us have ever seen.’
‘Oh, I quite see she’s very beautiful,’ said poor Lady Streatley, who
had given Streatley seven children and was no longer the woman she was.
‘If one _likes_ that sort of thing,’ said Terry, descending in her anger
to primitive woman.
‘Which one evidently does,’ said Laura maliciously, glancing at the
infatuated group.
‘Men are such fools,’ said Terry.
‘Babies,’ sighed Lady Streatley.
Only once did Charles, who was the greatest contrast to his brother,
being lean and brown and goodlooking and not much past thirty, besides
remaining grave on all the occasions that evening when his brother
laughed, for Charles was fastidious as well as sympathetic, and Sally’s
accent didn’t amuse him, and he hated to see her unwittingly amusing the
other four infatuated fools,--only once did he get her a moment to
himself, and then only for a minute or two, while there was some slight
rearrangement of positions because of the bringing in of a tray of
drinks.
When he did, this was the conversation:
‘I believe,’ said Charles in a low voice, ‘you’re every bit as beautiful
inside as you are out.’
‘Me?’ said Sally with weary surprise--by this time she was deadly
tired--for she hadn’t thought of bodies as reversible. ‘Ain’t I all
pink?’
‘Pink?’ echoed Charles, not at first following. Then he said rather
hastily, being queasy and without Streatley’s robust ability to enjoy
anything, ‘I mean your spirit. It’s just as divinely beautiful as your
face. I’m sure it is. I’m sure you never have a thought that isn’t
lovely----’
And he went on to murmur--why on earth he should say these inanities he
couldn’t think, and was much annoyed to hear them coming out--that he
hoped her husband loved her as she deserved.
‘You never _see_ such lovin’,’ said Sally earnestly, who didn’t mind
this one of the gentlemen as much as the others.
‘Oh, I can imagine it,’ said Charles, again hastily; and wanted to know
whether, then, her husband wouldn’t be excessively unhappy, not having
an idea where she was.
‘Dunno about un’appy,’ said Sally, knitting her brows a little--Charles
was deeply annoyed to discover how much he wished to kiss them--for she
hadn’t thought of unhappiness in connection with her brief and strictly
temporary withdrawal. ‘Angry’s more like it.’
‘Angry?’ said Charles, incredulously. ‘Angry with you?’
‘Gets angry a lot, Mr. Luke do,’ said Sally, bowing her exquisite
little head in what Charles regarded as a lovely but misplaced
acquiescence. ‘Except,’ she added, anxious to be accurate, ‘when ’e
begins oh-Sallyin’.’
This ended the conversation. Charles couldn’t go on. He was queasy. He
didn’t need to ask what oh-Sallying was. He could guess. And, as he
shuddered, the desire he had to strangle Streatley was supplemented by a
desire to save Sally,--to seize and carry her off, out of reach of
indignities and profanities, and hide her away in some pure refuge of
which only he should have the key.