§
He couldn’t, however, do that; but he could carry her off next day in
his car into the country for a few hours, away from London and the
advances Streatley would be sure to try to make, and everybody else
would be sure to try to make who should meet her if she stayed with
Laura.
Next day was Friday; and his chief, one of the leading lights of the
Cabinet, to whom he was the most devoted and enthusiastic of private
secretaries, was going away for the week-end. Charles would be free.
Walking up and down his room, unable to go to bed, he decided he would
drive his car himself round to his father’s house the first thing in the
morning, not taking the chauffeur, and get hold of Sally before anyone
else did. For one whole day he would be alone with her. One day. It
wasn’t much to take out of her life, just one day?
Charles was in love. How not be? He was in love from the first moment he
saw the radiant beauty in Laura’s box at the play, and his love had
survived, though it took on a tinge of distress, their brief
conversation. But it became a passion when she broke up Laura’s party at
last by suddenly tumbling off her chair in a faint and lying crumpled on
the floor at his feet, her eyes shut and her mouth a little open, and
her hands flung out, palm upwards, in a queer defencelessness.
There had been a rush to help, and he had actually shoved Streatley away
with a vicious intention of really hurting him, so unendurable had it
been to him to think of those great hairy hands, besmirched by a hundred
love affairs, touching the child; and it was he who had picked her up
and carried her upstairs, followed by Laura, and laid her on her bed.
‘I’m _ashamed_ of you,’ he had said to Laura under his breath as he
turned and walked out of the room, shocked at such brutal exploiting of
an exhausted child.
‘But so am I, so am I----’ Laura had answered distractedly, running to
the bell and frantically ringing for her maid; and Sally lay on the bed
like a folded flower, thought Charles, stirred by passion into poetic
images, and at least for the moment safe in unconsciousness from the
screaming, tearing, grabbing world.
The next morning, then, when Laura came down punctually at nine o’clock
to breakfast--for however late she went to bed her restless vitality,
once it was broad daylight, prevented her being able to stay there,
which made her unpopular in country houses,--she found Charles in the
dining-room, standing with his back to the fire.
‘How much you must love me,’ she remarked sarcastically, being, after a
bad night, a little cross.
‘I don’t love you at all at this moment,’ said Charles.
‘Then is it breakfast you want?’
‘No,’ said Charles.
‘Can it be Sally?’
‘Yes,’ said Charles.
‘Fancy,’ said Laura; and poured herself out some coffee.
‘How is she?’ asked Charles after a pause, ignoring such silliness.
‘Oh, quite well,’ said Laura. ‘She was tired last night.’
‘Tired! I should think so,’ said Charles severely. ‘I’ve come to ask her
if she will let me take her into the country for the day. It’s my
intention to get her away from your crowd for a few hours.’
‘Rescue her, in fact,’ said Laura, munching, her back to him.
‘Exactly,’ said Charles, who was angry.
‘I expect Tom’--Tom was Lord Streatley--‘will be here soon, wanting to
rescue her too,’ remarked Laura, glancing out of the window to where she
could see Charles’s touring car standing, and no chauffeur. ‘_He_ won’t
bring his chauffeur either. Have some?’ she asked, holding up the
coffee-pot.
‘Can’t you be a little beast when you give your mind to it,’ said
Charles.
‘Well, you scolded me last night because _I_ had rescued her, and now
here you are----’
Laura broke off, and hastily drank some coffee. She didn’t really want
to quarrel with Charles; she never had yet. In fact, till Sally appeared
on the scene she had never quarrelled with any of her family. Besides in
her heart, though she was cross that morning, not having slept well
for the first time for years because of being worried and
conscience-stricken and anxious, she was glad that Charles should take
Sally off her hands. She had so much to do that day, so many important
engagements; and if Sally went with her everybody would instantly be
upset, and if she left her at home she would be a prey to Streatley.
Other people wishing to prey on her could be kept out by a simple order
to the servants, but not her own brother. And Streatley, when he was
infatuated, was a gross creature, and there would be more trouble and
wretchedness for poor Kitty his wife, let alone God knowing what
mightn’t happen to Sally.
If Sally had to be with one or the other of them, Charles was far the
better; but what a very great pity it was, Laura thought as she
pretended to be absorbed in her breakfast, that she hadn’t let her go
back the day before to where she belonged. It wasn’t any sort of fun
quarrelling with her dearest brother Charles, and seeing him look as if
he hadn’t slept a wink. Besides, Sally was going to have a baby. At
least, so she had informed Laura during the night, basing her conviction
on the close resemblance between her behaviour in fainting, and her
subsequent behaviour when she came to in being violently sick, and the
behaviour of somebody called Mrs. Ooper, who had lived next door at
Islington, and every spring, for seven years running, had fainted just
like that and then been sick,--and sure as fate, Sally had told Laura in
a feeble murmur, there at Christmas in each of those seven years had
been another little baby.
‘_I_ don’t want no doctor,’ she had whispered, putting out a cold hand
and catching at Laura’s arm when, dismayed at Sally’s sickness just as
they had at last been able to undress her and get her into bed, she was
running to the telephone to call hers up.
‘But, my darling,’ Laura had said, bending over her and smoothing back
the hair from her damp forehead with quick, anxious movements, ‘he’ll
give you something to make you well again.’
‘No, ’e won’t,’ Sally had whispered, looking up at her with a faint,
proud smile, ‘’cos I ain’t ill. _I_ know wot’s ’appenin’ all right. It’s
a little baby.’
And then she had told Laura, who had to stoop down close to hear, about
Mrs. Ooper.
Well, Laura didn’t know much about babies before they were born, but she
was sure a person who was expecting any ought to be with her husband.
She couldn’t kidnap whole families; she hadn’t bargained for more than
one Luke. And during the few hours that remained of the night, after she
had seen Sally go off to sleep with an expression of beatitude on her
face, she had tossed about in her own bed in a fever of penitence.
When would she learn not to interfere? When would she learn to hang on
to her impulses, and resist sudden temptation? Up to then she had never
even tried to. And a vision of what Sally’s unfortunate young husband
must be feeling, and of course his mother too, who might be tiresome but
hadn’t deserved this, produced the most painful sensations in Laura’s
naturally benevolent heart.
She would make amends,--oh, she would make amends. She would take Sally
to Cambridge herself on Saturday, when she was through with her London
engagements, and find rooms for her, and explain everything to the young
man, and beg his pardon. Perhaps, too, she could tell him a little of
Sally’s fear of his mother, and perhaps she might be able to persuade
him not to let her live with them; for Laura had often noticed, though
each time, being a member of the Labour Party, with shame and regret,
that the persuasions of the daughter of a duke are readily listened to.
But she didn’t want to make amends that day,--she was too busy; and she
couldn’t send a telegram, or anything like that, letting the Lukes know
where Sally was, because it would only bring them about her ears in
hordes, and she simply hadn’t time that day for hordes. Laura’s
intentions, that is, were admirable, but deferred.
‘Isn’t she coming down?’ asked Charles at last, for Laura, with her back
to him pretending to eat her breakfast, had said no more.
‘She’s having breakfast upstairs,’ said Laura.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked, annoyed.
‘Because you say I’m a little beast, so I may as well do the thing
thoroughly.’
Charles went across to the bell.
‘No--don’t ring,’ said Laura jumping up. ‘I’ll go and tell her.’ And she
went to the door, but hesitated, and came back to him, and laid her hand
on his arm.
He withdrew his arm.
‘Charles--are you so angry with me?’ she asked.
‘You’ve behaved simply disgracefully,’ he answered in a voice of deep
disgust. ‘You would sacrifice anybody to provide your friends with a new
sensation.’
Laura looked at him. It was true; or had been true. But she wasn’t going
to ever any more, she was going to turn over a new leaf--next day, when
she had finished with all her tiresome and important engagements.
‘You sacrificed that child’--began Charles, passionately indignant when
he thought of the unconscious figure on the floor.
‘Don’t _you_ sacrifice her,’ interrupted Laura. And when Charles stared
at her, too angry for speech, she added hastily, ‘Oh, don’t let’s
quarrel, Charles darling. I’m sure you’ll take the greatest care of her.
I’ll go and fetch her. Drive slowly, won’t you--and bring her back safe.
Tomorrow I’m going to hand her over to her husband.’
§
Now in his heart Charles knew that this was the only right thing to do.
Sally ought never to have been taken away from her husband, and, having
been taken, ought to be returned to him. At once. Not tomorrow, but at
once. He didn’t know the circumstances, except what Laura had hurriedly
told him the night before after supper, about having found her in a
train, dissolved in tears because her father was sending her back to a
mother-in-law who was awful to her, and she had brought her home with
her just to comfort her, just to let her recover; but it was plain that
such conduct on Laura’s part was indefensible. If ever anybody ought to
be safe at home it was Sally. She should be taken there without losing a
moment. Disgraceful of Laura to put it off for another day and night,
while she kept her fool engagements. Having behaved so wickedly, she
ought, without losing an hour, to set things straight again.
Charles felt strongly about Laura’s conduct; yet, though he himself
could have set things straight by simply driving Sally back to the Lukes
that morning, he didn’t do so. That was because he couldn’t. He was in
love, and therefore couldn’t.
There are some things it is impossible to do when you are in love,
thought Charles, who recognised and admitted his condition, and one is
to hand over the beloved to a brute. Luke was a brute. Clearly he was,
from what Sally had said the night before. He was either angry--angry
with that little angel!--or he oh-Sallied. A cold shudder ran down
Charles’s spine. The thought made him feel really sick, for he was a
tender-stomached as well as a tender-hearted young man, and possessed an
imagination which was sometimes too lively for comfort. It wouldn’t be
_his_ hand that delivered her up to a young brute; nor, he suddenly
determined, on the butler’s hurrying out to Laura, who was standing on
the steps seeing him and Sally off, and saying with urgency, ‘Lord
Streatley to speak to Mrs. Luke on the telephone,’ would it be his hand
that delivered her up to an old one. At once on hearing the message he
started the car, and was out of the square before Laura could say
anything. There was Sally, tucked up beside him in Laura’s furs, and
looking more beautiful in broad sunshine even than he remembered her the
night before,--a child of light and grace if ever there was one, thought
Charles, a thing of simple sweetness and obedience and trust; and was he
going to bring her back to another evening’s exploitation by his sister
and her precious friends, with that old scoundrel, his elder brother,
all over her?
Never, said Charles to himself; and headed his car for Crippenham.
§
Crippenham was where his father was. What so safe as a refuge for Sally
as his father? He was ninety-three, and he was deaf. A venerable age; a
convenient failing. Convenient indeed in this case, for the Duke, like
Charles, took little pleasure in the speech of the lower classes. Also
he was alone there till Laura should come back to him on the following
day, because nobody was ever invited to Crippenham, which was his yearly
rest-cure, and nobody ever dared even try to disturb its guarded repose.
Charles felt that it was, besides being the only, the very place. Here
Sally could be kept remote and hidden till Laura--not he; he wouldn’t be
able to do such a thing--restored her to where she belonged; here she
would be safe from the advances of Streatley, who couldn’t follow her
anywhere his father was, because the old man had an aversion to the four
surviving fruits of his first marriage, and freely showed it; and here
he would have her to himself for a whole evening, and part at least of
the next day.
Also, it would serve Laura right. She would get a fright, and think all
sorts of things had happened when they didn’t come back. Well, thought
Charles, she deserved everything she got. Under the cloak of protecting
and comforting Sally she had been completely selfish and cruel. Charles
was himself astonished at the violence of his feelings towards Laura,
with whom he had always been such friends. He didn’t investigate these
feelings, however; he didn’t investigate any of his other feelings
either, not excepting the one he had when he asked Sally, soon after
they had turned the corner out of the square, if she were warm enough,
and she looked up shyly at him, and smiled as she politely thanked him,
for his feelings since the evening before no longer bore investigation.
They were a mixed lot, a strong lot. And it vexed Charles to know that
even as early in the day as this, and not much after half past nine in
the morning, he wished to kiss Sally.
This wasn’t at all the proper spirit of rescue. He drove in silence. He
couldn’t remember having wished to kiss a woman before at half past nine
in the morning, and it annoyed him.
Sally, of course, was silent too. Not for her to speak without being
spoken to, and she sat mildly wondering that she should be going along
in a car at all. Laura had come up to her bedroom and said her brother
was there, wanting to take her out for a little fresh air. Do her good,
Laura had said, though Sally had never known good come of fresh air yet;
but, passive as a parcel, she had let herself be taken. Why, however,
she should be going for a joy-ride with this lord she didn’t know,
though she supposed it was as good a way as another of getting through
the intimidating day among the picks of the basket, and anyhow this way
there was only one of them, and anyhow he wasn’t the big old one with
the hairs on his hands.
Queer lot, these picks, thought Sally. Didn’t seem to have anything to
do to keep them at home; seemed to spend their time going somewhere
else. Fidgety. And a vision of her own life as it was going to be once
she was settled in those rooms at Cambridge, getting ready for her
little baby, and cleaning up, and making things cosy for her man,
flooded her heart with a delicious warmth. Laura had promised to help
her find the rooms, and take her to where Mr. Luke would be. Mr. Luke
wouldn’t be angry any more now, thought Sally--he’d be too pleased about
the little baby; and Laura seemed to know exactly where they would find
him, and had assured her he wouldn’t want to have Mrs. Luke living with
them. Laura was queer too, in Sally’s eyes, but good. Indeed Sally,
feeling very much the married woman after what had happened the evening
before, feeling motherly already, feeling exalted by the coming of her
baby to a height immensely above mere spinsterhood, went so far as to
say to herself of Laura, with indulgent affection, ‘Nice kid.’
§
They lunched at Thaxted. It was still only half past twelve, and Charles
had managed to be three hours doing the forty odd miles. There was a
beautiful church at Thaxted in which he could linger with her, for he
didn’t want to get to Crippenham till tea-time, and Crippenham was only
about nine miles beyond Cambridge, off the Ely road between Waterbeach
and Swaffham Prior.
Up to Thaxted, Charles was filled with an embarrassingly strong desire
to appropriate Sally for ever to himself. He hadn’t an idea how to do
it, but that was his wish. She sat there silent, beautiful beyond his
dreams--and how often and how wistfully had he not dreamt of what a
woman’s beauty might be!--pathetic, defenceless in the midst of a rudely
jostling, predatory world, like a child with a priceless pearl in its
hand among the poor and hungry, and he passionately loved her. As the
miles increased, so did Charles’s passion. He looked at her sideways,
and each time with a fresh throb of wonder. He wove dreams about her; he
saw visions of magic casements and perilous seas, and she behind them,
protected, guarded, worshipped by him alone; his soul was filled with
poetry; he was lifted above himself by this Presence, this
Manifestation; he thought in terms of music; the whole of England sang.
But at Thaxted he felt different, and began to think Sally ought to be
with those she belonged to; and by the time it was evening, and he was
meditating alone in the garden at Crippenham, he was quite sure of it.
At Thaxted he ordered the best lunch he could--Sally’s mouth watered as
she listened,--and while it was being got ready he took her into the
church. She was inattentively polite. The brisk movements of a big,
close-cropped man in a cassock, who strode busily about and made what
seemed to Sally a curtsey each time he crossed the middle aisle,
appeared to interest her much more than Charles’s remarks on the clear,
pale beauty of the building. It was rather like taking a dog to look at
things. Charles didn’t consciously think this, but there was an
unawareness about Sally when faced by the beauties of Thaxted Church,
and when faced, coming down, by the beauties of certain bits of the
country that singing April morning, which was very like, Charles
subconsciously thought, the unawareness of a dog. Ah, but how far, far
more beautiful she herself was than anything else, he thought; how
exquisite she looked in Laura’s chinchilla wrap, with the exalted
thoughts of the men who had built the church, thoughts frozen into the
delicate greys, and silvers, and rose-colours of that fair wide place,
for her background.
The man in the cassock left off doing whatever he was doing on catching
sight of Sally, and, after looking at her a moment, came up and offered,
his eyes on her face, to show them round the church; a little cluster of
Americans dissolved, and flowed towards her; and a woman dressed like a
nun broke off her prayers, and presently sidled up to where she stood.
Charles removed her.
Thaxted is a quiet place, and he strolled with her through its streets
till their food should be ready. Its streets, quiet to begin with,
didn’t stay quiet. The people of Thaxted, for some reason
incomprehensible to Charles, because no two women could be more unlike,
seemed to think Sally was Mary Pickford. He heard whispers to that
effect. Did they then think, too, that he was the person known, he
understood, as Doug?
He removed her a second time.
Perhaps the inn was as good a place as any to wait in. He had, however,
to engage a private room for their lunch, because so many people came in
and wished to lunch too; and it was when Sally had eaten a great deal of
greengage tart and cream--bottled greengages, Charles feared, but she
said she liked them--and drunk a great deal of raspberry syrup which
had, he was sure, never been near real raspberries and couldn’t be very
good for her, and then, while he was having coffee and she tea--he had
somehow stumbled on the fact that she liked tea after meals, and he
watched with concern the strength and number of the cups she drank--it
was then that she began to thaw, and to talk.
Alas, that she should. Alas, that she didn’t remain for ever silent,
wonderful, mysterious, of God.
Once having started thawing, it wasn’t in Sally’s generous nature to
stop. She thawed and thawed, and Charles became more and more afflicted.
Lord Charles--so, the night before, she had learned he was called--was
evidently a chip off the same block as her friend Laura; kind, that is.
See what a lovely dinner he was giving her. Also he had been much more
like a gentleman that day, and less like somebody who wanted to be a
husband; and after the greengage tart she began to warm up, and by the
time she had got to the cups of tea she felt great confidence in
Charles.
‘Kind, ain’t you,’ she said with her enchanting smile, when he
suggested, much against his convictions, another pot of tea.
‘Isn’t everybody?’ asked Charles.
‘Does their best,’ said Sally charitably. ‘But it’s up ’ill all the way
for some as I could mention.’
By this time Charles was already feeling chilled. The raspberry syrup
and the cups of strong tea had estranged him. This perfect girl, he
thought, ought to be choice too in her food, ought instinctively to
reject things out of bottles, and have no desire for a second helping of
obviously bad pastry. Still, she was very young. He too, at Eton, had
liked bad tuck. After all, queer as it seemed, she had only got to the
age he was at then.
He made excuses for her; and, it appearing to him important that he
should be in possession of more facts about her than those Laura had
told him the evening before, said encouragingly, ‘Do mention them.’
Sally did. She mentioned everybody and everything; and soon he knew as
much about her hasty marriage, hurried on within a fortnight to the
first man who came along, her return from her honeymoon to South Winch,
the determination of her mother-in-law to keep her apart from her
husband, her flight, helped by her father-in-law, back to her father,
his rejection of her, and her intention to rejoin her husband next day
at Cambridge whether he liked it or not, as he could bear.
He couldn’t bear much. It wasn’t only how she said it, but what she
said. Charles, who had at first been afflicted by her language, was now
afflicted by her facts. He shifted uneasily in his chair. He smoked
cigarette after cigarette. His thin brown face was flushed, and he
looked distressed. In that strange, defective, yet all too vivid speech
which he so deeply deplored, she drew for him a picture of what seemed
sheer exploitation, culminating in his own sister’s flinging herself
hilariously into the game. This child; this helpless child, who would
obey anybody, go anywhere, do anything she was told--in Charles’s eyes,
as he listened and drew her out, she became the most pathetic thing on
earth. Everybody, it appeared, first grabbed at her and then wanted to
get rid of her. Everybody; himself too. Yes, he too had grabbed at her,
under a mealy-mouthed pretence of helping her, and now he too
wanted--not to get rid of her, that seemed too violent, too brutal a way
of putting it, but to hand her over, to pass her on, to send her back to
that infernal young Luke, who himself was trying to escape from her and
leave her to his mother. And the courage of the child! It was the
courage of ignorance, of course, but still it seemed to Charles a lovely
thing, that was afraid of nothing, of no discomfort, of no hard work, if
only she might be with her husband in their own home. Charles discovered
that that was Sally’s one wish, and that her simple ambition appeared to
be to do what she called work her fingers to the bone on behalf of that
odious youth.
‘Mr. Luke,’ said Sally, who was unacquainted with any reason why she
shouldn’t say everything she knew to anyone who wished to hear, ‘Mr.
Luke, ’e thinks ’e can’t afford a ’ome yet for me, and so----’
‘Then he oughtn’t to have married you,’ flashed out Charles, infuriated
by the young brute.
‘Seemed ’e couldn’t ’elp it,’ said Sally. ‘Seemed as if it ’ad to be.
’E----’
‘Oh yes, _yes_,’ interrupted Charles impatiently, for he hated hearing
anything about Jocelyn’s emotions. ‘Of course, of course. That was a
quite foolish remark of mine.’
‘Five ’undred pounds a year ’e got,’ went on Sally, ‘and me able to make
sixpence go twice as far as most can. Dunno wot ’e’s talkin’ about.’
And indeed she didn’t know, for she shared Mr. Pinner’s opinion that
five hundred a year was wealth.
‘Fair beats me,’ she added, after a thoughtful pause.
Well, thought Charles, the Moulsford family had behaved badly, and,
under the cloak of sympathy and wishing to help, his and Laura’s conduct
had been most base; but they were certainly going to make up for it now.
By God, yes. Crippenham, which he had at first thought of from sheer
selfishness as the very place to get Sally to himself in, was evidently
now the place of all others from which she could be helped. Quite close
to Cambridge, within easy reach of young Luke, and in it, all-powerful
even now in spite of his age, certainly all-powerful when it came to
putting the fear of God into an undergraduate, or whatever he was, his
ancient but still inflammable father. Naturally at ninety-three the old
man consisted principally of embers; but these embers could still be
fanned into a partial glow by the sight of a good horse or a beautiful
woman, and Charles would only need to show Sally to him to have the old
man on her side. Not able to hear, but able to see: what combination
could, in the case of Sally, possibly be more admirable?
He drove on after lunch, his conscience clear; so clear that before
leaving Thaxted he sent Laura a telegram telling her they were going to
Crippenham, because he no longer wanted her to be made anxious,--for
those only, thought Charles, are angry and wish to make others
uncomfortable who are themselves in the wrong. He was no longer in the
wrong; or, rather, he was no longer thinking with rapture of the wrong
he would like to be in if Sally could be in it with him. Her speech made
a gulf between them which his fastidious soul couldn’t cross. There had
to be h’s before Charles could love with passion. Where there were none,
passion with him collapsed and died. On this occasion it died at the inn
at Thaxted towards the end of lunch; and he was grateful, really,
however unpleasant at the moment its dying was. For what mightn’t have
happened if she had gone on being silent and only saying yes and no, and
smiling the divine, delicious smile that didn’t only play in her dimples
but laughed and danced in her darling eyes? Charles was afraid that in
that case he would have been done for. Talking, she had saved him; and
though he still loved her, for no man could look at Sally and not love
her, he loved her differently,--kindly, gently, with a growingly
motherly concern for her welfare. After Thaxted there was no further
trace in his looks and manner of that which had made Sally suspect him
of a wish to be a husband.
But she was surprised when he asked her, as they drove along, whether
she would mind if he took her to his father in the country for the
night, instead of back to what he called noisy London. Laura was in
London; why should she be taken somewhere else, away from her? And to
his father too--to more picks, fresh ones; just as she was beginning to
shake down nicely with the ones she knew. Surely the father of the picks
would be the most frightening of all?
So she said, ‘Pardon?’ and looked so much alarmed that Charles, smiling,
explained that his father was staying at that moment quite near
Cambridge, and it would be convenient for the search for rooms she had
told him Laura had promised to undertake with her next day.
‘He’s quite harmless,’ Charles assured her, for she continued to look
alarmed--if where she was to be taken to next was near Cambridge, it
must also be near Woodles, and suppose her father were to happen to see
her?--‘and he’s all alone there till Laura goes back to him tomorrow. It
will cheer him up to have us. He’s ninety-three.’
Ninety-three? ‘Oh, my,’ said Sally politely. ‘’E ain’t ’alf old. Poor
old gentleman,’ she added with compassion, old people having been
objects of special regard and attention in the Pinner circle.
But for the rest of the drive she was silent, for she was trying to
thread her way among her indistinct and entangled thoughts, all of which
seemed confusedly to press upon her notice that she oughtn’t to be where
she was at all, that if she was anywhere it ought to be with her
husband, and that with every hour that passed she was sinking deeper and
deeper in wrong-doing.
‘Soon be in right up to the neck,’ she said to herself with resigned
unhappiness; and sincerely wished it were that time tomorrow, and she
safely joined up with Mr. Luke, and finished for good and all with these
soft-spoken but headstrong picks.