Introduction to Sally

‘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.

XII

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.

XIII

Only Charles could come and go as he pleased; only he could dare break in without notice on the sacred yearly business of prolonging life. Although he had had ninety-three years of it, the Duke still wanted more. He liked being alive, and it pleased him to keep Streatley waiting. Streatley, and the other three children of his first marriage—absurd, he thought, to have to refer to those four old things as children—were unpopular with their father. He had never at any time cared much for them, and had begun to be really angry with them when he was a lively seventy, and perceived that the possession of children bordering on a heavy fifty made him seem less young than he felt himself to be. Now that they were practically seventy themselves, and old seventies too, and he not looking a day different, he hoped, from what he had looked thirty years before, he was angrier with them than ever. He admitted that other people might be old at ninety-three, but he wasn’t; he was the exception. He didn’t feel old, and he didn’t, he considered, look old, so what was all this talk of age? The press never mentioned him without the prefix venerable; people pretended he was deaf, when he could hear as well as any man if he wasn’t mumbled at; Laura was continually making him sit out of draughts, just as if he were a damned invalid; arms were offered him if he wanted to walk a few steps—he couldn’t appear in the House without some officious member of it, usually that ass Chepstow, who was eighty if a day himself, ambling across to help; and every time he had a birthday the newspapers tumbled over each other with their offensively astonished congratulations. Couldn’t a man be over ninety without having it perpetually rubbed into him that he was old?

What he loved was his brood of young ones—Laura, Terry, and Charles; and of this lively trio the dearest to him was Charles. So that, looking up from his seedcake and seeing his last born coming into the room, not only entirely unexpectedly but with a young woman, though he was surprised he wasn’t angry; and when on their coming close to him he perceived the exceeding fairness of the young woman, his surprise became pleasurable; very pleasurable; in fact, pleasurable to excess.

He stared up at Sally a moment, not listening to what Charles was saying, and then struggled to get on to his feet. Younger than his three young ones ... much, much younger than his three young ones ... youth, ah, youth ... lovely, lovely youth....

Charles wanted to help him, but was thrust aside. ‘Poor old gentleman,’ said Sally, catching him by the arm as he seemed about to lose his balance and drop back into the chair.

‘Married?’ asked the Duke, breathing hard after his exertion, and looking at Charles.

Charles shook his head.

‘’Course I’m married,’ said Sally with heat.

‘He means us,’ said Charles.

‘Us?’ repeated Sally, much shocked.

‘You’re going to be, then,’ said the Duke, looking first at her and then at Charles, his face red with pleasure.

Charles shook his head again, and laughed.

But the Duke didn’t laugh. He stared at him a minute, and then said, ‘Fool.’

‘I got a nusband,’ said Sally indignantly.

‘He can’t hear,’ said Charles. ‘He’s very deaf.’

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke. ‘Speak clearly, my dear—no, don’t shout,’ he added; though Sally, far from going to shout, wasn’t even opening her mouth. Poor old gentleman, she thought, gazing at him in silent compassion; fancy him still being anybody’s father.

The Duke took her hand in a dry, cold grip.

‘Like shakin’ ’ands with a tombstone,’ thought Sally. And she was filled with so great a pity for anything so old that she didn’t feel shy of him at all, and in the coaxing voice of one who is addressing a baby she said, ‘’Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot—do, now.’

Charles looked at her astonished. Nearly everybody was afraid of his father. She reminded him of the weaned child in Isaiah, who put its hand fearlessly on the cockatrice’s den.

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke, gazing at her with delight.

‘This is Mrs. Luke, Father—a friend of Laura’s,’ shouted Charles, ‘and I’ve brought her——’

‘Write it down, my dear,’ said the Duke, not heeding Charles, and drawing Sally into a chair next his own and pushing paper and a pencil towards her with his shaking old hands. ‘Write down what you were saying to me.’

Charles became anxious. He felt sure Sally couldn’t write anything down. Nor could she; for if her spoken words were imperfect her written ones were worse, so that to be given a pencil and paper by the Duke and told to write might have been embarrassing if she hadn’t, owing to his extreme age and evident dilapidation, felt he wasn’t, as she said to herself, all there. Poor old gentleman, she thought, full of pity. What she saw, sitting heavily in the chair, breathing hard and blinking at her so kindly, was just, thought Sally, the remains, the left-overs; like, she said to herself, her images being necessarily domestic, Sunday’s dinner by the time one got to Friday,—not much good, that is, but had to be put up with. No; there was nothing frightening about him, poor old gentleman. More like a baby than anything else.

‘’Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot,’ she said again, gently putting the paper and pencil aside. ‘Do you good,’ she encouraged, ‘a nice ’ot cup of tea will.’

‘He can’t hear, you know,’ said Charles, much relieved by Sally’s attitude. But with what confidence, he thought, couldn’t a thing so gracious approach the most churlish, disgruntled of human beings; and his father wasn’t either churlish or disgruntled,—he only looked as if he were, and frightened people, and when he saw they were frightened he didn’t like them, and frightened them more than ever.

The Duke, watching Sally’s every movement with rapt attention, thought when she put her hand on the teapot to feel if it was still hot that she wanted tea herself, and bade Charles ring the bell and order more to be brought, and meanwhile he took the cup she offered him obediently, his eyes on her face. He hadn’t got as far, being still in too great a condition of amazement at her beauty, as wondering which of the ancient families of England had produced this young shoot of perfection, and not being able to hear a word she said took it for granted that the delicate-ankled—he was of the practically extinct generation that looks first at a woman’s ankles,—slender-fingered creature belonged to his own kind. True her hands were red hands; surprisingly red, he thought, on her presently taking off her gloves, which she rolled up together into a neat tight ball, compared to the flawless fairness of her face; but they were the authentic shape of good-breeding, even if her nails——

The Duke was really surprised when his eyes reached Sally’s nails.

Charles drew a chair close up to his father, and began his explanations. He was determined the old man should attend, and shouted well into his ear as he told him that he had motored Laura’s friend, Mrs. Luke, down from London, where she had been staying with Laura at Goring House, to Crippenham for the night because it was quieter, and she hadn’t been well——

‘I’m all right,’ interrupted Sally, who had been listening in an attitude of polite attention.

‘Oh, my dear child—when you fainted,’ protested Charles in his ordinary voice, raising a deprecating hand.

‘Speak up,’ said the Duke, impatiently.

‘’Course I fainted,’ said Sally, looking pleased.

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.

‘Yes—and were unconscious for at least half an hour,’ said Charles.

‘That’s right. And sick,’ said Sally, looking proud.

‘Sick? Were you sick as well? Then see how really ill——’

‘Speak up, speak up,’ said the Duke testily.

But Sally said nothing further, and merely smiled indulgently at Charles.

‘What did she say?’ asked the Duke, not wishing to lose a word that fell from that enchanting mouth.

‘She said,’ shouted Charles, ‘that she is quite well now.’

‘Of course she is,’ said the Duke, staring at her face and forgetting her nails. ‘Anyone can see she is as perfectly well as she is perfectly beautiful.’

‘Oh lor,’ thought Sally, ‘now ’e’s goin’ to begin.’

§

That afternoon and evening were a triumph for her if she had known it, but all she knew was that she was counting the hours to next day, and Jocelyn, and the settling down at last to her home and her duties. The old man was her slave. Crippenham and everything in it was laid at her feet, and the Duke only lamented that it should be to this one of his houses that she had come, where he couldn’t, he was afraid, make her even decently comfortable. Positively at Crippenham there was only one bathroom. The Duke seemed to regard this as a calamity, and Sally listened with mild wonder to the amount he had to say about it.

‘Fair ’arps on it, don’t ’e, poor old gentleman,’ she remarked to Charles; and bending over to the Duke’s ear—Charles looked on in astonishment at the fearless familiarity of the gesture—she tried to convey to him that it wasn’t Saturday night till the next night, and that by then she’d be in Cambridge, so there was no need for him to take on.

‘Eh?’ said the Duke. ‘What does she say?’ he asked Charles.

‘She says,’ shouted Charles, ‘that it doesn’t matter.’

How very glad he was that his father was so deaf. Often he had found his deafness trying, but how glad he was of it now. Not Saturday night.... Charles fell silent. It was then Friday. Could it be that since the previous Saturday——?

The Duke, however, knew nothing of Sally except what his eyes told him, and accordingly he was her slave. When she presently went up to Laura’s room with the housekeeper, who had instructions to place everything of Lady Laura’s at Mrs. Luke’s disposal—Crippenham had no spare rooms, only a room each for the Duke, and Charles, and Laura, the other six or seven bedrooms being left unfurnished and kept locked up—and Charles, who from long practice could make his father hear better than anyone except Laura, settled down to telling him as much about Sally as he thought prudent, the old man listened eagerly, his hand behind his ear, drinking in every word and asking questions which showed that if he was really interested in a subject he still could be most shrewd.

He was delighted that Sally should have run away from her mother-in-law, said it was proof of a fine, thoroughbred spirit, and asked who her father was.

Charles said his name was Pinner.

The Duke then inquired whether he were one of the Worcestershire Pinners, and Charles said he didn’t know.

The Duke then rambled off among his capacious memories, and presently brought back a Pinner who had been at Christchurch with him, and who had married, he said, one of the Dartmoors, an extremely handsome woman, fair too, who was probably the girl’s grandmother.

Charles merely bowed his head.

The Duke then asked who the Lukes, apart from this boy-husband at Ananias, were; for, he said, except the fellow in the Bible, he couldn’t recollect ever having heard of a Luke before.

Charles said all he knew was that they lived at South Winch.

‘What?’ cried the Duke. ‘Has she married beneath her?’—and was so really upset that for a time he blinked at Charles in silence. Because he felt that if only this dear son of his had secured the beautiful young creature he could have died content; and it seemed to him a double catastrophe that not only should his boy have missed her, but that she should have been caught into a misalliance with some obscure family in a suburb.

‘Upon my word, Charles,’ he said, after a dismayed silence, ‘that’s a pity. A very great pity.’

And rambling off into his memories again, he said it was a good thing that poor Jack Pinner was dead, for no man had a keener family feeling than he, and it would have broken his heart to think his grand-daughter had made a mistake of that kind.

He couldn’t get over it. He had never, in the whole of his long life, seen anyone to touch this girl for beauty, and that she should, at the very outset of what ought to have been a career of unparalleled splendour and success, have dropped out of her proper sphere and become entangled in a suburb really shocked him. Kings at her feet, all Europe echoing with her name—this seemed to the Duke such beauty’s proper accompaniment.

‘Tut, tut,’ he said, his hands, clasped on the top of his stick, shaking more than usual, ‘tut, tut, tut. What was her mother thinking of?’

‘Her mother is dead,’ said Charles.

‘Her father, then. Jack Pinner was no fool. I don’t understand how his son—where is he, by the way? I heard something about the Worcestershire estates having been sold after the war——’

Charles said he didn’t know where her father was, because, although Sally had told him the shop was at Woodles, he had never heard of Woodles, which indeed is not marked on any map, so that he felt he wasn’t lying in saying he didn’t know.

The Duke, however, appeared to be seized by a sudden fierce desire to track down his old friend’s reprehensible son and tell him what he thought of him, and Charles was dismayed, for no good, he was sure, could come of tracking down Mr. Pinner. Sally, he knew, was anxious her father shouldn’t find out her disobedience to his orders, and though of this disobedience Charles held Laura guilty, not Sally, yet he didn’t suppose Mr. Pinner would look at it like that, and it was, besides, important, Charles considered, that his father, who had always had a rooted objection to any woman who wasn’t well-bred, should go on thinking Sally was a Worcestershire Pinner.

It seemed, then, to Charles a good thing to keep his father and Mr. Pinner apart, and it was therefore with regret that he listened to the old man asking Sally the moment he next saw her, which wasn’t till dinner, for she stayed up in her room till fetched down by the scandalised housekeeper, to whom it was a new experience that His Grace should be kept waiting even a minute after the gong had sounded, where her father was.

‘’Im?’ said Sally, turning pale but forced by nature and her upbringing to an obedient truthfulness. ‘’E’s at Woodles, ’e is.’ And, ‘Oh my gracious,’ she added to herself, ‘they ain’t goin’ to tell ’im I’m ’ere?’

‘What does she say?’ the Duke asked Charles.

‘She says,’ shouted Charles, following his father, who was shuffling along leaning on Sally’s arm, to the dining-room, and shouting with outward composure but inward regret, ‘that he is at Woodles.’

‘Woodles? Woodles?’ repeated the Duke. ‘Never heard of it. Is it in Worcestershire?’

Sally shook her head. She didn’t know where Worcestershire was, but she felt pretty sure Woodles wasn’t in it.

‘I dunno wot it’s in,’ she said. And then, impelled as always to the naked truth, she added, ‘Close by ’ere, any’ow.’

‘What does she say?’ inquired the Duke, turning again to Charles.

‘She says,’ shouted Charles, obliged to hand on the answer correctly with Sally listening, but doing so with increased regret, ‘that it isn’t far from here.’

‘How very lucky,’ said the Duke, ‘and how very odd that I shouldn’t have known he was so near.’ And he added, when he had been lowered into his chair at the head of the table by the parlourmaid, who held one arm, and his servant, who held the other, ‘I’d like to have a talk with that father of yours, my dear.’

Sally turned paler.

‘Your grandfather was one of my oldest friends,’ continued the Duke, with difficulty unfolding his table-napkin because of how much his hands shook.

‘I ain’t got no grandfather,’ said Sally anxiously, who had never heard of him till that moment.

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.

‘She says,’ began Charles reluctantly—‘You know,’ he muttered quickly to Sally, for how could he tell the old man what she had said? ‘you have a grandfather—or had. You must have. Everybody has them.’

‘What? What?’ said the Duke impatiently. ‘Send a message round tonight, Charles, and say with my compliments that I’d very much like to see Pinner. Tell him I’m too old to go to him, so perhaps he’ll be obliging enough to come to me some time tomorrow. You can say his father was at Oxford with me if you like, and that I’ve only just heard he is in the neighbourhood. Say his daughter——’

‘Now don’t—now don’t go doin’ a thing like that,’ Sally faintly begged of Charles.

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.

‘Do you think it’s wise to break your rule of never seeing anybody while you’re here?’ shouted Charles. ‘You shouldn’t,’ he added to Sally, ‘have told him about Woodles.’

‘But ’e ask me,’ said Sally, distressed.

‘You’re not obliged to tell everybody everything,’ said Charles.

‘But if they asks me——’ said Sally, almost in tears.

The Duke became suddenly cross. ‘I hate all this muttering,’ he said. ‘Why on earth can’t you speak up, Charles?’

Charles spoke up. ‘It’s impossible to send tonight, Father,’ he shouted. ‘If you won’t keep servants here you can’t send messages.’

‘Then you can go yourself tomorrow,’ said the Duke.

‘Now don’t—now don’t go doin’ a thing like that,’ implored Sally again.

‘And bring him back in your car,’ said the Duke.

‘I believe Mrs. Luke would rather not see her father,’ shouted Charles.

‘That’s right,’ said Sally, nodding her head emphatically. It did sound awful though—not wanting to see one’s father. ‘Ain’t I gettin’ wicked quick,’ she thought; and hung her head.

He didn’t seem to think so, however, the old gentleman didn’t, for he leant across to her looking as pleasant as pleasant, and patted her shoulder with his poor shaky old hand, and said she was quite right. Right? Poor old gentleman, thought Sally—past even knowing good from bad.

The Duke bent across and patted her shoulder, a broad smile on his face. Such spirit—running away from her mother-in-law, and kicking at seeing her father—delighted him. She was a high-stepper, this lovely, noble little lady, and all his life he had admired only those women whose steps were high.

‘You shan’t see him, my dear,’ he said. ‘Quite right, quite right not to wish to.’ And just as she was heaving a sigh of thankfulness he added, ‘But I will. I really must have a talk with him.’

Strange, thought Charles, this determination to talk with Sally’s father. How much better, how much more really useful, to talk with her husband, or her mother-in-law.

§

After dinner, which Sally ate reluctantly, for she well knew by now that her ways with knives and forks were somehow different from the ways of people like Lukes and dukes, and she felt, besides, that the old gentleman’s eye was on her—which it was, but her face, for she was of course now without her hat, engrossed his whole attention, and he saw nothing that her hands were doing—after dinner, after, that is, the small cups of clear soup and the grilled cutlets with floury potatoes which were the evening meal at Crippenham during the severity of the retreat, Charles went into the garden to smoke.

It was a small garden, with nothing in it but a plot of rough grass, some shrubs, a tree or two, and in one corner the shut up four-roomed cottage his father had had built for him and Laura and Terry twenty-five years ago, when first he bought Crippenham, to play at housekeeping in. For years it had been unused; a melancholy object, Charles thought whenever he went into the garden and saw it there, smothered in creepers and deserted, a relic of vanished youth, a reminder that one was getting old.

Beneath its silent walls he wandered up and down, thinking. Every now and then, drawn by the light streaming out through the uncurtained window of his father’s study, he crossed the grass and stood a moment looking in, fascinated by the picture inside,—the two figures brilliantly lit up, the hunched-up old man, with his great bald head glistening in the light, talking, talking, and the exquisite girl, her head bowed in a divine courtesy and patience, listening, though her angelic little face was distinctly troubled. That was because of the fear of her father, Charles knew. She needn’t be afraid. If the old man insisted on seeing Pinner he would have to go to Woodles himself, for Charles certainly wasn’t going to fetch the creature. Charles didn’t at all like Mr. Pinner—imagine turning down a daughter, and such a daughter, when she fled to him for sanctuary!—but though he didn’t like him, and quite shared his father’s opinion that he should be talked to, wisdom told him that the best thing to do with Mr. Pinner was to leave him alone. The Lukes were the ones needing talking to. The Lukes were the people to deal with. The Lukes——

Yes; what line had he best take with his father in the conversation he meant to have after their adorable guest had gone to bed? He wandered up and down the path beneath the shuttered windows of the deserted cottage, deep in reflection. It was clear to him that nobody except his father could really help Sally. Laura, though she was provided with everything, and more than everything, that she wanted, had no separate income of her own, and could do nothing beyond giving moral support. He himself couldn’t lift a finger without at once causing scandal. His father could; his father was the only person who could; and his father, Charles determined, should. There were, then, after all, thought Charles, back at the window again and staring through it, compensations in being so old: one could help Sally. His father was revoltingly rich. It would be nothing to him to set her on her feet. True, there was no earthly reason why he should, but sometimes—great God, couldn’t a man sometimes come out of the narrow ring of reason, get outside the circle of just claims, forget his cautious charities, be unbusinesslike, break traditions, shock solicitors, and for once in his life do something absurd, and beautiful, and entirely for nothing?

Charles threw away his cigarette, and with his hands in his pockets took a few quick strides about the little garden, excited, stirred out of his customary calm. Why, even if the old man did as little for her as interrupt his rest-cure for a few hours and take her into Cambridge himself, just for the girl to be seen with him, just for her to appear under his wing, would knock every obstacle out of her path, except that one obstacle of young Luke’s poverty. His father knew the Master of Ananias; his father knew everybody. They all listened when he spoke. The merest indication of a wish would be attended to. It was, of course, regrettable that there should be this attentiveness to a man merely because he was rich and a duke, but by God, thought Charles, how damned convenient.

He walked quickly about the little garden. His father must be made to understand the situation. He would sit up all night if necessary, getting it into his head. He would tell him everything Sally had told him, adding anything that should seem in his judgment effective, and only keeping Mr. Pinner back, and the fact that the darling, lovely girl was not at her best in conversation and no good at all at writing things down. His father must take the Lukes by the hand; he must be led to desire to do so above all things. Tact, skill, judgment,—Charles would sit up all night exercising these. Mrs. Luke must be suppressed. The unpleasant youth, who dared be angry, must be taught his incredible good fortune in getting such a wife. Those Lukes——

Suddenly Charles stood still.

Those Lukes....

Queer, but the words had sounded in his ears like a cry of pain.

He was down at the edge of the garden, which ended in a ditch, and on the other side stretched flat, empty fields divided from each other by hedges and rows of elms, darker than the darkness. The air smelt of damp grass. The sky was wonderful, thick strewn with stars. A great peace lay over the fields. They seemed folded in silence. He could hear nothing but the croak of a far away frog. Why, then, had it seemed to him as if——

Charles stood motionless.

Those Lukes ... what must they not, since yesterday, have suffered?

Extraordinary, that he hadn’t thought of it before.