Chapter 12

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.