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She kept on saying ‘Pardon?’ that evening. She found it difficult to follow the things they all said. They were kind, and seemed to want to make her happy, but their language was obscure. So was Mr. Luke’s, if it came to that, only he, except at intervals, wasn’t kind. No, she couldn’t call Mr. Luke a kind man; but then he was her husband, and these weren’t, though they all behaved, she thought, rather as if they would like to be,—that is, there were curious and unmistakable resemblances between their way of looking at her and speaking to her and Jocelyn’s when he was courting. Lords, too, two of them. Who would have thought lords would forget themselves like this? For they knew she was married, and that it was sheer sin to look at her as though they were going to be husbands. And they so grand and good in the newspapers, making speeches, and opening hospitals! Sally was much shocked. One of them was very old; he couldn’t, she decided, be far off his dying breath. Oughtn’t he to be thinking what he was going to do about it, instead of sitting up late at a party behaving as if he would like to be a husband?
The only thing that comforted her for being at a party after all was that Jocelyn wasn’t there. She felt she could manage parties much best single-handed, without him watching and being angry. None of these people were angry, or minded about how she spoke; on the contrary, they seemed to like it, and laughed,—except one, the younger lord, who sat as grave as a church. There was, when all was said and done, a certain feeling of space in being without one’s husband; and after she had drunk a little champagne,—a very little, because it was so nasty, and reminded her of fizzy lemonade gone bad—this feeling of space increased, and she was able to listen to the things the gentlemen kept on saying to her with the same mild patience, tinged with regret, with which on her one visit to the Zoo she had contemplated the behaviour of the monkeys. Laura’s relations seemed to Sally, as she sat listening to them, as difficult to account for as the monkeys. One couldn’t account for them. But even as these, she reminded herself, they belonged to God.
‘They’re God’s,’ Mr. Pinner had said that day at the Zoo, when asked by her to explain why the monkeys behaved in the way they did; and that being so there was nothing further to worry about.
As for Laura, whose heart, being a Moulsford’s, was good, though it sometimes in moments of excitement forgot to be, she had several qualms during that evening, and soon began to think that perhaps she oughtn’t to have kidnapped Sally, or, having kidnapped her, ought to have kept her hidden till she took her to Cambridge and handed her over to her husband.
Yet she was even more of an overwhelming success than Laura had expected. Streatley was idiotic about her, Charles had fallen in love at last, Mr. Gillespie worshipped and forgave, the dramatic critic was fatuous, Terry was indignant, and the leading lady had been so furious when she saw Sally in the box, and knew why she herself and the play were being failures, that she had refused to come round to supper.
‘What a success,’ thought Laura, looking round her table, the vacant place at which was filled by Lady Streatley, who had drifted in unexpectedly because she didn’t see why Streatley should make a fool of himself with that actress woman unchecked. She had come to check him, and found him needing checking at an entirely different pair of feet. ‘What a success,’ thought Laura, suddenly ashamed.
‘And so you ought to be,’ said her brother Charles after supper, when she—they were great friends—took him aside and told him she somehow felt ashamed. ‘You’re a little fool, Laura, and never see further than the end of your silly nose. I should get rid of a few of your good intentions if I were you.’
‘But she was so unhappy,’ said Laura, trying to justify herself.
‘You wouldn’t have cared in the very least if she had been plain,’ said Charles.
‘Am I as bad as all that?’ asked Laura.
‘Every bit,’ said Charles, who was annoyed because of the way Sally was disturbing him.
Indeed, the way Sally was disturbing everybody was most unfortunate. Here was a united and affectionate family, the three younger ones almost filially devoted to their elder brother, all four of them with the warmest hearts, which, though they led them into situations Terry’s husband and Streatley’s wife might dislike, never for an instant dimmed their fraternal affections and loyalties. Not one of them would willingly have hurt the others. All were most goodnatured, doing what they could to make everybody happy. Laura was really benevolent; Theresa was really kind; Charles was really unselfish; and Streatley so really affectionate that he could still, at sixty-five, love several women at once, including his wife.
How annoying for Charles, for instance, who was so fond of his brother, and had looked on with bland detachment at his successive infatuations, suddenly to find he was competing with him. Competing with Streatley! And not only competing, but saying to himself that he was an ancient ass. Charles was horrified to find himself thinking Streatley an ancient ass; but he was even more horrified when he quite soon afterwards discovered he was definitely desirous of strangling him. That was because of the way he looked at Sally. It made Charles’s hitherto affectionate fingers itch to strangle him.
And how annoying for Lady Streatley to see her elderly husband making yet another fool of himself. He had made so many fools of himself over women that it was to be supposed she would by now have got used to it. Not at all. She was each time as profoundly upset as ever. And this time it was really dreadful, because the girl was hardly more than a child. Oughtn’t he to be thoroughly ashamed of himself?
‘I wish you could see the expression on your face,’ she murmured acidly to him, as they got up from the supper-table and gathered round the fire.
‘Leave my face alone,’ he growled, looking at her furiously; and that she should be acid and he should growl and look at her furiously was distressing to Lady Streatley, who was the most amiable of women, and knew that he was the most naturally kind of men.
And then Terry, so affectionate and faithful to her young friend Robert,—for her to have to look on while he forgot her very existence and sat on the floor at somebody else’s feet, his rapt gaze fixed unswervingly on a face that wasn’t hers, was most annoying. He had insisted on coming round with her to Laura’s party, though she refused at first to bring him. So violently determined was he, however, that he assured her she would never see him again if she didn’t take him round with her; and Terry, cowed, as many a fond woman had been before her by this threat, gave in, and spent the evening in a condition of high indignation.
It was Laura, though, with whom she was indignant,—Laura, the sister she had always so much loved, who had arranged the whole thing so as to set everybody by the ears. She forgave Robert—they had got to the stage when she was continually forgiving him, and he was continually hoping she wouldn’t—for how could he help it if this artful young woman from the slums laid herself out to beguile him? It was all Laura’s fault. Terry couldn’t have believed her goodnatured sister had it in her to be so wickedly mischievous. What devil had taken possession of her? First dressing the girl up and spoiling poor Jack Gillespie’s play with her, and then getting them all there to supper, so as to make fools of them....
‘I hope you’re pleased with your detestable party,’ she said, leaning against the chimney piece, staring in wrathful disgust at the circle round Sally, who, glancing shyly and furtively every now and then at the lovely dark lady dressed like a rose, thought she must surely be the most beautiful lady in the whole world, but feeling, judged Sally, a bit on the sick side that evening,—probably eaten something.
‘I’m not at all pleased,’ snapped Laura, ‘and I wish to goodness you’d all go home.’
That, however, was exactly what they couldn’t bear to do. Hours passed, and Laura’s party still went on. The men were unable to tear themselves away from Sally, whose every utterance—she said as little as possible, but couldn’t avoid answering direct questions—filled them with fresh delight, and the two women, Terry and her aggrieved sister-in-law, were doggedly determined to stay as long as they did.
‘If she weren’t so lovely,’ murmured Lady Streatley to the indignant Terry, when a roar of laughter, in which the loudest roar was Streatley’s, succeeded something Sally, tired and bewildered, had said in answer to a question, ‘I suppose they wouldn’t see anything at all in that Cockney talk.’
‘They’d think it unendurable,’ said Terry shortly.
‘But you see,’ said Laura, who was cross with Terry, ‘she happens to be the most beautiful thing any of us have ever seen.’
‘Oh, I quite see she’s very beautiful,’ said poor Lady Streatley, who had given Streatley seven children and was no longer the woman she was.
‘If one likes that sort of thing,’ said Terry, descending in her anger to primitive woman.
‘Which one evidently does,’ said Laura maliciously, glancing at the infatuated group.
‘Men are such fools,’ said Terry.
‘Babies,’ sighed Lady Streatley.
Only once did Charles, who was the greatest contrast to his brother, being lean and brown and goodlooking and not much past thirty, besides remaining grave on all the occasions that evening when his brother laughed, for Charles was fastidious as well as sympathetic, and Sally’s accent didn’t amuse him, and he hated to see her unwittingly amusing the other four infatuated fools,—only once did he get her a moment to himself, and then only for a minute or two, while there was some slight rearrangement of positions because of the bringing in of a tray of drinks.
When he did, this was the conversation:
‘I believe,’ said Charles in a low voice, ‘you’re every bit as beautiful inside as you are out.’
‘Me?’ said Sally with weary surprise—by this time she was deadly tired—for she hadn’t thought of bodies as reversible. ‘Ain’t I all pink?’
‘Pink?’ echoed Charles, not at first following. Then he said rather hastily, being queasy and without Streatley’s robust ability to enjoy anything, ‘I mean your spirit. It’s just as divinely beautiful as your face. I’m sure it is. I’m sure you never have a thought that isn’t lovely——’
And he went on to murmur—why on earth he should say these inanities he couldn’t think, and was much annoyed to hear them coming out—that he hoped her husband loved her as she deserved.
‘You never see such lovin’,’ said Sally earnestly, who didn’t mind this one of the gentlemen as much as the others.
‘Oh, I can imagine it,’ said Charles, again hastily; and wanted to know whether, then, her husband wouldn’t be excessively unhappy, not having an idea where she was.
‘Dunno about un’appy,’ said Sally, knitting her brows a little—Charles was deeply annoyed to discover how much he wished to kiss them—for she hadn’t thought of unhappiness in connection with her brief and strictly temporary withdrawal. ‘Angry’s more like it.’
‘Angry?’ said Charles, incredulously. ‘Angry with you?’
‘Gets angry a lot, Mr. Luke do,’ said Sally, bowing her exquisite little head in what Charles regarded as a lovely but misplaced acquiescence. ‘Except,’ she added, anxious to be accurate, ‘when ’e begins oh-Sallyin’.’
This ended the conversation. Charles couldn’t go on. He was queasy. He didn’t need to ask what oh-Sallying was. He could guess. And, as he shuddered, the desire he had to strangle Streatley was supplemented by a desire to save Sally,—to seize and carry her off, out of reach of indignities and profanities, and hide her away in some pure refuge of which only he should have the key.