‘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
§
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.