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.