Part 19

‘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.

XIV

§

Speaking of this time later on, Mrs. Luke was accustomed to say, ‘It was a _mauvais quart d’heure_,’ and to smile; but in her heart, when she thought of it, there was no smile.

She never forgot that coming down to breakfast on the morning of Sally’s flight, so unconscious of anything having happened, pleased that it was a fine day for her party, pleased with the pretty frock she had had sent from Harrods for the child to wear, excited at the prospect of presenting her to a dazzled South Winch, confident, somehow, with that curiously cloudless confidence that seems to lay hold of those about to be smitten by fate, that her beautiful daughter-in-law would behave perfectly, and the whole thing be a great success. Fate was about to smite her; and with more than the disappearance of a daughter-in-law, for that disappearance was but the first step to having to give up, renounce entirely and for always, her son.

Jocelyn came down to breakfast in a good humour too. He had slept like a log, after his series of interrupted nights.

‘Sally’s late,’ he said presently.

‘She is, isn’t she,’ said his mother. ‘You won’t call her Sally this afternoon, will you, dearest,’ she added, giving him his coffee.

‘Sorry, Mother. No. I’ll remember.’

And soon after that they made their discovery.

‘Now what,’ Mrs. Luke asked herself, pressing her cold hands together, when an hour or two later it became evident beyond doubt that Sally hadn’t merely gone, unaccountably, for an early walk, but had gone altogether, ‘now what, what have I done to deserve this?’

And the period of torment began, the period of distress and anxiety, of anger at first which soon flickered out, and of ever-growing, sickening fear, which she afterwards spoke of quietly as a _mauvais quart d’heure_.

It took some time before she and Jocelyn could be convinced that this wasn’t just a before breakfast walk. They clung to the hope that it was, in spite of their knowledge of Sally’s lack of initiative. Yet how much more initiative would be needed, they thought, looking at each other with frightened eyes, to do that which it became every moment more and more apparent that she had done.

‘But why? But why?’ Mrs. Luke kept on asking, pressing her cold hands together.

Jocelyn said nothing.

At eleven o’clock, when it was plain she wasn’t coming back, he went out and fetched his car.

‘She’s gone to her father,’ he said.

‘But why? Oh, Jocelyn--why?’

‘We’ve made her unhappy,’ he said, pulling on his gloves, his face set.

‘Unhappy?’

‘_I_ have, anyway. I’ve been an infernal cad--I tell you I _have_,’ he said, turning on his mother. ‘It’s no good your telling me I haven’t--I _have_.’

And he drove off, leaving her at the gate pressing her cold hands together, and staring after him with wide-open eyes.

But his coming back was worse than his going. It was after six before he got home, tired and dusty, at the fag end of the terrible party.

Mrs. Luke hadn’t seen how not to have the party, and had told her friends--ah, how much she shrank from them--when they trooped in punctually at half-past four, eager to see Jocelyn’s bride, that her daughter-in-law very unfortunately had had to go that morning to her father, who had suddenly fallen ill.

‘An old man,’ said poor Mrs. Luke--after dreary and painful thought she had come to the conclusion that if she said it was Sally who had fallen ill, Hammond would be sure sooner or later to give her away,--‘an old man, I’m afraid, and liable to--liable to----’

What was he liable to? Mrs. Luke’s brain wouldn’t work. Her lips, forced into the continual smile of the hostess, trembled. She wanted to cry. How badly, how badly she wanted just to sit down in a corner alone, and cry.

Then Jocelyn came back. There were still the Walkers there, and Miss Cartwright, and old Mrs. Pugh. Why wouldn’t they go? Why did they hang on, and hang on, and never, never go?

They all heard the car. They all knew it was his, because it made so much more noise than anybody else’s, and they all knew, because Mrs. Luke had told them, that he had motored his wife himself that morning to her sick father.

‘Ah. _Now_ we shall have the bulletin,’ said the Canon cheerfully; for the illness, probably slight, of an unknown young lady’s almost certainly inglorious father couldn’t be regarded, he felt, as an occasion for serious gloom. ‘No doubt it is a good one, and Jocelyn has been able to bring his wife back with him.’

‘I’ll go and see,’ said Mrs. Luke, getting up quickly, and almost running out of the room.

‘What a lot of trouble there is in the world, to be sure,’ said old Mrs. Pugh, shaking her head, ‘what a lot of trouble.’

‘Do you mean the father?’ asked Mrs. Walker.

‘Who _is_ the father?’ asked Miss Cartwright.

‘Nobody knows,’ said the Canon.

‘Not really?’ said Miss Cartwright.

‘Hush----’ said the Canon, raising his hand.

Outside the window, which was open, Jocelyn was speaking, and holding their breaths they heard him say, ‘Well, Mother? What time did she get back?’

§

He had been to Mr. Pinner. He had heard what Mr. Pinner had to say. The man had behaved well, had done his duty and sent her straight home; but she hadn’t got there.

Fear now descended on Jocelyn’s and his mother’s souls,--fear ten times greater than the fear of the morning; such fear that they were hardly aware of the Walkers, and Miss Cartwright, and old Mrs. Pugh, and said goodbye to them mechanically, and hadn’t an idea what any of them were saying, and the dusk deepened, and night came, and it grew late, and they sat listening and watching at the window, the window wide open so as to catch the first sounds of a footstep on the path, and they sat in almost complete silence, for they were too much frightened to speak.

That child--somewhere out there in the darkness--that beautiful, ignorant child, by herself in London--Sally, who had only to appear to collect a crowd--Sally, so trustful, so ready to obey anybody....

But what did one _do_? Who did one go to? What _could_ one do but still, in the dark, not speaking, hardly breathing so intently were they listening, wait?

Fragments of what Mr. Pinner had said drifted in and out of Jocelyn’s brain----

‘Told ’er to take a taxi all the way....’

‘Give ’er a pound, I did....’

‘Mistake was, lettin’ that there car go....’

That car? What car?

‘Mother,’ he said suddenly, ‘what car?’

‘What car, my darling?’

‘She arrived there in a car. Her father said so. I forgot to tell you.’

‘A car?’

Mrs. Luke got up quickly. So did he. She turned on the light, and it shone on their pale faces staring at each other. He hadn’t remembered the car till that moment.

Then without a word she went into the passage, snatched up a coat, wrapped it round herself, and before he could speak was out of the house. ‘Wait there,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘wait there--she might come----’

A car. Whose car but Edgar’s? Had Edgar----? Was Edgar----?

No, no. Impossible. She had arrived alone at her father’s, and the car had left her there.

But Edgar must know--he could tell her....

§

The butler hadn’t wanted to let her in, seeing her looking so wild on the steps when he answered the ring, and no hat on, and an old coat pulled round her shoulders, and he well knowing the affair with his master was off; but what did she care for butlers? She simply pushed past him, and went straight to the library--the handsome, Turkey-carpeted, leathery library she so vividly remembered--and there, as she expected, sat Mr. Thorpe.

He was in a deep chair before a great wood fire, with beside him, on a little Moorish table, his coffee and his liqueur, in his hands the evening paper, and in his mouth a huge cigar. He didn’t look in the least unhappy, nor did he look in the least as if he were still angry. On the contrary, he looked contented and pleased. But this expression changed when, turning his head on hearing the door open, he saw Mrs. Luke.

‘Edgar,’ she said, coming quickly across to him, holding Jocelyn’s coat together at her neck with shaking fingers, ‘where is Salvatia?’

And it was no use his staring at her as if she were a ghost, which indeed at first he thought she must be, so totally unlike the nicely dressed, ladylike Margery of his misplaced love was this white-faced, ruffled-haired woman,--it was no use his staring at her openmouthed and not answering, and then getting up with deliberation and ostentatiously going towards the bell, for she took no notice of any of that, and went on to say that Salvatia wasn’t with her father, who had sent her back to South Winch at once that morning, and hadn’t come home. Did he know where she was?

Then Mr. Thorpe, in his turn, was frightened. Not with her father? Not come home?

He stared at Mrs. Luke. What had he done? What, if that were the case, had he done? And instead of the agreeable vision he had been so much pleased with of paying out Margery and her stuck-up son, and the still more agreeable vision of visiting Sally secretly and comfortably at her father’s, and developing his friendship with her to almost any extent, he saw, as he stood staring, a picture that really frightened him, a picture of young beauty lost somehow in London, and quite peculiarly defenceless.

What had he done?

But Mr. Thorpe was a man of action. Not his to wring his hands and wait and hope; not his to waste time, either, confessing that he had behaved abominably, and begging Margery’s pardon. He did both, but quickly, economising words, and within five minutes was round at Almond Tree Cottage, and within ten minutes his car was round there, and within an hour he and Jocelyn were at Scotland Yard--Jocelyn, who also had no time for anger with Mr. Thorpe, who had no time for anything but searching for and rescuing Sally.

Nor did Mr. Thorpe say much to Jocelyn. His longest speech was to remark, looking out of the window on his side of the car as they tore up to London, that it was a pity one couldn’t get out of the habit of behaving first and thinking afterwards. He could go no nearer than this to apologising. He had done Jocelyn a great wrong, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to say so. To the mother, yes; somehow it was easier to eat humble pie to a woman. Contrition welled up in Mr. Thorpe, but stuck in his throat. It wouldn’t come out.

‘Damned pity, eh?’ he repeated, though not as one who requires an answer.

‘It’s so beastly _dark_,’ was all Jocelyn said, huddled, whitefaced and sick, in the other corner.

§

Scotland Yard took down particulars.

‘Expense no object,’ said Mr. Thorpe.

‘I can’t pay,’ said Jocelyn, who was shivering.

‘But I can,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘What you’ve got to do,’ he continued to the official, ‘is to find her instantly--_instantly_, do you hear? Get a move on. Not a minute to lose. If you’d seen her you’d understand--eh?’ he said, turning to Jocelyn for confirmation, who only shivered.

This great place--all the policemen they had met--all the being passed on from one official to another--nothing but officials, officials everywhere--it struck his heart cold. Sally in connection with this? He couldn’t speak. His lips were dry. He felt sick.

‘Upset,’ said Mr. Thorpe confidentially to the official. ‘Husband. Bound to be.’

The official nodded, and began telephoning.

‘I’ll let you know,’ he said to Mr. Thorpe, the receiver at his ear. ‘It’s no use your waiting here. Where can I--that you, Williams? Just one moment--where can I ring you up?’

And he wrote down the name of the hotel Mr. Thorpe gave him, for Mr. Thorpe wasn’t going to leave London till he had found Sally, not if he had to stay in it ten years, and then bowed his head in abstracted dismissal, his eyes gone absent-minded while he rapidly conversed with the person at the other end of the telephone.

‘Come on,’ said Mr. Thorpe, laying hold of Jocelyn’s arm.

He took him away to the hotel. The hotel was the Carlton. ‘Know me at the Carlton,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who in the first year of his widowerhood, before he felt justified in beginning to court Mrs. Luke, had sometimes consoled himself with the cooking of the Carlton. And thus it was that Mrs. Luke presently found herself too at the Carlton, for Jocelyn, who no more than Mr. Thorpe would leave the neighbourhood of Scotland Yard, was concerned for his mother, left alone at Almond Tree Cottage. So Mr. Thorpe sent the car back for her, and also for the necessary luggage. He couldn’t quite see himself appearing next morning at the Carlton in the dinner-jacket he put on every night at Abergeldie because of the butler.

§

She arrived at one in the morning. Mr. Thorpe by that time had taken three bedrooms, and a sitting-room.

‘I can’t pay,’ said the unhappy Jocelyn on seeing these arrangements.

‘But I can,’ said Mr. Thorpe.

‘I don’t know why----’ began Jocelyn, shrinking under the accumulating weight of obligations.

‘But _I_ do,’ said Mr. Thorpe, cutting him short.

Mrs. Luke never forgot that pink sitting-room at the Carlton, for it was there that Jocelyn, walking up and down it practically demented, cast himself adrift from her for ever. And yet what had she done but try to help him? What had she ever done all his life but love him, and try to help him?

‘There’s been too much of that--there’s been too _much_ of that,’ Jocelyn raved, when she attempted, faintly, for she was exhausted, to defend herself.

She soon gave up. She soon said nothing more at all, but sat crying softly, the tears dropping unnoticed on her folded hands.

Before this, however, while the car was fetching her from South Winch, Mr. Thorpe, bracing himself to his plain and unshirkable duty, invited Jocelyn into the sitting-room he had engaged, and ordered whiskies and sodas. These he drank by himself, while Jocelyn, his head sunk on his chest, sat stretched full length in a low chair staring at nothing; and having drunk the whiskies, Mr. Thorpe felt able to perform his duty.

Which he did; and in a series of brief sentences described the girl’s state of mind when he accidentally found her down by his fence, and how it was the idea of being left alone with Jocelyn’s mother till the summer that she couldn’t stand, because she simply couldn’t stand his mother. Frightened of her. Scared stiff. Just simply couldn’t stand her.

At this Jocelyn, roused from his stupor, looked round at Mr. Thorpe with heavy-eyed amazement.

‘Couldn’t stand my mother?’ he said in tones of wonder, his mouth remaining open, so much was he surprised.

‘That’s the ticket,’ said Mr. Thorpe; and drank more whiskey.

He then, after explaining that he wasn’t an orator, told Jocelyn in a further series of brief sentences that it was unnatural for wives to live with their mothers-in-law instead of with their husbands, that his wife knew and felt this, and that she was, besides, having been brought up on the Bible and being otherwise ignorant of life, genuinely and deeply shocked at what she regarded as his disobedience to God’s laws.

‘But my mother,’ said Jocelyn, ‘has been nothing but----’

‘Sees red about your mother, that girl does,’ interrupted Mr. Thorpe.

‘But _why_?’ said Jocelyn, sitting up straight now, his brows knitted in the most painful bewilderment.

‘Don’t ask _me_,’ said Mr. Thorpe; and drank more whiskey.

He then told Jocelyn, in a third and last series of brief sentences, for after that not only had he said his say but the young man didn’t seem able to stand any more, that if--no, when--his wife was restored to him, he had better see to it that his mother was as far off and as permanently off as possible; and then, Jocelyn by this time looking the very image of wretchedness, he gave him, poor young devil, the bit of comfort of telling him that his wife had only meant to leave him till she knew he was in Cambridge, and that then she had been going to join him there, and live in some rooms somewhere near him. It wasn’t him she was running from, it was his mother.

‘All that girl asked,’ said Mr. Thorpe, bringing his fist, weighty now with whiskey, down shatteringly on the table, ‘was a couple of rooms, and you sometimes in them. A girl in a thousand. If she’d been as ugly as sin she’d still have been a treasure to any man. But look at her--_look_ at her, I say.’