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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTRODUCTION TO SALLY ***
+
+
+
+
+
+ INTRODUCTION
+ TO SALLY
+
+
+ MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+ LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS
+ MELBOURNE
+
+ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+ NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
+ DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
+
+ THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+ TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+ INTRODUCTION
+ TO SALLY
+
+ BY THE AUTHOR OF
+ “ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN”
+
+
+ MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+ ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
+ 1926
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT
+
+
+ PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+ BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+§
+
+Mr. Pinner was a God-fearing man, who was afraid of everything except
+respectability. He married Mrs. Pinner when they were both twenty, and
+by the time they were both thirty if he had had to do it again he
+wouldn’t have. For Mrs. Pinner had several drawbacks. One was, she
+quarrelled; and Mr. Pinner, who prized peace, was obliged to quarrel
+too. Another was, she appeared to be unable to have children; and Mr.
+Pinner, who was fond of children, accordingly couldn’t have them either.
+And another, which while it lasted was in some ways the worst, was that
+she was excessively pretty.
+
+This was most awkward in a shop. It continually put Mr. Pinner in false
+positions. And it seemed to go on so long. There seemed to be no end to
+the years of Mrs. Pinner’s prettiness. They did end, however; and when
+she was about thirty-five, worn out by her own unquiet spirit and the
+work of helping Mr. Pinner in the shop, as well as keeping house for
+him, which included doing everything single-handed, by God’s mercy she
+at last began to fade.
+
+Mr. Pinner was pleased. For though her behaviour had been beyond
+criticism, and she had invariably, by a system of bridling and
+head-tossing, kept off familiarity on the part of male customers, still
+those customers had undoubtedly been more numerous than the others, and
+Mr. Pinner hadn’t liked it. It was highly unnatural, he knew, for
+gentlemen on their way home from their offices to wish to buy rice, for
+instance, when it had been bought earlier in the day by their wives or
+mothers. There was something underhand about it; and he, who being timid
+was also honest, found himself not able to be happy if there were a
+shadow of doubt in his mind as to the honourableness of any of his
+transactions. He never got used to these purchases, and was glad when
+the gradual disappearance of his wife’s beauty caused the gradual
+disappearance of the customers who made them. Money, it was true, was
+lost, but he preferred to lose it than to make it by means that verged
+in his opinion on shady.
+
+As Mrs. Pinner faded and custom dropped off, he and she had more time on
+their hands, and went to bed earlier; for Mrs. Pinner, who had an
+untiring tongue when she was awake, and inveigled her husband into many
+quarrels, was obliged to leave off talking when she was asleep, and he,
+pretending it was because of the gas bills, got her to go to bed earlier
+and earlier. Besides, he wished more heartily than ever that she might
+have a child, if only to take her attention off him. But he longed for a
+child himself as well, for he was affectionate without passion, and it
+was his secret opinion--all his opinions were secret, because if he let
+them out Mrs. Pinner quarrelled--that such men are born good fathers.
+Something, however, had to be born besides themselves before they could
+show their capabilities, and Mrs. Pinner, who was passionate without
+affection, which in Mr. Pinner’s opinion was rather shocking, for she
+sometimes quite frightened him in bed, and he was sure it wasn’t at all
+respectable for a wife to do that, especially as next day she didn’t
+seem to like him any better than before, hadn’t been able to produce
+what was needed.
+
+Certain it was that he couldn’t become a father without her. In this one
+thing he depended utterly on her; for though she believed she ruled him
+through and through, in every other matter at the back of his soul Mr.
+Pinner always secretly managed very well for himself. But here he was
+helpless. If she didn’t, he couldn’t. Nothing doing at all without Mrs.
+Pinner.
+
+Therefore, as a first step, every evening at nine o’clock, instead of at
+eleven or twelve as had been their habit in the busy, tiring years,
+after a day of only too much leisure they went to bed. There they
+tossed, because of its being so early; or, rather, Mrs. Pinner tossed,
+while he lay quiet, such being his nature. And whether it was these
+regular hours, or whether it was God, who favours families, at last
+taking pity on the Pinners, just as Mr. Pinner was coming to the
+conclusion that he had best perhaps now let well alone, for he and his
+wife were drawing near forty, Mrs. Pinner inexplicably began to do that
+which she ought to have done twenty years earlier, and proceeded to go
+through those bodily changes, one after the other and all strictly
+according to precedent, which were bound to end, though for many months
+Mr. Pinner didn’t believe it, in either a boy or a girl; or
+perhaps--this was his secret longing--in both.
+
+They ended in one girl.
+
+‘I’m blest,’ said Mr. Pinner to himself, seeing his wife’s complete,
+impassioned absorption, ‘if that kid ain’t goin’ to be my salvation.’
+
+And he wanted to have it christened Salvation, but Mrs. Pinner objected,
+because it wasn’t a girl’s name at all, she said; and, as she had no
+heart just then for quarrelling, they compromised on Salvatia.
+
+
+§
+
+Thus was Salvatia projected into the world, who afterwards became Sally.
+Her parents struggled against her being called Sally, because they
+thought it common. Their struggles, however, were vain. People were
+unteachable. And the child herself, from the moment she could talk,
+persisted in saying she was Sally.
+
+She grew up so amazingly pretty that it soon became the Pinners’ chief
+concern how best to hide her. Such beauty, which began by being their
+pride, quickly became their anxiety. By the time Sally was twelve they
+were always hiding her. She was quite easy to hide, for she went meekly
+where she was told and stayed there, having not only inherited her
+father’s mild goodness, but also, partly from him and more from some
+unknown forbear, for she had much more of it than Mr. Pinner at his most
+obliging, a great desire to give satisfaction and do what was asked of
+her. She had none of that artfulness of the weak that was so marked a
+feature of Mr. Pinner. She never was different at the back of her mind
+from what she was on the surface of her behaviour. Life hadn’t yet
+forced her, as it had forced Mr. Pinner, to be secretive; it hadn’t had
+time. Besides, said Mr. Pinner to himself, she wasn’t married.
+
+From her mother she had inherited nothing but her looks; translating,
+however, the darkness into fairness, and the prettiness into
+beauty,--beauty authentic, indisputable, apparent to the most
+unobservant. Mr. Pinner was divided between pride and fear. Mrs. Pinner
+concentrated entirely on her child, and was the best of prudent
+mothers. There, in their back parlour, they kept this secret treasure,
+and, like other treasures, its possession produced anxiety as well as
+joy. Till she was about twelve she did as other children, and went off
+to school by herself every day, illuminating Islington, as she passed
+along its streets, like a flame. Then the Pinners got a fright: she was
+followed. Not once or twice, but several times; and came home one day
+happy, her hands full of chocolates she said a gentleman had given her.
+
+The Pinners began to hide her. Mrs. Pinner took her to school and
+fetched her away again every day, and in between hid her in the back
+parlour. Mr. Pinner did Mrs. Pinner’s work as well as his own while she
+was gone, and just managed to because his wife was fleet of foot and ran
+most of the way; otherwise it would have broken his back, for he wasn’t
+able to afford to keep an assistant, and had little staying power. At
+night, when the dear object of their love and fear was asleep, they
+earnestly in bed discussed what was best to be done so as to secure to
+her the greatest happiness together with the greatest safety. Their
+common care and love had harmonised them. In the child they were
+completely at one. No longer did Mrs. Pinner rail, and Mr. Pinner, after
+a time, be obliged to answer back; no longer was he forced, contrary to
+his nature, into quarrels. Peace prevailed, and the affection that comes
+from a common absorbing interest.
+
+‘It’s all that there Sally,’ said Mr. Pinner, content at last in his
+married life, and unable--for he had few words--to put what he felt more
+glowingly.
+
+
+§
+
+But when Sally was sixteen Mrs. Pinner died; died in a few days, of a
+cold no worse than dozens of colds she had caught in her life and hadn’t
+died of.
+
+Mr. Pinner was left with no one to help him, either in his shop or with
+Sally. It was an immense misfortune. He didn’t know which way to turn.
+He lived within the narrowest margin of safety, for in Islington there
+were many grocers, and he was one of the very smallest, never having had
+any ambition beyond the ambition for peace and enough to eat.
+
+It was impossible for him to run the shop without help, and without the
+shop he and Sally would starve, so there was nothing for it but to let
+her take her mother’s place; and within a week his custom was doubled,
+and went on doubling and doubling till the local supply of males was
+exhausted.
+
+It was a repetition of twenty years earlier, only much worse. Mr. Pinner
+was most unhappy. Sally couldn’t help smiling back when anybody smiled
+at her,--it was her nature; and as everybody, the minute they saw her,
+did smile, she was in a continual condition of radiance, and the shop
+seemed full of light. Mr. Pinner was distracted. He hired an assistant,
+having made money, announced that his daughter had gone away to
+boarding-school, and hid her in the back parlour. The custom dropped
+off, and the assistant had to go. Out came Sally again, and back came
+the custom. What a situation, thought Mr. Pinner, irritable and
+perspiring. He was worn out keeping his eye on Sally, and weighing out
+coffee and bacon at the same time. His responsibilities crushed him. The
+only solution of his difficulties would be to get the girl married to
+some steady fellow able to take care of her. There seemed to him to be
+no steady fellows in the crowd in his shop, except the ones who were
+already married, and they couldn’t really be steady or they wouldn’t be
+there. How could a married man be called steady who eagerly waited for
+Sally to sell him groceries he would only afterwards have to conceal
+from his wife? While as for the rest, they were a weedy lot of
+overworked and underpaid young clerks who couldn’t possibly afford to
+marry. Sally smiled at them all. She had none of the bridling, of the
+keep-off-the-grass-_if_-you-please, of her mother.
+
+‘For mercy’s sake,’ Mr. Pinner would hiss in her ear, tugging her elbow
+as he hurried past, ‘don’t go keepin’ on makin’ pleasant faces at ’em
+like that.’
+
+But what faces was she to make, then? All Sally’s faces were pleasant
+from the point of view of the beholder, whatever sort she made; and if
+she, by a great effort, and contrary to her nature, frowned at anybody,
+as likely as not she would be gaped at harder than ever, and asked if
+she wouldn’t mind doing that again.
+
+Mr. Pinner was distracted. Even the clergy came to his shop,--came with
+breezy tales of being henpecked, and driven out by tyrant wives to
+purchase currants; and even the doctor came,--old enough surely, Mr.
+Pinner thought, to be ashamed of himself, running after a girl he had
+himself brought into the world, and pretending that what he was after
+was biscuits.
+
+What he was after was, very plainly, not biscuits, nor were the clergy
+after currants. One and all were after Sally. And it horrified Mr.
+Pinner, who took round the plate on Sundays, that a child of his, so
+good and modest, should be the innocent cause of producing in the
+hearts of her fellow-creatures a desire to sin. That they desired to
+sin was only too evident to Mr. Pinner, driven by fear to the basest
+suspicions. These married gentlemen--what could it be but sin they had
+in their minds? They wished to sin with Sally, to sin the sin of sins;
+with his Sally, his spotless lamb, a child of God, an inheritor of the
+kingdom of heaven.
+
+For a year Mr. Pinner endured it, struggling with his responsibilities
+and his black suspicions. The milk of his natural kindliness and respect
+for his betters went sour. He grew to hate the gentry. His face took on
+a twist of fear that became permanent. The other grocers were furious
+with him, accusing him among themselves of using his daughter as a
+decoy; and unable to bear this, for it of course got round to him, and
+worn out by the constant dread lest worse were yet to come, and some
+fine day a young whipper-snapper of a lord should be going for a walk in
+Islington and chance to stroll into his shop and see Sally, and then
+good-bye to virtue--for was any girl good enough and modest enough to
+stand out against the onslaughts of a lord? Mr. Pinner asked himself,
+who had never consciously come across any lords, and therefore was apt
+to think of them highly--Mr. Pinner determined to move.
+
+He moved. After several Sundays given up to fruitless and ill-organised
+excursions into other suburbs, he heard by chance of a village buried
+far away in what seemed to him, whose England consisted of Hampstead
+Heath, Hampton Court, and, once, Southend, a savage and uninhabited
+district in Cambridgeshire, where the man who kept its one shop was
+weary of solitude, and wanted to come nearer London. What could be
+nearer London than London itself? Mr. Pinner hurried to Woodles,
+leaving Sally under the strictest vows not to put her terribly
+complicating nose out of doors.
+
+He thought he had never seen such a place. Used to streets and crowds,
+he couldn’t have believed there were spots in the world so empty. It was
+raining, and there wasn’t a soul about. A few cottages, the shop, a
+church and vicarage, and a sad wet pig grunting along a ditch,--that was
+all. Three miles from a branch-line station, embedded in a network of
+muddy lanes, and the Vicar--Mr. Pinner inquired--seventy-eight with no
+sons, Woodles was surely the ideal place for him and Sally. Over a
+bottle of ginger beer he made friends with the shopkeeper, and arranged
+that he should come up to Islington with a view to exchanging. He came;
+and the exchange, after some regrettable incidents in connection with
+Sally which very nearly upset the whole thing, was made, and by
+Christmas Islington knew the Pinners no more.
+
+
+§
+
+All went well at Woodles for the first few weeks. It was a hamlet, Mr.
+Pinner rejoiced to discover, lived in practically exclusively by ladies.
+These ladies, attracted to it by the tumbledownness of its cottages,
+which made it both picturesque and cheap, had either never had husbands
+or had lost them, and accordingly, as so often happens in such
+circumstances, were poor. Well, Mr. Pinner didn’t mind that. He only
+wanted to live. He had no desire to make more than was just necessary to
+feed Sally. More merely meant responsibility and bother, and of those he
+had as much as he could do with because of Sally. He settled down, very
+content and safe among his widow and virgin customers, and spent a
+thankful Christmas, entering with hope into the New Year.
+
+Then, one day towards the end of January, two young men rent the peace
+of the sunny afternoon with the unpleasant noise motor-bicycles, rushing
+at high speed, appear, Mr. Pinner thought, kindly even towards these,
+not to be able to help making, and a lady customer who chanced to be in
+the shop remarked, ‘It has begun.’
+
+Mr. Pinner inquired politely what had begun, and the lady said term had,
+and Mr. Pinner, who didn’t know what she meant but was unwilling to show
+his ignorance, said, ‘And high time too.’
+
+After that, hardly an afternoon went by without young men hurrying
+through Woodles. Sometimes they were on motor-bicycles, sometimes they
+were on horses, sometimes they were in cars, but always they hurried.
+Where did they all come from? Mr. Pinner was astonished, and wondered
+uneasily whether Sally were not somehow at the bottom of it. But she
+couldn’t have been, for they never so much as glanced at the shop
+window, from behind whose jars of bulls’-eyes and mounds of toffee he
+and Sally secretly observed them.
+
+Then, gradually, he became aware of Cambridge. He hadn’t given it a
+thought when he came to Woodles. It was ten miles away--a place, he
+knew, where toffs were taught, but a place ten miles away hadn’t worried
+him. There he had changed, on that first visit, for the branch-line that
+took him within three miles of Woodles, and the village, asleep beneath
+its blanket of rain, had been entirely deserted, the last word in dank
+and misty isolation. And when he moved in, it was still asleep--asleep,
+this time, in the silence of the Christmas vacation, and only faintly
+stirred every now and again by the feeble movements of unmated ladies.
+It was so much out of the way that if it hadn’t been for Cambridge it
+would have slept for ever. But young men are restless and get
+everywhere. Bursting with energy, they rushed through Woodles as they
+rushed through all places within rushable distance. But they rushed,
+they didn’t stop; and Mr. Pinner consoled himself with that, and also
+with the knowledge he presently acquired that it was only for a few
+months--weeks, one might almost say, in the year, that this happened.
+
+He bade Sally keep indoors during the afternoon hours, and hoped for the
+best.
+
+
+§
+
+Then, on a gusty afternoon in early March, when the mud in the lanes had
+turned to dust and was tearing in clouds down the street, the door
+opened violently, because of the wind, and a young man was blown in, and
+had to use all his strength to get the door shut again.
+
+No sound of a motor had preceded him; he appeared just as one of the
+ladies might have appeared; and Sally was in the shop.
+
+She was on some steps, rummaging aloft among the tins of Huntley and
+Palmer, and he didn’t immediately see her, and addressed himself to Mr.
+Pinner.
+
+‘Have you any petrol?’ he asked.
+
+‘No, sir,’ said Mr. Pinner quickly, hoping he would go away at once
+without noticing Sally. ‘We don’t keep it.’
+
+‘Do you know where I can----’
+
+The young man broke off, and stood staring upwards. ‘Christ’--he
+whispered under his breath, ‘Christ----’
+
+‘Now, now,’ said Mr. Pinner with extreme irritability, only too well
+aware of what had happened, and in his fear slapping his knuckly little
+hand on the counter, ‘no blasphemy ’ere, sir, if _you_ please----’
+
+But he needn’t have been so angry and frightened, for this, if he had
+only known it, was his future son-in-law; the person who was to solve
+all his problems by taking over the responsibility of Sally. In a word
+it was, as Mr. Pinner ever afterwards described him, Mr. Luke.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+§
+
+
+At the date when he went into the shop at Woodles in search of petrol,
+young Luke, whose Christian name was Jocelyn, was a youth of parts, with
+an inventive and inquiring brain, and a thirst some of his friends at
+Ananias were unable to account for after knowledge. His bent was
+scientific; his tastes were chemical. He wished to weigh and compare, to
+experiment and prove. For this a quiet, undisturbed life was necessary,
+in which day after day he could work steadily and without interruption.
+What he had hoped for was to get a fellowship at Ananias. Instead, he
+got Sally.
+
+It was clear to Jocelyn, considering his case later, that the matter
+with him at this time was youth. Nature had her eye on him. However much
+he wished to use his brains, and devote himself to the pursuit of
+scientific truth, she wished to use the rest of him, and she did. He had
+been proof against every other temptation she had plied him with, but he
+wasn’t proof against Sally; and all the things he had thought, and
+hoped, and been interested in up to then, seemed, directly he saw Sally,
+dross. A fever of desire to secure this marvel before any one else
+discovered her sent him almost out of his mind. He was scorched by
+passion, racked by fear. He knew he was no good at all from the marriage
+point of view, for he had no money hardly, and was certain he would be
+refused, and then--what then?
+
+He need not have been afraid. At the word marriage Mr. Pinner, who had
+been snarling at him on his visits like an old dog who has been hurt and
+suspects everybody, nearly fell on his neck. Sally was in the back
+parlour. He had sent her there at once every time young Luke appeared in
+the shop, and then faced the young man defiantly, leaning with both
+hands on the counter, looking up at him with all his weak little
+bristles on end, and inquiring of him angrily, ‘Now what can I do for
+you to-_day_, sir?’
+
+At the end of a week of this, Jocelyn, wild with fear lest the other
+inhabitants of the colleges of Cambridge, so perilously close for cars
+and bicycles, should discover and carry the girl off before he did,
+proposed through Mr. Pinner.
+
+‘I want to marry your daughter,’ he stammered, his tongue dry, his eyes
+burning. ‘I must see her. I must talk--just to find out if she thinks
+she wouldn’t mind. It’s absurd, simply absurd, never to let me say a
+word to her----’
+
+And Mr. Pinner, instead of pushing him out of the shop as Jocelyn,
+knowing his own poverty, expected, nearly fell on his neck.
+
+‘Marry her? You did say marry, didn’t you, sir?’ he said in a trembling
+voice, flushing right up to his worried, kind blue eyes.
+
+He could scarcely believe that he heard right. This young gentleman--a
+car, and all--nothing against him as far as he could see, and he hoped
+he could see as far as most people, except his youth.... But if he
+hadn’t been so young he mightn’t so badly have wanted to marry Sally,
+Mr. Pinner told himself, his eyes, now full of respect and awe, on the
+eager face of the suitor, for from experience he knew that everybody had
+wanted to do something badly with Sally, but it had hardly ever been
+marriage.
+
+‘If your intentions is honourable----’ began Mr. Pinner.
+
+‘Honourable! Good God. As though----’
+
+‘Now, now, sir,’ interrupted Mr. Pinner gently, holding up a deprecating
+hand, ‘no need to get swearing. No need at _all_.’
+
+‘No, no--of course not. I beg your pardon. But I must see her--I must be
+able to talk to her----’
+
+‘Exactly, sir. Step inside,’ said Mr. Pinner, opening the door to the
+back room.
+
+
+§
+
+There sat Sally, mending in the lamplight.
+
+‘We got a visitor,’ said Mr. Pinner, excited and proud. ‘But I’m blest,
+sir,’ he added, turning to Jocelyn, ‘if I knows what to call you.’
+
+‘Luke--Jocelyn Luke,’ murmured the young man as one in a dream, his eyes
+on Sally.
+
+‘Mr. Luke,’ introduced Mr. Pinner, pleased, for the name smacked
+agreeably of evangelists. ‘And Salvatia is ’er name, ain’t it, Salvatia?
+’Er baptismal name, any’ow,’ he added, because of the way Sally was
+looking at him. ‘Sometimes people calls ’er Sally, but there ain’t no
+_need_ to, Mr. Luke--there ain’t no _need_ to at all, sir. Get another
+cup, will you, Salvatia?--and let’s ’ave our tea.’
+
+And while she was getting the cup out of some back scullery place,
+wondering at suddenly becoming Salvatia, her father whispered to the
+suitor, ‘You go a’ead, sir, when she come back, and don’t mind me.’
+
+Jocelyn didn’t mind him, for he forgot him the instant Sally reappeared,
+but he couldn’t go ahead. He sat dumb, gaping. The girl was too
+exquisite. She was beauty itself. From the top of her little head, with
+its flame-coloured hair and broad low brow and misty eyes like brown
+amber, down along the slender lines of her delicate body to where her
+small feet were thrust into shabby shoes, she was, surely, perfect. He
+could see no flaw. She seemed to light up the room. It was like, thought
+young Luke, for the first time in the presence of real beauty, suddenly
+being shown God. He wanted to cry. His mouth, usually so firmly shut,
+quivered. He sat dumb. So that it was Mr. Pinner who did what talking
+there was, for Sally, of the class whose womenfolk do not talk when the
+father brings in a friend to tea, said nothing.
+
+Her part was to pour out the tea; and this she did gravely, her
+eyelashes, which just to see was to long to kiss, lying duskily on her
+serious face. She was serious because the visitor hadn’t yet smiled at
+her, so she hadn’t been able to smile back, and Jocelyn accordingly
+didn’t yet know about her smile; and Mr. Pinner, flushed with
+excitement, afraid it couldn’t be really true, sure at the same time
+that it was, entertained the suitor as best he could, making little
+jokes intended to put him at his ease and encourage him to go ahead,
+while at the same time trying to convey to Sally, by frowns and nods,
+that if she chose to make pleasant faces at this particular young
+gentleman she had his permission to do so.
+
+The suitor, however, remained silent, and Sally obtuse. Her father had
+never behaved like this before, and she had no idea what it was all
+about. It was hard work for one, like Mr. Pinner, unaccustomed to social
+situations requiring tact and experience, and he perspired. He was
+relieved when his daughter cleared away the tea and went off with it
+into the scullery to wash up, leaving him alone with his young guest,
+who sat, his head sunk on his breast, following the girl with his eyes
+till the door was shut on her. Then, turning to her father, his thin
+face working with agitation, he began to pour out the whole tale of his
+terrible unworthiness and undesirability.
+
+‘’Ere,’ said Mr. Pinner, pushing a tin of the best tobacco he stocked
+towards his upset visitor, ‘light up, won’t you, sir?’
+
+The young man took no notice of the tobacco, and Mr. Pinner, listening
+attentively to all he was pouring out, couldn’t for the life of him see
+where the undesirability and unworthiness came in.
+
+‘She’s a good girl,’ said Mr. Pinner, not filling his pipe either, from
+politeness, ‘as good a girl as ever trod this earth. And what I always
+say is that no good man is unworthy of the goodest girl. That’s right,
+ain’t it? Got to be good, of course. Beg pardon, sir, but might I ask--’
+he sank his voice to a whisper, glancing at the scullery door--‘if
+you’re a _good_ man, sir? I should say, gentleman. It’s a ticklish
+question to ’ave to ask, I know, sir, but ’er mother would ’ave
+wished----’
+
+‘I don’t drink, I don’t bet, and I’m not tangled up with any woman,’
+said Jocelyn. ‘I suppose that’s what you mean?’
+
+‘Then where’s all this ’ere undesirable come in?’ inquired Mr. Pinner,
+puzzled.
+
+‘I’m poor,’ said the suitor briefly.
+
+‘Poor. That’s bad,’ agreed Mr. Pinner, shaking his head and screwing up
+his mouth. He knew all about being poor. He had had, first and last, his
+bellyful of that.
+
+And yet on being questioned, as Mr. Pinner felt bound in duty to
+question, it turned out that the young gentleman was very well off
+indeed. He had £500 a year certain, whatever he did or didn’t do, and to
+Mr. Pinner, used to counting in pennies, this not only seemed enough to
+keep a wife and family in comfort, but also in style.
+
+
+§
+
+Sally came back, and Mr. Pinner, inspired, lifted a finger, said ‘’Ark,’
+gave them to understand he heard a customer, without actually saying he
+did, which would have been a lie, and went away into the shop.
+
+Sally stood there, feeling awkward. Jocelyn had got up directly she came
+in, and she supposed he was going to wish her a good evening and go; but
+he didn’t. She therefore stood first on one foot and then on the other,
+and felt awkward.
+
+‘Won’t you,’ Jocelyn breathed, stretching out a hand of trembling
+entreaty, for he was afraid she might disappear again, ‘won’t you sit
+down?’
+
+‘Well,’ said Sally shyly, ‘I don’t mind if I do----’ And for the first
+time Jocelyn heard the phrase he was later on to hear so often, uttered
+in the accent he was to try so hard to purify.
+
+She sat down on the edge of the chair at the other side of the table.
+She wasn’t accustomed to sitting idle and didn’t know what to do with
+her hands, but she was sure it wouldn’t be manners to go on mending
+socks while a gentleman was in the room.
+
+Jocelyn sat down too, the table between them, the light from the oil
+lamp hanging from the ceiling beating down on Sally’s head.
+
+‘And Beauty was made flesh, and dwelt among us,’ he murmured, his eyes
+burning.
+
+‘Pardon?’ said Sally, polite, but wishing her father would come back.
+
+‘You lovely thing--you lovely, lovely thing,’ whispered Jocelyn
+hoarsely, his eyes like coals of fire.
+
+At this Sally became thoroughly uneasy, and looked at him in real alarm.
+
+‘Don’t be frightened. Your father knows. He says I may----’
+
+‘Father?’ she repeated, much surprised.
+
+‘Yes, yes--I asked him. He says I may. He says I may--may talk to you,
+make friends with you. That is,’ stammered Jocelyn, overcome by her
+loveliness, ‘if you’ll let me--oh, if you’ll let me....’
+
+Sally was astonished at her father. ‘Well I never did,’ she murmured
+courteously. ‘Fancy father.’
+
+‘Why? Why? Don’t you want to? Won’t you--don’t you want to?’
+
+‘Wouldn’t say _that_,’ said Sally, shifting in her chair, and struggling
+to find the polite words. ‘Wouldn’t exactly say as ’ow I don’t _want_
+to.’
+
+‘Then you--you’ll let me take you out? You’ll let me take you somewhere
+to tea? You’ll let me fetch you in the car--you’ll let me, won’t you?
+To-morrow?’ asked Jocelyn, leaning further across the table, his arms
+stretched along it towards her, reaching out to her in entreaty.
+
+‘Father----’
+
+‘But he says I may. It’s with his permission----’
+
+‘Tea too?’ asked Sally, more and more astonished. ‘It ain’t much _like_
+’im,’ she said, full of doubts.
+
+Whereupon Jocelyn got up impetuously, and came round to her with the
+intention of flinging himself at her feet, and on his knees beseeching
+her to come out with him--he who in his life had never been on his knees
+to anybody.
+
+‘Oh, Salvatia!’ he cried, coming round to her, holding out both his
+hands.
+
+She hastily pushed back her chair and slipped out of it beyond his
+reach, sure this wasn’t proper. No gentleman had a right to call a girl
+by her Christian name without permission asked and granted; on that
+point she was quite clear. Salvatia, indeed. The gentle creature
+couldn’t but be affronted and hurt by this.
+
+
+‘’Oo you gettin’ at, sir?’ she inquired, as in duty bound when faced by
+familiarity.
+
+‘You--you!’ gasped Jocelyn, following her into the corner she had
+withdrawn into, and falling at her feet.
+
+
+§
+
+Mr. Pinner was of opinion that the sooner they were married the better.
+There was that in Mr. Luke’s eye, he told himself, which could only be
+got rid of by marriage; nothing but the Church could make the sentiments
+the young gentleman appeared to entertain for Sally right ones.
+
+Whipt by fear, he hurried things on as eagerly as Jocelyn himself.
+Suppose something happened before there was time to get them married,
+and Mr. Luke, as he understood easily occurred with gentlemen in such
+circumstances, cooled off? He didn’t leave them a moment alone together
+after that first outing in the car when Jocelyn asked Sally to marry
+him, and she, obedient and wishful of pleasing everybody, besides having
+been talked to by her father the night before and told she had his full
+consent and blessing, and that it was her duty anyhow, heaven having
+sent Mr. Luke on purpose, had remarked amiably that she didn’t mind if
+she did.
+
+After this, Mr. Pinner’s one aim was to keep them from being by
+themselves till they were safely man and wife. He lived in a fever of
+watchfulness. He was obsessed by terror on behalf of Sally’s virginity.
+His days were infinitely more wearing than in the worst period of
+Islington. Mrs. Pinner was missed and mourned quite desperately. It
+almost broke his back, the hurry, the anxiety, the constant gnawing
+fear, and the secrecy his future son-in-law insisted on.
+
+‘What you want to be so secret for, Mr. Luke?’ he asked, black
+suspicion, always on the alert where Sally was concerned, clouding his
+naturally mild and trustful eyes.
+
+‘You don’t want a howling mob of undergraduates round, do you?’ retorted
+Jocelyn.
+
+‘Goodness gracious, I should think I didn’t, Mr. Luke,’ said Mr. Pinner,
+holding up both his little hands in horror. ‘She’s got a reg’lar gift,
+that Sally ‘as, for collecting crowds.’
+
+‘Well, then,’ said Jocelyn irritably, whose nerves were in shreds. And
+added, ‘Isn’t it our job to keep them off her?’
+
+‘Your job now, sir--or will be soon,’ said Mr. Pinner, unable to refrain
+from rubbing his hands at the thought of his near release from
+responsibility.
+
+‘I wish you wouldn’t keep on calling me sir,’ snapped Jocelyn. ‘I’ve
+_asked_ you not to. I keep _on_ asking you not to.’
+
+He was nearly in tears with strain and fatigue. Incredibly, he hadn’t
+once been able to kiss Sally,--not properly, not as a lover should.
+Always in the presence of that damned Pinner--such was the way he
+thought of his future father-in-law--what could he do? He couldn’t even
+talk to her; not really talk, not pour out the molten streams of
+adoration that were scalding him to death while that image of alertness
+sat unblinking by. What was the fellow afraid of? He had asked him at
+first straight out, on finding how he stuck, to leave them alone, and
+the answer he got was that courting should be fair and above board, and
+that he was obliged to be both father and mother to the poor girl.
+
+‘Fair and above board! Good God,’ thought Jocelyn, driving himself back
+at a furious pace to Cambridge and throwing back his head in a fit of
+wild, nervous laughter. His father-in-law--that little man with trousers
+so much too long for him that they corkscrewed round his legs. His
+father-in-law....
+
+But what was that in the way of grotesqueness compared to his being her
+father? There, indeed, was mystery: that loveliness beyond dreams should
+have sprung from Mr. Pinner’s little loins.
+
+
+§
+
+The widows of Woodles, and also the virgins, were extremely curious
+about Jocelyn’s daily visits, and tried to find out his name, and which
+college he belonged to. They were in no doubt as to the object of his
+visits, having by that time all seen Sally, and wished to warn Mr.
+Pinner to be careful.
+
+They went to his shop and warned him.
+
+Mr. Pinner, looking smaller and more sunk into his trousers than ever,
+thanked them profusely, and said he was being it.
+
+‘One has to be on one’s guard with a motherless daughter,’ they said.
+
+Mr. Pinner said he was on it.
+
+‘And as your daughter promises to grow up some day into rather a
+good-looking girl----’
+
+‘There ain’t much promise about Sally, mum--it’s been performance,
+performance, _and_ nothing but performance since she was so ’igh.’
+
+‘Oh, well--perhaps it’s not quite as bad as that,’ said the lady
+addressed, smiling indulgently. ‘Still, I do think she may grow into a
+good-looking girl, and so near Cambridge you will have to be careful.
+Your visitor is an undergraduate, of course?’
+
+And Mr. Pinner, afraid of Jocelyn, afraid of his threats of hordes of
+young men descending on the shop if the engagement were known, said,
+slipping on the edge of an untruth, but just managing to clear it,
+‘Couldn’t say, mum.’
+
+She forced him, however--the woman forced him. ‘What?’ she exclaimed.
+‘You can’t say? You don’t know?’
+
+So then he told it without blinking. ‘No, mum,’ he said, his harassed
+blue eyes on her face. ‘I don’t think the young gentleman _did_ ’appen
+to mention ’is name.’
+
+And in his heart he cried out to his conscience, ‘If they forces me to,
+’ow, ’ow can I ’elp it?’
+
+
+§
+
+Between these two men, both in a state of extreme nervous tension, Sally
+passed her last days under her father’s roof, amiably quiescent,
+completely good. She did as she was told; always she had done as she was
+told, and it was now a habit. She liked the look of the young man who so
+unexpectedly was to become her husband, and was pleased that he should
+be a gentleman. She knew nothing about gentlemen, but she liked the sort
+of sound their voices made when they talked. At Islington she had
+preferred the visits to the shop of the clergy for just that reason--the
+sound their voices made when they talked. She would have been perfectly
+happy during the fortnight between her first setting eyes on Jocelyn and
+her marriage to him, if there had been a few more smiles about.
+
+There were none. Her father was tying her up with trembling haste, as if
+she were a parcel to be got rid of in a hurry. Her lover’s face was
+haggard, and drawn in the opposite directions to those that lead to
+smiles. Dumbly he would gaze at her from under his overhanging brows,
+and every now and then burst into a brief explosion of talk she didn’t
+understand and hadn’t an idea how to deal with; or he would steal a
+shaking hand along the edge of the tablecloth, where her father couldn’t
+see it, and touch her dress. He looked just like somebody in a picture,
+thought Sally, with his thin dark face, and eyes right far back in his
+head,--quite blue eyes, in spite of his dark skin and hair. She liked
+him very much. She liked everybody very much. If only somebody had
+sometimes smiled, how nice it all would have been; for then she would
+have known for certain they were happy, and were getting what they
+wanted. Sally liked to be certain people were happy, and getting what
+they wanted. As it was, nobody could tell from their faces that these
+two were pleased. Sometimes in the evening, after her lover had gone and
+the door was locked and bolted and barred behind him, and all the
+windows had been examined and fastened securely, her father would calm
+down and cheer up; but her lover never calmed down or cheered up.
+
+Sally, who hardly had what could be called thoughts but only feelings,
+was conscious of this without putting it into words. Perhaps when he had
+got what he wanted, which was, she was thoroughly aware, herself, he
+would be different. There were no doubts whatever in her mind as to what
+he wanted. She was too much used to the sort of thing. Not, it is true,
+in quite such a violent form, but then none of the others who had
+admired her--that is, every single male she had ever come across--had
+been allowed to be what her father called her fiancy, which was, Sally
+understood, the name of the person one was going to marry, and who might
+say things and behave in a way no one else might, as distinguished from
+the name of the person one went to the pictures with and didn’t marry,
+and who was a fancy. She knew that, because, though she herself had only
+gone to the pictures wedged between her father and mother, she had heard
+the girls at school talk of going with their fancies,--those girls who
+had all been her friends till they began to grow up, and then all, after
+saying horrid things to her and crying violently, had got out of her
+way.
+
+As though she could help it; as though she could help having the sort of
+face that made them angry.
+
+‘_I_ ain’t made my silly face,’ she said tearfully--her delicious mouth
+pronounced it fice--to the last of her girl friends, to the one she was
+fondest of, who had hung on longest, but who couldn’t, after all, stand
+the look that came into the eyes of him she spoke of as her boy one day
+that he chanced to come across Sally.
+
+‘No. No more you didn’t, Sally Pinner,’ furiously retorted the friend.
+‘But you would ’ave if you could ’ave, so you’re nothin’ but a
+nypocrite--see?’
+
+And the friend forgot herself still further, and added that Sally was a
+blinkin’ nypocrite; which was, as Mr. Pinner would have said had he
+heard it, language.
+
+
+§
+
+So that Sally in her short life had already caused trouble and
+uneasiness, in spite of having been so carefully kept out of the way.
+
+Wherever there were human beings, those human beings stared at Sally and
+began to follow her; or, if they couldn’t follow her with their feet,
+did so with astonished, eager eyes as long as she was in sight. Holy
+Communion was the only one of the Sunday services Mr. Pinner let her go
+to in Woodles, because it was sparsely attended, and the few worshippers
+were women. But even at that solemn service the Vicar, who was
+seventy-eight, found it difficult altogether to shut out from his
+consciousness the lovely figure of grace shining like morning light in
+the shadows of his dark little church. He was as instantly aware of
+Sally the first Sunday she came to the service as every one else always
+was the moment she appeared anywhere, and she had the same effect on the
+old man as she had had on the young Jocelyn when first he saw her--he
+caught his breath, and for a moment was near tears. Because here, the
+old man perceived, at the end of his life he was at last beholding
+beauty,--fresh from God, still dewy from its heavenly birth; and the
+Vicar, who had long been a recluse, and lived entirely among his
+memories, which all were sentimental and poetic, bowed down in spirit
+before the young radiance come into his church, as before the Real
+Presence.
+
+
+§
+
+Such was Sally when young Jocelyn married her--mild inside, and only
+desiring to give satisfaction, and outside a thing that seemed made up
+of light. As Mr. Pinner had wished to hide her, so did Jocelyn wish to
+hide her, and wanted to be married in London, the least conspicuous of
+spots; but technical difficulties prevented this, seeing that he wanted
+to be married quickly, so he took the Vicar into his confidence, and got
+a special licence, and thus avoiding banns and publicity was married
+early one bright March morning, while Woodles, unaware of what was
+happening, was still washing up its breakfast things.
+
+By this time Jocelyn was acquainted with Sally’s inability to give a
+plain answer to a question, and half expected her to reply ‘I don’t mind
+if I do’ to the Vicar when he asked if she would take him, Jocelyn, to
+be her wedded husband. She didn’t; but if she had he wouldn’t have
+cared, nor would the Vicar have cared. Whatever she did, whatever she
+said, was to these two dazzled men the one perfect gesture, the one
+perfect word.
+
+But Sally, young and shy, said very little. Hardly had she spoken during
+the brief courtship. To the Vicar, full of awe of his office and his
+age, she scarcely dared raise her eyes, much less lift up her voice. It
+was enough, however; the old man was enthralled. Far from being
+surprised at Jocelyn’s determination to take his name off the books of
+his college and chuck his promising career and marry Sally and go up to
+London to pick up his living as a journalist, a profession for which he
+hadn’t the slightest aptitude, the Vicar understood perfectly. The
+college authorities, on the other hand, unaware of his reason for
+ruining himself, were amazed at such deliberate suicide. They had not
+seen Sally. The Vicar, who had, was convinced the young man was doing
+the one thing worth doing,--giving up everything to follow after Truth.
+
+‘For is not Truth Beauty, and Beauty Truth?’ asked the Vicar, too old to
+bother any longer with material considerations.
+
+Jocelyn and he were unanimous that it was.
+
+
+§
+
+The Vicar, indeed, was an immense comfort to Jocelyn the second and last
+week of his engagement, for Mr. Pinner was no comfort at all. Not that
+Jocelyn needed comfort at this marvellous moment; but he needed
+understanding, some one to talk to, some one who could and would listen
+intelligently. Mr. Pinner didn’t listen intelligently; he didn’t listen
+at all. All he did was to say heartily, ‘That’s right,’ to everything
+Jocelyn said, and such indiscrimination was annoying. It was a deep
+refreshment to get away from him and go up to the Vicarage, and there,
+slowly pacing up and down with the old man on the sunny path where the
+first daffodils were, talk with some one who so completely understood.
+
+The Vicar concluded, from the frequency with which his young friend came
+to take counsel of him, that he was an orphan, but he asked no questions
+because he was long past the age of questions. The age of silence was
+his, of quiet resting on his oars, of a last warming of himself in the
+light of the sun, before departing hence and being no more seen. By this
+time, his mind being faintly bleared, he connected Sally with the _Nunc
+Dimittis_, and thanked God aloud, greatly to her confusion, for she
+couldn’t make out what the old gentleman was talking about, for being
+allowed to see, before departing in peace, the perfect loveliness of her
+whom he called the Lord’s Salvatia. Fitting and right was the young
+man’s attitude in the Vicar’s eyes; fitting and right to leave all
+things, and follow after this child of grace.
+
+His unpractical attitude was immensely grateful to Jocelyn, who knew,
+though during this strange fortnight of thwarted love-making and
+arm’s-length worship he managed to forget, that one of the things he was
+leaving was his mother.
+
+He hadn’t mentioned it, but he had got one.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+§
+
+Not a father, for he had long been dead, but a mother, whose single joy
+and pride he was. There she sat at home by the fire on his wedding
+night, thinking of him. No complete half-hour of the day could pass
+without the thought of Jocelyn getting into it. Her only child; so
+brilliant, so serious, so hard-working, so good. She loved brains. She
+loved diligence. She loved the man of the house to be absorbed in his
+work. What a halo he was about her head! Everybody round where she lived
+knew about him. Everybody had heard of his successes,--‘My son, who is a
+scholar of Ananias.... My son, who is a Prizeman of his University....
+My son, who won this year’s Rutherford Prize....’ Great was her reward
+for having devoted her life to him and his education, and for having
+turned a deaf ear to those suitors who had tried to marry her when she
+was a young widow. She wasn’t even now, twenty years later, an old
+widow, but she was a widow who was less young.
+
+She lived in one of those suburbs where much is done for the mind. She
+was popular in it, and looked up to. She was, in fact, one of its
+leading lights,--cultivated, lady-like, well-read, artistic, interested
+in each new movement that came along. And of a most pleasing appearance,
+too, being slender at an age when the mothers of the grown-up are
+sometimes so no longer, dark haired among the grey, smooth among the
+puckered, and her eyes had no crow’s feet, and were calm and beautifully
+clear.
+
+She was serenely happy. The _milieu_ suited her exactly. She had come to
+South Winch twenty years before from Kensington--real Kensington, not
+West or North, but the part that clusters round the Albert Hall--on her
+husband’s death, because of having to be frugal, but soon discovered it
+was the very place for her. Far better, she intelligently recognised, to
+be a leading light in a suburb, and know and be known by everybody, than
+extinguished and invisible in London. Besides, spring came to the
+suburbs in a way it never did to London, and it was the custom in South
+Winch, where people were determined to think highly, to think
+particularly highly of spring. At the bottom of her half acre there was
+only an iron railing separating her from a real meadow belonging to the
+big villa of a prosperous City man, and spring, she told the Rector, who
+was also a Canon, did things in that meadow it would never dream of
+doing near the Albert Hall.
+
+‘Look at those dandelions,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘I do think the meanest
+flower that blows in its natural setting is more beautiful than the
+whole of those thought-out effects in Kensington Gardens.’
+
+And the Rector--the Canon--said, ‘How true that is,’ and remarked that
+she was a Wordsworthian; and Mrs. Luke smiled, and said, ‘Am I?’ and
+wasn’t altogether pleased, for Wordsworth, she somehow felt, was no
+longer, in the newest opinion, what he was.
+
+While Jocelyn, then, was worshipping Sally across the supper-table of
+the private sitting-room he had engaged in the hotel at Exeter, where
+they were breaking their journey to Cornwall, which was the place he was
+going to hide his honeymoon in, and Sally, unable to make head or tail
+of his speech and behaviour, was becoming every minute more uneasy, his
+mother sat, placid in the security of unconsciousness, by the fire in
+Almond Tree Cottage, a house which used, before the era of her careful
+simplicity, so foolishly to be called Beulah.
+
+‘A cottage,’ she observed to her sympathetic friends, ‘is the proper
+place for me. I’m a poor woman. Five hundred a year’--why hide
+anything?--‘doesn’t go far these days after Income Tax has been
+deducted. Jocelyn has his own five hundred, or we would really have been
+in a quite bad way. As it is, I can just manage.’
+
+And she did; and in her clever hands frugality merely seemed comfort
+gone a little thin, and nobody liked to ask her for subscriptions.
+
+The house was small and very white, and had a small and very green
+garden, with a cedar on the back lawn and an almond tree on the front
+one. Two front gates that swang back on their hinges, and a half-moon
+carriage-sweep. Railings. Shrubs. The yellow sanded road. Houses
+opposite, with almond trees too, or, less prettily, in the front gardens
+of the insensitive, monkey puzzles. The hall door was blue. Such
+curtains as could be seen at the same time as the door were blue too. At
+no season of the year was there not at least one vivid flower stuck in a
+slender vessel in the sitting-room window. And in the sitting-room
+itself, on the otherwise bare walls, was one picture only,--a copy,
+really very well done, of a gay and charming Tiepolo ceiling--Mrs. Luke
+was the first in South Winch to take up Tiepolo--in which everybody was
+delicately happy, in spite of a crucifixion going on in one corner, and
+high-spirited, fat little angels tossed roses across the silvery
+brightness of what was evidently a perfect summer afternoon. Books, too,
+were present; not many, but the right ones. Blake was there; also Donne;
+and Sir Thomas Browne; and Proust, in French. A novel, generally
+Galsworthy, lay on the little table near the fire, and, by an
+arrangement with a circle of friends, most of the better class weeklies
+passed through the house in a punctual stream.
+
+Sitting in the deep chair by the fireside table on Jocelyn’s wedding
+night, her dark head against the bright cushion that gave the necessary
+splash of colour to the restful bareness of the room, her lap full of
+reviews she was going to read of the best new books and plays, so as to
+be able to discuss them intelligently with him when he came home at
+Easter--only a few more days to wait,--his mother couldn’t keep her eyes
+from wandering off these studies to the glowing little fire of ships’
+logs and neat blocks of peat, for her thoughts persisted in flying, like
+homing birds, to the nest they always went back to and so warmly rested
+in: Jocelyn, and what he was, and what he was going to be.
+
+Other mothers had anxieties; she had never had one. Others had
+disappointments; she had had nothing but happy triumphs. He was
+retiring, it was true, and stayed up in his little attic-study when he
+was at home, and wouldn’t go anywhere except to a Beethoven
+concert--together they had studied all that has been said about
+Beethoven, and she had plans for proceeding to the study of all that has
+been said about Bach--or for long tramps with her, when they would eat
+bread and cheese at some wayside inn, and read aloud to each other
+between the mouthfuls; but how much richer was she herself for that. And
+the comfort of having a _good_ son, a son who cared nothing for even
+so-called harmless dissipations! When she looked round at other people’s
+sons, and saw the furrows on their fathers’ foreheads--she smiled at her
+own alliterations--and heard a whisper of the dread word Debts, and knew
+where debts came from--betting, gambling, drinking, women, in a ghastly
+crescendo, how could she ever, ever be thankful enough that Jocelyn was
+so good? Never once had he betted, gambled, drunk, or--she smiled again
+at her own word--womaned; she was ready to take her oath he hadn’t.
+Didn’t she know him inside out? He kept nothing from her; he couldn’t
+have if he had wanted to, bless him, for she, who had watched him from
+long before he became conscious, knew him far, far better than he could
+possibly know himself.
+
+Many, indeed, were her blessings. Great and conscious her content. Her
+dark head on the vivid cushion was full of bright--why not say
+it?--self-congratulation, which is the other word for thankfulness. And
+how not congratulate herself on the possession of that beloved,
+brilliant boy? While, to add to everything else, the neighbour, whose
+meadow of buttercups she so freely and inexpensively enjoyed from over
+the railing on dappled May mornings, was showing unmistakable signs of
+wishing to marry her. His year of widowerhood had recently come to an
+end, and the very next week he had begun the kind of activity that could
+only be described as courting; so that she had this feather, too, to add
+to a cap already, she gratefully acknowledged, so full of feathers.
+Poor? Yes, she was poor. But what was being poor? Nothing at all, if
+one refused to mind it.
+
+A third time she smiled, shaking her head at the neat peat blocks as if
+they had been the neighbour. ‘Come, come, my friend--at our ages,’ she
+could hear herself saying to him with gentle and flattering raillery--he
+must be at least twenty years older than herself--when the moment should
+arrive. But it was pleasant, this, to sit in her charmingly lit
+room--she was clever at making lampshades--and to know that next door
+was a man, well set up in spite of his sixty odd years, who thought her
+desirable, pleasant to be certain she had only to put out her hand, and
+take wealth.
+
+And who could say, she mused, but that it mightn’t be the best thing for
+Jocelyn too, to have a solid stepfather like that at his back, able to
+help him financially? She had spent happy years in the little white
+house, and it had rarely worried her that she should be obliged to take
+such ceaseless pains to hide the bones of her economies gracefully, but
+later on she would be older, and might be tired, and later on Jocelyn
+might perhaps want to marry and set up house for himself--after all, it
+would only be natural--and then she would be lonely, besides being ten
+years--she thought in ten years would be about the time he might wish to
+marry--less attractive than she was now, and getting not only lonelier
+with every year but also, she supposed, less attractive; though surely
+one oughtn’t to do that, if one’s mind and spirit----?
+
+Whereas, if she married the neighbour....
+
+
+§
+
+He came in at that moment, on the pretext of bringing her back a book
+she had lent him, though he hadn’t read it and didn’t mean to, for it
+was what he, being a plain man, called high-falutin. He didn’t tell her
+this, because when a man is courting he cannot be candid, and he well
+knew that he was courting. What he wasn’t sure of was whether she knew.
+You never could tell with women; the best of them were artful.
+
+He came in that evening, then, to make it finally clear to her. She was
+a charming woman, and much younger, he imagined, than her age, which
+couldn’t, he calculated, with a son of twenty-two be far short of
+forty-two, and he had always greatly admired the pluck with which she
+faced what seemed to him sheer destitution. She was the very woman, too,
+to have at the head of one’s table when one had friends to
+dinner,--good-looking, knowing how to dress, able to talk about any
+mortal thing, and a perfect lady. And after the friends had gone, and it
+was time to go to bye-bye--such were the words his thoughts clothed
+themselves in,--she would still be a desirable companion, even if--again
+his words--a bit on the thin side. That, however, would soon be set
+right when he had fed her up on all the good food she hadn’t ever been
+able to afford, and anyhow she was years and years younger than poor
+Annie, who had been the same age as himself, which was all right to
+begin with, but no sort of a show in the long run. Also, Annie had
+stayed common.
+
+So the neighbour, whose name was Mr. Thorpe, arrived on Jocelyn’s
+wedding night about nine o’clock in the restrained sitting-room of
+Almond Tree Cottage, determined to make his purpose clear. That he
+should be refused didn’t enter his head, for he had much to offer. He
+was far the richest man in the parish, his two daughters were married
+and out of the way, his house and cars were bigger than anybody’s, and
+he grew pineapples. He couldn’t help thinking, he couldn’t help knowing,
+that for a woman of over forty he was a catch, and he went into the
+room, past the reverent-eyed small maid who held the door open,
+expanding his chest. A poverty-stricken little room, he always
+considered, with nothing in it of the least account, except the lady.
+
+Yes; except the lady. But what a lady. Not a grey hair in her head,
+which he had carefully examined when she wasn’t looking, nor, he would
+wager, any tooth that wasn’t exclusively her own. And a trim ankle; and
+a pretty wrist. Ruffles, too. He liked ruffles at a woman’s wrist. And
+able to talk about any mortal thing. Annie, poor creature, had made him
+look like a fool when he had his friends to dinner. This one would be
+the finest of the feathers in a cap which, he too gratefully
+acknowledged, was stuck full of them.
+
+‘All alone, eh?’ he said cheerily. ‘That’s bad.’
+
+‘I’m used to it,’ said Mrs. Luke, smilingly holding out her slender
+hand, on which a single ruby--or was it a garnet? probably a
+garnet--caught the light. She had on a wine-coloured, soft woollen dress
+that Jocelyn liked, and the ring and the dress went very well together.
+
+A pretty picture; a perfect lady. Mr. Thorpe, determined to waste no
+time in making his purpose clear, bent his head and kissed the hand.
+
+‘Being used to a bad thing doesn’t make it better, but worse,’ he said,
+drawing up the only other really comfortable chair--Jocelyn’s--and
+sitting down close to her.
+
+And he was about to embark then and there on his proposal, for he hated
+waste of anything, including time, and Mrs. Luke was already drawing up
+her shoulders to her ears in an instinctive movement of defence, for she
+would have liked to have had longer to turn the thing over in her mind,
+and discover really whether his splendid illiteracy--it was so immense
+as to appear magnificent--would be a source of pleasure to her or
+suffering, whether the pleasure of filling up his mind’s emptiness would
+be greater than the pains of such an exertion, whether, in short, she
+hadn’t better refuse him, when the little maid came in with the silver
+salver she had been trained to present letters on, and held it out
+before her mistress.
+
+‘Letters, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe, nettled by this interruption. ‘I should
+give orders they’re to be left in the--well, you can’t call it a hall,
+can you, so let’s say passage.’
+
+The little maid, alarmed, sidled out of the room.
+
+‘I would indeed, if it weren’t that I can’t bear to wait a minute when
+it’s a letter from Jocelyn,’ said Mrs. Luke, holding the letter tight,
+for she saw it was from him. ‘You wouldn’t be able to wait either, would
+you,’ she went on, smiling more brightly even than usual, for the mere
+touch of the letter made her more bright, ‘for anything you loved.’
+
+‘No,’ said Mr. Thorpe sturdily, seizing this opening. ‘No. I wouldn’t.
+And that’s why I’ve come round----’
+
+But she didn’t hear. ‘You’ll forgive me, won’t you my dear friend,’ she
+murmured, slitting the envelope with an enamelled paper-knife lest she
+should harm the dear contents, ‘but I haven’t heard from that boy for
+over a fortnight, and I’ve been beginning to wonder----’
+
+‘Oh, certainly, certainly. Don’t mind me,’ said Mr. Thorpe, aggrieved.
+‘Mark my words, though,’ he added, sitting up very square and broad in
+his chair, and giving the knees of his trousers a twitch each, ‘one
+shouldn’t overdo the son business.’
+
+She didn’t hear. Her eyes were running down the lines of the letter,
+while she muttered something about just wanting to see if he were well.
+
+‘Damned stuck up young prig,’ Mr. Thorpe was in the act of saying to
+himself, resentfully watching this absorption, when he was interrupted
+by a complete and alarming change in the lady.
+
+She gave a violent shudder; she dropped the letter on the floor, as
+though her shaking hands couldn’t hold it; and then, fixing her large
+grey eyes on his, opened her mouth and moaned.
+
+He stared at her. He couldn’t think what was the matter.
+
+‘Sick, eh?’ he asked, staring.
+
+‘Oh, _oh_----’ was all she said, turning her face from him, and burying
+it in the cushion.
+
+
+§
+
+Well, what does one do with a woman who buries her face in a cushion?
+Comforts her, of course, thought Mr. Thorpe, again seizing his
+opportunity. The young ass couldn’t be dead, or he wouldn’t have
+written. But he might----
+
+Mr. Thorpe paused at the thought, and withdrew the hand already put out
+to pat. Yes; that was it. Better not comfort just yet. For the young
+fool had no doubt run into debt, and was being threatened with
+proceedings, and was trying to persuade his mother to pay, and Mr.
+Thorpe didn’t want to begin his betrothal with having to shell out for
+somebody else’s scapegrace son.
+
+His hand, accordingly, slowly redescended on to his knee, where it
+rested motionless while he stared at the figure in the chair. Pretty
+figure. Nice lines. Graceful, even in her upset. She only needed very
+little, just the weeniest bit, fattening up. But she shouldn’t have
+spoiled that son. Women were fools about their sons.
+
+Then, noticing that the letter was lying at his feet, and the lady, her
+face in the cushion, was incapable of observing what he did, he put on
+his eyeglasses, picked it up carefully so that it shouldn’t rustle, and,
+remarking to himself that all was fair in love and war, read it.
+
+Having read it, he as carefully replaced it on the carpet, took off his
+eyeglasses, and began to comfort.
+
+For it wasn’t debts, it was marriage; the best thing possible from Mr.
+Thorpe’s point of view--clearing the field, leaving the mother free to
+turn her thoughts to other ties. And a good job too, for the young ass
+had gone clean off his head. What a letter. He ought to be ashamed of
+himself, writing sick stuff like that to his mother. Married this very
+day. Given up Cambridge. Chucked his career. Finished with ambitions.
+Going to earn his own living in London. Mother bound to love--no, it was
+put hotter than that--worship the girl, who was more beautiful than any
+angel----
+
+Tut, tut. Silly young ass, caught by the first handsome slut.
+
+‘Better tell me about it,’ said Mr. Thorpe, leaning forward and laying
+his hand with unhesitating kindness on Mrs. Luke’s shoulder. ‘Nothing
+like getting things off one’s chest. Count on me. Whatever your son’s
+done I’ll help. I’ll do anything--anything at all, mind you, to help.’
+
+And Jocelyn’s mother, completely overwhelmed by the incredible sudden
+smash up of everything she had lived for, did, on hearing this kind,
+steady male voice through her misery, turn to Mr. Thorpe as the drowning
+turn to any spar, and, making odd little noises, stooped down and tried
+to pick up the letter.
+
+But her hands shook too much. He had to pick it up for her.
+
+‘Read it----,’ she said in a sobbing whisper.
+
+So he took out his eyeglasses, and read it again.
+
+
+§
+
+‘Now what you’ve got to do,’ said Mr. Thorpe, folding it up neatly when
+he had finished, and laying it down on the little table, ‘is to make up
+your mind that what’s done can’t be undone.’
+
+Mrs. Luke, her head buried in the cushions, moaned.
+
+‘That’s it,’ said Mr. Thorpe, a hand on each knee and an eye on her.
+‘That’s the ticket.’
+
+‘I know--I know,’ moaned Mrs. Luke. ‘But just at first--the shock----’
+
+‘Shock, eh? I don’t know that there’s much shock about marriage,’ said
+Mr. Thorpe. ‘Shouldn’t be, anyhow.’
+
+‘But so sudden--so unexpected----’
+
+‘People will marry, you know,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘Especially men. Once
+they get set on it, nothing stops ’em.’
+
+‘I know--I know--but Jocelyn--such a boy----’
+
+‘Boy, eh? Age has precious little to do with it,’ said Mr. Thorpe
+firmly. ‘In fact, nothing.’
+
+‘But his prospects--his career--all thrown away--ruined----’
+
+‘Marriage never harmed a man yet,’ said Mr. Thorpe still more firmly,
+aware that he was being inaccurate, but also aware that no one can
+afford to be accurate and court simultaneously. Accuracy, Mr. Thorpe
+knew, comes after marriage, not before.
+
+‘Mark my words,’ he went on, ‘that clever son of yours won’t stop being
+clever because he’s married. Who’s going to take his brains from him?
+Not a loving wife, you bet. Why, a good wife, a loving wife, doubles and
+trebles a man’s output.’
+
+‘How kind you are,’ murmured Mrs. Luke, who did find this comforting.
+‘But Jocelyn--my boy--to keep it from me----’
+
+‘Bound to keep something from his mother,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘Mothers are
+all right, and a man has to have them to start with, but the day comes
+when a back seat is what they’ve got to climb into. Only as regards
+their children, mind you,’ he added. ‘A woman has many other strings to
+her bow, and is by no means nothing but a mother.’
+
+‘Oh, but we were everything, everything to each other,’ moaned Mrs.
+Luke, stabbed afresh by the mention of a back seat. ‘Always, always. He
+never _looked_ at another woman----’
+
+‘Damned prig,’ thought Mr. Thorpe. And said out aloud, ‘Time he began,
+then. Though having a woman like you about,’ he added, placing his hand
+with determination on hers, which hung limply down holding a
+handkerchief while her face was still turned away, ‘ought to keep him
+from seeing the others all right. You’re a wonderful woman, you know--a
+remarkable woman.’
+
+His voice changed. It took on the unmistakable note that is immediately
+followed by love-making.
+
+‘I--think I’ll go and lie down,’ said Mrs. Luke faintly, recognising the
+note, and feeling she could bear no more of anything that night. ‘I--I
+really think I must. My head----’
+
+She struggled to get up.
+
+He helped her. He helped her by laying hold of both her wrists, and
+drawing her upwards and towards him.
+
+‘Head, eh?’ he said, a gleam in his eyes.
+
+‘How kind, how kind----’ she murmured distractedly, finding herself on
+her feet and very close to Mr. Thorpe, who still held her wrists.
+
+She wanted her letter. She looked about helplessly for her letter,
+keeping her head as far away from him as she could. There was her
+letter--on the table--she wanted to snatch it up--to get away as quickly
+as possible--to hide in her bedroom--and her wrists were being held, and
+she couldn’t move.
+
+‘Kind, eh? Kind, you call it?’ said Mr. Thorpe through his teeth. ‘I can
+be kinder than that.’ And he put his arms round her, and drew her
+vigorously to his chest.
+
+‘This in exchange for Jocelyn,’ drifted through Mrs. Luke’s wretched and
+resisting mind.
+
+But, even through her wretchedness and resistance she felt there was
+something rock-like, something solid and fixed, about Mr. Thorpe’s
+chest, to which in the present catastrophe, with the swirling waters of
+bitterest disappointment raging round her feet, it might be well to
+cling.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+§
+
+And while these things were happening in Almond Tree Cottage, Jocelyn,
+in the private sitting-room of the Exeter hotel, was behaving, it seemed
+to Sally, in the most strange way.
+
+If this was what married gentlemen were like, then she wondered that
+there should be any married ladies left. Enough to kill them off like
+flies, thought Sally, helplessly involved in frequent and alarming
+embraces. Still, she held on hard in her mind to what her father had
+said to her the evening before, when she was going up to bed,--‘Sally,’
+her father had said, calling her back a moment and looking solemn,
+‘don’t you take no notice of what Mr. Luke do or don’t, once ’e’s your
+’usband. ’Usbands ain’t gentlemen, remember--not ordinary, day-time
+gentlemen, such as you thinks they are till you knows better. And you
+just say to yourself as ’ow your mother went through it all before you
+was so much as born, and she was a bit of all right, warn’t she? So you
+just remember that, my girl, if by any chance you should ’appen to get
+the fidgets.’
+
+She did remember it, though it was Mr. Luke--so she thought of him--who
+had the fidgets. He didn’t seem able to sit quiet for two minutes in his
+chair, and eat his supper, and let her eat hers. Such a lovely supper,
+too--a real shame to let it get cold. What was the good of ordering a
+lovely supper if one wasn’t going to eat it properly?
+
+More and more earnestly as the evening progressed did she wish herself
+back in the peaceful parlour behind the shop; less and less did the
+thought of her mother having been through all this too support her,
+because she became surer every minute that she hadn’t been through it.
+Never in his life could her father have behaved as Mr. Luke was
+behaving. Entirely unused to kisses, except evenings and mornings, and
+then just one on her cheek and over and done with at once, Sally
+couldn’t get over the number and length of Mr. Luke’s. Also, it
+surprised her very much to see a gentleman interrupt his supper--and
+such a lovely supper--to run round the table and go down on his knees
+and kiss her shoes,--new ones, of course, but still not things that
+ought to be kissed; it surprised her so much, that she came over quite
+queer each time.
+
+She thought it a great mercy he had locked the door, so that the grand
+waiter couldn’t get in, for the grand waiter, staring at her while he
+handed her the dishes and calling her Madam, alarmed her in his way very
+nearly as much as Mr. Luke alarmed her in his; yet, on the other hand,
+if the waiter was locked out she was locked in, so that it cut both
+ways, thought Sally, wishing she might be let eat the meringue the
+waiter had left on her plate before being locked out. But every time she
+tried to, Mr. Luke seemed to have to be kissed.
+
+And the way Mr. Luke, when he did stay still a minute in his chair,
+never took his eyes off her, and the things he said! And he didn’t seem
+a bit happy either, in spite of talking such a lot about heaven and the
+angels. If only he had seemed happy Sally wouldn’t have minded so much,
+for then at least somebody would have been getting some good out of it;
+but he looked all upset, and as if he were going to be ill,--sickening
+for something, she concluded.
+
+For a long time she kept up her manners, bravely clinging to them and
+trying hard to guess when was the right moment to say Yes and when to
+say No, which was very difficult because he talked so queerly, and she
+hadn’t an idea what most of it meant; for a long time she was able to
+smile politely, if anxiously, every time she looked up and caught his
+fierce and burning eye; but all of a sudden, perpetually thwarted in her
+efforts to eat the meringue, and very hot and uncomfortable from so much
+kissing, she found she couldn’t do anything any more that was proper,
+wasn’t able to smile, said No when it ought to have been Yes, lost her
+nerve, and to her own surprise and excessive shame began to whimper.
+
+Very quietly she whimpered, very beautifully, her head drooping
+exquisitely on its adorable little neck, while the meringue she had so
+badly wanted to be allowed to eat for the last quarter of an hour was
+finally renounced, and left to waste and dribble away its expensive
+cream on her plate.
+
+Jocelyn was appalled.
+
+‘Oh, Sally--oh, my angel--oh, my heavenly, heavenly child!’ he cried,
+flinging himself once again at her feet, while she once again quickly
+drew them up beneath her frock, as she had done each time before.
+
+She apologised humbly. She was really terribly ashamed,--and he so good
+to her, spending all that money on such a splendid supper.
+
+‘I ain’t cried but once before in my life,’ she explained, fumbling for
+her handkerchief, while the tears welled up in her enchanting sweet
+eyes. ‘When mother died, that was, but I never didn’t not else. Dunno
+what come over me, Mr. Luke----’
+
+‘Only once before! When your mother died! And now on your wedding day!
+Oh, Sally--it’s me--I’ve made you--I, who would die a thousand deaths to
+spare a single perfect hair of your divine little head----’
+
+‘Don’t say that, Mr. Luke--please now, don’t say that,’ Sally earnestly
+begged, much perturbed by this perpetual harping on death and angels.
+And having at last got out her handkerchief, she was just going to wipe
+her eyes decently when he snatched it from her and didn’t let her do
+anything, but actually kissed away the tears as they rolled out.
+
+‘You ain’t ’alf fond of kissin’, are you, Mr. Luke,’ murmured Sally
+miserably, helplessly obliged to hand over her tears to what seemed to
+her a really horrid fate, while to herself she was saying in resigned,
+unhappy astonishment, ‘And them my very own eyes, too, when all’s said
+and done.’
+
+
+§
+
+It was three days later that Jocelyn, for the first time, said, ‘Don’t
+say that, Sally,’ in a tone of command.
+
+He had told her many times not to call him Mr. Luke, told her
+entreatingly, caressingly, playfully, that he was her husband Jocelyn,
+and no longer ever any more to be Mr. anything on her darling lips; and
+when she forgot, for habits in Sally died hard, smilingly and adoringly
+reminded her.
+
+But this time, after three whole days’ honeymoon and three whole
+nights, he commanded; adding in a tone of real annoyance, ‘And for God’s
+sake don’t look at people when they pass.’
+
+‘I ain’t lookin’ at them,’ protested Sally, flushing, who never wanted
+to look at anybody, besides having been taught by the anxious Pinners
+that no modest girl did. ‘They looks at me.’
+
+It was true. Jocelyn knew it was true, but nevertheless was angry, and
+caught hold of her arm and marched her up a side lane from the sea, up
+to the less inhabited hill at the back of the village.
+
+For they were at St. Mawes, the little cut-off fishing village in South
+Cornwall which had lived in Jocelyn’s memory ever since, two years
+before, on an Easter bicycling tour with his mother, he and she had
+suddenly dropped down on it from the hill above, unaware of its
+existence till they were right on it, so completely was it tucked away
+and hidden. It had lived in his memory as the most difficult spot to get
+at, and therefore probably the most solitary, of any he had come across.
+Miles from a railway, miles from the nearest town, only to be reached,
+unless one went to it by sea, along a most difficult and tortuous road
+that ended by throwing one down a precipice on to a ferry-boat which
+took one across the Fal and shot one out at the foot of another
+precipice,--or so the two hills seemed to Jocelyn and his mother, who
+had to push their bicycles up them--he considered it the place of places
+to hide his honeymoon in; to hide, that is, the precious and conspicuous
+Sally.
+
+His recollection of it was just a village street along the sea, an inn
+or two, a shop or two, a fisherman or two, and in the middle of the day
+complete emptiness.
+
+The very place.
+
+He wrote, trembling with excitement, to its post office to get him
+rooms, rooms for his wife and himself--his wife; oh, my God! thought
+Jocelyn, still a week off his wedding day.
+
+The post office got him rooms,--a tiny bedroom, almost filled by the
+bed, a tiny parlour, almost filled by the table, and a fisherman and his
+wife, who lived in the rest of the cottage, to look after them.
+
+The first day they were out in a boat all day being shown coves by the
+fisherman, who stared hard at Sally, and whenever they wanted to go back
+took them to see another cove instead; but the second day, the
+imperativeness of daily exercise having been part of Jocelyn’s early
+training, he felt it his duty to exercise Sally, and emerged with her
+during the quiet hour after their mid-day meal for a blow along the sea
+front.
+
+She had already said, when he asked her if she would like to go out,
+that she didn’t mind if she did, and he had passed it over because he
+happened to be looking at her when she said it, and no one who happened
+to be looking at Sally when she said anything was able to pay much
+attention to her words. Jocelyn couldn’t, anyhow, only three days
+married; but out on the sea front, walking side by side, his eyes fixed
+ahead in growing surprise at the number of people suddenly come out,
+like themselves, apparently, for blows, when in answer to his remark
+that the place seemed more populous than he had imagined, she said, ‘It
+do, don’t it, Mr. Luke,’ he snapped at her.
+
+Snapped at her. Snapped at his angel, his child of light, his being from
+another sphere, who ought, he had told her, making her fidget a good
+deal, for whatever did he mean? sit for ever on a sapphire throne, and
+be crowned by stars, and addressed only in the language of Beethoven’s
+symphonies. But then there were these confounded people suddenly sprung
+from nowhere, and it was enough to make any man snap, the way they
+looked at Sally. Where did they come from? Where were they going? What
+did they want?
+
+Jocelyn seized her, and hurried her up the side path that led over the
+hill to the quiet country at the back. He was excessively put out. The
+swine--the idle, ogling swine, he thought, rushing her up the steep path
+at such a rate that the willing Sally, obediently putting her best leg
+foremost, nevertheless, light and active as she was, arrived at the top
+so breathless that she couldn’t speak.
+
+Not that she wanted to speak. Never much of a hand at what her girl
+friends, when she still had them, used to call back-chat, the brief
+period of her honeymoon had taught her how safe and snug silence was
+compared to the draughty dangers of speech. Marriage, she already felt,
+groping dimly about in it, wasn’t at all like anything one was used to.
+It seemed swampy underfoot. You started walking along it, and it looked
+all right, when in you went. Husbands--difficult to know where one was
+with _them_, thought Sally. They changed about so. One moment on their
+knees as if one was a church, and the next rushing one off one’s feet up
+a hill such as one couldn’t have believed possible if one hadn’t seen it
+for oneself, and their face all angry. Angry? What for? wondered Sally,
+who was never angry.
+
+‘It’s that hair of yours,’ said Jocelyn, got to the top, and standing
+still a moment, for he too was panting.
+
+She looked at him uncomprehendingly, in a lovely surprise. He was
+frowning at the sea, and the bit of road along it visible at their feet,
+on which still crawled a few black specks.
+
+‘’Ow?’ Sally was injudicious enough to ask; but after all it was only
+one word--she was careful to say only one word.
+
+One was enough, though.
+
+‘How, Sally--_how_, HOW. You really _must_ learn to say _how_,’ said
+Jocelyn, exasperated.
+
+‘I did say ’ow,’ explained Sally meekly.
+
+‘Yes. You did. Exactly,’ said Jocelyn.
+
+‘Ain’t it right to say ’ow?’ she asked, anxious for instruction.
+
+‘Haven’t you _any_ ear?’ was Jocelyn’s answer, turning to her with a
+kind of pounce.
+
+Sally was still more surprised. What a question. Of course she had an
+ear. Two of them. And she was going to tell him so when his face, as he
+looked at her, changed to the one he had when he got talking about
+heaven and angels.
+
+For how could Jocelyn stay irritated with anything like that? He had
+only to turn and look at her for all his silly anger to shrivel up. In
+the presence of her loveliness, what a mere mincing worm he was, with
+his precise ways of speech, and his twopenny-halfpenny little bit of
+superior education. As though it mattered, as though it mattered,
+thought Jocelyn.
+
+‘Oh, Sally, I didn’t mean it,’ he said, catching up her hand and kissing
+it, which made her feel very awkward and ashamed, somehow, having a
+thing like that done to her hand, and in broad daylight, too, and out of
+doors. ‘But you should try and tuck your hair more out of sight--look,
+this way,’ he went on, gently taking her hat off and arranging her hair
+for her before putting it on again. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘it does
+catch the eye so, doesn’t it, my beautiful, flaming seraphim--oh, my
+God,’ he added under his breath, ‘how beautiful you are!’
+
+‘It don’t make no difference,’ said Sally in a resigned voice.
+
+‘What doesn’t?’
+
+‘If you tucks it in or don’t. They always looks at me. We tried
+everything at ’ome, Father and Mother did, but they always looks at me.’
+
+She spoke with deprecation and apology. Best let him know the worst at
+once, for she was thoroughly aware of her disabilities and the endless
+trouble she had given her parents; while as for their scoldings, and
+exhortations, and dark hints of bad things that might happen to her,
+hadn’t they rung in her ears since she was twelve? But what could she
+do? There she was. Having been born like that, how could she help it?
+
+And another thing she couldn’t help, though she was unconscious that she
+did it, was that every time she caught the amiable eye of a stranger,
+and she had never yet met any stranger who hadn’t amiable eyes, she
+smiled. Just a little; just an involuntary gratitude for the
+friendliness in the eye that had been caught. And as she had two
+dimples, otherwise invisible, the smile, which would anyhow have been
+lovely on that face, was of exceeding loveliness, and complications
+followed, and angry chidings from the worn-out Pinners, and, in Sally, a
+resigned surprise.
+
+It was while she was trying to convey to Jocelyn that whatever he did
+with her hair she was doomed to be looked at, and was at the same time
+shaking it back so as to help him to get it neat--it looked startlingly
+vivid against the grey background of sea and sky--that a young man
+called Carruthers, out for a run with his dog after a stuffy Sunday
+family lunch, came round the bend of the path, whistling and swinging
+his stick, and stopped dead when he saw her.
+
+His dog rushed on, however, and ran up to the spirit-thing, and sniffed
+and wagged round it, and seemed quite pleased; so it was real, it wasn’t
+a spirit, it wasn’t the beginning in his own brain of hallucinations on
+burning, Blake-like lines.
+
+He stood gazing. He had never seen anything like that before,--no, by
+Jove, nor had most other people. ‘Oh, I say--don’t, don’t, _don’t_ put
+it on yet!’ he nearly cried out as he saw the hat in the dark,
+Iberian-looking youth’s hands being raised quickly above the girl’s head
+when that confounded dog disturbed them, and knew that in another
+instant it would descend and the light go out.
+
+The Iberian’s movements, however, were swift and decided, and the hat
+was not only put on but pulled on,--tugged on with vigour as far down
+over her eyes as it would go; and then, after a frowning glance round,
+the fellow drew her hand through his arm and walked her off quickly in
+the opposite direction.
+
+There was nothing left for Carruthers but to call his dog--an attractive
+bitch, who would have been a Sealyham if it hadn’t been for something
+its mother did once,--and it wasn’t Carruthers’ fault that it too should
+chance to be called Sally.
+
+‘Sally! Sally!’ he therefore very naturally shouted, raising his voice
+as much as possible, which was a great deal. ‘Sally! Come here! Sally!
+Come _here_, I tell you!’
+
+The hills round St. Mawes reverberated with entreaties that Sally should
+come.
+
+She did come, his Sally did, but behind it, running, came the Iberian as
+well. The girl was out of sight round the corner. Young Carruthers
+watched the hurrying approach of her companion with surprise, which
+increased when he saw the expression on his face.
+
+‘How dare you! How dare you!’ shouted Jocelyn directly he was near
+enough; upon which Carruthers’ surprise became amazement.
+
+‘What’s up?’ he inquired.
+
+‘How dare you call out Sally, and tell her to come here? Eh? What do you
+mean by it? You----’
+
+‘I say--hold on,’ exclaimed Carruthers quickly, raising a defensive arm.
+‘Hold on a bit. Look--here she is, here’s Sally----’ and he pointed to
+the fawning sinner.
+
+Jocelyn’s fists fell limply to his sides. He flushed, and looked
+extremely foolish. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.
+
+‘Don’t mention it,’ said Carruthers, with immense sarcastic politeness.
+
+‘It--it’s my wife’s name,’ stammered Jocelyn, ‘and I thought you knew
+her, and were incredibly cheeking her----’
+
+Carruthers, staring at his nervous twitching face, didn’t laugh, but
+simply nodded. Having seen Sally he simply nodded.
+
+‘That’s all right,’ he said gravely; and for some reason added
+impulsively, ‘old man.’
+
+He watched the thin figure hurrying off again. ‘A bit of
+responsibility,’ he thought. ‘The poor chap looks all nerves and funk
+already----’ for it was plain they couldn’t have been married long,
+plain they were both too young to have been anything long.
+
+Carruthers, who was as solid and matter-of-fact outside as he wasn’t
+inside, turned away so as not again to interrupt, and went home across
+the fields whistling sad tunes in minor keys. Marvellous beyond
+imagining to be married to beauty like that, but--yes, by God, one would
+be on wires the whole time, there’d be no end to one’s anxieties. And
+his final conclusion was that Jocelyn was a poor devil.
+
+
+§
+
+He might have concluded it even more emphatically if he could have
+followed him, and seen what he saw when he got round the corner where
+Sally had been left for a moment--only for a moment, mind you, said
+Jocelyn to himself indignantly,--and found her the centre of an absorbed
+group.
+
+She was smiling at two men and a woman, who were smiling and talking to
+her with every appearance of profound and eager interest. She was, in
+fact, being polite; a habit against which Mr. Pinner had repeatedly
+warned her, but, for the reason that it wasn’t a habit at all but her
+natural inability not to return smiles for smiles, had warned her in
+vain.
+
+These people, climbing up the hill on its other side and finding her
+standing there alone, had asked her, their faces wreathed in smiles and
+their eyes wide with astonishment and delight, the way; and she had only
+politely told them she was a stranger in those parts, and they were only
+asking her a few kindly questions, to which she had only answered, ‘’Ere
+on my ’oneymoon,’ and they were only expressing hopes that she would
+have a good time, when Jocelyn descended, swift, lean and vengeful, on
+the otherwise harmonious group.
+
+‘Yes?’ said Jocelyn, scowling round at them. ‘Yes?’
+
+‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, with a gesture of all-including
+friendliness.
+
+But it was no use her being friendly. Jocelyn was rude. How not be rude,
+with those two men standing there staring as if their eyes would bulge
+right out?
+
+‘I was under the impression,’ he said, glaring at them up and down, from
+the top of their badly hatted heads, along their under-exercised and
+over-coated bodies to their unsatisfactory feet, ‘that it was possible
+in England to leave a lady alone for two minutes without her being
+subject to annoyance.’
+
+‘I’m sure----’ began the woman of the party, turning very red, while
+the men looked both scared and sheepish.
+
+‘Don’t mind ‘_im_,’ said Sally sweetly, desirous of mollifying.
+
+‘On the contrary, I assure you that you had much better--much better,’
+declared Jocelyn truculently. And again he pulled Sally’s hand through
+his arm, and again he hurried her off.
+
+‘Really,’ he said, when they were out of sight, and only green fields,
+empty of everything but cows, were visible. ‘Really.’
+
+He stopped and wiped his forehead.
+
+‘’Ot?’ ventured Sally, timid but sympathetic.
+
+‘To think that I can’t leave you alone a minute!’ he cried.
+
+‘They ask me the way,’ Sally explained.
+
+‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite. And what did you say, might I inquire?’
+
+‘Said as ’ow I didn’t know it.’
+
+‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite.’
+
+‘Bein’, as one might say, a stranger in these parts,’ Sally explained
+still further, for these repeated quites upset her into speech.
+
+‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite.’
+
+‘Now don’t say that, Mr. Luke--please don’t, now,’ she begged.
+
+‘Perhaps you, on your part, won’t say Mr. Luke,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Not
+quite so often. Not more than a dozen times a day, for instance.’
+
+Sally was silent. She mustn’t think of him as Mr. Luke, she couldn’t
+think of him by his outlandish other name, so she thought of him as
+Husband. ’Usband’s cross,’ she thought; and withdrew into a prudent
+dumbness.
+
+He ended by scrambling her through the hedge, and across a field as far
+from the path as possible; and, sitting her down with her back to
+everything except another hedge, tried to tell her a few things of a
+necessary but minatory nature.
+
+‘Sally,’ he began, lying down on the grass beside her and taking her
+hand in his, ‘you know, don’t you, that I love you?’
+
+Sally, cautiously coming out of her silence for a moment, as one who
+puts a toe into cold water and instantly draws it back again, said,
+‘Yes, Mr.----’ stopping herself just in time, and hastily amending,
+‘What I means is, yes.’
+
+‘And you know, don’t you, that my one thought is for you and your
+happiness?’
+
+Yes, she supposed she knew that, thought Sally, fidgeting uneasily, for
+though the voice and manner were the voice and manner of Mr. Luke there
+was somehow a smack about them that reminded her of her father when he
+was going to do what was known in the family as learning her.
+
+‘Don’t you?’ insisted Jocelyn, as she said nothing. ‘Don’t you?’
+
+He looked up into her face in search of an answer, and his voice
+faltered, he forgot completely what he was going to say, and whispering
+‘Oh, I _worship_ you!’ began kissing the hand he held, covering it with
+kisses, and seizing the other one and covering it with kisses too, while
+his ears, she could see, for his head lay in her lap, went crimson.
+
+And Sally, who had already discovered that when Jocelyn’s ears turned
+crimson he did nothing but kiss her and murmur words that were not,
+however incomprehensible, anyhow angry ones, knew that for this time she
+was being let off.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+§
+
+
+He kept her indoors for the rest of the day, and decided that in future
+they would use the car as a means of getting well out of reach of St.
+Mawes, and then, leaving it in some obscure village, take the necessary
+exercise undisturbed. The boat would have done for getting away in, but
+the fisherman wouldn’t let them have it without him, and he too stared
+persistently at Sally. His ridiculous name was Cupp. ‘Serve him right,’
+thought Jocelyn, who disliked him intensely.
+
+These difficulties considerably interfered with the peace of the
+honeymoon. Having to take precautions, and scheme before doing ordinary
+things such as go out for a walk, seemed perfectly monstrous to Jocelyn.
+He was inclined, though he struggled against it, to blame Sally. He knew
+it was grossly unfair to blame her, but then it was outside his theories
+that a modest woman, however lovely, shouldn’t be able in England to
+proceed on her lawful occasions unmolested. There must be, he thought,
+something in Sally’s behaviour, though he couldn’t quite see what.
+
+He took her away the next morning for the whole day in the car, and,
+leaving it at a lonely wayside inn, marched her off for the exercise
+they both needed. He needed it, he knew, for he was getting quite
+livery, and so, he dared say, was she; though it would have been as
+easy to imagine a new-born flower having a liver as Sally. Anyhow, she
+must be exercised; her health was now his concern, Jocelyn told himself.
+Everything of hers was now his concern. The lovely child had been
+miraculously handed over to him by Destiny--thus augustly did he dub Mr.
+Pinner--and there was no one but him to protect and guide and teach her.
+No one but him jolly well should, either, said Jocelyn to himself,
+baring his teeth at the mere thought, savagely possessive, strongly
+resembling a growling dog over a newly-acquired bone.
+
+But it was trying, having to hide her like this. It came to that, that
+he had to hide her if he was to have any peace. Well, when he took her
+to London, and settled down there seriously, there wouldn’t be this
+trouble, because he intended to live in the slums. Slums were the
+places, he felt sure, for being let alone in. Not, of course, the more
+cut-throat kind, but obscure streets where everybody was too busy being
+poor to be interested in a girl’s beauty. To be interested in that,
+Jocelyn thought he knew, you have to have had and be going to have a
+properly filling dinner every day. No dinners, no love. One only had to
+think a little to see this must be so. In such a street, how peaceful
+they would be, he in one room writing, she in another room not writing.
+Nor would there be any servant difficulty for them either, because Sally
+was used to housework, and knew no other conditions than those in which
+she had to do it herself. He and she were going to lead simple lives,
+irradiated by her enchanting loveliness; and presently, when she had
+begun to profit by the lessons he would give her in the art of correct
+speech, she would be more of a companion to him, more able to--well,
+converse.
+
+For the moment, he couldn’t disguise from himself, she was weak in
+conversation. To look at her, to look at her strangely noble little
+head, with everything there that is supposed to go with mind--the broad
+sweep of the brow, the beautifully moulded temples, the radiance in the
+eyes, the light that seemed to play over the vivid face with its swiftly
+changing expressions, each one more lovely than the last, and the whole
+amazing creature a poem of delicate colouring, except where colour had
+caught fire and become the flaming wonder of her hair--to look at this,
+and then hear the meagre, the really most meagre and defective
+observations that came out of it all, was a surprise. A growing
+surprise. Frankly, a growingly painful surprise. Somehow he hadn’t
+noticed it before, but now he every hour more plainly perceived a grave
+discrepancy between Sally’s appearance and her reality. Or was what he
+saw her reality, and what he heard mere appearance?
+
+At night he was sure this was so. Next morning he was afraid it wasn’t.
+In any case, she didn’t match.
+
+
+§
+
+Curious, thought Jocelyn a day or two later, how completely Sally didn’t
+match. Perhaps he was getting livery, and beholding her with a jaundiced
+eye. It wouldn’t be surprising if this were so, seeing the reversal of
+his ordinary habits that marriage had made. His life till then had been
+one of excessive intellectual activity, and excessive sexual inactivity.
+Now it was just the opposite. It seemed to him that he was living
+entirely on his emotions and his nerves, doing nothing but make love,
+and never thinking a single thought worth thinking. This preoccupation
+with Sally’s discrepances, for instance--what, after all, were a girl’s
+discrepances compared to the importance, the interest, of his brain work
+till he met her?
+
+He would come down to breakfast, to the sober facts of bacon and grey
+morning light, in a highly critical mood, feeling very old, and wise,
+and mature, and of course--there could be no two opinions as to that--in
+everything, except just physical beauty, Sally’s superior. Then she
+would come down, and, cautiously saying nothing, smile at him; and he
+would be forced, in spite of himself, to wonder, as he gazed at her in a
+fresh surprise, whether there could be anything in the world superior to
+such beauty. Not himself, anyhow, he thought, with his little inky
+ambitions, his desire to express and impress himself, his craving to
+find out and do. Sally had no cravings that he could discover; she was
+mere lovely acquiescence, content--and with what exquisiteness--to be.
+
+Still, in this world one couldn’t just sit silent, and serene, and
+wonderful; and the minute circumstances obliged her to say something her
+discrepances worried him again. It really was surprising: pure
+perfection outside, and inside--he hated to think it, but more and more
+feared he recognised--pure Pinner. He must take her in hand. He must
+teach her, train her in the manners expected in her new sphere of life.
+
+He pulled himself together, and took her in hand. During the second week
+after their marriage she was, as it were, almost constantly in hand; and
+towards its end Jocelyn’s consciousness of his responsibility and duty,
+which at first had faded away in the evening and disappeared entirely
+at night, stretched further and further across the day like a
+lengthening shadow, till at last it reached right into his very bed. The
+image of his mother had begun to loom nearer,--his mother, whom he had
+forgotten in the first fever of passion, but to whom he would
+undoubtedly soon now have to show Sally. Show her? Nothing so easy and
+sure of its effect as showing Sally, but it was what would happen
+immediately after she had been shown that Jocelyn, daily more able to
+contemplate Sally objectively as his honeymoon grew longer, began to
+consider.
+
+There was no time to lose. He took her in hand. He started by attacking
+her h’s, whose absence had early become acutely distressing to him.
+Every day he devoted an hour the first thing after breakfast to them,
+making her talk to him, to her regret, for she by then well knew that
+little good came of talk, and patiently, each time she dropped one,
+picking it up and handing it back to her, so to speak, with careful
+marginal comments.
+
+He found her most obtuse. Ordinary talk wasn’t enough. He had to invent
+sentences, special sentences for her to learn by heart and practise on,
+with little pitfalls in their middles which she was to avoid.
+
+She seemed incapable of avoiding anything. Into each pitfall Sally
+invariably fell; and unwilling to believe that she couldn’t keep out of
+them if she really tried, Jocelyn said the sentences over and over again
+to her, obstinately persevering, determined she should learn.
+
+_Hefty Harry hurries after his hat._ Sally drew in long breaths, and
+blew them out again at the beginning of each word, hoping they would
+turn into h’s, though for the life of her she couldn’t see any
+difference between the way she rendered _Hefty Harry_ and the way
+Jocelyn did.
+
+_Husbands inhabit heaven._ This was another one, worse than _Hefty
+Harry_, because it wasn’t enough to blow out her breath at the beginning
+of each word, but she had somehow to get it out in the middle of the
+middle one as well; besides, husbands didn’t inhabit heaven till they
+were dead, and Jocelyn’s habit of harping on heaven upset her, for
+heaven meant death first, and ever since her mother’s death, at which
+Sally had been present, she had had the poorest opinion of the whole
+thing.
+
+During the lesson Jocelyn carefully gazed out of the window, keeping his
+eyes off her, because this was serious, this was important, and mustn’t
+be interfered with by her face. There he sat, patient but determined,
+holding her hand so as to reassure her, saying the sentences slowly and
+distinctly, while Sally, moist with effort, diligently blew. Why was it
+so important? she vaguely wondered. He seemed to love her a lot,
+especially in the evenings, and kept on telling her at the times when
+his ears were red how happy he was, so what more did he want? What was
+the use of bothering over things like h’s, which he declared were there
+but of which she could see no sign? She and her father, they had never
+worried about them, and they had got along all right. But Sally was
+docile; Sally was obedient and goodnatured; Sally earnestly wished to
+give people what they wanted; and if what Husband wanted was h’s, then
+she would try her utmost to provide them. If only she were quite clear
+as to what they were! Perhaps, by plodding, she would some day discover.
+
+She plodded; and the nearest she got to criticism of this new
+development in her life was occasionally, when after breakfast Jocelyn
+called her over to the window, where he had placed two chairs in
+readiness for the lesson and pulled down the blind below the level of
+her head, occasionally, very occasionally, to murmur to herself, ‘Them
+h’s.’
+
+
+§
+
+But it wasn’t only her h’s, it wasn’t only the way she pronounced the
+few words that seemed to be at her disposal; there were other things
+that disquieted Jocelyn, as he awoke more and more from the wild first
+worship of her beauty. He appeared to be surrounded, out of doors and
+in, by an increasing number of difficulties. There was that business of
+not being able to go out without becoming the instant centre of the
+entire attention of St. Mawes,--most painful to Jocelyn, who had a fixed
+notion, implanted in him early in the decent cover of Almond Tree
+Cottage, that the truly well-bred were never conspicuous. How
+unpleasant, how extraordinarily unpleasant when, the morning lesson over
+and the need for exercise imperative, he went round to the garage to
+fetch the car, to find on his return the sea-wall opposite their
+lodgings black with expectant loungers; how unpleasant, how
+extraordinarily unpleasant to have to hurry Sally into the thing, as if
+she were the centre figure of a _cause célèbre_ leaving the Law Courts;
+and the car, being an old one bought second-hand, sometimes wouldn’t
+start--twice that happened--and then to see how those loungers sprang
+into life and flocked across to help! Jocelyn, used only to quiet
+comings and goings and no one taking the least notice of anything he
+did, used, in fact to being what his mother described as well-bred,
+felt as if he had suddenly turned into a circus.
+
+And indoors, too, he had difficulties, apart from and in addition to the
+difficulties at the lessons, for Sally showed a tendency, mild but
+unmistakable, to coalesce with the Cupps. She wanted to help Mrs. Cupp
+make the bed in the morning, she tried to clear away the breakfast, so
+as to save her feet, as she put it, and once, on some excuse or other,
+she actually left Jocelyn by himself in the parlour and got away into
+the kitchen, where he found her presently, on going to look, kissing a
+fat and hideous child that could only be a little Cupp.
+
+To do her justice Mrs. Cupp in no way that Jocelyn could see encouraged
+this; on the contrary, she seemed a particularly stand-offish sort of
+woman, who not only knew her own place but knew Sally’s as well, and
+wished to keep her in it. Unfortunate that Sally should be, apparently,
+so entirely without that knowledge.
+
+Jocelyn did his best to impart it. ‘You belong to me now, Sally,’ he
+explained, ‘and my place and sphere is your place and sphere, and my
+relations and friends your relations and friends. I don’t go and sit in
+kitchens, nor am I friends, beyond what every one is in regard to that
+class, with the Cupps. I don’t, and therefore you mustn’t.’
+
+Was this speech snobbish? He hoped not; he trusted not. He despised
+snobbishness. His mother had most carefully taught him to. She would
+shudder at the mere word, and the shudder had got into his childhood’s
+bones.
+
+Sally gave herself great pains to understand, looking at him attentively
+while he spoke and coming to the conclusion that what Usband was driving
+at was that she had got to sit quiet and remember she was now a lady.
+She sat quiet, remembering it. She made no attempt at any further
+budging from her place, even when Mrs. Cupp dropped things off the
+overloaded tray at her very feet, and her fingers itched to pick them
+up. She managed not to; she managed to take no notice whatever of them,
+and, bending her head over the paper Jocelyn had written her lesson out
+on in a fair round hand, would bury herself in it instead, saying it out
+loud as he had bidden her, conning it diligently.
+
+The room re-echoed with _Hefty Harry_, and the deep preliminary drawings
+in and blowings out of breaths that were meant to become h’s, and never
+did.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+§
+
+It was impossible for young Carruthers, having been vouchsafed a vision
+of Sally, to stop himself from trying to have another. He was drawn as
+by a magnet. His walks, after that Sunday, took him daily down to St.
+Mawes, where, having briskly gone the length of the front swinging his
+stick, he would lean awhile--as long as he dared without becoming
+conspicuous--against the sea-wall, smoking and ostensibly considering
+the horizon, but really missing nobody who came or went along the road.
+The Sealyham Sally was left at home, but other dogs were brought because
+they are such wonderful introducers, and the road to acquaintanceship,
+young Carruthers knew, is paved with good dogs.
+
+He wasn’t sure that any profit would come of it if he did see the
+honeymooners and get into conversation,--probably not; but he couldn’t
+help it; he had to try; he was drawn. And very soon he discovered which
+house they were staying in, because the other loungers, smoking and
+gazing out to sea, rare figures at ordinary times and scattered sparsely
+over a quarter of a mile, were now considerably increased in numbers,
+and thickened into a knot at one particular point. That point,
+Carruthers unhesitatingly concluded, was where she lived.
+
+Unwilling to be seen doing this sort of thing, he held himself aloof
+from the knot, smoking his pipe at a decent distance; but none the less
+nothing escaped him that happened at the windows or the door of the
+little house. The house, he knew, for his family had lived in the
+neighbourhood for many years, was the house of the fisherman Cupp. And
+he thought, thrice happy Cupp, and three times thrice happy Mrs.
+Cupp,--for she would be constantly in and out of the very room, and be
+able to look at--no, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t say Sally, not with his
+own four-legged Sally so grotesquely profaning the name.
+
+He was all wrong, however, about the Cupps. They were not at all happy;
+at least, Mrs. Cupp wasn’t, and unless Mrs. Cupp was happy Cupp, though
+he only dimly apprehended this truth and explained the fact of his
+discomfort in many ways that were not the right ones, couldn’t be happy
+either. For Mrs. Cupp, who beheld Sally with astonishment on her first
+appearance, no one in the least like that ever yet having been seen in
+St. Mawes, quickly began to have doubts as to whether her lodgers were
+married. Everybody in St. Mawes was married, except those who were going
+to be or had been, and it disturbed Mrs. Cupp terribly, who all her life
+had held her head high and looked people in the face, to think she was
+perhaps harbouring and cooking for a person who was neither virgin,
+wife, nor widow.
+
+For a brief time, so brief that it could be counted in hours, Sally’s
+nightgown had reassured her, because it was essentially the nightgown of
+the really married, a nightgown that Mrs. Cupp herself might have worn,
+and the most moral laundress had not to blush over. Up to the chin, down
+to the toes, long-sleeved, stiff, solid, edged at the throat and wrists
+with plain scallops, this nightgown did at first help Mrs. Cupp to hope
+that her lodgers were all right; but back came her doubts, and more
+insistent than before, when she perceived that Cupp too was noticing the
+young person’s appearance, and, though he said nothing, was beginning to
+behave all sly; and they deepened finally into certainty on her becoming
+aware of those thickening clusters of loungers constantly hanging about
+opposite her house. Even young Mr. Carruthers. Oh, she saw him plain
+enough, and knew all right what he was after; for she hadn’t been to the
+pictures over at Falmouth for nothing, and she had learned from them
+that that sort of girl got men come buzzing round her as if she were a
+pot of honey and they just so many flies. Cupp shouldn’t, though. Cupp
+shouldn’t get buzzing. Cupp, after fifteen years of being a steady
+husband, wasn’t going to be let buzz--not much, said Mrs. Cupp to
+herself, scouring her kitchen with violence.
+
+She said nothing to him, however, for two, as she would soon show him,
+could play at his game of acting sly; but when at the end of the first
+fortnight of the Lukes’ stay Jocelyn, on her coming in to clear away the
+breakfast, got out his money and was preparing as usual to pay her the
+next week’s lodging in advance, she told him without wasting words that
+the rooms were let.
+
+‘Let?’ repeated Jocelyn, taken aback.
+
+‘There’s an end to everything,’ said Mrs. Cupp enigmatically, as she
+cleared the table with great swift swoops.
+
+‘But,’ protested Jocelyn, annoyed and surprised, ‘we intended to stay at
+least another week.’
+
+‘I say there’s an end to everything,’ said Mrs. Cupp even more
+emphatically, crowding the plates noisily on to a tray. ‘And one of
+them’s my patience.’
+
+Jocelyn stared. Sally, raising her head from her daily task, on which
+she was at that moment engaged, looked on with the air of a mild,
+disinterested angel.
+
+‘But what on earth has happened? What’s the matter?’ asked Jocelyn.
+
+‘You only got to cast an eye out of the winder to see what’s the
+matter,’ said Mrs. Cupp, jerking her elbow in its direction. ‘_They_
+don’t collect like that round parties that’s respectable.’
+
+And dropping some forks off the overloaded tray she clattered out of the
+room.
+
+Jocelyn turned swiftly to Sally. ‘You see?’ he said.
+
+‘See wot?’ asked Sally, who was about to stoop and pick up the forks,
+but remembered not to just in time.
+
+Yes; see what, indeed. That it was her fault? That this disgrace had
+been brought on him through her fault? Was that, Jocelyn asked himself,
+shocked at the tempest of injustice that had for an instant swept him
+off his feet, what he wanted her to see?
+
+‘I meant,’ he said, ashamed of his unfairness, ‘you heard. You did hear,
+didn’t you, what the horrible woman was saying?’
+
+Sally nodded. ‘Thinks we ain’t married,’ she said. She seemed quite
+undisturbed. ‘Well, it ain’t much use thinkin’ we ain’t when we are,’
+she remarked.
+
+‘Unfortunately she’s sure we’re not, so that we are being turned out,’
+said Jocelyn, dropping her hand, which he had taken, for this placidity,
+which seemed to him evidence of inability to grasp a situation, instead
+of soothing made him angry again.
+
+He strode across to the window, and grabbing at the blind pulled it down
+still lower. How inexpressibly humiliating to be turned out, how
+unendurable to have people thinking Sally wasn’t respectable, and that
+he, _he_ of all people, would come off with a girl for that sort of
+loathsome lark.
+
+‘It ain’t much use bein’ sure, when I got my marriage lines,’ said Sally
+with the same calm. ‘Let alone my weddin’ ring.’ And she added
+complacently after a minute, ‘Upstairs in my box.’ And after a further
+minute, ‘I mean, my marriage lines.’
+
+Then, supposing that the interruption to the lesson might now be
+regarded as over, and that it would therefore be expected of her that
+she should get on with it, she applied herself once more with patient
+industry to her task.
+
+‘_H_-usbands _h_-in’abit _h_-eaven,’ she began again, assiduously
+blowing.
+
+‘Oh, my God,’ said Jocelyn, under his breath.
+
+
+§
+
+They left St. Mawes during the dinner hour. When Jocelyn told her they
+were going to leave almost at once, and she had better pack, Sally
+merely said Right O, and went upstairs to do it.
+
+Right O, thought Jocelyn. Right O. Not a question, not a comment of any
+kind. Convenient, of course, in a way, but was this companionship? Could
+there be much character behind such resistlessness? Yet if she had asked
+questions and made comments he would, he knew, have flown at her; so
+that he was being unfair again and unreasonable, and he hated himself.
+
+He usedn’t to be unfair and unreasonable, he thought, standing in front
+of the fireless grate, a wrathful eye on the loungers clotted on the
+other side of the road; and as for being angry, such a disturbance of
+one’s balance, whenever he had observed it in others, had seemed to him
+simply the sign of imperfect education. The uneducated were swept by
+furies, not scientific thinkers. Now just the contrary was happening,
+and the uneducated Sally remained serene, while he was in an almost
+constant condition of emotion of one kind or another. Marriage, he
+supposed gloomily; marriage. The invasion of the spirit by the flesh. So
+absurd, too, the whole thing--God, how absurd when he thought of it in
+the morning, and remembered the cringing worship of the night before.
+Absurd, absurd, this nightly abdication of the mind, this abject bowing
+down of the higher before the lower.... The worst of it was he didn’t
+seem able to help himself. Whatever his theories were in the daytime,
+whatever his critical detachment, he only had to be close to Sally at
+night....
+
+And in the daytime, instead of at least in the daytime being tranquil
+and able to get back his balance, every sort of annoyance crowded on
+him. Were all honeymoons like this? Impossible. They hadn’t got Sally in
+them. It was Sally who----
+
+The door opened, and there she was again, not ten minutes after having
+gone up. For Sally’s things being of the kind that are quick to pack,
+owing to their fewness, she was ready and down before he had had time,
+hardly, to be sure she was going to keep him waiting. So that he
+resented this too, because he wasn’t able to be angry with her over
+something definite and legitimate. He wanted to have a legitimate excuse
+for being angry with her, for it was really all her fault that they had
+been insulted and turned out. Of course it was. If he had been with his
+mother, Mrs. Cupp would have been deference itself, and that confounded
+sea-wall empty. It was all Sally. Looking like that. Looking so
+different from any one else. Looking so entirely different from the
+accepted idea of a decent man’s wife. Besides, she ought anyhow to have
+had more things to pack. That one small tin trunk of hers was a disgrace
+to him. Beastly thing, how he hated it. All yellow. He must get her a
+proper trunk, and fill it properly, before he could appear with her at
+Almond Tree Cottage. There certainly were drawbacks to taking a wife in
+her shift, as one’s forbears called it.
+
+Yet, when she came in ready to start, she looked so astonishingly
+_right_, tin trunk or not, and quite apart from her face. She looked
+right; her clothes did. She might have been a young duchess, thought
+Jocelyn, who had never seen a duchess. He hadn’t an idea how the miracle
+was worked. Not by dressmakers and cleverness, of that he was certain,
+for the poor Pinners would have to buy clothes off the peg. Perhaps
+because she was so reedy tall. Perhaps because of the way she moved.
+Perhaps because she was so slender that there hardly seemed to be
+anything inside the clothes, and they couldn’t help, left in this way
+almost to themselves, hanging in graceful folds. But _he_ knew well
+enough what was inside them--the delicate young loveliness, just
+beginning to flower; and at the thought his anger all left him, and he
+didn’t care any more about the Cupps or the sea-wall, and the feeling of
+humility came over him that came over him each time he saw her beauty,
+and he went to her and took both her hands, her little red hands, the
+only part of her that had been got at by life and spoilt, and kissed
+them, and said, ‘Forgive me, Sally.’
+
+‘Wot you been doin’?’ asked Sally, surprised.
+
+‘Not loving you enough,’ said Jocelyn, kissing her hands again.
+
+‘Now _don’t_,’ said Sally very earnestly, ‘_don’t_ you go thinkin’ that,
+now----’ for the idea that she, who had been being loved almost more
+than she could stand on this trip, and wouldn’t have been able to stand
+if it hadn’t been for knowing it was her bounden duty, might have to be
+loved still more if Mr. Luke got it into his head that she ought to be,
+excessively alarmed her.
+
+
+§
+
+The departure was not unmarked, as is sometimes said, by incident. Cupp,
+when the luggage had to be brought down, wasn’t to be found, Mrs. Cupp
+seemed incommunicably absorbed over a saucepan, and Jocelyn, with some
+sharpness refusing Sally’s help, whose instinct after years spent doing
+such things was to lay hold of anything that had to be laid hold of and
+drag it, got the tin box and his suitcase downstairs himself, and said
+Damn very loud when he knocked his head at the turn of the little
+staircase.
+
+Sally heard him, and was enormously surprised and shocked. This was
+swearing. This was what she had been most carefully taught to look upon
+as real sin. Nothing else had shocked her on the honeymoon, because she
+had nothing to go by when it came to husbands other than her father’s
+assurance that, except in the daytime, they weren’t gentlemen, and her
+own solemn vows in church to obey; but she knew all about swearing. It
+was wrong. It was strictly forbidden in God’s Holy Word. That and drink
+were the two evils spoken of most frequently in her home, and with most
+condemnation. They went hand in hand. Drink ruined people; and, on their
+way to ruin and when they had got to it, they swore.
+
+This is what Sally had been brought up to believe, so that when,
+standing in the doorway of the parlour watching Jocelyn labouring down
+the stairs with her trunk and longing to give him a hand, she heard him,
+after knocking his head, say a most loud clear damn, she was horrified.
+Her husband swearing. And not been drinking, either. Just had his tea as
+usual at breakfast, and been with her ever since, so she knew he
+couldn’t have. Next thing she’d have to listen to would be God’s name
+being taken in vain; and at the thought of that the blood of all the
+Pinners, that strictly God-fearing, Sunday-observing, Bible-loving race,
+surged to her cheeks.
+
+‘Mr. _Luke_!’ she exclaimed, throwing his teaching as to the avoidance
+of this name to the winds.
+
+‘Hullo?’ said Jocelyn, stopping short on the stairs and peering down at
+her round the edge of the tin trunk, arrested by the note in her voice.
+
+‘You didn’t ought to swear,’ said Sally, taking all her courage in both
+hands, her face scarlet. ‘There’s no call for it, and you didn’t ought
+to swear--you _know_ you didn’t ought to.’
+
+‘But I only said damn,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Wouldn’t you, if you bashed your
+head against this confounded sticking out bit of ceiling?’
+
+‘Mr. _Luke_!’ cried Sally again, her eyes filling with tears. That he
+should not only say bad words himself but think her capable of them....
+Often she had been bewildered by things he said and did, but now she
+looked up at him through the tears in her eyes in a complete
+non-comprehension. It was as though she were boxed away from him behind
+a great thick wall, or cut off across a great big river, alone on an
+island, while he stood far off and unreachable on the opposite bank, and
+she had somehow to get to him, to stay close to him, because he was her
+husband. Dimly these images presented themselves to her mind, dimly and
+confused, but nevertheless producing a very clear anxiety and
+discomfort.
+
+‘I’m sorry,’ said Jocelyn, carefully coming down the remaining stairs
+and depositing the trunk sideways in the narrow passage, for though the
+trunk, as a trunk, was small, the passage, as a passage, was smaller;
+and in his turn as he looked at her he grew red, for he had just
+remembered that he never said damn in the presence of his mother or of
+the other ladies of South Winch, which was a place one didn’t swear in,
+however much and unexpectedly he chanced to hurt himself. Was this
+_laissez aller_ in Sally’s presence due to his consciousness that she
+wasn’t a lady, or due to the fact that she was his wife? Jocelyn
+disliked both these explanations, and accordingly, in his turn, grew
+red.
+
+‘Forgive me, Sally,’ he said for the second time within half an hour.
+
+This time she had no doubt as to what had to be forgiven.
+
+‘Promise not to do it no more,’ she begged. ‘Promise now--do.’
+
+‘Oh Sally, I’ll promise anything, anything,’ said Jocelyn staring at
+her, caught again into emotion by the extraordinary beauty of her
+troubled face.
+
+‘Father says,’ said Sally, still looking at him through tears, ‘that if
+somebody swears, then they drinks. An’ if they drinks, then they swears.
+An’ it goes ‘and in ‘and, and they don’t stop ever, once they starts,
+till they gets to----.’
+
+She broke off, and stood looking at him in silence. The picture was too
+awful a one. She couldn’t go on.
+
+‘What do they get to, my angel, my beautiful angel?’ asked Jocelyn,
+kissing her softly, not listening any more.
+
+‘’Ell,’ whispered Sally.
+
+‘Now _you’re_ swearing,’ murmured Jocelyn dreamily, no longer fully
+conscious, shutting her eyes with kisses. ‘Your sweet, sweet eyes,’ he
+murmured, kissing them over and over again.
+
+No, Sally couldn’t make head or tail of Mr. Luke. Better not try. Better
+give it up. _She_ swearing?
+
+
+§
+
+She longed very much for the company of Mr. Pinner.
+
+‘Father,’ she thought, while Jocelyn was fetching the car, and she was
+standing alone in the passage watching the luggage, for she had been
+bred carefully never to leave luggage an instant by itself,
+‘Father--_’e_ could tell me.’
+
+What she wanted Mr. Pinner to tell her wasn’t at all clear in her mind,
+but she was quite clear that he would tell her if he could, whereas
+Jocelyn, who certainly could, wouldn’t. Mr. Luke, she felt in her bones,
+even if she had the courage to ask him anything would only be angry with
+her because she didn’t already know it; yet how could she know it if
+nobody had ever told her? At home they usedn’t to jump down one’s throat
+if one asked a question. ‘Snug,’ thought Sally, her head drooping in
+wistful recollection, while with the point of her umbrella she
+affectionately stroked the sides of the tin trunk, ‘snug at ’ome in the
+shop--snug at ’ome in the lil’ shop--’ and whatever else being married
+to a gentleman was, it wasn’t snug.
+
+Marriage to a gentleman--why, you never knew where you were from one
+moment to another; nothing settled about it; no cut and come again
+feeling; all ups and downs, without, as one might say, any middles; all
+either cross looks or, without warning, red ears, kisses, and
+oh-Sallyings. It was as if words weren’t the same when a gentleman got
+hold of them. They seemed somehow to separate. Queer, thought Sally,
+wistfully stroking the tin trunk.
+
+She groped round in her hazy thoughts. She was in a strange country, and
+there was a fog, and yet she had somehow to get somewhere. _She_
+swearing?
+
+
+§
+
+The car came round, and Jocelyn came in.
+
+‘Hasn’t Cupp turned up yet?’ he asked.
+
+Sally shook her head.
+
+‘I want him to help me cord the luggage on,’ said Jocelyn, squeezing
+past between her and the trunk.
+
+‘I can,’ said Sally.
+
+‘No you can’t,’ snapped Jocelyn, striding to the kitchen door and
+opening it.
+
+‘Is Mr. Cupp anywhere about?’ he haughtily asked the figure bent over
+the saucepan. He needed his help, or nothing would have induced him to
+speak to Mrs. Cupp again.
+
+‘No,’ said Mrs. Cupp, without ceasing to stir; but being a good woman,
+who tried always to speak the truth, she amplified this into accuracy.
+‘’E’s somewhere, but he ain’t about,’ said Mrs. Cupp.
+
+For, having, a short way with her when it came to husbands, she had
+turned the key that morning on Cupp while he was still asleep, well
+knowing that he wouldn’t dare get banging and shouting lest the
+neighbours should find out his wife had locked him in, and his shame
+become public. Besides, he was aware of the reason, and would keep quiet
+all right, she having had a straight talk with him the night before.
+
+Cupp had been discomfited.
+
+‘Don’t you go thinkin’ you’re goin’ to get adulteratin’ at your age and
+after ’avin’ been a decent ’usband these fifteen years,’ said Mrs. Cupp.
+
+’Oo’s been adulteratin’?’ growled Cupp, strong in the knowledge that he
+hadn’t, but weak in the consciousness that he would have liked to have.
+
+‘In your ’eart you ’ave, Cupp,’ said Mrs. Cupp, who had her Bible at her
+fingers’ ends, ‘and Scripture says it’s the same thing.’
+
+Cupp at this sighed deeply, for he knew it wasn’t.
+
+‘Scripture says,’ said Mrs. Cupp, sitting up very straight in bed and
+addressing Cupp’s back as he lay speechless beside her, ‘that ’ooso
+looks at a woman an’ lusts after ’er ’as committed adultery with ’er in
+’is ’eart. Ain’t you been lookin’ at that there girl and lustin’ after
+’er in your ’eart, Cupp? Ain’t you? Why, I _seen_ you. Seen you doin’ it
+round doors, seen you doin’ it out of winders. You been adulteratin’ all
+over the place. _I’ll_ learn you to get lustin’----’
+
+And when she went downstairs in the morning she locked him in.
+
+So Jocelyn had to carry out the luggage himself, bidding Sally stay
+where she was and wait quietly till he called her, and cording it on
+without the assistance, curtly refused, of the loungers against the
+sea-wall.
+
+His mother’s luggage on their little holiday jaunts had been so neat, so
+easily handled, fixed on in two minutes; but the tin trunk was a
+difficult, slippery shape, and anyhow an ignoble object. Every aspect of
+it annoyed him. It was like going about with a servant’s luggage, he
+thought, wrestling with the thing, which was too high and not long
+enough, and refused to fit in with his suitcase.
+
+‘Off?’ inquired one of the loungers affably.
+
+‘Looks like it,’ said Jocelyn, tugging at the cord.
+
+What a question. Silly ass. ‘Do you mind standing a little further
+back?’ he said with icy anger. ‘You see, if you come so close I can’t
+get----’ he tugged--‘any----’ he tugged, setting his
+teeth--‘_purchase_----’
+
+Nobody moved; neither the particular lounger he was speaking to, nor the
+others.
+
+‘Upon my word, sir,’ said Jocelyn, jerking round furiously, ready to
+fight the lot of them.
+
+But they were not attending to him. Their eyes were all fixed on the
+parlour window, to which Sally, so anxious not to keep Jocelyn waiting a
+minute when he called as to risk disobeying him, had stolen to see how
+near ready he was.
+
+There she stood, almost full length, the blind, now that they were
+leaving, drawn up, and the sun shining straight on her. St. Mawes had
+not had such a chance before. Its other glimpses of her had been
+flashes. Nor had the place in all its history ever till now been visited
+by beauty. Pretty girls had passed through it and disappeared, or stayed
+in it and disappeared equally completely because of growing old, and
+there was a tradition that in the last century the doctor had had a wife
+who for a brief time was very pretty, and during that brief time caused
+considerable uproar; but no one living had seen her, it was all hearsay
+from the last generation. This at the window wasn’t hearsay. This was
+the thing itself, the rare, heavenly thing at its most exquisite moment.
+Naturally the loungers took no further heed of Jocelyn; naturally with
+one accord they lifted up their eyes, and greedily drank in.
+
+Jocelyn gave the cord one final and very vicious tug, knotted it
+somehow, and ran indoors.
+
+‘What on earth you must go and stand at the window for----’ he
+exclaimed, hurrying into the room and catching her by the arm. ‘I was
+going to fetch you in a minute. Come along, then--let’s start, let’s get
+out of this confounded place. Ready? Got everything? I don’t want any
+delays once we’re outside----’
+
+Hastily he looked round the room; there was nothing there. Hastily he
+looked over Sally; she seemed complete. Then he rushed her out to the
+car exactly as if, head downwards, they were both plunging into
+something most unpleasant which had to be gone through before they could
+escape to freedom.
+
+‘Monstrous, monstrous,’ said Jocelyn to himself. ‘The whole thing is
+incredible and fantastic. I might be the impresario of a prima donna or
+a cinema star’--and he remembered, though at the time, like so many
+other things, it had drifted past his ears unnoticed, that that
+grotesque creature his father-in-law had said Sally had a gift for
+collecting crowds.
+
+How painfully true, thought Jocelyn, plunging into the one waiting
+outside. What a regrettable gift. Of all gifts this was the one he
+could best have done without in anybody he was obliged to be with; for
+he hated crowds, he hated public attention, he was thin-skinned and
+sensitive directly anything pulled him out of the happy oblivion of his
+work. As far as he had got in life, and it seemed to him a long way, he
+judged that quite the best of all conditions was to sit in an eye-proof
+shell, invisible to and unconscious of what is usually called the world.
+And speculate; and discover; and verify.
+
+Well, no use thinking of that now.
+
+‘Get in, get in,’ he urged under his breath, helping Sally with such
+energy that she was clumsier at it than usual. ‘Never mind the rug--you
+can arrange that afterwards. Here--I’ll hold the umbrella----’
+
+They got off. He could drive perfectly well, yet they got off only after
+a series of forward bounds and the stopping of his engine. But they did
+get off--through the loungers, past the windows with heads at them,
+round the sharp corner beyond the houses, up the extraordinarily steep
+hill.
+
+Sally held her breath. This hill terrified her. Suppose the car, which
+each time seemed very nearly to stop on it, stopped quite, couldn’t go
+on at all, and they rolled down backwards, down, down, straight into the
+sea?
+
+But they reached the top safely. It wasn’t the car that rolled down
+backwards that day; it was the tin trunk, and with it Jocelyn’s
+suitcase.
+
+Unconscious, they drove on towards Truro.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+§
+
+
+They drove in total silence. Jocelyn had much to think of, and not for
+anything would Sally have opened her mouth when Mr. Luke’s was shut in
+that particular tight line. He had see-sawed back again, she knew, and
+was at the opposite end to what she called his oh-Sally condition.
+Besides, she never did say anything when she was in the car, however
+much he tried to make her, for from the beginning, even before there
+were hills, it had frightened her. Cars hadn’t come Mr. Pinner’s way,
+and, except for the one drive with Jocelyn that first day of his
+courting, she had had no experience of them till now.
+
+This one gave her little joy. It went so fast; it had hairsbreadth
+escapes at corners; it had twice run over chickens, causing words with
+other angry gentlemen, and it was full inside, where she had to sit, of
+important and dangerous-looking handles and pedals that had to have the
+rug and her dress and her feet and her umbrella carefully kept clear of
+them, or there would be that which she called to herself, catching her
+breath with fear, an accident.
+
+Jocelyn had said once, very peremptorily and making hurried movements
+with his left hand, ‘For goodness sake don’t let that rug get mixed up
+with the gears----’ for the car was a Morris-Cowley, and what Sally
+thought of with anxiety as them ’andles were between her and Jocelyn,
+and it had been enough. The tone of his voice on that occasion had
+revealed to her that a combination of rug and gears, and therefore of
+anything else and gears, such as dress, feet or umbrella, would be
+instantly disastrous, and he never had to say it again.
+
+For the rest of the honeymoon she sat squeezed together as far away from
+the alarming things as she could, the rug tucked with anxious care
+tightly round her legs, and her feet cramped up in the corner. She was
+very uncomfortable, but that mattered nothing to Sally. Even if she
+hadn’t been afraid of what might happen, her own comfort, when the
+wishes of her elders and betters were in question, wouldn’t have been
+given a thought. The Pinners were like that. Their humility and patience
+would have been remarkable even in a saint, and as for their bumps of
+veneration, they were so big that that country would indeed be easy to
+govern which should be populated by many Pinners.
+
+The late Mrs. Pinner, not of course herself a Pinner proper, but of the
+more turbulent blood of a race from Tottenham called Skew, had disliked
+these virtues in Mr. Pinner, and thought and frequently told him that a
+shopkeeper shouldn’t have them at all. A shopkeeper’s job, she often
+explained, was to leave off being poor as soon as possible, and Mr.
+Pinner never at any time left off being that--all because, Mrs. Pinner
+asserted, he had no go; and having no go was her way of describing
+patience and humility. But in Sally, when these qualities began to
+appear, she encouraged them, for they made for the child’s safety, they
+kept her obedient and unquestioning, they sent her cheerfully to bed
+when other girls were going to the pictures, and caused her to be happy
+for hours on end by herself in the back parlour performing simple
+duties. Besides, though Mrs. Pinner would have been hard put to it to
+give it a name, in Sally patience and humility were somehow different
+from what they were in Pinner. They held their heads up more. They
+didn’t get their tails between their legs. They were in fact in Sally,
+though Mrs. Pinner could only feel this dumbly, never getting anywhere
+near thinking it, not abject things that quivered in corners, but
+gracious things that came to meet one with a smile.
+
+Filled, then, as ever, with these meek virtues, Sally, squeezed into as
+little space as possible, and bracing herself, having got safely to the
+top of the hill, to meet the next terror, which was the twisty,
+slippery, narrow steep road down to the ferry, and the twisty, slippery,
+narrow steep road up from it on the other side, and after that the
+terror of every corner, round each of which she was sure would lurk a
+broad-beamed charabanc,--was carried in the Morris-Cowley in the
+direction of Truro. Here, Jocelyn supposed, they had better stay the
+night. Here there were hotels, and he would be able to consider what he
+would do next.
+
+He urged the little car along as fast as it would go, for he was
+possessed by the feeling that if he only got away fast enough he would
+get away altogether. But get away altogether from what? Certainly from
+St. Mawes, and Mrs. Cupp, and the loungers who all of course also
+supposed he and Sally weren’t married. That was the first, the immediate
+necessity. He had not only been turned out, but turned out, he said to
+himself, with contumely,--no use saying it to Sally, because she
+wouldn’t know what contumely was, and it did seem to him really rather
+absurd to be going about with somebody who had never heard even of such
+an ordinary thing as contumely.
+
+It wasn’t her fault, of course, but the turning out and the contumely
+were obviously because of her; there was no denying that. His mother
+would have been sitting in those rooms at this moment, the most prized
+and cherished of lodgers. Obviously the whole thing was Sally’s fault,
+though he quite admitted she couldn’t help it. But it merely made it
+worse that she couldn’t, for it took away one’s confidence in the
+future, besides making it unfair to say anything unkind.
+
+Feeling that if he did say anything it might easily be unkind, he kept
+his mouth tight shut, and drove in total silence; and Sally, whenever
+the road was fairly straight and could be left for a moment unwatched,
+looked at him out of the corners of her eyelashes, and was very sorry
+for Usband, who seemed upset again.
+
+‘Stomach,’ concluded Sally, who could find no other explanation for
+Jocelyn’s ups and downs; and wondered whether she would ever dare bring
+to his notice a simple remedy her father, who sometimes suffered too but
+with less reserve, always had by him.
+
+Well, there was one thing to be said for all this, thought Jocelyn, his
+stern eye fixed straight ahead, his brow severe, as he hurried the car
+along the road to the ferry--he was now awake. At last. High time too.
+Till then, from the day he first saw Sally, in spite of moments of grave
+spiritual disturbance and annoyance, he had been in a feverish dream.
+Out of this dream Mrs. Cupp’s conduct had shaken him, and he believed he
+might now be regarded as through with the phase in which he thought of
+nothing but the present and let the future go hang. Now he had to
+think. Decisions were being forced on him. Holidays end, but life goes
+on; honeymoons finish, but wives don’t. Here he was with a wife, and
+upon his soul, thought Jocelyn, precious little else,--no career, no
+plans, no lodgings.
+
+What a position. The lodgings, of course, were a small thing, but how
+being turned out of them rankled! His life had been so dignified. He and
+his mother had never once come across a member of the lower classes who
+was rude. At South Winch all was order, decency, esteem in their own set
+and respectfulness from everybody else. At Ananias what order, what
+decency, what esteem, what respectfulness. Impossible at Ananias,
+however modest one might be, not to know that one was looked upon as a
+present pride and a future adornment, with the Master at the top of the
+scale invariably remembering who one was and graciously smiling, and at
+the bottom the almost affectionate attentions of one’s warm and panting
+bedmaker. Impossible, too, not to know, though this, except for the
+pleasure it gave his mother, was of no sort of consequence, that South
+Winch regarded him with interest. These attitudes hadn’t at all
+disarranged Jocelyn’s grave balance, hadn’t at all turned his head,
+because of his real and complete absorption in his work; but they had
+been there--a fitting and seemly background, a sunny, sheltering wall
+against which he could expand, in quiet security, the flowers of his
+ambitions.
+
+Now here he was, kicked out into the street--it amounted to that--by a
+person of the utmost obscurity called Cupp. Conceive it. Conceive having
+got into a position in which anybody called Cupp could humiliate him.
+
+He banged his fist down on the electric horn as an outlet to his
+feelings. It gave a brief squeak, and was silent.
+
+‘Horn’s gone wrong,’ he said, pressing it hard but getting nothing more
+out of it.
+
+Sally’s heart gave a thump. To have anything go wrong at such a moment!
+For they were on that road cut in the hillside, narrow, twisty, slippery
+and steep, which leads on the St. Mawes side down through a wood,
+charming that late March afternoon with the mild sun slanting through
+the pale, grey-green branches of naked trees across flocks of primroses,
+to the King Harry Ferry. Far down on Sally’s side she could have seen,
+if she had dared look, the placid waters of the Fal, unruffled in their
+deep shelter by the wind that was blowing along the open country at the
+top. Her anxious eyes, however, were not in search of scenery--at no
+time was she anything of a hand at scenery,--they were strained towards
+each fresh corner as it came in sight; for one day they had met a
+charabanc round one of those very corners, a great wide horror taking up
+nearly all the road. But luckily that day they were coming up the hill,
+not going down it, and so they had the inside, and not the unprotected,
+terrifying outside edge. Now they were outside, and suppose....
+
+‘Horn’s gone wrong,’ said Jocelyn, just as she was thinking that.
+
+But did it matter? she asked herself, seeking comfort. She tried to hope
+it didn’t. Horns weren’t like wheels. One didn’t depend on them for
+getting along. They just made noises. Useful, as one’s voice was useful,
+but not essential, like one’s legs.
+
+No, it didn’t matter much, evidently, for Usband was saying he would
+put it right while they were on the ferry,--and then her heart gave a
+much bigger thump, and seemed to leap into her mouth and crouch there
+trembling, for there, round the very next corner, a few yards in front
+of them, was another charabanc.
+
+‘My gracious goodness,’ thought Sally, the colour ebbing out of her face
+as she stiffened in her seat and held on tighter. ‘My gracious
+_goodness_----’
+
+But it was going down too; thank heaven it was going down too--making,
+even as they were making, for the ferry.
+
+Jocelyn banged again on his horn, which gave another weak squeak and
+then was silent.
+
+‘Oh, ’e ain’t goin’ to try and pass it? ’E ain’t goin’ to try and pass
+it?’ Sally asked herself, clutching the side of the car.
+
+The charabanc, however, was unaware that anything had come down the hill
+behind it, and continued in the middle of the narrow road; and to
+Sally’s relief Jocelyn stole quietly along close up to its back, for he
+thought that if he kept right up against it and made no noise the people
+in it wouldn’t be able to see Sally, and he wouldn’t have to sit there
+impotently watching the look spreading over their faces when they caught
+sight of her that by now he knew only too well.
+
+All went smoothly till they were on the ferry. The charabanc drove
+straight to the farther end of it, and Jocelyn slipped along close
+behind, and then, getting out, still unobserved, opened his bonnet and
+began to deal with the horn.
+
+He had no side-horn with him. It had been removed by an idiot who lived
+on his staircase at Ananias, and who constantly saw fun where no one
+else did. He saw fun in removing Jocelyn’s horn; and though on serious
+representations being made he restored it, it hadn’t been fixed on
+again, because Jocelyn soon after that met Sally, and everything else
+was blotted from his mind. Now he remembered it, and cursed the silly
+idiot through whose fault it wasn’t at that moment on the car. Still, he
+would soon set the electric one right; there couldn’t be much the matter
+with it.
+
+He proceeded, his head inside the bonnet, to set it right, and Sally,
+feeling safe for a bit with Jocelyn outside the car, looked on
+sympathetically. She wanted to help, if only by holding something, but
+knew she mustn’t move. The back of the great charabanc towered above
+their little two-seater as the stern of a liner towers above a tug. All
+was quiet up there. The tops of the heads of the last row of passengers
+were motionless, their owners no doubt being engaged in contemplating
+the scenery of the Fal.
+
+Then suddenly under Jocelyn’s manipulations the horn began to blow, and
+the row of heads, startled into attentiveness by this unexpected
+shrieking immediately underneath them, turned and peered down over the
+edge of the charabanc’s back. Then they saw Sally, and their peering
+became fixed.
+
+But Jocelyn had no time for that now; what was of importance at the
+moment was that the horn wouldn’t stop. It shrieked steadily; and though
+he leapt backwards and forwards from the part of it that was in the
+bonnet to the part of it that was on the steering-wheel and did things
+rapidly and violently in both places, it went on shrieking.
+
+Here was a nice thing, he thought, to happen to a man whose one aim was
+to be unnoticed. It was fortunate that the noise drowned what he was
+saying, for so Sally hadn’t the shock of hearing him break his recent
+promise; and, much surprised at the conduct of the horn, she was shaken
+out of her usual prudent silence and was moved to draw Jocelyn’s
+attention to its behaviour by remarking, on one of his flying visits to
+the steering wheel, that it wasn’t half hollering.
+
+‘Oh, shut _up_!’ cried Jocelyn, beside himself; and who knows whether he
+meant Sally or the horn?
+
+Sally took it that he was addressing the horn, and observed
+sympathetically that it didn’t seem to want to.
+
+‘If only I had a small screwdriver!’ cried Jocelyn, frantically throwing
+out the contents of his tool-box in search of what wasn’t there. ‘I
+don’t seem to have a small screwdriver--a _small_ screwdriver--has
+anybody got a _small_ screwdriver?’
+
+The ferryman had no screwdriver, big or small, and the driver of the
+charabanc, descended from his place to come and look on, had none small
+enough; while as for the passengers, now all standing on their seats and
+craning their necks, nothing was to be expected of them except
+absorption in Sally.
+
+‘Scissors would do--scissors, scissors!’ cried Jocelyn, who felt that if
+the horn didn’t stop he would go mad.
+
+Nobody had any scissors except Sally, who got on her feet quickly and
+delightedly, because now she could help--the heads craned more than
+ever--and said she had a pair at the bottom of her trunk.
+
+‘No, no,’ said Jocelyn, unable even for the sake of perhaps stopping the
+horn to face uncording and unpacking before the whole ferry that
+terrible tin trunk of hers. ‘Sit still, Sally----’
+
+And he began to hit whatever part seemed nearest to the noise with his
+clenched fist.
+
+‘_That_ won’t do no good,’ said the driver of the charabanc, grinning.
+
+The grin spread to the face of the ferryman, and began to appear on the
+faces piled up over the top of the charabanc.
+
+Jocelyn saw it, and suddenly froze into icy impassiveness. Whatever the
+damned horn chose to do he wasn’t going to provide entertainment for a
+lot of blasted trippers. Besides--was he losing his temper? He, who had
+supposed for years that he hadn’t got one?
+
+He slammed the bonnet to, flung the tools back into their box, got into
+his seat again, and sat waiting to drive off the ferry with a completely
+expressionless face, just as if nothing at all were happening; and
+Sally, deluded by his calm into supposing that he thought the horn was
+now all right, after waiting a moment anxiously and seeing that he
+didn’t do anything more, nudged him gently and told him it was still
+blowing.
+
+‘Is it?’ said Jocelyn; and there was something in the look he gave her
+that made her more sure than ever that speech with Usband was a mistake.
+
+It blew all the way to Truro. That was the nearest place where the thing
+could be taken to a garage, and kicked to pieces if nothing else would
+stop it. For ten miles it blew steadily. They streamed, shrieking, along
+the lanes and out on to the main road. The drive was a nightmare of
+astonished faces, of people rushing out of cottages, of children
+shouting, of laughter flashing and gone, to be succeeded by more and
+more, till the whole of every mile seemed one huge exclamation.
+
+Sally squeezed terror-stricken into her corner. Such speed as this she
+had never dreamed of, nor had it ever yet been got out of the
+Morris-Cowley. She could only cling and hope. The noise was deafening.
+The little car leapt into the air at every bump in the road. Jocelyn’s
+face was like a marble mask. The charabanc, being bound for Falmouth,
+turned off to the left at the main road, and the passengers rose as one
+man in their seats and waved handkerchiefs of farewell; while Sally,
+even at such a moment unable not to be polite, let go the side of the
+car an instant to search with trembling fingers for her handkerchief and
+wave it back.
+
+
+§
+
+At Truro he stopped at the first garage he saw, a small one in the
+outlying part of the town, where there were few passers-by. The few
+there were, however, immediately collected round the car that swooped
+down the hill on them hooting, and still went on hooting in spite of
+having stopped.
+
+How simple, if it had been his mother who was with him, to have asked
+her to walk on to an hotel or a confectioner’s, and wait for him while
+he had the horn seen to. She would have proceeded through the town
+unobserved and unmolested, and the hotel or confectioner would have
+received her without curiosity, and attended respectfully to her wants.
+Or she might have waited in the car, and there too she would have
+aroused neither interest nor comment. A lady, you see. A lady, turning,
+like a decent Italian house, her plain and expressionless side to the
+public of the street, and keeping her other side, her strictly private
+and delightful other side, for her family and friends.
+
+He hurried Sally into the garage, into the furthermost depths of the
+garage. Not for her, he felt, were quiet walks alone through streets and
+unquestioning acceptance at hotels; not for him the convenience, the
+comfort, of a companion who in a crisis needn’t be bothered about, who
+automatically became effaced. Nothing effaced Sally. Her deplorable
+conspicuousness made it impossible for her to go anywhere without him.
+She had to be accompanied and protected as watchfully as if she were the
+Crown Jewels. Yes, or a perambulator with a baby in it that could never
+be left alone for an instant, and was always having to be pushed about
+by somebody. That somebody was himself, Jocelyn Luke; Jocelyn Luke, who
+as recently as a month ago was working away, hopeful and absorbed,
+immersed in profoundly interesting and important studies, independent,
+with nothing at all to trammel him or hinder him--with, on the contrary,
+everything and everybody conspiring to leave him as untrammelled and
+unhindered as possible. What was he now? Why, the perambulator’s
+nursemaid. Just that: the perambulator’s attendant nursemaid.
+
+This seemed to Jocelyn fantastic.
+
+‘Wait here, will you?’ he said, hurrying her into the garage and
+depositing her like a parcel in the remotest corner. ‘Don’t move, will
+you, till I fetch you----’
+
+And he left her there, safe as far as he could see, and went back to the
+shrieking car.
+
+She sat down thankfully on a pile of empty petrol cans. If only she
+could be left there for a good long while, if only she could spend the
+rest of the day there.... ‘Don’t move,’ Usband had said; as though she
+wanted to! Except that she was very hungry, really hungry now that her
+fears were over, for she had had no dinner yet, and it was two o’clock,
+how happy would she have been to stay there without moving for the rest
+of the afternoon. The quiet corner, away from danger, away from having
+to guess what she ought to say to Usband, and away from the look he gave
+her when she had said it, seemed almost perfect. It would have been
+quite perfect if there had been anything to eat.
+
+And as if in answer to her wish, the little door into a shed at the back
+opened, and in walked a youth, smudged and pasty-looking as those look
+who work much in garages, bearing in his hand a basin tied up in a
+crimson handkerchief.
+
+This was young Mr. Soper, the most promising of the mechanics employed
+at the garage, who daily ate his dinner in that corner. There he could
+sit on the pile of empty petrol cans, out of sight and yet within
+earshot should his services suddenly be called for; and on this
+particular day, his firm having been by chance extra busy all the
+morning, he had gone later than usual into the private shed at the back
+to fetch the basin of food left there for him by his landlady’s little
+son, so that when Jocelyn took Sally into the corner it was empty,
+because Mr. Soper, instead of being in the middle of his dinner as he
+would have been on other days, was in the act of collecting it in the
+shed.
+
+‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ he said, staring at Sally, his mouth dropping open.
+‘Beg pardon, I’m sure, Miss----’
+
+And he put his arm quickly back round the door he had just come through
+and whipped out a chair. ‘Won’t you--won’t you sit more comfortable,
+Miss?’
+
+‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Sally, getting up and smiling politely.
+
+Mr. Soper’s pasty face became bright red at that smile. He proceeded to
+dust the seat of the chair by rubbing the bottom of his handkerchiefed
+basin up and down it, and then stood staring at the young lady, the
+basin dangling sideways in his hand, held carelessly by the knotted
+corners of its handkerchief, and some of its gravy accordingly dribbling
+out.
+
+‘It do smell nice, don’t it,’ remarked Sally as she sat down, unable to
+refrain from sniffing.
+
+‘What do, Miss?’ asked Mr. Soper, recognising with almost incredulous
+pleasure a manner of speech with which he was at his ease.
+
+‘Wot you got in that there basin,’ said Sally, also recognising, and
+also with pleasure, accents since her marriage become very dear to her
+because reminiscent of home.
+
+She smiled with the utmost friendliness at him. Mr. Soper found it
+difficult to believe his eyes.
+
+‘It’s my dinner,’ said Mr. Soper, gazing at the vision.
+
+‘Well, I didn’t suppose it was your Sunday ’at,’ said Sally, pleased to
+find that she too, given a chance, could say clever things. ‘Tell by the
+smell it ain’t a nat.’
+
+Mr. Soper also seemed to think this clever, for he laughed, as Sally put
+it to herself, like anything.
+
+‘Stew?’ she asked, her delicate nose describing little half circles of
+appreciative inquiry.
+
+‘That’s right,’ said Mr. Soper. ‘Irish.’
+
+‘Thought so,’ said Sally; and added with a sigh, ‘the best of the lot.’
+
+Mr. Soper being intelligent, though handicapped at the moment by not
+quite believing his eyes, thought he here perceived encouragement to
+untie the handkerchief. He put the basin on the floor at the young
+lady’s feet, and untied it. She gazed at the lovely contents, at
+potatoes showing their sleek sides through the brimming gravy, at
+little ends of slender cutlets, at glimpses of bright carrots, at
+pearly-shouldered onions gleaming from luscious depths, with such
+evident longing that he was emboldened to ask her if she wouldn’t oblige
+him by tasting it, and telling him her opinion of it as a stew.
+
+‘There’s stews and stews, you know, Miss,’ he said, hastily arranging it
+on an empty packing-case convenient for her, ‘but my old woman’s who
+looks after me is ’ard to beat----’
+
+And he ran into the little shed he had come out of, and after a minute’s
+rummaging brought her a spoon and plate. His own spoon was in his
+pocket. He didn’t use a plate.
+
+Sally tasted; and, having tasted, went on tasting. Soon there was danger
+that Mr. Soper’s dinner would be so much tasted that there wouldn’t be
+any left, but he cared nothing for that. If he had had a hundred stews,
+and he starving, they should all have been the young lady’s.
+
+Sally tried not to taste too much, but she was so hungry, and the stew
+was so lovely. Besides, the young man kept urging her to go on. He was
+more like a friend than any one she had yet met. That he should never
+take his eyes off her didn’t disturb her in the least, for she had been
+used to that all her life; and his language was her language, and he
+didn’t make her feel nervous, and she knew instinctively that she could
+do nothing wrong in his sight, and she talked more to him during the
+half hour they ate the stew together--for she presently insisted on his
+getting another plate and joining in--than she had talked to Jocelyn the
+whole time they had known each other; talked more to him, indeed, than
+she had ever talked to anybody, except, when she was little, to those
+girl friends who had later fallen away.
+
+How surprising, how delightful, the ease with which she said things to
+Mr. Soper, and the things that came into her head to say! Quite clever,
+she was; quite sharp, and quick at the take-up. And laugh--why, the
+young fellow made her laugh so that she could hardly keep from choking.
+Not in all her life had she laughed as Mr. Soper made her laugh. Bright,
+he was, and no mistake. While as for Mr. Soper himself, who could be
+much, much brighter, he was fortunately kept damped down to his simpler
+jokes by the effect the strange young lady’s loveliness had on him; so
+that he who in Truro was known as the life of his set, as the boldest of
+its wits as well as the most daring of its ladies’ men, was as mild and
+timid in his preliminary frisks with Sally as a lately born lamb
+exploring, for the first time, the beautiful strange world it had
+suddenly discovered.
+
+
+§
+
+Jocelyn found them there, the empty basin on the floor between them,
+and, sticking up in it, two spoons.
+
+‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, starting a little, for she had forgotten
+Jocelyn; and Mr. Soper had what he afterwards described as the turn of
+his life.
+
+She with a husband? She who was hardly old enough, if you asked him, to
+have a father even? Got a husband all the time, and eaten his stew. He
+didn’t grudge her the stew, but he did think she ought to have told him
+she had a husband. Fancy eating his stew, and knowing she had a husband
+the whole time. It seemed to make it unfair. It seemed to make it
+somehow false pretences. And one of these blinking gentlemen, too; one
+of your haw-haw chaps with the brains of a rabbit, thought Mr. Soper,
+looking Jocelyn up and down, who took no notice of him whatever. See
+that written all over him, thought Mr. Soper, seeking comfort in
+derision,--a silly fool who couldn’t even mend his own horn. Wicked, he
+called it, wicked, to thieve this girl away from her own lot, filch her,
+before she knew what she was about, from her natural mates, go-ahead
+chaps like, for instance, himself, when there were thousands of female
+rabbits in his own class who would have fitted him like so many blooming
+gloves.
+
+‘Class should stick to class,’ said Mr. Soper to himself, who belonged
+to at least four societies for violently welding all classes into one,
+the one being Mr. Soper’s.
+
+Jocelyn ignored him. (‘Haw, haw,’ thought Mr. Soper derisively, hurt by
+this, and sticking out a chin that no one noticed.) Shutting his eyes to
+the hideous evidence of the two spoons in the basin, to which he would
+refer, he decided, later, he took Sally’s arm and hurried her out to the
+now silent Morris-Cowley. This had not been his intention when he came
+in. He had intended to tell her that he had just discovered the loss of
+the luggage, that he was going back at once to look for it, and leave
+her there, where she was safe and private, till he came back.
+
+The sight of the basin and spoons forced him to other decisions. She was
+obviously neither safe nor private. He said nothing at all, but gripping
+her arm with, perhaps, unnecessary vigour seeing how unresistingly she
+went, hurried her out of the place and helped her, again with, perhaps,
+unnecessary vigour into her seat, slamming the door on her and hastening
+round to the other side to his own.
+
+Mr. Soper, however, was hard on their heels. Nothing if not nippy, he
+was determined to see the last of her who not only was the first human
+being he had met to whom he could imagine going down on his knees, but
+also--thus did romance and reality mingle in his mind--who contained at
+that moment at least three-quarters of his Irish stew. It seemed to give
+him a claim on her. Inside himself was the remaining quarter, and it did
+seem to unite them. Mortified as he was, deceived as he felt himself to
+be, he yet couldn’t help, in his mind, making a joke about this union,
+which he thought so good that he decided to tell it to his friends that
+night at the whist-drive he was going to--it need not be repeated
+here,--and he was so excessively nippy, such a very smart, all-there,
+seize-your-opportunity young man, that he actually managed to say in
+Sally’s left ear during the brief moment Jocelyn was on his way round to
+the other side, bending down ostensibly to examine the near back tyre,
+‘Whatever did you want to go and marry one of them haw-haw fellers for,
+when there was----’
+
+But what there was Sally never heard, for at that instant the car leaped
+forward, leaving him on the kerb alone.
+
+There he stood, looking after it; apparently merely a pale, contemptuous
+mechanic, full of the proper scorn for a shabby little four-year-old
+two-seater--he could of course date it exactly--but really a baffled
+young man who had just been pulled up and thwarted in the very act of
+falling, for the first time in his life, passionately and humbly in
+love.
+
+
+§
+
+The Thistle and Goat was where Jocelyn took her. It was the first hotel
+he saw. He had to deposit her somewhere; he couldn’t take her with him
+in search of the luggage, and have her hanging round while he picked it
+up and corded it on again, and making friends with anybody who came
+along. Would she obey him and stay in the bedroom, or would he be forced
+to the absurdity of locking her in? He was so seriously upset by the
+various misfortunes of the day that he was ready to behave with almost
+any absurdity. He was quite ready, for instance, to fight that spotted
+oaf at the garage; he had itched to knock him down, and had only been
+restrained by a vision of the crowd that would collect, and a
+consciousness of how it would advertise Sally. To lock her in her room
+was, he admitted, a violent sort of thing to do, and violence, he had
+been brought up to believe, was always vulgar and ridiculous, but it
+would anyhow be effective. Definite and strongly simple measures were,
+he perceived, needful with Sally, especially when one was in a hurry. He
+couldn’t, with the luggage lying somewhere on the road between Truro and
+St. Mawes, probably burst open and indecently scattered and exposed,
+start explaining to Sally all the things she was on no account to do
+while he was away collecting it. He certainly would explain; and fully;
+and clearly; for the spoon and basin business had been simply
+disgusting, and he was going to put a stop to that sort of thing once
+and forever, but not now,--not till there was plenty of time, so that he
+really might have a chance of getting into her head at least the
+beginning of a glimmer of what a lady simply couldn’t do. And he was so
+angry that he corrected this sentence, and instead of the word lady
+substituted the wife of a gentleman.
+
+He locked her in.
+
+‘If any one knocks,’ he told her before leaving her, ‘you will call out
+that you have locked the door, as you wish to be undisturbed. You
+understand me, Sally? That’s what you are to say--nothing else. Exactly
+and only that.’
+
+‘Right O,’ said Sally, a little dejectedly, for his tone and expression
+discouraged cheerfulness, and preparing to lock the door behind him.
+
+But it was he who locked it, much to her surprise, deftly pulling the
+key out of the inside of the door and slipping it into the outside
+before she realised what he was doing; and she heard him, having turned
+it, draw it out and go away.
+
+Yes, she was locked in all right.
+
+‘Whatever----’ began Sally in her thoughts; then gave it up, and sat
+down patiently on the edge of the wicker arm-chair to wait for the next
+thing that would happen to her.
+
+‘Glad I ’ad that there stew,’ she reflected.
+
+‘My wife,’ said Jocelyn to the lady in the office downstairs, as he went
+out still with the frown on his face caused by the realisation that he
+hadn’t given Sally any reason for his suddenly leaving her, and that she
+hadn’t asked for any--was that companionship?--‘wishes to be undisturbed
+till I come back.’
+
+‘_I_ see,’ said the lady, with what seemed to him rather a curious
+emphasis, and she was about to inquire where his luggage was, for the
+Thistle and Goat liked to know where luggage was, when he strode away.
+
+Now what did she see, Jocelyn asked himself. Nobody had ever said _I_
+see like that to any orders given when he was travelling with his
+mother. The emphasis was marked. It sounded, he thought, both
+suspicious and pert. He went out to the car, strangling a desire to go
+back and ask her what she saw. Did she too think he wasn’t really
+married? No, no--nonsense. Probably she saw and meant nothing. Really he
+was becoming sensitive beyond all dignity, he thought as he drove off on
+his unpleasant and difficult quest.
+
+But the lady in the office had merely expressed herself badly. What was
+worrying her was not what she saw but what she didn’t see, and what she
+didn’t see was luggage. The Thistle and Goat, in common with other
+hotels, liked luggage. It preferred luggage to be left rather than
+ladies. Now the gentleman had gone off without saying a word about it,
+and she tried to reassure herself by hoping, what was indeed true, that
+he had gone to fetch it, and that she need do nothing about it, anyhow
+for the present. And hardly had she settled down to a cup of
+after-luncheon tea in the back office when the luggage arrived, brought
+in by a different gentleman, and one, to her great relief, whom she
+knew--young Mr. Carruthers, of Trevinion Manor.
+
+Great was the confidence the Thistle and Goat had in the family of
+Carruthers, whom it had known all its life. No orders given by a passing
+tourist could have any weight when balanced against a Carruthers
+request. So that when young Mr. Carruthers, learning that Mr. Luke had
+lately left in his car, asked to see Mrs. Luke in order to hand over her
+luggage personally and desired his card to be sent up, regardless of the
+orders given by Mr. Luke the card was sent up and the message given; and
+Sally received both it and the message, for the chambermaid, finding the
+door locked and getting no answer, because Sally thought that by saying
+nothing she wouldn’t be telling any lies, unlocked it with her
+pass-key; and Sally, having heard the message and received the card,
+issued forth obediently. Naturally she did. Usband had said nothing
+about not leaving the room. She wanted her tin box, and to get unpacked.
+Besides, when anybody sent for her she always went.
+
+What had happened was that young Carruthers, strolling down as usual
+just before lunch across the fields to the sea-front, had found the
+window of the Cupp parlour flung wide open, and Mrs. Cupp vigorously
+shaking the hearth-rug out of it. Evidently her lodgers had left; and he
+went in and began asking her about them, and very soon discovered that
+the lean chap was Jocelyn Luke--Luke of Ananias, as Carruthers, himself
+at Oxford, instantly identified him, for there couldn’t well be two
+Jocelyn Lukes, and his reputation had ebbed across to Oxford, where he
+was known not unfavourably, and perhaps as on the whole the least
+hopelessly unpromising of the Cambridge crowd. And just as Mrs. Cupp was
+proceeding to tell him her opinion of the alleged Mrs. Luke, and how
+Cupp had only now been able to come out of his bedroom and have his
+dinner, there came news of the dropped luggage on the hill.
+
+Carruthers felt that he was the very man to deal with that. He rushed
+off, thrust everybody aside, collected it reverently, for the tin trunk
+had indeed burst open, and its modest contents, of a touching propriety
+he thought, as he carefully put back things that felt like flannel, were
+scattered on the road, and then, fetching his car, took it into Truro.
+
+It was easy, at the turn to Falmouth, to discover which way the Lukes
+had gone. It was also easy, on arriving in Truro, to discover which
+hotel they were in. He only had to describe them. Everybody had noticed
+them. Everybody on the road had heard their horn, and everybody had seen
+the beautiful young lady. And because he went into the town by the
+direct road, and as Jocelyn coming out of it, and sure the luggage
+hadn’t anyhow been dropped nearer than the top of the hill beyond the
+garage, took a round-about way, joining the main road only on the other
+side of the garage so as not again to have to set eyes on the loathsome
+oaf employed in it and risk being unable to resist going in and knocking
+him down, they missed each other precisely there; and accordingly when
+Jocelyn, having been all the way to St. Mawes, where he heard what had
+been done, got back about five, tired, very hungry, and wondering how on
+earth he was now going to find the officious person they said was trying
+to restore his belongings to him, he was told by the boots that young
+Mr. Carruthers had arrived just after he left, and was waiting to see
+him upstairs in the drawing-room.
+
+‘Thank heaven,’ thought Jocelyn, feeling the key in his pocket, ‘that I
+locked her in.’
+
+And he went into the drawing-room, and there at a table in a corner by
+the fire, with the remains on it of what seemed to have been an
+extraordinarily good and varied tea, she was sitting.
+
+
+§
+
+Carruthers--he recognised him at once as the man with the dog called
+Sally--was worshipping her. Decently, for Carruthers was plainly a
+decent chap, but worshipping her all right; it was written in every line
+and twist of him, as he leaned forward eagerly, telling her stories,
+apparently, for he was talking a great deal and she was only
+listening,--amusing stories, for she was smiling.
+
+She never smiled with him, thought Jocelyn; not like that, not a real
+smile of just enjoyment. From the very first day, that day at tea in the
+Pinner parlour, she had seemed frightened of him. But she couldn’t be
+much frightened, for here she was openly disregarding his injunctions,
+and somehow got out of her locked room. That seemed to Jocelyn anything
+but being frightened; it seemed to him to the last degree fearless and
+resourceful. And how strangely at variance with her apparent shyness and
+retiringness that twice in one day she should have allowed strange men
+to feed her.
+
+He approached their corner, pale and grim. He was tired to death after
+the vexatious day he had had, and very hungry after not having had
+anything to eat since breakfast. Carruthers had watched his opportunity,
+of course--waited somewhere till he had seen him go, and then taken the
+luggage in and asked for Sally. And Sally, somehow getting out of that
+room, had defied his orders and come down. Well, he couldn’t do anything
+with her at that moment. He was too tired to flare up. Besides--scenes;
+he couldn’t for ever make scenes. What a revolting form of activity to
+have thrust upon him! But the amount of ideas that would, he perceived,
+have to be got into her head if life was to be even approaching
+tolerable was so great that his mind, in his fatigued state, refused to
+consider it.
+
+She saw him first, and, much pleased with everything, with the beautiful
+tea, with Mr. Carruthers’ funny stories and with her pleasant afternoon
+altogether, continued to smile, but at him now, and said to Carruthers,
+‘’Ere comes Mr. Luke.’
+
+And on Carruthers getting up and Jocelyn arriving at the table,
+introduced them.
+
+‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally; explaining Carruthers to Jocelyn by
+saying, ‘The gentleman as brought our traps.’
+
+Jocelyn couldn’t be angry with Carruthers; he looked at him so
+friendlily, and shook his hand with what surely was a perfectly sincere
+heartiness. And though he was obviously bowled over by Sally--naturally,
+thought Jocelyn, seeing that he had none of the responsibility and only
+the fun--there was something curiously sympathetic in his attitude to
+Jocelyn himself, something that seemed, oddly, to understand.
+
+Sally, his wife, said, for instance, ‘’Ad yer tea?’--just that, and made
+no attempt to give him any. But what Carruthers said, quickly going
+across and ringing the bell, was, ‘I bet you haven’t. You’ve had the
+sort of rotten day there’s no time for anything in but swearing. They’ll
+bring some fresh stuff in a moment. It’s a jolly good tea they give one
+in this place,--don’t they, Mrs. Luke.’
+
+‘’_Eav_enly,’ said Sally. And turning to Jocelyn she said, more timidly,
+‘’Ad to come out of the bedroom. The servant----’
+
+‘Oh, that’s all right,’ interrupted Jocelyn hastily, earnestly desiring
+to keep from Carruthers the knowledge that he had locked her in. Things
+look so different, especially domestic actions, in the eyes of a third
+person unaware of the attendant circumstances, thought Jocelyn.
+
+He dropped into a chair. What a comfort it was, after a fortnight of
+being dog alone with Sally, to hear that decent voice. It really was
+like music. He hadn’t, at Cambridge, cared much for the Oxford way of
+speaking, but how beautiful it seemed after the Pinner way. He wanted to
+shut his eyes and just listen to it. ‘Go on, go on,’ he wanted to say,
+when Carruthers paused for a moment in his pleasant talk; and he sat
+there, listening and eating and drinking in silence, and Carruthers
+looked after him, and fed him, and talked pleasantly to him, and talked
+pleasantly to Sally as well, and did, in fact, all the talking. There
+was something about Jocelyn that made Carruthers feel maternal. He was
+so thin. His shoulder blades stuck out so, and his lean, nervous face
+twitched. Carruthers thought, as he had thought on that first occasion,
+only this time, knowing who he was and aware of Sally’s class, with ten
+times more conviction, ‘Poor devil’; but he also thought, his eyes
+resting on the lovely thing in the corner--he had established her in the
+farthermost corner of the Thistle and Goat’s drawing-room, for he too
+had instantly begun to hide her, and she lit up its gloom as a white
+flower lights up the dusk--he also thought, ‘Poor angel.’
+
+
+§
+
+Yes, she was an angel, and a poor one; he was sure of that. Carruthers,
+so romantic inside, so square and unemotional outside, told himself she
+was a forlorn child-angel torn out of her natural heaven, which
+obviously was completely h--less and obscure, but comfortable and
+unexacting, and pitched into a world of strangers, the very ABC of whose
+speech and behaviour she didn’t understand.
+
+After two hours _tête à tête_ with Sally, two hours which seemed like
+ten minutes, so deeply was he interested, this was his conclusion. She
+hadn’t been very shy, not after he left off being shy, which he was for
+a moment or two, confused by the sheer shock of her beauty seen close;
+but he had soon recovered and got into his stride, which was an easy one
+for her to keep up with, his one idea being to please her and make her
+happy.
+
+It wasn’t difficult to please Sally and make her happy; you had only to
+avoid frightening her. Mr. Soper hadn’t frightened her, he had fed
+her,--always a good beginning with a woman. Carruthers knew this, and
+immediately ordered tea, in spite of its still being only three o’clock;
+and, since the Thistle and Goat specialised in teas, the one which was
+presently brought was of such a conspicuous goodness, with so many
+strange Cornish cakes and exciting little sandwiches, besides a bowl of
+the Cornish cream Sally liked altogether best of anything she had
+learned to know on her honeymoon, that she soon felt as comfortable and
+friendly with Carruthers as she had with Mr. Soper.
+
+She was at the age of jam. Cream was still enough to make her happy. And
+she wasn’t used to quantities. In her frugal life there had never been
+quantities of anything, and they excited her. Quantities combined with
+kindness--what could be more delightful? She didn’t suppose she had
+enjoyed anything so much ever as that tea. And it was sheer enjoyment,
+nothing to do with hunger at all, for hunger had been done away with by
+Mr. Soper’s stew, and this was a deliberate choosing, a splendid
+unnecessariness, a sense of wide margin, of freedom, of power, and no
+need to think of putting away what was left over for next day.
+
+So by the time that Carruthers said, with that simplicity which made his
+mother sure there was no one in the world like her Gerry, ‘I’ve never
+seen any one as beautiful as you, and I didn’t know there could be
+anybody,’ Sally, unstiffened and lubricated by all the cream, was quite
+ready to discuss her appearance or anything else with him as far as she,
+restricted of speech as she was, could discuss at all, and he discovered
+to his deep surprise that she regarded her beauty as a thing to be
+apologised for, as a pity, as the same thing really as a deformity,
+forcing her to be conspicuous and nothing but a worry to those she loved
+and who loved her, and she not able to help it or alter it, or do
+anything at all except be sorry.
+
+‘Father,’ she said, ‘was in a state--you’ve no idea. If any one just
+looked my way. And they was always lookin’.’
+
+Carruthers nodded. Just what he had been thinking when first he saw her
+on the hill behind St. Mawes, with Luke trying to cover her up, to
+extinguish her quickly in her hat,--the responsibility, the anxiety....
+But that she herself should regard it like that astonished him. Surely
+any woman....
+
+‘And Mr. Luke--_’e’s_ frightened too. ‘Ides me, same as Father and
+Mother used.’
+
+‘You’re really imprisoned, then,’ said Carruthers, staring at her.
+‘Imprisoned in your beauty.’
+
+But seeing a puzzled expression come into her eyes he began to talk of
+other things, to tell her stories, to amuse her; for after all it wasn’t
+very fair to Luke, somehow, whose back happened to be turned, much
+against his will Carruthers was sure, to let her tell him about herself
+and her life. She was too defenceless. She was a child, who would talk
+to any stranger who was kind; and he could guess all he was entitled to
+know, he could see for himself the gift she held in her hands, the
+supreme gift for a woman, the gift beyond all others in power for the
+brief time it lasted, and he could see she was entirely unconscious of
+its value, of what might be done with it if only she knew how. And every
+time she opened her touchingly beautiful mouth of quick smiles and
+painstaking response, her h’s dropped about him in showers.
+
+Well, who cared? She might say anything she liked, and it wouldn’t
+matter; in any voice, with any accent, and it wouldn’t matter. Not even
+if she said coy common things, or arch common things, as he half
+expected she would when first she spoke and startled him with the
+discovery of her class, would it matter, For one needn’t listen. One
+could always just sit and watch. Yes--who cared?
+
+But the answer to that, he knew, wasn’t simply Nobody, it was Jocelyn
+Luke. Luke would care. He quite obviously did care already, though they
+couldn’t have been married more than two or three weeks; and she dumbly
+felt it, Carruthers was sure, for, after having been eager to get out of
+her imprisoning shell of illiteracy and say what she could while she was
+alone with him, directly Luke joined them she retired into a kind of
+anxious caution, looking at him before she said anything in answer to a
+question, and keeping as much as possible to Yes and No.
+
+‘He’s been teaching her,’ thought Carruthers. ‘He’s been going for her
+h’s. She’s on his nerves, and she knows it--no, not knows it, but feels
+it. She doesn’t _know_ anything about anything yet, but she feels a
+jolly lot, I’ll swear.’
+
+Deeply interesting Lukes. What would their fate be, he wondered.
+
+
+§
+
+After Carruthers had gone, pensively driving himself back to St. Mawes
+in the pale spring twilight, Jocelyn, soothed by his agreeable talk and
+manifest friendliness, and also by the good tea, felt quite different.
+He no longer wanted to admonish Sally. He didn’t even want to ask her
+why she had come out of the bedroom. He was ashamed of that; ashamed of
+having locked her in, degrading her to God knew what level of
+childishness, of slavery, of, indeed, some pet animal that might
+stray--in fact, a dog. He shuddered a little, and looked at her
+deprecatingly, and leaning over the table took her hand and kissed it.
+
+‘Sally,’ he murmured, suddenly for the first time since he grew up,
+feeling very young,--and how painfully young to be married!
+
+Marriage. It wasn’t just love-making, he thought as he kissed her hand;
+love-making, and then done with it and get on with your work. It was
+responsibility constant and lasting, not only for the other life so
+queerly and suddenly and permanently joined on to one, but also for
+oneself in a quite new way, a way one had never till then at all
+considered.
+
+He kissed her hand again.
+
+‘Tea done ’im good,’ thought Sally.
+
+But it was the half hour with one of his own kind, and one who, while
+definitely charming to him, yet so obviously and with a kind of
+reverence admired Sally, that had done him good. It had restored him to
+a condition of tranquillity, and he felt more normal, more really
+happy--he didn’t count his moments of wild rapture as happiness, because
+they somehow weren’t--than he had done since the days, now so curiously
+far away, before he had met her. Carruthers had reassured him. His
+behaviour to Sally had immensely reassured him. The world was, after
+all, chiefly decent. It didn’t consist solely of foul-minded Cupps, nor
+of impudent young men in garages. Just as there were more people in it
+healthy than sick, so there were more people in it who were appreciative
+and kindly than there were people who weren’t. Carruthers had known all
+about him, too. Jocelyn hadn’t credited Oxford with so much intelligent
+awareness. It was infinitely pleasant, after a fortnight with Sally who,
+wonderful as she was, uniquely wonderful he freely admitted, yet hadn’t
+the remotest idea of what he had done and still hoped to do--yes, by
+God, still hoped to do. Why not? Why chuck Cambridge after all? Why not
+face it with Sally, and train her who was, he knew, most obedient and
+only needing showing, to behave in such a way that no one, if she lived
+there, would dare make himself a nuisance?--it was infinitely pleasant
+after this to have been with somebody who knew all about him. He hadn’t
+got very far, of course, in his work; nobody knew that better than
+himself. But it had been a good enough beginning for Carruthers and
+Oxford to have heard of him. And the desire to go on, to proceed along
+the glorious path, came back to him in a mighty flood as he sat in the
+Thistle and Goat’s drawing-room, with that other desire appeased and
+seeming to be getting ready to fall into its proper place.
+
+If Sally too could be got into her proper place, mightn’t life even yet
+be a triumph?
+
+
+§
+
+He wrote to his mother that night, after Sally had gone to bed. He sent
+her there early, and with a return of irritability, because of the way
+the people in the dining-room at dinner, and afterwards in the
+drawing-room where he and she sat in a remote corner while he had his
+coffee, behaved. It was really outrageous. This was his first experience
+of dining with her in a public place. And it was no good his glaring at
+the creatures, because they never gave him so much as a glance.
+
+So he sent her to bed, and then he wrote to his mother. Better go home.
+Better now go home to South Winch, and not wander about in expensive
+hotels, with hateful old men in dinner jackets and fat women in beads
+staring their eyes out. Hotels were impossible with Sally; and so were
+lodgings, with the risk of another suspicious and insulting landlady.
+Besides, a fortnight was enough for a honeymoon, and for this particular
+honeymoon, with all its difficulties, quite enough. Home was the place.
+Almond Tree Cottage, and its quiet. He wanted to go home. He wanted to
+go home to his mother, and get her meeting with Sally over, and sit in
+that little study of his at the top of the house where not a soul could
+see him, and think out what was best to do next.
+
+His mother would help him. She had always understood and helped. Never
+yet had she failed him. And she would help him, too, in the business of
+looking after Sally,--take her off his hands sometimes, and perhaps
+succeed in getting her quite soon to talk like a civilised being.
+
+It had been the last thing he had originally intended, to go with Sally
+to stay at his mother’s. Introduce her, of course; take her down for a
+day; but not stay there, for well did he know his marriage would fall
+like a sword on his mother, cleaving her heart. Things, however, had
+changed since then. He had in his haste, in his blind passion, written
+to her that he was going to chuck Cambridge, and now that his passion
+was no longer blind and he wasn’t going to chuck it--no, he’d be damned
+if he would; not anyhow till he had tried what it was like there with
+Sally--he was anxious to go to his mother and heal up at least one of
+the wounds he knew his letter must have made. He would ask her what she
+thought, having seen Sally, of the idea of her living in Cambridge.
+Perhaps--it flashed into his mind like light--his mother would live
+there too; give up Almond Tree Cottage, and live with them in Cambridge.
+What a solution. Then she could look after Sally, and be such a comfort,
+such a blessed comfort, to him as well. What a splendid, simple
+solution.
+
+He threw down his pen, and stared straight in front of him. They would
+all be happy then--he going on with his work, Sally being taught by his
+mother, and his mother not separated from him.
+
+When he went to bed, and Sally stirred in her sleep as if she were
+waking up, he took her in his arms and asked her if she would like to
+live in Cambridge.
+
+‘Yes,’ murmured Sally, even though half asleep remembering to stick to
+monosyllables.
+
+‘It’ll be better than London,’ said Jocelyn, holding her close. ‘Won’t
+it, my love? Won’t it, my _beautiful_ love?’ he added in a whisper, for
+there was something about Sally’s hair, against which his face was, a
+softness, a sweetness....
+
+‘And perhaps my mother will come and live with us too there. You’d like
+that, wouldn’t you, darling?’
+
+There was a brief pause. Then, ‘Yes,’ murmured Sally.
+
+He kissed her delicious hair. ‘Darling,’ he said tenderly, pleased by
+this absence of all difficulty. ‘You’re half asleep,’ he added in her
+ear, pushing aside the hair that lay over it with his mouth.
+
+But was she? For, after another pause, she said, her face still turned
+away from him, something that sounded like Father.
+
+‘Yes, darling?’ said Jocelyn, as she didn’t go on.
+
+‘’E might come too, p’raps,’ murmured Sally.
+
+‘What?’ said Jocelyn, not sure he could have heard right, bending his
+face nearer. ‘Your father?’
+
+‘Yes,’ murmured Sally.
+
+‘Your _father_?’ said Jocelyn again.
+
+‘Yes,’ murmured Sally. ‘Then--we’d be tidy like--you’d ’ave ’er, and I’d
+’ave ’im.’
+
+‘Go to sleep Sally,’ said Jocelyn with sudden authority. ‘Do you know
+what time it is? Nearly eleven.’
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+§
+
+Meanwhile, at Almond Tree Cottage, Jocelyn’s mother had become Margery
+to Mr. Thorpe, and he to her was Edgar.
+
+The idea she had played with, the possibility she had smiled at, was now
+fact. She had reacted to Jocelyn’s marriage by getting involved,
+immediately and profoundly, in Mr. Thorpe. Without quite knowing how,
+with hardly a recollection of when, she had become engaged to him. He
+had caught her at the one moment in which, blind with shock, she would
+have clung to anything that offered support.
+
+How could she face South Winch without support? For there was not only
+her inward humiliation to be dealt with, the ruin of her love and pride
+and the wreck of those bright ambitious dreams--surely of all ambitious
+dreams the most natural and creditable, the dreams of a mother for the
+future greatness of her son,--there was the pity of South Winch. No, she
+couldn’t stand pity; and pity because of Jocelyn, of all people! Of him
+who had been her second, more glorious self, of him who was to have been
+all she would have been if she could have been. South Winch couldn’t
+pity her if she married its richest man. There was something about
+wealth, when present in sufficient quantities, that silenced even
+culture; and everybody knew about Mr. Thorpe’s house, and grounds, and
+cars, and conservatories. She therefore dropped like a fruit that no
+longer has enough life to hold on, into the outstretched hands of Mr.
+Thorpe.
+
+Jocelyn didn’t want her; Mr. Thorpe did. It was a deplorable thing, she
+thought, for she could still at intervals, in spite of her confusion and
+distress, think intelligently, that a woman couldn’t be happy, couldn’t
+be at peace, unless there existed somebody who wanted her, and wanted
+her exclusively; but there it was. Deplorable indeed, for it now flung
+her into Mr. Thorpe’s arms prematurely, without her having had time
+properly to think it out. No doubt she would have got into them in the
+end, but not yet, not for years and years. Now she tumbled in from a
+sheer instinct of self-preservation. She had to hold on to some one. She
+was giddy and staggering from the blow that had cut through her life.
+Jocelyn, her boy, her wonderful, darling boy, in whose career she had so
+passionately merged herself, doing everything, even the smallest thing,
+only with reference to him, wanted her so little that he could throw her
+aside, thrust her away without an instant’s hesitation, and with her his
+whole future, the future he and she had been working at with utter
+concentration for years, for the sake of a girl he had only known a
+fortnight. He said so in the letter. He said it was only a fortnight.
+One single fortnight, as against those twenty-two consecrated years.
+
+Who was this girl, who was this person for whom he gave up everything at
+a moment’s notice? Mrs. Luke, shuddering, hid in Mr. Thorpe’s arms; for
+the things that Jocelyn hadn’t said in that letter on the eve of his
+marriage were more terrible almost to her than those he had said,--the
+ominous non-reference to the girl’s family, to her upbringing, to her
+circumstances. Hardly had he mentioned her name. At the end, in a
+postcript, as if in his heart he were ashamed, he had said it was
+Salvatia--Salvatia!--and her father’s name was Pinner, but that he
+really didn’t know that it mattered, and he wouldn’t have cared, and
+neither would anybody else who saw her care, if she hadn’t had fifty
+names. And then he had added the strange words, ominously defiant,
+unnecessarily coarse, that he would have taken her, and so would any one
+else who saw her, in her shift; and then still further, and still more
+strangely and coarsely, he had scribbled in a shaky hand, as though he
+had torn open the letter again and stuck it in in a kind of frenzy of
+passion, ‘My God--her shift!’
+
+Mrs. Luke hid in Mr. Thorpe’s arms. Coarseness had never yet got into
+Almond Tree Cottage, except the coarseness consecrated by time, which it
+was a sign of intelligence not to mind, the coarseness, for instance, of
+those marvellous Elizabethans. But coarseness from Jocelyn? Oh, blind
+and mad, blind and mad. Where had her boy got it from, this capacity for
+sudden, violent, ruinous behaviour? Not from her, very certainly. It
+must be some of the thick, sinister blood filtered down into him from
+the Spanish woman her husband’s great-grandfather--Mrs. Luke had been
+pleased with this great-grandfather up to then, because in her own
+family, where there should have been four, there hadn’t been any--had
+married against his parents’ wishes. She hid in Mr. Thorpe’s arms.
+But--‘This in exchange for Jocelyn?’ she couldn’t help repeating to
+herself that first day, trying to shut her eyes, spiritually as well as
+physically, trying to withdraw her attention, as even in this crisis
+she remembered Dr. Johnson had done in unpleasant circumstances, from
+Mr. Thorpe’s betrothal caresses.
+
+Mr. Thorpe was clean and healthy; for that she was thankful. Still, she
+suffered a good deal that first day. Then, imperceptibly, she got used
+to him. Surprising how soon one gets used to a man, she thought, on whom
+this one’s substantial shape had made a distinctly disagreeable
+impression the first week she found herself up against it. By the end of
+a week she no longer noticed the curious springy solidity of Mr.
+Thorpe’s figure, which had seemed to her when he first embraced her,
+used as she was to the lean fragility of her late husband, so
+unpleasantly much. And besides, the flood of his riches began to flow
+over her immediately, and it was a warm flood. She hadn’t known how
+agreeable such a flood could be. She hadn’t had an idea of the way it
+could bring comfort into one’s every corner--yes, even into one’s mind
+when one’s mind was sore and unhappy. Riches, she had always held, were
+vulgar; but she now obscurely recognised that they were only vulgar if
+they were somebody else’s. One’s own--why, to what noble ends could not
+riches be directed in the hands of those who refused to use them
+vulgarly? Married to Mr. Thorpe, she would make of them as beautiful and
+graceful a thing as she had made of her poverty. And it did soothe Mrs.
+Luke, it did help her a great deal during these days of wreckage, that
+her life, which had been so spare and bony, was now becoming hourly, in
+every sort of pleasant way, more and more padded, more and more soft and
+luscious with fat.
+
+For, if no longer precious to Jocelyn, she was precious to Mr. Thorpe,
+and it was his pride to pad out the meagreness of her surroundings; and
+though she cried herself to sleep each night because of Jocelyn, she
+awoke each morning comforted because of Mr. Thorpe. After twelve hours
+of not seeing Mr. Thorpe she could clearly perceive, what was less
+evident at the end of a long evening with him, her immense good fortune
+in having got him. A decent, honourable man. Not every woman in the
+forties finds at the precise right moment a decent, honourable man, who
+is also rich. Where would she have been now without Mr. Thorpe? He was
+her rock, her refuge; he was the plaster to her wounded pride, the
+restorer of her self-respect.
+
+‘I can _rely_ on him,’ she said to herself while she sat in front of her
+glass in the morning, brushing her thick, black hair--in the evening
+when she brushed it she didn’t say anything. ‘I can entirely _trust_
+him. What, after all, is education? What has education done for Jocelyn?
+The one thing that matters is character.’
+
+And she would come down to find her breakfast-table strewn with fresh
+evidences of Mr. Thorpe’s hot-houses and love.
+
+
+§
+
+Not a word from Jocelyn all this time, not a sign. He might be dead, she
+thought; and it would have hurt her less if he had been. For dead he
+would have been for ever hers; nobody then could touch him, take him
+away. Crushed and bitter, she crept yet closer to Mr. Thorpe. He liked
+it. He liked being crept close to. He was thoroughly pleased with what
+in his business-like mind he referred to as his bargain.
+
+She never mentioned Jocelyn to him, and he liked that too. ‘Young fool,’
+he said, when he came round unexpectedly early one evening, and found
+her crying. ‘No use worrying about a fool.’
+
+And Mrs. Luke, still further crushed by hearing Jocelyn called a fool,
+and therefore being forced to the deduction that she had produced
+one--yes, and it was true, too, in spite of his brains--could only hang
+on to Mr. Thorpe, and say nothing.
+
+He liked that. He liked to be hung on to, and he had no objection to a
+certain amount of saying nothing in a woman. Her late husband, could he
+now have seen her who was once his wife, would have been surprised, for
+in his day she had never hung on, and had been particularly good at
+conversation. But there was that about Mr. Thorpe which quenched
+conversation. Even before her engagement, in the days of his preliminary
+assiduities after his wife’s death, she had found it difficult, when he
+came round, to keep what she understood was sometimes described as the
+ball rolling; and she was completely in command of herself then, in the
+full flood of her happiness and satisfaction. Conversation with him, the
+kind she and South Winch knew and practised, was out of the question.
+There was no exchange of opinions possible with Mr. Thorpe, because he
+never exchanged his, he merely emitted them and stuck to them. And they
+came out clothed in so very few words that they seemed to Mrs. Luke,
+watching him with quizzical, amused eyes--ah, those detached days, when
+one looked on and wasn’t involved!--almost indecently bare. Now she
+drooped. She bowed her head.
+
+Mr. Thorpe liked that. He liked a woman to bow her head. Gentleness in a
+woman was what he liked: gentleness, and softness, and roundness.
+Margery was gentle all right, and soft enough in places--anyhow of
+speech; but she wasn’t round. Not yet. Later, of course, after the cook
+at Abergeldie--his house was called Abergeldie--had had a go at her, she
+wouldn’t know herself again. And meanwhile, to put an immediate stop to
+all this underfeeding, a stream of nourishment--oysters, lobsters,
+plovers’ eggs, his own pineapples, his own forced strawberries, his own
+butter and fresh eggs, and, once, a sucking pig--thickly flowed across
+the daisied meadow dividing Abergeldie from Almond Tree Cottage.
+
+The little maid turned yellow, and began to get up at night and be sick.
+Mrs. Luke, feeling it was both wrong and grotesque to bury lobsters in
+the back garden, and unable either to stop the stream or deal with it
+herself, was forced to send most of the stuff round to her friends; and
+so South Winch became aware of what had happened, for nobody except Mr.
+Thorpe grew pineapples and bought plovers’ eggs, and nobody gave such
+quantities of them to a woman without being going to marry her
+afterwards.
+
+Well, it was as good a way as any other of letting people know, thought
+Mrs. Luke, sitting in silence with Mr. Thorpe’s arm round her waist,
+while every now and then he furtively felt to see whether she wasn’t
+beginning anywhere to curve. Instead of sending round _billets de faire
+part_ she sent lobsters. Rather original, she thought, with a slight
+return to her detached and amused earlier self. ‘Does he really think I
+can eat them all?’ she wondered.
+
+And the little maid, in whose kitchen much, even so, remained, fell from
+one bilious paroxysm into another.
+
+
+§
+
+She was warmly congratulated. It soothed her afresh, this new importance
+with which she was instantly clothed. Money--she sighed, but faced
+it--money, even in that place where people really did try to keep their
+eyes well turned to the light, was a great, perhaps the greatest, power.
+She sighed. It oughtn’t to be so; but if it was so? And who would not be
+grateful, really deeply grateful, to Edgar, and put up with all his
+little ways, when he was so generous, so kind, and so completely
+devoted? Besides, his little ways would, she was sure, later on become
+much modified. A wife could do so much. A well-bred, intelligent
+wife--it was simply silly not to admit plain facts--could do everything.
+When she was married....
+
+And then she found herself shrinking from the thought of when she was
+married. She could restrain his affection now; it was her privilege. But
+when she was married, it would be his privilege not to be able to be
+restrained. And there appeared to be no age limit to a man’s
+affectionateness. Here was Edgar, well over sixty and still
+affectionate. Really, really, thought Mrs. Luke, who even in her most
+ardent days had loved only with her mind.
+
+And then one evening, nearly three weeks after the arrival of that
+letter of Jocelyn’s that had brought all this about, Mr. Thorpe said,
+‘When’s it going to be?’
+
+‘When is what going to be?’ she asked, starting.
+
+To this he only replied, ‘Coy, eh?’ and sat staring at her proudly and
+affectionately, a hand on each knee.
+
+Pierced by the word, Mrs. Luke hastened to say in her most level voice,
+‘You mean our marriage? Surely there’s plenty of time.’
+
+‘Time, eh? You bet there isn’t. Not for you and me. We’re no chickens,
+either of us.’
+
+Mrs. Luke winced. She had never at any time tried, or wished, or
+pretended to be a chicken, yet to be told she wasn’t one was strangely
+ruffling. If it were a question of chickens, compared with Edgar she
+certainly was one. These things were relative. But what a way of....
+
+And then, as before, the little maid came in with a letter, and Mr.
+Thorpe, vexed as before by the interruption (why that servant--well, one
+could hardly call a thing that size a servant; that aproned spot,
+then--couldn’t leave letters outside till they were wanted ...), said,
+curbing himself, ‘Letter, eh?’
+
+‘From Jocelyn,’ said Mrs. Luke, who had flushed a bright flame-colour,
+and whose hands, as they held the letter, were shaking.
+
+‘Thought so,’ said Mr. Thorpe in disgust.
+
+
+§
+
+He learned with profound disapproval that Jocelyn was bringing his bride
+to Almond Tree Cottage. He didn’t want brides about--none, that is,
+except his own; and he feared this precious son of hers, who had behaved
+to her about as badly as a son could behave, would distract Margery’s
+attention from her own affairs, and make her even more coy about fixing
+the date of her wedding than she already was.
+
+‘Going to sponge on you,’ was his comment.
+
+She shrank from the word.
+
+‘Jocelyn isn’t like that,’ she said quickly.
+
+‘Pooh,’ said Mr. Thorpe.
+
+She shrank from this word too. Edgar was, as she well knew and quite
+accepted, a plain man and a rough diamond, but a man shouldn’t be too
+plain, a diamond shouldn’t be too rough. Besides, surely the expression
+was obsolete.
+
+‘My dear Edgar,’ she protested gently.
+
+Mr. Thorpe persisted. ‘It’s pooh all right,’ he said. ‘Young men with
+wives in their shifts’--he remembered every word of that first
+letter--‘and only five hundred a year to keep them on, always sponge. Or
+try to,’ he said, instinctively closing his hands over his pockets. ‘Got
+to live, you know. Must stay somewhere.’
+
+‘He is going to live in London,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘You remember he said
+so in his first letter. Live there and do--do literary work.’
+
+‘Bunkum,’ said Mr. Thorpe.
+
+And this word seemed to her even more obsolete, if possible, than pooh.
+
+But there was no time to worry about words. What was she going to do?
+Where was she going to put Jocelyn and his wife? How was she going to
+receive them? Had she better pretend to South Winch that she had known
+nothing about it till they had appeared on her doorstep and overwhelmed
+her with the news? Had she better pretend that Jocelyn had given up
+Cambridge because he had been offered a position in London too good to
+refuse? Or had she better hide them indoors till they had found rooms in
+London, and could be got away again without having been seen, and
+meanwhile go on behaving as if nothing had happened?
+
+She lost her head. Standing there, with the letter in her shaking hands
+and Mr. Thorpe, who wouldn’t go away, squarely in front of her, she
+lost her practical, cool head, and simply couldn’t think what to do. One
+thing alone was clear--she was going to suffer. And presently another
+thing emerged into clearness, an absurd thing, but curiously difficult
+and unpleasant,--she had no spare-room, and in Jocelyn’s room was only
+the little camp bed it had pleased him (and her too, who liked to think
+of him as Spartan), to sleep in. This was no house for more than just
+herself and Jocelyn. Oh, why hadn’t she married Mr. Thorpe at once? Then
+she would have been established at Abergeldie by now, and able to let
+the pair have Almond Tree Cottage to themselves.
+
+Abergeldie. The word brought light into her confusion. Of course. That
+was where they must go. Abergeldie, majestic in the size and number of
+its unused spare-rooms, magnificent in its conveniences, its baths, its
+staff of servants. She had been taken over it, as was fitting; had waded
+across the thickness of its carpets, admired its carved wardrobes,
+marble-topped washstands and immense beds, gazed from its numerous
+windows at its many views, wilted through its hot-houses, ached along
+its lawns, and knew all about it. The very place. And, given courage by
+the knowledge of the impossibility of housing more than one person
+beside herself in her own house, urged on by the picture in her mind of
+that tiny room upstairs and its narrow bed, she made her suggestion to
+Mr. Thorpe.
+
+Nervously she made it, fearing that the reason for it, fearing that the
+merest most passing mention of such a thing as a bed, would bring out
+the side of him which she was forced to recognise as ribald. And it did.
+He said all the things she was so sorry to have been obliged to expect
+he would. But he was good-natured; he liked to feel he was helping
+Margery out of a fix. Also, the young fool would be away from his mother
+then, and perhaps some sense could be got into his head, and at the same
+time as sense was got in nonsense would be got out,--the nonsense, for
+instance, of no doubt supposing that he, Edgar Thorpe, was the sort of
+man who could be sponged upon beyond, say, a couple of days. Besides, he
+was proud of Abergeldie, and hardly anybody, what with first Annie’s
+being alive and then with her not being alive, had ever seen it.
+
+So it was settled, and he went away earlier than usual to give his
+orders to the housekeeper; and Mrs. Luke, creeping into bed with a
+splitting headache, lay for hours staring at nothing, and trying to
+forget Mr. Thorpe’s last words.
+
+For, after he had most affectionately embraced her, so affectionately
+that she was sure one of her tendons had snapped, he had said: ‘No good
+his trying to milk _me_, you know.’
+
+Milk him?
+
+She lay staring into the dark. Was character, after all, better than
+education?
+
+
+§
+
+The Canon said it was, and so did his wife. In fact at tea next day in
+Mrs. Luke’s little garden, on that bit of lawn round the cedar, near the
+low fence across which grazed Mr. Thorpe’s Jersey cows, they all three
+were unanimous that it was. Wonderful how daylight, ordinary things,
+meals, tea-cups, callers, dispelled doubts.
+
+‘Better to have both, of course,’ said the Canon, eating Mr. Thorpe’s
+forced strawberries after covering them with the cream that had been,
+twenty-four hours earlier, inside those very cows, ‘but if that’s not
+possible, give me character. It’s what _tells_. It’s the only thing that
+in the long run _tells_.’
+
+‘Oh, well--one isn’t seriously disputing it,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘Only
+these theories, if one presses them----’
+
+She paused, and poured out more tea for Mrs. Walker.
+
+‘For instance,’ she went on, ‘suppose a man had a cook of a completely
+admirable nature. If he married her, could he be happy? I mean, an
+educated man. Let us say a very _well_ educated man.’
+
+‘Certainly, if she cooked nicely,’ said the Canon, who thought he
+scented rather than saw the form of Mr. Thorpe lurking somewhere at the
+back of his delightful parishioner’s remarks, and wasn’t going to be
+caught.
+
+He knew the importance of turning away seriousness, when it cropped up
+at the wrong moment, with a laugh. A man as valuably rich as Mr. Thorpe
+shouldn’t be taken too seriously, shouldn’t be examined and pulled
+about. His texture simply wouldn’t stand it. He should be said grace
+over, thought the Canon, who fully realised what a precious addition Mr.
+Thorpe’s wealth in Mrs. Luke’s hands was going to be to South Winch, and
+gobbled up thankfully. Gobbled up; not turned over first on the plate.
+
+Mrs. Luke hadn’t invited the Walkers to tea. On the contrary, when first
+they appeared at the back door, ushered through it by the little maid
+who each time she saw the Canon’s gaiters was thrown by them into a
+fresh convulsion of respectfulness, she had been annoyed. Because all
+day long she had been vainly trying to collect and arrange her thoughts,
+soothe her nerves, prepare her mind for the evening, when Jocelyn had
+said he would arrive--to supper, he wrote, somewhere round eight
+o’clock,--and define what her attitude was going to be both to him and
+to the girl with the utterly ridiculous Christian name; and not having
+one bit succeeded, and impelled by some vague hope that out of doors she
+might find quiet, that in Nature she might find tranquillity and
+composure, had said she would have tea in the garden.
+
+_Nature never did betray the heart that loved her...._
+
+Some idea like that, though she wasn’t at all a Wordsworthian and
+regarded him at best with indulgence, drove her out to what her corner
+of South Winch held of Nature,--the bit of lawn, the cedar, the Kerria
+japonica against the wall by the kitchen window, the meadow across the
+railing, full of daisies and cows, and, on that fine spring afternoon of
+swift shadows and sunshine, the wind, fresh and sweet with the scent of
+young leaves.
+
+But once the Walkers were there she found they did her good. They
+distracted her. And they liked her so much. It was always pleasant and
+restoring to be with people who liked one. The Canon made her feel she
+was good-looking and important, and his wife made her feel she was
+important. Also, they helped with the strawberries, from which, after a
+fortnight of them at every meal, she had for some time turned away her
+eyes. Later on, when she was alone again, there would still be at least
+a couple of hours to decide in what sort of a way she would meet
+Jocelyn; quite long enough, seeing how she couldn’t, whenever she
+thought of the meeting, stop herself from trembling.
+
+Oh, he had behaved outrageously to her--to her, his mother, who had
+given up her life to him. There had been men in past years she might
+have married, men of her own age and class, by whom she might have had
+other children and with whom she might have been happy all this time;
+and she had turned them down, dismissed them ruthlessly because of
+Jocelyn, because only Jocelyn, and his gifts and career, were to have
+her love and devotion. Wasn’t it a shame, wasn’t it a shame to treat her
+so? To behave to her as though she were his enemy, the kill-joy who
+mustn’t be told and mustn’t be consulted, who must be kept in the dark,
+shut out? And why, because he had gone mad about a girl, must he go
+still more mad, and ruin himself by throwing up Cambridge?
+
+A wave of fresh misery swept over her. ‘Go on talking--_please_,’ she
+said quickly, when the Walkers, replete, fell momentarily silent.
+
+They looked up surprised; and they were still more surprised when they
+saw that her face, usually delicately pale, was quite red, and her eyes
+full of tears.
+
+The Canon was affectionately concerned, and his wife was concerned.
+
+‘Are you not well, dear Mrs. Luke?’ she inquired.
+
+‘My _dear_ friend,’ said the Canon, setting down his cup, tidying his
+mouth, and taking her hand. ‘My dear, _dear_ friend--what is it?’
+
+Then, impulsively, she told them. ‘It’s Jocelyn,’ she said. ‘He’s
+married, and given up Cambridge.’
+
+And all her mortification and bitter unhappiness engulfed her, and she
+began helplessly to cry.
+
+‘Dear, dear. Dear me. Dear, dear me,’ said the Canon.
+
+‘Dear Mrs. Luke----’ said his wife.
+
+They sat impotently looking on. Such excessive weeping from the poised,
+the unemotional, the serene Mrs. Luke, was most disconcerting. One
+shouldn’t expose oneself like that, however unhappy one was, thought the
+Canon’s wife, feeling terribly uncomfortable; and even the Canon had a
+sensation he didn’t like, as of fig-leaves being wrenched off and flung
+aside.
+
+Well, having behaved like this--really her nerves had completely
+gone--there was nothing left but to explain further, and after a few
+painful moments of trying to gulp herself quiet she told them all about
+it.
+
+They were horrified. Jocelyn’s behaviour, to the Walkers who had
+ripening sons of their own, seemed to the last degree disgraceful. That
+the girl was some one to be ashamed of was very plain, or why should he
+have come down voluntarily from Cambridge? Marriage by itself didn’t
+stop a student from continuing there. He was ruined. He would never be
+anything now. And as representing South Winch, which had not yet in its
+history produced a distinguished man, the Canon felt this blighting of
+its hopes that some day it would be celebrated as the early home of Sir
+Jocelyn Luke, perhaps of Lord Luke--why not? hadn’t there been
+Kelvin?--very keenly.
+
+Poor mother. Poor, poor mother.
+
+The Canon took her hand, and, raising it reverently to his lips, kissed
+it. His wife didn’t mind this, because in sorrow, as in sickness, there
+is no sex. Nobody enjoys kissing the hand of the sick. She minded
+nothing the Canon did so long as he didn’t enjoy it.
+
+‘Yes--and he’s bringing her here to-night,’ gasped Mrs. Luke, struggling
+to keep down a fresh outburst.
+
+‘Here? Bringing her here? Without first asking your permission and
+forgiveness?’ cried the Canon. ‘Disgraceful. Outrageous. Unpardonable.’
+
+‘Oh, _isn’t_ it, _isn’t_ it----’ wept Mrs. Luke into her handkerchief.
+
+Never, never could she forgive Jocelyn. No, she never, never would. Let
+him manage for himself now. Let him lie as best he could on the
+miserable bed he had made. She would tell him so plainly, and though she
+couldn’t help his coming there that night she would insist that he
+should go away again next morning and never, never come back....
+
+And then, over the top of her handkerchief, she saw him standing there,
+standing in the back-door looking at her: Jocelyn; the light of her
+eyes; the only thing really in her life.
+
+‘Jocelyn--oh, _Jocelyn_!’
+
+She gave a kind of sobbing sigh; she struggled to her feet; she stood,
+swaying a moment, holding on to the table; and then simply ran to him.
+
+
+§
+
+‘Mother----’
+
+‘Oh--_Jocelyn_!’
+
+He hugged her tighter than he had ever hugged her. He was raised quite
+outside his ordinary self, in this joy of getting back to her. And that
+she should run into his arms--she who never ran, who never showed
+emotion!
+
+‘You’re not angry, Mother?’ he asked, looking down at her upturned face,
+still wet and red from her recent weeping.
+
+‘Dreadfully,’ she said, smiling up at him, the strangest transfigured,
+watery smile.
+
+‘Oh, Mother--I knew you wouldn’t fail me!’ he cried, infinitely
+relieved, infinitely melted and grateful.
+
+‘Fail you?’
+
+‘Oh, Mother----’
+
+And they hugged again. His mother’s love was a miracle. Her voice was an
+enchantment. Just to hear the words, the precious right words, said in
+the precious right voice....
+
+At the tea-table the Canon and his wife, who carefully didn’t look but
+yet saw, were much shocked. This surely amounted to having duped them as
+to her real feelings, to having got their sympathy and concern on false
+pretences.
+
+‘Hadn’t we better go home, John?’ Mrs. Walker inquired of her husband.
+
+‘Much better,’ said the Canon, who didn’t see how to do it.
+
+He looked about for a way of escape.
+
+There wasn’t one, except by climbing over to the cows, and that would
+involve them in trespass. Besides, retreat should be dignified.
+
+‘But where----?’ Mrs. Luke was whispering, her cheek against Jocelyn’s,
+while with one hand she still clung hold of his neck. ‘Salvatia----?’
+
+‘In the sitting-room,’ whispered Jocelyn. ‘I put her there. I wanted to
+see you first alone. Why on earth those Walkers are here to-day of all
+days----’
+
+He glanced at the scene on the lawn, where the Canon and his wife,
+marooned at the untidy tea-table, were trying to seem absorbed in
+something that wasn’t happening up above their heads in the branches of
+the cedar.
+
+‘You said supper-time----’
+
+‘But I scorched to get to you quickly----’
+
+‘Then you wanted me?’
+
+‘Oh, Mother!’
+
+And he hugged her again, and the Walkers looked about again for a way of
+escape, and again found none.
+
+Sweet, sweet, delicious beyond dreams, was this restoration to all, to
+far more than all that had been apparent before, of her boy’s need of
+her, and of his love. If this was the effect being married had on him,
+then she was glad he had married. How could she be angry with a wife who
+brought him closer than ever, more utterly than ever, back to his
+mother? So, she thought, must the Prodigal Son’s father have felt about
+the swine his boy had had such a dose of. He wouldn’t have resented
+them; he must have quite liked them.
+
+‘You’ll try and love her, won’t you, Mother?’ said Jocelyn. ‘She
+is--very lovable.’
+
+And taking his mother by the hand, he led her to the sitting-room.
+
+
+§
+
+There stood the exquisite Sally; stood, because she was afraid to sit.
+Round her slender body she held tightly the new wrap Jocelyn, among
+other things, had bought her on their way through London and had
+instructed her to keep on till he told her to take it off. It was grey,
+so as to make her as invisible as possible, and was of the kind that has
+neither sleeves nor fastenings; and Sally, who had never been inside a
+thing like that before, clutched it with anxious obedience about her
+with both hands.
+
+Extravagantly slender in this garment, which took on as if by magic the
+most delicious folds directly it got hold of Sally, and too lovely to be
+credible, she stood there, her lips parted in fright, and her eyes fixed
+on the entering Mrs. Luke.
+
+‘_Oh_----’ said Mrs. Luke, catching her breath, who had read poetry,
+who had heard music, who knew what April mornings in the woods are like,
+when the sun shines through windflowers and the birds are wild with
+young delight.
+
+Sally’s knees shook. She clutched the grey wrap tighter still about her.
+Mr. Luke’s mother was so terribly like Mr. Luke. Two of them. She hadn’t
+bargained for two of them. And she was worse than he was, because she
+was a lady. Gentlemen were difficult enough, but they did every now and
+then cast themselves at one’s feet and make one feel one could do what
+one liked for a bit, but a lady wouldn’t; a lady would always stay a
+lady.
+
+The word struck cold on Sally’s heart. What did one do with a lady? And
+a lady, too, who seemed hardly older than her son, and as wide-awake and
+sharp as you please, Sally was sure. She had been imagining Jocelyn’s
+mother old and stout and whitehaired, and perhaps not able to see or
+hear very well, and therefore comfortingly slow to mark what was done
+amiss. And here was this thin, quick, almost young lady. No flies on
+_her_ for dead certain, thought Sally, clutching her wrap.
+
+Her heart, which felt as if it had already sunk as far as it could go,
+contrived to sink still farther. She stared at Mrs. Luke with the
+fascinated fear of a rabbit confronted by a snake; but her stare, which
+felt inside just as ugly and scared as that, was outside the most
+beautiful little look of gracious shyness, and Mrs. Luke, staring back,
+was for a moment quite unable to speak.
+
+Who was this? Had Jocelyn caught and married some marvellous daughter of
+a patrician house? Had he been up to Olympus, and netted the young
+Aphrodite as, on that morning of roses, she stepped ashore from her
+shell?
+
+She flushed scarlet. The perfect grace and youth, the dream-like
+loveliness....
+
+‘Why,’ she murmured under her breath, ‘how _beautiful_----’ and took a
+step forward, and held out both her hands.
+
+‘Are you really my new daughter?’ she said in a low voice. ‘You?’
+
+With a great effort Sally managed to stand her ground, and not shrink
+away backwards before this alarming figure. She didn’t know what to do
+about the held out hands, because if she let go of the wrap so as to
+shake them it would fall off, and Jocelyn had said she was on no account
+to let it do that.
+
+She therefore stood motionless, and her tongue clove to the roof of her
+mouth.
+
+Mrs. Luke came close. ‘You wonderful child--_you’re_ Salvatia?’ she
+murmured.
+
+With a great effort Sally continued to hold her ground; with a great
+effort she unclove her tongue.
+
+‘That’s right,’ she said, clutching her grey wrap.
+
+Two words; but enough. How many times had not Jocelyn told her not to
+say That’s right? But he had told her not to say nearly everything; she
+couldn’t possibly remember all the things she wasn’t to say, however
+hard she tried. Indeed, Sally in her flustered soul was thinking what a
+mercy it was she hadn’t added ‘mum.’ It had been on the tip of her
+tongue, faced by a lady, and she had hung on to it just in time.
+
+Mrs. Luke, startled, was arrested for an instant in her advance. Then,
+not after all quite certain that she had heard what she had heard--it
+seemed impossible that she should have--she went close up to Sally and
+kissed her. She had to reach up to her for Sally was half a head the
+taller, besides being rigid with fright.
+
+‘Sally, kiss my mother and make friends,’ said Jocelyn.
+
+‘Yes, Mr. Luke----’ said Sally, making a quick downward lunge of her
+head.
+
+‘Now, Sally----_please_,’ protested Jocelyn. ‘She can’t,’ he added,
+turning to his mother, ‘get used to calling me by my Christian name.’
+
+‘Sorry,’ said Sally; and felt so very warm that she had a queer
+conviction that even her stomach must be blushing.
+
+Mrs. Luke stood looking at her, trying to smile. She now knew
+everything. No need for words from Jocelyn, for explanations. She knew,
+and she understood. Up to her to behave well; up to her to behave
+wonderfully, and make him more than ever certain there was no one in the
+whole world like his mother.
+
+‘She’ll learn,’ she said, smiling as best she could. ‘Won’t
+you--Salvatia?’
+
+If only, thought Sally, she were back at Woodles; if only, only she were
+back safe and quiet with her father at Woodles.
+
+‘It was inevitable,’ said Mrs. Luke, turning to Jocelyn. ‘Absolutely
+inevitable.’
+
+He caught hold of his mother’s hands. That she should see that, that she
+should instantly understand....
+
+‘And I congratulate you with all my heart, my dear son, and my dear
+daughter,’ Mrs. Luke went on, continuing to be wonderful. ‘You are both
+my dear, my very dear, children.’
+
+And Jocelyn bent his head over her hand, and kissed it in a fervour of
+gratitude and relief.
+
+And Sally, looking on at Usband in this new light, thought, ‘Well, I’m
+blest.’
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+§
+
+
+Restored by the shock both of Sally’s loveliness and language to her
+normal self, Mrs. Luke’s tears dried up and her emotions calmed down,
+and she began to think rapidly and clearly.
+
+This situation had to be dealt with. The only person who could deal with
+it with any hope at all of success was herself. She would, then, grasp
+it firmly, as if it were a nettle, and wear it proudly, as if it were a
+rose. Yes, that was the line to take: wear it proudly, as if it were a
+rose.
+
+More clearly than if Jocelyn had explained for an hour she saw what had
+happened, what couldn’t have helped happening, once chance had shown him
+Salvatia. From those few words of Sally’s she reconstructed the Pinner
+family and its conditions, and as she stood gazing at her, with one hand
+still in Jocelyn’s, she grouped the whole Pinner lot into the single
+word Gutter. Jocelyn had found and picked up beauty in a gutter. The
+gutter was as evident as the beauty, and as impossible to hide. Accept
+it, then; accept it, and make South Winch accept it. Treat it as quaint,
+as amusing, as completely excused by the beauty. She had made South
+Winch accept Tiepolo, when it didn’t in the least want to, and now see
+into what an enthusiasm it had lashed itself! Even so would she make it
+accept Salvatia; and ceaselessly every hour, every minute, she herself
+would educate the girl, and train her patiently, and force her gently
+into proper ways of speech and behaviour. Seventeen, was she? Mrs. Luke
+felt that with seventeen all things were possible. A child. Wax. And she
+was so really exquisite, so really perfect of form and colour and
+movement, that it would be wonderful to watch her development, her
+unfolding into at least the semblance of a lady.
+
+Salvatia--‘No, no, dearest Jocelyn--not Sally, not Sally,’ she begged on
+his calling her that, for she had a theory that names had the power of
+making you be like them, and a Sally was foredoomed to unredeemable
+vulgarity--should have masters (perhaps mistresses would be better,)
+down from London, when once Mrs. Luke was married to Mr. Thorpe and
+could afford things; regular teachers who would give her lessons at
+stated hours, while she herself would give her lessons at all the
+unstated ones. And she would take her everywhere, to each of the South
+Winch festivities, whether tea-parties, or debates, or lectures, or
+concerts or plays, and wherever she went Salvatia should be her open
+glory. It would be a mistake in tactics, besides being an impossibility,
+to try to hide her. She should be flaunted. For, confronted by a bull,
+Mrs. Luke remembered, quite the best thing to do was to take it by the
+horns.
+
+So swiftly do thoughts gallop through minds like Mrs. Luke’s that she
+had planned out her attitude in those few instants in the sitting-room,
+while she stood gazing at Sally and holding Jocelyn’s hand.
+
+‘We’re going to be _great_ friends, are we not Salvatia?’ she said,
+laying her free hand on her daughter-in-law’s delicate little shoulder.
+
+Great friends? She and the lady? The bare suggestion produced in Sally
+that physical condition known to the Pinner family as fit to drop.
+
+Directly questioned, however, she was forced to answer, so she said
+faintly, ‘Right O,’ and Mrs. Luke, smiling elaborately and patting the
+shoulder, said, ‘You very quaint little girl,’--and in spite of the
+obvious inappropriateness of these adjectives as a description of the
+noble young angel standing before her, she was determined that they
+should, roughly, represent her attitude towards her.
+
+‘Now we’ll all have tea,’ she said, suddenly becoming gaily
+business-like. These children--it was she who must take them in hand. No
+more emotions, she decided. Her beloved Jocelyn needed her help again,
+couldn’t do without her.... ‘Won’t we, Jocelyn? Won’t we, Salvatia? I’ve
+had some already, but I’ll be greedy and have some more. Jocelyn, you go
+and tell Hammond----’ Hammond was the little maid’s surname, and by it,
+to her great astonishment who knew herself only as Lizz, she had been
+called since she entered Mrs. Luke’s service--‘to make fresh tea and
+bring it in here. You must both be dying for it. And then you can say
+goodbye to the Walkers for me, Jocelyn, will you?’ she called after him.
+‘Tell them I’ve got a most beautiful surprise for them--quite soon,
+perhaps to-morrow. _You’re_ the beautiful surprise, Salvatia,’ she said,
+turning to Sally smilingly, who had made a sudden forward movement as if
+to follow Jocelyn, and who, on seeing him go out of the room and leave
+her alone with his mother, was so seriously alarmed that she again had a
+queer conviction about her stomach, but this time that it was turning
+what the Pinner family called as white as a sheet.
+
+‘Of course you know you’re beautiful, don’t you?’ said Mrs. Luke, busily
+pulling out the little table the tea was to be put on in the absence of
+the proper table in the garden, and clearing Sir Thomas Browne off it,
+and also two bright tulips in a clear glass vessel. ‘You must have heard
+that ever since you can remember.’
+
+‘But I can’t _’elp_ it,’ said Sally, very anxious, her eyes on the door.
+
+‘’Elp it? You quaint child. There’s an h in help, Salvatia dear. Help
+it? But why should you want to? It’s a wonderful gift, and you should
+thank God who gave it you, and use it entirely----’ Mrs. Luke was quite
+surprised at her own words, for she wasn’t at all religious, yet they
+came out glibly, and she concluded they were subconsciously inspired by
+the Canon in the garden--‘entirely to His glory.’
+
+‘Yes, m----’
+
+‘No--stop there, stop there,’ cried Mrs. Luke, quickly holding up her
+hand and smiling. ‘You were going to say ma’am, were you not, Salvatia?
+Well, you mustn’t. Not to me. Not to anybody. Except, of course,’ she
+added, feeling she couldn’t begin too soon to help the child, ‘to the
+Queen, and other royal ladies.’
+
+And before her eyes floated that vision she had so often contemplated of
+Sir Jocelyn Luke, of Lord Luke, and now was added to it Lady Luke, the
+lovely Lady Luke, being presented at Court, and by that time as perfect
+inside as out. Properly dealt with, Jocelyn’s marriage, instead of being
+his ruin, might end by being one of his chief glories.
+
+‘Sit down, little girl.’
+
+Sally dropped as if she were shot on to the nearest chair, which was
+Mrs. Luke’s.
+
+‘Not there--not that one,’ said Mrs. Luke, smiling. ‘No, dear child--nor
+that one,’ she added, as Sally having hastily got up again was about to
+drop on to the next nearest one, which was Jocelyn’s--better get her
+into all the little ways at once. ‘_Any_ chair, Salvatia dear, except
+just those two. Yes--that’s a very comfortable one. Is not it too
+strange to think that this time yesterday you and I never had seen each
+other, and had no more idea----’
+
+Sally, sitting down more cautiously on the edge of the third chair,
+didn’t think that strange at all, but very natural and nice. There had
+been lots of yesterdays without the lady in them, and all of them had
+seemed quite natural. What really was strange was that they should have
+left off and landed her here, shut up alone with somebody so happily
+till then unknown. If only, thought Sally, she could now, having been
+introduced and that, go somewhere where the lady wasn’t. For Mrs. Luke
+terrified her more than any one she had yet in her brief life come
+across. Worse, far worse, than her parents when, for her good, they used
+to give her What for, and worse even than Mr. Luke when he turned and
+just looked at her and didn’t say anything after she had passed some
+remark, was this smiling lady who patted her. She couldn’t take her eyes
+off Mrs. Luke, watching her with a fascinated apprehension, not knowing
+where she mightn’t be going to be patted next.
+
+Sitting sideways on the very edge of her chair, and still holding her
+wrap tightly about her, Sally’s eyes followed Mrs. Luke’s slightest
+movement. In any one else it would have been a stare, and Mrs. Luke
+would have explained that she mustn’t, but there was nothing wrong to be
+found with the look in Sally’s eyes,--nothing wrong, indeed, to be
+found in anything she did, thought Mrs. Luke, arranging things
+comfortably for everybody’s tea, so long as it wasn’t speaking.
+
+Mrs. Luke knew she was being watched, but only, so it seemed, with a
+lovely and gracious attentiveness. She also knew Sally was sitting on
+the edge of her chair, with her legs drawn up under her just as if she
+were trying to keep them out of something not quite nice; but no need to
+disturb a position which somehow seemed sheer grace. What a pity, what a
+pity, flashed across Mrs. Luke’s mind, that the child hadn’t happened to
+be born dumb! Was that wicked? No, she didn’t think so. She herself
+could imagine being very happy dumb, with plenty of books, and not
+having to talk to bores.
+
+‘Wouldn’t you like to take your hat off, Salvatia?’ she asked, drawing
+Jocelyn’s chair closer to the little table.
+
+Sally started. ‘No thank you, please----’ she said hastily.
+
+‘Do,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘I want you to.’
+
+‘Yes, m--yes, Mrs. Luke,’ said Sally, instantly obeying.
+
+‘Not Mrs. Luke, dear--Mother. You must call me Moth----’
+
+Her voice died away, and she stood staring in silence. How wonderful.
+How really amazingly beautiful. Like sunsets. And the girl, crowned with
+that bright crown of waving light, like some royal child.
+
+She stood staring, her hands dropped by her sides. ‘What a
+_responsibility_,’ she whispered.
+
+‘Pardon?’ said Sally, nervously.
+
+
+§
+
+The Walkers were got rid of, and Jocelyn came back frowning. They had
+scolded him; him, who had been completely understood and unreproached by
+his mother, the one person with either a right or a grievance. Having
+known him since he was three didn’t excuse them, he considered; and it
+seemed merely silly to rebuke him for leaving Cambridge when he wasn’t
+going to leave it. He didn’t attempt to enlighten them; he just stood
+and glowered, waiting till they should have done. What could old Walker
+know of the way one was forced to react to beauty? He had probably never
+set eyes on it in his life. And as for passionate love, the fiery love
+that had been burning him up for the last few weeks, one had only to
+look at Mrs. Walker to know he could never have felt that.
+
+So he simply repeated, when the Canon paused a moment, that his mother
+had asked him to say good-bye for her, and then, this second time, he
+added, ‘She can’t come herself, because she is with my wife.’
+
+‘Conceited young monkey,’ thought Mrs. Walker, who remembered him in
+petticoats, and even then giving himself airs. ‘Wife, indeed.’ Both Mrs.
+Walker’s sons were without gifts.
+
+‘Your mother is an angel, sir,’ said the Canon sternly.
+
+‘So is my wife,’ said Jocelyn, glowering.
+
+‘No doubt, no doubt,’ said the Canon, who didn’t for a moment believe
+it. Angels weren’t married in such a hurry. On the other hand, he was
+sure young devils frequently were. They got hold of one and made one.
+Jocelyn had been got hold of--lamentably, disastrously.
+
+The Canon snatched up his hat. ‘Come along, Margaret,’ he said testily,
+squaring his shoulders.
+
+And Margaret came along, and together they marched off into the house,
+along the passage, past the shut sitting-room door, accompanied by
+Jocelyn who showed them out in silence.
+
+He had said no word of that pleasant part of his mother’s message, that
+part about having a beautiful surprise for the Walkers, perhaps
+to-morrow, because he was annoyed with them, and they went away more
+indignant with him than before, besides feeling they had been
+treacherously treated by their hitherto dear friend, Mrs. Luke. And Mrs.
+Walker, when they were safely out in the road, said what a very
+disagreeable young man he had grown into, and the Canon said he hoped
+Mr. Thorpe would lick him into shape, and Jocelyn, all unconscious of
+Mr. Thorpe, went back frowning to his mother, who was in the act, when
+he opened the door, of stroking Sally’s hair.
+
+He forgot the tiresome Walkers, and his heart swelled with gratitude.
+That Sally should be taken at once to his mother’s arms like this had
+been outside his wildest hopes. Indeed, he had had no hopes, no clear
+thoughts about it at all; he only, driven by weariness of the burden of
+complications Sally brought into the simplest things, had come back to
+his mother’s feet as the Christian sinner, tired of or frightened by his
+sins, comes back to the feet of God. The analogy wasn’t perfect, of
+course; Sally, so good and beautiful, couldn’t be compared to sin. But
+he wanted to get back to his mother’s feet, he had a tremendous, almost
+childish, longing to lie there and let her kick him if she chose. He had
+treated her badly. He well knew he deserved it. Let her do anything in
+the way of rebuke and chastisement, if only he might lie there, he and
+his burden, safely cast down, both of them, at her feet. ‘_I will arise
+and go to my Mother_,’ had floated frequently through his head as he set
+the bonnet of the Morris-Cowley eastward towards London and South Winch.
+Naturally he hadn’t said it out loud. Sally was incapable of
+understanding even a simple reaction. This one, which was highly
+complicated, would have completely bewildered her. Besides, one can’t
+well speak of a reaction to its cause.
+
+But how happy was Jocelyn at the moment when he opened the door, and saw
+her and his mother in that attitude of mutual affection; how deeply
+relieved. The cords were loosened, the weight shifted. Here this calm
+room, with everything in it just right, just _so_--its restraints, its
+browns and ivories, its flashes of colour, its books, its one picture;
+and upstairs, up under the roof, his own attic waiting for him, with its
+promise of work to be resumed, to be carried on as it used to be in the
+tranquil, fruitful days before he met Sally.
+
+Jocelyn stood a moment looking at the scene, smiling his rare smile
+because he was so content. How unlike the places he had suffered in
+since he last was here. How unlike the Pinner lair at the back of the
+shop, where he had burnt in torment, and the hideous dwelling of the
+Cupps, where he had been insulted, and the dingy expensiveness of the
+Thistle and Goat, and the other three or four cynically ugly and
+uncomfortable rooms through which he had trailed his passion. Impossible
+not to smile, not to laugh almost, with gladness at getting home again.
+He had, he knew, all his life loved his mother, but it seemed as if he
+hadn’t loved her consciously till now, and he went quickly across to her
+and put his arm about her, and said, ‘Mother, you must never leave me.
+I can’t do without you. _We_ can’t. When I go back to Cambridge--and of
+course I’m going back--you must come too. You’re going to live with us
+there. Everything depends on you. All my future, all my happiness----’
+
+And Sally, over whose head these words were being tossed, sitting very
+rigid, for Mrs. Luke’s hand was still on her hair, and wholly
+unaccustomed to displays of family affection, once again said to
+herself, just for company’s sake and to keep her courage up, ‘Well, I’m
+blest.’
+
+
+§
+
+Mrs. Luke, however, was brought back by Jocelyn’s words to a vivid sense
+of Mr. Thorpe. He had sunk aside in her mind during the emotions of the
+last half hour. He now became distinct; extremely distinct, and
+frightfully near. That very evening he would be coming round after
+supper--he had agreed that the meal itself should be given over to
+reunion--in order to collect his young guests.
+
+Jocelyn, she knew, had no idea of his existence. Mr. Thorpe, though
+living in South Winch, had not till then been of it. His world had been
+different. His wealth had separated him, and his obvious
+disharmony--South Winch had only to look at him to perceive it--with the
+things of the spirit. Also, there had been his wife. So that if
+mentioned, which was rarely, it had merely been with vague uninterest as
+the rich man in the big house in Acacia Avenue.
+
+Now he had to be mentioned, and Jocelyn’s words made it difficult.
+
+Mrs. Luke stood silent, her hand still on Sally’s head, encircled by
+Jocelyn’s arm, while he told her of the plans he had been making for the
+last two days, ever since it suddenly dawned on him that that was to be
+their future. How could she interrupt him with Mr. Thorpe? Yet Mr.
+Thorpe was, she was sure, the real solution. Salvatia was going to be
+expensive, very, if the gutter was to be properly scraped off her, and
+no further stretching could possibly be got out of her own income, while
+Jocelyn’s, of course, would be all needed for Cambridge. Yes--Mr.
+Thorpe, who had begun by being a refuge, had now become a godsend.
+Jocelyn would see it himself, when he had had him properly explained.
+
+But how difficult to explain him--now, with the sweet balm of her boy’s
+dependence on her and his love being poured into her ears, her boy, who
+in his whole life hadn’t shown so much of either as he had in the half
+hour since he came home. Yet it wasn’t her fault, it was Jocelyn’s. It
+was his marriage that had precipitated Mr. Thorpe into their lives.
+Still, she didn’t blame Jocelyn, for no young man, let alone her
+imaginative, beauty-appreciating son, could have resisted Salvatia.
+
+She stood silent, smiling nervously. To have to quench this happy
+hopefulness with Mr. Thorpe was most painful. She smiled more and more
+nervously. Apart from everything else, it embarrassed her, her coming
+marriage, it embarrassed her dreadfully, somehow, faced by her grown-up
+son. The memory of that almost snapped tendon last night ... suppose
+Jocelyn were to think she was marrying Mr. Thorpe for anything but
+convenience, with anything but reluctance ... suppose he were to take
+up a Hamlet-like attitude to her, and think--he would never, she knew,
+say--rude things....
+
+‘How delightful it all sounds,’ she said at last, removing her hand from
+Sally’s head, who at once felt better. ‘Quite, quite delightful. But----’
+
+‘Now, Mother, there mustn’t be any buts,’ interrupted Jocelyn. ‘It’s all
+settled.’ And rashly--but then he felt so happy and safe--he appealed to
+Sally. ‘Isn’t it, Sally,’ he said. ‘We want Mother, don’t we. And we’re
+going to have her, aren’t we.’
+
+‘Yes--and Father,’ said Sally, whose ideas were simple but tenacious.
+
+‘Father?’ repeated Mrs. Luke, touched. ‘Dear child, your poor Jocelyn
+has no----’
+
+‘Mother, you and I must really have a good talk together,’ hastily
+interposed Jocelyn, who saw Sally’s mouth opening again. She shouldn’t
+_say_ anything; she really shouldn’t _say_ anything; the less she said
+the better for everybody. ‘You and I. By ourselves. This evening, when
+Sally----’
+
+‘Salvatia, Jocelyn. Please, please.’
+
+‘---- has gone up to bed.’
+
+‘But you know, Jocelyn dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, loosening herself from his
+clasp and withdrawing a little, ‘that’s just what the dear child can’t
+go up to. Not here. Not in this tiny house. You didn’t think, of course,
+but there isn’t an inch of room really--not for three people. So I
+wanted to tell you--’ she began putting his tie straight, her eyes on
+it, not looking at him--‘what I’ve arranged. You’re both going to be
+taken in next door.’
+
+‘Next door, Mother?’ said Jocelyn, much surprised, for he couldn’t at
+all recollect the next door people.
+
+‘Well, nearly next door,’ said Mrs. Luke, diligent over his tie, and
+excessively annoyed to feel she was turning red. ‘At Abergeldie.’
+
+‘Abergeldie?’ echoed Jocelyn, to whom the name was completely
+unfamiliar.
+
+‘I tell you what we’ll do,’ said Mrs. Luke, as though she had suddenly
+had a brilliant idea, on the little maid’s appearing in the door bearing
+a tray that seemed twice as big as she was, and all but dropping it when
+she caught sight of the young lady on the chair. ‘After tea Salvatia
+shall go and lie down in my bedroom and rest--won’t you, Salvatia,--and
+you and I will have a quiet talk, dear Jocelyn--no, no, Hammond, not
+there; here, where I’ve put the table ready--and I’ll tell you all
+about--we want three cups, Hammond, not two--I’ll tell you all about----’
+
+But she still couldn’t bring herself to mention Mr. Thorpe, and again
+said Abergeldie.
+
+‘Is that lodgings?’ asked Jocelyn, who didn’t at all like the sound of
+it.
+
+‘Oh, no--it isn’t _lodgings_,’ said Mrs. Luke brightly, giving his tie a
+final pat.
+
+
+§
+
+How was she to tell him about Mr. Thorpe? In what words, once she had
+got Salvatia upstairs out of the way, could she most quickly create in
+Jocelyn’s mind the image she wished to have there of a good, and
+honourable, and wealthy man, a man elderly and settled down, who
+respected and esteemed her, and because he respected and esteemed her
+wished to make her his wife? A good man, who would be a solid background
+for them all. A good man, whose feeling for her--Mrs. Luke was most
+anxious that Jocelyn shouldn’t suppose there was anything warm about Mr.
+Thorpe--was that of a kind, and much older, brother.
+
+Preoccupied and perturbed, she poured out the tea and drank some
+herself, and hardly noticed what Sally was doing who, faced for the
+first time in her life by no table to sit up to and only her lap to put
+her cup and saucer and spoon and things to eat on, kept on either
+dropping them or spilling them.
+
+‘Well, Mother, you’ll just have to be very patient,’ said Jocelyn,
+himself deeply annoyed when Sally’s spoon fell off for the third time,
+and for the third time made a noise on the varnished floor, which only
+had two rugs on it, and those far apart.
+
+And Mrs. Luke smiled, and said ‘Of course,’ and hardly noticed, because
+of her deep preoccupation with Mr. Thorpe.
+
+But when the cup itself slid sideways on the saucer and upset, and
+Sally’s frock was soaked and the cup broken, she was startled into
+awareness again, and for the moment forgot Mr. Thorpe.
+
+‘Oh, _my_!’ cried Sally, shaken into speech.
+
+‘It really isn’t of the slightest consequence, Salvatia,’ said Mrs.
+Luke, who was particularly fond of her teacups, of which none had ever
+yet been broken. ‘Pray don’t try to pick up anything. Hammond will do
+so. Jocelyn, ring the bell, will you? But I shouldn’t,’ she added, for
+naturally she was vexed at the set being spoilt, and though breeding,
+she knew, forbids vexation at such _contretemps_ being shown, yet it has
+to get out in some form or other, ‘I shouldn’t say, “Oh, _my_,” when
+anything unexpected happens.’
+
+‘Right O,’ murmured Sally, shattered, all Jocelyn’s teaching vanishing
+from her mind.
+
+‘Nor,’ remarked Mrs. Luke, gently and very clearly, ‘should I say,
+“Right O”.’
+
+‘I’ve told her not to a hundred times,’ said Jocelyn, wiping Sally’s
+frock with his handkerchief.
+
+‘That’s right,’ murmured Sally, who had now lost her head, and only
+wanted to admit her evil-doing and be forgiven.
+
+‘Nor, dear Salvatia,’ said Mrs. Luke, still more gently and clearly,
+‘should I, I think, say that.’
+
+So then Sally said nothing, for there seemed nothing left to say.
+
+‘She’ll be perfectly all right ultimately,’ said Mrs. Luke, coming down
+to Jocelyn when presently she had taken her upstairs, and tucked her up
+on the bed, and told her she was tired and must rest. ‘Perfectly.’
+
+Jocelyn was waiting in the sitting-room. He and his mother were now,
+having got Sally out of the way, going to have their talk.
+
+‘You’re wonderful, Mother,’ he said.
+
+‘Darling Jocelyn,’ smiled his mother. ‘It’s that child who is
+wonderful,’ she added. ‘Or will be, when she has been properly----’ she
+was going to say scraped, the word gutter coming once more into her
+mind, but of course she didn’t, and substituted something milder. ‘When
+she has been properly trained,’ finished Mrs. Luke.
+
+‘It sounds like a servant,’ said Jocelyn, who was sensitive because of
+the tin trunk (got rid of in Truro,) and the stiff nightgowns (got rid
+of in Truro too,) and several other distinct and searing memories.
+
+‘Servant? You absurd boy. She’s a duchess, who happens not to have been
+born right--the most beautiful duchess the world would ever have seen.
+Now never,’ said Mrs. Luke with much seriousness--she felt she must take
+this situation thoroughly in hand--‘never, never let such a word as the
+one you just used enter your mind in connection with Salvatia again, my
+dear Jocelyn.’
+
+No, he wouldn’t tell his mother about the way Sally had seemed to drift,
+as if drawn, towards the Cupps, quite obviously wanting to make friends
+with them, nor about the way she actually had made friends with the
+spotted mechanic in the Truro garage. And as for Mr. Pinner, for whom he
+had a curious distaste and of whom the remembrance was definitely
+grievous to him, Jocelyn wouldn’t tell his mother about him either. He
+would skim over Mr. Pinner. Why intrude him? Why dot the i’s of Sally’s
+beginnings? His mother had heard for herself how she spoke, and knew
+approximately what her father must be like. Let her knowledge remain
+approximate.
+
+So they went together into the garden--again Mrs. Luke instinctively
+sought Nature,--Jocelyn determined to keep Mr. Pinner out of his
+mother’s consciousness, and Mrs. Luke determined to get Mr. Thorpe into
+his.
+
+
+§
+
+Arm in arm they paced up and down what Mr. Thorpe persisted in calling
+the drying ground, in spite of Mrs. Luke’s steady reference to it as the
+lawn, and Jocelyn said, ‘Her family come from Islington.’
+
+‘Suburbans. Like ourselves,’ replied his mother, with a really heavenly
+tact, Jocelyn thought.
+
+But she wasn’t thinking of what he was saying and what she was
+answering; she was seeking a formula for Mr. Thorpe. And, to gain yet a
+further moment’s grace,--queer how nervous she felt--she stopped a
+moment in front of the Kerria japonica in the angle of the wall by the
+kitchen window, and asked him if he didn’t think it was doing very well
+that year.
+
+‘Wonderful,’ said Jocelyn. ‘It’s all perfect.’
+
+He sighed with contentment at his mother’s progressive and amazing
+tactfulness. How had she not from the first moment grasped the
+situation, and needed no explanation at all. Now she was grasping the
+Pinners, and dismissing them without a single question. ‘Suburbans. Like
+ourselves.’ At that moment Jocelyn positively adored his mother.
+
+‘Quite perfect,’ he said, admiring the Kerria. ‘Wherever you are, things
+grow as they should, and there’s peace, and order, and exact
+_rightness_.’
+
+‘Marriage has turned you into a flatterer,’ smiled Mrs. Luke, still
+putting off Mr. Thorpe.
+
+‘It has made me realise what a mother I’ve got,’ said Jocelyn, pressing
+her arm.
+
+‘Darling Jocelyn. But surely rather an unusual result?’
+
+‘My marriage is unusual.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Luke, bracing herself. ‘Yes. I suppose--we had better
+talk about it.’
+
+‘But we _are_ talking about it.’
+
+‘I mean the future.’
+
+‘Well, I’ve told you my plans.’
+
+‘But I haven’t told you mine.’
+
+‘Yours, Mother?’
+
+He turned his head and looked at her. Surely she was rather red?
+
+‘You know, Jocelyn,’ she said, in a queer altered voice, ‘I was very
+miserable. Very, very miserable. You mustn’t forget that. I really
+_was_.’
+
+
+§
+
+How differently Mrs. Luke had meant to introduce Mr. Thorpe; how clearly
+she recognised that in their present situation he was their only hope,
+and that he should be explained with the appreciation and praise due to
+an only hope. And here she was prefacing him by a solemn declaration of
+her own unhappiness. It wasn’t at all the proper beginning. It couldn’t
+but be damaging to Mr. Thorpe. Besides, her pride had always been to
+appear before Jocelyn in every situation as completely content and calm.
+Breeding, she had preached to him ever since he was a tot, was
+invariably calm, and behaved very much like the great description of
+charity in St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. Whatever it felt
+it didn’t show it. But she had had a bad time lately, a bad, bad time,
+and her nerves had been tried beyond, apparently, their endurance.
+
+‘What is it, Mother?’ asked Jocelyn, surprised and troubled. Had his
+mother been speculating, and lost?
+
+She made a great effort to recover her self-control, and tried to smile.
+‘Really some very good news,’ she said, resuming their walk. ‘We’ll go
+and sit under the cedar, and I’ll----’
+
+‘Mother, what is it?’ asked Jocelyn again anxiously as she broke off, a
+cold foreboding creeping round his heart. ‘You’re not going to--you’re
+not going to fail me now?’
+
+‘I’m going to help you more than I’ve ever done. In fact, if it hadn’t
+been for this--’ she was going to say windfall, but found she couldn’t
+think of Mr. Thorpe as a windfall,--‘if it hadn’t been for this, I could
+do very little for Salvatia. She will need----’
+
+Had his mother been speculating, and won?
+
+But what Salvatia would need Mrs. Luke didn’t on that occasion explain,
+for as on their way to the cedar they passed below the open window of
+the bedroom Sally had been left in, they heard voices coming from it,
+and Mrs. Luke, much astonished, stood still.
+
+Almond Tree Cottage was a small low house, and its first floor windows
+were not very far above the heads of those walking beneath them in the
+garden. Standing there astonished--for who could Salvatia possibly be
+talking to?--Mrs. Luke listened, her surprised eyes on Jocelyn’s face.
+He too listened, but with less surprise, for from past experience he
+could guess--it was painful to him--what was happening, and he guessed
+that Sally was reverting to type again, and coalescing with the servant.
+
+At first there was only a murmuring--one voice by itself, then another
+voice by itself, then two voices together; and his mother’s face was
+frankly bewildered. But presently Sally’s voice emerged, and it rose in
+a distinct, surprising wail, and they heard it say, or rather cry, ‘Oh,
+Ammond--oh, Ammond----’
+
+Twice. Just like that.
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Luke let go suddenly of Jocelyn’s arm, and hurried
+indoors and upstairs.
+
+
+§
+
+‘Are you unwell, Salvatia?’ she asked quickly, opening the bedroom door.
+
+On the edge of the bed, her stockinged feet trailing on the floor, sat
+Sally, and beside her, also on the edge of the bed, the little maid.
+Mrs. Luke couldn’t believe her eyes. Their arms were round each other.
+She hadn’t realised, somehow, that Hammond had any arms; not the sort
+that go round other people, not the sort that do anything except carry
+trays and sweep floors.
+
+It came upon her with an odd shock. If Salvatia were ill, of course
+Hammond’s arms would be in an explainable and excusable position. But
+Salvatia wasn’t ill. Mrs. Luke saw that at once. She wasn’t ill, for she
+was crying; and people who are ill, she had observed, do not as a rule
+cry.
+
+The little maid jumped up, and stood, very red and scared, with alarmed
+eyes fixed on her mistress. Sally did just the opposite--she lay down
+quickly on the bed again, and pulled the counterpane up to her chin and
+tried to look as if she hadn’t stirred from the position the lady had
+tucked her into when she left her. What she was ashamed of was crying;
+crying when everybody was so good to her and kind, patting and kissing
+her and that, even after she had broken the cup. It was terribly
+ungrateful of her to cry, thought Sally. But she wasn’t ashamed of
+having put her arm round Ammond. Friendly, she was; friendly, and seemed
+to know a lot for her age, which was six months less than Sally’s own. A
+bit shy she had been and stand-offish at first, but soon got used to
+Sally, who was feeling ever so lonely and strange, and when Ammond--of
+all the names for a girl!--came in with hot water for the lady to wash
+in before the next meal, Sally, taken by her friendly eye, began talking
+to her, and it was as great a relief as talking to the young fellow in
+the garage, only with the young fellow she had laughed, and with Ammond,
+to her confusion and shame, she did nothing but cry. But then the lady
+... enough to make a cat cry, that lady ... going to live with them, and
+never leave them any more ... keeping on smiling smiles that looked like
+smiles, and weren’t....
+
+‘_I_ know,’ said the little maid, nodding gravely.
+
+Knew a lot, Ammond did, for her age.
+
+
+§
+
+Sally had been very thankful when that dreadful tea was somehow
+finished--they had actually tried to make her have more tea, and begin
+the cup and lap business all over again, but she wasn’t to be caught a
+second time,--she had been very thankful to follow Mrs. Luke upstairs,
+and let herself be laid out on a bed and told she must rest till supper.
+Till breakfast next day she would rest if they liked, till kingdom come.
+She didn’t want any supper. There were forks for supper, which were
+worse than spoons, and perhaps they had that too just sitting round with
+nothing but their laps. She didn’t want anything, not anything in the
+world, except to be somewhere where the lady wasn’t. And the lady had
+drawn the curtains, and then covered her up with a counterpane, and
+smoothed back her hair, and told her sleep would refresh her, and bent
+over her and kissed her, and at last had gone away--and how thankful
+Sally had been, just to be alone.
+
+Kissed her. In spite of the cup, thought Sally, who lay still as she had
+been told, and reflected upon all that had been her lot that afternoon.
+They didn’t seem able to stop kissing in that family, thought Sally, in
+whose own there had been a total absence of what the Pinner circle knew
+and condemned as pawings about. The Pinners never pawed, nor did any of
+their friends. Nice, that was, thought Sally wistfully; knew where you
+were. Among these here Lukes--so ran her dejected thoughts, with no
+intention of irreverence but unable, from her habit of language, to run
+otherwise--one never could tell where one wasn’t going to be kissed
+next. Hands, hair, face--nothing seemed to come amiss to them when they
+once got going. Kept one on the hop; made one squirmy. And Mr.
+Luke--_he_ was different here. But then he kept on being different.
+While as for that there lady----
+
+At this point of her meditations Sally had turned her face to the pillow
+and buried it, and to her surprise she found the pillow was wet, and on
+looking into this she discovered that it was her own tears making it
+wet. Then she was ashamed. But being ashamed didn’t stop her crying;
+once she had begun she seemed to get worse every minute. And the little
+maid, coming in with the hot water, had found her crying quite hard.
+
+
+§
+
+Mrs. Luke made short work of the little maid. She merely said, in that
+gentle voice before which all servants went down flat as ninepins,
+‘Hammond, I am surprised at your disturbing Mrs. Jocelyn’s sleep--’ and
+the little maid, very red and with downcast eyes, sidled deprecatingly
+out of the room.
+
+Then Mrs. Luke took Sally in hand, sitting in her turn on the edge of
+the bed.
+
+‘Salvatia, dear--’ she said, laying her hand on the arm outlined beneath
+the counterpane, and addressing the averted face. ‘Salvatia, dear----’
+
+Sally’s tears dried up instantly, for she was much too much afraid to
+cry, but she buried her face still deeper, and kept her eyes tight shut.
+
+‘Don’t make confidences to a servant, dear child,’ said Mrs. Luke
+gently. ‘Come to Jocelyn, or to me. We’re the _natural_ ones for you to
+come to in any of your little troubles. Oh, I know honeymoons are trying
+for a girl, and often, without knowing why, she wants a good cry. Isn’t
+it so, Salvatia? Then come to me, or to your husband, when you feel like
+that, but don’t say things to Hammond you may afterwards regret. You
+see, Salvatia dear, you’re a lady, aren’t you--a grown-up married lady
+now, and your place is with your husband and me. What, dear child? What
+did you say?’
+
+Sally, however, hadn’t said anything; she had only gulped, trying to
+choke down her misgivings at this picture of where her place was. With
+the lady? ‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ she thought, in great discomfort of
+mind as she more and more perceived that her marriage was going to
+include Mrs. Luke, ‘if I ain’t bitten off more as I can chew----’ and
+immediately was shocked at herself for having thought it. Manners were
+manners. They had to be inside one, as well as out. No good saying
+Excuse me, Pardon, and Sorry, if inside you were thinking rude. God saw.
+God knew. And if you were only polite with your lips, and it wasn’t
+going right through you, you were being, as she remembered from her
+father’s teaching, a whited sepulchre.
+
+And Mrs. Luke, contemplating the _profil perdu_ on the pillow, the tip
+of the little ear, the lovely curve of the flushed cheek, and the tangle
+of bright hair, bent down and kissed it with a view to comfort and
+encouragement, and Sally, trying not to shrink farther into the pillow,
+said to herself, ‘At it again.’
+
+‘Why did you cry, Salvatia?’ asked Mrs. Luke, gently.
+
+‘Dunno,’ murmured Sally, withdrawing into the furthermost corner of her
+shell.
+
+‘Then, dear, it was simply childish, wasn’t it--to cry without a reason,
+and to cry before a servant too. Things like that lower one’s dignity,
+Salvatia. And you haven’t only your own dignity to consider now, but
+Jocelyn’s, your husband’s.’
+
+‘Oh dear,’ sighed Sally to herself, recognising from the tone, through
+all its gentleness, that she was being given What for--a new kind, and
+one which it was extremely difficult to follow and understand, however
+painstakingly she listened. Which parts, for instance, of herself and
+Mr. Luke were their dignities? ‘Good job I ain’t a nursin’ mother,’ she
+thought, for she knew all about nursing mothers, ‘or the lady’d turn my
+milk sour’--and immediately was much shocked at herself for having
+thought it. Manners were manners. They had to be inside one, as well as
+out. ‘Never think what you wouldn’t say,’ had been her father’s
+teaching; and fancy saying what she had just thought!
+
+‘_Oh Gawd_,’ silently prayed Sally, who had been made to repeat a
+collect every Sunday to Mr. Pinner, and in whose mind bits had stuck,
+‘_send down the ’Oly Spirit and cleanse the thoughts of my ’eart with
+’im forasmuch as without thee I ain’t able to...._’
+
+‘Perhaps, dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, finding it difficult in the face of
+Sally’s silence to go on--not for want of things to say, for there were
+so many and all so important that she hardly knew where to begin,--‘the
+best thing you can do is to bathe your eyes in the nice hot water
+Hammond has put ready, and tidy yourself a little, and then come
+downstairs. What do you think of that? Isn’t it a good idea? It is dull
+for you up here alone. But bathe your eyes well. We don’t want Jocelyn
+to see we’ve been crying, do we, dear child----’
+
+And in the act of stooping to give Sally a parting kiss she heard her
+name being called, loud and cheerily, downstairs in the hall.
+
+She started to her feet.
+
+‘Margery! Margery!’ called the voice, with the cheerful insistence of
+one who, being betrothed, has the right to be cheerful and insistent in
+his fiancée’s hall.
+
+Edgar. Come hours before his time.
+
+
+§
+
+‘Oh, hush, _hush_----’ besought Mrs. Luke, hurrying down to him.
+
+‘Hush, eh?’
+
+‘Jocelyn----’
+
+She glanced fearfully along the passage to the backdoor.
+
+‘He’s arrived,’ said Mr. Thorpe, not hushing at all. ‘Know that. Saw
+his--well, you can hardly call it a car, can you--his contraption,
+outside the gate.’
+
+‘But I haven’t had time yet to tell him----’
+
+‘That he’s been a fool?’ interrupted Mr. Thorpe.
+
+‘Come in here,’ said Mrs. Luke, taking him by the arm and pressing him
+into the parlour, the door of which she shut.
+
+‘Brought you this,’ said Mr. Thorpe, holding up a fish-basket, a big
+one, in front of her face. ‘Salmon. Prime cut. Thought it would be a bit
+of something worth eating for your--well, you don’t have dinner, do
+you--meal, then, to-night. Came back early from the City on purpose to
+get it here soon enough.’
+
+‘How kind, how kind,’ murmured Mrs. Luke distractedly.
+
+‘Plenty of it, too,’ said Mr. Thorpe, slapping the basket.
+
+‘Too much, too much,’ murmured Mrs. Luke, not quite sure whether it were
+the salmon she was talking about.
+
+‘Too much? Not a bit of it,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘I hate skimp.’
+
+And he was going to put down his present on the nearest chair and then,
+she knew, fold her in one of those strong hugs that scrunched, when she
+bent forward and hastily took the basket from him. She couldn’t, she
+simply couldn’t, on this occasion be folded--not with Jocelyn sitting
+out there, all unsuspecting, under the cedar.
+
+‘Never mind the basket,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who felt he had deserved well
+of Margery in this matter of the fish.
+
+‘I must take it to the kitchen at once,’ said Mrs. Luke, evading his
+wide-opened arms, ‘or it won’t be ready in time for supper.’
+
+‘What? No thanks, eh?’
+
+‘Yes, yes--afterwards,’ said Mrs. Luke, slipping away to the door.
+‘Jocelyn doesn’t know yet. About us, I mean. I haven’t had time----’
+
+‘Time, eh? Not had time to tell him, you’ve netted me?’
+
+Mr. Thorpe took out his watch. ‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Two would be
+enough, but I’ll give you five. Trot along now, and come back to me
+sharp in five minutes. If you don’t, I’ll fetch you. Trot along.’
+
+Trot along....
+
+Mrs. Luke, shutting him into the parlour, asked herself, as she went
+down the passage bearing the heavy basket in both her delicate hands,
+how long it would take after marriage to weed out Mr. Thorpe’s language.
+To be told to trot along, however, was so grotesque--she to trot, she,
+surely the most dignified of South Winch’s ladies!--that it seemed to
+restore her composure. She would not trot. Nor would she, in the
+emotional sphere, do anything that corresponded to it. She would neither
+trot nor hurry; neither physically, nor spiritually. She declined to be
+bound by five minutes, and a watch in Edgar’s hand. Really he must,
+somehow, come up more to her level, and not be so comfortably certain
+that she was coming down to his. And what a way to speak of their
+marriage--that she had netted him!
+
+Frozen, then, once more into calm by Mr. Thorpe’s words, she proceeded
+down the passage with almost more than her usual dignity, and as she
+passed the kitchen door she held out the fish-basket to the little maid,
+who came out of the shady corner where the sink was with reluctance,
+merely saying, ‘Boil it.’ Then, with her head held high as the heads of
+those are held who face the inevitable, she went out into the garden,
+and crossed the grass to where Jocelyn was waiting for her on the seat
+beneath the cedar.
+
+This took her one minute out of the five. In another four Mr. Thorpe
+would come out too into the garden, to see why she didn’t return. Let
+him, thought Mrs. Luke, filled with the courage of the cornered. This
+thing couldn’t be done in five minutes; it couldn’t be fired off at
+Jocelyn’s head like a pistol. Foolish Edgar.
+
+
+§
+
+‘Well, Mother?’ said Jocelyn, getting up as she approached.
+
+He had been smoking, content to leave whatever it was Sally had been
+doing in his mother’s capable hands, yet wishing to goodness Sally
+hadn’t done it. This trick of wanting to be with servants must revolt
+his mother. It revolted him; how much more, then, his fastidious mother.
+
+‘I can guess what it is, I’m afraid,’ he said, as she sat down beside
+him.
+
+‘No,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘You haven’t any idea.’
+
+‘_What_ has she been doing, Mother?’ he asked, seriously alarmed, and
+throwing away his cigarette.
+
+‘Salvatia? Nothing. Nothing that matters, poor dear child. It’s not
+about her I want to talk. It’s about Mr. Thorpe.’
+
+‘Mr. Thorpe?’
+
+‘Yes. Abergeldie. That’s Mr. Thorpe’s. That’s why you are going
+there--because it is Mr. Thorpe’s.’
+
+‘But why should we----?’
+
+‘Now Jocelyn,’ she interrupted, ‘please keep well in mind that Mr.
+Thorpe is the most absolutely reliable, trustworthy, excellent, devoted
+man. I can find no flaw in his character. He is generous to a
+fault--really to a fault. He has a perfect genius for kindness. Indeed,
+I can’t tell you how highly I think of him.’
+
+Jocelyn’s heart went cold and heavy with foreboding.
+
+There was a little silence.
+
+‘Yes, Mother. And?’ he said, after a minute.
+
+‘And he is rich. Very.’
+
+‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn, as she paused.
+
+‘When I got your first letter I was, of course, very much upset,’ said
+Mrs. Luke, looking straight in front of her.
+
+‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn, for she paused again.
+
+‘Everything seemed to go to pieces--all I had believed in and hoped
+for.’
+
+There was a longer pause.
+
+‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn at last, keeping his voice as level as
+possible.
+
+‘I’m not a religious woman, as you know. I hadn’t got God.’
+
+‘No, Mother. So?’
+
+‘So I--I turned to Mr. Thorpe.’
+
+‘Yes, Mother. Quite.’
+
+The bitterness of Jocelyn’s soul was complete. A black fog of anger,
+jealousy, wounded trust, hurt pride and cruellest disappointment
+engulfed him.
+
+‘Why not say at once,’ he said, lighting another cigarette with hands he
+was grimly determined should be perfectly steady, ‘that you are going to
+marry him?’
+
+‘If it hadn’t been for your marriage it never would have happened,’ said
+Mrs. Luke.
+
+‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn, very bitter, pitching the newly-lit cigarette
+away. ‘Oh, quite.’
+
+Sally again. Always, at the bottom of everything, Sally.
+
+Then he thought, ashamed, ‘My God, I’m a mean cur’--and sat in silence,
+his head in his hands, not looking up at all, while his mother did her
+best to make him see Mr. Thorpe as she wanted him to be seen.
+
+In her low voice, the low, educated voice Jocelyn had so much loved, she
+explained Mr. Thorpe and his advantages, determined that at this
+important, this vital moment she would not allow herself to be vexed by
+anything Jocelyn said.
+
+He, however, said nothing. It simply was too awful for speech--his
+mother, who never during his whole life had shown signs of wanting to
+marry, going now, now that she was at an age when she might surely, in
+Jocelyn’s twenty-two year old vision, be regarded as immune, to give
+herself to a complete stranger, and leave him, her son who needed her,
+God knew, more than ever before, to his fate. That he should hate this
+Thorpe with a violent hatred seemed natural. Who cared for his damned
+money? Why should Sally--his mother kept on harping on that--be going to
+be expensive? As if money, much money, according to what his mother was
+saying, now that Sally had come on the scene, Sally who was used to
+being penniless, was indispensable. Masters? What need was there for
+masters? His mother could teach her. Clothes? Why, whatever she put on
+seemed to catch beauty from her--he had seen that in the shop in London
+where he bought the wrap: every blessed thing the women tried on her,
+however unattractive to begin with, the minute it touched her body
+became part of beauty. And how revolting, anyhow--marriage. Oh, how he
+hated the thought of it, how he wanted now beyond anything in the world
+to be away from its footling worries and complications, away from women
+altogether, and back at Cambridge, back in a laboratory, absorbed once
+more in the great tranquil splendours of research!
+
+‘He is in the sitting-room,’ said Mrs. Luke, when she had said
+everything she could think of that she wished Jocelyn to suppose was
+true.
+
+‘Who is?’ said Jocelyn.
+
+‘Ah, I was afraid you would be angry,’ she said, putting her hand on his
+arm, ‘but I hoped that when it was all explained you would understand,
+and see the great, the immense advantages. Apparently you don’t, or----’
+she sighed--‘won’t. Then I must be patient till you do, or will. But
+Mr. Thorpe is waiting.’
+
+‘Who cares?’ inquired Jocelyn, his head in his hands; and it suddenly
+struck Mrs. Luke that Mr. Thorpe was waiting very quietly. The five
+minutes must have been up long ago; she must have been sitting there
+quite twenty, and yet he hadn’t come after her as he had threatened.
+Knowing him, as she did, for a man absolutely of his word, this struck
+her as odd.
+
+‘Dear Jocelyn,’ she said, remembering the fits of dark obstinacy that
+had at times seized her boy in his childhood, and out of which he had
+only been got by the utmost patience and gentleness, ‘I won’t bother you
+to come in now and see Mr. Thorpe. But as he is going to be your host
+to-night----’
+
+‘He isn’t,’ said Jocelyn, his head still in his hands, and his eyes
+still fixed on the grass at his feet.
+
+‘But, _dearest_ boy----’
+
+‘I decline to go near him.’
+
+‘But there’s _positively_ no room here for you both----’
+
+‘There’s London, and hotels, I suppose?’
+
+‘Oh, Jocelyn!’
+
+She looked at him in dismay. He didn’t move. She again put her hand on
+his arm. He took no notice. And aware, from past experiences, that for
+the next two hours at least he would probably be completely
+inaccessible to reason, she got up with a sigh and left him.
+
+Well, she had told him; she had done what she had to do. She would now
+go back to Mr. Thorpe.
+
+And she did go back; and opening the parlour door slowly and gently, for
+she was absorbed in painful thought, she found Mr. Thorpe sitting on the
+sofa, busily kissing Sally.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+§
+
+The following brief dialogue had taken place between him and Sally,
+before he began to kiss:
+
+‘Crikey!’ he exclaimed, on her appearing suddenly in the doorway.
+
+‘Pardon?’ said she, hesitating, and astonished to find a strange old
+gentleman where she had thought to find the Lukes.
+
+‘It’s crikey all right,’ he said, staring. ‘Know who I am?’
+
+‘No, sir.’
+
+‘Sir, eh?’
+
+He took a step forward and shut the door.
+
+‘Father--that’s who I am. Yours. Father-in-law. Same thing as father,
+only better,’ said he. ‘What does one do to a father, eh? Kisses him.
+How do, daughter. Kiss me.’
+
+Sally kissed him; or rather, having no reason to doubt that the old
+gentleman was what he said he was, docilely submitted while he kissed
+her, regarding his behaviour as merely another example of the inability
+of all Lukes to keep off pawings; and though she was mildly surprised at
+the gusto with which this one gave himself up to them, she was pleased
+to notice his happy face. If only everybody would be happy she wouldn’t
+mind anything. She hadn’t felt that the lady’s kisses were expressions
+of happiness, and Mr. Luke’s, when he started, made her think of a
+funeral that had got the bit between its teeth and couldn’t stop running
+away, more than of anything happy. Father-in-law, on the contrary,
+seemed as jolly as a sand-boy. And anyhow it was better than having to
+talk.
+
+This was the way the situation arose in which Mrs. Luke found them.
+
+‘Making friends with my new daughter,’ said Mr. Thorpe, not without
+confusion, on perceiving her standing looking on.
+
+‘Quite,’ said Mrs. Luke, who sometimes talked like Jocelyn.
+
+
+§
+
+Now to have caught Mr. Thorpe kissing somebody else--she didn’t like it
+when he kissed her, but she discovered she liked it still less when it
+was somebody else--was painful to Mrs. Luke. Every aspect of it was
+painful. The very word _caught_ was an unpleasant one; and she felt that
+to be placed in a position in life in which she might be liable to catch
+would be most disagreeable. What she saw put everything else for the
+moment out of her head. Edgar must certainly be told that he couldn’t
+behave like this. No marriage could stand it. If a woman couldn’t trust
+her husband not to humiliate her, whom could she trust? And to behave
+like this to Salvatia, of all people! Salvatia, who was to live with
+them at Abergeldie during term time, while Jocelyn pursued his career
+undisturbed at Cambridge--this had been another of Mrs. Luke’s swift
+decisions,--live with them, and be given advantages, and be trained to
+become a fit wife for him,--how could any of these plans be realised if
+Edgar’s tendency to kiss, of which Mrs. Luke had only been too well
+aware, but which she had supposed was concentrated entirely on herself,
+included also Salvatia?
+
+And if the situation was disagreeable to Mrs. Luke, it was very nearly
+as disagreeable to Mr. Thorpe. He didn’t like it one little bit. He knew
+quite well that there had been gusto in his embrace, and that Margery
+must have seen it. ‘Damn these women,’ he thought, unfairly.
+
+The only person without disagreeable sensations was Sally, who,
+unconscious of anything but dutiful behaviour, was standing wiping her
+face with a big, honest-looking handkerchief, observing while she did so
+that she wasn’t half hot.
+
+‘Jocelyn is in the garden, Salvatia,’ said Mrs. Luke.
+
+Regarding this as mere news, imparted she knew not to what end, Sally
+could think of nothing to say back, though it was evident from the
+lady’s eyes that she was expected to make some sort of a reply. She
+searched, therefore, in her _répertoire_, and after a moment said,
+‘Fancy that,’ and went on wiping her face.
+
+‘Won’t you go to him?’ then said Mrs. Luke, speaking very distinctly.
+
+‘Right O,’ said Sally, hastily then, for the lady’s eyebrows had
+suddenly become rather frightening; and, stuffing the handkerchief yard
+by yard into her pocket as she went, she exquisitely slid away.
+
+‘I’ll be off too,’ said Mr. Thorpe briskly, who for the first time
+didn’t feel at home with Margery. ‘Back on the tick of ten to fetch ’em
+both----’
+
+‘Oh, but please--wait just one moment,’ said Mrs. Luke, raising her
+hand as he began to move towards the door.
+
+‘Got to have my wigging first, eh?’ he said, pausing and squaring his
+shoulders to meet it.
+
+‘What is a wigging, Edgar?’ inquired Mrs. Luke gently, opening her clear
+grey eyes slightly wider.
+
+‘Oh Lord, Margery, cut the highbrow cackle,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘Why
+shouldn’t I kiss the girl? She’s my daughter-in-law. Or will be soon.’
+
+‘Really, Edgar, it would be very strange if you didn’t wish to kiss
+her,’ said Mrs. Luke, still with gentleness. ‘Anybody would wish to.’
+
+‘Well, then,’ said Mr. Thorpe sulkily; for not only didn’t he see what
+Margery was driving at, but for the first time he didn’t think her
+particularly good-looking. Moth-eaten, thought Mr. Thorpe, eyeing her. A
+lady, of course, and all that; but having to sleep later on with a
+moth-eaten lady wouldn’t, it suddenly struck him, be much fun. ‘Need a
+pitch dark night to turn _her_ into a handsome woman,’ he thought
+indelicately; but then he was angry, because he had been discovered
+doing wrong.
+
+‘I wanted to tell you,’ said Mrs. Luke, ignoring for the moment what she
+had just witnessed, ‘that I have told Jocelyn.’
+
+And Mr. Thorpe was so much relieved to find she wasn’t pursuing the
+kissing business further that he thought, ‘Not a bad old girl, Marge--’
+in his thoughts he called her Marge, though not to her face because she
+didn’t like it--‘not a bad old girl. Better than Annie, anyhow.’
+
+Yes, better than Annie; but less good--ah, how much less good--than
+young beauty.
+
+‘That’s all right, then,’ he said, cheerful again. ‘Nothing like
+coughing things up.’
+
+No--Edgar was too rough a diamond, Mrs. Luke said to herself, shrinking
+from this dreadful phrase. She hadn’t heard this one before. Was there
+no end to his dreadful phrases?
+
+‘He is much annoyed,’ she said, her eyebrows still drawn together with
+the pain Mr. Thorpe’s last sentence had given her.
+
+‘Annoyed, eh? Annoyed, is he? I like that,’ said Mr. Thorpe vehemently,
+his cheerfulness vanishing. Annoyed because his mother was making a
+rattling good match? Annoyed because the richest man for miles round was
+taking her on for the rest of her life? Of all the insolent puppies....
+
+Mr. Thorpe had no words with which to express his opinion of Jocelyn; no
+words, that is, fit for a drawing-room--he supposed the room he was in
+would be called a drawing-room, though he was blest if there was a
+single stick of stuff in it to justify such a name--for, having now seen
+Sally, his feeling for Jocelyn, which had been one of simple
+contemptuous indifference, had changed into something much more active.
+Fancy _him_ getting her, he thought--him, with only a beggarly five
+hundred a year, him, who wouldn’t even be able to dress her properly.
+Why, a young beauty like that ought to be a blaze of diamonds, and never
+put her feet to the ground except to step out of a Rolls.
+
+‘I’m very sorry, Edgar,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘but he says he doesn’t wish to
+accept your hospitality.’
+
+‘Doesn’t wish, eh? Doesn’t wish, does he? I like that,’ said Mr. Thorpe,
+more vehemently still.
+
+That his good-natured willingness to help Marge out of a fix, and his
+elaborate preparations for the comfort of the first guests he had had
+for years should be flouted in this way not only angered but hurt him.
+And what would the servants say? And he had taken such pains to have the
+bridal suite filled with everything calculated to make the young prig,
+who thought his sorts of brains were the only ones worth having, see for
+himself that they weren’t. Brains, indeed. What was the good of brains
+that you couldn’t get enough butter out of to butter your bread
+properly? Dry-bread brains, that’s what this precious prig’s were.
+Crust-and-cold-water brains. Brains? Pooh.
+
+This last word Mr. Thorpe said out loud; very loud; and Mrs. Luke shrank
+again. It strangely afflicted her when he said pooh.
+
+‘And I’m afraid,’ she went on, her voice extra gentle, for it did seem
+to her that considering the position she had found him in Edgar was
+behaving rather high-handedly, ‘that if he knew you had kissed his wife,
+kissed her in the way you did kiss her, he might still less wish to.’
+
+‘_Now_ we’ve got it!’ burst out Mr. Thorpe, slapping his thigh. ‘_Now_
+we’re getting down to brass tacks!’
+
+‘Brass tacks, Edgar?’ said Mrs. Luke, to whom this expression, too, was
+unfamiliar.
+
+‘Spite,’ said Mr. Thorpe.
+
+‘Spite?’ repeated Mrs. Luke, her grey eyes very wide.
+
+‘Feminine spite. Don’t believe a word about him not wanting to come and
+stay at my place. You’ve made it up. Because I kissed the girl.’
+
+And Mr. Thorpe in his anger inquired of Mrs. Luke whether she had ever
+heard about hell holding no fury like a woman scorned--for in common
+with other men who know little poetry he knew that--and he also called
+her Marge to her face, because he no longer saw any reason why he
+shouldn’t.
+
+‘My _dear_ Edgar,’ was all she could find to say, her shoulders drawn up
+slightly to her ears as if to ward off these blows of speech, violence
+never yet having crossed her path.
+
+She didn’t get angry herself. She behaved with dignity. She remembered
+that she was a lady.
+
+She did, however, at last suggest that perhaps it would be better if he
+went away, for not only was he making more noise than she cared
+about--really a most noisy man, she thought, gliding to the window and
+softly shutting it--but it had occurred to her as a possibility that
+Salvatia, out in the back garden, might be telling Jocelyn that Mr.
+Thorpe had kissed her, and that on hearing this Jocelyn, who in any case
+was upset, might be further upset into coming and joining Edgar and
+herself in the sitting-room.
+
+This, she was sure, would be a pity; so she suggested to Mr. Thorpe that
+he should go.
+
+‘Oh, I’m _going_ all right,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who somehow, instead of
+being the one to be wigged, was the one who was wigging.
+
+‘We’ll talk it all over quietly to-morrow, dear Edgar,’ said Mrs. Luke,
+attempting to placate.
+
+‘Dear Edgar, eh?’ retorted Mr. Thorpe, not to be shaken by fair words
+from his conviction that Marge regarded herself as a woman scorned, and
+therefore that she outrivalled the worst of the ladies of hell. ‘Fed-up
+Edgar’s more like it,’ he said; and strode, banging doors, out of the
+house.
+
+
+§
+
+Mrs. Luke stood motionless where he had left her. What an unexpected
+turn things had taken. How very violent Edgar really was; and how rude.
+A woman scorned? Feminine spite? Such expressions, applied to herself,
+would be merely ludicrous if they hadn’t, coming from Edgar in
+connection with Salvatia, been so extraordinarily rude.
+
+In connection with Salvatia. She paused on the thought. All this was
+because of Salvatia. From beginning to end, everything unpleasant and
+difficult that had happened to her during the last few weeks was because
+of Salvatia.
+
+But she mustn’t be unfair. If Salvatia had been the cause of her
+engagement to Edgar, she was now being the cause of its breaking off.
+For surely, surely, breaking off was the only course to take?
+
+‘Let me _think_,’ said Mrs. Luke, pressing her hand to her forehead,
+which was burning.
+
+Yes; surely no amount of money could make up for the rest of Edgar?
+Surely no amount, however great, could make up for the hourly fret and
+discomfort of having to live with the wrong sort--no, not necessarily
+the wrong sort, but the entirely different sort, corrected Mrs. Luke, at
+pains to be just--of mind? Besides, of what use could she be to Jocelyn
+and Salvatia, married to Edgar, if Jocelyn wouldn’t go near him, and
+Salvatia couldn’t because of his amorousness? It would merely make the
+cleavage between herself and Jocelyn complete at the very moment when he
+more than ever before in his life needed her. And the grotesqueness of
+accusing _her_, who had remained so quiet and calm, of being a fury,
+the sheer imbecility of imagining _her_ actuated by feminine spite!
+Really, really, said Mrs. Luke to herself, drawing her shoulders up to
+her ears again at the recollection. And then there was--no, she turned
+her mind away from those expressions of his; she positively couldn’t
+bear to think of cough it up, bunkum, and pooh.
+
+She went to her little desk and sat down to write a letter to Mr.
+Thorpe, because in some circumstances letters are so much the best; nor
+did she want to lose any time, in case it should occur to him too to
+write a letter, and it seemed to her important that when it comes to
+shedding anybody one should get there first, and be the shedder rather
+than the shed; and she had got as far as _Dear Edgar, I feel that I owe
+it to you_--when Jocelyn appeared in the doorway, with blazing eyes.
+
+
+§
+
+What had taken place in the garden between Jocelyn and Sally was this:
+
+She had gone out obediently to him, as she had been told. ‘Do as you’re
+told,’ her father and mother had taught her, ‘and not much can go wrong
+with you.’ Innocent Pinners. Inadequate teaching. It was to lead her,
+before she had done, into many difficulties.
+
+She went, then, as she had been told, over to where she saw Jocelyn, and
+sat down beside him beneath the cedar.
+
+He didn’t move, and didn’t look up, and she sat for a long while not
+daring to speak, because of the expression on his face.
+
+Naturally she thought it was his stomach again, for what else could it
+be? Last time she had seen him he was smiling as happy as happy, and
+kissing his mother’s hand. Clear to Sally as daylight was it that he
+was having another of those attacks to which her father had been such a
+martyr, and which were familiar to the Pinners under the name of the Dry
+Heaves. So too had her father sat when they came on, frowning hard at
+nothing, and looking just like ink. The only difference was that
+Jocelyn, she supposed because of being a gentleman, held his head in his
+hands, and her father held the real place the heaves were in. But
+presently, when the simple remedy he took on these occasions had begun
+to work, he was better; and it seemed to Sally a great pity that she
+should be too much afraid of Usband to tell him about it,--a great pity,
+and wrong as well. Hadn’t she promised God in church the day she was
+married to look after him in sickness and in health? And here he was
+sick, plain as a pikestaff.
+
+So at last she pulled her courage together, and did tell him.
+
+‘Father’s stomach,’ she began timidly, ‘was just like that.’
+
+‘What?’ said Jocelyn, roused from his black thoughts by this surprising
+remark, and turning his head and looking at her.
+
+‘You got the same stomachs,’ said Sally, shrinking under his look but
+continuing to hold on to her courage, ‘you and Father ’as. Like as two
+peas.’
+
+Jocelyn stared at her. What, in the name of all that was fantastic, had
+Pinner’s stomach to do with him?
+
+‘Sit just like that, ’e would, when they come on,’ continued Sally,
+lashing herself forward.
+
+‘Do you mind,’ requested Jocelyn with icy politeness, ‘making yourself
+clear?’
+
+‘Now, Mr. Luke, don’t--please don’t talk that way, begged Sally. ‘I
+only want to tell you what Father did when they come on.’
+
+‘When what comes on, and where?’
+
+‘These ’ere dry ’eaves,’ said Sally. ‘You’d be better if you’d take what
+Father did. ’Ad them somethin’ awful, ’e did. And you’d be better----’
+
+But her voice faded away. When Jocelyn looked at her like that and said
+not a word, her voice didn’t seem able to go on talking, however hard
+she tried to make it.
+
+And Jocelyn’s thoughts grew if possible blacker. This was to be his
+life’s companion--his _life’s_, mind you, he said to himself. Alone and
+unaided, he was to live out the years with her. A child; and presently
+not a child. A beauty; and presently not a beauty. But always to the
+end, now that his mother had deserted him, unadulterated Pinner.
+
+‘There’s an h in heaves,’ he said, glowering at her, his gloom really
+inspissate. ‘I don’t know what the beastly things are, but I’m sure
+they’ve got an h in them.’
+
+‘Sorry,’ breathed Sally humbly, casting down her eyes before his look.
+
+Then he became aware of the unusual flush on her face,--one side was
+quite scarlet.
+
+‘Why are you so red?’ he asked suddenly.
+
+‘Me?’ said Sally, starting at the peremptoriness in his tone.
+‘Oh--_that_.’
+
+She put up her hand and felt her burning cheek. ‘Father-in-law,’ she
+said.
+
+‘Father _who_?’ asked Jocelyn, astonished out of his gloom.
+
+‘In-law,’ said Sally. ‘’Im in the ’ouse. The old gentleman,’ she
+explained, as Jocelyn stared in greater and greater astonishment.
+
+Thorpe? The man who was to be his stepfather? But why----?
+
+A flash of something quite, quite horrible darted into his mind. ‘But
+why,’ he asked, ‘are you so very red? What has that to do----?’
+
+He broke off, and caught hold of her wrist.
+
+‘Daresay it ain’t the gentleman’s day for shavin’,’ suggested Sally.
+
+And on Jocelyn’s flinging away her wrist and jumping up, she watched him
+running indoors with recovered complacency. ‘Soon be better now,’ she
+said to herself, pleased; for her father always ran like that too, just
+when the heaves were going to leave off.
+
+
+§
+
+And she was right. Next time she saw him, which was at supper, he was
+quite well. His face had cleared, he could eat his food, and he kissed
+the top of her head as he passed behind her to his chair.
+
+‘Well, _that’s_ over,’ thought Sally, much relieved, though still
+remaining, through her lowered eyelashes, watchful and cautious. With
+these Lukes one never knew what was going to happen next; and as she sat
+doing her anxious best with the forks and other pitfalls of the meal,
+and the little maid came in and out, free in her movements, independent,
+able to give notice and go at any moment she chose, Sally couldn’t help
+comparing her lot with her own, and thinking that Ammond was singularly
+blest. And then she thought what a wicked girl she was to have such
+thoughts, and bent her head lower over her plate in shame, and Mrs. Luke
+said gently, ‘Sit up, dear child.’
+
+That night a bed was made for Jocelyn on the sitting-room sofa, Sally
+slept upstairs in the tiny Spartan room he used to sleep in, and
+Abergeldie wasn’t mentioned. Nor did they have Mr. Thorpe’s salmon for
+supper, because the idea of eating poor Edgar’s gift seemed, in the
+circumstances, cynical to Mrs. Luke; so Hammond ate it, and never
+afterwards could be got to touch fish.
+
+Mr. Thorpe had now become poor Edgar to Mrs. Luke. Only a few hours
+before, he had been thought of as a godsend. Well, he shouldn’t have
+kissed Salvatia. But indeed what a mercy that he had, for it brought
+clarity into what had been troubled and obscure. Without this
+action--and it wasn’t just kissing, it was enjoyment--Mrs. Luke would,
+she knew, have gone stumbling on, doing her duty by him, trying to get
+everybody to like each other and be happy in the way that was so
+obviously the best for them, the way which would quite certainly have
+been the best for them if poor Edgar had been as decent as, at his age,
+it was reasonable to expect. She could, she was sure, have managed
+Jocelyn, for had she not managed him all his life? And after marriage
+she could, she had no doubt, have managed Edgar too; but what hard work
+it would have been, what a ceaseless weeding, to take only one aspect of
+him, of his language!
+
+The enjoyment--it was the only word for it--with which he had kissed
+Salvatia had spared her all these pains. Certainly it was beneath her
+dignity, beyond her patience, altogether outside any possible
+compensation by wealth, to marry and manage a man who enjoyed kissing
+other women. That she couldn’t do. She could do much, but not that. Like
+the Canon’s wife, she would have forgiven everything except enjoyment.
+And she wrote an urbane letter--why not? Surely finality can afford to
+be urbane?--after having had a talk with Jocelyn when he arrived with
+blazing eyes in the sitting-room, a talk which began in
+violence--his,--and continued in patience--hers,--and ended in
+peace--theirs; and by the time they sat down to supper the letter,
+sealed--it seemed to be the sort of letter one ought to seal--was
+already lying in the pillar box at the corner of the road, and the last
+trying weeks were wiped out as though they had never been.
+
+At least, that was Mrs. Luke’s firm intention, that they should be wiped
+out; and she thought as she gazed at Jocelyn, so content again, eating a
+supper purged of the least reminder of Mr. Thorpe, that the _status quo
+ante_ was now thoroughly restored. Ah, happy _status quo ante_, thought
+Mrs. Luke, whose mind was well-furnished with pieces of Latin, happy
+_status quo ante_, with her boy close knit to her again, more than ever
+unable to do without her, and she in her turn finding the very breath of
+her being and reason for her existence in him and all his concerns. Not
+a cloud was now between them. She had quickly reassured him as to
+Salvatia’s red cheek,--Mr. Thorpe’s greeting, she had explained, was
+purely perfunctory, and witnessed by herself, but the child had such a
+delicate skin that a touch would mark it.
+
+‘You mustn’t ever bruise her,’ she had said, smiling. ‘It would show for
+weeks.’
+
+‘Oh, Mother!’ Jocelyn had said, smiling too, so happy, he too, to know
+he had been lifted out of the region of angers, out of the black places
+where people bruise hearts, not bodies, and in so doing mangle their
+own.
+
+Yes, she could manage Jocelyn. Tact and patience were all that was
+needed. Never, never should he know of Edgar’s amorousness, any more
+than he was ever, ever to know of Edgar’s other drawbacks. Let him think
+of him in the future as the kind, reliable rich man who once had wanted
+to marry her, but whom she had refused for her boy’s sake. She made this
+sacrifice willingly, happily, for her darling son--so she gave Jocelyn
+to understand, during the talk they had alone together in the
+sitting-room.
+
+The truth? No, not altogether the truth, she admitted as she sat eating
+her supper, her pure, pure supper, with all those horrible gross
+delicacies, under which she had so long groaned, banished out of sight,
+her glance resting fondly first on her boy, and then in amazed
+admiration, renewed with a start each time she looked at her, on the
+flame of loveliness that was her boy’s wife. No; what she had said to
+Jocelyn in the sitting-room wasn’t altogether the truth, she admitted
+that, but the mutilated form of it called tact. Or, rather, not
+mutilated, which suggested disfigurement, but pruned. Pruned truth.
+Truth pruned into acceptability to susceptibility. Was not that tact?
+Was not that the nearest one dared go in speech with the men one loved?
+They seemed not able to bear truth whole. Children, they were. And the
+geniuses--she smiled proudly and fondly at Jocelyn’s dark head bent over
+his plate--were the simplest children of them all.
+
+Yes, she thought, the _status quo ante_ was indeed restored, and
+everything was going to be as it used to be. The only difference was
+Salvatia.
+
+
+§
+
+Before a week was over Mrs. Luke left out the word ‘only’ from this
+sentence, and was inclined to say--again with Wordsworth; curious how
+that, surely antiquated, poet cropped up--_But oh, the difference_,
+instead. Salvatia was--well, why had one been given intelligence if not
+to cope, among other things, with what Salvatia was?
+
+That first night of reunion with Jocelyn, Mrs. Luke had lain awake
+nearly all of it, making plans. Very necessary, very urgent it was to
+get them cut and dried by the morning. The headache she had had earlier
+in the evening vanished before the imperativeness of thinking and seeing
+clearly. Many things had to be thought out and decided, some of them
+sordid, such as the question of living now that there was another mouth
+to feed, and others difficult, such as the best line to take with South
+Winch in regard to Mr. Thorpe. She thought and thought, lying on her
+back, her hands clasped behind her head, staring into the darkness,
+frowning in her concentration.
+
+Towards morning she saw that the line to take with South Winch about
+poor Edgar was precisely the line she had taken with Jocelyn: she had
+given up the hope of marriage, she would say, so as to be able to devote
+herself exclusively to her boy and his wife.
+
+‘See,’ she would say, indicating Salvatia, careful at once to draw
+attention to what anyhow, directly the child began to speak, couldn’t
+remain unnoticed, ‘how this untrained, delicious baby needs me. No
+mother, no education, no idea of what the world demands--could I
+possibly, thinking only of myself, selfishly leave her without help and
+guidance? I do feel the young have a very great claim on us.’ And then
+she would add that as long as she lived she would never forget how well,
+how splendidly, Mr. Thorpe had behaved.
+
+Pruned truth, again. And truth pruned, she was afraid, in a way that
+would cover her with laurels she hadn’t deserved. But what was she to
+do? One needs must find the easiest and best way out of a
+difficulty,--easiest and best for those one loves.
+
+In order, however, to indicate Salvatia and explain things by means of
+her, Mrs. Luke would have to produce her, have to show her to South
+Winch, and in order to do that she would have to give a party. Yes; she
+would give a party, a tea-party, and invite every one she knew to
+it--except, of course, Mr. Thorpe.
+
+Mrs. Luke had hitherto been sparing of parties, considering them not
+only difficult with one servant, and wastefully expensive, but also so
+very ordinary. Anybody not too positively poor could give tea-parties,
+and invite a lot of people and let them entertain each other. She chose
+the better way, which was to have one friend, at most two, at a time,
+and really talk, really exchange ideas, over a simple but attractive
+tea. Of course the friends had to have ideas, or one couldn’t exchange
+them. But now she would have a real party, with no ideas and many
+friends, the sort of party called an At Home, and at it Salvatia should
+be revealed to South Winch in all her wonder.
+
+The party, however, couldn’t be given for at least a week, because of
+first having to drill Salvatia. A week wasn’t much; was, indeed,
+terribly little; but if the drill were intensive, Mrs. Luke thought she
+could get the child’s behaviour into sufficient shape to go on with by
+the end of it.
+
+Hidden indoors--and in any case they would both at first hide indoors
+from a possible encounter with poor Edgar--she would devote the whole of
+every day to exercising Salvatia in the art of silence. That was all
+she needed to be perfect: silence. And how few words were really
+necessary for a girl with a face like that! No need whatever to exert
+herself,--her face did everything for her. Yes; no; please; thank you;
+what couldn’t be done with just these, if accompanied by that heavenly
+smile? Why, if she kept only to these, if she carefully refrained from
+more, from, especially, the use of any out of her own deplorable stock,
+it wouldn’t even be necessary for Mrs. Luke to say anything about her
+having had no education; and if she could be trained to add, ‘So kind of
+you,’ at the proper moment, and perhaps, ‘Yes, we are very happy,’ her
+success would be overwhelming.
+
+But almost immediately on beginning the drill, which she did the next
+day, Mrs. Luke perceived that this last sentence must be dropped. Poor
+Salvatia. The poor child was precluded from speaking of happiness,
+because of its h. Really rather sad, when one came to think of it. She
+could, relatively easily, be taught to speak of sorrow, of pain, of
+misfortune, of sickness and of death, but she couldn’t be taught, not in
+a week Mrs. Luke was afraid, to speak of happiness.
+
+Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. ‘We must be patient,’ she said,
+smiling at Sally, who seemed to tumble over herself in her haste to
+smile back.
+
+Almond Tree Cottage was now the scene of tireless activity. The At Home
+was fixed for the following Thursday week,--eight days ahead; and Mrs.
+Luke sent Jocelyn off to Cambridge the very morning after he arrived, in
+order to rearrange matters with his College and look about, as he seemed
+bent on it, for a suitable little house for them all, though she
+privately was bent on staying where she was, and keeping Sally with
+her. But it did no harm to let him look, and it kept him out of the way
+for a couple of days, in case Mr. Thorpe should think fit to come round
+in person, instead of writing. And, having cleared the field, she
+settled down to devoting herself entirely to Sally.
+
+But Sally, seeing Jocelyn preparing to depart--for some time she
+couldn’t believe her eyes--without going to take her too, was smitten
+into speech.
+
+‘You ain’t goin’ to leave me ’ere, Mr. Luke?’ she asked in tones of
+horrified incredulity, when at last it began to look exactly as if he
+were.
+
+‘Two days only, darling,’ said Jocelyn. ‘And you’ll be very happy with
+my mother.’
+
+‘But--can’t I come with you? I wouldn’t be no trouble. I--I’d do
+anything sooner than--’
+
+She looked over her shoulder; Mrs. Luke, however, was in the kitchen
+giving her orders for the day.
+
+‘--be as ’appy as all that,’ she finished, under her breath.
+
+‘I shall be much too busy, darling,’ said Jocelyn, pleased at the way
+she was taking their first separation, and not hearing the last words
+because he was rummaging among coats.
+
+‘There’s Father,’ persisted Sally anxiously. ‘_’E_ could take me in. I
+wouldn’t be no trouble to nobody----’
+
+‘Darling, I’m afraid it can’t possibly be managed,’ said Jocelyn, very
+thankful to leave her safe with his mother; but she looked so enchanting
+in her obvious sorrow at being parted from him that he took her in his
+arms, and kissed her warmly.
+
+‘_Kissin’s_ no good,’ said Sally. ‘Goin’ too’s what I’d like.’
+
+‘And if I took you too, my beautiful one,’ whispered Jocelyn, flaming up
+at the touch of her, ‘I’d do nothing but kiss you instead of doing my
+business----’ which wasn’t true, but with Sally in his arms he thought
+it was; besides, they had been separated for a whole night.
+
+‘Turtle doves--oh, _turtle_ doves!’ exclaimed Mrs. Luke, managing to
+smile, though she didn’t like it, when she came out of the kitchen and
+found them locked together; for this was happening in what Mr. Thorpe
+refused to call the hall.
+
+And later on when Jocelyn had gone, she put her arm through Sally’s, who
+was standing at the window staring after him as though it couldn’t be
+true that he had really left her, and drew her away into the little
+dining-room at the back of the house, because of its greater
+privacy--she had to consider the possible movements of Mr. Thorpe--and
+at once began to put the plans she had made in the night into practice,
+not only taking immense pains with the child’s words and pronunciation,
+but leaving no stone unturned--‘As the quaint phrase goes,’ she said,
+smiling at Sally, for why hide her intentions?--in order to win her
+confidence and love.
+
+Sally was most depressed. She didn’t want to love--‘Too much of that
+about as it is,’ she thought,--and she hadn’t an idea what her
+confidence was.
+
+The table was arranged with paper and ink, and Mrs. Luke began by
+kissing her affectionately, and telling her that they were now going to
+be very busy and happy. ‘Like bees,’ said Mrs. Luke, looking cheerful
+and encouraging, but also terrifyingly clever, with her clear grey eyes
+that seemed to see everything all at once and never were half as much
+pleased as her mouth was. ‘You know how bees store up honey--the
+bright, golden honey, don’t you, dear. Say honey, Salvatia dear. Say it
+after me----’
+
+Sally was most depressed. Mixed up with her efforts to say honey were
+puzzled thoughts about her husband’s having left her. She understood,
+from her study of the Bible, that one of the principal jobs of husbands
+was to cleave to their wives. Till death, the Bible said. Nobody had
+died. It wasn’t cleaving to go away to Cambridge and leave her high and
+dry with the lady. And though Usband was often very strange, he wasn’t
+anything like as strange as the lady; and though he often frightened
+her, there were moments when he didn’t frighten her at all--when, on the
+contrary, she seemed able to do pretty much as she liked with him. And
+she had great hopes that some day she and he would get on quite nicely
+together, once they had set up housekeeping and he went off first thing
+after breakfast to his work, and she got everything tidy and ready for
+him when he came back to his dinner. Yes; she and Usband would settle
+down nicely then. And later on, when she had a little baby--Sally
+thought frequently and complacently of the time when she would have a
+little baby, several little babies--things would be as pleasant as could
+be. All she wanted, so as to be happy, was no lady, a couple of rooms,
+Usband to do her duty by, God’s Word to study, and every now and then a
+little baby. It was all she asked. It was her idea of bliss. That, and
+being let alone.
+
+‘Peace an’ quiet,’ she said to herself, as she sat painfully trying, at
+Mrs. Luke’s request, to discuss with her the habits of bees. She hadn’t
+known they had any habits. She doubted whether she would know a bee if
+she saw one. There were no bees in Islington. Wasps, now--she knew a
+thing or two about wasps. Raw onion was the stuff for when they
+stung.... ‘Peace an’ quiet,’ she said to herself. ‘All one asks. This
+ain’t neither.’
+
+In an agony of application Sally perspired through the two days of
+Jocelyn’s absence. Lessons didn’t leave off when the paper and ink were
+cleared away because of the rissoles of lunch and the poached eggs of
+supper, but went on just as bad while she was eating. ‘Salvatia dear,
+don’t ’old your fork like that----’ ‘Salvatia dear, don’t go makin’ all
+that there noise when you drinks----’ so did Mrs. Luke’s admonishments
+present themselves to Sally’s ill-attuned ear. And after that the
+lessons were continued in the garden, where she was walked up and down,
+up and down, till her head, as she said to herself, fair reeled. Never
+before had Sally been walked up and down the same spot. She used to walk
+straight sometimes to places, and then come home again and done with it,
+but never up and down and keeping on turning round. No escape. The lady
+had her by the arm. Exercise, she called it. And talk! Not only talk
+herself, but keep on dragging her into it too. Education, the lady
+called it. Lessons, that’s to say. What ones these Lukes were for
+lessons, thought Sally, remembering her experience at St. Mawes. And
+there, through the kitchen window every time she passed it, she could
+see Ammond, washing up as free as air.
+
+The garden was small; the turnings accordingly frequent; and Sally’s
+head, strained by the excessive attention Mrs. Luke insisted on, did
+indeed reel. Her head.... How was it, Mrs. Luke was asking herself by
+the evening of that first day, ostensibly pleasantly chatting, but
+carefully observing Sally, who, pale and beautiful, with faint shadows
+under her eyes, sat looking at her lap so as not to see the lady looking
+at her,--how was it that so noble a little head, with a brow so happily
+formed, one would have supposed, for the harbouring of intelligence,
+should apparently be without any?
+
+Apparently. Mrs. Luke was careful not to come to any hasty conclusion,
+but by this time she had been drilling Sally ceaselessly for a whole
+day, and she had been so clear and patient, and so very, very simple,
+that she began to think her vocation was probably that of a teacher; yet
+no sign of real comprehension had up to then appeared. Goodwill there
+was; much goodwill. But no real _grasp_. And, of course, most lamentably
+little ear. Those h’s--it would have been disheartening, if Mrs. Luke
+hadn’t refused to be disheartened, the way Salvatia didn’t even seem to
+know if they were in a word or not. She simply didn’t hear them.
+
+‘Do you like music, Salvatia?’ said Mrs. Luke, getting up and preparing
+to test her ear on the clavichord at the other end of the room, an
+instrument which gave her great pleasure because it wasn’t so gross as a
+piano.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Sally, who had been strictly drilled that day in naked
+monosyllables.
+
+‘Do you sing, dear child?’
+
+‘’Ymns,’ said Sally.
+
+‘Ah, dear, _dearest_ child!’ cried Mrs. Luke, drawing her shoulders up
+to her ears, for after all the pains and labours of the day she was
+tired, and she couldn’t help being, perhaps, a little less patient. ‘How
+do you spell that poor small word? It is such a tiny, short word, and
+can’t afford to lose any of its letters----’
+
+And in the kitchen, Sally knew, with her hearth swept and neat, and
+everything put nicely away for the day, sat Ammond, doing her sewing as
+free as air.
+
+
+§
+
+Jocelyn came home on the evening of the third day. He hadn’t found a
+house, and seemed dispirited about that, and looked a great deal at
+Salvatia, Mrs. Luke thought,--almost as if he had never seen her before;
+indeed he looked at her so much that he hardly had eyes or attention for
+anything else.
+
+Mrs. Luke didn’t like it.
+
+Certainly the girl was quite extraordinarily beautiful that evening, and
+seemed even more alight than usual with the strange, surprising
+flame-effect she somehow made, but one would have supposed that these
+outwardnesses, once one knew that they were not the symbols of any
+corresponding inwardnesses, could hardly be sufficient for a man like
+Jocelyn.
+
+A little pang of something that hurt--it couldn’t of course be jealousy,
+for the very word in such a connection was ludicrous--shot through Mrs.
+Luke’s heart when she more than once caught a look in her boy’s eyes as
+they rested on his wife that she had never seen in any man’s eyes when
+they rested on her herself, but which she nevertheless instantly
+recognised. The love-look. The look of burning, impatient passion. She
+had been loved, but never like that, never with that intent adoration.
+
+Sally sat quietly there, neither speaking nor moving, but over her face
+rippled gladness. Nice, she thought, to get Usband back. It hadn’t been
+half awful without him. Finished now, though; wouldn’t happen again.
+‘Let’s forget it,’ she said to herself.
+
+And that night, after every one was in bed, Mrs. Luke heard cautious
+steps creaking up the stairs, and the door of the room Sally slept in
+across the little landing was softly opened, and some one went in and
+softly shut it again; and Mrs. Luke didn’t like it at all, and ended by
+crying herself to sleep.
+
+Next day, however, Jocelyn was restored to the self she knew, and was
+reasonable and detached. They talked over the house in Cambridge
+question, and he quite agreed with his mother that when he went up,
+which he was due to do in nine days time, while he continued in his
+spare moments there to search for one she would keep Sally with her at
+Almond Tree Cottage.
+
+‘And even if you find one, dearest,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘remember we can’t
+afford to take it till I have got rid of this one.’
+
+‘Quite, Mother,’ said Jocelyn--so reasonable, so completely detached.
+
+‘And meanwhile, the best thing will be for Salvatia to stay quietly here
+with me.’
+
+‘Far and away the best, Mother,’ said Jocelyn, whose thoughts had gone
+off with renewed eagerness to his work, to the two spacious months of
+undisturbed labour ahead of him in those quiet rooms of his in Austen’s
+Court.
+
+What was Sally’s surprise to find that Jocelyn’s return made no
+difference to the lessons. They went on just the same; indeed, they
+seemed every day to get worse, and he, except at meals and when he crept
+into her room at night, stayed at the top of the house shut up by
+himself, or went out for his daily walk after lunch and didn’t take her
+with him.
+
+At night she tried to ask him about these things, because this was the
+time he was most likely to answer, but he only whispered, ‘Hush--Mother
+will hear.’
+
+‘Not if you whispers,’ whispered Sally.
+
+‘She’d hear the whispers,’ whispered Jocelyn.
+
+Why Mother shouldn’t hear whispers Sally was unable to make out.
+
+And there at night was Usband, all for being friendly and loving, and in
+the day didn’t seem to know she was alive. Warmed up a bit, he did,
+towards evening, but else sat hardly opening his mouth, his eyes looking
+at something that wasn’t there. Was this, Sally might well in her turn
+have asked if she had been able to formulate such a question,
+companionship? But even if she had formulated it she wouldn’t have asked
+it, because she was so meek.
+
+Strange, however, how the meek go on being meek till the very moment
+when they do something from which bold persons would shrink. This is
+what Sally did, after having progressed that week steadily towards
+despair.
+
+Gradually but steadily, by piecing together bit by bit the things Mrs.
+Luke and Jocelyn said to each other at meals and in the evening, she
+became aware of what was in store for her. First, a party; an enormous
+party, at which everybody who wasn’t a gentleman was going to be a lady;
+and she was to be at it too, and it was for this that her mind and
+manners were being fattened up so ceaselessly by Mrs. Luke. Then, two
+days after the party, Jocelyn, her husband who had promised in church to
+cherish her, was going away to Cambridge, and going to stay there by
+himself till the summer, just as if he weren’t married. How could he
+cherish her from Cambridge? It was evident even to Sally that it
+couldn’t be done. Finally, she was to be left at Almond Tree Cottage
+alone with Mrs. Luke, being educated, being made fit, being fattened
+inside just as you fatten animals outside. What for? She hadn’t married
+Mrs. Luke. Wasn’t she able, just as she was, to be a good wife to
+Usband, and a good mother later on to the little babies? What more could
+a girl do than be ready to work her fingers to the bone for him? And she
+could cook so nicely, give her a chance; and she could mend as well as
+any one; and as for keeping the house clean, hadn’t her mother taught
+her never to dream of sitting down and taking up her sewing while there
+was so much as a single speck of dirt about?
+
+With growing horror, and steadily increasing despair, Sally listened to
+the talk at meals. She had learned to say nothing now but yes, no, thank
+you, and please, and either kept her eyes on her plate or, through her
+eyelashes, watched with pangs of envy the happy Hammond’s free entrances
+and departures. She herself never moved without Mrs. Luke’s arm through
+hers or round her shoulders,--‘We are quite inseparable,’ Mrs. Luke
+would say, smiling at Jocelyn, when the meals were over and the time had
+arrived for going somewhere else, as she either encircled Sally’s
+shrinking shoulder or put her hand through her limp arm. ‘Aren’t we,
+Salvatia?’
+
+And Sally, starting--she had got into a curious habit, which Mrs. Luke
+much deplored, of starting when she was spoken to, however
+gently--hurriedly said, ‘Yes.’
+
+Queer, thought Mrs. Luke, who noticed everything but was without the
+power of correct deduction, seeing that the child so obviously was
+anxious to please and she herself so certainly was anxious to help her,
+queer how difficult it was to do anything with her in the way of
+confidence and love. And to Jocelyn in the evenings, after Sally had
+been told she was tired and must wish to go to bed, which she quickly
+learnt meant that she was to get up at once and say goodnight and go to
+it, Mrs. Luke would talk about her lovingly and humorously, and
+laughingly describe what she called the intensive methods of cultivation
+she was applying to the marvellous child.
+
+‘You’ll see how beautifully she’ll behave at our little party,’ she
+said. ‘And as for what she’ll be like after a few months--well, dearest,
+all I can say is that I promise to hand her over to you fit to be your
+real companion, and not only--’ Mrs. Luke shivered slightly at the
+thought of the creaking stairs--‘just a wife.’
+
+Two evenings before the day of the party, Mrs. Luke, who had made, she
+knew, no headway at all in spite of the most untiring efforts in winning
+the confidence and love she expected, remarked hesitatingly, when she
+and Jocelyn were alone together after Sally’s departure for bed, that
+the child appeared to have rather curious and disconcerting resistances.
+
+‘Do you mean she doesn’t obey you?’ asked Jocelyn, much surprised.
+
+‘Oh, with almost too much eagerness. No. I mean something mental. Or
+rather,’ amended Mrs. Luke, who by this time was definitely disappointed
+in Sally’s mind but was still prepared to concede her a soul,
+‘spiritual. Spiritual resistances. Disconcerting _spiritual_
+resistances. She seems to shut herself up. And I ask myself, what in? A
+child like that, with a--well, really rather blank mind at present. What
+is she withdrawing into? Where does she _go_, Jocelyn?’
+
+And that night when, having given his mother time to go to sleep and the
+house was quiet, Jocelyn stole upstairs to Sally, full of nothing but
+love for her, she made a scene. He called it a scene; she called it
+mentioning. She had screwed herself up to mentioning to him that it was
+wrong to leave her, as she now beyond any possibility of doubt knew that
+he was going to leave her, and go away by himself to Cambridge.
+
+A scene with Sally. Jocelyn was as much amazed, and correspondingly
+outraged, as if his fountain-pen had turned on him and declared that
+what he was making it write was all wrong. For Sally took her stand on
+the New Testament, on the Gospel of St. Mark, Chapter X, Verses 7 and 8,
+and not only declared there was no mistaking the words, and that it
+wasn’t his wife a man had to leave but his father and mother, and that
+he had to leave them so as to cleave to his wife, and that they two were
+to be one flesh, but asked him how he could either cleave or be one
+flesh if he were in Cambridge and she in South Winch?
+
+It was past midnight and pitch dark, so he couldn’t see her face, and
+accordingly wasn’t bewitched. Also, he had found her waiting up for him,
+not gone to bed at all, but dressed and sitting in a chair, so that,
+again, he wasn’t bewitched. When one neither saw nor touched Sally it
+was quite easy not to be bewitched.
+
+‘For heaven’s sake don’t _talk_,’ he said in a low voice, when he had
+got over his first astonishment. ‘Don’t you know Mother will hear?’
+
+Sally couldn’t help that. She had got to say it. God was on her side.
+His laws were going to be broken, and nothing made Sally so brave as
+having to take up the cudgels in defence of God’s laws. Besides, if the
+dark prevented Jocelyn from seeing her beauty it saved her from seeing
+the icy displeased look on his face that made her falter off into
+silence. And she was in despair. Apart from the right or the wrong of
+it, she felt she couldn’t possibly be left alone with Mrs. Luke.
+Therefore, having mentioned God’s laws to him, she proceeded to entreat
+him to take her with him, it didn’t matter into what hole, or let her go
+to her father’s, and he come and see her whenever he had time.
+
+‘I told you--I told you the other day,’ said Sally, trying to subdue her
+voice to a whisper, but it kept on breaking through, ‘when you was only
+goin’ to be away for two days that I didn’t ’alf like it. ’Ow do you
+suppose I’m goin’ to like weeks and weeks? And it ain’t _right_, Mr.
+Luke--it ain’t _right_. You only got to read St. Mark----’
+
+Jocelyn was amazed. Sally talking like this? Sally suddenly making
+difficulties, and having an opinion, and judging? Dragging in the Bible,
+too, just like somebody’s cook.
+
+‘You don’t understand,’ he said in a low voice because of his mother,
+but a voice quite as full of anger as if he had been shouting. ‘How can
+you? What do you know about anything?’
+
+‘I know what ain’t bein’ one flesh,’ persisted Sally, greatly helped in
+the matter of courage by the dark.
+
+He gathered his dressing-gown round him; it sounded exactly as if a
+servant were daring to talk familiarly to him.
+
+‘This isn’t the time,’ he whispered, infinitely disgusted, ‘to argue.’
+
+‘P’raps you’ll tell me when the time is, then,’ said Sally, who knew she
+could never be alone with him in the day because of Mrs. Luke; and
+really in the dark, unable to see her, Jocelyn had the impression of
+some woman of the lower classes confronting him with arms akimbo.
+
+‘Certainly not at one in the morning,’ he said freezingly. ‘I shall go
+downstairs again. I didn’t come up here to listen to outrageous rot.’
+
+‘Mr. _Luke_! Rot? When it’s God’s Word I’m talkin’ about? Ain’t you my
+’usband? Didn’t you vow----’
+
+There was a tap at the door.
+
+‘You see?’ said Jocelyn, starting and extraordinarily put out that Mrs.
+Luke should know he was in there. ‘You _have_ disturbed my mother.’
+
+‘What is it, Jocelyn?’ his mother’s voice asked anxiously from outside.
+
+He opened the door. She too was in a dressing-gown, and her long hair
+hung down in thick plaits.
+
+‘What is it, Jocelyn?’ she asked again.
+
+‘Only that Sally has gone out of her senses,’ he said shortly; and he
+stalked away downstairs, ashamed to have been caught by his mother
+upstairs, angry with himself for being ashamed, and seriously enraged
+with Sally.
+
+‘Salvatia, Jocelyn dearest--_do_ remember,’ called Mrs. Luke plaintively
+after him.
+
+‘Oh, Christ!’ muttered Jocelyn, banging the sitting-room door behind him
+and throwing himself on the hard narrow sofa from which, only a quarter
+of an hour before, he had got up, all warm with love, to go to his wife.
+
+And in the room overhead Mrs. Luke put her arms round Sally, and did her
+best, while tactfully asking no questions, to soothe and calm the child.
+But how can one soothe and calm anything that behaves exactly as if it
+were a very rigid, unresponsive, and entirely dumb stone?
+
+
+§
+
+There were explanations next day. Mrs. Luke put the whole situation
+patiently and clearly before Sally. It wasn’t fair, she said to Jocelyn,
+after a private talk with him during which he had told her the sorts of
+things Sally had said in the night, it wasn’t fair to keep the child
+quite in the dark as to their arrangements. Even if she weren’t
+altogether able to understand, she should, Mrs. Luke said, be given the
+opportunity of doing so.
+
+So when breakfast was cleared away, and Jocelyn had withdrawn to his
+attic, Mrs. Luke shut herself up as usual with Sally in the dining-room,
+and spent the morning patiently explaining.
+
+Sally said nothing. This made it difficult for Mrs. Luke to know whether
+she had understood. And yet how simple it was. Jocelyn’s work, the
+paramount importance of his work, on which both his and Salvatia’s
+future and perhaps--who knew?--the world’s, depended; their present, but
+no doubt temporary, poverty, which made it out of the question for them
+to follow him to Cambridge till Almond Tree Cottage had been let; the
+necessity of teaching Salvatia, during long, quiet, uninterrupted days,
+all the little odds and ends, so small and yet so indispensable, that go
+to make up the wife of a gentleman; and the impossibility of asking
+Jocelyn to leave his rooms in College and live in anything as
+uncomfortable and makeshift as the sorts of lodgings within their means
+were bound to be. Of course had Salvatia been alone in the world, and
+with nowhere at all to go to, some such arrangement would have had to be
+made. But she wasn’t alone. She had her husband’s mother, and her
+husband’s mother’s home, and affection, and sympathy, and the warmest
+welcome.
+
+‘Just a little patience, Salvatia dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘and our little
+problems will all quite naturally solve themselves. We shall have got a
+tenant for this house, Jocelyn will have found a nice home for us in
+Cambridge, you will meanwhile have learnt everything necessary to make
+you able to be its perfect little mistress, and we’ll all live happily
+ever after.’
+
+Now wasn’t this kind? Surely it was very kind, thought Mrs. Luke. And
+wasn’t it loving? Surely it was altogether loving. Yet Salvatia said
+never a word.
+
+Indeed, Sally was necessarily dumb. She had too few words to enter into
+controversy with Mrs. Luke, and knew that if she tried to she would only
+collapse into tears. But after lunch, through which she sat saying
+nothing, when Mrs. Luke sent her out into the garden alone because she
+herself had to go down that afternoon to the shops to see about the
+cakes for her party next day, Sally went to the one corner which wasn’t
+overlooked by the windows of the house, owing to an intervening
+tool-shed, and, leaning against the iron rails that separated Mrs.
+Luke’s property from Mr. Thorpe’s, wept bitterly.
+
+She clutched the top rail with both hands, and laying her head on them
+wept most bitterly; for it was plain now to her that her dream of two
+rooms and no lady was never to come true, and that meanwhile--what was
+the good of blinking facts?--her husband had deserted her. And she had
+no money; only five shillings her father had given her as a wedding
+present,--that was all. Handsome as a present, but not enough, she was
+sure, to get her home to him. If only she could go home to him, and
+escape any more of Mrs. Luke, and escape the terrible, the
+make-you-come-over-all-cold-to-think-of party! Then, when Usband arrived
+at his college, she could turn up there and give him a surprise, and
+find a room for herself somewhere close, and live in it as quiet as a
+mouse, not bothering him at all or interrupting, but near enough to feel
+still married.
+
+Sally’s body was shaken by sobs; even the rail on which she leant her
+head, her head with its bright, tumbled hair, whose ends, getting into
+her eyes, were wet and darkened by her grief, was shaken. She could bear
+no more. She couldn’t bear any more of anything in the house behind the
+tool-shed. Yet what was she to do? Five shillings would get her
+nowhere----
+
+‘Crying, eh?’ said a voice on the other side of the fence.
+
+And looking up with a great start, Sally beheld Father-in-law.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+§
+
+Mr. Thorpe, being a man accustomed all his life to success in everything
+he undertook--except in the case of Annie, but even she had been a
+success at first--had spent a week of bitterness.
+
+He was aggrieved, deeply aggrieved; and he hated the hole and corner way
+Mrs. Luke had hidden from him, refusing to see him, refusing any sort of
+explanation, turning him down with a single letter, and not answering
+when he wrote back.
+
+He, who was very well aware that he was conferring everything, that he
+was giving her a chance in a million, when he called was shown the door;
+and all he had done for her, the affection he had bestowed, the gifts he
+had lavished, were as though they had not been. In the sight of South
+Winch and of his own household he was humiliated. But it went deeper
+than that: he knew himself for kind, and no one wanted his kindness; he
+knew himself for generous, and no one wanted his generosity either.
+Naturally he was full of resentment; so full, that he hadn’t even gone
+to his office regularly that week, but had hung about his house and
+grounds instead, fault-finding.
+
+Where he hung about most was that part of his plantations which abutted
+on the meadow dividing Abergeldie from Mrs. Luke; and wandering among
+his conifers he could see, without himself being seen, anything that
+went on in her miserable plot of ground. If he had been told that such
+behaviour was undignified he would have replied that dignity be damned;
+for not only was he smarting under Mrs. Luke’s ingratitude, not only was
+he annoyed beyond measure at not going to get the wife he no longer
+really wanted--who would wish to be tied up to a jealous, middle-aged
+woman, when there were so many pretty, cheerful girls about?--but he
+longed, with a simple longing he hadn’t felt since he first went
+sweethearting as a boy, to see Sally again.
+
+He did see her; always, however, arm in arm with Hell’s Fury, as he now
+called her who had so recently been his Marge. Then, on this Wednesday
+afternoon, more than a week after Mrs. Luke had shown herself in her
+true colours--a jolly good thing he had found her out before and not
+after marriage, thought Mr. Thorpe, who yet was enraged that he had,--as
+he wandered among his conifers after luncheon, nursing his grievances
+and glancing every now and then at the little house across the meadow,
+so insignificant and cheap and nevertheless able to play such a part in
+his life, he saw young beauty at last come out alone, and go round to
+the back of the tool-shed, and behave as has been indicated.
+
+For a few minutes Mr. Thorpe stayed where he was, in case the H.F.--so,
+for convenience sake, did he abbreviate the rude nickname he had given
+Mrs. Luke--should come out too; but when some time had passed and nobody
+appeared, he concluded that the two high-brows had gone for a walk, and
+Beauty for once was alone. Crying, too. What had they been doing to the
+girl, that precious pair of hoity toity treat-you-as-dirters, Mr. Thorpe
+asked himself. Then, climbing cautiously over the fence, and crossing
+the field close to the belt of firs, he arrived unseen and unheard to
+where Sally, her head bowed over her hands, was standing crying.
+
+How kind he was. What a comfort he was. And how clear in his
+instructions as to what she was to do. It was quite easy to say things
+to Father-in-law; he seemed to understand at once.
+
+Nobody had told Sally he wasn’t her father-in-law. The Lukes’ habit of
+silence towards her about their affairs had left her supposing he was
+what he said he was, and she herself had heard him not being
+contradicted by Mrs. Luke when she came into the drawing-room that day
+and he told her he was making friends with his new daughter.
+
+Sally was aware that Jocelyn’s own father was dead, and she had at first
+supposed Mr. Thorpe was Mrs. Luke’s second husband. In the confusion of
+mind in which she had been since arriving at Almond Tree Cottage, she
+had had no thoughts left over for wondering why, if he were, he lived
+somewhere else. Dimly the last few days, not having seen him again, she
+had begun to think, though with no real interest, that perhaps Mrs. Luke
+hadn’t quite married him yet, but only very nearly. Anyhow it didn’t
+matter. He said he was her father-in-law, and that was good enough for
+her. Such a kind old gentleman. Much older than her own father. Might
+easily have been her grandfather, with all that bald head and grey
+moustache.
+
+And Mr. Thorpe’s pleasure, nay, delight, at being able to help Beauty
+and at the same time give those two high-brows something to talk about,
+was very great. This was indeed killing two birds with one stone--and
+what birds! He listened attentively to all she brokenly and imperfectly
+said; he entirely applauded her idea of going back to her father for a
+bit, and assured her there was no place like home; he told her he would
+send her there in one of his cars, quite safe from door to door; he
+advised her to stay with her father till her husband did his duty, which
+was to make a home for her and live with her in it; he asked why she
+should allow herself to be deserted, to be left alone with Mrs. Luke,
+who would do nothing but try and cram her head with rubbish----
+
+‘Don’t you like ‘er?’ asked Sally, surprised.
+
+‘No,’ said Mr. Thorpe stoutly.
+
+‘But you’re goin’ to marry ‘er,’ said Sally, more surprised.
+
+‘Catch _me_,’ said Mr. Thorpe.
+
+‘But then you ain’t my father-in-law,’ said Sally, more surprised than
+ever.
+
+‘Yes I am,’ said Mr. Thorpe hastily. ‘Once a father-in-law always a
+father-in-law,’ he assured her,--and hurried her off this subject by
+asking her why she should be treated by her husband as if she weren’t
+married at all, and by what right young Luke thought he could behave
+differently from any husband any one had ever heard of. Scandalous, said
+Mr. Thorpe, to leave her. Shocking. Incomprehensible. And that so-called
+husband of hers with his marriage vows not yet had time to go cold on
+his lips!
+
+In fact, Mr. Thorpe said out loud and beautifully everything Sally had
+thought and not been able to get into words.
+
+The result was that, encouraged and supported, indeed urged and driven,
+she took one of those desperate steps characteristic of the very meek,
+and, acting according to Mr. Thorpe’s clear and precise instructions,
+stole out of the house at five next morning--the very day of the party,
+from which he, who knew all about it from his housekeeper, and had tried
+to console himself by thinking of the piles of strawberries and peaches
+and quarts of cream he wasn’t going to send to it, insisted that she
+should at all costs escape--carrying only a little bag, with her five
+shillings in it and her comb and toothbrush; and, creeping down the
+stairs holding her breath, got out without a sound through the kitchen
+window, anxiously listening for a moment as she passed the shut
+sitting-room door on the other side of which Jocelyn lay
+asleep,--Jocelyn, who that night, being still much annoyed with her, had
+very fortunately not been upstairs.
+
+At the corner of the road was Mr. Thorpe’s car. He himself remained
+discreetly in bed. No use overdoing things. Besides, he could wait. He
+knew where to find Beauty when the time came, which was more than those
+damned Lukes did; and he had given his chauffeur the necessary orders
+the night before, and could rely on their being carried out to the
+letter; so that Sally found, when she got into the car, which was more
+splendid outside and more soft inside than she could have believed
+possible, not only a lovely rug of the silkiest fur, which the
+chauffeur, a most attentive young gentleman, wrapped round her legs as
+carefully as if they were the Queen’s, but a basket full of everything
+for breakfast, even hot coffee, and an enormous box of chocolates which
+were for her to keep, the chauffeur said, with Mr. Thorpe’s compliments.
+And such was the effect on her of all this moral and physical support
+that she no longer, as she was smoothly and deliciously borne along
+through sleeping South Winch, across awakening London, past sunshiny
+fields and woods just flushing green, on and on, into Essex, into
+Cambridgeshire, smooth and swift, with a motion utterly different from
+the one Jocelyn’s car made and completely confidence-inspiring, she no
+longer felt as if she were doing anything that was frightening, and
+also, perhaps, wrong. Could anybody be doing anything very wrong who had
+such a splendid car to sit in, and such a respectful and attentive young
+gentleman driving it?
+
+
+§
+
+Mr. Pinner disillusioned her.
+
+For many years he hadn’t tasted such quiet happiness, such contentment
+and well-being, as during the four weeks he had been without Sally. Her
+marriage to a gentleman, to one of the scholars from Cambridge, was
+known to every one in the village, and he was proud of it, very proud.
+Sally, besides having been handed over safe and sound to some one else’s
+care, had risen in life and was now a lady. He had every reason to be
+proud of her, and no further bother. Now for the first time he could
+live, after forty years of the other thing, free from females. Was it
+sinful, he asked himself occasionally, and at variance with God’s Word,
+to be so very happy all alone? He didn’t think it could be. He had
+served his time. Forty years in the wilderness he had had--just like the
+Israelites, who had come out of it too, just as he had, and enjoyed
+themselves too at last, as he was enjoying himself, quietly and nicely.
+No husband or father could have been fonder of his wife and daughter
+than he had been of his, or done his duty by them more steadily. Surely
+now, both of them being safely settled, it couldn’t be wrong to like
+having a rest? He loved Sally, but she had been a back-breaking
+responsibility. For four weeks now he had enjoyed himself, and with such
+relish that when he got up in the morning and thought of the quiet, free
+hours ahead of him, he had often quavered into song. Then came the day
+when, peacefully dusting the toffee in his window, and thinking how
+prettily the birds were singing that fine spring morning, and of the
+little bit of mutton he was going to do in capers for his dinner, he saw
+an enormous closed car coming down the village street, and with
+astonishment beheld it stop in front of his shop, and Sally get out.
+
+Mr. Pinner knew enough of what cars cost to be sure this one wasn’t
+anyhow Mr. Luke’s. Things like that cost as much as two of Mr. Luke’s
+five hundreds a year; so that the car, of which Sally had been so proud,
+far from impressing him only frightened him. And when, after the
+chauffeur had handed her a bag, he saw him turn the car round and
+disappear, going away again without her while she came running up the
+steps, he was more frightened than ever.
+
+What had happened? Not a month married, and back again by herself with a
+bag.
+
+‘I come ’ome,’ said Sally in the doorway, still bright with the sheer
+enjoyment of the ride, yet, faced by her father’s amazement, conscious
+of a slight lowering of her temperature. ‘My! You ain’t ’alf small,
+Father,’ she added, surprised, after looking at the tall Jocelyn and the
+broad Mr. Thorpe, by how little there was of Mr. Pinner. ‘Almost count
+you on the fingers of one ’and,’ she said.
+
+‘Want more fingers than I got to count _you_,’ retorted Mr. Pinner,
+retreating behind the counter and feeling that these words somehow
+constituted a smart preliminary snub.
+
+He didn’t offer to kiss her. He stood entrenched behind his counter and
+stared up at her, struck, after having got out of the habit of her
+beauty, into a new astonishment at it. But it gave him no pleasure. It
+merely frightened him. For it blew up peace.
+
+‘Where’s your ’usband?’ he inquired, afraid and stern.
+
+‘Oh--_’im_,’ said Sally, trying to look unconcerned, but flushing. ’E’s
+with ’is mother, ’e is. Ain’t you pleased to see me, Father?’ she asked,
+in an attempt to lead the conversation off husbands at least for a bit;
+and tighter to her side she hugged the box of chocolates, because the
+feel of it helped her to remember Father-in-law’s approval and
+encouragement. And he was a gentleman, wasn’t he? And a lot older even
+than Father, so must know what was what.
+
+‘Oh, indeed. With ’is mother, is ’e,’ said Mr. Pinner, ignoring her
+question. ‘’Oos car was that?’ he asked.
+
+‘Father-in-law’s,’ said Sally, hugging her chocolates.
+
+‘Oh, indeed. And ’oo may father-in-law be?’
+
+‘The gentleman as is--as was goin’ to marry Mr. Luke’s mother.’
+
+‘Oh, indeed. And you ride about in ’is car meanwhile. _I_ see.’
+
+‘Lent it to me so I can come ’ome.’
+
+‘What do ’e want to send you ’ere for, then?’ asked Mr. Pinner, leaning
+on his knuckles, his blue eyes very bright. ‘Ain’t your ’ome where your
+’usband’s is? Ain’t that a married woman’s ’ome?’
+
+‘I only come on a visit,’ faltered Sally, whose spirits were by now in
+her shoes. Her father had often scolded her, but she had never been
+afraid of him. Now there was something in his eye that made her feel
+less sure that she had taken, as Mr. Thorpe had told her, the one
+possible and completely natural step. ‘I only come for a few days, while
+Mr. Luke----’
+
+‘Mr. Luke know you’re ’ere?’ interrupted her father.
+
+‘’E don’t know yet,’ said Sally. ‘But I----’
+
+‘That’s enough,’ said Mr. Pinner, holding up a hand. ‘That’s quite
+enough. No need for no more words. You go back right away to your
+’usband, my girl. Come to the wrong box, you ’ave, for ’arbourin’
+runaway wives.’
+
+‘But, Father--’ she stammered, not yet quite able to believe that in
+coming back to him she had only got out of the frying pan into the fire,
+‘you got to listen to _why_ I come----’
+
+He held up his hand again, stopping her. He had no need to listen. He
+could see for himself that she was a runaway wife, which was against
+both man’s and God’s laws.
+
+Sally, however, persisted. She put her bag down on the counter, behind
+which he firmly remained, and facing him across it tried to give him an
+idea of what had been happening to her, and what had been going to
+happen to her much worse if she had stayed.
+
+He refused to be given an idea of it. He turned a deaf ear to all
+explanations. And he was merely scandalised when she said, crying by
+this time, that she couldn’t, couldn’t be left alone with Mr. Luke’s
+mother, for where a husband thinks fit to leave his wife, said Mr.
+Pinner, always supposing it is respectable, there that wife must remain
+till he fetches her. This he laid down to Sally as a law from which a
+married woman departs at her peril, and he laid it down with all the
+more emphasis, perhaps, because of knowing how unlikely it was that he
+himself would ever have had the courage to enforce it in the case of
+Mrs. Pinner, and that, if he had, how certain it was she wouldn’t have
+stayed five minutes in any place he tried to leave her in.
+
+Sally was in despair. What was she to do? The little shop looked like
+paradise to her, a haven of peaceful bliss after the life she had led
+since last she saw it. She cried and cried. She couldn’t believe that
+her father, who had always been so kind really, wouldn’t let her stay
+with him for the two days till Jocelyn got back to Cambridge.
+
+But not even for one night would Mr. Pinner, who was secretly terrified
+of Jocelyn, and sure he would be hot on his wife’s tracks and make a
+scene and blame him if he gave her so much as an inch of encouragement,
+harbour her. Back she should go by the very next train to her husband
+and her duty; and the breaking of marriage vows, and the disregard of
+the injunctions in the New Testament which had so much shocked her in
+Jocelyn, were now thrown at her by Mr. Pinner, who accused her of
+precisely these. Useless for Sally, clinging to the hope of somehow
+being able to justify herself and be allowed to stay, to say through her
+tears that the Gospel didn’t mention what a woman had to do but only
+what a man had to, because to that Mr. Pinner replied that no Gospel
+could be expected to mention everything, and that in any case, when it
+came to sinning, the sexes couldn’t be kept apart.
+
+
+§
+
+He walked her off to the little station three miles away. The bag the
+respectful chauffeur had wanted to carry for her up those few steps she
+now carried three miles herself.
+
+‘Pity you was in such a ’urry to let that there car go,’ Mr. Pinner
+remarked sarcastically, as they trudged almost in silence along the
+lanes.
+
+Sally gulped; delicately, because even her gulps were little
+gulps,--gentle, delicate little things. She didn’t know what was to
+become of her, she really didn’t. Go back to that dreadful house, and
+arrive in the middle of the party? Face real wrath, real deserved wrath,
+from those who even when they were being kind had terrified her? So
+thoroughly had Mr. Pinner’s horror at what she had done cleared her mind
+of Mr. Thorpe’s points of view that she felt she hadn’t a leg to stand
+on, and would do anything, almost, sooner than, covered with shame, go
+back to the anger of the Lukes. But what? What could she do except go
+back? Yet if she had been miserable there while she was still good, how
+was she going to bear it now that she had become wicked? She shuddered
+to think of what Mrs. Luke would be like really angry--and Mr. Luke, who
+had the right not to leave her alone even at night....
+
+Sadly did Sally gulp from time to time, and every now and then emit a
+faint sob, as she walked in silence that morning beside the adamant Mr.
+Pinner to the branch-line station. She hadn’t been in the Woodles
+district very long, but it seemed to her as she passed along its quiet
+lanes that she loved every stick and stone of it. It was what she
+understood. It was peace. It was home. Her father went with her as far
+as Cambridge, so as to put her safely into the express to Liverpool
+Street, and his instructions were, after buying her a first class
+ticket--he felt that Mr. Luke would wish her to travel first class, and
+it gave him a gloomy pride to buy it--that she was to take a taxi from
+Liverpool Street, and go in it all the way to South Winch.
+
+He then, with the ticket, gave her a pound note.
+
+‘It can’t be more than ten miles out,’ said Mr. Pinner, who had never in
+his life before squandered money, let alone a pound, on a taxi, but who
+tried to console himself with the thought that it would have been well
+spent if only it got Sally safe back to where she belonged; and though
+he was depressed he was also proud, for it, too, gave him a kind of
+sombre satisfaction.
+
+‘Been an expensive day for me, this,’ he said, gloomy, but proud.
+
+Sally gulped.
+
+He kept her in the waiting-room at the station till the last moment, for
+she was attracting the usual too well-remembered attention, and beauty
+in tears was even more conspicuous than beauty placid, and then he
+hurried her along to the front of the train, and put her in a carriage
+in which there was only one lady--a real lady, of course, thought Mr.
+Pinner, anxiously taking stock of her, or she wouldn’t be travelling
+first class.
+
+‘Beg pardon, Madam,’ he said in his best behind-the-counter manner,
+taking his hat off. ‘You goin’ to London by any chance?’
+
+Seeing that the train didn’t stop till it got there, the lady couldn’t
+say anything but yes; and then Mr. Pinner asked her if she would mind
+keeping an eye on his daughter, who, though a married lady too--the
+lady made a little bow of acknowledgement of this tribute to her
+evidently settled-down appearance, though she was, in fact, a
+spinster--yet didn’t know her way about very well.
+
+Then when the train began to move, and Sally’s face, as she leant out of
+the window to say goodbye, was a study in despair, Mr. Pinner relented
+enough to pat her tear-stained cheek, and running a few steps beside the
+carriage bade her not take on any more.
+
+‘What’s done’s done,’ he called out after the train, by way of cheering
+her.
+
+And Sally, dropping back into her corner, pulled out her handkerchief
+and wept.
+
+
+§
+
+Yes. What was done was done true enough, she thought, mopping the tears
+as they rolled down her face, including her having married Mr. Luke and
+his mother; for she now regarded him and his mother as all of a piece.
+
+The lady at the other end of the carriage, who, however hard she tried,
+couldn’t take her eyes off her--and she did try very hard, for she hated
+staring at grief--ventured after a while to repeat Mr. Pinner’s advice,
+and suggested, though in more Luke-like language, that Sally shouldn’t
+take on. Whereupon Sally, the voice being sympathetic and the face kind,
+took on more than ever.
+
+‘Oh, _please_ don’t,’ said the lady, much concerned, moving up to the
+seat opposite her. Such liquefaction she had never seen, nor such
+loveliness in spite of it. When she herself cried, which was very
+rarely--what was the good?--she became a swollen thing of lumps. ‘You
+mustn’t, really,’ she begged. ‘Your eyes--you simply mustn’t do anything
+to hurt them. What is it? Can I help at all? I’d love to if I could----’
+
+By the time they were rushing through Bishops Stortford Sally had told
+her everything. Incoherent and sobbing at first, there was something
+about this lady that comforted her into calmness. She wasn’t at all like
+Mr. Thorpe, yet she took his sort of view, not Mr. Pinner’s, and was
+even more sympathetic, and even more understanding. It really seemed,
+from the questions she asked, as if she must know the Lukes personally.
+She said she didn’t, when Sally inquired if this were so, and laughed.
+She was very cheerful, and laughed several times, though she was so kind
+and sorry about everything.
+
+‘You can’t go back there today, anyhow,’ she said at last. ‘Not into the
+middle of that party----’ she laughed and shuddered, for Sally had
+explained with a face of horror that nobody at all was going to be at
+the party who wasn’t either a lady or a gentleman except herself. ‘You
+shall come and stay with me for a few days till your Mr. Luke goes to
+Cambridge, and then we’ll see what happens. But I’m not going to let you
+go back into the clutches of that Mrs. Luke.’
+
+And she leant forward and took her hand, and smiled so kindly and
+cheerfully, and said, ‘You’ll come for a day or two to our house, won’t
+you? My father isn’t there just now, and I’ve got it all to myself. Come
+till we have made up our minds about what to do next.’
+
+This really seemed too good to be true. Sally turned scarlet. Was she
+saved? Saved, at the very last minute, from horror and disgrace?
+
+‘Just for a day or two,’ said her new friend, who couldn’t take her
+eyes off Sally’s face, ’till your husband can find somewhere for you to
+live. We’ll help him to look. I’ll come with you, and help to find
+something. No, it doesn’t matter a bit about your not having any
+luggage--I can lend you everything. And we’ll write to him if you like,
+and tell him you can’t and won’t stay with his mother. Don’t you think
+this is quite the best plan? Don’t you, Sally?’
+
+And she smiled, and asked if she might call her Sally.
+
+‘But,’ hesitated Sally, for she didn’t want to get anybody into
+difficulties, ‘Father says I’m a runaway wife, and ’e wouldn’t ’arbour
+me ’imself because of that.’
+
+‘Oh, but somebody must. And I’m the very one for it, because I’m so
+respectable, and not a wife. Don’t you worry, you lovely thing. We
+really must bring your Mr. Luke to his senses. By the way, hasn’t he got
+a Christian name?’
+
+‘You never ’_eard_ such a name,’ said Sally earnestly, who felt, to her
+own great surprise, almost as comfortable and easy with this strange
+lady as she had with Mr. Soper. ‘Outlandish, I call it.’
+
+Her new friend laughed again when she told her it was Jocelyn. ‘Aren’t
+you delicious,’ she said, her bright eyes screwed up with laughter.
+
+Sally liked being called delicious. It gave her assurance. Jocelyn had
+called her lots of things like that in his red-eared moments, but they
+hadn’t done her much good, because they never seemed to go on into next
+day. This lady was quite in her ordinary senses, her ears were proper
+pale ears, and what she said sounded as though it would last. And how
+badly Sally needed reassurance after the things Mr. Pinner had said to
+her that morning!
+
+‘Now you come along with me,’ said her friend, jumping up as the train
+ran into Liverpool Street, her eyes, which were like little black
+marbles, dancing. ‘And please call me Laura, will you? Because it’s my
+name.’
+
+She leaned out of the window, and waved. A chauffeur came running down
+the platform and opened the door; a car was waiting; and in another
+minute Sally was in it, once more sunk in softness, and once more with a
+lovely fur rug over her knees, while sitting next to her, talking and
+laughing, was her new friend, and sitting opposite her, neither talking
+nor laughing, a smart young lady in black, carrying a bag, who had
+appeared from nowhere and wasn’t taken any notice of, and who looked
+steadily out of the window.
+
+‘What a _day_ I’m ’avin’, thought Sally.
+
+But when presently the car stopped at a big house in a great square with
+trees in the middle, and a footman appeared at the door, and in the hall
+Sally could see another one just like him, and then another, and yet
+another, she was definitely frightened.
+
+‘Oh lor,’ she whispered, shrinking back into the car.
+
+‘No--Laura,’ said her new friend, laughing and taking her hand; and
+drawing it through her arm she led her up the steps of the house, and
+into the middle of the first real fleshpots of her life.
+
+
+§
+
+Fleshpots.
+
+She had thought her honeymoon was a honeymoon of fleshpots; she had been
+sure Almond Tree Cottage was the very home of them; but now she saw the
+real thing: fleshpots _in excelsis_.
+
+Her father had said, ‘Beware of fleshpots,’ when he was expounding the
+doings of the Children of Israel to her of a Sunday afternoon, ‘they
+don’t do no one no good.’ And she had been brought up so carefully, so
+piously, so privately, that she had never come across that literature of
+luxury, those epics of fat things, that are lavishly provided for the
+poor and skimped. The flunkeys and the frocks, the country castles and
+the town palaces, the food, the jewels and the dukes, had remained
+outside her imaginative experience. What she had read had been her
+Bible, and a few books of her mother’s childhood in which people were
+sad, and good and ill, and died saying things that made her cry very
+much. There was nothing to set her dreaming in these. Life, she thought,
+was like that, except for the lucky ones such as herself, who had kind
+parents and a nice back parlour to sit and sew in when their work was
+done. There were the gentry, of course; they existed, she knew, but only
+knew vaguely. Entirely vague they had been in her mind till she became a
+Luke, and found herself engulfed by them; and what an awe-inspiring
+engulfing it had seemed to her, with Ammond handing round everything at
+meals, and tea on a table you didn’t sit up at!
+
+Now, as her new friend’s arm propelled her past the blank-faced footmen,
+across the great marble-floored and columned hall, she realised that
+Almond Tree Cottage had been the merest wheelbarrow in size and fittings
+compared to this. This was grand. More--this was terrible. It was her
+idea of a cathedral or a museum, but not of a place human beings washed
+their hands in, and talked out loud.
+
+‘P’raps,’ she murmured to the lady called Laura, holding back as she was
+about to be taken into a room which she could see at once she would
+never feel comfortable in, and where far away in the distance was
+another of those tables with tea on it that one didn’t sit up at,
+‘p’raps, if you don’t mind, I’d better be gettin’ along after all----’
+for, being polite, she had forced herself to bow with a nervous smile to
+a gentleman in black, who was standing about and whose eye had met hers,
+and he hadn’t taken any notice but looked as blank-faced as everybody
+else, and the rebuff had terribly embarrassed her.
+
+‘Come along,’ was all Laura said to that, calling out over her shoulder
+to the same gentleman in black to see that a room was got ready for Mrs.
+Luke; and he answered, as polite and mild as milk, ‘Very good,
+m’lady----’ so he was a servant, and Laura was one of those ladies
+Sally had heard her parents sometimes allude to with awe, who are always
+being told they’re ladies every time any one speaks to them, and who
+were, so Mr. and Mrs. Pinner declared, the pick of the basket.
+
+‘P’raps,’ murmured Sally again, faintly, for the thought of having got
+among the pick of the basket unnerved her, ‘I’d best do what Father
+said, and take a taxi....’
+
+‘You shall if you really want to,’ said Laura, ‘but let’s have tea
+first. And think of that party! It’s raging at this minute. Oh,
+Sally--could you bear it?’
+
+Sally sat down on the chair Laura pushed up for her. She sat down
+obediently, but only on the edge of it, her long slender legs tucked
+sideways, as one sits who isn’t at ease. No, she couldn’t bear to go
+back to that party; nor could she, waiting till it was over, go back
+after it and face Mrs. Luke. It was more than flesh and blood could
+manage.
+
+Then, that being so, and seeing that her father wouldn’t have her, the
+only thing to do was to stay where she was till Usband went to Cambridge
+on Saturday, and be thankful she had this kind lady to be with, and try
+and swallow all the servants and marble, and do her best to behave
+grateful. It was only for a couple of days, for directly Usband got to
+Cambridge she would go after him as a wife should. Fallen on her feet
+wonderfully she had, Sally anxiously assured herself; but nevertheless,
+as she sat on the edge of her chair, and great pictures looked down at
+her from vast walls, she felt excessively uneasy.
+
+‘Tell me some more about the Lukes,’ said Laura gaily, arranging a
+little table in front of her on which her cup and plate had a nice lot
+of room, and nothing got spilt or dropped. ‘I think they’re such fun.’
+
+‘Fun?’ echoed Sally, her lips parting.
+
+She stared at Laura. Fun? The Lukes?
+
+‘I never ’eard of a ’usband bein’ fun,’ she said in a very low voice,
+her head drooping.
+
+‘Perhaps that isn’t quite the word,’ said Laura, ‘though I believe it’s
+a very good way of approaching them.’ And then she paused, teapot in
+hand, her eyes on Sally’s face. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you know you’re
+the most utterly beautiful thing?’
+
+Whereupon Sally started, for this was the way Mrs. Luke had begun with
+her, and said quickly, even as she had said then, ‘But I can’t ’elp it.’
+
+‘Help it?’ echoed Laura, astonished.
+
+‘People begins,’ said Sally anxiously, ‘with “Oh my, ain’t you
+beautiful,” and ends with bein’ angry. It ain’t as if I could ’_elp_
+it,’ she said, looking up at her new friend with eyes in which tears
+were gathering, for it would be more than she could bear on her empty
+stomach--she had had no food since her breakfast in Mr. Thorpe’s car--if
+she too were going to be angry with her.
+
+Really such an extraordinary piece of good fortune as this had never yet
+come Laura’s way.
+
+
+§
+
+Now was Sally shovelled up by chance from the bottom of the social
+ladder to the top, for Laura was the spinster daughter of a duke. He was
+so aged that, by sheer going on living, everything he had ever done,
+good and bad, had been forgotten, and at last he had become an object of
+universal respect. Ninety-three next birthday; a great age. And his
+eldest son, the prospective duke, was sixty-five,--a great age too for
+anything that is still prospective. He was a marquis, Sally learned with
+surprise presently, when she was having her tea and Laura, who perceived
+she needed soothing, was trying to distract her by telling her about her
+relations; for she failed to understand why he shouldn’t be a duke.
+Pinners produced Pinners; why not dukes dukes?
+
+But Laura said these things couldn’t be explained, and hurried on.
+
+The old duke had married three times, and Laura was the product of what
+the neat-phrased French would call the third bed. All the beds, first,
+second, and third, had long vanished, and of the third, which had been
+very fruitful, Laura, and her brother Charles, and her married sister
+Terry, were the only surviving traces. The second bed had been barren;
+the first had provided the heir, and three ancient ladies old enough to
+be Laura’s mothers, who were scattered over England in varying degrees
+of resignation, one being the widow of a bishop, another the widow of a
+Cabinet Minister, and the third not yet the widow of a club man and
+expert bridge-player, who never came home till next day.
+
+‘Why don’t ’e?’ asked Sally, manners seeming to demand that she should
+say something when, for an instant, her friend paused.
+
+But Laura said these things couldn’t be explained, and hurried on.
+
+Much the liveliest of the beds had been the one she herself came out of,
+and her blood pressure--except during the last year of the War, when
+unceasing hard work, combined with a diet of practically continual
+boiled fish, reduced it to a comfortable normal--had always been higher
+than was convenient. This led her into excesses. She must be up and
+doing; she found it impossible to sit still. Vitality bubbled in her
+quick speech and danced in her black eyes. She was now thirty-five,
+round and stubby, fleet of foot and swift of reply, and her past was
+strewn with charities she had organised, dressmakers she had
+established, hat shops she had run, estate agencies she had started,
+hospital beds she had endowed, arts she had supported, geniuses she had
+discovered, and four lovers.
+
+Four weren’t many, she thought, considering the piles her sister Terry
+had got through. Laura’s lovers had come and gone, as lovers do, and she
+hadn’t minded much, because neither had they. There was something too
+electric about her for love. She seemed to crackle in their very arms.
+This disconcerted them; and each in his turn married some one else.
+
+For a long time now she had been bored, and bored violently, and by the
+time she came across Sally she had seen everything, been everything,
+heard everything and done everything; and the prospect of seeing and
+being and hearing and doing over and over again, till her joints cracked
+and her hair fell out, was boring her into fits.
+
+Her father’s three wives had been the daughters of millionaires, whose
+pride it was to leave them all their money. Her father, rich before, had
+thus become incredibly richer. England was full of him. And the war had
+only made him richer, because he owned coal mines. Such riches, Laura
+considered, were disgusting, and she had plunged into Socialism, and
+come up dripping Labour. But whatever she did, whatever she was, her
+chief job was to look after her father, and see that his last years were
+peaceful; and she had now only left him in Cambridgeshire, where they
+had been spending Easter, for a day or two, and rushed up to London
+because of being obliged to go to a charity ball of which she was a
+patroness, to the first night of a play whose author she was
+encouraging, to a bazaar in aid of the Black and Blue League, of which
+she was vice-president and whose aims were the assistance of wives, and,
+if possible, to look in at a concert being given by a young violinist
+she had helped to have trained: and she had been thinking, as she sat in
+the empty railway carriage between Crippenham and Cambridge--the
+expresses stopped at Crippenham when the Duke was in residence--that all
+this was a great bore.
+
+What was the good of it, really? Oughtn’t charity to be approached quite
+differently? Weren’t bazaars essentially vicious? Did wives need
+assistance more than husbands? And there was her own stupid supper-party
+that night after the play, with the author coming to it, and the
+leading lady, and Streatley her elder brother, who thought he admired
+the leading lady, and Terry her sister, who thought the author admired
+her, and Charles her younger brother, who was sure he admired nobody,
+and one or two others, including a dramatic critic; and how too
+perfectly awful if the play was a failure, and there they all were,
+boxed up with the person who had written it.
+
+‘Silly life,’ she had been thinking as the train ran into Cambridge.
+‘Round and round in a cage we go, and nothing is ever different except
+our whiskers, which keep on getting greyer.’
+
+‘But then,’ she said leaning forward, her eyes twinkling and dancing as
+she looked at Sally, who by this time had finished her tea, ‘the door
+opened and you got in. Too marvellous, Sally. Divinely beautiful. And
+not an h in your whole delicious composition.’
+
+‘Pardon?’ said Sally, who hadn’t quite got that.
+
+
+§
+
+She hadn’t understood more than a word here and there of all the words
+Laura had rattled off at her, and in her heart, while she steadily ate
+sandwiches, she had slowly come to the conclusion that the pick of the
+basket was a queer fish. An affectionate and friendly fish, but queer
+all right, thought Sally; and in spite of the good tea--the best she had
+ever had, outdoing the one at Truro, and infinitely better than any at
+Mrs. Luke’s,--in spite of the calming and balancing effect of
+nourishment after not having had a bite to eat since five o’clock that
+morning, in spite of Laura’s kindness and cheerfulness, Sally felt
+uneasy.
+
+She oughtn’t to be there. She oughtn’t to have come with Laura. It was
+only for two days, but two days were enough to do wrong in. What would
+her father say, who thought she was at that moment in a taxi, paid for
+by his pound, if he could see her? What would Mrs. Luke say? What was
+Mrs. Luke saying, anyhow? As for Mr. Luke, what he would say didn’t so
+much matter, because almost before he had finished saying it she would
+have joined him in Cambridge, and started acting as a wife should. Of
+course he on his side must act as a husband should, and not try and send
+her away from him to his mother,--that was only fair, wasn’t it? Sally
+anxiously asked herself.
+
+And her uneasiness became acute when Laura, having taken her up a whole
+lot of stairs, every one of which looked like pure marble, and into a
+room she could only guess was a bedroom because there was a bed in it,
+but which was otherwise unidentifiable to Sally as such, sat down at a
+table and began telephoning to people to send round somebody at once
+with dresses and shoes to be tried on a young lady, who had to wear them
+that very evening.
+
+Sally listened in alarm. Impossible not to guess that she was the young
+lady; impossible not to gather that there was to be a party, and she was
+to be at it. Had she after all only escaped Mrs. Luke’s party to find
+herself caught in another? Was Laura, who had so much sympathised with
+her earnest wish not to be present at the one, going to plunge her into
+the other?
+
+Standing afraid and conscience-stricken in front of the blazing wood
+fire, while Laura telephoned--this all came of not obeying her
+father--Sally wondered whether anything could save her. Laura had saved
+her from Mrs. Luke, but who was going to save her from Laura? Laura
+lived in the middle of marble. She had servants at her beck and call,
+and could make the gentleman in black do anything she chose. And the
+smart young lady, who had sat on the small seat of the car and looked
+out of the window, presently, on Laura’s telling her to, crawled round
+the floor at Sally’s feet with her mouth full of pins, doing something
+to a petticoat of Laura’s that Sally, it seemed, was going to have to
+wear that evening.
+
+‘All you’ve got to do, Sally,’ said Laura, having finished telephoning,
+and coming briskly over to where her newest discovery was standing
+meekly without her frock and hat, while the petticoat was pinned
+narrower, ’is to enjoy yourself. Oh, you lovely, _lovely_ thing!’ she
+burst out, beating her hands together with delight; for the more one
+took off Sally the more exquisite she became.
+
+Enjoy herself? She, a married woman? ‘Wonder ’ow,’ thought Sally.
+
+‘Say what you like, do what you like,’ said Laura, her eyes bulging with
+admiration, ‘and don’t care about anybody or anything. Don’t you bother
+about h’s, or silly things like that. Just say whatever comes into your
+darling, delicious head, and enjoy yourself.’
+
+In the presence of the young lady crawling on the floor, Sally was dumb.
+Laura, on the other hand, talked just as if she weren’t there; but when
+for a moment Sally found herself alone with Laura, she did make a mild
+protest.
+
+‘Might ’ave gone back to that there other party after all,’ she said,
+’an’ done what Father tell me, if I got to be at one any’ow.’
+
+‘Oh, but this isn’t a party,’ Laura hastily assured her, for Sally was
+distinctly drooping. ‘This is a theatre. You like going to a play, don’t
+you, Sally? Of course you do. I simply don’t believe the girl exists who
+doesn’t.’
+
+Yes; Sally liked going to a play. She hadn’t ever been to one, and the
+idea of a theatre did cheer her up. And Laura said nothing about the
+supper afterwards, because why say everything?
+
+
+§
+
+They went, then, to the first night of Mr. Gillespie’s new play. Sally
+was astonished when Laura, and the maid, and the head lady from
+Paquille’s and her two assistants, had finished with her and bade her
+look at herself in the glass.
+
+‘That me?’ she asked, her lips parting and her eyes widening, for it
+might have been a real grand lady. And she added doubtfully, ‘I ain’t
+’alf bare.’
+
+Laura, however, was just as bare, and there was ever so much more of her
+to be bare with, so she supposed it must be all right; but she did
+wonder what her father would say if he could see her now--‘Oh, my
+_goodness_,’ shuddered Sally, her mind slinking away from the thought.
+
+They had dressed her in a cloud of blue tulle over a cloud of green
+tulle. Her loveliness was startling. It was like nothing either Laura or
+the lady from Paquille’s had ever seen, and they had seen most of what
+there was of existing beauty. Even the maid, an expert in repression,
+showed excitement. And presently when the Paquille lady wrapped the
+cloak round her that went with that frock, and, swathed in its green and
+silver, she looked like a white flower in a slender sheath of green,
+Laura fairly danced with delight to think what Terry would say, who was
+used to being so much prettier than anybody else, and what Charles would
+say, who long had declared there was no such thing as real beauty, and
+Streatley, who said the women nowadays couldn’t hold a candle to the
+women of his youth, and everybody.
+
+Such a find, such a haul, such a piece of luck had never yet befallen
+Laura. And the mischievous pleasure she took in thinking of the effect
+it was going to have on her relations and of the upsetting results it
+was going to produce, was all the more surprising because, at the bottom
+of her heart, she was devoted to them.
+
+
+§
+
+Among the opera-glasses that raked Sally as she followed Laura into the
+stage box three minutes before the curtain went up on Mr. Gillespie’s
+new play, were Terry’s. She was in the stalls, with the young man who
+just then was, as the Pinners would have said, walking out with her. He
+too was looking at Sally.
+
+‘Laura’s latest,’ remarked Terry, turning to him after a prolonged
+incredulous stare at the astonishing contents of the box; for Laura was
+well known for her successive discoveries of every kind--saints,
+geniuses, rugged men of labour--each of which, after a brief blare of
+publicity, disappeared and was not heard of again.
+
+The young man’s face, however, had the kind of expression on it as he
+looked at Sally that is apt to annoy the woman one is with; and Terry,
+who was strictly monogamous during each of her affairs, and expected the
+other person to be so too, didn’t like it.
+
+‘Who is she?’ asked her young friend.
+
+‘God knows,’ said Terry, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+The curtain went up and the lights went down, and Sally disappeared
+into the darkness. When next she was visible, Charles Moulsford and Lord
+Streatley had joined their sister in the box. They were talking to
+Sally. She was politely smiling. The house had eyes for nothing else.
+
+‘Who _is_ she?’ asked Terry’s young friend again, with a warmer
+insistence.
+
+‘You’d better go and ask her,’ said Terry, cross.
+
+‘All right, I will,’ said her young friend; and got up and left her; for
+by this time she had been monogamous with him for six months, and he
+long had wished she would love him less.
+
+The other three acts of the play took place in bright summer weather,
+and the glorious sunshine on the stage lit up Sally too in the stage
+box. The house had eyes only for her. Mr. Gillespie’s play accordingly
+fell flat. Nobody called for him at the end, what applause there was was
+absent-minded, and next morning the leading newspaper, after a
+perfunctory _résumé_ of that which it unkindly described as the alleged
+plot, ended by remarking languidly, ‘Mr. Gillespie must try again.’
+
+It was a strange evening. The actors, who began well, seemed to get more
+and more bloodless as the play proceeded. Mr. Gillespie, crouching in
+the darkest corner of the box above Laura’s, a shelter out of which
+nothing would have dragged him except the most frenzied cries of
+enthusiasm, couldn’t imagine what was the matter with his players; but
+they had felt almost at once that no notice was being taken of them, and
+presently, discovering the reason, a blight settled on them, and its
+ravages, as the evening went on, became more marked. By the end there
+was practically complete anaemia, and Mr. Gillespie, fleeing from the
+theatre before the final curtain so as to see and hear nothing more, so
+as to get away, so as to meet neither managers nor actors, so as to wipe
+from his mind that he had ever written plays, or ever hoped, or ever
+believed, or ever had dreams and ambitions, went straight for comfort to
+his friend Lady Laura Moulsford, who had been so kind and encouraging,
+and who had told him to come round to her that evening, laughingly
+promising to have the laurels ready.
+
+Laurels! Poor Mr. Gillespie now only wanted to hide his head in her kind
+lap. He winced to remember how happily he too had laughed, how sure he
+had been. But that was because of the great success of his first play;
+and this one, his second, was twenty times better, and was going to be
+twenty times greater a success.
+
+And so it would have been except for Sally. When, presently, after he
+had waited three quarters of an hour alone in the library at Goring
+House because Sally was being so much crowded round coming out of the
+theatre that it took all that time to extricate her and get her away,
+she came in with Laura and Laura’s brothers, he instantly realised what
+had happened; and even as Mr. Soper hadn’t grudged her his stew, though
+feeling aggrieved, so did Mr. Gillespie, though feeling heartbroken, not
+grudge her the laurels that should have been his.
+
+He turned very red; he bent low over her hand when Laura introduced him;
+he murmured, ‘I lay my failure at your feet and glory in it,’--this
+being the way Mr. Gillespie talked; and Sally, nervous and bewildered,
+but indomitably polite, said, ‘Pardon?’
+
+
+§
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+‘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.
+
+‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked, annoyed.
+
+‘Because you say I’m a little beast, so I may as well do the thing
+thoroughly.’
+
+Charles went across to the bell.
+
+‘No--don’t ring,’ said Laura jumping up. ‘I’ll go and tell her.’ And she
+went to the door, but hesitated, and came back to him, and laid her hand
+on his arm.
+
+He withdrew his arm.
+
+‘Charles--are you so angry with me?’ she asked.
+
+‘You’ve behaved simply disgracefully,’ he answered in a voice of deep
+disgust. ‘You would sacrifice anybody to provide your friends with a new
+sensation.’
+
+Laura looked at him. It was true; or had been true. But she wasn’t going
+to ever any more, she was going to turn over a new leaf--next day, when
+she had finished with all her tiresome and important engagements.
+
+‘You sacrificed that child’--began Charles, passionately indignant when
+he thought of the unconscious figure on the floor.
+
+‘Don’t _you_ sacrifice her,’ interrupted Laura. And when Charles stared
+at her, too angry for speech, she added hastily, ‘Oh, don’t let’s
+quarrel, Charles darling. I’m sure you’ll take the greatest care of her.
+I’ll go and fetch her. Drive slowly, won’t you--and bring her back safe.
+Tomorrow I’m going to hand her over to her husband.’
+
+
+§
+
+Now in his heart Charles knew that this was the only right thing to do.
+Sally ought never to have been taken away from her husband, and, having
+been taken, ought to be returned to him. At once. Not tomorrow, but at
+once. He didn’t know the circumstances, except what Laura had hurriedly
+told him the night before after supper, about having found her in a
+train, dissolved in tears because her father was sending her back to a
+mother-in-law who was awful to her, and she had brought her home with
+her just to comfort her, just to let her recover; but it was plain that
+such conduct on Laura’s part was indefensible. If ever anybody ought to
+be safe at home it was Sally. She should be taken there without losing a
+moment. Disgraceful of Laura to put it off for another day and night,
+while she kept her fool engagements. Having behaved so wickedly, she
+ought, without losing an hour, to set things straight again.
+
+Charles felt strongly about Laura’s conduct; yet, though he himself
+could have set things straight by simply driving Sally back to the Lukes
+that morning, he didn’t do so. That was because he couldn’t. He was in
+love, and therefore couldn’t.
+
+There are some things it is impossible to do when you are in love,
+thought Charles, who recognised and admitted his condition, and one is
+to hand over the beloved to a brute. Luke was a brute. Clearly he was,
+from what Sally had said the night before. He was either angry--angry
+with that little angel!--or he oh-Sallied. A cold shudder ran down
+Charles’s spine. The thought made him feel really sick, for he was a
+tender-stomached as well as a tender-hearted young man, and possessed an
+imagination which was sometimes too lively for comfort. It wouldn’t be
+_his_ hand that delivered her up to a young brute; nor, he suddenly
+determined, on the butler’s hurrying out to Laura, who was standing on
+the steps seeing him and Sally off, and saying with urgency, ‘Lord
+Streatley to speak to Mrs. Luke on the telephone,’ would it be his hand
+that delivered her up to an old one. At once on hearing the message he
+started the car, and was out of the square before Laura could say
+anything. There was Sally, tucked up beside him in Laura’s furs, and
+looking more beautiful in broad sunshine even than he remembered her the
+night before,--a child of light and grace if ever there was one, thought
+Charles, a thing of simple sweetness and obedience and trust; and was he
+going to bring her back to another evening’s exploitation by his sister
+and her precious friends, with that old scoundrel, his elder brother,
+all over her?
+
+Never, said Charles to himself; and headed his car for Crippenham.
+
+
+§
+
+Crippenham was where his father was. What so safe as a refuge for Sally
+as his father? He was ninety-three, and he was deaf. A venerable age; a
+convenient failing. Convenient indeed in this case, for the Duke, like
+Charles, took little pleasure in the speech of the lower classes. Also
+he was alone there till Laura should come back to him on the following
+day, because nobody was ever invited to Crippenham, which was his yearly
+rest-cure, and nobody ever dared even try to disturb its guarded repose.
+
+Charles felt that it was, besides being the only, the very place. Here
+Sally could be kept remote and hidden till Laura--not he; he wouldn’t be
+able to do such a thing--restored her to where she belonged; here she
+would be safe from the advances of Streatley, who couldn’t follow her
+anywhere his father was, because the old man had an aversion to the four
+surviving fruits of his first marriage, and freely showed it; and here
+he would have her to himself for a whole evening, and part at least of
+the next day.
+
+Also, it would serve Laura right. She would get a fright, and think all
+sorts of things had happened when they didn’t come back. Well, thought
+Charles, she deserved everything she got. Under the cloak of protecting
+and comforting Sally she had been completely selfish and cruel. Charles
+was himself astonished at the violence of his feelings towards Laura,
+with whom he had always been such friends. He didn’t investigate these
+feelings, however; he didn’t investigate any of his other feelings
+either, not excepting the one he had when he asked Sally, soon after
+they had turned the corner out of the square, if she were warm enough,
+and she looked up shyly at him, and smiled as she politely thanked him,
+for his feelings since the evening before no longer bore investigation.
+They were a mixed lot, a strong lot. And it vexed Charles to know that
+even as early in the day as this, and not much after half past nine in
+the morning, he wished to kiss Sally.
+
+This wasn’t at all the proper spirit of rescue. He drove in silence. He
+couldn’t remember having wished to kiss a woman before at half past nine
+in the morning, and it annoyed him.
+
+Sally, of course, was silent too. Not for her to speak without being
+spoken to, and she sat mildly wondering that she should be going along
+in a car at all. Laura had come up to her bedroom and said her brother
+was there, wanting to take her out for a little fresh air. Do her good,
+Laura had said, though Sally had never known good come of fresh air yet;
+but, passive as a parcel, she had let herself be taken. Why, however,
+she should be going for a joy-ride with this lord she didn’t know,
+though she supposed it was as good a way as another of getting through
+the intimidating day among the picks of the basket, and anyhow this way
+there was only one of them, and anyhow he wasn’t the big old one with
+the hairs on his hands.
+
+Queer lot, these picks, thought Sally. Didn’t seem to have anything to
+do to keep them at home; seemed to spend their time going somewhere
+else. Fidgety. And a vision of her own life as it was going to be once
+she was settled in those rooms at Cambridge, getting ready for her
+little baby, and cleaning up, and making things cosy for her man,
+flooded her heart with a delicious warmth. Laura had promised to help
+her find the rooms, and take her to where Mr. Luke would be. Mr. Luke
+wouldn’t be angry any more now, thought Sally--he’d be too pleased about
+the little baby; and Laura seemed to know exactly where they would find
+him, and had assured her he wouldn’t want to have Mrs. Luke living with
+them. Laura was queer too, in Sally’s eyes, but good. Indeed Sally,
+feeling very much the married woman after what had happened the evening
+before, feeling motherly already, feeling exalted by the coming of her
+baby to a height immensely above mere spinsterhood, went so far as to
+say to herself of Laura, with indulgent affection, ‘Nice kid.’
+
+
+§
+
+They lunched at Thaxted. It was still only half past twelve, and Charles
+had managed to be three hours doing the forty odd miles. There was a
+beautiful church at Thaxted in which he could linger with her, for he
+didn’t want to get to Crippenham till tea-time, and Crippenham was only
+about nine miles beyond Cambridge, off the Ely road between Waterbeach
+and Swaffham Prior.
+
+Up to Thaxted, Charles was filled with an embarrassingly strong desire
+to appropriate Sally for ever to himself. He hadn’t an idea how to do
+it, but that was his wish. She sat there silent, beautiful beyond his
+dreams--and how often and how wistfully had he not dreamt of what a
+woman’s beauty might be!--pathetic, defenceless in the midst of a rudely
+jostling, predatory world, like a child with a priceless pearl in its
+hand among the poor and hungry, and he passionately loved her. As the
+miles increased, so did Charles’s passion. He looked at her sideways,
+and each time with a fresh throb of wonder. He wove dreams about her; he
+saw visions of magic casements and perilous seas, and she behind them,
+protected, guarded, worshipped by him alone; his soul was filled with
+poetry; he was lifted above himself by this Presence, this
+Manifestation; he thought in terms of music; the whole of England sang.
+
+But at Thaxted he felt different, and began to think Sally ought to be
+with those she belonged to; and by the time it was evening, and he was
+meditating alone in the garden at Crippenham, he was quite sure of it.
+
+At Thaxted he ordered the best lunch he could--Sally’s mouth watered as
+she listened,--and while it was being got ready he took her into the
+church. She was inattentively polite. The brisk movements of a big,
+close-cropped man in a cassock, who strode busily about and made what
+seemed to Sally a curtsey each time he crossed the middle aisle,
+appeared to interest her much more than Charles’s remarks on the clear,
+pale beauty of the building. It was rather like taking a dog to look at
+things. Charles didn’t consciously think this, but there was an
+unawareness about Sally when faced by the beauties of Thaxted Church,
+and when faced, coming down, by the beauties of certain bits of the
+country that singing April morning, which was very like, Charles
+subconsciously thought, the unawareness of a dog. Ah, but how far, far
+more beautiful she herself was than anything else, he thought; how
+exquisite she looked in Laura’s chinchilla wrap, with the exalted
+thoughts of the men who had built the church, thoughts frozen into the
+delicate greys, and silvers, and rose-colours of that fair wide place,
+for her background.
+
+The man in the cassock left off doing whatever he was doing on catching
+sight of Sally, and, after looking at her a moment, came up and offered,
+his eyes on her face, to show them round the church; a little cluster of
+Americans dissolved, and flowed towards her; and a woman dressed like a
+nun broke off her prayers, and presently sidled up to where she stood.
+
+Charles removed her.
+
+Thaxted is a quiet place, and he strolled with her through its streets
+till their food should be ready. Its streets, quiet to begin with,
+didn’t stay quiet. The people of Thaxted, for some reason
+incomprehensible to Charles, because no two women could be more unlike,
+seemed to think Sally was Mary Pickford. He heard whispers to that
+effect. Did they then think, too, that he was the person known, he
+understood, as Doug?
+
+He removed her a second time.
+
+Perhaps the inn was as good a place as any to wait in. He had, however,
+to engage a private room for their lunch, because so many people came in
+and wished to lunch too; and it was when Sally had eaten a great deal of
+greengage tart and cream--bottled greengages, Charles feared, but she
+said she liked them--and drunk a great deal of raspberry syrup which
+had, he was sure, never been near real raspberries and couldn’t be very
+good for her, and then, while he was having coffee and she tea--he had
+somehow stumbled on the fact that she liked tea after meals, and he
+watched with concern the strength and number of the cups she drank--it
+was then that she began to thaw, and to talk.
+
+Alas, that she should. Alas, that she didn’t remain for ever silent,
+wonderful, mysterious, of God.
+
+Once having started thawing, it wasn’t in Sally’s generous nature to
+stop. She thawed and thawed, and Charles became more and more afflicted.
+Lord Charles--so, the night before, she had learned he was called--was
+evidently a chip off the same block as her friend Laura; kind, that is.
+See what a lovely dinner he was giving her. Also he had been much more
+like a gentleman that day, and less like somebody who wanted to be a
+husband; and after the greengage tart she began to warm up, and by the
+time she had got to the cups of tea she felt great confidence in
+Charles.
+
+‘Kind, ain’t you,’ she said with her enchanting smile, when he
+suggested, much against his convictions, another pot of tea.
+
+‘Isn’t everybody?’ asked Charles.
+
+‘Does their best,’ said Sally charitably. ‘But it’s up ’ill all the way
+for some as I could mention.’
+
+By this time Charles was already feeling chilled. The raspberry syrup
+and the cups of strong tea had estranged him. This perfect girl, he
+thought, ought to be choice too in her food, ought instinctively to
+reject things out of bottles, and have no desire for a second helping of
+obviously bad pastry. Still, she was very young. He too, at Eton, had
+liked bad tuck. After all, queer as it seemed, she had only got to the
+age he was at then.
+
+He made excuses for her; and, it appearing to him important that he
+should be in possession of more facts about her than those Laura had
+told him the evening before, said encouragingly, ‘Do mention them.’
+
+Sally did. She mentioned everybody and everything; and soon he knew as
+much about her hasty marriage, hurried on within a fortnight to the
+first man who came along, her return from her honeymoon to South Winch,
+the determination of her mother-in-law to keep her apart from her
+husband, her flight, helped by her father-in-law, back to her father,
+his rejection of her, and her intention to rejoin her husband next day
+at Cambridge whether he liked it or not, as he could bear.
+
+He couldn’t bear much. It wasn’t only how she said it, but what she
+said. Charles, who had at first been afflicted by her language, was now
+afflicted by her facts. He shifted uneasily in his chair. He smoked
+cigarette after cigarette. His thin brown face was flushed, and he
+looked distressed. In that strange, defective, yet all too vivid speech
+which he so deeply deplored, she drew for him a picture of what seemed
+sheer exploitation, culminating in his own sister’s flinging herself
+hilariously into the game. This child; this helpless child, who would
+obey anybody, go anywhere, do anything she was told--in Charles’s eyes,
+as he listened and drew her out, she became the most pathetic thing on
+earth. Everybody, it appeared, first grabbed at her and then wanted to
+get rid of her. Everybody; himself too. Yes, he too had grabbed at her,
+under a mealy-mouthed pretence of helping her, and now he too
+wanted--not to get rid of her, that seemed too violent, too brutal a way
+of putting it, but to hand her over, to pass her on, to send her back to
+that infernal young Luke, who himself was trying to escape from her and
+leave her to his mother. And the courage of the child! It was the
+courage of ignorance, of course, but still it seemed to Charles a lovely
+thing, that was afraid of nothing, of no discomfort, of no hard work, if
+only she might be with her husband in their own home. Charles discovered
+that that was Sally’s one wish, and that her simple ambition appeared to
+be to do what she called work her fingers to the bone on behalf of that
+odious youth.
+
+‘Mr. Luke,’ said Sally, who was unacquainted with any reason why she
+shouldn’t say everything she knew to anyone who wished to hear, ‘Mr.
+Luke, ’e thinks ’e can’t afford a ’ome yet for me, and so----’
+
+‘Then he oughtn’t to have married you,’ flashed out Charles, infuriated
+by the young brute.
+
+‘Seemed ’e couldn’t ’elp it,’ said Sally. ‘Seemed as if it ’ad to be.
+’E----’
+
+‘Oh yes, _yes_,’ interrupted Charles impatiently, for he hated hearing
+anything about Jocelyn’s emotions. ‘Of course, of course. That was a
+quite foolish remark of mine.’
+
+‘Five ’undred pounds a year ’e got,’ went on Sally, ‘and me able to make
+sixpence go twice as far as most can. Dunno wot ’e’s talkin’ about.’
+
+And indeed she didn’t know, for she shared Mr. Pinner’s opinion that
+five hundred a year was wealth.
+
+‘Fair beats me,’ she added, after a thoughtful pause.
+
+Well, thought Charles, the Moulsford family had behaved badly, and,
+under the cloak of sympathy and wishing to help, his and Laura’s conduct
+had been most base; but they were certainly going to make up for it now.
+By God, yes. Crippenham, which he had at first thought of from sheer
+selfishness as the very place to get Sally to himself in, was evidently
+now the place of all others from which she could be helped. Quite close
+to Cambridge, within easy reach of young Luke, and in it, all-powerful
+even now in spite of his age, certainly all-powerful when it came to
+putting the fear of God into an undergraduate, or whatever he was, his
+ancient but still inflammable father. Naturally at ninety-three the old
+man consisted principally of embers; but these embers could still be
+fanned into a partial glow by the sight of a good horse or a beautiful
+woman, and Charles would only need to show Sally to him to have the old
+man on her side. Not able to hear, but able to see: what combination
+could, in the case of Sally, possibly be more admirable?
+
+He drove on after lunch, his conscience clear; so clear that before
+leaving Thaxted he sent Laura a telegram telling her they were going to
+Crippenham, because he no longer wanted her to be made anxious,--for
+those only, thought Charles, are angry and wish to make others
+uncomfortable who are themselves in the wrong. He was no longer in the
+wrong; or, rather, he was no longer thinking with rapture of the wrong
+he would like to be in if Sally could be in it with him. Her speech made
+a gulf between them which his fastidious soul couldn’t cross. There had
+to be h’s before Charles could love with passion. Where there were none,
+passion with him collapsed and died. On this occasion it died at the inn
+at Thaxted towards the end of lunch; and he was grateful, really,
+however unpleasant at the moment its dying was. For what mightn’t have
+happened if she had gone on being silent and only saying yes and no, and
+smiling the divine, delicious smile that didn’t only play in her dimples
+but laughed and danced in her darling eyes? Charles was afraid that in
+that case he would have been done for. Talking, she had saved him; and
+though he still loved her, for no man could look at Sally and not love
+her, he loved her differently,--kindly, gently, with a growingly
+motherly concern for her welfare. After Thaxted there was no further
+trace in his looks and manner of that which had made Sally suspect him
+of a wish to be a husband.
+
+But she was surprised when he asked her, as they drove along, whether
+she would mind if he took her to his father in the country for the
+night, instead of back to what he called noisy London. Laura was in
+London; why should she be taken somewhere else, away from her? And to
+his father too--to more picks, fresh ones; just as she was beginning to
+shake down nicely with the ones she knew. Surely the father of the picks
+would be the most frightening of all?
+
+So she said, ‘Pardon?’ and looked so much alarmed that Charles, smiling,
+explained that his father was staying at that moment quite near
+Cambridge, and it would be convenient for the search for rooms she had
+told him Laura had promised to undertake with her next day.
+
+‘He’s quite harmless,’ Charles assured her, for she continued to look
+alarmed--if where she was to be taken to next was near Cambridge, it
+must also be near Woodles, and suppose her father were to happen to see
+her?--‘and he’s all alone there till Laura goes back to him tomorrow. It
+will cheer him up to have us. He’s ninety-three.’
+
+Ninety-three? ‘Oh, my,’ said Sally politely. ‘’E ain’t ’alf old. Poor
+old gentleman,’ she added with compassion, old people having been
+objects of special regard and attention in the Pinner circle.
+
+But for the rest of the drive she was silent, for she was trying to
+thread her way among her indistinct and entangled thoughts, all of which
+seemed confusedly to press upon her notice that she oughtn’t to be where
+she was at all, that if she was anywhere it ought to be with her
+husband, and that with every hour that passed she was sinking deeper and
+deeper in wrong-doing.
+
+‘Soon be in right up to the neck,’ she said to herself with resigned
+unhappiness; and sincerely wished it were that time tomorrow, and she
+safely joined up with Mr. Luke, and finished for good and all with these
+soft-spoken but headstrong picks.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+§
+
+
+While they, along the roads, were drawing every minute nearer, the
+unconscious Duke was sitting in his plain study, having his plain tea,
+which had been set beside him by his plain parlourmaid. This is not to
+say that the parlourmaid was ill-favoured, but only that she wasn’t a
+footman.
+
+There were no footmen at Crippenham. There was hardly anything there,
+except the Duke. For years it had been his conviction that this annual
+fortnight of the rest that is obtained by complete contrast prolonged
+his life. Something evidently prolonged it, and the Duke was sure it was
+Crippenham. There he went every Easter alone with Laura, because it was
+a small house, and an ugly house, and a solitary house, and had nothing
+to recommend it except that it was the exact opposite of every other
+Moulsford possession.
+
+Only Charles could come and go as he pleased; only he could dare break
+in without notice on the sacred yearly business of prolonging life.
+Although he had had ninety-three years of it, the Duke still wanted
+more. He liked being alive, and it pleased him to keep Streatley
+waiting. Streatley, and the other three children of his first
+marriage--absurd, he thought, to have to refer to those four old things
+as children--were unpopular with their father. He had never at any time
+cared much for them, and had begun to be really angry with them when he
+was a lively seventy, and perceived that the possession of children
+bordering on a heavy fifty made him seem less young than he felt himself
+to be. Now that they were practically seventy themselves, and old
+seventies too, and he not looking a day different, he hoped, from what
+he had looked thirty years before, he was angrier with them than ever.
+He admitted that other people might be old at ninety-three, but he
+wasn’t; he was the exception. He didn’t feel old, and he didn’t, he
+considered, look old, so what was all this talk of age? The press never
+mentioned him without the prefix venerable; people pretended he was
+deaf, when he could hear as well as any man if he wasn’t mumbled at;
+Laura was continually making him sit out of draughts, just as if he were
+a damned invalid; arms were offered him if he wanted to walk a few
+steps--he couldn’t appear in the House without some officious member of
+it, usually that ass Chepstow, who was eighty if a day himself, ambling
+across to help; and every time he had a birthday the newspapers tumbled
+over each other with their offensively astonished congratulations.
+Couldn’t a man be over ninety without having it perpetually rubbed into
+him that he was old?
+
+What he loved was his brood of young ones--Laura, Terry, and Charles;
+and of this lively trio the dearest to him was Charles. So that, looking
+up from his seedcake and seeing his last born coming into the room, not
+only entirely unexpectedly but with a young woman, though he was
+surprised he wasn’t angry; and when on their coming close to him he
+perceived the exceeding fairness of the young woman, his surprise
+became pleasurable; very pleasurable; in fact, pleasurable to excess.
+
+He stared up at Sally a moment, not listening to what Charles was
+saying, and then struggled to get on to his feet. Younger than his three
+young ones ... much, much younger than his three young ones ... youth,
+ah, youth ... lovely, lovely youth....
+
+Charles wanted to help him, but was thrust aside. ‘Poor old gentleman,’
+said Sally, catching him by the arm as he seemed about to lose his
+balance and drop back into the chair.
+
+‘Married?’ asked the Duke, breathing hard after his exertion, and
+looking at Charles.
+
+Charles shook his head.
+
+‘’Course I’m married,’ said Sally with heat.
+
+‘He means us,’ said Charles.
+
+‘Us?’ repeated Sally, much shocked.
+
+‘You’re going to be, then,’ said the Duke, looking first at her and then
+at Charles, his face red with pleasure.
+
+Charles shook his head again, and laughed.
+
+But the Duke didn’t laugh. He stared at him a minute, and then said,
+‘Fool.’
+
+‘I _got_ a nusband,’ said Sally indignantly.
+
+‘He can’t hear,’ said Charles. ‘He’s very deaf.’
+
+‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke. ‘Speak clearly, my dear--no, don’t
+shout,’ he added; though Sally, far from going to shout, wasn’t even
+opening her mouth. Poor old gentleman, she thought, gazing at him in
+silent compassion; fancy him still being anybody’s father.
+
+The Duke took her hand in a dry, cold grip.
+
+‘Like shakin’ ’ands with a tombstone,’ thought Sally. And she was
+filled with so great a pity for anything so old that she didn’t feel shy
+of him at all, and in the coaxing voice of one who is addressing a baby
+she said, ‘’Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot--do, now.’
+
+Charles looked at her astonished. Nearly everybody was afraid of his
+father. She reminded him of the weaned child in Isaiah, who put its hand
+fearlessly on the cockatrice’s den.
+
+‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke, gazing at her with delight.
+
+‘This is Mrs. Luke, Father--a friend of Laura’s,’ shouted Charles, ‘and
+I’ve brought her----’
+
+‘Write it down, my dear,’ said the Duke, not heeding Charles, and
+drawing Sally into a chair next his own and pushing paper and a pencil
+towards her with his shaking old hands. ‘Write down what you were saying
+to me.’
+
+Charles became anxious. He felt sure Sally couldn’t write anything down.
+Nor could she; for if her spoken words were imperfect her written ones
+were worse, so that to be given a pencil and paper by the Duke and told
+to write might have been embarrassing if she hadn’t, owing to his
+extreme age and evident dilapidation, felt he wasn’t, as she said to
+herself, all there. Poor old gentleman, she thought, full of pity. What
+she saw, sitting heavily in the chair, breathing hard and blinking at
+her so kindly, was just, thought Sally, the remains, the left-overs;
+like, she said to herself, her images being necessarily domestic,
+Sunday’s dinner by the time one got to Friday,--not much good, that is,
+but had to be put up with. No; there was nothing frightening about
+_him_, poor old gentleman. More like a baby than anything else.
+
+‘’Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot,’ she said again, gently putting the paper
+and pencil aside. ‘Do you good,’ she encouraged, ‘a nice ’ot cup of tea
+will.’
+
+‘He can’t hear, you know,’ said Charles, much relieved by Sally’s
+attitude. But with what confidence, he thought, couldn’t a thing so
+gracious approach the most churlish, disgruntled of human beings; and
+his father wasn’t either churlish or disgruntled,--he only looked as if
+he were, and frightened people, and when he saw they were frightened he
+didn’t like them, and frightened them more than ever.
+
+The Duke, watching Sally’s every movement with rapt attention, thought
+when she put her hand on the teapot to feel if it was still hot that she
+wanted tea herself, and bade Charles ring the bell and order more to be
+brought, and meanwhile he took the cup she offered him obediently, his
+eyes on her face. He hadn’t got as far, being still in too great a
+condition of amazement at her beauty, as wondering which of the ancient
+families of England had produced this young shoot of perfection, and not
+being able to hear a word she said took it for granted that the
+delicate-ankled--he was of the practically extinct generation that looks
+first at a woman’s ankles,--slender-fingered creature belonged to his
+own kind. True her hands were red hands; surprisingly red, he thought,
+on her presently taking off her gloves, which she rolled up together
+into a neat tight ball, compared to the flawless fairness of her face;
+but they were the authentic shape of good-breeding, even if her
+nails----
+
+The Duke was really surprised when his eyes reached Sally’s nails.
+
+Charles drew a chair close up to his father, and began his explanations.
+He was determined the old man should attend, and shouted well into his
+ear as he told him that he had motored Laura’s friend, Mrs. Luke, down
+from London, where she had been staying with Laura at Goring House, to
+Crippenham for the night because it was quieter, and she hadn’t been
+well----
+
+‘_I’m_ all right,’ interrupted Sally, who had been listening in an
+attitude of polite attention.
+
+‘Oh, my dear child--when you fainted,’ protested Charles in his ordinary
+voice, raising a deprecating hand.
+
+‘Speak up,’ said the Duke, impatiently.
+
+‘’Course I fainted,’ said Sally, looking pleased.
+
+‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.
+
+‘Yes--and were unconscious for at least half an hour,’ said Charles.
+
+‘That’s right. _And_ sick,’ said Sally, looking proud.
+
+‘Sick? Were you sick as well? Then see how really ill----’
+
+‘Speak up, speak up,’ said the Duke testily.
+
+But Sally said nothing further, and merely smiled indulgently at
+Charles.
+
+‘What did she say?’ asked the Duke, not wishing to lose a word that fell
+from that enchanting mouth.
+
+‘She said,’ shouted Charles, ‘that she is quite well now.’
+
+‘Of course she is,’ said the Duke, staring at her face and forgetting
+her nails. ‘Anyone can see she is as perfectly well as she is perfectly
+beautiful.’
+
+‘Oh lor,’ thought Sally, ‘now _’e’s_ goin’ to begin.’
+
+
+§
+
+That afternoon and evening were a triumph for her if she had known it,
+but all she knew was that she was counting the hours to next day, and
+Jocelyn, and the settling down at last to her home and her duties. The
+old man was her slave. Crippenham and everything in it was laid at her
+feet, and the Duke only lamented that it should be to this one of his
+houses that she had come, where he couldn’t, he was afraid, make her
+even decently comfortable. Positively at Crippenham there was only one
+bathroom. The Duke seemed to regard this as a calamity, and Sally
+listened with mild wonder to the amount he had to say about it.
+
+‘Fair ’arps on it, don’t ’e, poor old gentleman,’ she remarked to
+Charles; and bending over to the Duke’s ear--Charles looked on in
+astonishment at the fearless familiarity of the gesture--she tried to
+convey to him that it wasn’t Saturday night till the next night, and
+that by then she’d be in Cambridge, so there was no need for him to take
+on.
+
+‘Eh?’ said the Duke. ‘What does she say?’ he asked Charles.
+
+‘She says,’ shouted Charles, ‘that it doesn’t matter.’
+
+How very glad he was that his father was so deaf. Often he had found his
+deafness trying, but how glad he was of it now. Not Saturday night....
+Charles fell silent. It was then Friday. Could it be that since the
+previous Saturday----?
+
+The Duke, however, knew nothing of Sally except what his eyes told him,
+and accordingly he was her slave. When she presently went up to Laura’s
+room with the housekeeper, who had instructions to place everything of
+Lady Laura’s at Mrs. Luke’s disposal--Crippenham had no spare rooms,
+only a room each for the Duke, and Charles, and Laura, the other six or
+seven bedrooms being left unfurnished and kept locked up--and Charles,
+who from long practice could make his father hear better than anyone
+except Laura, settled down to telling him as much about Sally as he
+thought prudent, the old man listened eagerly, his hand behind his ear,
+drinking in every word and asking questions which showed that if he was
+really interested in a subject he still could be most shrewd.
+
+He was delighted that Sally should have run away from her mother-in-law,
+said it was proof of a fine, thoroughbred spirit, and asked who her
+father was.
+
+Charles said his name was Pinner.
+
+The Duke then inquired whether he were one of the Worcestershire
+Pinners, and Charles said he didn’t know.
+
+The Duke then rambled off among his capacious memories, and presently
+brought back a Pinner who had been at Christchurch with him, and who had
+married, he said, one of the Dartmoors, an extremely handsome woman,
+fair too, who was probably the girl’s grandmother.
+
+Charles merely bowed his head.
+
+The Duke then asked who the Lukes, apart from this boy-husband at
+Ananias, were; for, he said, except the fellow in the Bible, he couldn’t
+recollect ever having heard of a Luke before.
+
+Charles said all he knew was that they lived at South Winch.
+
+‘What?’ cried the Duke. ‘Has she married beneath her?’--and was so
+really upset that for a time he blinked at Charles in silence. Because
+he felt that if only this dear son of his had secured the beautiful
+young creature he could have died content; and it seemed to him a double
+catastrophe that not only should his boy have missed her, but that she
+should have been caught into a misalliance with some obscure family in a
+suburb.
+
+‘Upon my word, Charles,’ he said, after a dismayed silence, ‘that’s a
+pity. A very great pity.’
+
+And rambling off into his memories again, he said it was a good thing
+that poor Jack Pinner was dead, for no man had a keener family feeling
+than he, and it would have broken his heart to think his grand-daughter
+had made a mistake of that kind.
+
+He couldn’t get over it. He had never, in the whole of his long life,
+seen anyone to touch this girl for beauty, and that she should, at the
+very outset of what ought to have been a career of unparalleled
+splendour and success, have dropped out of her proper sphere and become
+entangled in a suburb really shocked him. Kings at her feet, all Europe
+echoing with her name--this seemed to the Duke such beauty’s proper
+accompaniment.
+
+‘Tut, tut,’ he said, his hands, clasped on the top of his stick, shaking
+more than usual, ‘tut, tut, tut. What was her mother thinking of?’
+
+‘Her mother is dead,’ said Charles.
+
+‘Her father, then. Jack Pinner was no fool. I don’t understand how his
+son--where is he, by the way? I heard something about the Worcestershire
+estates having been sold after the war----’
+
+Charles said he didn’t know where her father was, because, although
+Sally had told him the shop was at Woodles, he had never heard of
+Woodles, which indeed is not marked on any map, so that he felt he
+wasn’t lying in saying he didn’t know.
+
+The Duke, however, appeared to be seized by a sudden fierce desire to
+track down his old friend’s reprehensible son and tell him what he
+thought of him, and Charles was dismayed, for no good, he was sure,
+could come of tracking down Mr. Pinner. Sally, he knew, was anxious her
+father shouldn’t find out her disobedience to his orders, and though of
+this disobedience Charles held Laura guilty, not Sally, yet he didn’t
+suppose Mr. Pinner would look at it like that, and it was, besides,
+important, Charles considered, that his father, who had always had a
+rooted objection to any woman who wasn’t well-bred, should go on
+thinking Sally was a Worcestershire Pinner.
+
+It seemed, then, to Charles a good thing to keep his father and Mr.
+Pinner apart, and it was therefore with regret that he listened to the
+old man asking Sally the moment he next saw her, which wasn’t till
+dinner, for she stayed up in her room till fetched down by the
+scandalised housekeeper, to whom it was a new experience that His Grace
+should be kept waiting even a minute after the gong had sounded, where
+her father was.
+
+‘’Im?’ said Sally, turning pale but forced by nature and her upbringing
+to an obedient truthfulness. ‘’E’s at Woodles, ’_e_ is.’ And, ‘Oh my
+gracious,’ she added to herself, ‘they ain’t goin’ to tell ’im I’m
+’ere?’
+
+‘What does she say?’ the Duke asked Charles.
+
+‘She says,’ shouted Charles, following his father, who was shuffling
+along leaning on Sally’s arm, to the dining-room, and shouting with
+outward composure but inward regret, ‘that he is at Woodles.’
+
+‘Woodles? Woodles?’ repeated the Duke. ‘Never heard of it. Is it in
+Worcestershire?’
+
+Sally shook her head. She didn’t know where Worcestershire was, but she
+felt pretty sure Woodles wasn’t in it.
+
+‘_I_ dunno wot it’s in,’ she said. And then, impelled as always to the
+naked truth, she added, ‘Close by$1’ere, any’ow.’
+
+‘What does she say?’ inquired the Duke, turning again to Charles.
+
+‘She says,’ shouted Charles, obliged to hand on the answer correctly
+with Sally listening, but doing so with increased regret, ‘that it isn’t
+far from here.’
+
+‘How very lucky,’ said the Duke, ‘and how very odd that I shouldn’t have
+known he was so near.’ And he added, when he had been lowered into his
+chair at the head of the table by the parlourmaid, who held one arm, and
+his servant, who held the other, ‘I’d like to have a talk with that
+father of yours, my dear.’
+
+Sally turned paler.
+
+‘Your grandfather was one of my oldest friends,’ continued the Duke,
+with difficulty unfolding his table-napkin because of how much his hands
+shook.
+
+‘I ain’t _got_ no grandfather,’ said Sally anxiously, who had never
+heard of him till that moment.
+
+‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.
+
+‘She says,’ began Charles reluctantly--‘You know,’ he muttered quickly
+to Sally, for how could he tell the old man what she had said? ‘you
+_have_ a grandfather--or had. You must have. Everybody has them.’
+
+‘What? What?’ said the Duke impatiently. ‘Send a message round tonight,
+Charles, and say with my compliments that I’d very much like to see
+Pinner. Tell him I’m too old to go to him, so perhaps he’ll be obliging
+enough to come to me some time tomorrow. You can say his father was at
+Oxford with me if you like, and that I’ve only just heard he is in the
+neighbourhood. Say his daughter----’
+
+‘Now don’t--now _don’t_ go doin’ a thing like that,’ Sally faintly
+begged of Charles.
+
+‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.
+
+‘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.’
+
+‘Oh, damn you!’ shouted Jocelyn, springing to his feet, unable to bear
+any more, ‘Damn you--damn you! How dare you, how dare you, when it’s
+you--_you_----’
+
+And he came towards Mr. Thorpe, his arms lifted as if to strike him;
+but he suddenly dropped them to his sides, and turning away gripped hold
+of the chimneypiece, and, laying his head on his hands, sobbed.
+
+
+§
+
+Charles Moulsford, then, was right, and the Lukes suffered. So did Mr.
+Thorpe, for it was all his fault really. He was amazed at the ease and
+swiftness with which he had slipped away from being evidently and
+positively a decent man into being equally evidently and positively an
+evil-doer. That he had done evil, and perhaps irreparable evil, was
+plain. Yet its beginning was after all quite small. He had only helped
+the girl to go to her father. Such an act hadn’t deserved this
+tremendous punishment. Mr. Thorpe couldn’t help feeling that fate was
+behaving unfairly by him. If all his impulses and indiscretions
+throughout his life had been punished like this, where would he have
+been by now?
+
+But that was neither here nor there. This terrible thing had happened,
+and it was his fault. Without him she couldn’t have budged; and, weighed
+down by his direct responsibility, when Jocelyn advanced on him with his
+fists uplifted ready to strike him he rather hoped he would actually do
+it, and when instead the poor devil broke down and began to cry, Mr.
+Thorpe was very unhappy indeed. Perhaps he hadn’t been quite tactful in
+the things he had said to him. Perhaps he had been clumsy. Whiskey was
+tricky stuff. He had only meant----
+
+Then Margery arrived, with her white face and great, scared eyes, and
+found her son standing there holding on to the chimneypiece and crying,
+and--well, Mr. Thorpe felt he had overdone the getting even business
+altogether, and discovered with a shock that he could no longer regard
+himself as a decent man.
+
+He went away to his bedroom, leaving them alone. He didn’t know what
+they were saying to each other, but he could hear that Jocelyn seemed to
+be talking a good deal. Couldn’t stop, the poor devil couldn’t; went on
+and on.
+
+Mr. Thorpe sat down to think out plans, the ceaseless sound of that
+voice in his ears. It was he who had lost the girl, and it was he who
+was going to find her. If Scotland Yard found her first so much the
+better, but he wasn’t going to sit still till they did, he was going off
+on his own account next morning. He’d begin by sending Margery home, who
+was doing no good here, he could tell by the sounds coming through the
+door, pack Jocelyn, who was doing no good here either raving like that,
+off to Cambridge because of the remote chance that the girl was going to
+be able after all to do what she said and join him there, and he himself
+would meanwhile make a bee-line for her father.
+
+Pinner was the man. Pinner was the point to start from. Pinner and
+Woodles. She had said his name was Pinner, and that he lived at Woodles.
+Woodles? Funny sort of name that, thought Mr. Thorpe, trying to cheer
+himself up by being amused at it. The sounds coming through the door
+weren’t very cheering. Raving, the poor young devil was,--raving at his
+mother. Mr. Thorpe feared he had perhaps been quite beastly tactless,
+telling him of Sally’s not being able to stand his mother. He felt very
+uncomfortable about it, sitting there with those sounds in his ears. And
+meanwhile the night was slipping along, and where was that girl?
+
+There were so many possible answers to this question, and all of them so
+very unpleasant, that Mr. Thorpe couldn’t, he found, sit quiet in his
+chair. Three o’clock. Fourteen hours now since last she was seen....
+
+He got up and walked about. In the next room he could hear Jocelyn doing
+the same thing. No--dash it all, thought Mr. Thorpe after listening for
+some time to the ceaseless voice, he couldn’t be allowed to go on at his
+mother like that. He’d had close on a couple of hours of it. All very
+well being heartbroken, all very well being out of one’s senses, but he
+couldn’t be allowed----
+
+Mr. Thorpe opened the door and went in. There was Jocelyn, striding
+about the room, up and down, round and round, enough to make one giddy
+just to see him, his words pouring out, his face convulsed, and there
+sitting looking at him, not saying a word, with tears rolling down her
+face, was his mother.
+
+No--damn it all--there were limits----
+
+‘Better shut up now, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe firmly to the demented young
+man. ‘Said all there’s to say long ago, I bet. Won’t help, you
+know--this sort of thing.’
+
+‘I’m telling my mother--I’m making it clear to her once and for all,’
+raved Jocelyn, who indeed no longer had the least control of himself,
+‘that if I ever find Sally never again as long as I _live_ shall she
+come between us, never shall she set _foot_----’
+
+‘Oh, shut up. We know all that, don’t we, Margery. Who’s going to come
+between you, you silly young ass? Look here--no good crying, you know,’
+said Mr. Thorpe, going to Mrs. Luke and putting his arm round her. It
+seemed natural. For two pins he would have kissed her. Habit. Can’t get
+away from habits.
+
+But Mrs. Luke didn’t appear to know he was there. Her eyes, from which
+the tears dropped slowly and unnoticed, were fixed only on Jocelyn.
+
+‘He’s so tired--so tired,’ she kept on whispering to herself. ‘Oh, my
+darling--you’re so _tired_.’
+
+
+§
+
+It was Mr. Pinner’s turn next day to have a bad time, and he had it. He
+had a most miserable day, from noon on, when the same car that had
+brought Sally drew up in front of his shop, and a stout elderly
+gentleman with a red face and a bristly moustache got out, and came and
+spent half an hour with him.
+
+What a half hour that was; but all of a piece with the life he seemed
+now to be living. The day before there had been first Sally, and then
+Mr. Luke, and now there was this gentleman. Mr. Luke had soon been
+pacified, and only wanted to be getting home again, but the stout
+gentleman came in and sat down square to it, and at the end of half an
+hour Mr. Pinner felt as if he had been turned inside out, and wouldn’t
+ever be able to look himself in the face again.
+
+For Sally hadn’t gone home, and it was his fault that she hadn’t. These
+were the facts; the gentleman said so. Terrible, terrible, thought Mr.
+Pinner, shrinking further than ever into his trousers. The first fact
+was terrible enough, but the second seemed even worse to Mr. Pinner.
+Responsibility, again--and he who had supposed when he got Sally safely
+married that he had done with it for good and all!
+
+At first he had tried to make a stand and hold up his head, and had said
+politely--nothing lost by manners,--‘Excuse me, sir, but are you by any
+chance the gentleman my daughter mentioned to me as ’er father-in-law?’
+And when the gentleman, after a minute, said he was, Mr. Pinner told him
+that in that case it was he who was responsible for her loss, for it was
+he who had lent her the car in which she had left her husband.
+
+Wasn’t this true? Anybody would have thought so; but before Mr. Pinner
+could say knife the boot had been put on the other leg, and he found
+that it was his fault and his only that she was lost, because he hadn’t,
+as the gentleman said was his plain duty, taken her back himself to the
+very door.
+
+Mr. Pinner, constitutionally unable not to feel guilty if anybody told
+him loud enough that he was, at once saw the truth of this. Terrible.
+Awful. Fancy. Yes, indeed--a daughter like that. Yes, indeed--_any_
+daughter, but a daughter like that, a daughter in a million. No,
+indeed--he didn’t know how he came not to do such a thing----
+
+And the more Mr. Thorpe cross-examined him about the details of that
+seeing-off at the station, the more did Mr. Pinner’s conduct appear
+criminal; for, under Mr. Thorpe’s searching questions, Mr. Pinner
+somehow began to be sure the lady in the carriage hadn’t been a lady at
+all, but something quite different, something terrible and wicked, who
+had carried Sally off into the sort of place one doesn’t mention. He
+remembered her black eyes, and how they rolled----
+
+‘Rolled, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe, who was snatching at Mr. Pinner’s words
+almost before they appeared, trembling, on the edge of his mouth.
+
+Yes--rolled. And bold-looking, she was too,--bold-looking, and pat as
+you please at answering. Not Mr. Pinner’s idea at all of a modest woman.
+Yes, and the compartment smelt of scent, now he came to think of
+it--yes, he dared say it was cheap scent. And powdered, her face
+was--he had remarked on it to himself, after the train had gone.
+
+Thus did Mr. Thorpe’s own fears get by cross-examination into Mr.
+Pinner’s mind, and by the end of the half hour Mr. Pinner was as much
+convinced as Mr. Thorpe that Sally had fallen into the hands of somebody
+of whom Mr. Thorpe used an expression that Mr. Pinner wouldn’t have
+soiled his lips with for any sum one cared to mention. And then, after
+swearing at him, and asking him what sort of a father he thought he was,
+and Mr. Pinner, who by this time was wishing with all his heart that he
+wasn’t a father at all, tremblingly begging him not to blaspheme, Mr.
+Thorpe went away.
+
+‘What ’ad I better do now, sir?’ Mr. Pinner asked, following him out on
+to the steps in much distress, clinging to him in spite of his
+horrifying language.
+
+‘You? What can _you_ do? You’ve done your damnedest----’
+
+‘Sir, sir----’
+
+And he got into his car, and Mr. Pinner heard him tell the chauffeur to
+drive like the devil to London and go to Liverpool Street Station; and
+it seemed as if in a flash the street were empty, and he alone.
+
+
+§
+
+That afternoon Mr. Pinner himself arrived at Liverpool Street
+Station--an anxious little man in his Sunday clothes, his blue eyes
+staring with anxiety. He couldn’t just stay in his shop, and as likely
+as not never hear anything more, either one way or the other. He must do
+something. He must ask questions. Nobody would tell him if Sally were
+found or not, if he didn’t. She herself might some day perhaps drop him
+a line, but she wasn’t much of a one for writing, and besides he had
+been harsh to her. ‘Don’t believe you loves me,’ she had said, crying
+bitterly when he scolded her so and wouldn’t let her stay with him. Love
+her? He loved her dearly. She was all he had in the world. If anything
+had happened to that girl----
+
+He timidly stopped a porter, and began to inquire. The porter, who was
+busy, stared at him and hurried on. He then tried a guard, who said,
+‘Eh?’ very loud, looked past him along the platform, waved a green flag,
+jumped on to a train, and departed.
+
+He then tried another porter; several porters; and at last, more timid
+than ever by this time, approached a ticket-collector.
+
+Nobody seemed to have time for Mr. Pinner. His trousers were against
+him. So was his hat; so was everything he said and did. The
+ticket-collector, who didn’t like shabbiness and meekness, ignored him.
+He knew perfectly well who Mr. Pinner was talking about, for the whole
+station was invariably aware of any of the Duke’s family passing through
+it, and everybody the day before had seen Lady Laura and the young lady.
+Mr. Pinner hadn’t got beyond his first words of description before the
+ticket-collector knew what he was driving at, but he only looked down
+his long nose at the flushed little man in the corkscrew trousers, and
+said nothing. Give a thing like that information about her ladyship’s
+movements? Not much.
+
+Yet this same ticket-collector, only an hour or two before, had been wax
+in the gloved hands of Mr. Thorpe, and with these words had parted from
+him:
+
+‘Thank you, sir. Don’t mention it, sir. No trouble at all. Yes--a very
+striking young lady indeed, sir. Her ladyship was going to Goring House
+for a couple of days, so the chauffeur told me. Much obliged, sir. Yes,
+sir--Lady Laura Moulsford. That’s right, sir--the Duke of Goring’s
+daughter.’
+
+This same ticket-collector had said all that; and to Mr. Pinner he said
+not a word. He merely down his long nose looked at him, and when the
+little man explained that he was the fair young lady’s father he looked
+at him more glassily than ever. So that presently for very shame
+Mr. Pinner couldn’t go on standing there asking questions that
+got no answers, and after lingering awhile uncertainly in the
+ticket-collector’s neighbourhood, for something told him that this man
+could throw light on Sally’s disappearance if he would, he went
+sorrowfully, but unresentfully, away.
+
+Presently he found himself in South Winch. He seemed to have drifted
+there, not knowing what to do or where to go next, and unable to bear
+the thought of his lonely shop and of nobody’s letting him know about
+anything. He had thought it fine and peaceful at first to be independent
+and at last alone, but it didn’t seem so now. He missed his wife. Nobody
+now to mind what he did, good or bad. Nobody.
+
+In South Winch he sought out the grocer, so as to get Jocelyn’s address,
+preferring him to the Post Office because the smell of currants and
+bacon made him feel less lonely, and, having followed the directions the
+grocer gave him, found the road and the house, and opened the white gate
+with deferential trepidation. Timidly at the door he asked if he might
+say a word to Mr. Luke, and the little maid, at once at ease with his
+sort of clothes, inquired pleasantly if Mrs. Luke wouldn’t do just as
+well; better, suggested the little maid, because she was there, and Mr.
+Jocelyn wasn’t. In fact she offered Mrs. Luke to Mr. Pinner, she pressed
+her upon him,--a lady he wouldn’t have dreamt of disturbing if left to
+himself.
+
+So that Mr. Pinner, without apparently in the least wanting to, found
+himself in a beautiful drawing-room, and there by the fire sat a lady,
+leaning back on some cushions as though she were tired.
+
+At first he thought she was asleep, and he was beginning to feel
+extremely awkward when she turned her head and looked at him.
+
+A pale lady. A very pale lady; with a face that seemed all eyes.
+
+‘Beg pardon, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner, wishing he hadn’t come.
+
+The lady went on looking at him. She didn’t move. Her hands were hanging
+down over the arms of the chair as though she were tired. She just
+turned her head, but didn’t move else.
+
+‘It’s about Sally,’ said Mr. Pinner. ‘’Appened to be passin’, and
+thought I’d----’
+
+He stopped, for now he came to think of it he didn’t rightly know what
+he had thought.
+
+The lady leant forward in her chair. ‘Do you know where she is?’ she
+asked quickly.
+
+‘No, mum. Do you?’ asked Mr. Pinner.
+
+‘No,’ said the lady in a queer sort of voice, her head drooping.
+
+Mr. Pinner stood there very awkward indeed.
+
+‘Are you her father?’ she asked, after a minute.
+
+‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.
+
+Then she got up and came across to him.
+
+‘I’m afraid you are very unhappy,’ she said, looking at him.
+
+‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.
+
+She held out her hand, her eyes on his face.
+
+He shook it respectfully, but without enthusiasm.
+
+‘Why, you’re cold,’ she said.
+
+‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.
+
+‘Won’t you come to the fire and get warm?’ she said; and before he had
+time to consider what he ought to do next, Mr. Pinner found himself
+sitting on the edge of the low chair the lady pushed up for him, warming
+his knees and not saying anything.
+
+The lady talked a little. She had some nice hot tea made for him, and
+while he drank it talked a little, and said she was sure they would hear
+good news soon, and he mustn’t worry, because she was sure....
+
+Then she fell silent too, and they sat there together looking into the
+fire; and it was funny, thought Mr. Pinner, how just to sit there
+quietly, and know she was sorry too about everything, seemed to make him
+feel better. A kind lady; a good lady. What did Sally mean, saying he
+wouldn’t be able to stand her either, if he knew her? The only thing
+wrong with her that Mr. Pinner could see, was that she looked so ill.
+Half dead, thought Mr. Pinner.
+
+And after being with her he had more courage to go back to the lonely
+shop, and she promised faithfully to let him know the minute there was
+any news, and again told him not to worry and everything would come all
+right, and he went away comforted.
+
+And she, watching him as he trotted off down to the gate, felt somehow
+comforted too; not quite so lonely; not quite so lost.
+
+
+§
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Thorpe, having lunched and tidied and generally freshened
+himself up, was on the steps of Goring House, asking for Lady Laura
+Moulsford.
+
+‘Her ladyship is hout,’ said the footman haughtily, for he knew at once
+when Mr. Thorpe added the word Moulsford that he was what the footman
+called not one of Our Lot. No good his having a car waiting there, and a
+fur coat, and suède gloves; he simply wasn’t one of Our Lot. And the
+footman, his head thrown back, looked at Mr. Thorpe very much as the
+ticket-collector was at that moment looking at Mr. Pinner.
+
+‘Out, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘When will she be in?’
+
+‘Her ladyship didn’t say,’ said the footman, his head well back.
+
+‘You’ve got a young lady here of the name of Luke. She in?’
+
+‘Mrs. Luke is hout,’ said the footman, beginning to shut the door.
+
+‘Is anybody in?’ asked Mr. Thorpe, getting angry.
+
+‘The family is hout,’ said the footman; and was going to shut the door
+quite when Mr. Thorpe went close up to him and damned him. And because
+Mr. Thorpe’s temper was quick and hot he damned him thoroughly, and the
+footman, as he heard the familiar words, strongly reminiscent not only
+of Lord Streatley but also of the different sergeants he had had during
+the war, who, however unlike each other to look at, were identical to
+listen to, thought he must be one of Lady Laura’s friends after all, and
+began to open the door again; and Mr. Thorpe advancing, damning as he
+went and saying things about flunkeys that were new to the footman,
+entered that marble hall which had struck such a chill into Sally’s
+unaspiring soul.
+
+The butler appeared. The butler was suave where the footman had been
+haughty. He had heard some of the things Mr. Thorpe was saying as he
+hurried from his private sitting-room into the echoing hall, and had no
+doubt that he was a friend of the family’s.
+
+Lady Laura had been in to lunch, but had gone out again; Mrs. Luke was
+motoring with Lord Charles--who the devil was _he_, Mr. Thorpe
+wondered--down to Crippenham, where she was going to stay the night. Her
+ladyship had had a telegram from his lordship to that effect, and she
+herself was going down the following morning.
+
+‘Where’s Crippenham?’ asked Mr. Thorpe.
+
+The butler was surprised. Up to that moment he had taken Mr. Thorpe for
+a friend, if an infrequent one, of Lady Laura’s.
+
+‘His Grace’s Cambridgeshire seat,’ he said, in his turn with _hauteur_.
+‘His Grace is at present in residence.’
+
+‘Crikey!’ thought Mr. Thorpe. ‘Got right in with the Duke himself, has
+she?’ And he felt fonder of Sally than ever.
+
+
+§
+
+At this point Mr. Thorpe, who had been behaving so well, began to behave
+less well. The minute the pressure of anxiety was relaxed, the minute,
+that is, that he no longer suffered, he became callous to the sufferings
+of the Lukes; and instead of at once letting them know what he had
+discovered he kept it to himself, he hugged his secret, and deferred
+sending till some hours later a telegram to each of them saying, ‘_Hot
+on her tracks._’
+
+Quite enough, thought Mr. Thorpe, as jolly again as a sand-boy, and
+immediately unable to imagine the world other than populated by
+sand-boys equally jolly,--quite enough that would be to go on with,
+quite enough to make them both feel better. If he told them more, they’d
+get rushing off to Crippenham and disturbing the Duke’s house-party. The
+whole thing should now be allowed to simmer, said Mr. Thorpe to himself.
+Sally should be given a fair field with her duke, and not have relations
+coming barging in and interrupting.
+
+But what a girl, thought Mr. Thorpe, slapping his knee--he was in his
+car, on the way to his club--what a girl. She only had to meet dukes for
+them to go down like ninepins at her feet. Apart from her beauty, what
+spirit, what daring, what initiative, what resource! It had been worth
+all the anxiety, this magnificent _dénouement_. Safe, and sounder than
+ever. A glorious girl; and he too had at once seen how glorious she was,
+and at once, like the Duke, fallen at her feet. That girl, thought Mr.
+Thorpe, who began to believe she would rise triumphant even over a
+handicap like Jocelyn, might do anything, might do any mortal thing,--no
+end at all, there wasn’t, to what that girl couldn’t do. And, glowing,
+he telephoned to Scotland Yard, and later on, after having had his tea
+and played a rubber of bridge, sent his telegrams.
+
+Then he went quietly home. Things should simmer. Things must now be left
+to themselves a little. He went quietly home to Abergeldie, and didn’t
+let Mrs. Luke know he was there. Her feelings, he considered, were
+sufficiently relieved for the present by his telegram; things must now
+be allowed to simmer. And he took a little walk in his shrubbery, and
+then had a hot bath, and dressed, and dined, ordering up a pint of the
+1911 _Cordon Rouge_, and sat down afterwards with a great sigh of
+satisfaction by his library fire.
+
+He smoked, and he thought; and the only thing he regretted in the whole
+business was the rude name he had called Lady Laura Moulsford to that
+fool Pinner. But, long as he smoked and thought, it never occurred to
+him to resent, or even to criticise, the conduct of the Moulsford
+family. Strange as it may seem, considering that family’s black
+behaviour, Mr. Thorpe dwelt on it in his mind with nothing but
+complacency.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+§
+
+
+At Crippenham next morning it was very fine. London and South Winch were
+in a mist, but the sun shone brightly in Cambridgeshire, and the Duke
+woke up with a curiously youthful feeling of eagerness to get up quickly
+and go downstairs. He knew he couldn’t do anything quickly, but the odd
+thing was that for years and years he hadn’t wanted to, and that now
+suddenly he did want to; and just to want to was both pleasant and
+remarkable.
+
+He had been thinking in the night,--or, rather, Charles’s thoughts,
+placed so insistently before him, had sunk in and become
+indistinguishable from his own; and he had thought so much that he
+hadn’t gone to sleep till nearly five. But then he slept soundly, and
+woke up to find his room flooded with sunshine, and to feel this
+curiously agreeable eagerness to be up and doing.
+
+The evening before, when Charles came in from the garden and packed his
+bewitching guest off to bed, he had been very cross, and had listened
+peevishly to all his son was explaining and pointing out; not because he
+wasn’t interested, or because he resented the suggestions being made,
+but simply because the moment that girl left the room it was as if the
+light had gone out,--the light, and the fire. She needn’t have obeyed
+Charles. Why should she obey Charles? She might have stayed with him a
+little longer, warming him by the sight of her beauty and her youth. The
+instant she went he felt old and cold; back again in the condition he
+was in before she arrived, dropped back again into age and listlessness,
+and, however stoutly he pretended it wasn’t so, into a deathly chill.
+
+Now that, thought the Duke, himself surprised at the difference his
+guest’s not being in the room made, was what had happened to David too
+towards the end. They didn’t read it in the Lessons in church on
+Sundays, but he nevertheless quite well remembered, from his private
+inquisitive study of the Bible in his boyhood, how they covered David
+when he was old with clothes but he got no heat, and only a young person
+called the Shunammite was able, by her near presence, to warm him. The
+Duke didn’t ask such nearness as had been the Shunammite’s to David, for
+he, perhaps because he was less old, found all he needed of renewed life
+by merely looking at Sally; but he did, remembering David while Charles
+talked, feel aggrieved that so little as this, so little as merely
+wishing to look at her, should be taken from him, and she sent to bed at
+ten o’clock.
+
+So he was cross, and pretended not to understand, and anyhow not to be
+interested. But he had understood very well, and in the watches of the
+night had come to his decision. At his age it wouldn’t do to be too long
+coming to decisions; if he wished to secure the beautiful young
+creature--Charles said help, but does not helping, by means of the
+resultant obligations, also secure?--he must be quick.
+
+He rang for his servant half an hour before the usual time. He wanted to
+get up, to go to her again, to look at her, to sit near her and have
+her fragrant, lovely youth flowing round him. The mere thought of Sally
+made him feel happier and more awake than he had felt for years. Better
+than the fortnight’s cure of silence and diet at Crippenham was one look
+at Sally, one minute spent with Sally. And she was so kind and
+intelligent, as well as so beautiful--listening to every word he said
+with the most obvious interest, and not once fidgeting or getting
+sleepy, as people nowadays seemed to have got into the habit of doing.
+It was like sitting in the sun to be with her; like sitting in the sun
+on a warm spring morning, and freshness everywhere, and flowers, and
+hope.
+
+Naturally, having found this draught of new life the Duke wasn’t going
+to let it go. On the contrary, it was his firm intention, with all the
+strength and obstinacy still in him, to stick to Sally. How fortunate
+that she was poor, and he could be the one to help her. For she, owing
+all her happiness to him, couldn’t but let him often be with her.
+Charles had said it would be both new and desirable to do something in
+one’s life for nothing; but the Duke doubted if it were ever possible,
+however much one wished to, to do anything for nothing. In the case of
+Sally it was manifestly impossible. Whatever he did, whatever he gave,
+he would be getting far more back; for she by her friendship, and
+perhaps affection, and anyhow by her presence, would be giving him life.
+
+‘Come out into the garden, my dear,’ he said, when he had been safely
+helped downstairs--the stairs were each time an adventure--putting his
+shaking hand through her arm. ‘I want to see your hair in the sun, while
+I talk to you.’
+
+And leading him carefully out, Sally thought, ‘Poor old gentleman,’ and
+minded nothing at all that he said. Her hair, her eyes, all that _Oh my
+ain’t you beautiful_ business, of which she was otherwise both sick and
+afraid, didn’t matter in him she called the Jewk. He was just a poor old
+gentleman, an ancient and practically helpless baby, towards whom she
+felt like a compassionate mother; and when he said, sitting in the sunny
+sheltered seat she had lowered him on to and taking her hand and looking
+at her with his watery old eyes, that he was going to give her
+Crippenham, and that the only condition he made was that he might come
+and do a rest-cure there rather often, she smiled and nodded as sweetly
+and kindly as she smiled and nodded at everything else he said.
+
+Like the croonings of a baby were the utterances of the Duke in Sally’s
+ears; no more meaning in them, no more weight to be attached to them,
+than that. Give her Crippenham? Poor old gentleman. Didn’t know what he
+was talking about any more, poor old dear. She humoured him; she patted
+his arm; and she wished to goodness Laura would be quick and come and
+take her to her husband.
+
+Sally now longed to get to Jocelyn as much as if she had passionately
+loved him. He was her husband. He was the father of the little baby. Her
+place was with him. She had had enough of this fleshpot business. She
+was homesick for the things she knew,--plain things, simple things,
+duties she understood. Kind, yes; kind as kind, the picks were, and they
+meant well; but she had had enough. It wasn’t right it wasn’t, at least
+it wasn’t right for her, to live so fat. What would her father have said
+if he had seen her in the night in Laura’s bedroom, among all that lot
+of silver bottles and brushes and laces and silks, and herself in a
+thin silk nightgown the colour of skin, making her look stark naked?
+What would he have said if he had seen her having her breakfast up there
+as though she were ill,--and such a breakfast, too! Fleshpots, he’d have
+said; fleshpots. And he would have said, Sally, strong if inaccurate in
+her Bible, was sure, that she had sold her husband for a mess of
+fleshpots.
+
+This was no life for her, this was no place for her, she thought, her
+head bowed and the sun playing at games of miracles with her hair while
+the Duke talked. She drew impatient patterns with the tip of her shoe on
+the gravel. She hardly listened. Her ear was cocked for the first sounds
+of Laura. She ached to have done with all this wasting of time, she
+ached to be in her own home, getting on with her job of looking after
+her man and preparing for her child. ‘Saturday today,’ she mused, such a
+lovely look coming into her eyes that the Duke, watching her, was sure
+it was his proposed gift making her divinely happy. ‘We’d be ’avin’
+shepherd’s pie for dinner--or p’raps a nice little bit of fish....’
+
+And, coming out of that pleasant dream with a sigh, she thought,
+‘Oughtn’t never to ’ave met none of these ’ere. All comes of runnin’
+away from dooty.’
+
+Apologetically she turned her head and looked at the Duke, for she had
+forgotten him for a moment, besides having been thinking on lines that
+were hardly grateful. Poor old gentleman--still keeping on about giving
+her Crippenham. Crippenham? She’d as soon have the cleaning of
+Buckingham Palace while she was about it as of that great, frightening
+house--or, come to that, of a prison.
+
+But how like a bad dream it was, being kept there with the morning
+slipping past, and she unable to reach him across the gulf of his
+deafness. By eleven o’clock she was quite pale with unhappiness, she
+could hardly bear it any longer. Would she have to give manners the
+go-by and take to her heels once more? This time, though, there would be
+no kind father-in-law to lend her a car; this time she would have to
+walk,--walk all the way, and then when she got there find Jocelyn
+unaided. And the old gentleman kept on and on about Crippenham being
+hers, and everything in it....
+
+’E’s nothin’ but a nimage,’ she said to herself in despair. ‘Sits ’ere
+like a old idol. Wot do _’e_ know about a married woman’s dooties?’
+
+‘Where’s Charles?’ asked the Duke.
+
+Sally shook her head. She hadn’t seen a sign of him that morning.
+
+‘I want him to get my solicitor down--no time to lose,’ said the Duke.
+‘You’re to have the place lock, stock and barrel, my dear, such as it
+is--servants and all.’
+
+Servants and all? Poor old gentleman. Why, she wouldn’t know which end
+of a servant to start with. She with servants? And these ones here who,
+however hard she tried up there in the bedroom, wouldn’t make friends.
+They called her Madam. She Madam? Oh, my gracious, thought Sally,
+shrinking in horror from such a dreadful picture.
+
+‘It’s a hole of a place,’ went on the Duke, ‘and quite unworthy of you,
+but we can have more bathrooms put in, and it’ll do till we find
+something you like better. And Charles tells me you married rather
+suddenly, and haven’t got anywhere to go to at present. He also says you
+have to live close to Cambridge, because of your husband’s studies. And
+he also says, and I entirely agree with him, my dear, that you oughtn’t
+to be in Cambridge itself, but somewhere more secluded--somewhere where
+you won’t be seen quite so much, somewhere hidden, in fact. Now I think,
+I really do think, that Crippenham, in spite of all its disadvantages,
+does exactly fulfil these requirements. And I want you to have it, my
+dear--to take it as my wedding present to you, and to live in it very
+happily, and bless it and make it beautiful by your presence.’
+
+Thus the Duke.
+
+‘’E don’t ’alf _talk_,’ thought Sally, quivering to be gone.
+
+
+§
+
+Charles, on being sent for by the Duke, was nowhere to be found. That
+was because he was in South Winch. He had gone off at daybreak in his
+car, and at the very moment his father woke up to the fact of his
+absence and asked where he was, he was standing in the drawing-room at
+Almond Tree Cottage, his eyes fixed eagerly on the door, waiting for
+Mrs. Luke.
+
+He hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking of her. Somehow he had got it
+into his head that she, more than her son, would suffer through Sally’s
+disappearance, and be afraid. Because, thought Charles, she would feel
+that it was from her the girl had run, and that any misfortune that
+might happen to her would be, terribly, laid at her door. For two whole
+days and two whole nights that unfortunate woman must have gone through
+torture. What Charles couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t thought of
+this before. Indeed his and Laura’s conduct had been utterly
+unpardonable. The least he could now do, he thought, as he lay wide
+awake throughout the night, was to get to South Winch without losing a
+minute, and put Mrs. Luke out of her misery, and beg her forgiveness.
+
+She was in the garden when he arrived. The little maid, staring at the
+card he asked her to take to her mistress, said she would fetch her, and
+ushered him into the drawing-room, where he waited with the books, the
+bright cushions, the Tiepolo, and two withered tulips in a glass from
+which nearly all the water had dried away; and while he waited he fought
+with a feeling he considered most contemptible, in face of the facts,
+that he was somehow on an errand of mercy, and arriving with healing in
+his wings,--that he was somehow a benefactor.
+
+Sternly he told himself he ought to feel nothing but shame; sternly he
+tried to suppress his glow of misplaced self-satisfaction. There was
+nothing good about him and Laura in this business. They had, the pair of
+them, been criminally impulsive and selfish. He knew it; he acknowledged
+it. Yet here he was, secretly glowing, his eyes watching the door, as
+much excited as if he were going to bestow a most magnificently
+generous, unexpected present.
+
+Then it opened, and Mrs. Luke came in. He was sure it was Mrs. Luke, for
+no one else could look so unhappy; and the glow utterly vanished, and
+the feeling of shame and contrition became overwhelming.
+
+‘She’s safe,’ said Charles quickly, eager to put a stop at once to the
+expression in her eyes. ‘She’s at my father’s. She’s going to Cambridge
+today to your son. She’s been with us the whole time----’
+
+And he went to her, and took her hand and kissed it.
+
+‘If it weren’t so ridiculous,’ he said, his face flushed with painful
+contrition, still holding her hand and looking into her heavy,
+dark-ringed eyes, ‘I’d very much like to go down on my knees to you, and
+beg your pardon.’
+
+
+§
+
+And while Charles was in South Winch, Laura was in Cambridge, dealing
+with Jocelyn. She, like Charles, had become conscious of the sufferings
+of the Lukes, and, like him, was obsessed by them and lost in
+astonishment that she hadn’t thought of them sooner; but for some
+obscure reason, or instinct, her compunctions and her sympathies were
+for Jocelyn rather than for his mother, and after a second sleepless
+night, during which she was haunted by the image of the unfortunate
+young husband and greatly tormented, she went down, much chastened, to
+Cambridge by the first possible train, with only one desire now, to put
+him out of his misery and beg his forgiveness.
+
+So that Jocelyn, sitting doing nothing, his untouched breakfast still
+littering the table, sitting bent forward in the basket-chair common to
+the rooms of young men at Cambridge, his thin hands gripped so hard
+round his knees that the knuckles showed white, his ears strained for
+the slightest sound on the staircase, his eyes hollow from want of
+sleep, sitting as he had sat all the previous afternoon after getting
+Mr. Thorpe’s telegram and most of the night, sitting waiting, listening,
+and perhaps for the first time in his life, for his mother had not
+included religious exercises in his early education, doing something not
+unlike praying, did at last hear a woman’s step crossing Austen’s Court,
+hesitating at what he felt sure was his corner, then slowly coming up
+his staircase, and hesitating again at the first floor.
+
+All the blood in his body seemed to rush to his head and throb there.
+His heart thumped so loud that he could hardly hear the steps any more.
+He struggled out of his low chair and stood listening, holding on to it
+to steady himself. Would they come up higher? Yes--they were coming up.
+Yes--it must be Sally. Sally--oh, oh, _Sally_!
+
+He flew to the door, pulled it open, and saw--Laura.
+
+‘It’s all right,’ she panted, for the stairs were steep and she was fat,
+‘it is--about Sally--don’t look so----’ she stopped to get her
+breath--‘so dreadfully disappointed. She’s safe. If you’ll--oh, what
+_stairs_----’ she pressed her hand to her heaving bosom--‘come with me,
+I’ll--take you--to her----’
+
+And having got to the top, she staggered past him into his room, and
+dropped into the basket-chair, and for a minute or two did nothing but
+gasp.
+
+But how difficult she found him. Jocelyn, whose reactions were always
+violent, behaved very differently from the way his mother at that moment
+was behaving, placed in the same situation of being asked forgiveness by
+a Moulsford. Instead of forgiving, of being, as Laura had pictured, so
+much delighted at the prospect of soon having Sally restored to him that
+he didn’t mind anything, he appeared to mind very much, and quarrelled
+with her. She, accustomed to have everything she did that was perhaps a
+little wrong condoned and overlooked by all classes except her own, was
+astonished. Here she was, doing a thing she had never done before,
+begging a young man to forgive her, and he wouldn’t. On the contrary, he
+rated her. Rated her! Her, Laura Moulsford. She knew that much is
+forgiven those above by those below, and had frequently deplored the
+practice as one that has sometimes held up progress, but now that the
+opposite was being done to herself she didn’t like it at all.
+
+‘Oh, what a nasty disposition you’ve got!’ she cried at last, when
+Jocelyn had been telling her for ten impassioned minutes, leaning
+against the chimney-piece and glowering down at her with eyes flashing
+with indignation, what he thought of her. ‘I’m glad now, instead of
+sorry, for what I did. At least Sally has had two days less of you.’
+
+‘If you’re going to rag me as well----’ began Jocelyn, taking a quick
+step forward as if to seize and shake this fat little incredibly
+officious stranger,--so like him, his mother would have said, to waste
+time being furious instead of at once making her take him to Sally.
+
+But Laura, unacquainted with his ways, was astonished.
+
+Then he pulled himself up. ‘It’s not you I’m cursing really at all,’ he
+said. ‘It’s myself.’
+
+‘Well, I don’t mind that,’ said Laura, smiling.
+
+‘I’ve got the beastliest temper,’ said Jocelyn.
+
+‘So I see,’ said Laura.
+
+‘Do you think,’ he asked, for in spite of his anger he was all soft and
+bruised underneath after his two days of fear, and when the fat stranger
+smiled there was something very motherly about her, ‘I shall ever get
+over it?’
+
+‘Perhaps if you try--try hard.’
+
+‘But--look here, I don’t care what you say--what _business_ had you to
+make away with my wife?’
+
+‘Now you’re beginning all over again.’
+
+‘Make away with my wife, smash up everything between me and my
+mother----’
+
+‘Oh, _oh_----’ interrupted Laura, stopping up her ears, and bowing her
+head before the storm.
+
+
+§
+
+It was ten more minutes before she got him out of his rooms and into a
+taxi.
+
+‘We’ve lost twenty minutes,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘You’ve
+lost twenty kisses you might have had----’
+
+‘For God’s _sake_ don’t rag me!’ cried Jocelyn, gripping her by the arm
+and bundling her into the taxi.
+
+‘But what,’ asked Laura, who had tumbled in a heap on the seat, yet who
+didn’t mind being thrown in because she knew she deserved worse than
+that, ‘what else can one do with a creature like you?’
+
+And she told him very seriously, as they heaved along towards
+Crippenham, that the real mistake had been Sally’s marrying beneath her.
+
+‘Beneath her?’ repeated Jocelyn, staring.
+
+‘Isn’t it apparent?’ said Laura. ‘Angels should only marry other angels,
+and not descend to entanglements with perfectly ordinary----’
+
+‘No, I’m damned if I’m ordinary,’ thought Jocelyn. ‘And who the devil is
+_she_, anyhow?’
+
+‘Bad-tempered,’ continued Laura.
+
+‘Yes, I’m beastly bad-tempered,’ he admitted.
+
+‘Conceited----’
+
+‘I swear I’m not conceited,’ he said.
+
+‘Aren’t you?’ said Laura, turning her head and scrutinising him with
+bright, mocking eyes.
+
+And then, coming swift and silent as an arrow along the road towards
+their taxi, she saw her father’s car.
+
+‘Oh, stop!’ she cried, leaping to her feet and thrusting as much of
+herself as would go through the window. ‘Here’s my father--yes, and
+Sally. Stop--oh, _stop_!’ she cried, frantically waving her arms.
+
+
+§
+
+It had been decreed by Fate that Jocelyn should be reunited to Sally in
+the middle of the road just beyond Waterbeach, at the point where the
+lane to Lyddiatt’s Farm turns off; for such was the Duke’s desire to
+help his lovely friend and such his infatuation, that he had actually
+broken his rule of never emerging from Crippenham, once he got there,
+till the day appointed for his departure, and was himself taking her to
+Ananias to hand her over in person to her husband, afterwards lunching
+with the Master,--a thing unheard of, this lunching, for the Duke
+disliked the Master’s politics and the Master disliked the Duke’s, but
+what wouldn’t one do to further the interests, by saying a good word for
+them, of the young couple?
+
+This he had arranged that morning before coming downstairs, his amazed
+servant telephoning the message and receiving the Master’s hypocritical
+expressions of pleasure in return, for apart from the Duke’s politics
+the Master was no fonder of a deaf guest than anybody else; and just as
+Sally, on that garden seat, was coming to the end of her patience and
+submissiveness and was seriously thinking of jumping up and taking to
+her heels, the parlourmaid appeared on the path; and when she was quite
+close she stood still, and opened her mouth very wide, and roared out
+that the car was at the door; and the Duke, with a final pat of
+benediction, bade Sally fetch her hat, and come with him to her husband.
+
+So there it was that they met,--the taxi and the Rolls Royce, Laura and
+Jocelyn, Sally and the Duke. And on the Swaffham Prior side of
+Waterbeach, where the crooked signpost points to Lyddiatt’s Farm, the
+dull, empty road was made radiant for a moment that day by happiness.
+
+‘Stop! Stop!’ cried Laura, frantically waving.
+
+‘Sally! Oh--oh, _Sally_!’ shouted Jocelyn, standing up too, and trying
+too, behind Laura, to wave.
+
+The chauffeur recognised Laura, and pulled up as soon as he could; the
+taxi pulled up with a great grinding of its brakes; Jocelyn jumped out
+of one door, and Laura of the other; and both ran.
+
+‘Why,’ said Sally, who didn’t know what had happened, turning her head
+and looking in astonishment at the two running figures coming along
+behind, ‘why,’ she said, forgetting the Duke was deaf, ‘’ere _is_ Mr.
+Luke----’
+
+And in another instant Jocelyn was there, up on the step of the car,
+leaning over the side, dragging her to him with both arms, hugging her
+to his heart, and kissing her as if there were no one in the world
+except themselves.
+
+‘Sally--oh, my _darling_! Oh, Sally--oh, oh, _Sally_!’ cried Jocelyn,
+raining kisses on her between each word. ‘How could you--why did
+you--oh, yes--I know, I know--I’ve been a beast to you--but I’m not
+going to be any more--I swear, I swear----’
+
+‘Now don’t, Mr Luke,’ Sally managed to say, stifled though she was,
+‘don’t get swearin’ about it----’
+
+And pulling her head away from him she was able to attend to the
+proprieties, and introduce him.
+
+‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, looking over his arm, which was round
+her neck, at the old man beside her. ‘The Jewk,’ she said, turning her
+face back to Jocelyn, who took no notice of the introduction, who didn’t
+indeed hear, because the moment she turned her face--oh, her divine,
+divine little face!--back to him, he fell to kissing it again.
+
+And Laura, coming panting up just then, got up on the step on the other
+side of the car, and shouted in her father’s ear, who could always hear
+everything she said, ‘This is Jocelyn Luke, Father--Sally’s husband.’
+
+And the Duke said, ‘I thought it must be.’
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+§
+
+
+Now the end of this story, which is only the very beginning of Sally,
+the merest introduction to her, for it isn’t to be supposed that nothing
+more happened in her life,--the end of it is that she did as she was
+told about Crippenham, and if the Duke had been less than ninety-three
+there would have been a scandal.
+
+But after ninety there is little scandal. The worst that was said of the
+Lukes was that they had got hold of the old man, and nobody who saw
+Sally believed that. Indeed, the instant anyone set eyes on her the
+Duke’s behaviour was accounted for, and after five minutes in her
+company it became crystal clear that she was incapable of getting hold
+of anybody. So young, so shy, so acquiescent,--absurd to suppose she
+ever had such a thing as an ulterior motive. And the husband, too;
+impossible to imagine that silent scholar, also so young, and rather shy
+too, or else very sulky,--impossible to imagine him plotting. On the
+contrary, he didn’t seem to like what had happened to him much, and
+showed no signs whatever either of pleasure or gratitude. But of Jocelyn
+no one thought long. He was without interest for the great world. He was
+merely an obscure young man at Cambridge, somebody the Duke’s amazing
+beauty had married.
+
+Sally did, then, as she was told about Crippenham. It was given her, and
+she took it; or rather, for her attitude was one of complete passivity,
+it became hers. But she had an unsuspected simple tenacity of purpose,
+which was later to develop disconcertingly, and she refused to live
+anywhere except in the four-roomed cottage in the corner of the garden,
+built years before as a playhouse for Laura and Charles.
+
+On this one point she was like a rock; a polite rock, against which
+persuasions, though received sweetly and amiably, should beat in vain.
+So the Duke had the little house fitted up with every known
+labour-saving appliance, none of which Sally would use because of having
+been brought up to believe only in elbow-grease, and two bathrooms, one
+for her and one for Jocelyn; and he attached such importance to these
+bathrooms, and he insisted so obstinately on their being built, that
+Sally could only conclude the picks must need a terrible lot of washing.
+Whited sepulchres they must be, she secretly thought; looking as clean
+as clean outside, fit to eat one’s dinner off if it came to that, but
+evidently nothing but show and take-in.
+
+The Duke, much concerned at first, settled down to this determination of
+Sally’s, and explained it to himself by remembering Marie-Antoinette.
+She had her Trianon. She too had played, as Sally wished to play, at
+being simple. He consoled himself by speaking of the cottage as Little
+Trianon; a name Sally accepted with patience, though she told
+Jocelyn--who was so much stunned at the strange turn his life had taken
+that she found she could be quite chatty with him, and he never
+corrected, and never even said anything back--she wouldn’t have thought
+of herself. Some day, the Duke was sure, the marvellous child would
+grow up and get tired of her Trianon, and then, when she wanted to move
+into the house, she should find Versailles all ready for her, and very
+different from what it used to be.
+
+So, on the excuse of seeing to the alterations, he was hardly ever away
+from Crippenham, and if he had been less than ninety-three there would
+certainly have been a scandal.
+
+But Jocelyn, who woke up after the wild joy and relief of being reunited
+to Sally to find himself the permanent guest of a duke, didn’t know
+whether to be pleased or annoyed. The problems of his and Sally’s
+existence were solved, it was true, but he wasn’t sure that he didn’t
+prefer the problems. He rubbed his eyes. This was fantastic. It had no
+relation to real life, which was the life of hard work and constant
+progress in his cloister at Ananias. Also, its topsy-turviness
+bewildered him. Here was the Duke, convinced that Sally had married
+beneath her, and so unshakably convinced that Jocelyn had enormous
+difficulty in not beginning to believe it too. He couldn’t help being
+impressed by the Duke. He had never met a duke before, never come within
+miles of meeting one, and was impressed. That first afternoon, when he
+had been carried off in the Rolls Royce to Crippenham, he had spent the
+time between luncheon and tea shut up in the old man’s study being
+upbraided for having taken advantage, as he was severely told, of
+Sally’s youth and inexperience and motherlessness to persuade her into a
+marriage which was obviously socially disastrous for her; and he
+couldn’t even if he had wished to, which he certainly didn’t, tell him
+about Mr. Pinner, because he couldn’t get through the barrier of his
+deafness. There the old man had sat, with beetling brows and great
+stern voice, booming away at him hour after hour, and there Jocelyn had
+sat, young, helpless, silent, his forehead beaded with perspiration,
+listening to a description, among other things, of the glories which
+would have been Sally’s if he hadn’t inveigled her into marrying him.
+And so sure was the Duke of his facts, and so indignant, that gradually
+Jocelyn began to think there was something in it, and every moment felt
+more of a blackguard. In the old man’s eyes, he asked himself, would
+there be much difference between him and Pinner? And was there, in
+anybody’s eyes, much difference? More education; that was all. But of
+family, in the Duke’s sense, he had as little as Pinner, and if Pinner
+had been to a decent school, as Jocelyn had, and then gone to
+Cambridge--no, Oxford for Pinner--he would probably have cut quite as
+good a figure, if not in science then in something else; perhaps as a
+distinguished cleric.
+
+He sat dumb and perspiring, feeling increasingly guilty; and if he could
+have answered back he wouldn’t have, because the Duke made him feel
+meek.
+
+This meekness, however, didn’t last. It presently, after a period of
+bewilderment, gave way to something very like resentment, which in its
+turn developed into a growing conviction that he had become just a cat’s
+paw,--he who, if left to himself, could have done almost anything.
+
+Naturally he didn’t like this. But how, for the moment, could he help
+it? Sally was going to have a baby. They had to live somewhere. It was
+really heaven-sent, the whole thing. Yet--Sally, whom he had been going
+to mould, was moulding him. Unconsciously; nothing to do with any
+intention or desire of her own. And what she was moulding him into,
+thought Jocelyn, as he drove himself backwards and forwards every day
+between Crippenham and Cambridge, between his domestic life and his
+work, between the strange mixture of emotions at the one end and the
+clear peace and self-respect at the other, turning over in his mind with
+knitted brows, as he drove, all that had happened to him in the brief
+weeks since he had added Sally to his life--what she was moulding him
+into was a cat’s paw.
+
+Yes. Just that.
+
+Were all husbands cat’s paws?
+
+Probably, thought Jocelyn.
+
+
+§
+
+Mrs. Luke also reacted to the Moulsfords in terms of meekness. Hers,
+however, lasted. She found them permanently dazzling. Besides, there was
+nothing to be done. Jocelyn had gone; she had lost him for ever; he
+would never come back, she very well knew, to the old life of dependence
+on her. And if he must go, if she must lose him, there really was no one
+in the world she would more willingly lose him to than the Duke of
+Goring. For certainly it was a splendid, an exalted losing.
+
+When she had had time to think after that visit from Lord Charles--he
+had, she considered, a curious attractiveness--and was more herself
+again, when she had recovered a little from the extreme misery she had
+gone through and began not to feel quite so ill, she found it easy to
+forgive her _mauvais quart d’heure_. The Moulsfords were heaping
+benefits on her boy. They were settling all his difficulties. That
+morning when she was so unhappy, Lord Charles had been most
+delightfully kind and sympathetic, and had told her that the Duke, his
+father, intended to help the young couple,--‘You know my son won this
+year’s Rutherford Prize,’ she had said. ‘Indeed I do,’ he had answered
+in his charming, eager way, adding how much interested his father was in
+the careers of brilliant young men, especially at Cambridge, helping
+them in any way he could--and who would not, in such circumstances,
+forgive?
+
+Mrs. Luke forgave.
+
+The fact, however, remained that she was now alone, and she couldn’t
+think what her life was going to be without Jocelyn. For how, she
+wondered, did one live without an object, with no _raison d’être_ of any
+sort? How did one live after one has left off being needed?
+
+That year the spring was late and cold. The days dragged along, each one
+emptier than the last. There was nothing in them at all; no reason,
+hardly, why one should so much as get up every morning and dress for
+days like that,--pithless, coreless, dead days. She tried to comfort
+herself by remembering that at least she wasn’t any longer beaten down
+and humiliated, that she could lift her head and look South Winch in the
+face, and look it in the face more proudly than ever before; but even
+that seemed to have lost its savour. Still, she mustn’t grumble. This
+happened to all mothers sooner or later, this casting loose, this final
+separation, and to none, she was sure, had it ever happened more
+magnificently. She mustn’t grumble. She must be very thankful. She _was_
+very thankful. Like Toussaint l’Ouverture--Wordsworth, again--she had,
+she said to herself, sitting solitary through the chilly spring evenings
+by her fire after yet another empty day, great allies; only fortunately
+of a different kind from poor Toussaint’s, for however highly one might
+regard, theoretically, exultations and agonies and love and man’s
+unconquerable mind, she, for her part, preferred the Moulsfords.
+
+But did she?
+
+A bleak little doubt crept into her mind. As the weeks passed, the doubt
+grew bleaker. Invisible Moulsfords; Moulsfords delightful and most
+friendly when one met them, but whom one never did meet; Moulsfords full
+of almost intimacies; Moulsfords who said they were coming to see one
+again, and didn’t come; Moulsfords benignant, but somewhere else: were
+these in the long run, except as subjects of carefully modest
+conversation in South Winch--and South Winch, curiously, while it was
+plainly awe-struck by what had happened to Jocelyn yet was also
+definitely less friendly than it used to be--were these in the long run
+as life-giving, as satisfying, as fundamentally _filling_ as Toussaint’s
+exultations and agonies?
+
+Ah, one had to _feel_; feel positively, feel acutely. Anything,
+anything, any anger, any pain, any anxiety, any exasperation, anything
+at all that stabbed one alive, was better than this awful numbness, this
+empty, deadly, settled, stagnant, back-water calm....
+
+And one evening, when it had been raining all day, after a period of
+standing at the drawing-room window looking out at the dripping front
+garden, where the almond-tree by the gate shivered in the grey twilight
+like a frail, half-naked ghost, she turned and went to her
+writing-table, and sat down and wrote a little note to Mr. Thorpe, and
+asked if he would not come in after his dinner, and chat, and show that
+they could still be good friends and neighbours; and when she had
+finished it, and signed herself Margery, with no Luke, she rang for the
+little maid, and bade her take it round to Abergeldie and bring back an
+answer.
+
+‘For after all,’ she said to herself while she waited, standing by the
+fire and slowly smoothing one cold hand with the other, ‘he has
+_sterling_ qualities.’
+
+
+ THE END
+
+ _Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+ Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber:
+
+ It it were a=> If it were a {pg 126}
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTRODUCTION TO SALLY ***
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+<title>
+ The Project Gutenberg eBook of Introduction
+to Sally, by Elizabeth Von Arnim.
+</title>
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTRODUCTION TO SALLY ***</div>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<p class="c">INTRODUCTION<br>
+TO SALLY
+</p>
+
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#I">Chapter I, </a>
+<a href="#II">II, </a>
+<a href="#III">III, </a>
+<a href="#IV">IV, </a>
+<a href="#V">V, </a>
+<a href="#VI">VI, </a>
+<a href="#VII">VII, </a>
+<a href="#VIII">VIII, </a>
+<a href="#IX">IX, </a>
+<a href="#X">X, </a>
+<a href="#XI">XI, </a>
+<a href="#XII">XII, </a>
+<a href="#XIII">XIII, </a>
+<a href="#XIV">XIV, </a>
+<a href="#XV">XV, </a>
+<a href="#XVI">XVI.</a><br>
+<a href="#transcrib">Transcriber's note.</a>
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="343" height="550" alt="[cover image
+unavailable.]">
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="c">
+MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br>
+LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS<br>
+MELBOURNE<br>
+<br>
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br>
+NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO<br>
+DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO<br>
+<br>
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br>
+TORONTO<br>
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h1>INTRODUCTION<br>
+TO SALLY</h1>
+
+<p class="c">BY THE AUTHOR OF<br>
+“ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN”<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br>
+ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON<br>
+1926<br>
+<br><br><br><small>
+COPYRIGHT<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN<br>
+BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH<br></small>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_1">{1}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Mr. Pinner</span> was a God-fearing man, who was afraid of everything except
+respectability. He married Mrs. Pinner when they were both twenty, and
+by the time they were both thirty if he had had to do it again he
+wouldn’t have. For Mrs. Pinner had several drawbacks. One was, she
+quarrelled; and Mr. Pinner, who prized peace, was obliged to quarrel
+too. Another was, she appeared to be unable to have children; and Mr.
+Pinner, who was fond of children, accordingly couldn’t have them either.
+And another, which while it lasted was in some ways the worst, was that
+she was excessively pretty.</p>
+
+<p>This was most awkward in a shop. It continually put Mr. Pinner in false
+positions. And it seemed to go on so long. There seemed to be no end to
+the years of Mrs. Pinner’s prettiness. They did end, however; and when
+she was about thirty-five, worn out by her own unquiet spirit and the
+work of helping Mr. Pinner in the shop, as well as keeping house for
+him, which included doing everything single-handed, by God’s mercy she
+at last began to fade.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner was pleased. For though her behaviour had been beyond
+criticism, and she had invariably, by a system of bridling and
+head-tossing, kept off familiarity on the part of male customers, still
+those customers had<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_2">{2}</a></span> undoubtedly been more numerous than the others, and
+Mr. Pinner hadn’t liked it. It was highly unnatural, he knew, for
+gentlemen on their way home from their offices to wish to buy rice, for
+instance, when it had been bought earlier in the day by their wives or
+mothers. There was something underhand about it; and he, who being timid
+was also honest, found himself not able to be happy if there were a
+shadow of doubt in his mind as to the honourableness of any of his
+transactions. He never got used to these purchases, and was glad when
+the gradual disappearance of his wife’s beauty caused the gradual
+disappearance of the customers who made them. Money, it was true, was
+lost, but he preferred to lose it than to make it by means that verged
+in his opinion on shady.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Pinner faded and custom dropped off, he and she had more time on
+their hands, and went to bed earlier; for Mrs. Pinner, who had an
+untiring tongue when she was awake, and inveigled her husband into many
+quarrels, was obliged to leave off talking when she was asleep, and he,
+pretending it was because of the gas bills, got her to go to bed earlier
+and earlier. Besides, he wished more heartily than ever that she might
+have a child, if only to take her attention off him. But he longed for a
+child himself as well, for he was affectionate without passion, and it
+was his secret opinion—all his opinions were secret, because if he let
+them out Mrs. Pinner quarrelled—that such men are born good fathers.
+Something, however, had to be born besides themselves before they could
+show their capabilities, and Mrs. Pinner, who was passionate without
+affection, which in Mr. Pinner’s opinion was rather shocking, for she
+sometimes quite frightened him in bed, and he was sure it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_3">{3}</a></span> wasn’t at all
+respectable for a wife to do that, especially as next day she didn’t
+seem to like him any better than before, hadn’t been able to produce
+what was needed.</p>
+
+<p>Certain it was that he couldn’t become a father without her. In this one
+thing he depended utterly on her; for though she believed she ruled him
+through and through, in every other matter at the back of his soul Mr.
+Pinner always secretly managed very well for himself. But here he was
+helpless. If she didn’t, he couldn’t. Nothing doing at all without Mrs.
+Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, as a first step, every evening at nine o’clock, instead of at
+eleven or twelve as had been their habit in the busy, tiring years,
+after a day of only too much leisure they went to bed. There they
+tossed, because of its being so early; or, rather, Mrs. Pinner tossed,
+while he lay quiet, such being his nature. And whether it was these
+regular hours, or whether it was God, who favours families, at last
+taking pity on the Pinners, just as Mr. Pinner was coming to the
+conclusion that he had best perhaps now let well alone, for he and his
+wife were drawing near forty, Mrs. Pinner inexplicably began to do that
+which she ought to have done twenty years earlier, and proceeded to go
+through those bodily changes, one after the other and all strictly
+according to precedent, which were bound to end, though for many months
+Mr. Pinner didn’t believe it, in either a boy or a girl; or
+perhaps—this was his secret longing—in both.</p>
+
+<p>They ended in one girl.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m blest,’ said Mr. Pinner to himself, seeing his wife’s complete,
+impassioned absorption, ‘if that kid ain’t goin’ to be my salvation.’</p>
+
+<p>And he wanted to have it christened Salvation, but Mrs. Pinner objected,
+because it wasn’t a girl’s name<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_4">{4}</a></span> at all, she said; and, as she had no
+heart just then for quarrelling, they compromised on Salvatia.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Thus was Salvatia projected into the world, who afterwards became Sally.
+Her parents struggled against her being called Sally, because they
+thought it common. Their struggles, however, were vain. People were
+unteachable. And the child herself, from the moment she could talk,
+persisted in saying she was Sally.</p>
+
+<p>She grew up so amazingly pretty that it soon became the Pinners’ chief
+concern how best to hide her. Such beauty, which began by being their
+pride, quickly became their anxiety. By the time Sally was twelve they
+were always hiding her. She was quite easy to hide, for she went meekly
+where she was told and stayed there, having not only inherited her
+father’s mild goodness, but also, partly from him and more from some
+unknown forbear, for she had much more of it than Mr. Pinner at his most
+obliging, a great desire to give satisfaction and do what was asked of
+her. She had none of that artfulness of the weak that was so marked a
+feature of Mr. Pinner. She never was different at the back of her mind
+from what she was on the surface of her behaviour. Life hadn’t yet
+forced her, as it had forced Mr. Pinner, to be secretive; it hadn’t had
+time. Besides, said Mr. Pinner to himself, she wasn’t married.</p>
+
+<p>From her mother she had inherited nothing but her looks; translating,
+however, the darkness into fairness, and the prettiness into
+beauty,—beauty authentic, indisputable, apparent to the most
+unobservant. Mr. Pinner was divided between pride and fear. Mrs. Pinner
+concentrated entirely on her child, and was the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_5">{5}</a></span> best of prudent
+mothers. There, in their back parlour, they kept this secret treasure,
+and, like other treasures, its possession produced anxiety as well as
+joy. Till she was about twelve she did as other children, and went off
+to school by herself every day, illuminating Islington, as she passed
+along its streets, like a flame. Then the Pinners got a fright: she was
+followed. Not once or twice, but several times; and came home one day
+happy, her hands full of chocolates she said a gentleman had given her.</p>
+
+<p>The Pinners began to hide her. Mrs. Pinner took her to school and
+fetched her away again every day, and in between hid her in the back
+parlour. Mr. Pinner did Mrs. Pinner’s work as well as his own while she
+was gone, and just managed to because his wife was fleet of foot and ran
+most of the way; otherwise it would have broken his back, for he wasn’t
+able to afford to keep an assistant, and had little staying power. At
+night, when the dear object of their love and fear was asleep, they
+earnestly in bed discussed what was best to be done so as to secure to
+her the greatest happiness together with the greatest safety. Their
+common care and love had harmonised them. In the child they were
+completely at one. No longer did Mrs. Pinner rail, and Mr. Pinner, after
+a time, be obliged to answer back; no longer was he forced, contrary to
+his nature, into quarrels. Peace prevailed, and the affection that comes
+from a common absorbing interest.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s all that there Sally,’ said Mr. Pinner, content at last in his
+married life, and unable—for he had few words—to put what he felt more
+glowingly.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_6">{6}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>But when Sally was sixteen Mrs. Pinner died; died in a few days, of a
+cold no worse than dozens of colds she had caught in her life and hadn’t
+died of.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner was left with no one to help him, either in his shop or with
+Sally. It was an immense misfortune. He didn’t know which way to turn.
+He lived within the narrowest margin of safety, for in Islington there
+were many grocers, and he was one of the very smallest, never having had
+any ambition beyond the ambition for peace and enough to eat.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible for him to run the shop without help, and without the
+shop he and Sally would starve, so there was nothing for it but to let
+her take her mother’s place; and within a week his custom was doubled,
+and went on doubling and doubling till the local supply of males was
+exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>It was a repetition of twenty years earlier, only much worse. Mr. Pinner
+was most unhappy. Sally couldn’t help smiling back when anybody smiled
+at her,—it was her nature; and as everybody, the minute they saw her,
+did smile, she was in a continual condition of radiance, and the shop
+seemed full of light. Mr. Pinner was distracted. He hired an assistant,
+having made money, announced that his daughter had gone away to
+boarding-school, and hid her in the back parlour. The custom dropped
+off, and the assistant had to go. Out came Sally again, and back came
+the custom. What a situation, thought Mr. Pinner, irritable and
+perspiring. He was worn out keeping his eye on Sally, and weighing out
+coffee and bacon at the same time. His responsibilities crushed him. The
+only solution of his difficulties would<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_7">{7}</a></span> be to get the girl married to
+some steady fellow able to take care of her. There seemed to him to be
+no steady fellows in the crowd in his shop, except the ones who were
+already married, and they couldn’t really be steady or they wouldn’t be
+there. How could a married man be called steady who eagerly waited for
+Sally to sell him groceries he would only afterwards have to conceal
+from his wife? While as for the rest, they were a weedy lot of
+overworked and underpaid young clerks who couldn’t possibly afford to
+marry. Sally smiled at them all. She had none of the bridling, of the
+keep-off-the-grass-<i>if</i>-you-please, of her mother.</p>
+
+<p>‘For mercy’s sake,’ Mr. Pinner would hiss in her ear, tugging her elbow
+as he hurried past, ‘don’t go keepin’ on makin’ pleasant faces at ’em
+like that.’</p>
+
+<p>But what faces was she to make, then? All Sally’s faces were pleasant
+from the point of view of the beholder, whatever sort she made; and if
+she, by a great effort, and contrary to her nature, frowned at anybody,
+as likely as not she would be gaped at harder than ever, and asked if
+she wouldn’t mind doing that again.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner was distracted. Even the clergy came to his shop,—came with
+breezy tales of being henpecked, and driven out by tyrant wives to
+purchase currants; and even the doctor came,—old enough surely, Mr.
+Pinner thought, to be ashamed of himself, running after a girl he had
+himself brought into the world, and pretending that what he was after
+was biscuits.</p>
+
+<p>What he was after was, very plainly, not biscuits, nor were the clergy
+after currants. One and all were after Sally. And it horrified Mr.
+Pinner, who took round the plate on Sundays, that a child of his, so
+good and modest, should be the innocent cause of producing in the
+hearts<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_8">{8}</a></span> of her fellow-creatures a desire to sin. That they desired to
+sin was only too evident to Mr. Pinner, driven by fear to the basest
+suspicions. These married gentlemen—what could it be but sin they had
+in their minds? They wished to sin with Sally, to sin the sin of sins;
+with his Sally, his spotless lamb, a child of God, an inheritor of the
+kingdom of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>For a year Mr. Pinner endured it, struggling with his responsibilities
+and his black suspicions. The milk of his natural kindliness and respect
+for his betters went sour. He grew to hate the gentry. His face took on
+a twist of fear that became permanent. The other grocers were furious
+with him, accusing him among themselves of using his daughter as a
+decoy; and unable to bear this, for it of course got round to him, and
+worn out by the constant dread lest worse were yet to come, and some
+fine day a young whipper-snapper of a lord should be going for a walk in
+Islington and chance to stroll into his shop and see Sally, and then
+good-bye to virtue—for was any girl good enough and modest enough to
+stand out against the onslaughts of a lord? Mr. Pinner asked himself,
+who had never consciously come across any lords, and therefore was apt
+to think of them highly—Mr. Pinner determined to move.</p>
+
+<p>He moved. After several Sundays given up to fruitless and ill-organised
+excursions into other suburbs, he heard by chance of a village buried
+far away in what seemed to him, whose England consisted of Hampstead
+Heath, Hampton Court, and, once, Southend, a savage and uninhabited
+district in Cambridgeshire, where the man who kept its one shop was
+weary of solitude, and wanted to come nearer London. What could be
+nearer London than London itself? Mr. Pinner hurried to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_9">{9}</a></span> Woodles,
+leaving Sally under the strictest vows not to put her terribly
+complicating nose out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>He thought he had never seen such a place. Used to streets and crowds,
+he couldn’t have believed there were spots in the world so empty. It was
+raining, and there wasn’t a soul about. A few cottages, the shop, a
+church and vicarage, and a sad wet pig grunting along a ditch,—that was
+all. Three miles from a branch-line station, embedded in a network of
+muddy lanes, and the Vicar—Mr. Pinner inquired—seventy-eight with no
+sons, Woodles was surely the ideal place for him and Sally. Over a
+bottle of ginger beer he made friends with the shopkeeper, and arranged
+that he should come up to Islington with a view to exchanging. He came;
+and the exchange, after some regrettable incidents in connection with
+Sally which very nearly upset the whole thing, was made, and by
+Christmas Islington knew the Pinners no more.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>All went well at Woodles for the first few weeks. It was a hamlet, Mr.
+Pinner rejoiced to discover, lived in practically exclusively by ladies.
+These ladies, attracted to it by the tumbledownness of its cottages,
+which made it both picturesque and cheap, had either never had husbands
+or had lost them, and accordingly, as so often happens in such
+circumstances, were poor. Well, Mr. Pinner didn’t mind that. He only
+wanted to live. He had no desire to make more than was just necessary to
+feed Sally. More merely meant responsibility and bother, and of those he
+had as much as he could do with because of Sally. He settled down, very
+content and safe among his widow and virgin customers,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_10">{10}</a></span> and spent a
+thankful Christmas, entering with hope into the New Year.</p>
+
+<p>Then, one day towards the end of January, two young men rent the peace
+of the sunny afternoon with the unpleasant noise motor-bicycles, rushing
+at high speed, appear, Mr. Pinner thought, kindly even towards these,
+not to be able to help making, and a lady customer who chanced to be in
+the shop remarked, ‘It has begun.’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner inquired politely what had begun, and the lady said term had,
+and Mr. Pinner, who didn’t know what she meant but was unwilling to show
+his ignorance, said, ‘And high time too.’</p>
+
+<p>After that, hardly an afternoon went by without young men hurrying
+through Woodles. Sometimes they were on motor-bicycles, sometimes they
+were on horses, sometimes they were in cars, but always they hurried.
+Where did they all come from? Mr. Pinner was astonished, and wondered
+uneasily whether Sally were not somehow at the bottom of it. But she
+couldn’t have been, for they never so much as glanced at the shop
+window, from behind whose jars of bulls’-eyes and mounds of toffee he
+and Sally secretly observed them.</p>
+
+<p>Then, gradually, he became aware of Cambridge. He hadn’t given it a
+thought when he came to Woodles. It was ten miles away—a place, he
+knew, where toffs were taught, but a place ten miles away hadn’t worried
+him. There he had changed, on that first visit, for the branch-line that
+took him within three miles of Woodles, and the village, asleep beneath
+its blanket of rain, had been entirely deserted, the last word in dank
+and misty isolation. And when he moved in, it was still asleep—asleep,
+this time, in the silence of the Christmas vacation, and only faintly
+stirred every now and again<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_11">{11}</a></span> by the feeble movements of unmated ladies.
+It was so much out of the way that if it hadn’t been for Cambridge it
+would have slept for ever. But young men are restless and get
+everywhere. Bursting with energy, they rushed through Woodles as they
+rushed through all places within rushable distance. But they rushed,
+they didn’t stop; and Mr. Pinner consoled himself with that, and also
+with the knowledge he presently acquired that it was only for a few
+months—weeks, one might almost say, in the year, that this happened.</p>
+
+<p>He bade Sally keep indoors during the afternoon hours, and hoped for the
+best.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Then, on a gusty afternoon in early March, when the mud in the lanes had
+turned to dust and was tearing in clouds down the street, the door
+opened violently, because of the wind, and a young man was blown in, and
+had to use all his strength to get the door shut again.</p>
+
+<p>No sound of a motor had preceded him; he appeared just as one of the
+ladies might have appeared; and Sally was in the shop.</p>
+
+<p>She was on some steps, rummaging aloft among the tins of Huntley and
+Palmer, and he didn’t immediately see her, and addressed himself to Mr.
+Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you any petrol?’ he asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, sir,’ said Mr. Pinner quickly, hoping he would go away at once
+without noticing Sally. ‘We don’t keep it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you know where I can——’</p>
+
+<p>The young man broke off, and stood staring upwards. ‘Christ’—he
+whispered under his breath, ‘Christ——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, now,’ said Mr. Pinner with extreme irritability,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_12">{12}</a></span> only too well
+aware of what had happened, and in his fear slapping his knuckly little
+hand on the counter, ‘no blasphemy ’ere, sir, if <i>you</i> please——’</p>
+
+<p>But he needn’t have been so angry and frightened, for this, if he had
+only known it, was his future son-in-law; the person who was to solve
+all his problems by taking over the responsibility of Sally. In a word
+it was, as Mr. Pinner ever afterwards described him, Mr. Luke.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_13">{13}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">At</span> the date when he went into the shop at Woodles in search of petrol,
+young Luke, whose Christian name was Jocelyn, was a youth of parts, with
+an inventive and inquiring brain, and a thirst some of his friends at
+Ananias were unable to account for after knowledge. His bent was
+scientific; his tastes were chemical. He wished to weigh and compare, to
+experiment and prove. For this a quiet, undisturbed life was necessary,
+in which day after day he could work steadily and without interruption.
+What he had hoped for was to get a fellowship at Ananias. Instead, he
+got Sally.</p>
+
+<p>It was clear to Jocelyn, considering his case later, that the matter
+with him at this time was youth. Nature had her eye on him. However much
+he wished to use his brains, and devote himself to the pursuit of
+scientific truth, she wished to use the rest of him, and she did. He had
+been proof against every other temptation she had plied him with, but he
+wasn’t proof against Sally; and all the things he had thought, and
+hoped, and been interested in up to then, seemed, directly he saw Sally,
+dross. A fever of desire to secure this marvel before any one else
+discovered her sent him almost out of his mind. He was scorched by
+passion, racked by fear. He knew he was no good at all from the marriage
+point<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_14">{14}</a></span> of view, for he had no money hardly, and was certain he would be
+refused, and then—what then?</p>
+
+<p>He need not have been afraid. At the word marriage Mr. Pinner, who had
+been snarling at him on his visits like an old dog who has been hurt and
+suspects everybody, nearly fell on his neck. Sally was in the back
+parlour. He had sent her there at once every time young Luke appeared in
+the shop, and then faced the young man defiantly, leaning with both
+hands on the counter, looking up at him with all his weak little
+bristles on end, and inquiring of him angrily, ‘Now what can I do for
+you to-<i>day</i>, sir?’</p>
+
+<p>At the end of a week of this, Jocelyn, wild with fear lest the other
+inhabitants of the colleges of Cambridge, so perilously close for cars
+and bicycles, should discover and carry the girl off before he did,
+proposed through Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘I want to marry your daughter,’ he stammered, his tongue dry, his eyes
+burning. ‘I must see her. I must talk—just to find out if she thinks
+she wouldn’t mind. It’s absurd, simply absurd, never to let me say a
+word to her——’</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Pinner, instead of pushing him out of the shop as Jocelyn,
+knowing his own poverty, expected, nearly fell on his neck.</p>
+
+<p>‘Marry her? You did say marry, didn’t you, sir?’ he said in a trembling
+voice, flushing right up to his worried, kind blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He could scarcely believe that he heard right. This young gentleman—a
+car, and all—nothing against him as far as he could see, and he hoped
+he could see as far as most people, except his youth.... But if he
+hadn’t been so young he mightn’t so badly have wanted to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_15">{15}</a></span> marry Sally,
+Mr. Pinner told himself, his eyes, now full of respect and awe, on the
+eager face of the suitor, for from experience he knew that everybody had
+wanted to do something badly with Sally, but it had hardly ever been
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>‘If your intentions is honourable——’ began Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘Honourable! Good God. As though——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, now, sir,’ interrupted Mr. Pinner gently, holding up a deprecating
+hand, ‘no need to get swearing. No need at <i>all</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, no—of course not. I beg your pardon. But I must see her—I must be
+able to talk to her——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Exactly, sir. Step inside,’ said Mr. Pinner, opening the door to the
+back room.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>There sat Sally, mending in the lamplight.</p>
+
+<p>‘We got a visitor,’ said Mr. Pinner, excited and proud. ‘But I’m blest,
+sir,’ he added, turning to Jocelyn, ‘if I knows what to call you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Luke—Jocelyn Luke,’ murmured the young man as one in a dream, his eyes
+on Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Luke,’ introduced Mr. Pinner, pleased, for the name smacked
+agreeably of evangelists. ‘And Salvatia is ’er name, ain’t it, Salvatia?
+’Er baptismal name, any’ow,’ he added, because of the way Sally was
+looking at him. ‘Sometimes people calls ’er Sally, but there ain’t no
+<i>need</i> to, Mr. Luke—there ain’t no <i>need</i> to at all, sir. Get another
+cup, will you, Salvatia?—and let’s ’ave our tea.’</p>
+
+<p>And while she was getting the cup out of some back scullery place,
+wondering at suddenly becoming Salvatia,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_16">{16}</a></span> her father whispered to the
+suitor, ‘You go a’ead, sir, when she come back, and don’t mind me.’</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn didn’t mind him, for he forgot him the instant Sally reappeared,
+but he couldn’t go ahead. He sat dumb, gaping. The girl was too
+exquisite. She was beauty itself. From the top of her little head, with
+its flame-coloured hair and broad low brow and misty eyes like brown
+amber, down along the slender lines of her delicate body to where her
+small feet were thrust into shabby shoes, she was, surely, perfect. He
+could see no flaw. She seemed to light up the room. It was like, thought
+young Luke, for the first time in the presence of real beauty, suddenly
+being shown God. He wanted to cry. His mouth, usually so firmly shut,
+quivered. He sat dumb. So that it was Mr. Pinner who did what talking
+there was, for Sally, of the class whose womenfolk do not talk when the
+father brings in a friend to tea, said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Her part was to pour out the tea; and this she did gravely, her
+eyelashes, which just to see was to long to kiss, lying duskily on her
+serious face. She was serious because the visitor hadn’t yet smiled at
+her, so she hadn’t been able to smile back, and Jocelyn accordingly
+didn’t yet know about her smile; and Mr. Pinner, flushed with
+excitement, afraid it couldn’t be really true, sure at the same time
+that it was, entertained the suitor as best he could, making little
+jokes intended to put him at his ease and encourage him to go ahead,
+while at the same time trying to convey to Sally, by frowns and nods,
+that if she chose to make pleasant faces at this particular young
+gentleman she had his permission to do so.</p>
+
+<p>The suitor, however, remained silent, and Sally obtuse. Her father had
+never behaved like this before,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_17">{17}</a></span> and she had no idea what it was all
+about. It was hard work for one, like Mr. Pinner, unaccustomed to social
+situations requiring tact and experience, and he perspired. He was
+relieved when his daughter cleared away the tea and went off with it
+into the scullery to wash up, leaving him alone with his young guest,
+who sat, his head sunk on his breast, following the girl with his eyes
+till the door was shut on her. Then, turning to her father, his thin
+face working with agitation, he began to pour out the whole tale of his
+terrible unworthiness and undesirability.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ere,’ said Mr. Pinner, pushing a tin of the best tobacco he stocked
+towards his upset visitor, ‘light up, won’t you, sir?’</p>
+
+<p>The young man took no notice of the tobacco, and Mr. Pinner, listening
+attentively to all he was pouring out, couldn’t for the life of him see
+where the undesirability and unworthiness came in.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’s a good girl,’ said Mr. Pinner, not filling his pipe either, from
+politeness, ‘as good a girl as ever trod this earth. And what I always
+say is that no good man is unworthy of the goodest girl. That’s right,
+ain’t it? Got to be good, of course. Beg pardon, sir, but might I ask—’
+he sank his voice to a whisper, glancing at the scullery door—‘if
+you’re a <i>good</i> man, sir? I should say, gentleman. It’s a ticklish
+question to ’ave to ask, I know, sir, but ’er mother would ’ave
+wished——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t drink, I don’t bet, and I’m not tangled up with any woman,’
+said Jocelyn. ‘I suppose that’s what you mean?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then where’s all this ’ere undesirable come in?’ inquired Mr. Pinner,
+puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m poor,’ said the suitor briefly.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_18">{18}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Poor. That’s bad,’ agreed Mr. Pinner, shaking his head and screwing up
+his mouth. He knew all about being poor. He had had, first and last, his
+bellyful of that.</p>
+
+<p>And yet on being questioned, as Mr. Pinner felt bound in duty to
+question, it turned out that the young gentleman was very well off
+indeed. He had £500 a year certain, whatever he did or didn’t do, and to
+Mr. Pinner, used to counting in pennies, this not only seemed enough to
+keep a wife and family in comfort, but also in style.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Sally came back, and Mr. Pinner, inspired, lifted a finger, said ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ark,’
+gave them to understand he heard a customer, without actually saying he
+did, which would have been a lie, and went away into the shop.</p>
+
+<p>Sally stood there, feeling awkward. Jocelyn had got up directly she came
+in, and she supposed he was going to wish her a good evening and go; but
+he didn’t. She therefore stood first on one foot and then on the other,
+and felt awkward.</p>
+
+<p>‘Won’t you,’ Jocelyn breathed, stretching out a hand of trembling
+entreaty, for he was afraid she might disappear again, ‘won’t you sit
+down?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well,’ said Sally shyly, ‘I don’t mind if I do——’ And for the first
+time Jocelyn heard the phrase he was later on to hear so often, uttered
+in the accent he was to try so hard to purify.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down on the edge of the chair at the other side of the table.
+She wasn’t accustomed to sitting idle and didn’t know what to do with
+her hands, but she was sure it wouldn’t be manners to go on mending
+socks while a gentleman was in the room.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_19">{19}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn sat down too, the table between them, the light from the oil
+lamp hanging from the ceiling beating down on Sally’s head.</p>
+
+<p>‘And Beauty was made flesh, and dwelt among us,’ he murmured, his eyes
+burning.</p>
+
+<p>‘Pardon?’ said Sally, polite, but wishing her father would come back.</p>
+
+<p>‘You lovely thing—you lovely, lovely thing,’ whispered Jocelyn
+hoarsely, his eyes like coals of fire.</p>
+
+<p>At this Sally became thoroughly uneasy, and looked at him in real alarm.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t be frightened. Your father knows. He says I may——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Father?’ she repeated, much surprised.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, yes—I asked him. He says I may. He says I may—may talk to you,
+make friends with you. That is,’ stammered Jocelyn, overcome by her
+loveliness, ‘if you’ll let me—oh, if you’ll let me....’</p>
+
+<p>Sally was astonished at her father. ‘Well I never did,’ she murmured
+courteously. ‘Fancy father.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why? Why? Don’t you want to? Won’t you—don’t you want to?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Wouldn’t say <i>that</i>,’ said Sally, shifting in her chair, and struggling
+to find the polite words. ‘Wouldn’t exactly say as ’ow I don’t <i>want</i>
+to.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you—you’ll let me take you out? You’ll let me take you somewhere
+to tea? You’ll let me fetch you in the car—you’ll let me, won’t you?
+To-morrow?’ asked Jocelyn, leaning further across the table, his arms
+stretched along it towards her, reaching out to her in entreaty.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father——’</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_20">{20}</a></span></p>
+<p>‘But he says I may. It’s with his permission——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Tea too?’ asked Sally, more and more astonished. ‘It ain’t much <i>like</i>
+’im,’ she said, full of doubts.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Jocelyn got up impetuously, and came round to her with the
+intention of flinging himself at her feet, and on his knees beseeching
+her to come out with him—he who in his life had never been on his knees
+to anybody.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Salvatia!’ he cried, coming round to her, holding out both his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>She hastily pushed back her chair and slipped out of it beyond his
+reach, sure this wasn’t proper. No gentleman had a right to call a girl
+by her Christian name without permission asked and granted; on that
+point she was quite clear. Salvatia, indeed. The gentle creature
+couldn’t but be affronted and hurt by this.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Oo you gettin’ at, sir?’ she inquired, as in duty bound when faced by
+familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>‘You—you!’ gasped Jocelyn, following her into the corner she had
+withdrawn into, and falling at her feet.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner was of opinion that the sooner they were married the better.
+There was that in Mr. Luke’s eye, he told himself, which could only be
+got rid of by marriage; nothing but the Church could make the sentiments
+the young gentleman appeared to entertain for Sally right ones.</p>
+
+<p>Whipt by fear, he hurried things on as eagerly as Jocelyn himself.
+Suppose something happened before there was time to get them married,
+and Mr. Luke, as he understood easily occurred with gentlemen in such
+circumstances, cooled off? He didn’t leave them a moment alone together
+after that first outing in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_21">{21}</a></span> car when Jocelyn asked Sally to marry
+him, and she, obedient and wishful of pleasing everybody, besides having
+been talked to by her father the night before and told she had his full
+consent and blessing, and that it was her duty anyhow, heaven having
+sent Mr. Luke on purpose, had remarked amiably that she didn’t mind if
+she did.</p>
+
+<p>After this, Mr. Pinner’s one aim was to keep them from being by
+themselves till they were safely man and wife. He lived in a fever of
+watchfulness. He was obsessed by terror on behalf of Sally’s virginity.
+His days were infinitely more wearing than in the worst period of
+Islington. Mrs. Pinner was missed and mourned quite desperately. It
+almost broke his back, the hurry, the anxiety, the constant gnawing
+fear, and the secrecy his future son-in-law insisted on.</p>
+
+<p>‘What you want to be so secret for, Mr. Luke?’ he asked, black
+suspicion, always on the alert where Sally was concerned, clouding his
+naturally mild and trustful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>‘You don’t want a howling mob of undergraduates round, do you?’ retorted
+Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>‘Goodness gracious, I should think I didn’t, Mr. Luke,’ said Mr. Pinner,
+holding up both his little hands in horror. ‘She’s got a reg’lar gift,
+that Sally ‘as, for collecting crowds.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, then,’ said Jocelyn irritably, whose nerves were in shreds. And
+added, ‘Isn’t it our job to keep them off her?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your job now, sir—or will be soon,’ said Mr. Pinner, unable to refrain
+from rubbing his hands at the thought of his near release from
+responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wish you wouldn’t keep on calling me sir,’ snapped<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_22">{22}</a></span> Jocelyn. ‘I’ve
+<i>asked</i> you not to. I keep <i>on</i> asking you not to.’</p>
+
+<p>He was nearly in tears with strain and fatigue. Incredibly, he hadn’t
+once been able to kiss Sally,—not properly, not as a lover should.
+Always in the presence of that damned Pinner—such was the way he
+thought of his future father-in-law—what could he do? He couldn’t even
+talk to her; not really talk, not pour out the molten streams of
+adoration that were scalding him to death while that image of alertness
+sat unblinking by. What was the fellow afraid of? He had asked him at
+first straight out, on finding how he stuck, to leave them alone, and
+the answer he got was that courting should be fair and above board, and
+that he was obliged to be both father and mother to the poor girl.</p>
+
+<p>‘Fair and above board! Good God,’ thought Jocelyn, driving himself back
+at a furious pace to Cambridge and throwing back his head in a fit of
+wild, nervous laughter. His father-in-law—that little man with trousers
+so much too long for him that they corkscrewed round his legs. His
+father-in-law....</p>
+
+<p>But what was that in the way of grotesqueness compared to his being her
+father? There, indeed, was mystery: that loveliness beyond dreams should
+have sprung from Mr. Pinner’s little loins.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>The widows of Woodles, and also the virgins, were extremely curious
+about Jocelyn’s daily visits, and tried to find out his name, and which
+college he belonged to. They were in no doubt as to the object of his
+visits, having by that time all seen Sally, and wished to warn Mr.
+Pinner to be careful.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_23">{23}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They went to his shop and warned him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner, looking smaller and more sunk into his trousers than ever,
+thanked them profusely, and said he was being it.</p>
+
+<p>‘One has to be on one’s guard with a motherless daughter,’ they said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner said he was on it.</p>
+
+<p>‘And as your daughter promises to grow up some day into rather a
+good-looking girl——’</p>
+
+<p>‘There ain’t much promise about Sally, mum—it’s been performance,
+performance, <i>and</i> nothing but performance since she was so ’igh.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, well—perhaps it’s not quite as bad as that,’ said the lady
+addressed, smiling indulgently. ‘Still, I do think she may grow into a
+good-looking girl, and so near Cambridge you will have to be careful.
+Your visitor is an undergraduate, of course?’</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Pinner, afraid of Jocelyn, afraid of his threats of hordes of
+young men descending on the shop if the engagement were known, said,
+slipping on the edge of an untruth, but just managing to clear it,
+‘Couldn’t say, mum.’</p>
+
+<p>She forced him, however—the woman forced him. ‘What?’ she exclaimed.
+‘You can’t say? You don’t know?’</p>
+
+<p>So then he told it without blinking. ‘No, mum,’ he said, his harassed
+blue eyes on her face. ‘I don’t think the young gentleman <i>did</i> ’appen
+to mention ’is name.’</p>
+
+<p>And in his heart he cried out to his conscience, ‘If they forces me to,
+’ow, ’ow can I ’elp it?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_24">{24}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Between these two men, both in a state of extreme nervous tension, Sally
+passed her last days under her father’s roof, amiably quiescent,
+completely good. She did as she was told; always she had done as she was
+told, and it was now a habit. She liked the look of the young man who so
+unexpectedly was to become her husband, and was pleased that he should
+be a gentleman. She knew nothing about gentlemen, but she liked the sort
+of sound their voices made when they talked. At Islington she had
+preferred the visits to the shop of the clergy for just that reason—the
+sound their voices made when they talked. She would have been perfectly
+happy during the fortnight between her first setting eyes on Jocelyn and
+her marriage to him, if there had been a few more smiles about.</p>
+
+<p>There were none. Her father was tying her up with trembling haste, as if
+she were a parcel to be got rid of in a hurry. Her lover’s face was
+haggard, and drawn in the opposite directions to those that lead to
+smiles. Dumbly he would gaze at her from under his overhanging brows,
+and every now and then burst into a brief explosion of talk she didn’t
+understand and hadn’t an idea how to deal with; or he would steal a
+shaking hand along the edge of the tablecloth, where her father couldn’t
+see it, and touch her dress. He looked just like somebody in a picture,
+thought Sally, with his thin dark face, and eyes right far back in his
+head,—quite blue eyes, in spite of his dark skin and hair. She liked
+him very much. She liked everybody very much. If only somebody had
+sometimes smiled, how nice it all would have been; for then she would
+have known for<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_25">{25}</a></span> certain they were happy, and were getting what they
+wanted. Sally liked to be certain people were happy, and getting what
+they wanted. As it was, nobody could tell from their faces that these
+two were pleased. Sometimes in the evening, after her lover had gone and
+the door was locked and bolted and barred behind him, and all the
+windows had been examined and fastened securely, her father would calm
+down and cheer up; but her lover never calmed down or cheered up.</p>
+
+<p>Sally, who hardly had what could be called thoughts but only feelings,
+was conscious of this without putting it into words. Perhaps when he had
+got what he wanted, which was, she was thoroughly aware, herself, he
+would be different. There were no doubts whatever in her mind as to what
+he wanted. She was too much used to the sort of thing. Not, it is true,
+in quite such a violent form, but then none of the others who had
+admired her—that is, every single male she had ever come across—had
+been allowed to be what her father called her fiancy, which was, Sally
+understood, the name of the person one was going to marry, and who might
+say things and behave in a way no one else might, as distinguished from
+the name of the person one went to the pictures with and didn’t marry,
+and who was a fancy. She knew that, because, though she herself had only
+gone to the pictures wedged between her father and mother, she had heard
+the girls at school talk of going with their fancies,—those girls who
+had all been her friends till they began to grow up, and then all, after
+saying horrid things to her and crying violently, had got out of her
+way.</p>
+
+<p>As though she could help it; as though she could help having the sort of
+face that made them angry.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_26">{26}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘<i>I</i> ain’t made my silly face,’ she said tearfully—her delicious mouth
+pronounced it fice—to the last of her girl friends, to the one she was
+fondest of, who had hung on longest, but who couldn’t, after all, stand
+the look that came into the eyes of him she spoke of as her boy one day
+that he chanced to come across Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘No. No more you didn’t, Sally Pinner,’ furiously retorted the friend.
+‘But you would ’ave if you could ’ave, so you’re nothin’ but a
+nypocrite—see?’</p>
+
+<p>And the friend forgot herself still further, and added that Sally was a
+blinkin’ nypocrite; which was, as Mr. Pinner would have said had he
+heard it, language.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>So that Sally in her short life had already caused trouble and
+uneasiness, in spite of having been so carefully kept out of the way.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever there were human beings, those human beings stared at Sally and
+began to follow her; or, if they couldn’t follow her with their feet,
+did so with astonished, eager eyes as long as she was in sight. Holy
+Communion was the only one of the Sunday services Mr. Pinner let her go
+to in Woodles, because it was sparsely attended, and the few worshippers
+were women. But even at that solemn service the Vicar, who was
+seventy-eight, found it difficult altogether to shut out from his
+consciousness the lovely figure of grace shining like morning light in
+the shadows of his dark little church. He was as instantly aware of
+Sally the first Sunday she came to the service as every one else always
+was the moment she appeared anywhere, and she had the same effect on the
+old man as she had had on the young Jocelyn when first he saw her—he
+caught his breath,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_27">{27}</a></span> and for a moment was near tears. Because here, the
+old man perceived, at the end of his life he was at last beholding
+beauty,—fresh from God, still dewy from its heavenly birth; and the
+Vicar, who had long been a recluse, and lived entirely among his
+memories, which all were sentimental and poetic, bowed down in spirit
+before the young radiance come into his church, as before the Real
+Presence.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Such was Sally when young Jocelyn married her—mild inside, and only
+desiring to give satisfaction, and outside a thing that seemed made up
+of light. As Mr. Pinner had wished to hide her, so did Jocelyn wish to
+hide her, and wanted to be married in London, the least conspicuous of
+spots; but technical difficulties prevented this, seeing that he wanted
+to be married quickly, so he took the Vicar into his confidence, and got
+a special licence, and thus avoiding banns and publicity was married
+early one bright March morning, while Woodles, unaware of what was
+happening, was still washing up its breakfast things.</p>
+
+<p>By this time Jocelyn was acquainted with Sally’s inability to give a
+plain answer to a question, and half expected her to reply ‘I don’t mind
+if I do’ to the Vicar when he asked if she would take him, Jocelyn, to
+be her wedded husband. She didn’t; but if she had he wouldn’t have
+cared, nor would the Vicar have cared. Whatever she did, whatever she
+said, was to these two dazzled men the one perfect gesture, the one
+perfect word.</p>
+
+<p>But Sally, young and shy, said very little. Hardly had she spoken during
+the brief courtship. To the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_28">{28}</a></span> Vicar, full of awe of his office and his
+age, she scarcely dared raise her eyes, much less lift up her voice. It
+was enough, however; the old man was enthralled. Far from being
+surprised at Jocelyn’s determination to take his name off the books of
+his college and chuck his promising career and marry Sally and go up to
+London to pick up his living as a journalist, a profession for which he
+hadn’t the slightest aptitude, the Vicar understood perfectly. The
+college authorities, on the other hand, unaware of his reason for
+ruining himself, were amazed at such deliberate suicide. They had not
+seen Sally. The Vicar, who had, was convinced the young man was doing
+the one thing worth doing,—giving up everything to follow after Truth.</p>
+
+<p>‘For is not Truth Beauty, and Beauty Truth?’ asked the Vicar, too old to
+bother any longer with material considerations.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn and he were unanimous that it was.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>The Vicar, indeed, was an immense comfort to Jocelyn the second and last
+week of his engagement, for Mr. Pinner was no comfort at all. Not that
+Jocelyn needed comfort at this marvellous moment; but he needed
+understanding, some one to talk to, some one who could and would listen
+intelligently. Mr. Pinner didn’t listen intelligently; he didn’t listen
+at all. All he did was to say heartily, ‘That’s right,’ to everything
+Jocelyn said, and such indiscrimination was annoying. It was a deep
+refreshment to get away from him and go up to the Vicarage, and there,
+slowly pacing up and down with the old man on the sunny path where the
+first daffodils were, talk with some one who so completely understood.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_29">{29}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Vicar concluded, from the frequency with which his young friend came
+to take counsel of him, that he was an orphan, but he asked no questions
+because he was long past the age of questions. The age of silence was
+his, of quiet resting on his oars, of a last warming of himself in the
+light of the sun, before departing hence and being no more seen. By this
+time, his mind being faintly bleared, he connected Sally with the <i>Nunc
+Dimittis</i>, and thanked God aloud, greatly to her confusion, for she
+couldn’t make out what the old gentleman was talking about, for being
+allowed to see, before departing in peace, the perfect loveliness of her
+whom he called the Lord’s Salvatia. Fitting and right was the young
+man’s attitude in the Vicar’s eyes; fitting and right to leave all
+things, and follow after this child of grace.</p>
+
+<p>His unpractical attitude was immensely grateful to Jocelyn, who knew,
+though during this strange fortnight of thwarted love-making and
+arm’s-length worship he managed to forget, that one of the things he was
+leaving was his mother.</p>
+
+<p>He hadn’t mentioned it, but he had got one.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_30">{30}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Not</span> a father, for he had long been dead, but a mother, whose single joy
+and pride he was. There she sat at home by the fire on his wedding
+night, thinking of him. No complete half-hour of the day could pass
+without the thought of Jocelyn getting into it. Her only child; so
+brilliant, so serious, so hard-working, so good. She loved brains. She
+loved diligence. She loved the man of the house to be absorbed in his
+work. What a halo he was about her head! Everybody round where she lived
+knew about him. Everybody had heard of his successes,—‘My son, who is a
+scholar of Ananias.... My son, who is a Prizeman of his University....
+My son, who won this year’s Rutherford Prize....’ Great was her reward
+for having devoted her life to him and his education, and for having
+turned a deaf ear to those suitors who had tried to marry her when she
+was a young widow. She wasn’t even now, twenty years later, an old
+widow, but she was a widow who was less young.</p>
+
+<p>She lived in one of those suburbs where much is done for the mind. She
+was popular in it, and looked up to. She was, in fact, one of its
+leading lights,—cultivated, lady-like, well-read, artistic, interested
+in each new movement that came along. And of a most pleasing appearance,
+too, being slender at an age when the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_31">{31}</a></span> mothers of the grown-up are
+sometimes so no longer, dark haired among the grey, smooth among the
+puckered, and her eyes had no crow’s feet, and were calm and beautifully
+clear.</p>
+
+<p>She was serenely happy. The <i>milieu</i> suited her exactly. She had come to
+South Winch twenty years before from Kensington—real Kensington, not
+West or North, but the part that clusters round the Albert Hall—on her
+husband’s death, because of having to be frugal, but soon discovered it
+was the very place for her. Far better, she intelligently recognised, to
+be a leading light in a suburb, and know and be known by everybody, than
+extinguished and invisible in London. Besides, spring came to the
+suburbs in a way it never did to London, and it was the custom in South
+Winch, where people were determined to think highly, to think
+particularly highly of spring. At the bottom of her half acre there was
+only an iron railing separating her from a real meadow belonging to the
+big villa of a prosperous City man, and spring, she told the Rector, who
+was also a Canon, did things in that meadow it would never dream of
+doing near the Albert Hall.</p>
+
+<p>‘Look at those dandelions,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘I do think the meanest
+flower that blows in its natural setting is more beautiful than the
+whole of those thought-out effects in Kensington Gardens.’</p>
+
+<p>And the Rector—the Canon—said, ‘How true that is,’ and remarked that
+she was a Wordsworthian; and Mrs. Luke smiled, and said, ‘Am I?’ and
+wasn’t altogether pleased, for Wordsworth, she somehow felt, was no
+longer, in the newest opinion, what he was.</p>
+
+<p>While Jocelyn, then, was worshipping Sally across the supper-table of
+the private sitting-room he had engaged<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_32">{32}</a></span> in the hotel at Exeter, where
+they were breaking their journey to Cornwall, which was the place he was
+going to hide his honeymoon in, and Sally, unable to make head or tail
+of his speech and behaviour, was becoming every minute more uneasy, his
+mother sat, placid in the security of unconsciousness, by the fire in
+Almond Tree Cottage, a house which used, before the era of her careful
+simplicity, so foolishly to be called Beulah.</p>
+
+<p>‘A cottage,’ she observed to her sympathetic friends, ‘is the proper
+place for me. I’m a poor woman. Five hundred a year’—why hide
+anything?—‘doesn’t go far these days after Income Tax has been
+deducted. Jocelyn has his own five hundred, or we would really have been
+in a quite bad way. As it is, I can just manage.’</p>
+
+<p>And she did; and in her clever hands frugality merely seemed comfort
+gone a little thin, and nobody liked to ask her for subscriptions.</p>
+
+<p>The house was small and very white, and had a small and very green
+garden, with a cedar on the back lawn and an almond tree on the front
+one. Two front gates that swang back on their hinges, and a half-moon
+carriage-sweep. Railings. Shrubs. The yellow sanded road. Houses
+opposite, with almond trees too, or, less prettily, in the front gardens
+of the insensitive, monkey puzzles. The hall door was blue. Such
+curtains as could be seen at the same time as the door were blue too. At
+no season of the year was there not at least one vivid flower stuck in a
+slender vessel in the sitting-room window. And in the sitting-room
+itself, on the otherwise bare walls, was one picture only,—a copy,
+really very well done, of a gay and charming Tiepolo ceiling—Mrs. Luke
+was the first in South Winch to take<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_33">{33}</a></span> up Tiepolo—in which everybody was
+delicately happy, in spite of a crucifixion going on in one corner, and
+high-spirited, fat little angels tossed roses across the silvery
+brightness of what was evidently a perfect summer afternoon. Books, too,
+were present; not many, but the right ones. Blake was there; also Donne;
+and Sir Thomas Browne; and Proust, in French. A novel, generally
+Galsworthy, lay on the little table near the fire, and, by an
+arrangement with a circle of friends, most of the better class weeklies
+passed through the house in a punctual stream.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting in the deep chair by the fireside table on Jocelyn’s wedding
+night, her dark head against the bright cushion that gave the necessary
+splash of colour to the restful bareness of the room, her lap full of
+reviews she was going to read of the best new books and plays, so as to
+be able to discuss them intelligently with him when he came home at
+Easter—only a few more days to wait,—his mother couldn’t keep her eyes
+from wandering off these studies to the glowing little fire of ships’
+logs and neat blocks of peat, for her thoughts persisted in flying, like
+homing birds, to the nest they always went back to and so warmly rested
+in: Jocelyn, and what he was, and what he was going to be.</p>
+
+<p>Other mothers had anxieties; she had never had one. Others had
+disappointments; she had had nothing but happy triumphs. He was
+retiring, it was true, and stayed up in his little attic-study when he
+was at home, and wouldn’t go anywhere except to a Beethoven
+concert—together they had studied all that has been said about
+Beethoven, and she had plans for proceeding to the study of all that has
+been said about Bach—or for long tramps with her, when they would eat
+bread and cheese<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_34">{34}</a></span> at some wayside inn, and read aloud to each other
+between the mouthfuls; but how much richer was she herself for that. And
+the comfort of having a <i>good</i> son, a son who cared nothing for even
+so-called harmless dissipations! When she looked round at other people’s
+sons, and saw the furrows on their fathers’ foreheads—she smiled at her
+own alliterations—and heard a whisper of the dread word Debts, and knew
+where debts came from—betting, gambling, drinking, women, in a ghastly
+crescendo, how could she ever, ever be thankful enough that Jocelyn was
+so good? Never once had he betted, gambled, drunk, or—she smiled again
+at her own word—womaned; she was ready to take her oath he hadn’t.
+Didn’t she know him inside out? He kept nothing from her; he couldn’t
+have if he had wanted to, bless him, for she, who had watched him from
+long before he became conscious, knew him far, far better than he could
+possibly know himself.</p>
+
+<p>Many, indeed, were her blessings. Great and conscious her content. Her
+dark head on the vivid cushion was full of bright—why not say
+it?—self-congratulation, which is the other word for thankfulness. And
+how not congratulate herself on the possession of that beloved,
+brilliant boy? While, to add to everything else, the neighbour, whose
+meadow of buttercups she so freely and inexpensively enjoyed from over
+the railing on dappled May mornings, was showing unmistakable signs of
+wishing to marry her. His year of widowerhood had recently come to an
+end, and the very next week he had begun the kind of activity that could
+only be described as courting; so that she had this feather, too, to add
+to a cap already, she gratefully acknowledged, so full of feathers.
+Poor? Yes, she was poor. But<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_35">{35}</a></span> what was being poor? Nothing at all, if
+one refused to mind it.</p>
+
+<p>A third time she smiled, shaking her head at the neat peat blocks as if
+they had been the neighbour. ‘Come, come, my friend—at our ages,’ she
+could hear herself saying to him with gentle and flattering raillery—he
+must be at least twenty years older than herself—when the moment should
+arrive. But it was pleasant, this, to sit in her charmingly lit
+room—she was clever at making lampshades—and to know that next door
+was a man, well set up in spite of his sixty odd years, who thought her
+desirable, pleasant to be certain she had only to put out her hand, and
+take wealth.</p>
+
+<p>And who could say, she mused, but that it mightn’t be the best thing for
+Jocelyn too, to have a solid stepfather like that at his back, able to
+help him financially? She had spent happy years in the little white
+house, and it had rarely worried her that she should be obliged to take
+such ceaseless pains to hide the bones of her economies gracefully, but
+later on she would be older, and might be tired, and later on Jocelyn
+might perhaps want to marry and set up house for himself—after all, it
+would only be natural—and then she would be lonely, besides being ten
+years—she thought in ten years would be about the time he might wish to
+marry—less attractive than she was now, and getting not only lonelier
+with every year but also, she supposed, less attractive; though surely
+one oughtn’t to do that, if one’s mind and spirit——?</p>
+
+<p>Whereas, if she married the neighbour....<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_36">{36}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>He came in at that moment, on the pretext of bringing her back a book
+she had lent him, though he hadn’t read it and didn’t mean to, for it
+was what he, being a plain man, called high-falutin. He didn’t tell her
+this, because when a man is courting he cannot be candid, and he well
+knew that he was courting. What he wasn’t sure of was whether she knew.
+You never could tell with women; the best of them were artful.</p>
+
+<p>He came in that evening, then, to make it finally clear to her. She was
+a charming woman, and much younger, he imagined, than her age, which
+couldn’t, he calculated, with a son of twenty-two be far short of
+forty-two, and he had always greatly admired the pluck with which she
+faced what seemed to him sheer destitution. She was the very woman, too,
+to have at the head of one’s table when one had friends to
+dinner,—good-looking, knowing how to dress, able to talk about any
+mortal thing, and a perfect lady. And after the friends had gone, and it
+was time to go to bye-bye—such were the words his thoughts clothed
+themselves in,—she would still be a desirable companion, even if—again
+his words—a bit on the thin side. That, however, would soon be set
+right when he had fed her up on all the good food she hadn’t ever been
+able to afford, and anyhow she was years and years younger than poor
+Annie, who had been the same age as himself, which was all right to
+begin with, but no sort of a show in the long run. Also, Annie had
+stayed common.</p>
+
+<p>So the neighbour, whose name was Mr. Thorpe, arrived on Jocelyn’s
+wedding night about nine o’clock in the restrained sitting-room of
+Almond Tree Cottage,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_37">{37}</a></span> determined to make his purpose clear. That he
+should be refused didn’t enter his head, for he had much to offer. He
+was far the richest man in the parish, his two daughters were married
+and out of the way, his house and cars were bigger than anybody’s, and
+he grew pineapples. He couldn’t help thinking, he couldn’t help knowing,
+that for a woman of over forty he was a catch, and he went into the
+room, past the reverent-eyed small maid who held the door open,
+expanding his chest. A poverty-stricken little room, he always
+considered, with nothing in it of the least account, except the lady.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; except the lady. But what a lady. Not a grey hair in her head,
+which he had carefully examined when she wasn’t looking, nor, he would
+wager, any tooth that wasn’t exclusively her own. And a trim ankle; and
+a pretty wrist. Ruffles, too. He liked ruffles at a woman’s wrist. And
+able to talk about any mortal thing. Annie, poor creature, had made him
+look like a fool when he had his friends to dinner. This one would be
+the finest of the feathers in a cap which, he too gratefully
+acknowledged, was stuck full of them.</p>
+
+<p>‘All alone, eh?’ he said cheerily. ‘That’s bad.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m used to it,’ said Mrs. Luke, smilingly holding out her slender
+hand, on which a single ruby—or was it a garnet? probably a
+garnet—caught the light. She had on a wine-coloured, soft woollen dress
+that Jocelyn liked, and the ring and the dress went very well together.</p>
+
+<p>A pretty picture; a perfect lady. Mr. Thorpe, determined to waste no
+time in making his purpose clear, bent his head and kissed the hand.</p>
+
+<p>‘Being used to a bad thing doesn’t make it better, but worse,’ he said,
+drawing up the only other really<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_38">{38}</a></span> comfortable chair—Jocelyn’s—and
+sitting down close to her.</p>
+
+<p>And he was about to embark then and there on his proposal, for he hated
+waste of anything, including time, and Mrs. Luke was already drawing up
+her shoulders to her ears in an instinctive movement of defence, for she
+would have liked to have had longer to turn the thing over in her mind,
+and discover really whether his splendid illiteracy—it was so immense
+as to appear magnificent—would be a source of pleasure to her or
+suffering, whether the pleasure of filling up his mind’s emptiness would
+be greater than the pains of such an exertion, whether, in short, she
+hadn’t better refuse him, when the little maid came in with the silver
+salver she had been trained to present letters on, and held it out
+before her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>‘Letters, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe, nettled by this interruption. ‘I should
+give orders they’re to be left in the—well, you can’t call it a hall,
+can you, so let’s say passage.’</p>
+
+<p>The little maid, alarmed, sidled out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>‘I would indeed, if it weren’t that I can’t bear to wait a minute when
+it’s a letter from Jocelyn,’ said Mrs. Luke, holding the letter tight,
+for she saw it was from him. ‘You wouldn’t be able to wait either, would
+you,’ she went on, smiling more brightly even than usual, for the mere
+touch of the letter made her more bright, ‘for anything you loved.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said Mr. Thorpe sturdily, seizing this opening. ‘No. I wouldn’t.
+And that’s why I’ve come round——’</p>
+
+<p>But she didn’t hear. ‘You’ll forgive me, won’t you my dear friend,’ she
+murmured, slitting the envelope<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_39">{39}</a></span> with an enamelled paper-knife lest she
+should harm the dear contents, ‘but I haven’t heard from that boy for
+over a fortnight, and I’ve been beginning to wonder——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, certainly, certainly. Don’t mind me,’ said Mr. Thorpe, aggrieved.
+‘Mark my words, though,’ he added, sitting up very square and broad in
+his chair, and giving the knees of his trousers a twitch each, ‘one
+shouldn’t overdo the son business.’</p>
+
+<p>She didn’t hear. Her eyes were running down the lines of the letter,
+while she muttered something about just wanting to see if he were well.</p>
+
+<p>‘Damned stuck up young prig,’ Mr. Thorpe was in the act of saying to
+himself, resentfully watching this absorption, when he was interrupted
+by a complete and alarming change in the lady.</p>
+
+<p>She gave a violent shudder; she dropped the letter on the floor, as
+though her shaking hands couldn’t hold it; and then, fixing her large
+grey eyes on his, opened her mouth and moaned.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her. He couldn’t think what was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sick, eh?’ he asked, staring.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, <i>oh</i>——’ was all she said, turning her face from him, and burying
+it in the cushion.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Well, what does one do with a woman who buries her face in a cushion?
+Comforts her, of course, thought Mr. Thorpe, again seizing his
+opportunity. The young ass couldn’t be dead, or he wouldn’t have
+written. But he might——</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe paused at the thought, and withdrew the hand already put out
+to pat. Yes; that was it. Better<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_40">{40}</a></span> not comfort just yet. For the young
+fool had no doubt run into debt, and was being threatened with
+proceedings, and was trying to persuade his mother to pay, and Mr.
+Thorpe didn’t want to begin his betrothal with having to shell out for
+somebody else’s scapegrace son.</p>
+
+<p>His hand, accordingly, slowly redescended on to his knee, where it
+rested motionless while he stared at the figure in the chair. Pretty
+figure. Nice lines. Graceful, even in her upset. She only needed very
+little, just the weeniest bit, fattening up. But she shouldn’t have
+spoiled that son. Women were fools about their sons.</p>
+
+<p>Then, noticing that the letter was lying at his feet, and the lady, her
+face in the cushion, was incapable of observing what he did, he put on
+his eyeglasses, picked it up carefully so that it shouldn’t rustle, and,
+remarking to himself that all was fair in love and war, read it.</p>
+
+<p>Having read it, he as carefully replaced it on the carpet, took off his
+eyeglasses, and began to comfort.</p>
+
+<p>For it wasn’t debts, it was marriage; the best thing possible from Mr.
+Thorpe’s point of view—clearing the field, leaving the mother free to
+turn her thoughts to other ties. And a good job too, for the young ass
+had gone clean off his head. What a letter. He ought to be ashamed of
+himself, writing sick stuff like that to his mother. Married this very
+day. Given up Cambridge. Chucked his career. Finished with ambitions.
+Going to earn his own living in London. Mother bound to love—no, it was
+put hotter than that—worship the girl, who was more beautiful than any
+angel——</p>
+
+<p>Tut, tut. Silly young ass, caught by the first handsome slut.</p>
+
+<p>‘Better tell me about it,’ said Mr. Thorpe, leaning forward and laying
+his hand with unhesitating kindness<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_41">{41}</a></span> on Mrs. Luke’s shoulder. ‘Nothing
+like getting things off one’s chest. Count on me. Whatever your son’s
+done I’ll help. I’ll do anything—anything at all, mind you, to help.’</p>
+
+<p>And Jocelyn’s mother, completely overwhelmed by the incredible sudden
+smash up of everything she had lived for, did, on hearing this kind,
+steady male voice through her misery, turn to Mr. Thorpe as the drowning
+turn to any spar, and, making odd little noises, stooped down and tried
+to pick up the letter.</p>
+
+<p>But her hands shook too much. He had to pick it up for her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Read it——,’ she said in a sobbing whisper.</p>
+
+<p>So he took out his eyeglasses, and read it again.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>‘Now what you’ve got to do,’ said Mr. Thorpe, folding it up neatly when
+he had finished, and laying it down on the little table, ‘is to make up
+your mind that what’s done can’t be undone.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke, her head buried in the cushions, moaned.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s it,’ said Mr. Thorpe, a hand on each knee and an eye on her.
+‘That’s the ticket.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know—I know,’ moaned Mrs. Luke. ‘But just at first—the shock——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Shock, eh? I don’t know that there’s much shock about marriage,’ said
+Mr. Thorpe. ‘Shouldn’t be, anyhow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But so sudden—so unexpected——’</p>
+
+<p>‘People will marry, you know,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘Especially men. Once
+they get set on it, nothing stops ’em.’</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_42">{42}</a></span></p>
+<p>‘I know—I know—but Jocelyn—such a boy——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Boy, eh? Age has precious little to do with it,’ said Mr. Thorpe
+firmly. ‘In fact, nothing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But his prospects—his career—all thrown away—ruined——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Marriage never harmed a man yet,’ said Mr. Thorpe still more firmly,
+aware that he was being inaccurate, but also aware that no one can
+afford to be accurate and court simultaneously. Accuracy, Mr. Thorpe
+knew, comes after marriage, not before.</p>
+
+<p>‘Mark my words,’ he went on, ‘that clever son of yours won’t stop being
+clever because he’s married. Who’s going to take his brains from him?
+Not a loving wife, you bet. Why, a good wife, a loving wife, doubles and
+trebles a man’s output.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How kind you are,’ murmured Mrs. Luke, who did find this comforting.
+‘But Jocelyn—my boy—to keep it from me——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Bound to keep something from his mother,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘Mothers are
+all right, and a man has to have them to start with, but the day comes
+when a back seat is what they’ve got to climb into. Only as regards
+their children, mind you,’ he added. ‘A woman has many other strings to
+her bow, and is by no means nothing but a mother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, but we were everything, everything to each other,’ moaned Mrs.
+Luke, stabbed afresh by the mention of a back seat. ‘Always, always. He
+never <i>looked</i> at another woman——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Damned prig,’ thought Mr. Thorpe. And said out aloud, ‘Time he began,
+then. Though having a woman like you about,’ he added, placing his hand
+with determination on hers, which hung limply down holding a
+handkerchief while her face was still turned away, ‘ought<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_43">{43}</a></span> to keep him
+from seeing the others all right. You’re a wonderful woman, you know—a
+remarkable woman.’</p>
+
+<p>His voice changed. It took on the unmistakable note that is immediately
+followed by love-making.</p>
+
+<p>‘I—think I’ll go and lie down,’ said Mrs. Luke faintly, recognising the
+note, and feeling she could bear no more of anything that night. ‘I—I
+really think I must. My head——’</p>
+
+<p>She struggled to get up.</p>
+
+<p>He helped her. He helped her by laying hold of both her wrists, and
+drawing her upwards and towards him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Head, eh?’ he said, a gleam in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>‘How kind, how kind——’ she murmured distractedly, finding herself on
+her feet and very close to Mr. Thorpe, who still held her wrists.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted her letter. She looked about helplessly for her letter,
+keeping her head as far away from him as she could. There was her
+letter—on the table—she wanted to snatch it up—to get away as quickly
+as possible—to hide in her bedroom—and her wrists were being held, and
+she couldn’t move.</p>
+
+<p>‘Kind, eh? Kind, you call it?’ said Mr. Thorpe through his teeth. ‘I can
+be kinder than that.’ And he put his arms round her, and drew her
+vigorously to his chest.</p>
+
+<p>‘This in exchange for Jocelyn,’ drifted through Mrs. Luke’s wretched and
+resisting mind.</p>
+
+<p>But, even through her wretchedness and resistance she felt there was
+something rock-like, something solid and fixed, about Mr. Thorpe’s
+chest, to which in the present catastrophe, with the swirling waters of
+bitterest disappointment raging round her feet, it might be well to
+cling.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_44">{44}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">And</span> while these things were happening in Almond Tree Cottage, Jocelyn,
+in the private sitting-room of the Exeter hotel, was behaving, it seemed
+to Sally, in the most strange way.</p>
+
+<p>If this was what married gentlemen were like, then she wondered that
+there should be any married ladies left. Enough to kill them off like
+flies, thought Sally, helplessly involved in frequent and alarming
+embraces. Still, she held on hard in her mind to what her father had
+said to her the evening before, when she was going up to bed,—‘Sally,’
+her father had said, calling her back a moment and looking solemn,
+‘don’t you take no notice of what Mr. Luke do or don’t, once ’e’s your
+’usband. ’Usbands ain’t gentlemen, remember—not ordinary, day-time
+gentlemen, such as you thinks they are till you knows better. And you
+just say to yourself as ’ow your mother went through it all before you
+was so much as born, and she was a bit of all right, warn’t she? So you
+just remember that, my girl, if by any chance you should ’appen to get
+the fidgets.’</p>
+
+<p>She did remember it, though it was Mr. Luke—so she thought of him—who
+had the fidgets. He didn’t seem able to sit quiet for two minutes in his
+chair, and eat his supper, and let her eat hers. Such a lovely<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_45">{45}</a></span> supper,
+too—a real shame to let it get cold. What was the good of ordering a
+lovely supper if one wasn’t going to eat it properly?</p>
+
+<p>More and more earnestly as the evening progressed did she wish herself
+back in the peaceful parlour behind the shop; less and less did the
+thought of her mother having been through all this too support her,
+because she became surer every minute that she hadn’t been through it.
+Never in his life could her father have behaved as Mr. Luke was
+behaving. Entirely unused to kisses, except evenings and mornings, and
+then just one on her cheek and over and done with at once, Sally
+couldn’t get over the number and length of Mr. Luke’s. Also, it
+surprised her very much to see a gentleman interrupt his supper—and
+such a lovely supper—to run round the table and go down on his knees
+and kiss her shoes,—new ones, of course, but still not things that
+ought to be kissed; it surprised her so much, that she came over quite
+queer each time.</p>
+
+<p>She thought it a great mercy he had locked the door, so that the grand
+waiter couldn’t get in, for the grand waiter, staring at her while he
+handed her the dishes and calling her Madam, alarmed her in his way very
+nearly as much as Mr. Luke alarmed her in his; yet, on the other hand,
+if the waiter was locked out she was locked in, so that it cut both
+ways, thought Sally, wishing she might be let eat the meringue the
+waiter had left on her plate before being locked out. But every time she
+tried to, Mr. Luke seemed to have to be kissed.</p>
+
+<p>And the way Mr. Luke, when he did stay still a minute in his chair,
+never took his eyes off her, and the things he said! And he didn’t seem
+a bit happy either, in spite of talking such a lot about heaven and the
+angels.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_46">{46}</a></span> If only he had seemed happy Sally wouldn’t have minded so much,
+for then at least somebody would have been getting some good out of it;
+but he looked all upset, and as if he were going to be ill,—sickening
+for something, she concluded.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time she kept up her manners, bravely clinging to them and
+trying hard to guess when was the right moment to say Yes and when to
+say No, which was very difficult because he talked so queerly, and she
+hadn’t an idea what most of it meant; for a long time she was able to
+smile politely, if anxiously, every time she looked up and caught his
+fierce and burning eye; but all of a sudden, perpetually thwarted in her
+efforts to eat the meringue, and very hot and uncomfortable from so much
+kissing, she found she couldn’t do anything any more that was proper,
+wasn’t able to smile, said No when it ought to have been Yes, lost her
+nerve, and to her own surprise and excessive shame began to whimper.</p>
+
+<p>Very quietly she whimpered, very beautifully, her head drooping
+exquisitely on its adorable little neck, while the meringue she had so
+badly wanted to be allowed to eat for the last quarter of an hour was
+finally renounced, and left to waste and dribble away its expensive
+cream on her plate.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn was appalled.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Sally—oh, my angel—oh, my heavenly, heavenly child!’ he cried,
+flinging himself once again at her feet, while she once again quickly
+drew them up beneath her frock, as she had done each time before.</p>
+
+<p>She apologised humbly. She was really terribly ashamed,—and he so good
+to her, spending all that money on such a splendid supper.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_47">{47}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘I ain’t cried but once before in my life,’ she explained, fumbling for
+her handkerchief, while the tears welled up in her enchanting sweet
+eyes. ‘When mother died, that was, but I never didn’t not else. Dunno
+what come over me, Mr. Luke——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only once before! When your mother died! And now on your wedding day!
+Oh, Sally—it’s me—I’ve made you—I, who would die a thousand deaths to
+spare a single perfect hair of your divine little head——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t say that, Mr. Luke—please now, don’t say that,’ Sally earnestly
+begged, much perturbed by this perpetual harping on death and angels.
+And having at last got out her handkerchief, she was just going to wipe
+her eyes decently when he snatched it from her and didn’t let her do
+anything, but actually kissed away the tears as they rolled out.</p>
+
+<p>‘You ain’t ’alf fond of kissin’, are you, Mr. Luke,’ murmured Sally
+miserably, helplessly obliged to hand over her tears to what seemed to
+her a really horrid fate, while to herself she was saying in resigned,
+unhappy astonishment, ‘And them my very own eyes, too, when all’s said
+and done.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>It was three days later that Jocelyn, for the first time, said, ‘Don’t
+say that, Sally,’ in a tone of command.</p>
+
+<p>He had told her many times not to call him Mr. Luke, told her
+entreatingly, caressingly, playfully, that he was her husband Jocelyn,
+and no longer ever any more to be Mr. anything on her darling lips; and
+when she forgot, for habits in Sally died hard, smilingly and adoringly
+reminded her.</p>
+
+<p>But this time, after three whole days’ honeymoon and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_48">{48}</a></span> three whole
+nights, he commanded; adding in a tone of real annoyance, ‘And for God’s
+sake don’t look at people when they pass.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I ain’t lookin’ at them,’ protested Sally, flushing, who never wanted
+to look at anybody, besides having been taught by the anxious Pinners
+that no modest girl did. ‘They looks at me.’</p>
+
+<p>It was true. Jocelyn knew it was true, but nevertheless was angry, and
+caught hold of her arm and marched her up a side lane from the sea, up
+to the less inhabited hill at the back of the village.</p>
+
+<p>For they were at St. Mawes, the little cut-off fishing village in South
+Cornwall which had lived in Jocelyn’s memory ever since, two years
+before, on an Easter bicycling tour with his mother, he and she had
+suddenly dropped down on it from the hill above, unaware of its
+existence till they were right on it, so completely was it tucked away
+and hidden. It had lived in his memory as the most difficult spot to get
+at, and therefore probably the most solitary, of any he had come across.
+Miles from a railway, miles from the nearest town, only to be reached,
+unless one went to it by sea, along a most difficult and tortuous road
+that ended by throwing one down a precipice on to a ferry-boat which
+took one across the Fal and shot one out at the foot of another
+precipice,—or so the two hills seemed to Jocelyn and his mother, who
+had to push their bicycles up them—he considered it the place of places
+to hide his honeymoon in; to hide, that is, the precious and conspicuous
+Sally.</p>
+
+<p>His recollection of it was just a village street along the sea, an inn
+or two, a shop or two, a fisherman or two, and in the middle of the day
+complete emptiness.</p>
+
+<p>The very place.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_49">{49}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He wrote, trembling with excitement, to its post office to get him
+rooms, rooms for his wife and himself—his wife; oh, my God! thought
+Jocelyn, still a week off his wedding day.</p>
+
+<p>The post office got him rooms,—a tiny bedroom, almost filled by the
+bed, a tiny parlour, almost filled by the table, and a fisherman and his
+wife, who lived in the rest of the cottage, to look after them.</p>
+
+<p>The first day they were out in a boat all day being shown coves by the
+fisherman, who stared hard at Sally, and whenever they wanted to go back
+took them to see another cove instead; but the second day, the
+imperativeness of daily exercise having been part of Jocelyn’s early
+training, he felt it his duty to exercise Sally, and emerged with her
+during the quiet hour after their mid-day meal for a blow along the sea
+front.</p>
+
+<p>She had already said, when he asked her if she would like to go out,
+that she didn’t mind if she did, and he had passed it over because he
+happened to be looking at her when she said it, and no one who happened
+to be looking at Sally when she said anything was able to pay much
+attention to her words. Jocelyn couldn’t, anyhow, only three days
+married; but out on the sea front, walking side by side, his eyes fixed
+ahead in growing surprise at the number of people suddenly come out,
+like themselves, apparently, for blows, when in answer to his remark
+that the place seemed more populous than he had imagined, she said, ‘It
+do, don’t it, Mr. Luke,’ he snapped at her.</p>
+
+<p>Snapped at her. Snapped at his angel, his child of light, his being from
+another sphere, who ought, he had told her, making her fidget a good
+deal, for whatever did he mean? sit for ever on a sapphire throne, and
+be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_50">{50}</a></span> crowned by stars, and addressed only in the language of Beethoven’s
+symphonies. But then there were these confounded people suddenly sprung
+from nowhere, and it was enough to make any man snap, the way they
+looked at Sally. Where did they come from? Where were they going? What
+did they want?</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn seized her, and hurried her up the side path that led over the
+hill to the quiet country at the back. He was excessively put out. The
+swine—the idle, ogling swine, he thought, rushing her up the steep path
+at such a rate that the willing Sally, obediently putting her best leg
+foremost, nevertheless, light and active as she was, arrived at the top
+so breathless that she couldn’t speak.</p>
+
+<p>Not that she wanted to speak. Never much of a hand at what her girl
+friends, when she still had them, used to call back-chat, the brief
+period of her honeymoon had taught her how safe and snug silence was
+compared to the draughty dangers of speech. Marriage, she already felt,
+groping dimly about in it, wasn’t at all like anything one was used to.
+It seemed swampy underfoot. You started walking along it, and it looked
+all right, when in you went. Husbands—difficult to know where one was
+with <i>them</i>, thought Sally. They changed about so. One moment on their
+knees as if one was a church, and the next rushing one off one’s feet up
+a hill such as one couldn’t have believed possible if one hadn’t seen it
+for oneself, and their face all angry. Angry? What for? wondered Sally,
+who was never angry.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s that hair of yours,’ said Jocelyn, got to the top, and standing
+still a moment, for he too was panting.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_51">{51}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She looked at him uncomprehendingly, in a lovely surprise. He was
+frowning at the sea, and the bit of road along it visible at their feet,
+on which still crawled a few black specks.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ow?’ Sally was injudicious enough to ask; but after all it was only
+one word—she was careful to say only one word.</p>
+
+<p>One was enough, though.</p>
+
+<p>‘How, Sally—<i>how</i>, <small>HOW</small>. You really <i>must</i> learn to say <i>how</i>,’ said
+Jocelyn, exasperated.</p>
+
+<p>‘I did say ’ow,’ explained Sally meekly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes. You did. Exactly,’ said Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ain’t it right to say ’ow?’ she asked, anxious for instruction.</p>
+
+<p>‘Haven’t you <i>any</i> ear?’ was Jocelyn’s answer, turning to her with a
+kind of pounce.</p>
+
+<p>Sally was still more surprised. What a question. Of course she had an
+ear. Two of them. And she was going to tell him so when his face, as he
+looked at her, changed to the one he had when he got talking about
+heaven and angels.</p>
+
+<p>For how could Jocelyn stay irritated with anything like that? He had
+only to turn and look at her for all his silly anger to shrivel up. In
+the presence of her loveliness, what a mere mincing worm he was, with
+his precise ways of speech, and his twopenny-halfpenny little bit of
+superior education. As though it mattered, as though it mattered,
+thought Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Sally, I didn’t mean it,’ he said, catching up her hand and kissing
+it, which made her feel very awkward and ashamed, somehow, having a
+thing like that done to her hand, and in broad daylight, too, and out of
+doors. ‘But you should try and tuck your hair more out of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_52">{52}</a></span> sight—look,
+this way,’ he went on, gently taking her hat off and arranging her hair
+for her before putting it on again. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘it does
+catch the eye so, doesn’t it, my beautiful, flaming seraphim—oh, my
+God,’ he added under his breath, ‘how beautiful you are!’</p>
+
+<p>‘It don’t make no difference,’ said Sally in a resigned voice.</p>
+
+<p>‘What doesn’t?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you tucks it in or don’t. They always looks at me. We tried
+everything at ’ome, Father and Mother did, but they always looks at me.’</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with deprecation and apology. Best let him know the worst at
+once, for she was thoroughly aware of her disabilities and the endless
+trouble she had given her parents; while as for their scoldings, and
+exhortations, and dark hints of bad things that might happen to her,
+hadn’t they rung in her ears since she was twelve? But what could she
+do? There she was. Having been born like that, how could she help it?</p>
+
+<p>And another thing she couldn’t help, though she was unconscious that she
+did it, was that every time she caught the amiable eye of a stranger,
+and she had never yet met any stranger who hadn’t amiable eyes, she
+smiled. Just a little; just an involuntary gratitude for the
+friendliness in the eye that had been caught. And as she had two
+dimples, otherwise invisible, the smile, which would anyhow have been
+lovely on that face, was of exceeding loveliness, and complications
+followed, and angry chidings from the worn-out Pinners, and, in Sally, a
+resigned surprise.</p>
+
+<p>It was while she was trying to convey to Jocelyn that whatever he did
+with her hair she was doomed to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_53">{53}</a></span> looked at, and was at the same time
+shaking it back so as to help him to get it neat—it looked startlingly
+vivid against the grey background of sea and sky—that a young man
+called Carruthers, out for a run with his dog after a stuffy Sunday
+family lunch, came round the bend of the path, whistling and swinging
+his stick, and stopped dead when he saw her.</p>
+
+<p>His dog rushed on, however, and ran up to the spirit-thing, and sniffed
+and wagged round it, and seemed quite pleased; so it was real, it wasn’t
+a spirit, it wasn’t the beginning in his own brain of hallucinations on
+burning, Blake-like lines.</p>
+
+<p>He stood gazing. He had never seen anything like that before,—no, by
+Jove, nor had most other people. ‘Oh, I say—don’t, don’t, <i>don’t</i> put
+it on yet!’ he nearly cried out as he saw the hat in the dark,
+Iberian-looking youth’s hands being raised quickly above the girl’s head
+when that confounded dog disturbed them, and knew that in another
+instant it would descend and the light go out.</p>
+
+<p>The Iberian’s movements, however, were swift and decided, and the hat
+was not only put on but pulled on,—tugged on with vigour as far down
+over her eyes as it would go; and then, after a frowning glance round,
+the fellow drew her hand through his arm and walked her off quickly in
+the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing left for Carruthers but to call his dog—an attractive
+bitch, who would have been a Sealyham if it hadn’t been for something
+its mother did once,—and it wasn’t Carruthers’ fault that it too should
+chance to be called Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sally! Sally!’ he therefore very naturally shouted, raising his voice
+as much as possible, which was a great<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_54">{54}</a></span> deal. ‘Sally! Come here! Sally!
+Come <i>here</i>, I tell you!’</p>
+
+<p>The hills round St. Mawes reverberated with entreaties that Sally should
+come.</p>
+
+<p>She did come, his Sally did, but behind it, running, came the Iberian as
+well. The girl was out of sight round the corner. Young Carruthers
+watched the hurrying approach of her companion with surprise, which
+increased when he saw the expression on his face.</p>
+
+<p>‘How dare you! How dare you!’ shouted Jocelyn directly he was near
+enough; upon which Carruthers’ surprise became amazement.</p>
+
+<p>‘What’s up?’ he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>‘How dare you call out Sally, and tell her to come here? Eh? What do you
+mean by it? You——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I say—hold on,’ exclaimed Carruthers quickly, raising a defensive arm.
+‘Hold on a bit. Look—here she is, here’s Sally——’ and he pointed to
+the fawning sinner.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn’s fists fell limply to his sides. He flushed, and looked
+extremely foolish. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t mention it,’ said Carruthers, with immense sarcastic politeness.</p>
+
+<p>‘It—it’s my wife’s name,’ stammered Jocelyn, ‘and I thought you knew
+her, and were incredibly cheeking her——’</p>
+
+<p>Carruthers, staring at his nervous twitching face, didn’t laugh, but
+simply nodded. Having seen Sally he simply nodded.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s all right,’ he said gravely; and for some reason added
+impulsively, ‘old man.’</p>
+
+<p>He watched the thin figure hurrying off again. ‘A bit of
+responsibility,’ he thought. ‘The poor chap looks<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_55">{55}</a></span> all nerves and funk
+already——’ for it was plain they couldn’t have been married long,
+plain they were both too young to have been anything long.</p>
+
+<p>Carruthers, who was as solid and matter-of-fact outside as he wasn’t
+inside, turned away so as not again to interrupt, and went home across
+the fields whistling sad tunes in minor keys. Marvellous beyond
+imagining to be married to beauty like that, but—yes, by God, one would
+be on wires the whole time, there’d be no end to one’s anxieties. And
+his final conclusion was that Jocelyn was a poor devil.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>He might have concluded it even more emphatically if he could have
+followed him, and seen what he saw when he got round the corner where
+Sally had been left for a moment—only for a moment, mind you, said
+Jocelyn to himself indignantly,—and found her the centre of an absorbed
+group.</p>
+
+<p>She was smiling at two men and a woman, who were smiling and talking to
+her with every appearance of profound and eager interest. She was, in
+fact, being polite; a habit against which Mr. Pinner had repeatedly
+warned her, but, for the reason that it wasn’t a habit at all but her
+natural inability not to return smiles for smiles, had warned her in
+vain.</p>
+
+<p>These people, climbing up the hill on its other side and finding her
+standing there alone, had asked her, their faces wreathed in smiles and
+their eyes wide with astonishment and delight, the way; and she had only
+politely told them she was a stranger in those parts, and they were only
+asking her a few kindly questions, to which she had only answered, ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ere
+on my ’oneymoon,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_56">{56}</a></span>’ and they were only expressing hopes that she would
+have a good time, when Jocelyn descended, swift, lean and vengeful, on
+the otherwise harmonious group.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes?’ said Jocelyn, scowling round at them. ‘Yes?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, with a gesture of all-including
+friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>But it was no use her being friendly. Jocelyn was rude. How not be rude,
+with those two men standing there staring as if their eyes would bulge
+right out?</p>
+
+<p>‘I was under the impression,’ he said, glaring at them up and down, from
+the top of their badly hatted heads, along their under-exercised and
+over-coated bodies to their unsatisfactory feet, ‘that it was possible
+in England to leave a lady alone for two minutes without her being
+subject to annoyance.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure——’ began the woman of the party, turning very red, while
+the men looked both scared and sheepish.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t mind ‘<i>im</i>,’ said Sally sweetly, desirous of mollifying.</p>
+
+<p>‘On the contrary, I assure you that you had much better—much better,’
+declared Jocelyn truculently. And again he pulled Sally’s hand through
+his arm, and again he hurried her off.</p>
+
+<p>‘Really,’ he said, when they were out of sight, and only green fields,
+empty of everything but cows, were visible. ‘Really.’</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and wiped his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ot?’ ventured Sally, timid but sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>‘To think that I can’t leave you alone a minute!’ he cried.</p>
+
+<p>‘They ask me the way,’ Sally explained.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_57">{57}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite. And what did you say, might I inquire?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Said as ’ow I didn’t know it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Bein’, as one might say, a stranger in these parts,’ Sally explained
+still further, for these repeated quites upset her into speech.</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now don’t say that, Mr. Luke—please don’t, now,’ she begged.</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps you, on your part, won’t say Mr. Luke,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Not
+quite so often. Not more than a dozen times a day, for instance.’</p>
+
+<p>Sally was silent. She mustn’t think of him as Mr. Luke, she couldn’t
+think of him by his outlandish other name, so she thought of him as
+Husband. ’Usband’s cross,’ she thought; and withdrew into a prudent
+dumbness.</p>
+
+<p>He ended by scrambling her through the hedge, and across a field as far
+from the path as possible; and, sitting her down with her back to
+everything except another hedge, tried to tell her a few things of a
+necessary but minatory nature.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sally,’ he began, lying down on the grass beside her and taking her
+hand in his, ‘you know, don’t you, that I love you?’</p>
+
+<p>Sally, cautiously coming out of her silence for a moment, as one who
+puts a toe into cold water and instantly draws it back again, said,
+‘Yes, Mr.——’ stopping herself just in time, and hastily amending,
+‘What I means is, yes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you know, don’t you, that my one thought is for you and your
+happiness?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_58">{58}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she supposed she knew that, thought Sally, fidgeting uneasily, for
+though the voice and manner were the voice and manner of Mr. Luke there
+was somehow a smack about them that reminded her of her father when he
+was going to do what was known in the family as learning her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you?’ insisted Jocelyn, as she said nothing. ‘Don’t you?’</p>
+
+<p>He looked up into her face in search of an answer, and his voice
+faltered, he forgot completely what he was going to say, and whispering
+‘Oh, I <i>worship</i> you!’ began kissing the hand he held, covering it with
+kisses, and seizing the other one and covering it with kisses too, while
+his ears, she could see, for his head lay in her lap, went crimson.</p>
+
+<p>And Sally, who had already discovered that when Jocelyn’s ears turned
+crimson he did nothing but kiss her and murmur words that were not,
+however incomprehensible, anyhow angry ones, knew that for this time she
+was being let off.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_59">{59}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">He</span> kept her indoors for the rest of the day, and decided that in future
+they would use the car as a means of getting well out of reach of St.
+Mawes, and then, leaving it in some obscure village, take the necessary
+exercise undisturbed. The boat would have done for getting away in, but
+the fisherman wouldn’t let them have it without him, and he too stared
+persistently at Sally. His ridiculous name was Cupp. ‘Serve him right,’
+thought Jocelyn, who disliked him intensely.</p>
+
+<p>These difficulties considerably interfered with the peace of the
+honeymoon. Having to take precautions, and scheme before doing ordinary
+things such as go out for a walk, seemed perfectly monstrous to Jocelyn.
+He was inclined, though he struggled against it, to blame Sally. He knew
+it was grossly unfair to blame her, but then it was outside his theories
+that a modest woman, however lovely, shouldn’t be able in England to
+proceed on her lawful occasions unmolested. There must be, he thought,
+something in Sally’s behaviour, though he couldn’t quite see what.</p>
+
+<p>He took her away the next morning for the whole day in the car, and,
+leaving it at a lonely wayside inn, marched her off for the exercise
+they both needed. He needed it, he knew, for he was getting quite
+livery, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_60">{60}</a></span> so, he dared say, was she; though it would have been as
+easy to imagine a new-born flower having a liver as Sally. Anyhow, she
+must be exercised; her health was now his concern, Jocelyn told himself.
+Everything of hers was now his concern. The lovely child had been
+miraculously handed over to him by Destiny—thus augustly did he dub Mr.
+Pinner—and there was no one but him to protect and guide and teach her.
+No one but him jolly well should, either, said Jocelyn to himself,
+baring his teeth at the mere thought, savagely possessive, strongly
+resembling a growling dog over a newly-acquired bone.</p>
+
+<p>But it was trying, having to hide her like this. It came to that, that
+he had to hide her if he was to have any peace. Well, when he took her
+to London, and settled down there seriously, there wouldn’t be this
+trouble, because he intended to live in the slums. Slums were the
+places, he felt sure, for being let alone in. Not, of course, the more
+cut-throat kind, but obscure streets where everybody was too busy being
+poor to be interested in a girl’s beauty. To be interested in that,
+Jocelyn thought he knew, you have to have had and be going to have a
+properly filling dinner every day. No dinners, no love. One only had to
+think a little to see this must be so. In such a street, how peaceful
+they would be, he in one room writing, she in another room not writing.
+Nor would there be any servant difficulty for them either, because Sally
+was used to housework, and knew no other conditions than those in which
+she had to do it herself. He and she were going to lead simple lives,
+irradiated by her enchanting loveliness; and presently, when she had
+begun to profit by the lessons he would give her in the art of correct
+speech,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_61">{61}</a></span> she would be more of a companion to him, more able to—well,
+converse.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment, he couldn’t disguise from himself, she was weak in
+conversation. To look at her, to look at her strangely noble little
+head, with everything there that is supposed to go with mind—the broad
+sweep of the brow, the beautifully moulded temples, the radiance in the
+eyes, the light that seemed to play over the vivid face with its swiftly
+changing expressions, each one more lovely than the last, and the whole
+amazing creature a poem of delicate colouring, except where colour had
+caught fire and become the flaming wonder of her hair—to look at this,
+and then hear the meagre, the really most meagre and defective
+observations that came out of it all, was a surprise. A growing
+surprise. Frankly, a growingly painful surprise. Somehow he hadn’t
+noticed it before, but now he every hour more plainly perceived a grave
+discrepancy between Sally’s appearance and her reality. Or was what he
+saw her reality, and what he heard mere appearance?</p>
+
+<p>At night he was sure this was so. Next morning he was afraid it wasn’t.
+In any case, she didn’t match.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Curious, thought Jocelyn a day or two later, how completely Sally didn’t
+match. Perhaps he was getting livery, and beholding her with a jaundiced
+eye. It wouldn’t be surprising if this were so, seeing the reversal of
+his ordinary habits that marriage had made. His life till then had been
+one of excessive intellectual activity, and excessive sexual inactivity.
+Now it was just the opposite. It seemed to him that he was living
+entirely on his emotions and his nerves, doing nothing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_62">{62}</a></span> but make love,
+and never thinking a single thought worth thinking. This preoccupation
+with Sally’s discrepances, for instance—what, after all, were a girl’s
+discrepances compared to the importance, the interest, of his brain work
+till he met her?</p>
+
+<p>He would come down to breakfast, to the sober facts of bacon and grey
+morning light, in a highly critical mood, feeling very old, and wise,
+and mature, and of course—there could be no two opinions as to that—in
+everything, except just physical beauty, Sally’s superior. Then she
+would come down, and, cautiously saying nothing, smile at him; and he
+would be forced, in spite of himself, to wonder, as he gazed at her in a
+fresh surprise, whether there could be anything in the world superior to
+such beauty. Not himself, anyhow, he thought, with his little inky
+ambitions, his desire to express and impress himself, his craving to
+find out and do. Sally had no cravings that he could discover; she was
+mere lovely acquiescence, content—and with what exquisiteness—to be.</p>
+
+<p>Still, in this world one couldn’t just sit silent, and serene, and
+wonderful; and the minute circumstances obliged her to say something her
+discrepances worried him again. It really was surprising: pure
+perfection outside, and inside—he hated to think it, but more and more
+feared he recognised—pure Pinner. He must take her in hand. He must
+teach her, train her in the manners expected in her new sphere of life.</p>
+
+<p>He pulled himself together, and took her in hand. During the second week
+after their marriage she was, as it were, almost constantly in hand; and
+towards its end Jocelyn’s consciousness of his responsibility and duty,
+which at first had faded away in the evening and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_63">{63}</a></span> disappeared entirely
+at night, stretched further and further across the day like a
+lengthening shadow, till at last it reached right into his very bed. The
+image of his mother had begun to loom nearer,—his mother, whom he had
+forgotten in the first fever of passion, but to whom he would
+undoubtedly soon now have to show Sally. Show her? Nothing so easy and
+sure of its effect as showing Sally, but it was what would happen
+immediately after she had been shown that Jocelyn, daily more able to
+contemplate Sally objectively as his honeymoon grew longer, began to
+consider.</p>
+
+<p>There was no time to lose. He took her in hand. He started by attacking
+her h’s, whose absence had early become acutely distressing to him.
+Every day he devoted an hour the first thing after breakfast to them,
+making her talk to him, to her regret, for she by then well knew that
+little good came of talk, and patiently, each time she dropped one,
+picking it up and handing it back to her, so to speak, with careful
+marginal comments.</p>
+
+<p>He found her most obtuse. Ordinary talk wasn’t enough. He had to invent
+sentences, special sentences for her to learn by heart and practise on,
+with little pitfalls in their middles which she was to avoid.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed incapable of avoiding anything. Into each pitfall Sally
+invariably fell; and unwilling to believe that she couldn’t keep out of
+them if she really tried, Jocelyn said the sentences over and over again
+to her, obstinately persevering, determined she should learn.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hefty Harry hurries after his hat.</i> Sally drew in long breaths, and
+blew them out again at the beginning of each word, hoping they would
+turn into h’s, though for<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_64">{64}</a></span> the life of her she couldn’t see any
+difference between the way she rendered <i>Hefty Harry</i> and the way
+Jocelyn did.</p>
+
+<p><i>Husbands inhabit heaven.</i> This was another one, worse than <i>Hefty
+Harry</i>, because it wasn’t enough to blow out her breath at the beginning
+of each word, but she had somehow to get it out in the middle of the
+middle one as well; besides, husbands didn’t inhabit heaven till they
+were dead, and Jocelyn’s habit of harping on heaven upset her, for
+heaven meant death first, and ever since her mother’s death, at which
+Sally had been present, she had had the poorest opinion of the whole
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>During the lesson Jocelyn carefully gazed out of the window, keeping his
+eyes off her, because this was serious, this was important, and mustn’t
+be interfered with by her face. There he sat, patient but determined,
+holding her hand so as to reassure her, saying the sentences slowly and
+distinctly, while Sally, moist with effort, diligently blew. Why was it
+so important? she vaguely wondered. He seemed to love her a lot,
+especially in the evenings, and kept on telling her at the times when
+his ears were red how happy he was, so what more did he want? What was
+the use of bothering over things like h’s, which he declared were there
+but of which she could see no sign? She and her father, they had never
+worried about them, and they had got along all right. But Sally was
+docile; Sally was obedient and goodnatured; Sally earnestly wished to
+give people what they wanted; and if what Husband wanted was h’s, then
+she would try her utmost to provide them. If only she were quite clear
+as to what they were! Perhaps, by plodding, she would some day discover.</p>
+
+<p>She plodded; and the nearest she got to criticism of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_65">{65}</a></span> this new
+development in her life was occasionally, when after breakfast Jocelyn
+called her over to the window, where he had placed two chairs in
+readiness for the lesson and pulled down the blind below the level of
+her head, occasionally, very occasionally, to murmur to herself, ‘Them
+h’s.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>But it wasn’t only her h’s, it wasn’t only the way she pronounced the
+few words that seemed to be at her disposal; there were other things
+that disquieted Jocelyn, as he awoke more and more from the wild first
+worship of her beauty. He appeared to be surrounded, out of doors and
+in, by an increasing number of difficulties. There was that business of
+not being able to go out without becoming the instant centre of the
+entire attention of St. Mawes,—most painful to Jocelyn, who had a fixed
+notion, implanted in him early in the decent cover of Almond Tree
+Cottage, that the truly well-bred were never conspicuous. How
+unpleasant, how extraordinarily unpleasant when, the morning lesson over
+and the need for exercise imperative, he went round to the garage to
+fetch the car, to find on his return the sea-wall opposite their
+lodgings black with expectant loungers; how unpleasant, how
+extraordinarily unpleasant to have to hurry Sally into the thing, as if
+she were the centre figure of a <i>cause célèbre</i> leaving the Law Courts;
+and the car, being an old one bought second-hand, sometimes wouldn’t
+start—twice that happened—and then to see how those loungers sprang
+into life and flocked across to help! Jocelyn, used only to quiet
+comings and goings and no one taking the least notice of anything he
+did, used, in fact to being what<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_66">{66}</a></span> his mother described as well-bred,
+felt as if he had suddenly turned into a circus.</p>
+
+<p>And indoors, too, he had difficulties, apart from and in addition to the
+difficulties at the lessons, for Sally showed a tendency, mild but
+unmistakable, to coalesce with the Cupps. She wanted to help Mrs. Cupp
+make the bed in the morning, she tried to clear away the breakfast, so
+as to save her feet, as she put it, and once, on some excuse or other,
+she actually left Jocelyn by himself in the parlour and got away into
+the kitchen, where he found her presently, on going to look, kissing a
+fat and hideous child that could only be a little Cupp.</p>
+
+<p>To do her justice Mrs. Cupp in no way that Jocelyn could see encouraged
+this; on the contrary, she seemed a particularly stand-offish sort of
+woman, who not only knew her own place but knew Sally’s as well, and
+wished to keep her in it. Unfortunate that Sally should be, apparently,
+so entirely without that knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn did his best to impart it. ‘You belong to me now, Sally,’ he
+explained, ‘and my place and sphere is your place and sphere, and my
+relations and friends your relations and friends. I don’t go and sit in
+kitchens, nor am I friends, beyond what every one is in regard to that
+class, with the Cupps. I don’t, and therefore you mustn’t.’</p>
+
+<p>Was this speech snobbish? He hoped not; he trusted not. He despised
+snobbishness. His mother had most carefully taught him to. She would
+shudder at the mere word, and the shudder had got into his childhood’s
+bones.</p>
+
+<p>Sally gave herself great pains to understand, looking at him attentively
+while he spoke and coming to the conclusion that what Usband was driving
+at was that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_67">{67}</a></span> she had got to sit quiet and remember she was now a lady.
+She sat quiet, remembering it. She made no attempt at any further
+budging from her place, even when Mrs. Cupp dropped things off the
+overloaded tray at her very feet, and her fingers itched to pick them
+up. She managed not to; she managed to take no notice whatever of them,
+and, bending her head over the paper Jocelyn had written her lesson out
+on in a fair round hand, would bury herself in it instead, saying it out
+loud as he had bidden her, conning it diligently.</p>
+
+<p>The room re-echoed with <i>Hefty Harry</i>, and the deep preliminary drawings
+in and blowings out of breaths that were meant to become h’s, and never
+did.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_68">{68}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">It</span> was impossible for young Carruthers, having been vouchsafed a vision
+of Sally, to stop himself from trying to have another. He was drawn as
+by a magnet. His walks, after that Sunday, took him daily down to St.
+Mawes, where, having briskly gone the length of the front swinging his
+stick, he would lean awhile—as long as he dared without becoming
+conspicuous—against the sea-wall, smoking and ostensibly considering
+the horizon, but really missing nobody who came or went along the road.
+The Sealyham Sally was left at home, but other dogs were brought because
+they are such wonderful introducers, and the road to acquaintanceship,
+young Carruthers knew, is paved with good dogs.</p>
+
+<p>He wasn’t sure that any profit would come of it if he did see the
+honeymooners and get into conversation,—probably not; but he couldn’t
+help it; he had to try; he was drawn. And very soon he discovered which
+house they were staying in, because the other loungers, smoking and
+gazing out to sea, rare figures at ordinary times and scattered sparsely
+over a quarter of a mile, were now considerably increased in numbers,
+and thickened into a knot at one particular point. That point,
+Carruthers unhesitatingly concluded, was where she lived.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_69">{69}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Unwilling to be seen doing this sort of thing, he held himself aloof
+from the knot, smoking his pipe at a decent distance; but none the less
+nothing escaped him that happened at the windows or the door of the
+little house. The house, he knew, for his family had lived in the
+neighbourhood for many years, was the house of the fisherman Cupp. And
+he thought, thrice happy Cupp, and three times thrice happy Mrs.
+Cupp,—for she would be constantly in and out of the very room, and be
+able to look at—no, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t say Sally, not with his
+own four-legged Sally so grotesquely profaning the name.</p>
+
+<p>He was all wrong, however, about the Cupps. They were not at all happy;
+at least, Mrs. Cupp wasn’t, and unless Mrs. Cupp was happy Cupp, though
+he only dimly apprehended this truth and explained the fact of his
+discomfort in many ways that were not the right ones, couldn’t be happy
+either. For Mrs. Cupp, who beheld Sally with astonishment on her first
+appearance, no one in the least like that ever yet having been seen in
+St. Mawes, quickly began to have doubts as to whether her lodgers were
+married. Everybody in St. Mawes was married, except those who were going
+to be or had been, and it disturbed Mrs. Cupp terribly, who all her life
+had held her head high and looked people in the face, to think she was
+perhaps harbouring and cooking for a person who was neither virgin,
+wife, nor widow.</p>
+
+<p>For a brief time, so brief that it could be counted in hours, Sally’s
+nightgown had reassured her, because it was essentially the nightgown of
+the really married, a nightgown that Mrs. Cupp herself might have worn,
+and the most moral laundress had not to blush over. Up to the chin, down
+to the toes, long-sleeved, stiff, solid,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_70">{70}</a></span> edged at the throat and wrists
+with plain scallops, this nightgown did at first help Mrs. Cupp to hope
+that her lodgers were all right; but back came her doubts, and more
+insistent than before, when she perceived that Cupp too was noticing the
+young person’s appearance, and, though he said nothing, was beginning to
+behave all sly; and they deepened finally into certainty on her becoming
+aware of those thickening clusters of loungers constantly hanging about
+opposite her house. Even young Mr. Carruthers. Oh, she saw him plain
+enough, and knew all right what he was after; for she hadn’t been to the
+pictures over at Falmouth for nothing, and she had learned from them
+that that sort of girl got men come buzzing round her as if she were a
+pot of honey and they just so many flies. Cupp shouldn’t, though. Cupp
+shouldn’t get buzzing. Cupp, after fifteen years of being a steady
+husband, wasn’t going to be let buzz—not much, said Mrs. Cupp to
+herself, scouring her kitchen with violence.</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing to him, however, for two, as she would soon show him,
+could play at his game of acting sly; but when at the end of the first
+fortnight of the Lukes’ stay Jocelyn, on her coming in to clear away the
+breakfast, got out his money and was preparing as usual to pay her the
+next week’s lodging in advance, she told him without wasting words that
+the rooms were let.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let?’ repeated Jocelyn, taken aback.</p>
+
+<p>‘There’s an end to everything,’ said Mrs. Cupp enigmatically, as she
+cleared the table with great swift swoops.</p>
+
+<p>‘But,’ protested Jocelyn, annoyed and surprised, ‘we intended to stay at
+least another week.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I say there’s an end to everything,’ said Mrs. Cupp<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_71">{71}</a></span> even more
+emphatically, crowding the plates noisily on to a tray. ‘And one of
+them’s my patience.’</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn stared. Sally, raising her head from her daily task, on which
+she was at that moment engaged, looked on with the air of a mild,
+disinterested angel.</p>
+
+<p>‘But what on earth has happened? What’s the matter?’ asked Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>‘You only got to cast an eye out of the winder to see what’s the
+matter,’ said Mrs. Cupp, jerking her elbow in its direction. ‘<i>They</i>
+don’t collect like that round parties that’s respectable.’</p>
+
+<p>And dropping some forks off the overloaded tray she clattered out of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn turned swiftly to Sally. ‘You see?’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>‘See wot?’ asked Sally, who was about to stoop and pick up the forks,
+but remembered not to just in time.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; see what, indeed. That it was her fault? That this disgrace had
+been brought on him through her fault? Was that, Jocelyn asked himself,
+shocked at the tempest of injustice that had for an instant swept him
+off his feet, what he wanted her to see?</p>
+
+<p>‘I meant,’ he said, ashamed of his unfairness, ‘you heard. You did hear,
+didn’t you, what the horrible woman was saying?’</p>
+
+<p>Sally nodded. ‘Thinks we ain’t married,’ she said. She seemed quite
+undisturbed. ‘Well, it ain’t much use thinkin’ we ain’t when we are,’
+she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>‘Unfortunately she’s sure we’re not, so that we are being turned out,’
+said Jocelyn, dropping her hand, which he had taken, for this placidity,
+which seemed to him evidence of inability to grasp a situation, instead
+of soothing made him angry again.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_72">{72}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He strode across to the window, and grabbing at the blind pulled it down
+still lower. How inexpressibly humiliating to be turned out, how
+unendurable to have people thinking Sally wasn’t respectable, and that
+he, <i>he</i> of all people, would come off with a girl for that sort of
+loathsome lark.</p>
+
+<p>‘It ain’t much use bein’ sure, when I got my marriage lines,’ said Sally
+with the same calm. ‘Let alone my weddin’ ring.’ And she added
+complacently after a minute, ‘Upstairs in my box.’ And after a further
+minute, ‘I mean, my marriage lines.’</p>
+
+<p>Then, supposing that the interruption to the lesson might now be
+regarded as over, and that it would therefore be expected of her that
+she should get on with it, she applied herself once more with patient
+industry to her task.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>H</i>-usbands <i>h</i>-in’abit <i>h</i>-eaven,’ she began again, assiduously
+blowing.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, my God,’ said Jocelyn, under his breath.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>They left St. Mawes during the dinner hour. When Jocelyn told her they
+were going to leave almost at once, and she had better pack, Sally
+merely said Right O, and went upstairs to do it.</p>
+
+<p>Right O, thought Jocelyn. Right O. Not a question, not a comment of any
+kind. Convenient, of course, in a way, but was this companionship? Could
+there be much character behind such resistlessness? Yet if she had asked
+questions and made comments he would, he knew, have flown at her; so
+that he was being unfair again and unreasonable, and he hated himself.</p>
+
+<p>He usedn’t to be unfair and unreasonable, he thought,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_73">{73}</a></span> standing in front
+of the fireless grate, a wrathful eye on the loungers clotted on the
+other side of the road; and as for being angry, such a disturbance of
+one’s balance, whenever he had observed it in others, had seemed to him
+simply the sign of imperfect education. The uneducated were swept by
+furies, not scientific thinkers. Now just the contrary was happening,
+and the uneducated Sally remained serene, while he was in an almost
+constant condition of emotion of one kind or another. Marriage, he
+supposed gloomily; marriage. The invasion of the spirit by the flesh. So
+absurd, too, the whole thing—God, how absurd when he thought of it in
+the morning, and remembered the cringing worship of the night before.
+Absurd, absurd, this nightly abdication of the mind, this abject bowing
+down of the higher before the lower.... The worst of it was he didn’t
+seem able to help himself. Whatever his theories were in the daytime,
+whatever his critical detachment, he only had to be close to Sally at
+night....</p>
+
+<p>And in the daytime, instead of at least in the daytime being tranquil
+and able to get back his balance, every sort of annoyance crowded on
+him. Were all honeymoons like this? Impossible. They hadn’t got Sally in
+them. It was Sally who——</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and there she was again, not ten minutes after having
+gone up. For Sally’s things being of the kind that are quick to pack,
+owing to their fewness, she was ready and down before he had had time,
+hardly, to be sure she was going to keep him waiting. So that he
+resented this too, because he wasn’t able to be angry with her over
+something definite and legitimate. He wanted to have a legitimate excuse
+for being angry with her, for it was really all her fault that they had
+been<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_74">{74}</a></span> insulted and turned out. Of course it was. If he had been with his
+mother, Mrs. Cupp would have been deference itself, and that confounded
+sea-wall empty. It was all Sally. Looking like that. Looking so
+different from any one else. Looking so entirely different from the
+accepted idea of a decent man’s wife. Besides, she ought anyhow to have
+had more things to pack. That one small tin trunk of hers was a disgrace
+to him. Beastly thing, how he hated it. All yellow. He must get her a
+proper trunk, and fill it properly, before he could appear with her at
+Almond Tree Cottage. There certainly were drawbacks to taking a wife in
+her shift, as one’s forbears called it.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, when she came in ready to start, she looked so astonishingly
+<i>right</i>, tin trunk or not, and quite apart from her face. She looked
+right; her clothes did. She might have been a young duchess, thought
+Jocelyn, who had never seen a duchess. He hadn’t an idea how the miracle
+was worked. Not by dressmakers and cleverness, of that he was certain,
+for the poor Pinners would have to buy clothes off the peg. Perhaps
+because she was so reedy tall. Perhaps because of the way she moved.
+Perhaps because she was so slender that there hardly seemed to be
+anything inside the clothes, and they couldn’t help, left in this way
+almost to themselves, hanging in graceful folds. But <i>he</i> knew well
+enough what was inside them—the delicate young loveliness, just
+beginning to flower; and at the thought his anger all left him, and he
+didn’t care any more about the Cupps or the sea-wall, and the feeling of
+humility came over him that came over him each time he saw her beauty,
+and he went to her and took both her hands, her little red hands, the
+only part of her that had been<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_75">{75}</a></span> got at by life and spoilt, and kissed
+them, and said, ‘Forgive me, Sally.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Wot you been doin’?’ asked Sally, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not loving you enough,’ said Jocelyn, kissing her hands again.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now <i>don’t</i>,’ said Sally very earnestly, ‘<i>don’t</i> you go thinkin’ that,
+now——’ for the idea that she, who had been being loved almost more
+than she could stand on this trip, and wouldn’t have been able to stand
+if it hadn’t been for knowing it was her bounden duty, might have to be
+loved still more if Mr. Luke got it into his head that she ought to be,
+excessively alarmed her.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>The departure was not unmarked, as is sometimes said, by incident. Cupp,
+when the luggage had to be brought down, wasn’t to be found, Mrs. Cupp
+seemed incommunicably absorbed over a saucepan, and Jocelyn, with some
+sharpness refusing Sally’s help, whose instinct after years spent doing
+such things was to lay hold of anything that had to be laid hold of and
+drag it, got the tin box and his suitcase downstairs himself, and said
+Damn very loud when he knocked his head at the turn of the little
+staircase.</p>
+
+<p>Sally heard him, and was enormously surprised and shocked. This was
+swearing. This was what she had been most carefully taught to look upon
+as real sin. Nothing else had shocked her on the honeymoon, because she
+had nothing to go by when it came to husbands other than her father’s
+assurance that, except in the daytime, they weren’t gentlemen, and her
+own solemn vows in church to obey; but she knew all about swearing. It
+was wrong. It was strictly forbidden in God’s Holy<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_76">{76}</a></span> Word. That and drink
+were the two evils spoken of most frequently in her home, and with most
+condemnation. They went hand in hand. Drink ruined people; and, on their
+way to ruin and when they had got to it, they swore.</p>
+
+<p>This is what Sally had been brought up to believe, so that when,
+standing in the doorway of the parlour watching Jocelyn labouring down
+the stairs with her trunk and longing to give him a hand, she heard him,
+after knocking his head, say a most loud clear damn, she was horrified.
+Her husband swearing. And not been drinking, either. Just had his tea as
+usual at breakfast, and been with her ever since, so she knew he
+couldn’t have. Next thing she’d have to listen to would be God’s name
+being taken in vain; and at the thought of that the blood of all the
+Pinners, that strictly God-fearing, Sunday-observing, Bible-loving race,
+surged to her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. <i>Luke</i>!’ she exclaimed, throwing his teaching as to the avoidance
+of this name to the winds.</p>
+
+<p>‘Hullo?’ said Jocelyn, stopping short on the stairs and peering down at
+her round the edge of the tin trunk, arrested by the note in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>‘You didn’t ought to swear,’ said Sally, taking all her courage in both
+hands, her face scarlet. ‘There’s no call for it, and you didn’t ought
+to swear—you <i>know</i> you didn’t ought to.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I only said damn,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Wouldn’t you, if you bashed your
+head against this confounded sticking out bit of ceiling?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. <i>Luke</i>!’ cried Sally again, her eyes filling with tears. That he
+should not only say bad words himself but think her capable of them....
+Often she had been<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_77">{77}</a></span> bewildered by things he said and did, but now she
+looked up at him through the tears in her eyes in a complete
+non-comprehension. It was as though she were boxed away from him behind
+a great thick wall, or cut off across a great big river, alone on an
+island, while he stood far off and unreachable on the opposite bank, and
+she had somehow to get to him, to stay close to him, because he was her
+husband. Dimly these images presented themselves to her mind, dimly and
+confused, but nevertheless producing a very clear anxiety and
+discomfort.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sorry,’ said Jocelyn, carefully coming down the remaining stairs
+and depositing the trunk sideways in the narrow passage, for though the
+trunk, as a trunk, was small, the passage, as a passage, was smaller;
+and in his turn as he looked at her he grew red, for he had just
+remembered that he never said damn in the presence of his mother or of
+the other ladies of South Winch, which was a place one didn’t swear in,
+however much and unexpectedly he chanced to hurt himself. Was this
+<i>laissez aller</i> in Sally’s presence due to his consciousness that she
+wasn’t a lady, or due to the fact that she was his wife? Jocelyn
+disliked both these explanations, and accordingly, in his turn, grew
+red.</p>
+
+<p>‘Forgive me, Sally,’ he said for the second time within half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>This time she had no doubt as to what had to be forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>‘Promise not to do it no more,’ she begged. ‘Promise now—do.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh Sally, I’ll promise anything, anything,’ said Jocelyn staring at
+her, caught again into emotion by the extraordinary beauty of her
+troubled face.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father says,’ said Sally, still looking at him through<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_78">{78}</a></span> tears, ‘that if
+somebody swears, then they drinks. An’ if they drinks, then they swears.
+An’ it goes ‘and in ‘and, and they don’t stop ever, once they starts,
+till they gets to——.’</p>
+
+<p>She broke off, and stood looking at him in silence. The picture was too
+awful a one. She couldn’t go on.</p>
+
+<p>‘What do they get to, my angel, my beautiful angel?’ asked Jocelyn,
+kissing her softly, not listening any more.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ell,’ whispered Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now <i>you’re</i> swearing,’ murmured Jocelyn dreamily, no longer fully
+conscious, shutting her eyes with kisses. ‘Your sweet, sweet eyes,’ he
+murmured, kissing them over and over again.</p>
+
+<p>No, Sally couldn’t make head or tail of Mr. Luke. Better not try. Better
+give it up. <i>She</i> swearing?</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>She longed very much for the company of Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father,’ she thought, while Jocelyn was fetching the car, and she was
+standing alone in the passage watching the luggage, for she had been
+bred carefully never to leave luggage an instant by itself,
+‘Father—<i>’e</i> could tell me.’</p>
+
+<p>What she wanted Mr. Pinner to tell her wasn’t at all clear in her mind,
+but she was quite clear that he would tell her if he could, whereas
+Jocelyn, who certainly could, wouldn’t. Mr. Luke, she felt in her bones,
+even if she had the courage to ask him anything would only be angry with
+her because she didn’t already know it; yet how could she know it if
+nobody had ever told her? At home they usedn’t to jump down one’s throat
+if one asked a question. ‘Snug,’ thought Sally, her head<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_79">{79}</a></span> drooping in
+wistful recollection, while with the point of her umbrella she
+affectionately stroked the sides of the tin trunk, ‘snug at ’ome in the
+shop—snug at ’ome in the lil’ shop—’ and whatever else being married
+to a gentleman was, it wasn’t snug.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage to a gentleman—why, you never knew where you were from one
+moment to another; nothing settled about it; no cut and come again
+feeling; all ups and downs, without, as one might say, any middles; all
+either cross looks or, without warning, red ears, kisses, and
+oh-Sallyings. It was as if words weren’t the same when a gentleman got
+hold of them. They seemed somehow to separate. Queer, thought Sally,
+wistfully stroking the tin trunk.</p>
+
+<p>She groped round in her hazy thoughts. She was in a strange country, and
+there was a fog, and yet she had somehow to get somewhere. <i>She</i>
+swearing?</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>The car came round, and Jocelyn came in.</p>
+
+<p>‘Hasn’t Cupp turned up yet?’ he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Sally shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>‘I want him to help me cord the luggage on,’ said Jocelyn, squeezing
+past between her and the trunk.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can,’ said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘No you can’t,’ snapped Jocelyn, striding to the kitchen door and
+opening it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is Mr. Cupp anywhere about?’ he haughtily asked the figure bent over
+the saucepan. He needed his help, or nothing would have induced him to
+speak to Mrs. Cupp again.</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said Mrs. Cupp, without ceasing to stir; but being a good woman,
+who tried always to speak the truth,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_80">{80}</a></span> she amplified this into accuracy.
+‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>E’s somewhere, but he ain’t about,’ said Mrs. Cupp.</p>
+
+<p>For, having, a short way with her when it came to husbands, she had
+turned the key that morning on Cupp while he was still asleep, well
+knowing that he wouldn’t dare get banging and shouting lest the
+neighbours should find out his wife had locked him in, and his shame
+become public. Besides, he was aware of the reason, and would keep quiet
+all right, she having had a straight talk with him the night before.</p>
+
+<p>Cupp had been discomfited.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you go thinkin’ you’re goin’ to get adulteratin’ at your age and
+after ’avin’ been a decent ’usband these fifteen years,’ said Mrs. Cupp.</p>
+
+<p>’Oo’s been adulteratin’?’ growled Cupp, strong in the knowledge that he
+hadn’t, but weak in the consciousness that he would have liked to have.</p>
+
+<p>‘In your ’eart you ’ave, Cupp,’ said Mrs. Cupp, who had her Bible at her
+fingers’ ends, ‘and Scripture says it’s the same thing.’</p>
+
+<p>Cupp at this sighed deeply, for he knew it wasn’t.</p>
+
+<p>‘Scripture says,’ said Mrs. Cupp, sitting up very straight in bed and
+addressing Cupp’s back as he lay speechless beside her, ‘that ’ooso
+looks at a woman an’ lusts after ’er ’as committed adultery with ’er in
+’is ’eart. Ain’t you been lookin’ at that there girl and lustin’ after
+’er in your ’eart, Cupp? Ain’t you? Why, I <i>seen</i> you. Seen you doin’ it
+round doors, seen you doin’ it out of winders. You been adulteratin’ all
+over the place. <i>I’ll</i> learn you to get lustin’——’</p>
+
+<p>And when she went downstairs in the morning she locked him in.</p>
+
+<p>So Jocelyn had to carry out the luggage himself,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_81">{81}</a></span> bidding Sally stay
+where she was and wait quietly till he called her, and cording it on
+without the assistance, curtly refused, of the loungers against the
+sea-wall.</p>
+
+<p>His mother’s luggage on their little holiday jaunts had been so neat, so
+easily handled, fixed on in two minutes; but the tin trunk was a
+difficult, slippery shape, and anyhow an ignoble object. Every aspect of
+it annoyed him. It was like going about with a servant’s luggage, he
+thought, wrestling with the thing, which was too high and not long
+enough, and refused to fit in with his suitcase.</p>
+
+<p>‘Off?’ inquired one of the loungers affably.</p>
+
+<p>‘Looks like it,’ said Jocelyn, tugging at the cord.</p>
+
+<p>What a question. Silly ass. ‘Do you mind standing a little further
+back?’ he said with icy anger. ‘You see, if you come so close I can’t
+get——’ he tugged—‘any——’ he tugged, setting his
+teeth—‘<i>purchase</i>——’</p>
+
+<p>Nobody moved; neither the particular lounger he was speaking to, nor the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>‘Upon my word, sir,’ said Jocelyn, jerking round furiously, ready to
+fight the lot of them.</p>
+
+<p>But they were not attending to him. Their eyes were all fixed on the
+parlour window, to which Sally, so anxious not to keep Jocelyn waiting a
+minute when he called as to risk disobeying him, had stolen to see how
+near ready he was.</p>
+
+<p>There she stood, almost full length, the blind, now that they were
+leaving, drawn up, and the sun shining straight on her. St. Mawes had
+not had such a chance before. Its other glimpses of her had been
+flashes. Nor had the place in all its history ever till now been visited
+by beauty. Pretty girls had passed through it and disappeared, or stayed
+in it and disappeared equally<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_82">{82}</a></span> completely because of growing old, and
+there was a tradition that in the last century the doctor had had a wife
+who for a brief time was very pretty, and during that brief time caused
+considerable uproar; but no one living had seen her, it was all hearsay
+from the last generation. This at the window wasn’t hearsay. This was
+the thing itself, the rare, heavenly thing at its most exquisite moment.
+Naturally the loungers took no further heed of Jocelyn; naturally with
+one accord they lifted up their eyes, and greedily drank in.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn gave the cord one final and very vicious tug, knotted it
+somehow, and ran indoors.</p>
+
+<p>‘What on earth you must go and stand at the window for——’ he
+exclaimed, hurrying into the room and catching her by the arm. ‘I was
+going to fetch you in a minute. Come along, then—let’s start, let’s get
+out of this confounded place. Ready? Got everything? I don’t want any
+delays once we’re outside——’</p>
+
+<p>Hastily he looked round the room; there was nothing there. Hastily he
+looked over Sally; she seemed complete. Then he rushed her out to the
+car exactly as if, head downwards, they were both plunging into
+something most unpleasant which had to be gone through before they could
+escape to freedom.</p>
+
+<p>‘Monstrous, monstrous,’ said Jocelyn to himself. ‘The whole thing is
+incredible and fantastic. I might be the impresario of a prima donna or
+a cinema star’—and he remembered, though at the time, like so many
+other things, it had drifted past his ears unnoticed, that that
+grotesque creature his father-in-law had said Sally had a gift for
+collecting crowds.</p>
+
+<p>How painfully true, thought Jocelyn, plunging into the one waiting
+outside. What a regrettable gift. Of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_83">{83}</a></span> all gifts this was the one he
+could best have done without in anybody he was obliged to be with; for
+he hated crowds, he hated public attention, he was thin-skinned and
+sensitive directly anything pulled him out of the happy oblivion of his
+work. As far as he had got in life, and it seemed to him a long way, he
+judged that quite the best of all conditions was to sit in an eye-proof
+shell, invisible to and unconscious of what is usually called the world.
+And speculate; and discover; and verify.</p>
+
+<p>Well, no use thinking of that now.</p>
+
+<p>‘Get in, get in,’ he urged under his breath, helping Sally with such
+energy that she was clumsier at it than usual. ‘Never mind the rug—you
+can arrange that afterwards. Here—I’ll hold the umbrella——’</p>
+
+<p>They got off. He could drive perfectly well, yet they got off only after
+a series of forward bounds and the stopping of his engine. But they did
+get off—through the loungers, past the windows with heads at them,
+round the sharp corner beyond the houses, up the extraordinarily steep
+hill.</p>
+
+<p>Sally held her breath. This hill terrified her. Suppose the car, which
+each time seemed very nearly to stop on it, stopped quite, couldn’t go
+on at all, and they rolled down backwards, down, down, straight into the
+sea?</p>
+
+<p>But they reached the top safely. It wasn’t the car that rolled down
+backwards that day; it was the tin trunk, and with it Jocelyn’s
+suitcase.</p>
+
+<p>Unconscious, they drove on towards Truro.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_84">{84}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">They</span> drove in total silence. Jocelyn had much to think of, and not for
+anything would Sally have opened her mouth when Mr. Luke’s was shut in
+that particular tight line. He had see-sawed back again, she knew, and
+was at the opposite end to what she called his oh-Sally condition.
+Besides, she never did say anything when she was in the car, however
+much he tried to make her, for from the beginning, even before there
+were hills, it had frightened her. Cars hadn’t come Mr. Pinner’s way,
+and, except for the one drive with Jocelyn that first day of his
+courting, she had had no experience of them till now.</p>
+
+<p>This one gave her little joy. It went so fast; it had hairsbreadth
+escapes at corners; it had twice run over chickens, causing words with
+other angry gentlemen, and it was full inside, where she had to sit, of
+important and dangerous-looking handles and pedals that had to have the
+rug and her dress and her feet and her umbrella carefully kept clear of
+them, or there would be that which she called to herself, catching her
+breath with fear, an accident.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn had said once, very peremptorily and making hurried movements
+with his left hand, ‘For goodness sake don’t let that rug get mixed up
+with the gears——’ for the car was a Morris-Cowley, and what Sally
+thought<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_85">{85}</a></span> of with anxiety as them ’andles were between her and Jocelyn,
+and it had been enough. The tone of his voice on that occasion had
+revealed to her that a combination of rug and gears, and therefore of
+anything else and gears, such as dress, feet or umbrella, would be
+instantly disastrous, and he never had to say it again.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the honeymoon she sat squeezed together as far away from
+the alarming things as she could, the rug tucked with anxious care
+tightly round her legs, and her feet cramped up in the corner. She was
+very uncomfortable, but that mattered nothing to Sally. Even if she
+hadn’t been afraid of what might happen, her own comfort, when the
+wishes of her elders and betters were in question, wouldn’t have been
+given a thought. The Pinners were like that. Their humility and patience
+would have been remarkable even in a saint, and as for their bumps of
+veneration, they were so big that that country would indeed be easy to
+govern which should be populated by many Pinners.</p>
+
+<p>The late Mrs. Pinner, not of course herself a Pinner proper, but of the
+more turbulent blood of a race from Tottenham called Skew, had disliked
+these virtues in Mr. Pinner, and thought and frequently told him that a
+shopkeeper shouldn’t have them at all. A shopkeeper’s job, she often
+explained, was to leave off being poor as soon as possible, and Mr.
+Pinner never at any time left off being that—all because, Mrs. Pinner
+asserted, he had no go; and having no go was her way of describing
+patience and humility. But in Sally, when these qualities began to
+appear, she encouraged them, for they made for the child’s safety, they
+kept her obedient and unquestioning, they sent her cheerfully to bed
+when other girls were going to the pictures, and caused her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_86">{86}</a></span> to be happy
+for hours on end by herself in the back parlour performing simple
+duties. Besides, though Mrs. Pinner would have been hard put to it to
+give it a name, in Sally patience and humility were somehow different
+from what they were in Pinner. They held their heads up more. They
+didn’t get their tails between their legs. They were in fact in Sally,
+though Mrs. Pinner could only feel this dumbly, never getting anywhere
+near thinking it, not abject things that quivered in corners, but
+gracious things that came to meet one with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Filled, then, as ever, with these meek virtues, Sally, squeezed into as
+little space as possible, and bracing herself, having got safely to the
+top of the hill, to meet the next terror, which was the twisty,
+slippery, narrow steep road down to the ferry, and the twisty, slippery,
+narrow steep road up from it on the other side, and after that the
+terror of every corner, round each of which she was sure would lurk a
+broad-beamed charabanc,—was carried in the Morris-Cowley in the
+direction of Truro. Here, Jocelyn supposed, they had better stay the
+night. Here there were hotels, and he would be able to consider what he
+would do next.</p>
+
+<p>He urged the little car along as fast as it would go, for he was
+possessed by the feeling that if he only got away fast enough he would
+get away altogether. But get away altogether from what? Certainly from
+St. Mawes, and Mrs. Cupp, and the loungers who all of course also
+supposed he and Sally weren’t married. That was the first, the immediate
+necessity. He had not only been turned out, but turned out, he said to
+himself, with contumely,—no use saying it to Sally, because she
+wouldn’t know what contumely was, and it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_87">{87}</a></span> did seem to him really rather
+absurd to be going about with somebody who had never heard even of such
+an ordinary thing as contumely.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn’t her fault, of course, but the turning out and the contumely
+were obviously because of her; there was no denying that. His mother
+would have been sitting in those rooms at this moment, the most prized
+and cherished of lodgers. Obviously the whole thing was Sally’s fault,
+though he quite admitted she couldn’t help it. But it merely made it
+worse that she couldn’t, for it took away one’s confidence in the
+future, besides making it unfair to say anything unkind.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling that if he did say anything it might easily be unkind, he kept
+his mouth tight shut, and drove in total silence; and Sally, whenever
+the road was fairly straight and could be left for a moment unwatched,
+looked at him out of the corners of her eyelashes, and was very sorry
+for Usband, who seemed upset again.</p>
+
+<p>‘Stomach,’ concluded Sally, who could find no other explanation for
+Jocelyn’s ups and downs; and wondered whether she would ever dare bring
+to his notice a simple remedy her father, who sometimes suffered too but
+with less reserve, always had by him.</p>
+
+<p>Well, there was one thing to be said for all this, thought Jocelyn, his
+stern eye fixed straight ahead, his brow severe, as he hurried the car
+along the road to the ferry—he was now awake. At last. High time too.
+Till then, from the day he first saw Sally, in spite of moments of grave
+spiritual disturbance and annoyance, he had been in a feverish dream.
+Out of this dream Mrs. Cupp’s conduct had shaken him, and he believed he
+might now be regarded as through with the phase in which he thought of
+nothing but the present and let the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_88">{88}</a></span> future go hang. Now he had to
+think. Decisions were being forced on him. Holidays end, but life goes
+on; honeymoons finish, but wives don’t. Here he was with a wife, and
+upon his soul, thought Jocelyn, precious little else,—no career, no
+plans, no lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>What a position. The lodgings, of course, were a small thing, but how
+being turned out of them rankled! His life had been so dignified. He and
+his mother had never once come across a member of the lower classes who
+was rude. At South Winch all was order, decency, esteem in their own set
+and respectfulness from everybody else. At Ananias what order, what
+decency, what esteem, what respectfulness. Impossible at Ananias,
+however modest one might be, not to know that one was looked upon as a
+present pride and a future adornment, with the Master at the top of the
+scale invariably remembering who one was and graciously smiling, and at
+the bottom the almost affectionate attentions of one’s warm and panting
+bedmaker. Impossible, too, not to know, though this, except for the
+pleasure it gave his mother, was of no sort of consequence, that South
+Winch regarded him with interest. These attitudes hadn’t at all
+disarranged Jocelyn’s grave balance, hadn’t at all turned his head,
+because of his real and complete absorption in his work; but they had
+been there—a fitting and seemly background, a sunny, sheltering wall
+against which he could expand, in quiet security, the flowers of his
+ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>Now here he was, kicked out into the street—it amounted to that—by a
+person of the utmost obscurity called Cupp. Conceive it. Conceive having
+got into a position in which anybody called Cupp could humiliate him.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_89">{89}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He banged his fist down on the electric horn as an outlet to his
+feelings. It gave a brief squeak, and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>‘Horn’s gone wrong,’ he said, pressing it hard but getting nothing more
+out of it.</p>
+
+<p>Sally’s heart gave a thump. To have anything go wrong at such a moment!
+For they were on that road cut in the hillside, narrow, twisty, slippery
+and steep, which leads on the St. Mawes side down through a wood,
+charming that late March afternoon with the mild sun slanting through
+the pale, grey-green branches of naked trees across flocks of primroses,
+to the King Harry Ferry. Far down on Sally’s side she could have seen,
+if she had dared look, the placid waters of the Fal, unruffled in their
+deep shelter by the wind that was blowing along the open country at the
+top. Her anxious eyes, however, were not in search of scenery—at no
+time was she anything of a hand at scenery,—they were strained towards
+each fresh corner as it came in sight; for one day they had met a
+charabanc round one of those very corners, a great wide horror taking up
+nearly all the road. But luckily that day they were coming up the hill,
+not going down it, and so they had the inside, and not the unprotected,
+terrifying outside edge. Now they were outside, and suppose....</p>
+
+<p>‘Horn’s gone wrong,’ said Jocelyn, just as she was thinking that.</p>
+
+<p>But did it matter? she asked herself, seeking comfort. She tried to hope
+it didn’t. Horns weren’t like wheels. One didn’t depend on them for
+getting along. They just made noises. Useful, as one’s voice was useful,
+but not essential, like one’s legs.</p>
+
+<p>No, it didn’t matter much, evidently, for Usband was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_90">{90}</a></span> saying he would
+put it right while they were on the ferry,—and then her heart gave a
+much bigger thump, and seemed to leap into her mouth and crouch there
+trembling, for there, round the very next corner, a few yards in front
+of them, was another charabanc.</p>
+
+<p>‘My gracious goodness,’ thought Sally, the colour ebbing out of her face
+as she stiffened in her seat and held on tighter. ‘My gracious
+<i>goodness</i>——’</p>
+
+<p>But it was going down too; thank heaven it was going down too—making,
+even as they were making, for the ferry.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn banged again on his horn, which gave another weak squeak and
+then was silent.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, ’e ain’t goin’ to try and pass it? ’E ain’t goin’ to try and pass
+it?’ Sally asked herself, clutching the side of the car.</p>
+
+<p>The charabanc, however, was unaware that anything had come down the hill
+behind it, and continued in the middle of the narrow road; and to
+Sally’s relief Jocelyn stole quietly along close up to its back, for he
+thought that if he kept right up against it and made no noise the people
+in it wouldn’t be able to see Sally, and he wouldn’t have to sit there
+impotently watching the look spreading over their faces when they caught
+sight of her that by now he knew only too well.</p>
+
+<p>All went smoothly till they were on the ferry. The charabanc drove
+straight to the farther end of it, and Jocelyn slipped along close
+behind, and then, getting out, still unobserved, opened his bonnet and
+began to deal with the horn.</p>
+
+<p>He had no side-horn with him. It had been removed by an idiot who lived
+on his staircase at Ananias, and who constantly saw fun where no one
+else did. He saw<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_91">{91}</a></span> fun in removing Jocelyn’s horn; and though on serious
+representations being made he restored it, it hadn’t been fixed on
+again, because Jocelyn soon after that met Sally, and everything else
+was blotted from his mind. Now he remembered it, and cursed the silly
+idiot through whose fault it wasn’t at that moment on the car. Still, he
+would soon set the electric one right; there couldn’t be much the matter
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>He proceeded, his head inside the bonnet, to set it right, and Sally,
+feeling safe for a bit with Jocelyn outside the car, looked on
+sympathetically. She wanted to help, if only by holding something, but
+knew she mustn’t move. The back of the great charabanc towered above
+their little two-seater as the stern of a liner towers above a tug. All
+was quiet up there. The tops of the heads of the last row of passengers
+were motionless, their owners no doubt being engaged in contemplating
+the scenery of the Fal.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly under Jocelyn’s manipulations the horn began to blow, and
+the row of heads, startled into attentiveness by this unexpected
+shrieking immediately underneath them, turned and peered down over the
+edge of the charabanc’s back. Then they saw Sally, and their peering
+became fixed.</p>
+
+<p>But Jocelyn had no time for that now; what was of importance at the
+moment was that the horn wouldn’t stop. It shrieked steadily; and though
+he leapt backwards and forwards from the part of it that was in the
+bonnet to the part of it that was on the steering-wheel and did things
+rapidly and violently in both places, it went on shrieking.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a nice thing, he thought, to happen to a man whose one aim was
+to be unnoticed. It was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_92">{92}</a></span> fortunate that the noise drowned what he was
+saying, for so Sally hadn’t the shock of hearing him break his recent
+promise; and, much surprised at the conduct of the horn, she was shaken
+out of her usual prudent silence and was moved to draw Jocelyn’s
+attention to its behaviour by remarking, on one of his flying visits to
+the steering wheel, that it wasn’t half hollering.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, shut <i>up</i>!’ cried Jocelyn, beside himself; and who knows whether he
+meant Sally or the horn?</p>
+
+<p>Sally took it that he was addressing the horn, and observed
+sympathetically that it didn’t seem to want to.</p>
+
+<p>‘If only I had a small screwdriver!’ cried Jocelyn, frantically throwing
+out the contents of his tool-box in search of what wasn’t there. ‘I
+don’t seem to have a small screwdriver—a <i>small</i> screwdriver—has
+anybody got a <i>small</i> screwdriver?’</p>
+
+<p>The ferryman had no screwdriver, big or small, and the driver of the
+charabanc, descended from his place to come and look on, had none small
+enough; while as for the passengers, now all standing on their seats and
+craning their necks, nothing was to be expected of them except
+absorption in Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Scissors would do—scissors, scissors!’ cried Jocelyn, who felt that if
+the horn didn’t stop he would go mad.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had any scissors except Sally, who got on her feet quickly and
+delightedly, because now she could help—the heads craned more than
+ever—and said she had a pair at the bottom of her trunk.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, no,’ said Jocelyn, unable even for the sake of perhaps stopping the
+horn to face uncording and unpacking before the whole ferry that
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_93">{93}</a></span>terrible tin trunk of hers. ‘Sit still, Sally——’</p>
+
+<p>And he began to hit whatever part seemed nearest to the noise with his
+clenched fist.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>That</i> won’t do no good,’ said the driver of the charabanc, grinning.</p>
+
+<p>The grin spread to the face of the ferryman, and began to appear on the
+faces piled up over the top of the charabanc.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn saw it, and suddenly froze into icy impassiveness. Whatever the
+damned horn chose to do he wasn’t going to provide entertainment for a
+lot of blasted trippers. Besides—was he losing his temper? He, who had
+supposed for years that he hadn’t got one?</p>
+
+<p>He slammed the bonnet to, flung the tools back into their box, got into
+his seat again, and sat waiting to drive off the ferry with a completely
+expressionless face, just as if nothing at all were happening; and
+Sally, deluded by his calm into supposing that he thought the horn was
+now all right, after waiting a moment anxiously and seeing that he
+didn’t do anything more, nudged him gently and told him it was still
+blowing.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is it?’ said Jocelyn; and there was something in the look he gave her
+that made her more sure than ever that speech with Usband was a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>It blew all the way to Truro. That was the nearest place where the thing
+could be taken to a garage, and kicked to pieces if nothing else would
+stop it. For ten miles it blew steadily. They streamed, shrieking, along
+the lanes and out on to the main road. The drive was a nightmare of
+astonished faces, of people rushing out of cottages, of children
+shouting, of laughter flashing and gone, to be succeeded by more and
+more, till the whole of every mile seemed one huge exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>Sally squeezed terror-stricken into her corner. Such<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_94">{94}</a></span> speed as this she
+had never dreamed of, nor had it ever yet been got out of the
+Morris-Cowley. She could only cling and hope. The noise was deafening.
+The little car leapt into the air at every bump in the road. Jocelyn’s
+face was like a marble mask. The charabanc, being bound for Falmouth,
+turned off to the left at the main road, and the passengers rose as one
+man in their seats and waved handkerchiefs of farewell; while Sally,
+even at such a moment unable not to be polite, let go the side of the
+car an instant to search with trembling fingers for her handkerchief and
+wave it back.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>At Truro he stopped at the first garage he saw, a small one in the
+outlying part of the town, where there were few passers-by. The few
+there were, however, immediately collected round the car that swooped
+down the hill on them hooting, and still went on hooting in spite of
+having stopped.</p>
+
+<p>How simple, if it had been his mother who was with him, to have asked
+her to walk on to an hotel or a confectioner’s, and wait for him while
+he had the horn seen to. She would have proceeded through the town
+unobserved and unmolested, and the hotel or confectioner would have
+received her without curiosity, and attended respectfully to her wants.
+Or she might have waited in the car, and there too she would have
+aroused neither interest nor comment. A lady, you see. A lady, turning,
+like a decent Italian house, her plain and expressionless side to the
+public of the street, and keeping her other side, her strictly private
+and delightful other side, for her family and friends.</p>
+
+<p>He hurried Sally into the garage, into the furthermost<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_95">{95}</a></span> depths of the
+garage. Not for her, he felt, were quiet walks alone through streets and
+unquestioning acceptance at hotels; not for him the convenience, the
+comfort, of a companion who in a crisis needn’t be bothered about, who
+automatically became effaced. Nothing effaced Sally. Her deplorable
+conspicuousness made it impossible for her to go anywhere without him.
+She had to be accompanied and protected as watchfully as if she were the
+Crown Jewels. Yes, or a perambulator with a baby in it that could never
+be left alone for an instant, and was always having to be pushed about
+by somebody. That somebody was himself, Jocelyn Luke; Jocelyn Luke, who
+as recently as a month ago was working away, hopeful and absorbed,
+immersed in profoundly interesting and important studies, independent,
+with nothing at all to trammel him or hinder him—with, on the contrary,
+everything and everybody conspiring to leave him as untrammelled and
+unhindered as possible. What was he now? Why, the perambulator’s
+nursemaid. Just that: the perambulator’s attendant nursemaid.</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to Jocelyn fantastic.</p>
+
+<p>‘Wait here, will you?’ he said, hurrying her into the garage and
+depositing her like a parcel in the remotest corner. ‘Don’t move, will
+you, till I fetch you——’</p>
+
+<p>And he left her there, safe as far as he could see, and went back to the
+shrieking car.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down thankfully on a pile of empty petrol cans. If only she
+could be left there for a good long while, if only she could spend the
+rest of the day there.... ‘Don’t move,’ Usband had said; as though she
+wanted to! Except that she was very hungry, really hungry now that her
+fears were over, for she had had no dinner yet, and it was two o’clock,
+how happy would she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_96">{96}</a></span> have been to stay there without moving for the rest
+of the afternoon. The quiet corner, away from danger, away from having
+to guess what she ought to say to Usband, and away from the look he gave
+her when she had said it, seemed almost perfect. It would have been
+quite perfect if there had been anything to eat.</p>
+
+<p>And as if in answer to her wish, the little door into a shed at the back
+opened, and in walked a youth, smudged and pasty-looking as those look
+who work much in garages, bearing in his hand a basin tied up in a
+crimson handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>This was young Mr. Soper, the most promising of the mechanics employed
+at the garage, who daily ate his dinner in that corner. There he could
+sit on the pile of empty petrol cans, out of sight and yet within
+earshot should his services suddenly be called for; and on this
+particular day, his firm having been by chance extra busy all the
+morning, he had gone later than usual into the private shed at the back
+to fetch the basin of food left there for him by his landlady’s little
+son, so that when Jocelyn took Sally into the corner it was empty,
+because Mr. Soper, instead of being in the middle of his dinner as he
+would have been on other days, was in the act of collecting it in the
+shed.</p>
+
+<p>‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ he said, staring at Sally, his mouth dropping open.
+‘Beg pardon, I’m sure, Miss——’</p>
+
+<p>And he put his arm quickly back round the door he had just come through
+and whipped out a chair. ‘Won’t you—won’t you sit more comfortable,
+Miss?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Sally, getting up and smiling politely.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Soper’s pasty face became bright red at that smile. He proceeded to
+dust the seat of the chair by rubbing the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_97">{97}</a></span> bottom of his handkerchiefed
+basin up and down it, and then stood staring at the young lady, the
+basin dangling sideways in his hand, held carelessly by the knotted
+corners of its handkerchief, and some of its gravy accordingly dribbling
+out.</p>
+
+<p>‘It do smell nice, don’t it,’ remarked Sally as she sat down, unable to
+refrain from sniffing.</p>
+
+<p>‘What do, Miss?’ asked Mr. Soper, recognising with almost incredulous
+pleasure a manner of speech with which he was at his ease.</p>
+
+<p>‘Wot you got in that there basin,’ said Sally, also recognising, and
+also with pleasure, accents since her marriage become very dear to her
+because reminiscent of home.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled with the utmost friendliness at him. Mr. Soper found it
+difficult to believe his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s my dinner,’ said Mr. Soper, gazing at the vision.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, I didn’t suppose it was your Sunday ’at,’ said Sally, pleased to
+find that she too, given a chance, could say clever things. ‘Tell by the
+smell it ain’t a nat.’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Soper also seemed to think this clever, for he laughed, as Sally put
+it to herself, like anything.</p>
+
+<p>‘Stew?’ she asked, her delicate nose describing little half circles of
+appreciative inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s right,’ said Mr. Soper. ‘Irish.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thought so,’ said Sally; and added with a sigh, ‘the best of the lot.’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Soper being intelligent, though handicapped at the moment by not
+quite believing his eyes, thought he here perceived encouragement to
+untie the handkerchief. He put the basin on the floor at the young
+lady’s feet, and untied it. She gazed at the lovely contents, at
+potatoes showing their sleek sides through the brimming<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_98">{98}</a></span> gravy, at
+little ends of slender cutlets, at glimpses of bright carrots, at
+pearly-shouldered onions gleaming from luscious depths, with such
+evident longing that he was emboldened to ask her if she wouldn’t oblige
+him by tasting it, and telling him her opinion of it as a stew.</p>
+
+<p>‘There’s stews and stews, you know, Miss,’ he said, hastily arranging it
+on an empty packing-case convenient for her, ‘but my old woman’s who
+looks after me is ’ard to beat——’</p>
+
+<p>And he ran into the little shed he had come out of, and after a minute’s
+rummaging brought her a spoon and plate. His own spoon was in his
+pocket. He didn’t use a plate.</p>
+
+<p>Sally tasted; and, having tasted, went on tasting. Soon there was danger
+that Mr. Soper’s dinner would be so much tasted that there wouldn’t be
+any left, but he cared nothing for that. If he had had a hundred stews,
+and he starving, they should all have been the young lady’s.</p>
+
+<p>Sally tried not to taste too much, but she was so hungry, and the stew
+was so lovely. Besides, the young man kept urging her to go on. He was
+more like a friend than any one she had yet met. That he should never
+take his eyes off her didn’t disturb her in the least, for she had been
+used to that all her life; and his language was her language, and he
+didn’t make her feel nervous, and she knew instinctively that she could
+do nothing wrong in his sight, and she talked more to him during the
+half hour they ate the stew together—for she presently insisted on his
+getting another plate and joining in—than she had talked to Jocelyn the
+whole time they had known each other; talked more to him, indeed, than
+she had<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_99">{99}</a></span> ever talked to anybody, except, when she was little, to those
+girl friends who had later fallen away.</p>
+
+<p>How surprising, how delightful, the ease with which she said things to
+Mr. Soper, and the things that came into her head to say! Quite clever,
+she was; quite sharp, and quick at the take-up. And laugh—why, the
+young fellow made her laugh so that she could hardly keep from choking.
+Not in all her life had she laughed as Mr. Soper made her laugh. Bright,
+he was, and no mistake. While as for Mr. Soper himself, who could be
+much, much brighter, he was fortunately kept damped down to his simpler
+jokes by the effect the strange young lady’s loveliness had on him; so
+that he who in Truro was known as the life of his set, as the boldest of
+its wits as well as the most daring of its ladies’ men, was as mild and
+timid in his preliminary frisks with Sally as a lately born lamb
+exploring, for the first time, the beautiful strange world it had
+suddenly discovered.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Jocelyn found them there, the empty basin on the floor between them,
+and, sticking up in it, two spoons.</p>
+
+<p>‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, starting a little, for she had forgotten
+Jocelyn; and Mr. Soper had what he afterwards described as the turn of
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>She with a husband? She who was hardly old enough, if you asked him, to
+have a father even? Got a husband all the time, and eaten his stew. He
+didn’t grudge her the stew, but he did think she ought to have told him
+she had a husband. Fancy eating his stew, and knowing she had a husband
+the whole time. It seemed to make it unfair. It seemed to make it
+somehow false pretences. And one of these blinking gentlemen, too; one
+of your<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_100">{100}</a></span> haw-haw chaps with the brains of a rabbit, thought Mr. Soper,
+looking Jocelyn up and down, who took no notice of him whatever. See
+that written all over him, thought Mr. Soper, seeking comfort in
+derision,—a silly fool who couldn’t even mend his own horn. Wicked, he
+called it, wicked, to thieve this girl away from her own lot, filch her,
+before she knew what she was about, from her natural mates, go-ahead
+chaps like, for instance, himself, when there were thousands of female
+rabbits in his own class who would have fitted him like so many blooming
+gloves.</p>
+
+<p>‘Class should stick to class,’ said Mr. Soper to himself, who belonged
+to at least four societies for violently welding all classes into one,
+the one being Mr. Soper’s.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn ignored him. (‘Haw, haw,’ thought Mr. Soper derisively, hurt by
+this, and sticking out a chin that no one noticed.) Shutting his eyes to
+the hideous evidence of the two spoons in the basin, to which he would
+refer, he decided, later, he took Sally’s arm and hurried her out to the
+now silent Morris-Cowley. This had not been his intention when he came
+in. He had intended to tell her that he had just discovered the loss of
+the luggage, that he was going back at once to look for it, and leave
+her there, where she was safe and private, till he came back.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of the basin and spoons forced him to other decisions. She was
+obviously neither safe nor private. He said nothing at all, but gripping
+her arm with, perhaps, unnecessary vigour seeing how unresistingly she
+went, hurried her out of the place and helped her, again with, perhaps,
+unnecessary vigour into her seat, slamming the door on her and hastening
+round to the other side to his own.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Soper, however, was hard on their heels. Nothing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_101">{101}</a></span> if not nippy, he
+was determined to see the last of her who not only was the first human
+being he had met to whom he could imagine going down on his knees, but
+also—thus did romance and reality mingle in his mind—who contained at
+that moment at least three-quarters of his Irish stew. It seemed to give
+him a claim on her. Inside himself was the remaining quarter, and it did
+seem to unite them. Mortified as he was, deceived as he felt himself to
+be, he yet couldn’t help, in his mind, making a joke about this union,
+which he thought so good that he decided to tell it to his friends that
+night at the whist-drive he was going to—it need not be repeated
+here,—and he was so excessively nippy, such a very smart, all-there,
+seize-your-opportunity young man, that he actually managed to say in
+Sally’s left ear during the brief moment Jocelyn was on his way round to
+the other side, bending down ostensibly to examine the near back tyre,
+‘Whatever did you want to go and marry one of them haw-haw fellers for,
+when there was——’</p>
+
+<p>But what there was Sally never heard, for at that instant the car leaped
+forward, leaving him on the kerb alone.</p>
+
+<p>There he stood, looking after it; apparently merely a pale, contemptuous
+mechanic, full of the proper scorn for a shabby little four-year-old
+two-seater—he could of course date it exactly—but really a baffled
+young man who had just been pulled up and thwarted in the very act of
+falling, for the first time in his life, passionately and humbly in
+love.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>The Thistle and Goat was where Jocelyn took her. It was the first hotel
+he saw. He had to deposit her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_102">{102}</a></span> somewhere; he couldn’t take her with him
+in search of the luggage, and have her hanging round while he picked it
+up and corded it on again, and making friends with anybody who came
+along. Would she obey him and stay in the bedroom, or would he be forced
+to the absurdity of locking her in? He was so seriously upset by the
+various misfortunes of the day that he was ready to behave with almost
+any absurdity. He was quite ready, for instance, to fight that spotted
+oaf at the garage; he had itched to knock him down, and had only been
+restrained by a vision of the crowd that would collect, and a
+consciousness of how it would advertise Sally. To lock her in her room
+was, he admitted, a violent sort of thing to do, and violence, he had
+been brought up to believe, was always vulgar and ridiculous, but it
+would anyhow be effective. Definite and strongly simple measures were,
+he perceived, needful with Sally, especially when one was in a hurry. He
+couldn’t, with the luggage lying somewhere on the road between Truro and
+St. Mawes, probably burst open and indecently scattered and exposed,
+start explaining to Sally all the things she was on no account to do
+while he was away collecting it. He certainly would explain; and fully;
+and clearly; for the spoon and basin business had been simply
+disgusting, and he was going to put a stop to that sort of thing once
+and forever, but not now,—not till there was plenty of time, so that he
+really might have a chance of getting into her head at least the
+beginning of a glimmer of what a lady simply couldn’t do. And he was so
+angry that he corrected this sentence, and instead of the word lady
+substituted the wife of a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>He locked her in.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_103">{103}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘If any one knocks,’ he told her before leaving her, ‘you will call out
+that you have locked the door, as you wish to be undisturbed. You
+understand me, Sally? That’s what you are to say—nothing else. Exactly
+and only that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Right O,’ said Sally, a little dejectedly, for his tone and expression
+discouraged cheerfulness, and preparing to lock the door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>But it was he who locked it, much to her surprise, deftly pulling the
+key out of the inside of the door and slipping it into the outside
+before she realised what he was doing; and she heard him, having turned
+it, draw it out and go away.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she was locked in all right.</p>
+
+<p>‘Whatever——’ began Sally in her thoughts; then gave it up, and sat
+down patiently on the edge of the wicker arm-chair to wait for the next
+thing that would happen to her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Glad I ’ad that there stew,’ she reflected.</p>
+
+<p>‘My wife,’ said Jocelyn to the lady in the office downstairs, as he went
+out still with the frown on his face caused by the realisation that he
+hadn’t given Sally any reason for his suddenly leaving her, and that she
+hadn’t asked for any—was that companionship?—‘wishes to be undisturbed
+till I come back.’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>I</i> see,’ said the lady, with what seemed to him rather a curious
+emphasis, and she was about to inquire where his luggage was, for the
+Thistle and Goat liked to know where luggage was, when he strode away.</p>
+
+<p>Now what did she see, Jocelyn asked himself. Nobody had ever said <i>I</i>
+see like that to any orders given when he was travelling with his
+mother. The emphasis was marked. It sounded, he thought, both
+suspicious<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_104">{104}</a></span> and pert. He went out to the car, strangling a desire to go
+back and ask her what she saw. Did she too think he wasn’t really
+married? No, no—nonsense. Probably she saw and meant nothing. Really he
+was becoming sensitive beyond all dignity, he thought as he drove off on
+his unpleasant and difficult quest.</p>
+
+<p>But the lady in the office had merely expressed herself badly. What was
+worrying her was not what she saw but what she didn’t see, and what she
+didn’t see was luggage. The Thistle and Goat, in common with other
+hotels, liked luggage. It preferred luggage to be left rather than
+ladies. Now the gentleman had gone off without saying a word about it,
+and she tried to reassure herself by hoping, what was indeed true, that
+he had gone to fetch it, and that she need do nothing about it, anyhow
+for the present. And hardly had she settled down to a cup of
+after-luncheon tea in the back office when the luggage arrived, brought
+in by a different gentleman, and one, to her great relief, whom she
+knew—young Mr. Carruthers, of Trevinion Manor.</p>
+
+<p>Great was the confidence the Thistle and Goat had in the family of
+Carruthers, whom it had known all its life. No orders given by a passing
+tourist could have any weight when balanced against a Carruthers
+request. So that when young Mr. Carruthers, learning that Mr. Luke had
+lately left in his car, asked to see Mrs. Luke in order to hand over her
+luggage personally and desired his card to be sent up, regardless of the
+orders given by Mr. Luke the card was sent up and the message given; and
+Sally received both it and the message, for the chambermaid, finding the
+door locked and getting no answer, because Sally thought that by saying
+nothing she wouldn’t be telling any lies, unlocked it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_105">{105}</a></span> with her
+pass-key; and Sally, having heard the message and received the card,
+issued forth obediently. Naturally she did. Usband had said nothing
+about not leaving the room. She wanted her tin box, and to get unpacked.
+Besides, when anybody sent for her she always went.</p>
+
+<p>What had happened was that young Carruthers, strolling down as usual
+just before lunch across the fields to the sea-front, had found the
+window of the Cupp parlour flung wide open, and Mrs. Cupp vigorously
+shaking the hearth-rug out of it. Evidently her lodgers had left; and he
+went in and began asking her about them, and very soon discovered that
+the lean chap was Jocelyn Luke—Luke of Ananias, as Carruthers, himself
+at Oxford, instantly identified him, for there couldn’t well be two
+Jocelyn Lukes, and his reputation had ebbed across to Oxford, where he
+was known not unfavourably, and perhaps as on the whole the least
+hopelessly unpromising of the Cambridge crowd. And just as Mrs. Cupp was
+proceeding to tell him her opinion of the alleged Mrs. Luke, and how
+Cupp had only now been able to come out of his bedroom and have his
+dinner, there came news of the dropped luggage on the hill.</p>
+
+<p>Carruthers felt that he was the very man to deal with that. He rushed
+off, thrust everybody aside, collected it reverently, for the tin trunk
+had indeed burst open, and its modest contents, of a touching propriety
+he thought, as he carefully put back things that felt like flannel, were
+scattered on the road, and then, fetching his car, took it into Truro.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy, at the turn to Falmouth, to discover which way the Lukes
+had gone. It was also easy, on arriving in Truro, to discover which
+hotel they were in.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_106">{106}</a></span> He only had to describe them. Everybody had noticed
+them. Everybody on the road had heard their horn, and everybody had seen
+the beautiful young lady. And because he went into the town by the
+direct road, and as Jocelyn coming out of it, and sure the luggage
+hadn’t anyhow been dropped nearer than the top of the hill beyond the
+garage, took a round-about way, joining the main road only on the other
+side of the garage so as not again to have to set eyes on the loathsome
+oaf employed in it and risk being unable to resist going in and knocking
+him down, they missed each other precisely there; and accordingly when
+Jocelyn, having been all the way to St. Mawes, where he heard what had
+been done, got back about five, tired, very hungry, and wondering how on
+earth he was now going to find the officious person they said was trying
+to restore his belongings to him, he was told by the boots that young
+Mr. Carruthers had arrived just after he left, and was waiting to see
+him upstairs in the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank heaven,’ thought Jocelyn, feeling the key in his pocket, ‘that I
+locked her in.’</p>
+
+<p>And he went into the drawing-room, and there at a table in a corner by
+the fire, with the remains on it of what seemed to have been an
+extraordinarily good and varied tea, she was sitting.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Carruthers—he recognised him at once as the man with the dog called
+Sally—was worshipping her. Decently, for Carruthers was plainly a
+decent chap, but worshipping her all right; it was written in every line
+and twist of him, as he leaned forward eagerly, telling her stories,
+apparently, for he was talking a great deal and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_107">{107}</a></span> she was only
+listening,—amusing stories, for she was smiling.</p>
+
+<p>She never smiled with him, thought Jocelyn; not like that, not a real
+smile of just enjoyment. From the very first day, that day at tea in the
+Pinner parlour, she had seemed frightened of him. But she couldn’t be
+much frightened, for here she was openly disregarding his injunctions,
+and somehow got out of her locked room. That seemed to Jocelyn anything
+but being frightened; it seemed to him to the last degree fearless and
+resourceful. And how strangely at variance with her apparent shyness and
+retiringness that twice in one day she should have allowed strange men
+to feed her.</p>
+
+<p>He approached their corner, pale and grim. He was tired to death after
+the vexatious day he had had, and very hungry after not having had
+anything to eat since breakfast. Carruthers had watched his opportunity,
+of course—waited somewhere till he had seen him go, and then taken the
+luggage in and asked for Sally. And Sally, somehow getting out of that
+room, had defied his orders and come down. Well, he couldn’t do anything
+with her at that moment. He was too tired to flare up. Besides—scenes;
+he couldn’t for ever make scenes. What a revolting form of activity to
+have thrust upon him! But the amount of ideas that would, he perceived,
+have to be got into her head if life was to be even approaching
+tolerable was so great that his mind, in his fatigued state, refused to
+consider it.</p>
+
+<p>She saw him first, and, much pleased with everything, with the beautiful
+tea, with Mr. Carruthers’ funny stories and with her pleasant afternoon
+altogether, continued to smile, but at him now, and said to Carruthers,
+‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ere comes Mr. Luke.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_108">{108}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<p>And on Carruthers getting up and Jocelyn arriving at the table,
+introduced them.</p>
+
+<p>‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally; explaining Carruthers to Jocelyn by
+saying, ‘The gentleman as brought our traps.’</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn couldn’t be angry with Carruthers; he looked at him so
+friendlily, and shook his hand with what surely was a perfectly sincere
+heartiness. And though he was obviously bowled over by Sally—naturally,
+thought Jocelyn, seeing that he had none of the responsibility and only
+the fun—there was something curiously sympathetic in his attitude to
+Jocelyn himself, something that seemed, oddly, to understand.</p>
+
+<p>Sally, his wife, said, for instance, ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ad yer tea?’—just that, and made
+no attempt to give him any. But what Carruthers said, quickly going
+across and ringing the bell, was, ‘I bet you haven’t. You’ve had the
+sort of rotten day there’s no time for anything in but swearing. They’ll
+bring some fresh stuff in a moment. It’s a jolly good tea they give one
+in this place,—don’t they, Mrs. Luke.’</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span><i>Eav</i>enly,’ said Sally. And turning to Jocelyn she said, more timidly,
+‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ad to come out of the bedroom. The servant——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, that’s all right,’ interrupted Jocelyn hastily, earnestly desiring
+to keep from Carruthers the knowledge that he had locked her in. Things
+look so different, especially domestic actions, in the eyes of a third
+person unaware of the attendant circumstances, thought Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped into a chair. What a comfort it was, after a fortnight of
+being dog alone with Sally, to hear that decent voice. It really was
+like music. He hadn’t,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_109">{109}</a></span> at Cambridge, cared much for the Oxford way of
+speaking, but how beautiful it seemed after the Pinner way. He wanted to
+shut his eyes and just listen to it. ‘Go on, go on,’ he wanted to say,
+when Carruthers paused for a moment in his pleasant talk; and he sat
+there, listening and eating and drinking in silence, and Carruthers
+looked after him, and fed him, and talked pleasantly to him, and talked
+pleasantly to Sally as well, and did, in fact, all the talking. There
+was something about Jocelyn that made Carruthers feel maternal. He was
+so thin. His shoulder blades stuck out so, and his lean, nervous face
+twitched. Carruthers thought, as he had thought on that first occasion,
+only this time, knowing who he was and aware of Sally’s class, with ten
+times more conviction, ‘Poor devil’; but he also thought, his eyes
+resting on the lovely thing in the corner—he had established her in the
+farthermost corner of the Thistle and Goat’s drawing-room, for he too
+had instantly begun to hide her, and she lit up its gloom as a white
+flower lights up the dusk—he also thought, ‘Poor angel.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Yes, she was an angel, and a poor one; he was sure of that. Carruthers,
+so romantic inside, so square and unemotional outside, told himself she
+was a forlorn child-angel torn out of her natural heaven, which
+obviously was completely h—less and obscure, but comfortable and
+unexacting, and pitched into a world of strangers, the very ABC of whose
+speech and behaviour she didn’t understand.</p>
+
+<p>After two hours <i>tête à tête</i> with Sally, two hours which seemed like
+ten minutes, so deeply was he interested, this was his conclusion. She
+hadn’t been very shy, not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_110">{110}</a></span> after he left off being shy, which he was for
+a moment or two, confused by the sheer shock of her beauty seen close;
+but he had soon recovered and got into his stride, which was an easy one
+for her to keep up with, his one idea being to please her and make her
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn’t difficult to please Sally and make her happy; you had only to
+avoid frightening her. Mr. Soper hadn’t frightened her, he had fed
+her,—always a good beginning with a woman. Carruthers knew this, and
+immediately ordered tea, in spite of its still being only three o’clock;
+and, since the Thistle and Goat specialised in teas, the one which was
+presently brought was of such a conspicuous goodness, with so many
+strange Cornish cakes and exciting little sandwiches, besides a bowl of
+the Cornish cream Sally liked altogether best of anything she had
+learned to know on her honeymoon, that she soon felt as comfortable and
+friendly with Carruthers as she had with Mr. Soper.</p>
+
+<p>She was at the age of jam. Cream was still enough to make her happy. And
+she wasn’t used to quantities. In her frugal life there had never been
+quantities of anything, and they excited her. Quantities combined with
+kindness—what could be more delightful? She didn’t suppose she had
+enjoyed anything so much ever as that tea. And it was sheer enjoyment,
+nothing to do with hunger at all, for hunger had been done away with by
+Mr. Soper’s stew, and this was a deliberate choosing, a splendid
+unnecessariness, a sense of wide margin, of freedom, of power, and no
+need to think of putting away what was left over for next day.</p>
+
+<p>So by the time that Carruthers said, with that simplicity which made his
+mother sure there was no one in the world like her Gerry, ‘I’ve never
+seen any one as<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_111">{111}</a></span> beautiful as you, and I didn’t know there could be
+anybody,’ Sally, unstiffened and lubricated by all the cream, was quite
+ready to discuss her appearance or anything else with him as far as she,
+restricted of speech as she was, could discuss at all, and he discovered
+to his deep surprise that she regarded her beauty as a thing to be
+apologised for, as a pity, as the same thing really as a deformity,
+forcing her to be conspicuous and nothing but a worry to those she loved
+and who loved her, and she not able to help it or alter it, or do
+anything at all except be sorry.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father,’ she said, ‘was in a state—you’ve no idea. If any one just
+looked my way. And they was always lookin’.’</p>
+
+<p>Carruthers nodded. Just what he had been thinking when first he saw her
+on the hill behind St. Mawes, with Luke trying to cover her up, to
+extinguish her quickly in her hat,—the responsibility, the anxiety....
+But that she herself should regard it like that astonished him. Surely
+any woman....</p>
+
+<p>‘And Mr. Luke—<i>’e’s</i> frightened too. ‘Ides me, same as Father and
+Mother used.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You’re really imprisoned, then,’ said Carruthers, staring at her.
+‘Imprisoned in your beauty.’</p>
+
+<p>But seeing a puzzled expression come into her eyes he began to talk of
+other things, to tell her stories, to amuse her; for after all it wasn’t
+very fair to Luke, somehow, whose back happened to be turned, much
+against his will Carruthers was sure, to let her tell him about herself
+and her life. She was too defenceless. She was a child, who would talk
+to any stranger who was kind; and he could guess all he was entitled to
+know, he could see for himself the gift she held in her hands,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_112">{112}</a></span> the
+supreme gift for a woman, the gift beyond all others in power for the
+brief time it lasted, and he could see she was entirely unconscious of
+its value, of what might be done with it if only she knew how. And every
+time she opened her touchingly beautiful mouth of quick smiles and
+painstaking response, her h’s dropped about him in showers.</p>
+
+<p>Well, who cared? She might say anything she liked, and it wouldn’t
+matter; in any voice, with any accent, and it wouldn’t matter. Not even
+if she said coy common things, or arch common things, as he half
+expected she would when first she spoke and startled him with the
+discovery of her class, would it matter, For one needn’t listen. One
+could always just sit and watch. Yes—who cared?</p>
+
+<p>But the answer to that, he knew, wasn’t simply Nobody, it was Jocelyn
+Luke. Luke would care. He quite obviously did care already, though they
+couldn’t have been married more than two or three weeks; and she dumbly
+felt it, Carruthers was sure, for, after having been eager to get out of
+her imprisoning shell of illiteracy and say what she could while she was
+alone with him, directly Luke joined them she retired into a kind of
+anxious caution, looking at him before she said anything in answer to a
+question, and keeping as much as possible to Yes and No.</p>
+
+<p>‘He’s been teaching her,’ thought Carruthers. ‘He’s been going for her
+h’s. She’s on his nerves, and she knows it—no, not knows it, but feels
+it. She doesn’t <i>know</i> anything about anything yet, but she feels a
+jolly lot, I’ll swear.’</p>
+
+<p>Deeply interesting Lukes. What would their fate be, he wondered.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_113">{113}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>After Carruthers had gone, pensively driving himself back to St. Mawes
+in the pale spring twilight, Jocelyn, soothed by his agreeable talk and
+manifest friendliness, and also by the good tea, felt quite different.
+He no longer wanted to admonish Sally. He didn’t even want to ask her
+why she had come out of the bedroom. He was ashamed of that; ashamed of
+having locked her in, degrading her to God knew what level of
+childishness, of slavery, of, indeed, some pet animal that might
+stray—in fact, a dog. He shuddered a little, and looked at her
+deprecatingly, and leaning over the table took her hand and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sally,’ he murmured, suddenly for the first time since he grew up,
+feeling very young,—and how painfully young to be married!</p>
+
+<p>Marriage. It wasn’t just love-making, he thought as he kissed her hand;
+love-making, and then done with it and get on with your work. It was
+responsibility constant and lasting, not only for the other life so
+queerly and suddenly and permanently joined on to one, but also for
+oneself in a quite new way, a way one had never till then at all
+considered.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand again.</p>
+
+<p>‘Tea done ’im good,’ thought Sally.</p>
+
+<p>But it was the half hour with one of his own kind, and one who, while
+definitely charming to him, yet so obviously and with a kind of
+reverence admired Sally, that had done him good. It had restored him to
+a condition of tranquillity, and he felt more normal, more really
+happy—he didn’t count his moments of wild rapture as happiness, because
+they somehow weren’t—than he had<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_114">{114}</a></span> done since the days, now so curiously
+far away, before he had met her. Carruthers had reassured him. His
+behaviour to Sally had immensely reassured him. The world was, after
+all, chiefly decent. It didn’t consist solely of foul-minded Cupps, nor
+of impudent young men in garages. Just as there were more people in it
+healthy than sick, so there were more people in it who were appreciative
+and kindly than there were people who weren’t. Carruthers had known all
+about him, too. Jocelyn hadn’t credited Oxford with so much intelligent
+awareness. It was infinitely pleasant, after a fortnight with Sally who,
+wonderful as she was, uniquely wonderful he freely admitted, yet hadn’t
+the remotest idea of what he had done and still hoped to do—yes, by
+God, still hoped to do. Why not? Why chuck Cambridge after all? Why not
+face it with Sally, and train her who was, he knew, most obedient and
+only needing showing, to behave in such a way that no one, if she lived
+there, would dare make himself a nuisance?—it was infinitely pleasant
+after this to have been with somebody who knew all about him. He hadn’t
+got very far, of course, in his work; nobody knew that better than
+himself. But it had been a good enough beginning for Carruthers and
+Oxford to have heard of him. And the desire to go on, to proceed along
+the glorious path, came back to him in a mighty flood as he sat in the
+Thistle and Goat’s drawing-room, with that other desire appeased and
+seeming to be getting ready to fall into its proper place.</p>
+
+<p>If Sally too could be got into her proper place, mightn’t life even yet
+be a triumph?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_115">{115}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>He wrote to his mother that night, after Sally had gone to bed. He sent
+her there early, and with a return of irritability, because of the way
+the people in the dining-room at dinner, and afterwards in the
+drawing-room where he and she sat in a remote corner while he had his
+coffee, behaved. It was really outrageous. This was his first experience
+of dining with her in a public place. And it was no good his glaring at
+the creatures, because they never gave him so much as a glance.</p>
+
+<p>So he sent her to bed, and then he wrote to his mother. Better go home.
+Better now go home to South Winch, and not wander about in expensive
+hotels, with hateful old men in dinner jackets and fat women in beads
+staring their eyes out. Hotels were impossible with Sally; and so were
+lodgings, with the risk of another suspicious and insulting landlady.
+Besides, a fortnight was enough for a honeymoon, and for this particular
+honeymoon, with all its difficulties, quite enough. Home was the place.
+Almond Tree Cottage, and its quiet. He wanted to go home. He wanted to
+go home to his mother, and get her meeting with Sally over, and sit in
+that little study of his at the top of the house where not a soul could
+see him, and think out what was best to do next.</p>
+
+<p>His mother would help him. She had always understood and helped. Never
+yet had she failed him. And she would help him, too, in the business of
+looking after Sally,—take her off his hands sometimes, and perhaps
+succeed in getting her quite soon to talk like a civilised being.</p>
+
+<p>It had been the last thing he had originally intended,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_116">{116}</a></span> to go with Sally
+to stay at his mother’s. Introduce her, of course; take her down for a
+day; but not stay there, for well did he know his marriage would fall
+like a sword on his mother, cleaving her heart. Things, however, had
+changed since then. He had in his haste, in his blind passion, written
+to her that he was going to chuck Cambridge, and now that his passion
+was no longer blind and he wasn’t going to chuck it—no, he’d be damned
+if he would; not anyhow till he had tried what it was like there with
+Sally—he was anxious to go to his mother and heal up at least one of
+the wounds he knew his letter must have made. He would ask her what she
+thought, having seen Sally, of the idea of her living in Cambridge.
+Perhaps—it flashed into his mind like light—his mother would live
+there too; give up Almond Tree Cottage, and live with them in Cambridge.
+What a solution. Then she could look after Sally, and be such a comfort,
+such a blessed comfort, to him as well. What a splendid, simple
+solution.</p>
+
+<p>He threw down his pen, and stared straight in front of him. They would
+all be happy then—he going on with his work, Sally being taught by his
+mother, and his mother not separated from him.</p>
+
+<p>When he went to bed, and Sally stirred in her sleep as if she were
+waking up, he took her in his arms and asked her if she would like to
+live in Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ murmured Sally, even though half asleep remembering to stick to
+monosyllables.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’ll be better than London,’ said Jocelyn, holding her close. ‘Won’t
+it, my love? Won’t it, my <i>beautiful</i> love?’ he added in a whisper, for
+there was something about Sally’s hair, against which his face was, a
+softness, a sweetness....<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_117">{117}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘And perhaps my mother will come and live with us too there. You’d like
+that, wouldn’t you, darling?’</p>
+
+<p>There was a brief pause. Then, ‘Yes,’ murmured Sally.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her delicious hair. ‘Darling,’ he said tenderly, pleased by
+this absence of all difficulty. ‘You’re half asleep,’ he added in her
+ear, pushing aside the hair that lay over it with his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>But was she? For, after another pause, she said, her face still turned
+away from him, something that sounded like Father.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, darling?’ said Jocelyn, as she didn’t go on.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>E might come too, p’raps,’ murmured Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘What?’ said Jocelyn, not sure he could have heard right, bending his
+face nearer. ‘Your father?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ murmured Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Your <i>father</i>?’ said Jocelyn again.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ murmured Sally. ‘Then—we’d be tidy like—you’d ’ave ’er, and I’d
+’ave ’im.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Go to sleep Sally,’ said Jocelyn with sudden authority. ‘Do you know
+what time it is? Nearly eleven.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_118">{118}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<h2><a id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Meanwhile</span>, at Almond Tree Cottage, Jocelyn’s mother had become Margery
+to Mr. Thorpe, and he to her was Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>The idea she had played with, the possibility she had smiled at, was now
+fact. She had reacted to Jocelyn’s marriage by getting involved,
+immediately and profoundly, in Mr. Thorpe. Without quite knowing how,
+with hardly a recollection of when, she had become engaged to him. He
+had caught her at the one moment in which, blind with shock, she would
+have clung to anything that offered support.</p>
+
+<p>How could she face South Winch without support? For there was not only
+her inward humiliation to be dealt with, the ruin of her love and pride
+and the wreck of those bright ambitious dreams—surely of all ambitious
+dreams the most natural and creditable, the dreams of a mother for the
+future greatness of her son,—there was the pity of South Winch. No, she
+couldn’t stand pity; and pity because of Jocelyn, of all people! Of him
+who had been her second, more glorious self, of him who was to have been
+all she would have been if she could have been. South Winch couldn’t
+pity her if she married its richest man. There was something about
+wealth, when present in sufficient quantities, that silenced even
+culture;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_119">{119}</a></span> and everybody knew about Mr. Thorpe’s house, and grounds, and
+cars, and conservatories. She therefore dropped like a fruit that no
+longer has enough life to hold on, into the outstretched hands of Mr.
+Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn didn’t want her; Mr. Thorpe did. It was a deplorable thing, she
+thought, for she could still at intervals, in spite of her confusion and
+distress, think intelligently, that a woman couldn’t be happy, couldn’t
+be at peace, unless there existed somebody who wanted her, and wanted
+her exclusively; but there it was. Deplorable indeed, for it now flung
+her into Mr. Thorpe’s arms prematurely, without her having had time
+properly to think it out. No doubt she would have got into them in the
+end, but not yet, not for years and years. Now she tumbled in from a
+sheer instinct of self-preservation. She had to hold on to some one. She
+was giddy and staggering from the blow that had cut through her life.
+Jocelyn, her boy, her wonderful, darling boy, in whose career she had so
+passionately merged herself, doing everything, even the smallest thing,
+only with reference to him, wanted her so little that he could throw her
+aside, thrust her away without an instant’s hesitation, and with her his
+whole future, the future he and she had been working at with utter
+concentration for years, for the sake of a girl he had only known a
+fortnight. He said so in the letter. He said it was only a fortnight.
+One single fortnight, as against those twenty-two consecrated years.</p>
+
+<p>Who was this girl, who was this person for whom he gave up everything at
+a moment’s notice? Mrs. Luke, shuddering, hid in Mr. Thorpe’s arms; for
+the things that Jocelyn hadn’t said in that letter on the eve of his
+marriage were more terrible almost to her than those he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_120">{120}</a></span> had said,—the
+ominous non-reference to the girl’s family, to her upbringing, to her
+circumstances. Hardly had he mentioned her name. At the end, in a
+postcript, as if in his heart he were ashamed, he had said it was
+Salvatia—Salvatia!—and her father’s name was Pinner, but that he
+really didn’t know that it mattered, and he wouldn’t have cared, and
+neither would anybody else who saw her care, if she hadn’t had fifty
+names. And then he had added the strange words, ominously defiant,
+unnecessarily coarse, that he would have taken her, and so would any one
+else who saw her, in her shift; and then still further, and still more
+strangely and coarsely, he had scribbled in a shaky hand, as though he
+had torn open the letter again and stuck it in in a kind of frenzy of
+passion, ‘My God—her shift!’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke hid in Mr. Thorpe’s arms. Coarseness had never yet got into
+Almond Tree Cottage, except the coarseness consecrated by time, which it
+was a sign of intelligence not to mind, the coarseness, for instance, of
+those marvellous Elizabethans. But coarseness from Jocelyn? Oh, blind
+and mad, blind and mad. Where had her boy got it from, this capacity for
+sudden, violent, ruinous behaviour? Not from her, very certainly. It
+must be some of the thick, sinister blood filtered down into him from
+the Spanish woman her husband’s great-grandfather—Mrs. Luke had been
+pleased with this great-grandfather up to then, because in her own
+family, where there should have been four, there hadn’t been any—had
+married against his parents’ wishes. She hid in Mr. Thorpe’s arms.
+But—‘This in exchange for Jocelyn?’ she couldn’t help repeating to
+herself that first day, trying to shut her eyes, spiritually as well as
+physically, trying to withdraw her attention, as even in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_121">{121}</a></span> this crisis
+she remembered Dr. Johnson had done in unpleasant circumstances, from
+Mr. Thorpe’s betrothal caresses.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe was clean and healthy; for that she was thankful. Still, she
+suffered a good deal that first day. Then, imperceptibly, she got used
+to him. Surprising how soon one gets used to a man, she thought, on whom
+this one’s substantial shape had made a distinctly disagreeable
+impression the first week she found herself up against it. By the end of
+a week she no longer noticed the curious springy solidity of Mr.
+Thorpe’s figure, which had seemed to her when he first embraced her,
+used as she was to the lean fragility of her late husband, so
+unpleasantly much. And besides, the flood of his riches began to flow
+over her immediately, and it was a warm flood. She hadn’t known how
+agreeable such a flood could be. She hadn’t had an idea of the way it
+could bring comfort into one’s every corner—yes, even into one’s mind
+when one’s mind was sore and unhappy. Riches, she had always held, were
+vulgar; but she now obscurely recognised that they were only vulgar if
+they were somebody else’s. One’s own—why, to what noble ends could not
+riches be directed in the hands of those who refused to use them
+vulgarly? Married to Mr. Thorpe, she would make of them as beautiful and
+graceful a thing as she had made of her poverty. And it did soothe Mrs.
+Luke, it did help her a great deal during these days of wreckage, that
+her life, which had been so spare and bony, was now becoming hourly, in
+every sort of pleasant way, more and more padded, more and more soft and
+luscious with fat.</p>
+
+<p>For, if no longer precious to Jocelyn, she was precious to Mr. Thorpe,
+and it was his pride to pad out the meagre<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_122">{122}</a></span>ness of her surroundings; and
+though she cried herself to sleep each night because of Jocelyn, she
+awoke each morning comforted because of Mr. Thorpe. After twelve hours
+of not seeing Mr. Thorpe she could clearly perceive, what was less
+evident at the end of a long evening with him, her immense good fortune
+in having got him. A decent, honourable man. Not every woman in the
+forties finds at the precise right moment a decent, honourable man, who
+is also rich. Where would she have been now without Mr. Thorpe? He was
+her rock, her refuge; he was the plaster to her wounded pride, the
+restorer of her self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can <i>rely</i> on him,’ she said to herself while she sat in front of her
+glass in the morning, brushing her thick, black hair—in the evening
+when she brushed it she didn’t say anything. ‘I can entirely <i>trust</i>
+him. What, after all, is education? What has education done for Jocelyn?
+The one thing that matters is character.’</p>
+
+<p>And she would come down to find her breakfast-table strewn with fresh
+evidences of Mr. Thorpe’s hot-houses and love.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Not a word from Jocelyn all this time, not a sign. He might be dead, she
+thought; and it would have hurt her less if he had been. For dead he
+would have been for ever hers; nobody then could touch him, take him
+away. Crushed and bitter, she crept yet closer to Mr. Thorpe. He liked
+it. He liked being crept close to. He was thoroughly pleased with what
+in his business-like mind he referred to as his bargain.</p>
+
+<p>She never mentioned Jocelyn to him, and he liked that too. ‘Young fool,’
+he said, when he came round<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_123">{123}</a></span> unexpectedly early one evening, and found
+her crying. ‘No use worrying about a fool.’</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Luke, still further crushed by hearing Jocelyn called a fool,
+and therefore being forced to the deduction that she had produced
+one—yes, and it was true, too, in spite of his brains—could only hang
+on to Mr. Thorpe, and say nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He liked that. He liked to be hung on to, and he had no objection to a
+certain amount of saying nothing in a woman. Her late husband, could he
+now have seen her who was once his wife, would have been surprised, for
+in his day she had never hung on, and had been particularly good at
+conversation. But there was that about Mr. Thorpe which quenched
+conversation. Even before her engagement, in the days of his preliminary
+assiduities after his wife’s death, she had found it difficult, when he
+came round, to keep what she understood was sometimes described as the
+ball rolling; and she was completely in command of herself then, in the
+full flood of her happiness and satisfaction. Conversation with him, the
+kind she and South Winch knew and practised, was out of the question.
+There was no exchange of opinions possible with Mr. Thorpe, because he
+never exchanged his, he merely emitted them and stuck to them. And they
+came out clothed in so very few words that they seemed to Mrs. Luke,
+watching him with quizzical, amused eyes—ah, those detached days, when
+one looked on and wasn’t involved!—almost indecently bare. Now she
+drooped. She bowed her head.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe liked that. He liked a woman to bow her head. Gentleness in a
+woman was what he liked: gentleness, and softness, and roundness.
+Margery was gentle all right, and soft enough in places—anyhow of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_124">{124}</a></span>
+speech; but she wasn’t round. Not yet. Later, of course, after the cook
+at Abergeldie—his house was called Abergeldie—had had a go at her, she
+wouldn’t know herself again. And meanwhile, to put an immediate stop to
+all this underfeeding, a stream of nourishment—oysters, lobsters,
+plovers’ eggs, his own pineapples, his own forced strawberries, his own
+butter and fresh eggs, and, once, a sucking pig—thickly flowed across
+the daisied meadow dividing Abergeldie from Almond Tree Cottage.</p>
+
+<p>The little maid turned yellow, and began to get up at night and be sick.
+Mrs. Luke, feeling it was both wrong and grotesque to bury lobsters in
+the back garden, and unable either to stop the stream or deal with it
+herself, was forced to send most of the stuff round to her friends; and
+so South Winch became aware of what had happened, for nobody except Mr.
+Thorpe grew pineapples and bought plovers’ eggs, and nobody gave such
+quantities of them to a woman without being going to marry her
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it was as good a way as any other of letting people know, thought
+Mrs. Luke, sitting in silence with Mr. Thorpe’s arm round her waist,
+while every now and then he furtively felt to see whether she wasn’t
+beginning anywhere to curve. Instead of sending round <i>billets de faire
+part</i> she sent lobsters. Rather original, she thought, with a slight
+return to her detached and amused earlier self. ‘Does he really think I
+can eat them all?’ she wondered.</p>
+
+<p>And the little maid, in whose kitchen much, even so, remained, fell from
+one bilious paroxysm into another.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_125">{125}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>She was warmly congratulated. It soothed her afresh, this new importance
+with which she was instantly clothed. Money—she sighed, but faced
+it—money, even in that place where people really did try to keep their
+eyes well turned to the light, was a great, perhaps the greatest, power.
+She sighed. It oughtn’t to be so; but if it was so? And who would not be
+grateful, really deeply grateful, to Edgar, and put up with all his
+little ways, when he was so generous, so kind, and so completely
+devoted? Besides, his little ways would, she was sure, later on become
+much modified. A wife could do so much. A well-bred, intelligent
+wife—it was simply silly not to admit plain facts—could do everything.
+When she was married....</p>
+
+<p>And then she found herself shrinking from the thought of when she was
+married. She could restrain his affection now; it was her privilege. But
+when she was married, it would be his privilege not to be able to be
+restrained. And there appeared to be no age limit to a man’s
+affectionateness. Here was Edgar, well over sixty and still
+affectionate. Really, really, thought Mrs. Luke, who even in her most
+ardent days had loved only with her mind.</p>
+
+<p>And then one evening, nearly three weeks after the arrival of that
+letter of Jocelyn’s that had brought all this about, Mr. Thorpe said,
+‘When’s it going to be?’</p>
+
+<p>‘When is what going to be?’ she asked, starting.</p>
+
+<p>To this he only replied, ‘Coy, eh?’ and sat staring at her proudly and
+affectionately, a hand on each knee.</p>
+
+<p>Pierced by the word, Mrs. Luke hastened to say in her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_126">{126}</a></span> most level voice,
+‘You mean our marriage? Surely there’s plenty of time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Time, eh? You bet there isn’t. Not for you and me. We’re no chickens,
+either of us.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke winced. She had never at any time tried, or wished, or
+pretended to be a chicken, yet to be told she wasn’t one was strangely
+ruffling. If it were a question of chickens, compared with Edgar she
+certainly was one. These things were relative. But what a way of....</p>
+
+<p>And then, as before, the little maid came in with a letter, and Mr.
+Thorpe, vexed as before by the interruption (why that servant—well, one
+could hardly call a thing that size a servant; that aproned spot,
+then—couldn’t leave letters outside till they were wanted ...), said,
+curbing himself, ‘Letter, eh?’</p>
+
+<p>‘From Jocelyn,’ said Mrs. Luke, who had flushed a bright flame-colour,
+and whose hands, as they held the letter, were shaking.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thought so,’ said Mr. Thorpe in disgust.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>He learned with profound disapproval that Jocelyn was bringing his bride
+to Almond Tree Cottage. He didn’t want brides about—none, that is,
+except his own; and he feared this precious son of hers, who had behaved
+to her about as badly as a son could behave, would distract Margery’s
+attention from her own affairs, and make her even more coy about fixing
+the date of her wedding than she already was.</p>
+
+<p>‘Going to sponge on you,’ was his comment.</p>
+
+<p>She shrank from the word.</p>
+
+<p>‘Jocelyn isn’t like that,’ she said quickly.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_127">{127}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Pooh,’ said Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>She shrank from this word too. Edgar was, as she well knew and quite
+accepted, a plain man and a rough diamond, but a man shouldn’t be too
+plain, a diamond shouldn’t be too rough. Besides, surely the expression
+was obsolete.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Edgar,’ she protested gently.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe persisted. ‘It’s pooh all right,’ he said. ‘Young men with
+wives in their shifts’—he remembered every word of that first
+letter—‘and only five hundred a year to keep them on, always sponge. Or
+try to,’ he said, instinctively closing his hands over his pockets. ‘Got
+to live, you know. Must stay somewhere.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is going to live in London,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘You remember he said
+so in his first letter. Live there and do—do literary work.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Bunkum,’ said Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>And this word seemed to her even more obsolete, if possible, than pooh.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no time to worry about words. What was she going to do?
+Where was she going to put Jocelyn and his wife? How was she going to
+receive them? Had she better pretend to South Winch that she had known
+nothing about it till they had appeared on her doorstep and overwhelmed
+her with the news? Had she better pretend that Jocelyn had given up
+Cambridge because he had been offered a position in London too good to
+refuse? Or had she better hide them indoors till they had found rooms in
+London, and could be got away again without having been seen, and
+meanwhile go on behaving as if nothing had happened?</p>
+
+<p>She lost her head. Standing there, with the letter in her shaking hands
+and Mr. Thorpe, who wouldn’t go<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_128">{128}</a></span> away, squarely in front of her, she
+lost her practical, cool head, and simply couldn’t think what to do. One
+thing alone was clear—she was going to suffer. And presently another
+thing emerged into clearness, an absurd thing, but curiously difficult
+and unpleasant,—she had no spare-room, and in Jocelyn’s room was only
+the little camp bed it had pleased him (and her too, who liked to think
+of him as Spartan), to sleep in. This was no house for more than just
+herself and Jocelyn. Oh, why hadn’t she married Mr. Thorpe at once? Then
+she would have been established at Abergeldie by now, and able to let
+the pair have Almond Tree Cottage to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Abergeldie. The word brought light into her confusion. Of course. That
+was where they must go. Abergeldie, majestic in the size and number of
+its unused spare-rooms, magnificent in its conveniences, its baths, its
+staff of servants. She had been taken over it, as was fitting; had waded
+across the thickness of its carpets, admired its carved wardrobes,
+marble-topped washstands and immense beds, gazed from its numerous
+windows at its many views, wilted through its hot-houses, ached along
+its lawns, and knew all about it. The very place. And, given courage by
+the knowledge of the impossibility of housing more than one person
+beside herself in her own house, urged on by the picture in her mind of
+that tiny room upstairs and its narrow bed, she made her suggestion to
+Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>Nervously she made it, fearing that the reason for it, fearing that the
+merest most passing mention of such a thing as a bed, would bring out
+the side of him which she was forced to recognise as ribald. And it did.
+He said all the things she was so sorry to have been obliged<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_129">{129}</a></span> to expect
+he would. But he was good-natured; he liked to feel he was helping
+Margery out of a fix. Also, the young fool would be away from his mother
+then, and perhaps some sense could be got into his head, and at the same
+time as sense was got in nonsense would be got out,—the nonsense, for
+instance, of no doubt supposing that he, Edgar Thorpe, was the sort of
+man who could be sponged upon beyond, say, a couple of days. Besides, he
+was proud of Abergeldie, and hardly anybody, what with first Annie’s
+being alive and then with her not being alive, had ever seen it.</p>
+
+<p>So it was settled, and he went away earlier than usual to give his
+orders to the housekeeper; and Mrs. Luke, creeping into bed with a
+splitting headache, lay for hours staring at nothing, and trying to
+forget Mr. Thorpe’s last words.</p>
+
+<p>For, after he had most affectionately embraced her, so affectionately
+that she was sure one of her tendons had snapped, he had said: ‘No good
+his trying to milk <i>me</i>, you know.’</p>
+
+<p>Milk him?</p>
+
+<p>She lay staring into the dark. Was character, after all, better than
+education?</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>The Canon said it was, and so did his wife. In fact at tea next day in
+Mrs. Luke’s little garden, on that bit of lawn round the cedar, near the
+low fence across which grazed Mr. Thorpe’s Jersey cows, they all three
+were unanimous that it was. Wonderful how daylight, ordinary things,
+meals, tea-cups, callers, dispelled doubts.</p>
+
+<p>‘Better to have both, of course,’ said the Canon, eating Mr. Thorpe’s
+forced strawberries after covering<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_130">{130}</a></span> them with the cream that had been,
+twenty-four hours earlier, inside those very cows, ‘but if that’s not
+possible, give me character. It’s what <i>tells</i>. It’s the only thing that
+in the long run <i>tells</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, well—one isn’t seriously disputing it,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘Only
+these theories, if one presses them——’</p>
+
+<p>She paused, and poured out more tea for Mrs. Walker.</p>
+
+<p>‘For instance,’ she went on, ‘suppose a man had a cook of a completely
+admirable nature. If he married her, could he be happy? I mean, an
+educated man. Let us say a very <i>well</i> educated man.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Certainly, if she cooked nicely,’ said the Canon, who thought he
+scented rather than saw the form of Mr. Thorpe lurking somewhere at the
+back of his delightful parishioner’s remarks, and wasn’t going to be
+caught.</p>
+
+<p>He knew the importance of turning away seriousness, when it cropped up
+at the wrong moment, with a laugh. A man as valuably rich as Mr. Thorpe
+shouldn’t be taken too seriously, shouldn’t be examined and pulled
+about. His texture simply wouldn’t stand it. He should be said grace
+over, thought the Canon, who fully realised what a precious addition Mr.
+Thorpe’s wealth in Mrs. Luke’s hands was going to be to South Winch, and
+gobbled up thankfully. Gobbled up; not turned over first on the plate.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke hadn’t invited the Walkers to tea. On the contrary, when first
+they appeared at the back door, ushered through it by the little maid
+who each time she saw the Canon’s gaiters was thrown by them into a
+fresh convulsion of respectfulness, she had been annoyed. Because all
+day long she had been vainly trying to collect and arrange her thoughts,
+soothe her nerves,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_131">{131}</a></span> prepare her mind for the evening, when Jocelyn had
+said he would arrive—to supper, he wrote, somewhere round eight
+o’clock,—and define what her attitude was going to be both to him and
+to the girl with the utterly ridiculous Christian name; and not having
+one bit succeeded, and impelled by some vague hope that out of doors she
+might find quiet, that in Nature she might find tranquillity and
+composure, had said she would have tea in the garden.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nature never did betray the heart that loved her....</i></p>
+
+<p>Some idea like that, though she wasn’t at all a Wordsworthian and
+regarded him at best with indulgence, drove her out to what her corner
+of South Winch held of Nature,—the bit of lawn, the cedar, the Kerria
+japonica against the wall by the kitchen window, the meadow across the
+railing, full of daisies and cows, and, on that fine spring afternoon of
+swift shadows and sunshine, the wind, fresh and sweet with the scent of
+young leaves.</p>
+
+<p>But once the Walkers were there she found they did her good. They
+distracted her. And they liked her so much. It was always pleasant and
+restoring to be with people who liked one. The Canon made her feel she
+was good-looking and important, and his wife made her feel she was
+important. Also, they helped with the strawberries, from which, after a
+fortnight of them at every meal, she had for some time turned away her
+eyes. Later on, when she was alone again, there would still be at least
+a couple of hours to decide in what sort of a way she would meet
+Jocelyn; quite long enough, seeing how she couldn’t, whenever she
+thought of the meeting, stop herself from trembling.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, he had behaved outrageously to her—to her, his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_132">{132}</a></span> mother, who had
+given up her life to him. There had been men in past years she might
+have married, men of her own age and class, by whom she might have had
+other children and with whom she might have been happy all this time;
+and she had turned them down, dismissed them ruthlessly because of
+Jocelyn, because only Jocelyn, and his gifts and career, were to have
+her love and devotion. Wasn’t it a shame, wasn’t it a shame to treat her
+so? To behave to her as though she were his enemy, the kill-joy who
+mustn’t be told and mustn’t be consulted, who must be kept in the dark,
+shut out? And why, because he had gone mad about a girl, must he go
+still more mad, and ruin himself by throwing up Cambridge?</p>
+
+<p>A wave of fresh misery swept over her. ‘Go on talking—<i>please</i>,’ she
+said quickly, when the Walkers, replete, fell momentarily silent.</p>
+
+<p>They looked up surprised; and they were still more surprised when they
+saw that her face, usually delicately pale, was quite red, and her eyes
+full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>The Canon was affectionately concerned, and his wife was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you not well, dear Mrs. Luke?’ she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>‘My <i>dear</i> friend,’ said the Canon, setting down his cup, tidying his
+mouth, and taking her hand. ‘My dear, <i>dear</i> friend—what is it?’</p>
+
+<p>Then, impulsively, she told them. ‘It’s Jocelyn,’ she said. ‘He’s
+married, and given up Cambridge.’</p>
+
+<p>And all her mortification and bitter unhappiness engulfed her, and she
+began helplessly to cry.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear, dear. Dear me. Dear, dear me,’ said the Canon.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_133">{133}</a></span></p>
+<p>‘Dear Mrs. Luke——’ said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>They sat impotently looking on. Such excessive weeping from the poised,
+the unemotional, the serene Mrs. Luke, was most disconcerting. One
+shouldn’t expose oneself like that, however unhappy one was, thought the
+Canon’s wife, feeling terribly uncomfortable; and even the Canon had a
+sensation he didn’t like, as of fig-leaves being wrenched off and flung
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>Well, having behaved like this—really her nerves had completely
+gone—there was nothing left but to explain further, and after a few
+painful moments of trying to gulp herself quiet she told them all about
+it.</p>
+
+<p>They were horrified. Jocelyn’s behaviour, to the Walkers who had
+ripening sons of their own, seemed to the last degree disgraceful. That
+the girl was some one to be ashamed of was very plain, or why should he
+have come down voluntarily from Cambridge? Marriage by itself didn’t
+stop a student from continuing there. He was ruined. He would never be
+anything now. And as representing South Winch, which had not yet in its
+history produced a distinguished man, the Canon felt this blighting of
+its hopes that some day it would be celebrated as the early home of Sir
+Jocelyn Luke, perhaps of Lord Luke—why not? hadn’t there been
+Kelvin?—very keenly.</p>
+
+<p>Poor mother. Poor, poor mother.</p>
+
+<p>The Canon took her hand, and, raising it reverently to his lips, kissed
+it. His wife didn’t mind this, because in sorrow, as in sickness, there
+is no sex. Nobody enjoys kissing the hand of the sick. She minded
+nothing the Canon did so long as he didn’t enjoy it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes—and he’s bringing her here to-night,’ gasped Mrs. Luke, struggling
+to keep down a fresh outburst.</p>
+
+<p>‘Here? Bringing her here? Without first asking<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_134">{134}</a></span> your permission and
+forgiveness?’ cried the Canon. ‘Disgraceful. Outrageous. Unpardonable.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, <i>isn’t</i> it, <i>isn’t</i> it——’ wept Mrs. Luke into her handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>Never, never could she forgive Jocelyn. No, she never, never would. Let
+him manage for himself now. Let him lie as best he could on the
+miserable bed he had made. She would tell him so plainly, and though she
+couldn’t help his coming there that night she would insist that he
+should go away again next morning and never, never come back....</p>
+
+<p>And then, over the top of her handkerchief, she saw him standing there,
+standing in the back-door looking at her: Jocelyn; the light of her
+eyes; the only thing really in her life.</p>
+
+<p>‘Jocelyn—oh, <i>Jocelyn</i>!’</p>
+
+<p>She gave a kind of sobbing sigh; she struggled to her feet; she stood,
+swaying a moment, holding on to the table; and then simply ran to him.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>‘Mother——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh—<i>Jocelyn</i>!’</p>
+
+<p>He hugged her tighter than he had ever hugged her. He was raised quite
+outside his ordinary self, in this joy of getting back to her. And that
+she should run into his arms—she who never ran, who never showed
+emotion!</p>
+
+<p>‘You’re not angry, Mother?’ he asked, looking down at her upturned face,
+still wet and red from her recent weeping.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dreadfully,’ she said, smiling up at him, the strangest transfigured,
+watery smile.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_135">{135}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Mother—I knew you wouldn’t fail me!’ he cried, infinitely
+relieved, infinitely melted and grateful.</p>
+
+<p>‘Fail you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Mother——’</p>
+
+<p>And they hugged again. His mother’s love was a miracle. Her voice was an
+enchantment. Just to hear the words, the precious right words, said in
+the precious right voice....</p>
+
+<p>At the tea-table the Canon and his wife, who carefully didn’t look but
+yet saw, were much shocked. This surely amounted to having duped them as
+to her real feelings, to having got their sympathy and concern on false
+pretences.</p>
+
+<p>‘Hadn’t we better go home, John?’ Mrs. Walker inquired of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>‘Much better,’ said the Canon, who didn’t see how to do it.</p>
+
+<p>He looked about for a way of escape.</p>
+
+<p>There wasn’t one, except by climbing over to the cows, and that would
+involve them in trespass. Besides, retreat should be dignified.</p>
+
+<p>‘But where——?’ Mrs. Luke was whispering, her cheek against Jocelyn’s,
+while with one hand she still clung hold of his neck. ‘Salvatia——?’</p>
+
+<p>‘In the sitting-room,’ whispered Jocelyn. ‘I put her there. I wanted to
+see you first alone. Why on earth those Walkers are here to-day of all
+days——’</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at the scene on the lawn, where the Canon and his wife,
+marooned at the untidy tea-table, were trying to seem absorbed in
+something that wasn’t happening up above their heads in the branches of
+the cedar.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_136">{136}</a></span></p>
+<p>‘You said supper-time——’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I scorched to get to you quickly——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you wanted me?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Mother!’</p>
+
+<p>And he hugged her again, and the Walkers looked about again for a way of
+escape, and again found none.</p>
+
+<p>Sweet, sweet, delicious beyond dreams, was this restoration to all, to
+far more than all that had been apparent before, of her boy’s need of
+her, and of his love. If this was the effect being married had on him,
+then she was glad he had married. How could she be angry with a wife who
+brought him closer than ever, more utterly than ever, back to his
+mother? So, she thought, must the Prodigal Son’s father have felt about
+the swine his boy had had such a dose of. He wouldn’t have resented
+them; he must have quite liked them.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ll try and love her, won’t you, Mother?’ said Jocelyn. ‘She
+is—very lovable.’</p>
+
+<p>And taking his mother by the hand, he led her to the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>There stood the exquisite Sally; stood, because she was afraid to sit.
+Round her slender body she held tightly the new wrap Jocelyn, among
+other things, had bought her on their way through London and had
+instructed her to keep on till he told her to take it off. It was grey,
+so as to make her as invisible as possible, and was of the kind that has
+neither sleeves nor fastenings; and Sally, who had never been inside a
+thing like that before, clutched it with anxious obedience about her
+with both hands.</p>
+
+<p>Extravagantly slender in this garment, which took<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_137">{137}</a></span> on as if by magic the
+most delicious folds directly it got hold of Sally, and too lovely to be
+credible, she stood there, her lips parted in fright, and her eyes fixed
+on the entering Mrs. Luke.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>Oh</i>——’ said Mrs. Luke, catching her breath, who had read poetry,
+who had heard music, who knew what April mornings in the woods are like,
+when the sun shines through windflowers and the birds are wild with
+young delight.</p>
+
+<p>Sally’s knees shook. She clutched the grey wrap tighter still about her.
+Mr. Luke’s mother was so terribly like Mr. Luke. Two of them. She hadn’t
+bargained for two of them. And she was worse than he was, because she
+was a lady. Gentlemen were difficult enough, but they did every now and
+then cast themselves at one’s feet and make one feel one could do what
+one liked for a bit, but a lady wouldn’t; a lady would always stay a
+lady.</p>
+
+<p>The word struck cold on Sally’s heart. What did one do with a lady? And
+a lady, too, who seemed hardly older than her son, and as wide-awake and
+sharp as you please, Sally was sure. She had been imagining Jocelyn’s
+mother old and stout and whitehaired, and perhaps not able to see or
+hear very well, and therefore comfortingly slow to mark what was done
+amiss. And here was this thin, quick, almost young lady. No flies on
+<i>her</i> for dead certain, thought Sally, clutching her wrap.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart, which felt as if it had already sunk as far as it could go,
+contrived to sink still farther. She stared at Mrs. Luke with the
+fascinated fear of a rabbit confronted by a snake; but her stare, which
+felt inside just as ugly and scared as that, was outside the most
+beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_138">{138}</a></span> little look of gracious shyness, and Mrs. Luke, staring back,
+was for a moment quite unable to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Who was this? Had Jocelyn caught and married some marvellous daughter of
+a patrician house? Had he been up to Olympus, and netted the young
+Aphrodite as, on that morning of roses, she stepped ashore from her
+shell?</p>
+
+<p>She flushed scarlet. The perfect grace and youth, the dream-like
+loveliness....</p>
+
+<p>‘Why,’ she murmured under her breath, ‘how <i>beautiful</i>——’ and took a
+step forward, and held out both her hands.</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you really my new daughter?’ she said in a low voice. ‘You?’</p>
+
+<p>With a great effort Sally managed to stand her ground, and not shrink
+away backwards before this alarming figure. She didn’t know what to do
+about the held out hands, because if she let go of the wrap so as to
+shake them it would fall off, and Jocelyn had said she was on no account
+to let it do that.</p>
+
+<p>She therefore stood motionless, and her tongue clove to the roof of her
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke came close. ‘You wonderful child—<i>you’re</i> Salvatia?’ she
+murmured.</p>
+
+<p>With a great effort Sally continued to hold her ground; with a great
+effort she unclove her tongue.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s right,’ she said, clutching her grey wrap.</p>
+
+<p>Two words; but enough. How many times had not Jocelyn told her not to
+say That’s right? But he had told her not to say nearly everything; she
+couldn’t possibly remember all the things she wasn’t to say, however
+hard she tried. Indeed, Sally in her flustered soul was thinking what a
+mercy it was she hadn’t added<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_139">{139}</a></span> ‘mum.’ It had been on the tip of her
+tongue, faced by a lady, and she had hung on to it just in time.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke, startled, was arrested for an instant in her advance. Then,
+not after all quite certain that she had heard what she had heard—it
+seemed impossible that she should have—she went close up to Sally and
+kissed her. She had to reach up to her for Sally was half a head the
+taller, besides being rigid with fright.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sally, kiss my mother and make friends,’ said Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, Mr. Luke——’ said Sally, making a quick downward lunge of her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, Sally——<i>please</i>,’ protested Jocelyn. ‘She can’t,’ he added,
+turning to his mother, ‘get used to calling me by my Christian name.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Sorry,’ said Sally; and felt so very warm that she had a queer
+conviction that even her stomach must be blushing.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke stood looking at her, trying to smile. She now knew
+everything. No need for words from Jocelyn, for explanations. She knew,
+and she understood. Up to her to behave well; up to her to behave
+wonderfully, and make him more than ever certain there was no one in the
+whole world like his mother.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’ll learn,’ she said, smiling as best she could. ‘Won’t
+you—Salvatia?’</p>
+
+<p>If only, thought Sally, she were back at Woodles; if only, only she were
+back safe and quiet with her father at Woodles.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was inevitable,’ said Mrs. Luke, turning to Jocelyn. ‘Absolutely
+inevitable.’</p>
+
+<p>He caught hold of his mother’s hands. That she should see that, that she
+should instantly understand....<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_140">{140}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘And I congratulate you with all my heart, my dear son, and my dear
+daughter,’ Mrs. Luke went on, continuing to be wonderful. ‘You are both
+my dear, my very dear, children.’</p>
+
+<p>And Jocelyn bent his head over her hand, and kissed it in a fervour of
+gratitude and relief.</p>
+
+<p>And Sally, looking on at Usband in this new light, thought, ‘Well, I’m
+blest.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_141">{141}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<h2><a id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Restored</span> by the shock both of Sally’s loveliness and language to her
+normal self, Mrs. Luke’s tears dried up and her emotions calmed down,
+and she began to think rapidly and clearly.</p>
+
+<p>This situation had to be dealt with. The only person who could deal with
+it with any hope at all of success was herself. She would, then, grasp
+it firmly, as if it were a nettle, and wear it proudly, as if it were a
+rose. Yes, that was the line to take: wear it proudly, as if it were a
+rose.</p>
+
+<p>More clearly than if Jocelyn had explained for an hour she saw what had
+happened, what couldn’t have helped happening, once chance had shown him
+Salvatia. From those few words of Sally’s she reconstructed the Pinner
+family and its conditions, and as she stood gazing at her, with one hand
+still in Jocelyn’s, she grouped the whole Pinner lot into the single
+word Gutter. Jocelyn had found and picked up beauty in a gutter. The
+gutter was as evident as the beauty, and as impossible to hide. Accept
+it, then; accept it, and make South Winch accept it. Treat it as quaint,
+as amusing, as completely excused by the beauty. She had made South
+Winch accept Tiepolo, when it didn’t in the least want to, and now see
+into what an enthusiasm it had lashed itself! Even so would she make it
+accept<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_142">{142}</a></span> Salvatia; and ceaselessly every hour, every minute, she herself
+would educate the girl, and train her patiently, and force her gently
+into proper ways of speech and behaviour. Seventeen, was she? Mrs. Luke
+felt that with seventeen all things were possible. A child. Wax. And she
+was so really exquisite, so really perfect of form and colour and
+movement, that it would be wonderful to watch her development, her
+unfolding into at least the semblance of a lady.</p>
+
+<p>Salvatia—‘No, no, dearest Jocelyn—not Sally, not Sally,’ she begged on
+his calling her that, for she had a theory that names had the power of
+making you be like them, and a Sally was foredoomed to unredeemable
+vulgarity—should have masters (perhaps mistresses would be better,)
+down from London, when once Mrs. Luke was married to Mr. Thorpe and
+could afford things; regular teachers who would give her lessons at
+stated hours, while she herself would give her lessons at all the
+unstated ones. And she would take her everywhere, to each of the South
+Winch festivities, whether tea-parties, or debates, or lectures, or
+concerts or plays, and wherever she went Salvatia should be her open
+glory. It would be a mistake in tactics, besides being an impossibility,
+to try to hide her. She should be flaunted. For, confronted by a bull,
+Mrs. Luke remembered, quite the best thing to do was to take it by the
+horns.</p>
+
+<p>So swiftly do thoughts gallop through minds like Mrs. Luke’s that she
+had planned out her attitude in those few instants in the sitting-room,
+while she stood gazing at Sally and holding Jocelyn’s hand.</p>
+
+<p>‘We’re going to be <i>great</i> friends, are we not Salvatia?’ she said,
+laying her free hand on her daughter-in-law’s delicate little shoulder.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_143">{143}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Great friends? She and the lady? The bare suggestion produced in Sally
+that physical condition known to the Pinner family as fit to drop.</p>
+
+<p>Directly questioned, however, she was forced to answer, so she said
+faintly, ‘Right O,’ and Mrs. Luke, smiling elaborately and patting the
+shoulder, said, ‘You very quaint little girl,’—and in spite of the
+obvious inappropriateness of these adjectives as a description of the
+noble young angel standing before her, she was determined that they
+should, roughly, represent her attitude towards her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now we’ll all have tea,’ she said, suddenly becoming gaily
+business-like. These children—it was she who must take them in hand. No
+more emotions, she decided. Her beloved Jocelyn needed her help again,
+couldn’t do without her.... ‘Won’t we, Jocelyn? Won’t we, Salvatia? I’ve
+had some already, but I’ll be greedy and have some more. Jocelyn, you go
+and tell Hammond——’ Hammond was the little maid’s surname, and by it,
+to her great astonishment who knew herself only as Lizz, she had been
+called since she entered Mrs. Luke’s service—‘to make fresh tea and
+bring it in here. You must both be dying for it. And then you can say
+goodbye to the Walkers for me, Jocelyn, will you?’ she called after him.
+‘Tell them I’ve got a most beautiful surprise for them—quite soon,
+perhaps to-morrow. <i>You’re</i> the beautiful surprise, Salvatia,’ she said,
+turning to Sally smilingly, who had made a sudden forward movement as if
+to follow Jocelyn, and who, on seeing him go out of the room and leave
+her alone with his mother, was so seriously alarmed that she again had a
+queer conviction about her stomach, but this time that it was turning
+what the Pinner family called as white as a sheet.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_144">{144}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Of course you know you’re beautiful, don’t you?’ said Mrs. Luke, busily
+pulling out the little table the tea was to be put on in the absence of
+the proper table in the garden, and clearing Sir Thomas Browne off it,
+and also two bright tulips in a clear glass vessel. ‘You must have heard
+that ever since you can remember.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I can’t <i>’elp</i> it,’ said Sally, very anxious, her eyes on the door.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Elp it? You quaint child. There’s an h in help, Salvatia dear. Help
+it? But why should you want to? It’s a wonderful gift, and you should
+thank God who gave it you, and use it entirely——’ Mrs. Luke was quite
+surprised at her own words, for she wasn’t at all religious, yet they
+came out glibly, and she concluded they were subconsciously inspired by
+the Canon in the garden—‘entirely to His glory.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, m——’</p>
+
+<p>‘No—stop there, stop there,’ cried Mrs. Luke, quickly holding up her
+hand and smiling. ‘You were going to say ma’am, were you not, Salvatia?
+Well, you mustn’t. Not to me. Not to anybody. Except, of course,’ she
+added, feeling she couldn’t begin too soon to help the child, ‘to the
+Queen, and other royal ladies.’</p>
+
+<p>And before her eyes floated that vision she had so often contemplated of
+Sir Jocelyn Luke, of Lord Luke, and now was added to it Lady Luke, the
+lovely Lady Luke, being presented at Court, and by that time as perfect
+inside as out. Properly dealt with, Jocelyn’s marriage, instead of being
+his ruin, might end by being one of his chief glories.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sit down, little girl.’</p>
+
+<p>Sally dropped as if she were shot on to the nearest chair, which was
+Mrs. Luke’s.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_145">{145}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Not there—not that one,’ said Mrs. Luke, smiling. ‘No, dear child—nor
+that one,’ she added, as Sally having hastily got up again was about to
+drop on to the next nearest one, which was Jocelyn’s—better get her
+into all the little ways at once. ‘<i>Any</i> chair, Salvatia dear, except
+just those two. Yes—that’s a very comfortable one. Is not it too
+strange to think that this time yesterday you and I never had seen each
+other, and had no more idea——’</p>
+
+<p>Sally, sitting down more cautiously on the edge of the third chair,
+didn’t think that strange at all, but very natural and nice. There had
+been lots of yesterdays without the lady in them, and all of them had
+seemed quite natural. What really was strange was that they should have
+left off and landed her here, shut up alone with somebody so happily
+till then unknown. If only, thought Sally, she could now, having been
+introduced and that, go somewhere where the lady wasn’t. For Mrs. Luke
+terrified her more than any one she had yet in her brief life come
+across. Worse, far worse, than her parents when, for her good, they used
+to give her What for, and worse even than Mr. Luke when he turned and
+just looked at her and didn’t say anything after she had passed some
+remark, was this smiling lady who patted her. She couldn’t take her eyes
+off Mrs. Luke, watching her with a fascinated apprehension, not knowing
+where she mightn’t be going to be patted next.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting sideways on the very edge of her chair, and still holding her
+wrap tightly about her, Sally’s eyes followed Mrs. Luke’s slightest
+movement. In any one else it would have been a stare, and Mrs. Luke
+would have explained that she mustn’t, but there was nothing wrong to be
+found with the look in Sally’s eyes,—nothing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_146">{146}</a></span> wrong, indeed, to be
+found in anything she did, thought Mrs. Luke, arranging things
+comfortably for everybody’s tea, so long as it wasn’t speaking.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke knew she was being watched, but only, so it seemed, with a
+lovely and gracious attentiveness. She also knew Sally was sitting on
+the edge of her chair, with her legs drawn up under her just as if she
+were trying to keep them out of something not quite nice; but no need to
+disturb a position which somehow seemed sheer grace. What a pity, what a
+pity, flashed across Mrs. Luke’s mind, that the child hadn’t happened to
+be born dumb! Was that wicked? No, she didn’t think so. She herself
+could imagine being very happy dumb, with plenty of books, and not
+having to talk to bores.</p>
+
+<p>‘Wouldn’t you like to take your hat off, Salvatia?’ she asked, drawing
+Jocelyn’s chair closer to the little table.</p>
+
+<p>Sally started. ‘No thank you, please——’ she said hastily.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘I want you to.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, m—yes, Mrs. Luke,’ said Sally, instantly obeying.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not Mrs. Luke, dear—Mother. You must call me Moth——’</p>
+
+<p>Her voice died away, and she stood staring in silence. How wonderful.
+How really amazingly beautiful. Like sunsets. And the girl, crowned with
+that bright crown of waving light, like some royal child.</p>
+
+<p>She stood staring, her hands dropped by her sides. ‘What a
+<i>responsibility</i>,’ she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>‘Pardon?’ said Sally, nervously.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_147">{147}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>The Walkers were got rid of, and Jocelyn came back frowning. They had
+scolded him; him, who had been completely understood and unreproached by
+his mother, the one person with either a right or a grievance. Having
+known him since he was three didn’t excuse them, he considered; and it
+seemed merely silly to rebuke him for leaving Cambridge when he wasn’t
+going to leave it. He didn’t attempt to enlighten them; he just stood
+and glowered, waiting till they should have done. What could old Walker
+know of the way one was forced to react to beauty? He had probably never
+set eyes on it in his life. And as for passionate love, the fiery love
+that had been burning him up for the last few weeks, one had only to
+look at Mrs. Walker to know he could never have felt that.</p>
+
+<p>So he simply repeated, when the Canon paused a moment, that his mother
+had asked him to say good-bye for her, and then, this second time, he
+added, ‘She can’t come herself, because she is with my wife.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Conceited young monkey,’ thought Mrs. Walker, who remembered him in
+petticoats, and even then giving himself airs. ‘Wife, indeed.’ Both Mrs.
+Walker’s sons were without gifts.</p>
+
+<p>‘Your mother is an angel, sir,’ said the Canon sternly.</p>
+
+<p>‘So is my wife,’ said Jocelyn, glowering.</p>
+
+<p>‘No doubt, no doubt,’ said the Canon, who didn’t for a moment believe
+it. Angels weren’t married in such a hurry. On the other hand, he was
+sure young devils frequently were. They got hold of one and made one.
+Jocelyn had been got hold of—lamentably, disastrously.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_148">{148}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Canon snatched up his hat. ‘Come along, Margaret,’ he said testily,
+squaring his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>And Margaret came along, and together they marched off into the house,
+along the passage, past the shut sitting-room door, accompanied by
+Jocelyn who showed them out in silence.</p>
+
+<p>He had said no word of that pleasant part of his mother’s message, that
+part about having a beautiful surprise for the Walkers, perhaps
+to-morrow, because he was annoyed with them, and they went away more
+indignant with him than before, besides feeling they had been
+treacherously treated by their hitherto dear friend, Mrs. Luke. And Mrs.
+Walker, when they were safely out in the road, said what a very
+disagreeable young man he had grown into, and the Canon said he hoped
+Mr. Thorpe would lick him into shape, and Jocelyn, all unconscious of
+Mr. Thorpe, went back frowning to his mother, who was in the act, when
+he opened the door, of stroking Sally’s hair.</p>
+
+<p>He forgot the tiresome Walkers, and his heart swelled with gratitude.
+That Sally should be taken at once to his mother’s arms like this had
+been outside his wildest hopes. Indeed, he had had no hopes, no clear
+thoughts about it at all; he only, driven by weariness of the burden of
+complications Sally brought into the simplest things, had come back to
+his mother’s feet as the Christian sinner, tired of or frightened by his
+sins, comes back to the feet of God. The analogy wasn’t perfect, of
+course; Sally, so good and beautiful, couldn’t be compared to sin. But
+he wanted to get back to his mother’s feet, he had a tremendous, almost
+childish, longing to lie there and let her kick him if she chose. He had
+treated her badly. He well knew he deserved it. Let her do<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_149">{149}</a></span> anything in
+the way of rebuke and chastisement, if only he might lie there, he and
+his burden, safely cast down, both of them, at her feet. ‘<i>I will arise
+and go to my Mother</i>,’ had floated frequently through his head as he set
+the bonnet of the Morris-Cowley eastward towards London and South Winch.
+Naturally he hadn’t said it out loud. Sally was incapable of
+understanding even a simple reaction. This one, which was highly
+complicated, would have completely bewildered her. Besides, one can’t
+well speak of a reaction to its cause.</p>
+
+<p>But how happy was Jocelyn at the moment when he opened the door, and saw
+her and his mother in that attitude of mutual affection; how deeply
+relieved. The cords were loosened, the weight shifted. Here this calm
+room, with everything in it just right, just <i>so</i>—its restraints, its
+browns and ivories, its flashes of colour, its books, its one picture;
+and upstairs, up under the roof, his own attic waiting for him, with its
+promise of work to be resumed, to be carried on as it used to be in the
+tranquil, fruitful days before he met Sally.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn stood a moment looking at the scene, smiling his rare smile
+because he was so content. How unlike the places he had suffered in
+since he last was here. How unlike the Pinner lair at the back of the
+shop, where he had burnt in torment, and the hideous dwelling of the
+Cupps, where he had been insulted, and the dingy expensiveness of the
+Thistle and Goat, and the other three or four cynically ugly and
+uncomfortable rooms through which he had trailed his passion. Impossible
+not to smile, not to laugh almost, with gladness at getting home again.
+He had, he knew, all his life loved his mother, but it seemed as if he
+hadn’t loved her consciously till now, and he went quickly across to her
+and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_150">{150}</a></span> put his arm about her, and said, ‘Mother, you must never leave me.
+I can’t do without you. <i>We</i> can’t. When I go back to Cambridge—and of
+course I’m going back—you must come too. You’re going to live with us
+there. Everything depends on you. All my future, all my happiness——’</p>
+
+<p>And Sally, over whose head these words were being tossed, sitting very
+rigid, for Mrs. Luke’s hand was still on her hair, and wholly
+unaccustomed to displays of family affection, once again said to
+herself, just for company’s sake and to keep her courage up, ‘Well, I’m
+blest.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke, however, was brought back by Jocelyn’s words to a vivid sense
+of Mr. Thorpe. He had sunk aside in her mind during the emotions of the
+last half hour. He now became distinct; extremely distinct, and
+frightfully near. That very evening he would be coming round after
+supper—he had agreed that the meal itself should be given over to
+reunion—in order to collect his young guests.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn, she knew, had no idea of his existence. Mr. Thorpe, though
+living in South Winch, had not till then been of it. His world had been
+different. His wealth had separated him, and his obvious
+disharmony—South Winch had only to look at him to perceive it—with the
+things of the spirit. Also, there had been his wife. So that if
+mentioned, which was rarely, it had merely been with vague uninterest as
+the rich man in the big house in Acacia Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>Now he had to be mentioned, and Jocelyn’s words made it difficult.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_151">{151}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke stood silent, her hand still on Sally’s head, encircled by
+Jocelyn’s arm, while he told her of the plans he had been making for the
+last two days, ever since it suddenly dawned on him that that was to be
+their future. How could she interrupt him with Mr. Thorpe? Yet Mr.
+Thorpe was, she was sure, the real solution. Salvatia was going to be
+expensive, very, if the gutter was to be properly scraped off her, and
+no further stretching could possibly be got out of her own income, while
+Jocelyn’s, of course, would be all needed for Cambridge. Yes—Mr.
+Thorpe, who had begun by being a refuge, had now become a godsend.
+Jocelyn would see it himself, when he had had him properly explained.</p>
+
+<p>But how difficult to explain him—now, with the sweet balm of her boy’s
+dependence on her and his love being poured into her ears, her boy, who
+in his whole life hadn’t shown so much of either as he had in the half
+hour since he came home. Yet it wasn’t her fault, it was Jocelyn’s. It
+was his marriage that had precipitated Mr. Thorpe into their lives.
+Still, she didn’t blame Jocelyn, for no young man, let alone her
+imaginative, beauty-appreciating son, could have resisted Salvatia.</p>
+
+<p>She stood silent, smiling nervously. To have to quench this happy
+hopefulness with Mr. Thorpe was most painful. She smiled more and more
+nervously. Apart from everything else, it embarrassed her, her coming
+marriage, it embarrassed her dreadfully, somehow, faced by her grown-up
+son. The memory of that almost snapped tendon last night ... suppose
+Jocelyn were to think she was marrying Mr. Thorpe for anything but
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_152">{152}</a></span>convenience, with anything but reluctance ... suppose he were to take
+up a Hamlet-like attitude to her, and think—he would never, she knew,
+say—rude things....</p>
+
+<p>‘How delightful it all sounds,’ she said at last, removing her hand from
+Sally’s head, who at once felt better. ‘Quite, quite delightful. But——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, Mother, there mustn’t be any buts,’ interrupted Jocelyn. ‘It’s all
+settled.’ And rashly—but then he felt so happy and safe—he appealed to
+Sally. ‘Isn’t it, Sally,’ he said. ‘We want Mother, don’t we. And we’re
+going to have her, aren’t we.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes—and Father,’ said Sally, whose ideas were simple but tenacious.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father?’ repeated Mrs. Luke, touched. ‘Dear child, your poor Jocelyn
+has no——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mother, you and I must really have a good talk together,’ hastily
+interposed Jocelyn, who saw Sally’s mouth opening again. She shouldn’t
+<i>say</i> anything; she really shouldn’t <i>say</i> anything; the less she said
+the better for everybody. ‘You and I. By ourselves. This evening, when
+Sally——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Salvatia, Jocelyn. Please, please.’</p>
+
+<p>‘—— has gone up to bed.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But you know, Jocelyn dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, loosening herself from his
+clasp and withdrawing a little, ‘that’s just what the dear child can’t
+go up to. Not here. Not in this tiny house. You didn’t think, of course,
+but there isn’t an inch of room really—not for three people. So I
+wanted to tell you—’ she began putting his tie straight, her eyes on
+it, not looking at him—‘what I’ve arranged. You’re both going to be
+taken in next door.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Next door, Mother?’ said Jocelyn, much surprised, for he couldn’t at
+all recollect the next door people.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_153">{153}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Well, nearly next door,’ said Mrs. Luke, diligent over his tie, and
+excessively annoyed to feel she was turning red. ‘At Abergeldie.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Abergeldie?’ echoed Jocelyn, to whom the name was completely
+unfamiliar.</p>
+
+<p>‘I tell you what we’ll do,’ said Mrs. Luke, as though she had suddenly
+had a brilliant idea, on the little maid’s appearing in the door bearing
+a tray that seemed twice as big as she was, and all but dropping it when
+she caught sight of the young lady on the chair. ‘After tea Salvatia
+shall go and lie down in my bedroom and rest—won’t you, Salvatia,—and
+you and I will have a quiet talk, dear Jocelyn—no, no, Hammond, not
+there; here, where I’ve put the table ready—and I’ll tell you all
+about—we want three cups, Hammond, not two—I’ll tell you all about——’</p>
+
+<p>But she still couldn’t bring herself to mention Mr. Thorpe, and again
+said Abergeldie.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is that lodgings?’ asked Jocelyn, who didn’t at all like the sound of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, no—it isn’t <i>lodgings</i>,’ said Mrs. Luke brightly, giving his tie a
+final pat.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>How was she to tell him about Mr. Thorpe? In what words, once she had
+got Salvatia upstairs out of the way, could she most quickly create in
+Jocelyn’s mind the image she wished to have there of a good, and
+honourable, and wealthy man, a man elderly and settled down, who
+respected and esteemed her, and because he respected and esteemed her
+wished to make her his wife? A good man, who would be a solid background
+for them<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_154">{154}</a></span> all. A good man, whose feeling for her—Mrs. Luke was most
+anxious that Jocelyn shouldn’t suppose there was anything warm about Mr.
+Thorpe—was that of a kind, and much older, brother.</p>
+
+<p>Preoccupied and perturbed, she poured out the tea and drank some
+herself, and hardly noticed what Sally was doing who, faced for the
+first time in her life by no table to sit up to and only her lap to put
+her cup and saucer and spoon and things to eat on, kept on either
+dropping them or spilling them.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, Mother, you’ll just have to be very patient,’ said Jocelyn,
+himself deeply annoyed when Sally’s spoon fell off for the third time,
+and for the third time made a noise on the varnished floor, which only
+had two rugs on it, and those far apart.</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Luke smiled, and said ‘Of course,’ and hardly noticed, because
+of her deep preoccupation with Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>But when the cup itself slid sideways on the saucer and upset, and
+Sally’s frock was soaked and the cup broken, she was startled into
+awareness again, and for the moment forgot Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, <i>my</i>!’ cried Sally, shaken into speech.</p>
+
+<p>‘It really isn’t of the slightest consequence, Salvatia,’ said Mrs.
+Luke, who was particularly fond of her teacups, of which none had ever
+yet been broken. ‘Pray don’t try to pick up anything. Hammond will do
+so. Jocelyn, ring the bell, will you? But I shouldn’t,’ she added, for
+naturally she was vexed at the set being spoilt, and though breeding,
+she knew, forbids vexation at such <i>contretemps</i> being shown, yet it has
+to get out in some form or other, ‘I shouldn’t say, “Oh, <i>my</i>,” when
+anything unexpected happens.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_155">{155}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<p>‘Right O,’ murmured Sally, shattered, all Jocelyn’s teaching vanishing
+from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nor,’ remarked Mrs. Luke, gently and very clearly, ‘should I say,
+“Right O”.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ve told her not to a hundred times,’ said Jocelyn, wiping Sally’s
+frock with his handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s right,’ murmured Sally, who had now lost her head, and only
+wanted to admit her evil-doing and be forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nor, dear Salvatia,’ said Mrs. Luke, still more gently and clearly,
+‘should I, I think, say that.’</p>
+
+<p>So then Sally said nothing, for there seemed nothing left to say.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’ll be perfectly all right ultimately,’ said Mrs. Luke, coming down
+to Jocelyn when presently she had taken her upstairs, and tucked her up
+on the bed, and told her she was tired and must rest. ‘Perfectly.’</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn was waiting in the sitting-room. He and his mother were now,
+having got Sally out of the way, going to have their talk.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’re wonderful, Mother,’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Darling Jocelyn,’ smiled his mother. ‘It’s that child who is
+wonderful,’ she added. ‘Or will be, when she has been properly——’ she
+was going to say scraped, the word gutter coming once more into her
+mind, but of course she didn’t, and substituted something milder. ‘When
+she has been properly trained,’ finished Mrs. Luke.</p>
+
+<p>‘It sounds like a servant,’ said Jocelyn, who was sensitive because of
+the tin trunk (got rid of in Truro,) and the stiff nightgowns (got rid
+of in Truro too,) and several other distinct and searing memories.</p>
+
+<p>‘Servant? You absurd boy. She’s a duchess, who<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_156">{156}</a></span> happens not to have been
+born right—the most beautiful duchess the world would ever have seen.
+Now never,’ said Mrs. Luke with much seriousness—she felt she must take
+this situation thoroughly in hand—‘never, never let such a word as the
+one you just used enter your mind in connection with Salvatia again, my
+dear Jocelyn.’</p>
+
+<p>No, he wouldn’t tell his mother about the way Sally had seemed to drift,
+as if drawn, towards the Cupps, quite obviously wanting to make friends
+with them, nor about the way she actually had made friends with the
+spotted mechanic in the Truro garage. And as for Mr. Pinner, for whom he
+had a curious distaste and of whom the remembrance was definitely
+grievous to him, Jocelyn wouldn’t tell his mother about him either. He
+would skim over Mr. Pinner. Why intrude him? Why dot the i’s of Sally’s
+beginnings? His mother had heard for herself how she spoke, and knew
+approximately what her father must be like. Let her knowledge remain
+approximate.</p>
+
+<p>So they went together into the garden—again Mrs. Luke instinctively
+sought Nature,—Jocelyn determined to keep Mr. Pinner out of his
+mother’s consciousness, and Mrs. Luke determined to get Mr. Thorpe into
+his.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Arm in arm they paced up and down what Mr. Thorpe persisted in calling
+the drying ground, in spite of Mrs. Luke’s steady reference to it as the
+lawn, and Jocelyn said, ‘Her family come from Islington.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Suburbans. Like ourselves,’ replied his mother, with a really heavenly
+tact, Jocelyn thought.</p>
+
+<p>But she wasn’t thinking of what he was saying and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_157">{157}</a></span> what she was
+answering; she was seeking a formula for Mr. Thorpe. And, to gain yet a
+further moment’s grace,—queer how nervous she felt—she stopped a
+moment in front of the Kerria japonica in the angle of the wall by the
+kitchen window, and asked him if he didn’t think it was doing very well
+that year.</p>
+
+<p>‘Wonderful,’ said Jocelyn. ‘It’s all perfect.’</p>
+
+<p>He sighed with contentment at his mother’s progressive and amazing
+tactfulness. How had she not from the first moment grasped the
+situation, and needed no explanation at all. Now she was grasping the
+Pinners, and dismissing them without a single question. ‘Suburbans. Like
+ourselves.’ At that moment Jocelyn positively adored his mother.</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite perfect,’ he said, admiring the Kerria. ‘Wherever you are, things
+grow as they should, and there’s peace, and order, and exact
+<i>rightness</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Marriage has turned you into a flatterer,’ smiled Mrs. Luke, still
+putting off Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>‘It has made me realise what a mother I’ve got,’ said Jocelyn, pressing
+her arm.</p>
+
+<p>‘Darling Jocelyn. But surely rather an unusual result?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My marriage is unusual.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Luke, bracing herself. ‘Yes. I suppose—we had better
+talk about it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But we <i>are</i> talking about it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I mean the future.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, I’ve told you my plans.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I haven’t told you mine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yours, Mother?’</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head and looked at her. Surely she was rather red?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_158">{158}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘You know, Jocelyn,’ she said, in a queer altered voice, ‘I was very
+miserable. Very, very miserable. You mustn’t forget that. I really
+<i>was</i>.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>How differently Mrs. Luke had meant to introduce Mr. Thorpe; how clearly
+she recognised that in their present situation he was their only hope,
+and that he should be explained with the appreciation and praise due to
+an only hope. And here she was prefacing him by a solemn declaration of
+her own unhappiness. It wasn’t at all the proper beginning. It couldn’t
+but be damaging to Mr. Thorpe. Besides, her pride had always been to
+appear before Jocelyn in every situation as completely content and calm.
+Breeding, she had preached to him ever since he was a tot, was
+invariably calm, and behaved very much like the great description of
+charity in St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. Whatever it felt
+it didn’t show it. But she had had a bad time lately, a bad, bad time,
+and her nerves had been tried beyond, apparently, their endurance.</p>
+
+<p>‘What is it, Mother?’ asked Jocelyn, surprised and troubled. Had his
+mother been speculating, and lost?</p>
+
+<p>She made a great effort to recover her self-control, and tried to smile.
+‘Really some very good news,’ she said, resuming their walk. ‘We’ll go
+and sit under the cedar, and I’ll——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mother, what is it?’ asked Jocelyn again anxiously as she broke off, a
+cold foreboding creeping round his heart. ‘You’re not going to—you’re
+not going to fail me now?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m going to help you more than I’ve ever done. In fact, if it hadn’t
+been for this—’ she was going to say<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_159">{159}</a></span> windfall, but found she couldn’t
+think of Mr. Thorpe as a windfall,—‘if it hadn’t been for this, I could
+do very little for Salvatia. She will need——’</p>
+
+<p>Had his mother been speculating, and won?</p>
+
+<p>But what Salvatia would need Mrs. Luke didn’t on that occasion explain,
+for as on their way to the cedar they passed below the open window of
+the bedroom Sally had been left in, they heard voices coming from it,
+and Mrs. Luke, much astonished, stood still.</p>
+
+<p>Almond Tree Cottage was a small low house, and its first floor windows
+were not very far above the heads of those walking beneath them in the
+garden. Standing there astonished—for who could Salvatia possibly be
+talking to?—Mrs. Luke listened, her surprised eyes on Jocelyn’s face.
+He too listened, but with less surprise, for from past experience he
+could guess—it was painful to him—what was happening, and he guessed
+that Sally was reverting to type again, and coalescing with the servant.</p>
+
+<p>At first there was only a murmuring—one voice by itself, then another
+voice by itself, then two voices together; and his mother’s face was
+frankly bewildered. But presently Sally’s voice emerged, and it rose in
+a distinct, surprising wail, and they heard it say, or rather cry, ‘Oh,
+Ammond—oh, Ammond——’</p>
+
+<p>Twice. Just like that.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Mrs. Luke let go suddenly of Jocelyn’s arm, and hurried
+indoors and upstairs.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>‘Are you unwell, Salvatia?’ she asked quickly, opening the bedroom door.</p>
+
+<p>On the edge of the bed, her stockinged feet trailing on<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_160">{160}</a></span> the floor, sat
+Sally, and beside her, also on the edge of the bed, the little maid.
+Mrs. Luke couldn’t believe her eyes. Their arms were round each other.
+She hadn’t realised, somehow, that Hammond had any arms; not the sort
+that go round other people, not the sort that do anything except carry
+trays and sweep floors.</p>
+
+<p>It came upon her with an odd shock. If Salvatia were ill, of course
+Hammond’s arms would be in an explainable and excusable position. But
+Salvatia wasn’t ill. Mrs. Luke saw that at once. She wasn’t ill, for she
+was crying; and people who are ill, she had observed, do not as a rule
+cry.</p>
+
+<p>The little maid jumped up, and stood, very red and scared, with alarmed
+eyes fixed on her mistress. Sally did just the opposite—she lay down
+quickly on the bed again, and pulled the counterpane up to her chin and
+tried to look as if she hadn’t stirred from the position the lady had
+tucked her into when she left her. What she was ashamed of was crying;
+crying when everybody was so good to her and kind, patting and kissing
+her and that, even after she had broken the cup. It was terribly
+ungrateful of her to cry, thought Sally. But she wasn’t ashamed of
+having put her arm round Ammond. Friendly, she was; friendly, and seemed
+to know a lot for her age, which was six months less than Sally’s own. A
+bit shy she had been and stand-offish at first, but soon got used to
+Sally, who was feeling ever so lonely and strange, and when Ammond—of
+all the names for a girl!—came in with hot water for the lady to wash
+in before the next meal, Sally, taken by her friendly eye, began talking
+to her, and it was as great a relief as talking to the young fellow in
+the garage, only with the young fellow she had laughed, and with Ammond,
+to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_161">{161}</a></span> her confusion and shame, she did nothing but cry. But then the lady
+... enough to make a cat cry, that lady ... going to live with them, and
+never leave them any more ... keeping on smiling smiles that looked like
+smiles, and weren’t....</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>I</i> know,’ said the little maid, nodding gravely.</p>
+
+<p>Knew a lot, Ammond did, for her age.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Sally had been very thankful when that dreadful tea was somehow
+finished—they had actually tried to make her have more tea, and begin
+the cup and lap business all over again, but she wasn’t to be caught a
+second time,—she had been very thankful to follow Mrs. Luke upstairs,
+and let herself be laid out on a bed and told she must rest till supper.
+Till breakfast next day she would rest if they liked, till kingdom come.
+She didn’t want any supper. There were forks for supper, which were
+worse than spoons, and perhaps they had that too just sitting round with
+nothing but their laps. She didn’t want anything, not anything in the
+world, except to be somewhere where the lady wasn’t. And the lady had
+drawn the curtains, and then covered her up with a counterpane, and
+smoothed back her hair, and told her sleep would refresh her, and bent
+over her and kissed her, and at last had gone away—and how thankful
+Sally had been, just to be alone.</p>
+
+<p>Kissed her. In spite of the cup, thought Sally, who lay still as she had
+been told, and reflected upon all that had been her lot that afternoon.
+They didn’t seem able to stop kissing in that family, thought Sally, in
+whose own there had been a total absence of what the Pinner circle knew
+and condemned as pawings about. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_162">{162}</a></span> Pinners never pawed, nor did any of
+their friends. Nice, that was, thought Sally wistfully; knew where you
+were. Among these here Lukes—so ran her dejected thoughts, with no
+intention of irreverence but unable, from her habit of language, to run
+otherwise—one never could tell where one wasn’t going to be kissed
+next. Hands, hair, face—nothing seemed to come amiss to them when they
+once got going. Kept one on the hop; made one squirmy. And Mr.
+Luke—<i>he</i> was different here. But then he kept on being different.
+While as for that there lady——</p>
+
+<p>At this point of her meditations Sally had turned her face to the pillow
+and buried it, and to her surprise she found the pillow was wet, and on
+looking into this she discovered that it was her own tears making it
+wet. Then she was ashamed. But being ashamed didn’t stop her crying;
+once she had begun she seemed to get worse every minute. And the little
+maid, coming in with the hot water, had found her crying quite hard.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke made short work of the little maid. She merely said, in that
+gentle voice before which all servants went down flat as ninepins,
+‘Hammond, I am surprised at your disturbing Mrs. Jocelyn’s sleep—’ and
+the little maid, very red and with downcast eyes, sidled deprecatingly
+out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mrs. Luke took Sally in hand, sitting in her turn on the edge of
+the bed.</p>
+
+<p>‘Salvatia, dear—’ she said, laying her hand on the arm outlined beneath
+the counterpane, and addressing the averted face. ‘Salvatia, dear——’</p>
+
+<p>Sally’s tears dried up instantly, for she was much too<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_163">{163}</a></span> much afraid to
+cry, but she buried her face still deeper, and kept her eyes tight shut.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t make confidences to a servant, dear child,’ said Mrs. Luke
+gently. ‘Come to Jocelyn, or to me. We’re the <i>natural</i> ones for you to
+come to in any of your little troubles. Oh, I know honeymoons are trying
+for a girl, and often, without knowing why, she wants a good cry. Isn’t
+it so, Salvatia? Then come to me, or to your husband, when you feel like
+that, but don’t say things to Hammond you may afterwards regret. You
+see, Salvatia dear, you’re a lady, aren’t you—a grown-up married lady
+now, and your place is with your husband and me. What, dear child? What
+did you say?’</p>
+
+<p>Sally, however, hadn’t said anything; she had only gulped, trying to
+choke down her misgivings at this picture of where her place was. With
+the lady? ‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ she thought, in great discomfort of
+mind as she more and more perceived that her marriage was going to
+include Mrs. Luke, ‘if I ain’t bitten off more as I can chew——’ and
+immediately was shocked at herself for having thought it. Manners were
+manners. They had to be inside one, as well as out. No good saying
+Excuse me, Pardon, and Sorry, if inside you were thinking rude. God saw.
+God knew. And if you were only polite with your lips, and it wasn’t
+going right through you, you were being, as she remembered from her
+father’s teaching, a whited sepulchre.</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Luke, contemplating the <i>profil perdu</i> on the pillow, the tip
+of the little ear, the lovely curve of the flushed cheek, and the tangle
+of bright hair, bent down and kissed it with a view to comfort and
+encouragement,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_164">{164}</a></span> and Sally, trying not to shrink farther into the pillow,
+said to herself, ‘At it again.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why did you cry, Salvatia?’ asked Mrs. Luke, gently.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dunno,’ murmured Sally, withdrawing into the furthermost corner of her
+shell.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then, dear, it was simply childish, wasn’t it—to cry without a reason,
+and to cry before a servant too. Things like that lower one’s dignity,
+Salvatia. And you haven’t only your own dignity to consider now, but
+Jocelyn’s, your husband’s.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh dear,’ sighed Sally to herself, recognising from the tone, through
+all its gentleness, that she was being given What for—a new kind, and
+one which it was extremely difficult to follow and understand, however
+painstakingly she listened. Which parts, for instance, of herself and
+Mr. Luke were their dignities? ‘Good job I ain’t a nursin’ mother,’ she
+thought, for she knew all about nursing mothers, ‘or the lady’d turn my
+milk sour’—and immediately was much shocked at herself for having
+thought it. Manners were manners. They had to be inside one, as well as
+out. ‘Never think what you wouldn’t say,’ had been her father’s
+teaching; and fancy saying what she had just thought!</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>Oh Gawd</i>,’ silently prayed Sally, who had been made to repeat a
+collect every Sunday to Mr. Pinner, and in whose mind bits had stuck,
+‘<i>send down the ’Oly Spirit and cleanse the thoughts of my ’eart with
+’im forasmuch as without thee I ain’t able to....</i>’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps, dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, finding it difficult in the face of
+Sally’s silence to go on—not for want of things to say, for there were
+so many and all so important that she hardly knew where to begin,—‘the
+best thing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_165">{165}</a></span> you can do is to bathe your eyes in the nice hot water
+Hammond has put ready, and tidy yourself a little, and then come
+downstairs. What do you think of that? Isn’t it a good idea? It is dull
+for you up here alone. But bathe your eyes well. We don’t want Jocelyn
+to see we’ve been crying, do we, dear child——’</p>
+
+<p>And in the act of stooping to give Sally a parting kiss she heard her
+name being called, loud and cheerily, downstairs in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>She started to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>‘Margery! Margery!’ called the voice, with the cheerful insistence of
+one who, being betrothed, has the right to be cheerful and insistent in
+his fiancée’s hall.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar. Come hours before his time.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>‘Oh, hush, <i>hush</i>——’ besought Mrs. Luke, hurrying down to him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Hush, eh?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Jocelyn——’</p>
+
+<p>She glanced fearfully along the passage to the backdoor.</p>
+
+<p>‘He’s arrived,’ said Mr. Thorpe, not hushing at all. ‘Know that. Saw
+his—well, you can hardly call it a car, can you—his contraption,
+outside the gate.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I haven’t had time yet to tell him——’</p>
+
+<p>‘That he’s been a fool?’ interrupted Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>‘Come in here,’ said Mrs. Luke, taking him by the arm and pressing him
+into the parlour, the door of which she shut.</p>
+
+<p>‘Brought you this,’ said Mr. Thorpe, holding up a fish-basket, a big
+one, in front of her face. ‘Salmon. Prime cut. Thought it would be a bit
+of something<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_166">{166}</a></span> worth eating for your—well, you don’t have dinner, do
+you—meal, then, to-night. Came back early from the City on purpose to
+get it here soon enough.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How kind, how kind,’ murmured Mrs. Luke distractedly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Plenty of it, too,’ said Mr. Thorpe, slapping the basket.</p>
+
+<p>‘Too much, too much,’ murmured Mrs. Luke, not quite sure whether it were
+the salmon she was talking about.</p>
+
+<p>‘Too much? Not a bit of it,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘I hate skimp.’</p>
+
+<p>And he was going to put down his present on the nearest chair and then,
+she knew, fold her in one of those strong hugs that scrunched, when she
+bent forward and hastily took the basket from him. She couldn’t, she
+simply couldn’t, on this occasion be folded—not with Jocelyn sitting
+out there, all unsuspecting, under the cedar.</p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind the basket,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who felt he had deserved well
+of Margery in this matter of the fish.</p>
+
+<p>‘I must take it to the kitchen at once,’ said Mrs. Luke, evading his
+wide-opened arms, ‘or it won’t be ready in time for supper.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What? No thanks, eh?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, yes—afterwards,’ said Mrs. Luke, slipping away to the door.
+‘Jocelyn doesn’t know yet. About us, I mean. I haven’t had time——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Time, eh? Not had time to tell him, you’ve netted me?’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe took out his watch. ‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Two would be
+enough, but I’ll give you five.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_167">{167}</a></span> Trot along now, and come back to me
+sharp in five minutes. If you don’t, I’ll fetch you. Trot along.’</p>
+
+<p>Trot along....</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke, shutting him into the parlour, asked herself, as she went
+down the passage bearing the heavy basket in both her delicate hands,
+how long it would take after marriage to weed out Mr. Thorpe’s language.
+To be told to trot along, however, was so grotesque—she to trot, she,
+surely the most dignified of South Winch’s ladies!—that it seemed to
+restore her composure. She would not trot. Nor would she, in the
+emotional sphere, do anything that corresponded to it. She would neither
+trot nor hurry; neither physically, nor spiritually. She declined to be
+bound by five minutes, and a watch in Edgar’s hand. Really he must,
+somehow, come up more to her level, and not be so comfortably certain
+that she was coming down to his. And what a way to speak of their
+marriage—that she had netted him!</p>
+
+<p>Frozen, then, once more into calm by Mr. Thorpe’s words, she proceeded
+down the passage with almost more than her usual dignity, and as she
+passed the kitchen door she held out the fish-basket to the little maid,
+who came out of the shady corner where the sink was with reluctance,
+merely saying, ‘Boil it.’ Then, with her head held high as the heads of
+those are held who face the inevitable, she went out into the garden,
+and crossed the grass to where Jocelyn was waiting for her on the seat
+beneath the cedar.</p>
+
+<p>This took her one minute out of the five. In another four Mr. Thorpe
+would come out too into the garden, to see why she didn’t return. Let
+him, thought Mrs. Luke, filled with the courage of the cornered. This<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_168">{168}</a></span>
+thing couldn’t be done in five minutes; it couldn’t be fired off at
+Jocelyn’s head like a pistol. Foolish Edgar.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>‘Well, Mother?’ said Jocelyn, getting up as she approached.</p>
+
+<p>He had been smoking, content to leave whatever it was Sally had been
+doing in his mother’s capable hands, yet wishing to goodness Sally
+hadn’t done it. This trick of wanting to be with servants must revolt
+his mother. It revolted him; how much more, then, his fastidious mother.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can guess what it is, I’m afraid,’ he said, as she sat down beside
+him.</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘You haven’t any idea.’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>What</i> has she been doing, Mother?’ he asked, seriously alarmed, and
+throwing away his cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>‘Salvatia? Nothing. Nothing that matters, poor dear child. It’s not
+about her I want to talk. It’s about Mr. Thorpe.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Thorpe?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes. Abergeldie. That’s Mr. Thorpe’s. That’s why you are going
+there—because it is Mr. Thorpe’s.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But why should we——?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now Jocelyn,’ she interrupted, ‘please keep well in mind that Mr.
+Thorpe is the most absolutely reliable, trustworthy, excellent, devoted
+man. I can find no flaw in his character. He is generous to a
+fault—really to a fault. He has a perfect genius for kindness. Indeed,
+I can’t tell you how highly I think of him.’</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn’s heart went cold and heavy with foreboding.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little silence.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, Mother. And?’ he said, after a minute.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_169">{169}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘And he is rich. Very.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn, as she paused.</p>
+
+<p>‘When I got your first letter I was, of course, very much upset,’ said
+Mrs. Luke, looking straight in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn, for she paused again.</p>
+
+<p>‘Everything seemed to go to pieces—all I had believed in and hoped
+for.’</p>
+
+<p>There was a longer pause.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn at last, keeping his voice as level as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m not a religious woman, as you know. I hadn’t got God.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, Mother. So?’</p>
+
+<p>‘So I—I turned to Mr. Thorpe.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, Mother. Quite.’</p>
+
+<p>The bitterness of Jocelyn’s soul was complete. A black fog of anger,
+jealousy, wounded trust, hurt pride and cruellest disappointment
+engulfed him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why not say at once,’ he said, lighting another cigarette with hands he
+was grimly determined should be perfectly steady, ‘that you are going to
+marry him?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If it hadn’t been for your marriage it never would have happened,’ said
+Mrs. Luke.</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn, very bitter, pitching the newly-lit cigarette
+away. ‘Oh, quite.’</p>
+
+<p>Sally again. Always, at the bottom of everything, Sally.</p>
+
+<p>Then he thought, ashamed, ‘My God, I’m a mean cur’—and sat in silence,
+his head in his hands, not looking up at all, while his mother did her
+best to make him see Mr. Thorpe as she wanted him to be seen.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_170">{170}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In her low voice, the low, educated voice Jocelyn had so much loved, she
+explained Mr. Thorpe and his advantages, determined that at this
+important, this vital moment she would not allow herself to be vexed by
+anything Jocelyn said.</p>
+
+<p>He, however, said nothing. It simply was too awful for speech—his
+mother, who never during his whole life had shown signs of wanting to
+marry, going now, now that she was at an age when she might surely, in
+Jocelyn’s twenty-two year old vision, be regarded as immune, to give
+herself to a complete stranger, and leave him, her son who needed her,
+God knew, more than ever before, to his fate. That he should hate this
+Thorpe with a violent hatred seemed natural. Who cared for his damned
+money? Why should Sally—his mother kept on harping on that—be going to
+be expensive? As if money, much money, according to what his mother was
+saying, now that Sally had come on the scene, Sally who was used to
+being penniless, was indispensable. Masters? What need was there for
+masters? His mother could teach her. Clothes? Why, whatever she put on
+seemed to catch beauty from her—he had seen that in the shop in London
+where he bought the wrap: every blessed thing the women tried on her,
+however unattractive to begin with, the minute it touched her body
+became part of beauty. And how revolting, anyhow—marriage. Oh, how he
+hated the thought of it, how he wanted now beyond anything in the world
+to be away from its footling worries and complications, away from women
+altogether, and back at Cambridge, back in a laboratory, absorbed once
+more in the great tranquil splendours of research!</p>
+
+<p>‘He is in the sitting-room,’ said Mrs. Luke, when<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_171">{171}</a></span> she had said
+everything she could think of that she wished Jocelyn to suppose was
+true.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who is?’ said Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, I was afraid you would be angry,’ she said, putting her hand on his
+arm, ‘but I hoped that when it was all explained you would understand,
+and see the great, the immense advantages. Apparently you don’t, or——’
+she sighed—‘won’t. Then I must be patient till you do, or will. But
+Mr. Thorpe is waiting.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who cares?’ inquired Jocelyn, his head in his hands; and it suddenly
+struck Mrs. Luke that Mr. Thorpe was waiting very quietly. The five
+minutes must have been up long ago; she must have been sitting there
+quite twenty, and yet he hadn’t come after her as he had threatened.
+Knowing him, as she did, for a man absolutely of his word, this struck
+her as odd.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear Jocelyn,’ she said, remembering the fits of dark obstinacy that
+had at times seized her boy in his childhood, and out of which he had
+only been got by the utmost patience and gentleness, ‘I won’t bother you
+to come in now and see Mr. Thorpe. But as he is going to be your host
+to-night——’</p>
+
+<p>‘He isn’t,’ said Jocelyn, his head still in his hands, and his eyes
+still fixed on the grass at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>‘But, <i>dearest</i> boy——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I decline to go near him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But there’s <i>positively</i> no room here for you both——’</p>
+
+<p>‘There’s London, and hotels, I suppose?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Jocelyn!’</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in dismay. He didn’t move. She again put her hand on
+his arm. He took no notice. And aware, from past experiences, that for
+the next two hours at least he would probably be completely<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_172">{172}</a></span>
+inaccessible to reason, she got up with a sigh and left him.</p>
+
+<p>Well, she had told him; she had done what she had to do. She would now
+go back to Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>And she did go back; and opening the parlour door slowly and gently, for
+she was absorbed in painful thought, she found Mr. Thorpe sitting on the
+sofa, busily kissing Sally.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_173">{173}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> following brief dialogue had taken place between him and Sally,
+before he began to kiss:</p>
+
+<p>‘Crikey!’ he exclaimed, on her appearing suddenly in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>‘Pardon?’ said she, hesitating, and astonished to find a strange old
+gentleman where she had thought to find the Lukes.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s crikey all right,’ he said, staring. ‘Know who I am?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, sir.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Sir, eh?’</p>
+
+<p>He took a step forward and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father—that’s who I am. Yours. Father-in-law. Same thing as father,
+only better,’ said he. ‘What does one do to a father, eh? Kisses him.
+How do, daughter. Kiss me.’</p>
+
+<p>Sally kissed him; or rather, having no reason to doubt that the old
+gentleman was what he said he was, docilely submitted while he kissed
+her, regarding his behaviour as merely another example of the inability
+of all Lukes to keep off pawings; and though she was mildly surprised at
+the gusto with which this one gave himself up to them, she was pleased
+to notice his happy face. If only everybody would be happy she would<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_174">{174}</a></span>n’t
+mind anything. She hadn’t felt that the lady’s kisses were expressions
+of happiness, and Mr. Luke’s, when he started, made her think of a
+funeral that had got the bit between its teeth and couldn’t stop running
+away, more than of anything happy. Father-in-law, on the contrary,
+seemed as jolly as a sand-boy. And anyhow it was better than having to
+talk.</p>
+
+<p>This was the way the situation arose in which Mrs. Luke found them.</p>
+
+<p>‘Making friends with my new daughter,’ said Mr. Thorpe, not without
+confusion, on perceiving her standing looking on.</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite,’ said Mrs. Luke, who sometimes talked like Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Now to have caught Mr. Thorpe kissing somebody else—she didn’t like it
+when he kissed her, but she discovered she liked it still less when it
+was somebody else—was painful to Mrs. Luke. Every aspect of it was
+painful. The very word <i>caught</i> was an unpleasant one; and she felt that
+to be placed in a position in life in which she might be liable to catch
+would be most disagreeable. What she saw put everything else for the
+moment out of her head. Edgar must certainly be told that he couldn’t
+behave like this. No marriage could stand it. If a woman couldn’t trust
+her husband not to humiliate her, whom could she trust? And to behave
+like this to Salvatia, of all people! Salvatia, who was to live with
+them at Abergeldie during term time, while Jocelyn pursued his career
+undisturbed at Cambridge—this had been another of Mrs. Luke’s swift
+decisions,—live with them, and be given advantages, and be trained to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_175">{175}</a></span>
+become a fit wife for him,—how could any of these plans be realised if
+Edgar’s tendency to kiss, of which Mrs. Luke had only been too well
+aware, but which she had supposed was concentrated entirely on herself,
+included also Salvatia?</p>
+
+<p>And if the situation was disagreeable to Mrs. Luke, it was very nearly
+as disagreeable to Mr. Thorpe. He didn’t like it one little bit. He knew
+quite well that there had been gusto in his embrace, and that Margery
+must have seen it. ‘Damn these women,’ he thought, unfairly.</p>
+
+<p>The only person without disagreeable sensations was Sally, who,
+unconscious of anything but dutiful behaviour, was standing wiping her
+face with a big, honest-looking handkerchief, observing while she did so
+that she wasn’t half hot.</p>
+
+<p>‘Jocelyn is in the garden, Salvatia,’ said Mrs. Luke.</p>
+
+<p>Regarding this as mere news, imparted she knew not to what end, Sally
+could think of nothing to say back, though it was evident from the
+lady’s eyes that she was expected to make some sort of a reply. She
+searched, therefore, in her <i>répertoire</i>, and after a moment said,
+‘Fancy that,’ and went on wiping her face.</p>
+
+<p>‘Won’t you go to him?’ then said Mrs. Luke, speaking very distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Right O,’ said Sally, hastily then, for the lady’s eyebrows had
+suddenly become rather frightening; and, stuffing the handkerchief yard
+by yard into her pocket as she went, she exquisitely slid away.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll be off too,’ said Mr. Thorpe briskly, who for the first time
+didn’t feel at home with Margery. ‘Back on the tick of ten to fetch ’em
+both——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, but please—wait just one moment,’ said Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_176">{176}</a></span> Luke, raising her
+hand as he began to move towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>‘Got to have my wigging first, eh?’ he said, pausing and squaring his
+shoulders to meet it.</p>
+
+<p>‘What is a wigging, Edgar?’ inquired Mrs. Luke gently, opening her clear
+grey eyes slightly wider.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh Lord, Margery, cut the highbrow cackle,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘Why
+shouldn’t I kiss the girl? She’s my daughter-in-law. Or will be soon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Really, Edgar, it would be very strange if you didn’t wish to kiss
+her,’ said Mrs. Luke, still with gentleness. ‘Anybody would wish to.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, then,’ said Mr. Thorpe sulkily; for not only didn’t he see what
+Margery was driving at, but for the first time he didn’t think her
+particularly good-looking. Moth-eaten, thought Mr. Thorpe, eyeing her. A
+lady, of course, and all that; but having to sleep later on with a
+moth-eaten lady wouldn’t, it suddenly struck him, be much fun. ‘Need a
+pitch dark night to turn <i>her</i> into a handsome woman,’ he thought
+indelicately; but then he was angry, because he had been discovered
+doing wrong.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wanted to tell you,’ said Mrs. Luke, ignoring for the moment what she
+had just witnessed, ‘that I have told Jocelyn.’</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Thorpe was so much relieved to find she wasn’t pursuing the
+kissing business further that he thought, ‘Not a bad old girl, Marge—’
+in his thoughts he called her Marge, though not to her face because she
+didn’t like it—‘not a bad old girl. Better than Annie, anyhow.’</p>
+
+<p>Yes, better than Annie; but less good—ah, how much less good—than
+young beauty.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_177">{177}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘That’s all right, then,’ he said, cheerful again. ‘Nothing like
+coughing things up.’</p>
+
+<p>No—Edgar was too rough a diamond, Mrs. Luke said to herself, shrinking
+from this dreadful phrase. She hadn’t heard this one before. Was there
+no end to his dreadful phrases?</p>
+
+<p>‘He is much annoyed,’ she said, her eyebrows still drawn together with
+the pain Mr. Thorpe’s last sentence had given her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Annoyed, eh? Annoyed, is he? I like that,’ said Mr. Thorpe vehemently,
+his cheerfulness vanishing. Annoyed because his mother was making a
+rattling good match? Annoyed because the richest man for miles round was
+taking her on for the rest of her life? Of all the insolent puppies....</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe had no words with which to express his opinion of Jocelyn; no
+words, that is, fit for a drawing-room—he supposed the room he was in
+would be called a drawing-room, though he was blest if there was a
+single stick of stuff in it to justify such a name—for, having now seen
+Sally, his feeling for Jocelyn, which had been one of simple
+contemptuous indifference, had changed into something much more active.
+Fancy <i>him</i> getting her, he thought—him, with only a beggarly five
+hundred a year, him, who wouldn’t even be able to dress her properly.
+Why, a young beauty like that ought to be a blaze of diamonds, and never
+put her feet to the ground except to step out of a Rolls.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m very sorry, Edgar,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘but he says he doesn’t wish to
+accept your hospitality.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Doesn’t wish, eh? Doesn’t wish, does he? I like that,’ said Mr. Thorpe,
+more vehemently still.</p>
+
+<p>That his good-natured willingness to help Marge out<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_178">{178}</a></span> of a fix, and his
+elaborate preparations for the comfort of the first guests he had had
+for years should be flouted in this way not only angered but hurt him.
+And what would the servants say? And he had taken such pains to have the
+bridal suite filled with everything calculated to make the young prig,
+who thought his sorts of brains were the only ones worth having, see for
+himself that they weren’t. Brains, indeed. What was the good of brains
+that you couldn’t get enough butter out of to butter your bread
+properly? Dry-bread brains, that’s what this precious prig’s were.
+Crust-and-cold-water brains. Brains? Pooh.</p>
+
+<p>This last word Mr. Thorpe said out loud; very loud; and Mrs. Luke shrank
+again. It strangely afflicted her when he said pooh.</p>
+
+<p>‘And I’m afraid,’ she went on, her voice extra gentle, for it did seem
+to her that considering the position she had found him in Edgar was
+behaving rather high-handedly, ‘that if he knew you had kissed his wife,
+kissed her in the way you did kiss her, he might still less wish to.’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>Now</i> we’ve got it!’ burst out Mr. Thorpe, slapping his thigh. ‘<i>Now</i>
+we’re getting down to brass tacks!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Brass tacks, Edgar?’ said Mrs. Luke, to whom this expression, too, was
+unfamiliar.</p>
+
+<p>‘Spite,’ said Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>‘Spite?’ repeated Mrs. Luke, her grey eyes very wide.</p>
+
+<p>‘Feminine spite. Don’t believe a word about him not wanting to come and
+stay at my place. You’ve made it up. Because I kissed the girl.’</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Thorpe in his anger inquired of Mrs. Luke whether she had ever
+heard about hell holding no fury<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_179">{179}</a></span> like a woman scorned—for in common
+with other men who know little poetry he knew that—and he also called
+her Marge to her face, because he no longer saw any reason why he
+shouldn’t.</p>
+
+<p>‘My <i>dear</i> Edgar,’ was all she could find to say, her shoulders drawn up
+slightly to her ears as if to ward off these blows of speech, violence
+never yet having crossed her path.</p>
+
+<p>She didn’t get angry herself. She behaved with dignity. She remembered
+that she was a lady.</p>
+
+<p>She did, however, at last suggest that perhaps it would be better if he
+went away, for not only was he making more noise than she cared
+about—really a most noisy man, she thought, gliding to the window and
+softly shutting it—but it had occurred to her as a possibility that
+Salvatia, out in the back garden, might be telling Jocelyn that Mr.
+Thorpe had kissed her, and that on hearing this Jocelyn, who in any case
+was upset, might be further upset into coming and joining Edgar and
+herself in the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>This, she was sure, would be a pity; so she suggested to Mr. Thorpe that
+he should go.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I’m <i>going</i> all right,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who somehow, instead of
+being the one to be wigged, was the one who was wigging.</p>
+
+<p>‘We’ll talk it all over quietly to-morrow, dear Edgar,’ said Mrs. Luke,
+attempting to placate.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear Edgar, eh?’ retorted Mr. Thorpe, not to be shaken by fair words
+from his conviction that Marge regarded herself as a woman scorned, and
+therefore that she outrivalled the worst of the ladies of hell. ‘Fed-up
+Edgar’s more like it,’ he said; and strode, banging doors, out of the
+house.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_180">{180}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke stood motionless where he had left her. What an unexpected
+turn things had taken. How very violent Edgar really was; and how rude.
+A woman scorned? Feminine spite? Such expressions, applied to herself,
+would be merely ludicrous if they hadn’t, coming from Edgar in
+connection with Salvatia, been so extraordinarily rude.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with Salvatia. She paused on the thought. All this was
+because of Salvatia. From beginning to end, everything unpleasant and
+difficult that had happened to her during the last few weeks was because
+of Salvatia.</p>
+
+<p>But she mustn’t be unfair. If Salvatia had been the cause of her
+engagement to Edgar, she was now being the cause of its breaking off.
+For surely, surely, breaking off was the only course to take?</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me <i>think</i>,’ said Mrs. Luke, pressing her hand to her forehead,
+which was burning.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; surely no amount of money could make up for the rest of Edgar?
+Surely no amount, however great, could make up for the hourly fret and
+discomfort of having to live with the wrong sort—no, not necessarily
+the wrong sort, but the entirely different sort, corrected Mrs. Luke, at
+pains to be just—of mind? Besides, of what use could she be to Jocelyn
+and Salvatia, married to Edgar, if Jocelyn wouldn’t go near him, and
+Salvatia couldn’t because of his amorousness? It would merely make the
+cleavage between herself and Jocelyn complete at the very moment when he
+more than ever before in his life needed her. And the grotesqueness of
+accusing <i>her</i>, who had remained so quiet and calm, of being a fury,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_181">{181}</a></span>
+the sheer imbecility of imagining <i>her</i> actuated by feminine spite!
+Really, really, said Mrs. Luke to herself, drawing her shoulders up to
+her ears again at the recollection. And then there was—no, she turned
+her mind away from those expressions of his; she positively couldn’t
+bear to think of cough it up, bunkum, and pooh.</p>
+
+<p>She went to her little desk and sat down to write a letter to Mr.
+Thorpe, because in some circumstances letters are so much the best; nor
+did she want to lose any time, in case it should occur to him too to
+write a letter, and it seemed to her important that when it comes to
+shedding anybody one should get there first, and be the shedder rather
+than the shed; and she had got as far as <i>Dear Edgar, I feel that I owe
+it to you</i>—when Jocelyn appeared in the doorway, with blazing eyes.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>What had taken place in the garden between Jocelyn and Sally was this:</p>
+
+<p>She had gone out obediently to him, as she had been told. ‘Do as you’re
+told,’ her father and mother had taught her, ‘and not much can go wrong
+with you.’ Innocent Pinners. Inadequate teaching. It was to lead her,
+before she had done, into many difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>She went, then, as she had been told, over to where she saw Jocelyn, and
+sat down beside him beneath the cedar.</p>
+
+<p>He didn’t move, and didn’t look up, and she sat for a long while not
+daring to speak, because of the expression on his face.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally she thought it was his stomach again, for what else could it
+be? Last time she had seen him he was smiling as happy as happy, and
+kissing his mothe<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_182">{182}</a></span>r’s hand. Clear to Sally as daylight was it that he
+was having another of those attacks to which her father had been such a
+martyr, and which were familiar to the Pinners under the name of the Dry
+Heaves. So too had her father sat when they came on, frowning hard at
+nothing, and looking just like ink. The only difference was that
+Jocelyn, she supposed because of being a gentleman, held his head in his
+hands, and her father held the real place the heaves were in. But
+presently, when the simple remedy he took on these occasions had begun
+to work, he was better; and it seemed to Sally a great pity that she
+should be too much afraid of Usband to tell him about it,—a great pity,
+and wrong as well. Hadn’t she promised God in church the day she was
+married to look after him in sickness and in health? And here he was
+sick, plain as a pikestaff.</p>
+
+<p>So at last she pulled her courage together, and did tell him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father’s stomach,’ she began timidly, ‘was just like that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What?’ said Jocelyn, roused from his black thoughts by this surprising
+remark, and turning his head and looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>‘You got the same stomachs,’ said Sally, shrinking under his look but
+continuing to hold on to her courage, ‘you and Father ’as. Like as two
+peas.’</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn stared at her. What, in the name of all that was fantastic, had
+Pinner’s stomach to do with him?</p>
+
+<p>‘Sit just like that, ’e would, when they come on,’ continued Sally,
+lashing herself forward.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you mind,’ requested Jocelyn with icy politeness, ‘making yourself
+clear?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, Mr. Luke, don’t—please don’t talk that way,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_183">{183}</a></span> begged Sally. ‘I
+only want to tell you what Father did when they come on.’</p>
+
+<p>‘When what comes on, and where?’</p>
+
+<p>‘These ’ere dry ’eaves,’ said Sally. ‘You’d be better if you’d take what
+Father did. ’Ad them somethin’ awful, ’e did. And you’d be better——’</p>
+
+<p>But her voice faded away. When Jocelyn looked at her like that and said
+not a word, her voice didn’t seem able to go on talking, however hard
+she tried to make it.</p>
+
+<p>And Jocelyn’s thoughts grew if possible blacker. This was to be his
+life’s companion—his <i>life’s</i>, mind you, he said to himself. Alone and
+unaided, he was to live out the years with her. A child; and presently
+not a child. A beauty; and presently not a beauty. But always to the
+end, now that his mother had deserted him, unadulterated Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘There’s an h in heaves,’ he said, glowering at her, his gloom really
+inspissate. ‘I don’t know what the beastly things are, but I’m sure
+they’ve got an h in them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Sorry,’ breathed Sally humbly, casting down her eyes before his look.</p>
+
+<p>Then he became aware of the unusual flush on her face,—one side was
+quite scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why are you so red?’ he asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Me?’ said Sally, starting at the peremptoriness in his tone.
+‘Oh—<i>that</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>She put up her hand and felt her burning cheek. ‘Father-in-law,’ she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father <i>who</i>?’ asked Jocelyn, astonished out of his gloom.</p>
+
+<p>‘In-law,’ said Sally. ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Im in the ’ouse. The old gentleman,’ she
+explained, as Jocelyn stared in greater and greater astonishment.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_184">{184}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thorpe? The man who was to be his stepfather? But why——?</p>
+
+<p>A flash of something quite, quite horrible darted into his mind. ‘But
+why,’ he asked, ‘are you so very red? What has that to do——?’</p>
+
+<p>He broke off, and caught hold of her wrist.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daresay it ain’t the gentleman’s day for shavin’,’ suggested Sally.</p>
+
+<p>And on Jocelyn’s flinging away her wrist and jumping up, she watched him
+running indoors with recovered complacency. ‘Soon be better now,’ she
+said to herself, pleased; for her father always ran like that too, just
+when the heaves were going to leave off.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>And she was right. Next time she saw him, which was at supper, he was
+quite well. His face had cleared, he could eat his food, and he kissed
+the top of her head as he passed behind her to his chair.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, <i>that’s</i> over,’ thought Sally, much relieved, though still
+remaining, through her lowered eyelashes, watchful and cautious. With
+these Lukes one never knew what was going to happen next; and as she sat
+doing her anxious best with the forks and other pitfalls of the meal,
+and the little maid came in and out, free in her movements, independent,
+able to give notice and go at any moment she chose, Sally couldn’t help
+comparing her lot with her own, and thinking that Ammond was singularly
+blest. And then she thought what a wicked girl she was to have such
+thoughts, and bent her head lower over her plate in shame, and Mrs. Luke
+said gently, ‘Sit up, dear child.’</p>
+
+<p>That night a bed was made for Jocelyn on the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_185">{185}</a></span>sitting-room sofa, Sally
+slept upstairs in the tiny Spartan room he used to sleep in, and
+Abergeldie wasn’t mentioned. Nor did they have Mr. Thorpe’s salmon for
+supper, because the idea of eating poor Edgar’s gift seemed, in the
+circumstances, cynical to Mrs. Luke; so Hammond ate it, and never
+afterwards could be got to touch fish.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe had now become poor Edgar to Mrs. Luke. Only a few hours
+before, he had been thought of as a godsend. Well, he shouldn’t have
+kissed Salvatia. But indeed what a mercy that he had, for it brought
+clarity into what had been troubled and obscure. Without this
+action—and it wasn’t just kissing, it was enjoyment—Mrs. Luke would,
+she knew, have gone stumbling on, doing her duty by him, trying to get
+everybody to like each other and be happy in the way that was so
+obviously the best for them, the way which would quite certainly have
+been the best for them if poor Edgar had been as decent as, at his age,
+it was reasonable to expect. She could, she was sure, have managed
+Jocelyn, for had she not managed him all his life? And after marriage
+she could, she had no doubt, have managed Edgar too; but what hard work
+it would have been, what a ceaseless weeding, to take only one aspect of
+him, of his language!</p>
+
+<p>The enjoyment—it was the only word for it—with which he had kissed
+Salvatia had spared her all these pains. Certainly it was beneath her
+dignity, beyond her patience, altogether outside any possible
+compensation by wealth, to marry and manage a man who enjoyed kissing
+other women. That she couldn’t do. She could do much, but not that. Like
+the Canon’s wife, she would have forgiven everything except enjoyment.
+And she wrote an urbane letter—why not?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_186">{186}</a></span> Surely finality can afford to
+be urbane?—after having had a talk with Jocelyn when he arrived with
+blazing eyes in the sitting-room, a talk which began in
+violence—his,—and continued in patience—hers,—and ended in
+peace—theirs; and by the time they sat down to supper the letter,
+sealed—it seemed to be the sort of letter one ought to seal—was
+already lying in the pillar box at the corner of the road, and the last
+trying weeks were wiped out as though they had never been.</p>
+
+<p>At least, that was Mrs. Luke’s firm intention, that they should be wiped
+out; and she thought as she gazed at Jocelyn, so content again, eating a
+supper purged of the least reminder of Mr. Thorpe, that the <i>status quo
+ante</i> was now thoroughly restored. Ah, happy <i>status quo ante</i>, thought
+Mrs. Luke, whose mind was well-furnished with pieces of Latin, happy
+<i>status quo ante</i>, with her boy close knit to her again, more than ever
+unable to do without her, and she in her turn finding the very breath of
+her being and reason for her existence in him and all his concerns. Not
+a cloud was now between them. She had quickly reassured him as to
+Salvatia’s red cheek,—Mr. Thorpe’s greeting, she had explained, was
+purely perfunctory, and witnessed by herself, but the child had such a
+delicate skin that a touch would mark it.</p>
+
+<p>‘You mustn’t ever bruise her,’ she had said, smiling. ‘It would show for
+weeks.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Mother!’ Jocelyn had said, smiling too, so happy, he too, to know
+he had been lifted out of the region of angers, out of the black places
+where people bruise hearts, not bodies, and in so doing mangle their
+own.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she could manage Jocelyn. Tact and patience were all that was
+needed. Never, never should he know<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_187">{187}</a></span> of Edgar’s amorousness, any more
+than he was ever, ever to know of Edgar’s other drawbacks. Let him think
+of him in the future as the kind, reliable rich man who once had wanted
+to marry her, but whom she had refused for her boy’s sake. She made this
+sacrifice willingly, happily, for her darling son—so she gave Jocelyn
+to understand, during the talk they had alone together in the
+sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>The truth? No, not altogether the truth, she admitted as she sat eating
+her supper, her pure, pure supper, with all those horrible gross
+delicacies, under which she had so long groaned, banished out of sight,
+her glance resting fondly first on her boy, and then in amazed
+admiration, renewed with a start each time she looked at her, on the
+flame of loveliness that was her boy’s wife. No; what she had said to
+Jocelyn in the sitting-room wasn’t altogether the truth, she admitted
+that, but the mutilated form of it called tact. Or, rather, not
+mutilated, which suggested disfigurement, but pruned. Pruned truth.
+Truth pruned into acceptability to susceptibility. Was not that tact?
+Was not that the nearest one dared go in speech with the men one loved?
+They seemed not able to bear truth whole. Children, they were. And the
+geniuses—she smiled proudly and fondly at Jocelyn’s dark head bent over
+his plate—were the simplest children of them all.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she thought, the <i>status quo ante</i> was indeed restored, and
+everything was going to be as it used to be. The only difference was
+Salvatia.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Before a week was over Mrs. Luke left out the word ‘only’ from this
+sentence, and was inclined to say—again<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_188">{188}</a></span> with Wordsworth; curious how
+that, surely antiquated, poet cropped up—<i>But oh, the difference</i>,
+instead. Salvatia was—well, why had one been given intelligence if not
+to cope, among other things, with what Salvatia was?</p>
+
+<p>That first night of reunion with Jocelyn, Mrs. Luke had lain awake
+nearly all of it, making plans. Very necessary, very urgent it was to
+get them cut and dried by the morning. The headache she had had earlier
+in the evening vanished before the imperativeness of thinking and seeing
+clearly. Many things had to be thought out and decided, some of them
+sordid, such as the question of living now that there was another mouth
+to feed, and others difficult, such as the best line to take with South
+Winch in regard to Mr. Thorpe. She thought and thought, lying on her
+back, her hands clasped behind her head, staring into the darkness,
+frowning in her concentration.</p>
+
+<p>Towards morning she saw that the line to take with South Winch about
+poor Edgar was precisely the line she had taken with Jocelyn: she had
+given up the hope of marriage, she would say, so as to be able to devote
+herself exclusively to her boy and his wife.</p>
+
+<p>‘See,’ she would say, indicating Salvatia, careful at once to draw
+attention to what anyhow, directly the child began to speak, couldn’t
+remain unnoticed, ‘how this untrained, delicious baby needs me. No
+mother, no education, no idea of what the world demands—could I
+possibly, thinking only of myself, selfishly leave her without help and
+guidance? I do feel the young have a very great claim on us.’ And then
+she would add that as long as she lived she would never forget how well,
+how splendidly, Mr. Thorpe had behaved.</p>
+
+<p>Pruned truth, again. And truth pruned, she was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_189">{189}</a></span> afraid, in a way that
+would cover her with laurels she hadn’t deserved. But what was she to
+do? One needs must find the easiest and best way out of a
+difficulty,—easiest and best for those one loves.</p>
+
+<p>In order, however, to indicate Salvatia and explain things by means of
+her, Mrs. Luke would have to produce her, have to show her to South
+Winch, and in order to do that she would have to give a party. Yes; she
+would give a party, a tea-party, and invite every one she knew to
+it—except, of course, Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke had hitherto been sparing of parties, considering them not
+only difficult with one servant, and wastefully expensive, but also so
+very ordinary. Anybody not too positively poor could give tea-parties,
+and invite a lot of people and let them entertain each other. She chose
+the better way, which was to have one friend, at most two, at a time,
+and really talk, really exchange ideas, over a simple but attractive
+tea. Of course the friends had to have ideas, or one couldn’t exchange
+them. But now she would have a real party, with no ideas and many
+friends, the sort of party called an At Home, and at it Salvatia should
+be revealed to South Winch in all her wonder.</p>
+
+<p>The party, however, couldn’t be given for at least a week, because of
+first having to drill Salvatia. A week wasn’t much; was, indeed,
+terribly little; but if the drill were intensive, Mrs. Luke thought she
+could get the child’s behaviour into sufficient shape to go on with by
+the end of it.</p>
+
+<p>Hidden indoors—and in any case they would both at first hide indoors
+from a possible encounter with poor Edgar—she would devote the whole of
+every day to exercising Salvatia in the art of silence. That was all
+she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_190">{190}</a></span> needed to be perfect: silence. And how few words were really
+necessary for a girl with a face like that! No need whatever to exert
+herself,—her face did everything for her. Yes; no; please; thank you;
+what couldn’t be done with just these, if accompanied by that heavenly
+smile? Why, if she kept only to these, if she carefully refrained from
+more, from, especially, the use of any out of her own deplorable stock,
+it wouldn’t even be necessary for Mrs. Luke to say anything about her
+having had no education; and if she could be trained to add, ‘So kind of
+you,’ at the proper moment, and perhaps, ‘Yes, we are very happy,’ her
+success would be overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>But almost immediately on beginning the drill, which she did the next
+day, Mrs. Luke perceived that this last sentence must be dropped. Poor
+Salvatia. The poor child was precluded from speaking of happiness,
+because of its h. Really rather sad, when one came to think of it. She
+could, relatively easily, be taught to speak of sorrow, of pain, of
+misfortune, of sickness and of death, but she couldn’t be taught, not in
+a week Mrs. Luke was afraid, to speak of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. ‘We must be patient,’ she said,
+smiling at Sally, who seemed to tumble over herself in her haste to
+smile back.</p>
+
+<p>Almond Tree Cottage was now the scene of tireless activity. The At Home
+was fixed for the following Thursday week,—eight days ahead; and Mrs.
+Luke sent Jocelyn off to Cambridge the very morning after he arrived, in
+order to rearrange matters with his College and look about, as he seemed
+bent on it, for a suitable little house for them all, though she
+privately was bent on staying where she was, and keeping Sally with
+her.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_191">{191}</a></span> But it did no harm to let him look, and it kept him out of the way
+for a couple of days, in case Mr. Thorpe should think fit to come round
+in person, instead of writing. And, having cleared the field, she
+settled down to devoting herself entirely to Sally.</p>
+
+<p>But Sally, seeing Jocelyn preparing to depart—for some time she
+couldn’t believe her eyes—without going to take her too, was smitten
+into speech.</p>
+
+<p>‘You ain’t goin’ to leave me ’ere, Mr. Luke?’ she asked in tones of
+horrified incredulity, when at last it began to look exactly as if he
+were.</p>
+
+<p>‘Two days only, darling,’ said Jocelyn. ‘And you’ll be very happy with
+my mother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But—can’t I come with you? I wouldn’t be no trouble. I—I’d do
+anything sooner than—’</p>
+
+<p>She looked over her shoulder; Mrs. Luke, however, was in the kitchen
+giving her orders for the day.</p>
+
+<p>‘—be as ’appy as all that,’ she finished, under her breath.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall be much too busy, darling,’ said Jocelyn, pleased at the way
+she was taking their first separation, and not hearing the last words
+because he was rummaging among coats.</p>
+
+<p>‘There’s Father,’ persisted Sally anxiously. ‘<i><span class="lftspc">’</span>E</i> could take me in. I
+wouldn’t be no trouble to nobody——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Darling, I’m afraid it can’t possibly be managed,’ said Jocelyn, very
+thankful to leave her safe with his mother; but she looked so enchanting
+in her obvious sorrow at being parted from him that he took her in his
+arms, and kissed her warmly.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>Kissin’s</i> no good,’ said Sally. ‘Goin’ too’s what I’d like.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_192">{192}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<p>‘And if I took you too, my beautiful one,’ whispered Jocelyn, flaming up
+at the touch of her, ‘I’d do nothing but kiss you instead of doing my
+business——’ which wasn’t true, but with Sally in his arms he thought
+it was; besides, they had been separated for a whole night.</p>
+
+<p>‘Turtle doves—oh, <i>turtle</i> doves!’ exclaimed Mrs. Luke, managing to
+smile, though she didn’t like it, when she came out of the kitchen and
+found them locked together; for this was happening in what Mr. Thorpe
+refused to call the hall.</p>
+
+<p>And later on when Jocelyn had gone, she put her arm through Sally’s, who
+was standing at the window staring after him as though it couldn’t be
+true that he had really left her, and drew her away into the little
+dining-room at the back of the house, because of its greater
+privacy—she had to consider the possible movements of Mr. Thorpe—and
+at once began to put the plans she had made in the night into practice,
+not only taking immense pains with the child’s words and pronunciation,
+but leaving no stone unturned—‘As the quaint phrase goes,’ she said,
+smiling at Sally, for why hide her intentions?—in order to win her
+confidence and love.</p>
+
+<p>Sally was most depressed. She didn’t want to love—‘Too much of that
+about as it is,’ she thought,—and she hadn’t an idea what her
+confidence was.</p>
+
+<p>The table was arranged with paper and ink, and Mrs. Luke began by
+kissing her affectionately, and telling her that they were now going to
+be very busy and happy. ‘Like bees,’ said Mrs. Luke, looking cheerful
+and encouraging, but also terrifyingly clever, with her clear grey eyes
+that seemed to see everything all at once and never were half as much
+pleased as her mouth was.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_193">{193}</a></span> ‘You know how bees store up honey—the
+bright, golden honey, don’t you, dear. Say honey, Salvatia dear. Say it
+after me——’</p>
+
+<p>Sally was most depressed. Mixed up with her efforts to say honey were
+puzzled thoughts about her husband’s having left her. She understood,
+from her study of the Bible, that one of the principal jobs of husbands
+was to cleave to their wives. Till death, the Bible said. Nobody had
+died. It wasn’t cleaving to go away to Cambridge and leave her high and
+dry with the lady. And though Usband was often very strange, he wasn’t
+anything like as strange as the lady; and though he often frightened
+her, there were moments when he didn’t frighten her at all—when, on the
+contrary, she seemed able to do pretty much as she liked with him. And
+she had great hopes that some day she and he would get on quite nicely
+together, once they had set up housekeeping and he went off first thing
+after breakfast to his work, and she got everything tidy and ready for
+him when he came back to his dinner. Yes; she and Usband would settle
+down nicely then. And later on, when she had a little baby—Sally
+thought frequently and complacently of the time when she would have a
+little baby, several little babies—things would be as pleasant as could
+be. All she wanted, so as to be happy, was no lady, a couple of rooms,
+Usband to do her duty by, God’s Word to study, and every now and then a
+little baby. It was all she asked. It was her idea of bliss. That, and
+being let alone.</p>
+
+<p>‘Peace an’ quiet,’ she said to herself, as she sat painfully trying, at
+Mrs. Luke’s request, to discuss with her the habits of bees. She hadn’t
+known they had any habits. She doubted whether she would know a bee if<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_194">{194}</a></span>
+she saw one. There were no bees in Islington. Wasps, now—she knew a
+thing or two about wasps. Raw onion was the stuff for when they
+stung.... ‘Peace an’ quiet,’ she said to herself. ‘All one asks. This
+ain’t neither.’</p>
+
+<p>In an agony of application Sally perspired through the two days of
+Jocelyn’s absence. Lessons didn’t leave off when the paper and ink were
+cleared away because of the rissoles of lunch and the poached eggs of
+supper, but went on just as bad while she was eating. ‘Salvatia dear,
+don’t ’old your fork like that——’ ‘Salvatia dear, don’t go makin’ all
+that there noise when you drinks——’ so did Mrs. Luke’s admonishments
+present themselves to Sally’s ill-attuned ear. And after that the
+lessons were continued in the garden, where she was walked up and down,
+up and down, till her head, as she said to herself, fair reeled. Never
+before had Sally been walked up and down the same spot. She used to walk
+straight sometimes to places, and then come home again and done with it,
+but never up and down and keeping on turning round. No escape. The lady
+had her by the arm. Exercise, she called it. And talk! Not only talk
+herself, but keep on dragging her into it too. Education, the lady
+called it. Lessons, that’s to say. What ones these Lukes were for
+lessons, thought Sally, remembering her experience at St. Mawes. And
+there, through the kitchen window every time she passed it, she could
+see Ammond, washing up as free as air.</p>
+
+<p>The garden was small; the turnings accordingly frequent; and Sally’s
+head, strained by the excessive attention Mrs. Luke insisted on, did
+indeed reel. Her head.... How was it, Mrs. Luke was asking herself by
+the evening of that first day, ostensibly pleasantly chatting, but
+carefully observing Sally, who, pale and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_195">{195}</a></span> beautiful, with faint shadows
+under her eyes, sat looking at her lap so as not to see the lady looking
+at her,—how was it that so noble a little head, with a brow so happily
+formed, one would have supposed, for the harbouring of intelligence,
+should apparently be without any?</p>
+
+<p>Apparently. Mrs. Luke was careful not to come to any hasty conclusion,
+but by this time she had been drilling Sally ceaselessly for a whole
+day, and she had been so clear and patient, and so very, very simple,
+that she began to think her vocation was probably that of a teacher; yet
+no sign of real comprehension had up to then appeared. Goodwill there
+was; much goodwill. But no real <i>grasp</i>. And, of course, most lamentably
+little ear. Those h’s—it would have been disheartening, if Mrs. Luke
+hadn’t refused to be disheartened, the way Salvatia didn’t even seem to
+know if they were in a word or not. She simply didn’t hear them.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you like music, Salvatia?’ said Mrs. Luke, getting up and preparing
+to test her ear on the clavichord at the other end of the room, an
+instrument which gave her great pleasure because it wasn’t so gross as a
+piano.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ said Sally, who had been strictly drilled that day in naked
+monosyllables.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you sing, dear child?’</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ymns,’ said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, dear, <i>dearest</i> child!’ cried Mrs. Luke, drawing her shoulders up
+to her ears, for after all the pains and labours of the day she was
+tired, and she couldn’t help being, perhaps, a little less patient. ‘How
+do you spell that poor small word? It is such a tiny, short word, and
+can’t afford to lose any of its letters——’</p>
+
+<p>And in the kitchen, Sally knew, with her hearth swept<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_196">{196}</a></span> and neat, and
+everything put nicely away for the day, sat Ammond, doing her sewing as
+free as air.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Jocelyn came home on the evening of the third day. He hadn’t found a
+house, and seemed dispirited about that, and looked a great deal at
+Salvatia, Mrs. Luke thought,—almost as if he had never seen her before;
+indeed he looked at her so much that he hardly had eyes or attention for
+anything else.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke didn’t like it.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly the girl was quite extraordinarily beautiful that evening, and
+seemed even more alight than usual with the strange, surprising
+flame-effect she somehow made, but one would have supposed that these
+outwardnesses, once one knew that they were not the symbols of any
+corresponding inwardnesses, could hardly be sufficient for a man like
+Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>A little pang of something that hurt—it couldn’t of course be jealousy,
+for the very word in such a connection was ludicrous—shot through Mrs.
+Luke’s heart when she more than once caught a look in her boy’s eyes as
+they rested on his wife that she had never seen in any man’s eyes when
+they rested on her herself, but which she nevertheless instantly
+recognised. The love-look. The look of burning, impatient passion. She
+had been loved, but never like that, never with that intent adoration.</p>
+
+<p>Sally sat quietly there, neither speaking nor moving, but over her face
+rippled gladness. Nice, she thought, to get Usband back. It hadn’t been
+half awful without him. Finished now, though; wouldn’t happen again.
+‘Let’s forget it,’ she said to herself.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_197">{197}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And that night, after every one was in bed, Mrs. Luke heard cautious
+steps creaking up the stairs, and the door of the room Sally slept in
+across the little landing was softly opened, and some one went in and
+softly shut it again; and Mrs. Luke didn’t like it at all, and ended by
+crying herself to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, however, Jocelyn was restored to the self she knew, and was
+reasonable and detached. They talked over the house in Cambridge
+question, and he quite agreed with his mother that when he went up,
+which he was due to do in nine days time, while he continued in his
+spare moments there to search for one she would keep Sally with her at
+Almond Tree Cottage.</p>
+
+<p>‘And even if you find one, dearest,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘remember we can’t
+afford to take it till I have got rid of this one.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite, Mother,’ said Jocelyn—so reasonable, so completely detached.</p>
+
+<p>‘And meanwhile, the best thing will be for Salvatia to stay quietly here
+with me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Far and away the best, Mother,’ said Jocelyn, whose thoughts had gone
+off with renewed eagerness to his work, to the two spacious months of
+undisturbed labour ahead of him in those quiet rooms of his in Austen’s
+Court.</p>
+
+<p>What was Sally’s surprise to find that Jocelyn’s return made no
+difference to the lessons. They went on just the same; indeed, they
+seemed every day to get worse, and he, except at meals and when he crept
+into her room at night, stayed at the top of the house shut up by
+himself, or went out for his daily walk after lunch and didn’t take her
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>At night she tried to ask him about these things,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_198">{198}</a></span> because this was the
+time he was most likely to answer, but he only whispered, ‘Hush—Mother
+will hear.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not if you whispers,’ whispered Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’d hear the whispers,’ whispered Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>Why Mother shouldn’t hear whispers Sally was unable to make out.</p>
+
+<p>And there at night was Usband, all for being friendly and loving, and in
+the day didn’t seem to know she was alive. Warmed up a bit, he did,
+towards evening, but else sat hardly opening his mouth, his eyes looking
+at something that wasn’t there. Was this, Sally might well in her turn
+have asked if she had been able to formulate such a question,
+companionship? But even if she had formulated it she wouldn’t have asked
+it, because she was so meek.</p>
+
+<p>Strange, however, how the meek go on being meek till the very moment
+when they do something from which bold persons would shrink. This is
+what Sally did, after having progressed that week steadily towards
+despair.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually but steadily, by piecing together bit by bit the things Mrs.
+Luke and Jocelyn said to each other at meals and in the evening, she
+became aware of what was in store for her. First, a party; an enormous
+party, at which everybody who wasn’t a gentleman was going to be a lady;
+and she was to be at it too, and it was for this that her mind and
+manners were being fattened up so ceaselessly by Mrs. Luke. Then, two
+days after the party, Jocelyn, her husband who had promised in church to
+cherish her, was going away to Cambridge, and going to stay there by
+himself till the summer, just as if he weren’t married. How could he
+cherish her from Cambridge? It was evident even to Sally that it
+couldn’t be done. Finally, she was to be left at Almond Tree<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_199">{199}</a></span> Cottage
+alone with Mrs. Luke, being educated, being made fit, being fattened
+inside just as you fatten animals outside. What for? She hadn’t married
+Mrs. Luke. Wasn’t she able, just as she was, to be a good wife to
+Usband, and a good mother later on to the little babies? What more could
+a girl do than be ready to work her fingers to the bone for him? And she
+could cook so nicely, give her a chance; and she could mend as well as
+any one; and as for keeping the house clean, hadn’t her mother taught
+her never to dream of sitting down and taking up her sewing while there
+was so much as a single speck of dirt about?</p>
+
+<p>With growing horror, and steadily increasing despair, Sally listened to
+the talk at meals. She had learned to say nothing now but yes, no, thank
+you, and please, and either kept her eyes on her plate or, through her
+eyelashes, watched with pangs of envy the happy Hammond’s free entrances
+and departures. She herself never moved without Mrs. Luke’s arm through
+hers or round her shoulders,—‘We are quite inseparable,’ Mrs. Luke
+would say, smiling at Jocelyn, when the meals were over and the time had
+arrived for going somewhere else, as she either encircled Sally’s
+shrinking shoulder or put her hand through her limp arm. ‘Aren’t we,
+Salvatia?’</p>
+
+<p>And Sally, starting—she had got into a curious habit, which Mrs. Luke
+much deplored, of starting when she was spoken to, however
+gently—hurriedly said, ‘Yes.’</p>
+
+<p>Queer, thought Mrs. Luke, who noticed everything but was without the
+power of correct deduction, seeing that the child so obviously was
+anxious to please and she herself so certainly was anxious to help her,
+queer how difficult it was to do anything with her in the way of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_200">{200}</a></span>
+confidence and love. And to Jocelyn in the evenings, after Sally had
+been told she was tired and must wish to go to bed, which she quickly
+learnt meant that she was to get up at once and say goodnight and go to
+it, Mrs. Luke would talk about her lovingly and humorously, and
+laughingly describe what she called the intensive methods of cultivation
+she was applying to the marvellous child.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ll see how beautifully she’ll behave at our little party,’ she
+said. ‘And as for what she’ll be like after a few months—well, dearest,
+all I can say is that I promise to hand her over to you fit to be your
+real companion, and not only—’ Mrs. Luke shivered slightly at the
+thought of the creaking stairs—‘just a wife.’</p>
+
+<p>Two evenings before the day of the party, Mrs. Luke, who had made, she
+knew, no headway at all in spite of the most untiring efforts in winning
+the confidence and love she expected, remarked hesitatingly, when she
+and Jocelyn were alone together after Sally’s departure for bed, that
+the child appeared to have rather curious and disconcerting resistances.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you mean she doesn’t obey you?’ asked Jocelyn, much surprised.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, with almost too much eagerness. No. I mean something mental. Or
+rather,’ amended Mrs. Luke, who by this time was definitely disappointed
+in Sally’s mind but was still prepared to concede her a soul,
+‘spiritual. Spiritual resistances. Disconcerting <i>spiritual</i>
+resistances. She seems to shut herself up. And I ask myself, what in? A
+child like that, with a—well, really rather blank mind at present. What
+is she withdrawing into? Where does she <i>go</i>, Jocelyn?’</p>
+
+<p>And that night when, having given his mother time to go to sleep and the
+house was quiet, Jocelyn stole upstairs<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_201">{201}</a></span> to Sally, full of nothing but
+love for her, she made a scene. He called it a scene; she called it
+mentioning. She had screwed herself up to mentioning to him that it was
+wrong to leave her, as she now beyond any possibility of doubt knew that
+he was going to leave her, and go away by himself to Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>A scene with Sally. Jocelyn was as much amazed, and correspondingly
+outraged, as if his fountain-pen had turned on him and declared that
+what he was making it write was all wrong. For Sally took her stand on
+the New Testament, on the Gospel of St. Mark, Chapter X, Verses 7 and 8,
+and not only declared there was no mistaking the words, and that it
+wasn’t his wife a man had to leave but his father and mother, and that
+he had to leave them so as to cleave to his wife, and that they two were
+to be one flesh, but asked him how he could either cleave or be one
+flesh if he were in Cambridge and she in South Winch?</p>
+
+<p>It was past midnight and pitch dark, so he couldn’t see her face, and
+accordingly wasn’t bewitched. Also, he had found her waiting up for him,
+not gone to bed at all, but dressed and sitting in a chair, so that,
+again, he wasn’t bewitched. When one neither saw nor touched Sally it
+was quite easy not to be bewitched.</p>
+
+<p>‘For heaven’s sake don’t <i>talk</i>,’ he said in a low voice, when he had
+got over his first astonishment. ‘Don’t you know Mother will hear?’</p>
+
+<p>Sally couldn’t help that. She had got to say it. God was on her side.
+His laws were going to be broken, and nothing made Sally so brave as
+having to take up the cudgels in defence of God’s laws. Besides, if the
+dark prevented Jocelyn from seeing her beauty it saved her from seeing
+the icy displeased look on his face that made<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_202">{202}</a></span> her falter off into
+silence. And she was in despair. Apart from the right or the wrong of
+it, she felt she couldn’t possibly be left alone with Mrs. Luke.
+Therefore, having mentioned God’s laws to him, she proceeded to entreat
+him to take her with him, it didn’t matter into what hole, or let her go
+to her father’s, and he come and see her whenever he had time.</p>
+
+<p>‘I told you—I told you the other day,’ said Sally, trying to subdue her
+voice to a whisper, but it kept on breaking through, ‘when you was only
+goin’ to be away for two days that I didn’t ’alf like it. ’Ow do you
+suppose I’m goin’ to like weeks and weeks? And it ain’t <i>right</i>, Mr.
+Luke—it ain’t <i>right</i>. You only got to read St. Mark——’</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn was amazed. Sally talking like this? Sally suddenly making
+difficulties, and having an opinion, and judging? Dragging in the Bible,
+too, just like somebody’s cook.</p>
+
+<p>‘You don’t understand,’ he said in a low voice because of his mother,
+but a voice quite as full of anger as if he had been shouting. ‘How can
+you? What do you know about anything?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know what ain’t bein’ one flesh,’ persisted Sally, greatly helped in
+the matter of courage by the dark.</p>
+
+<p>He gathered his dressing-gown round him; it sounded exactly as if a
+servant were daring to talk familiarly to him.</p>
+
+<p>‘This isn’t the time,’ he whispered, infinitely disgusted, ‘to argue.’</p>
+
+<p>‘P’raps you’ll tell me when the time is, then,’ said Sally, who knew she
+could never be alone with him in the day because of Mrs. Luke; and
+really in the dark, unable to see her, Jocelyn had the impression of
+some<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_203">{203}</a></span> woman of the lower classes confronting him with arms akimbo.</p>
+
+<p>‘Certainly not at one in the morning,’ he said freezingly. ‘I shall go
+downstairs again. I didn’t come up here to listen to outrageous rot.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. <i>Luke</i>! Rot? When it’s God’s Word I’m talkin’ about? Ain’t you my
+’usband? Didn’t you vow——’</p>
+
+<p>There was a tap at the door.</p>
+
+<p>‘You see?’ said Jocelyn, starting and extraordinarily put out that Mrs.
+Luke should know he was in there. ‘You <i>have</i> disturbed my mother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What is it, Jocelyn?’ his mother’s voice asked anxiously from outside.</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door. She too was in a dressing-gown, and her long hair
+hung down in thick plaits.</p>
+
+<p>‘What is it, Jocelyn?’ she asked again.</p>
+
+<p>‘Only that Sally has gone out of her senses,’ he said shortly; and he
+stalked away downstairs, ashamed to have been caught by his mother
+upstairs, angry with himself for being ashamed, and seriously enraged
+with Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Salvatia, Jocelyn dearest—<i>do</i> remember,’ called Mrs. Luke plaintively
+after him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Christ!’ muttered Jocelyn, banging the sitting-room door behind him
+and throwing himself on the hard narrow sofa from which, only a quarter
+of an hour before, he had got up, all warm with love, to go to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>And in the room overhead Mrs. Luke put her arms round Sally, and did her
+best, while tactfully asking no questions, to soothe and calm the child.
+But how can one soothe and calm anything that behaves exactly as if it
+were a very rigid, unresponsive, and entirely dumb stone?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_204">{204}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>There were explanations next day. Mrs. Luke put the whole situation
+patiently and clearly before Sally. It wasn’t fair, she said to Jocelyn,
+after a private talk with him during which he had told her the sorts of
+things Sally had said in the night, it wasn’t fair to keep the child
+quite in the dark as to their arrangements. Even if she weren’t
+altogether able to understand, she should, Mrs. Luke said, be given the
+opportunity of doing so.</p>
+
+<p>So when breakfast was cleared away, and Jocelyn had withdrawn to his
+attic, Mrs. Luke shut herself up as usual with Sally in the dining-room,
+and spent the morning patiently explaining.</p>
+
+<p>Sally said nothing. This made it difficult for Mrs. Luke to know whether
+she had understood. And yet how simple it was. Jocelyn’s work, the
+paramount importance of his work, on which both his and Salvatia’s
+future and perhaps—who knew?—the world’s, depended; their present, but
+no doubt temporary, poverty, which made it out of the question for them
+to follow him to Cambridge till Almond Tree Cottage had been let; the
+necessity of teaching Salvatia, during long, quiet, uninterrupted days,
+all the little odds and ends, so small and yet so indispensable, that go
+to make up the wife of a gentleman; and the impossibility of asking
+Jocelyn to leave his rooms in College and live in anything as
+uncomfortable and makeshift as the sorts of lodgings within their means
+were bound to be. Of course had Salvatia been alone in the world, and
+with nowhere at all to go to, some such arrangement would have had to be
+made. But she wasn’t alone. She had her husband’s mother, and her
+husband’s mothe<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_205">{205}</a></span>r’s home, and affection, and sympathy, and the warmest
+welcome.</p>
+
+<p>‘Just a little patience, Salvatia dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘and our little
+problems will all quite naturally solve themselves. We shall have got a
+tenant for this house, Jocelyn will have found a nice home for us in
+Cambridge, you will meanwhile have learnt everything necessary to make
+you able to be its perfect little mistress, and we’ll all live happily
+ever after.’</p>
+
+<p>Now wasn’t this kind? Surely it was very kind, thought Mrs. Luke. And
+wasn’t it loving? Surely it was altogether loving. Yet Salvatia said
+never a word.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Sally was necessarily dumb. She had too few words to enter into
+controversy with Mrs. Luke, and knew that if she tried to she would only
+collapse into tears. But after lunch, through which she sat saying
+nothing, when Mrs. Luke sent her out into the garden alone because she
+herself had to go down that afternoon to the shops to see about the
+cakes for her party next day, Sally went to the one corner which wasn’t
+overlooked by the windows of the house, owing to an intervening
+tool-shed, and, leaning against the iron rails that separated Mrs.
+Luke’s property from Mr. Thorpe’s, wept bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>She clutched the top rail with both hands, and laying her head on them
+wept most bitterly; for it was plain now to her that her dream of two
+rooms and no lady was never to come true, and that meanwhile—what was
+the good of blinking facts?—her husband had deserted her. And she had
+no money; only five shillings her father had given her as a wedding
+present,—that was all. Handsome as a present, but not enough, she was
+sure, to get her home to him. If only she could go home to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_206">{206}</a></span> him, and
+escape any more of Mrs. Luke, and escape the terrible, the
+make-you-come-over-all-cold-to-think-of party! Then, when Usband arrived
+at his college, she could turn up there and give him a surprise, and
+find a room for herself somewhere close, and live in it as quiet as a
+mouse, not bothering him at all or interrupting, but near enough to feel
+still married.</p>
+
+<p>Sally’s body was shaken by sobs; even the rail on which she leant her
+head, her head with its bright, tumbled hair, whose ends, getting into
+her eyes, were wet and darkened by her grief, was shaken. She could bear
+no more. She couldn’t bear any more of anything in the house behind the
+tool-shed. Yet what was she to do? Five shillings would get her
+nowhere——</p>
+
+<p>‘Crying, eh?’ said a voice on the other side of the fence.</p>
+
+<p>And looking up with a great start, Sally beheld Father-in-law.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_207">{207}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Mr. Thorpe</span>, being a man accustomed all his life to success in everything
+he undertook—except in the case of Annie, but even she had been a
+success at first—had spent a week of bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>He was aggrieved, deeply aggrieved; and he hated the hole and corner way
+Mrs. Luke had hidden from him, refusing to see him, refusing any sort of
+explanation, turning him down with a single letter, and not answering
+when he wrote back.</p>
+
+<p>He, who was very well aware that he was conferring everything, that he
+was giving her a chance in a million, when he called was shown the door;
+and all he had done for her, the affection he had bestowed, the gifts he
+had lavished, were as though they had not been. In the sight of South
+Winch and of his own household he was humiliated. But it went deeper
+than that: he knew himself for kind, and no one wanted his kindness; he
+knew himself for generous, and no one wanted his generosity either.
+Naturally he was full of resentment; so full, that he hadn’t even gone
+to his office regularly that week, but had hung about his house and
+grounds instead, fault-finding.</p>
+
+<p>Where he hung about most was that part of his plantations which abutted
+on the meadow dividing Abergeldie<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_208">{208}</a></span> from Mrs. Luke; and wandering among
+his conifers he could see, without himself being seen, anything that
+went on in her miserable plot of ground. If he had been told that such
+behaviour was undignified he would have replied that dignity be damned;
+for not only was he smarting under Mrs. Luke’s ingratitude, not only was
+he annoyed beyond measure at not going to get the wife he no longer
+really wanted—who would wish to be tied up to a jealous, middle-aged
+woman, when there were so many pretty, cheerful girls about?—but he
+longed, with a simple longing he hadn’t felt since he first went
+sweethearting as a boy, to see Sally again.</p>
+
+<p>He did see her; always, however, arm in arm with Hell’s Fury, as he now
+called her who had so recently been his Marge. Then, on this Wednesday
+afternoon, more than a week after Mrs. Luke had shown herself in her
+true colours—a jolly good thing he had found her out before and not
+after marriage, thought Mr. Thorpe, who yet was enraged that he had,—as
+he wandered among his conifers after luncheon, nursing his grievances
+and glancing every now and then at the little house across the meadow,
+so insignificant and cheap and nevertheless able to play such a part in
+his life, he saw young beauty at last come out alone, and go round to
+the back of the tool-shed, and behave as has been indicated.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes Mr. Thorpe stayed where he was, in case the H.F.—so,
+for convenience sake, did he abbreviate the rude nickname he had given
+Mrs. Luke—should come out too; but when some time had passed and nobody
+appeared, he concluded that the two high-brows had gone for a walk, and
+Beauty for once was alone. Crying, too. What had they been doing to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_209">{209}</a></span> the
+girl, that precious pair of hoity toity treat-you-as-dirters, Mr. Thorpe
+asked himself. Then, climbing cautiously over the fence, and crossing
+the field close to the belt of firs, he arrived unseen and unheard to
+where Sally, her head bowed over her hands, was standing crying.</p>
+
+<p>How kind he was. What a comfort he was. And how clear in his
+instructions as to what she was to do. It was quite easy to say things
+to Father-in-law; he seemed to understand at once.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had told Sally he wasn’t her father-in-law. The Lukes’ habit of
+silence towards her about their affairs had left her supposing he was
+what he said he was, and she herself had heard him not being
+contradicted by Mrs. Luke when she came into the drawing-room that day
+and he told her he was making friends with his new daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Sally was aware that Jocelyn’s own father was dead, and she had at first
+supposed Mr. Thorpe was Mrs. Luke’s second husband. In the confusion of
+mind in which she had been since arriving at Almond Tree Cottage, she
+had had no thoughts left over for wondering why, if he were, he lived
+somewhere else. Dimly the last few days, not having seen him again, she
+had begun to think, though with no real interest, that perhaps Mrs. Luke
+hadn’t quite married him yet, but only very nearly. Anyhow it didn’t
+matter. He said he was her father-in-law, and that was good enough for
+her. Such a kind old gentleman. Much older than her own father. Might
+easily have been her grandfather, with all that bald head and grey
+moustache.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Thorpe’s pleasure, nay, delight, at being able to help Beauty
+and at the same time give those two<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_210">{210}</a></span> high-brows something to talk about,
+was very great. This was indeed killing two birds with one stone—and
+what birds! He listened attentively to all she brokenly and imperfectly
+said; he entirely applauded her idea of going back to her father for a
+bit, and assured her there was no place like home; he told her he would
+send her there in one of his cars, quite safe from door to door; he
+advised her to stay with her father till her husband did his duty, which
+was to make a home for her and live with her in it; he asked why she
+should allow herself to be deserted, to be left alone with Mrs. Luke,
+who would do nothing but try and cram her head with rubbish——</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you like ‘er?’ asked Sally, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said Mr. Thorpe stoutly.</p>
+
+<p>‘But you’re goin’ to marry ‘er,’ said Sally, more surprised.</p>
+
+<p>‘Catch <i>me</i>,’ said Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>‘But then you ain’t my father-in-law,’ said Sally, more surprised than
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes I am,’ said Mr. Thorpe hastily. ‘Once a father-in-law always a
+father-in-law,’ he assured her,—and hurried her off this subject by
+asking her why she should be treated by her husband as if she weren’t
+married at all, and by what right young Luke thought he could behave
+differently from any husband any one had ever heard of. Scandalous, said
+Mr. Thorpe, to leave her. Shocking. Incomprehensible. And that so-called
+husband of hers with his marriage vows not yet had time to go cold on
+his lips!</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Mr. Thorpe said out loud and beautifully everything Sally had
+thought and not been able to get into words.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_211">{211}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The result was that, encouraged and supported, indeed urged and driven,
+she took one of those desperate steps characteristic of the very meek,
+and, acting according to Mr. Thorpe’s clear and precise instructions,
+stole out of the house at five next morning—the very day of the party,
+from which he, who knew all about it from his housekeeper, and had tried
+to console himself by thinking of the piles of strawberries and peaches
+and quarts of cream he wasn’t going to send to it, insisted that she
+should at all costs escape—carrying only a little bag, with her five
+shillings in it and her comb and toothbrush; and, creeping down the
+stairs holding her breath, got out without a sound through the kitchen
+window, anxiously listening for a moment as she passed the shut
+sitting-room door on the other side of which Jocelyn lay
+asleep,—Jocelyn, who that night, being still much annoyed with her, had
+very fortunately not been upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the road was Mr. Thorpe’s car. He himself remained
+discreetly in bed. No use overdoing things. Besides, he could wait. He
+knew where to find Beauty when the time came, which was more than those
+damned Lukes did; and he had given his chauffeur the necessary orders
+the night before, and could rely on their being carried out to the
+letter; so that Sally found, when she got into the car, which was more
+splendid outside and more soft inside than she could have believed
+possible, not only a lovely rug of the silkiest fur, which the
+chauffeur, a most attentive young gentleman, wrapped round her legs as
+carefully as if they were the Queen’s, but a basket full of everything
+for breakfast, even hot coffee, and an enormous box of chocolates which
+were for her to keep, the chauffeur said, with Mr. Thorpe’s compliments.
+And such was the effect on her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_212">{212}</a></span> of all this moral and physical support
+that she no longer, as she was smoothly and deliciously borne along
+through sleeping South Winch, across awakening London, past sunshiny
+fields and woods just flushing green, on and on, into Essex, into
+Cambridgeshire, smooth and swift, with a motion utterly different from
+the one Jocelyn’s car made and completely confidence-inspiring, she no
+longer felt as if she were doing anything that was frightening, and
+also, perhaps, wrong. Could anybody be doing anything very wrong who had
+such a splendid car to sit in, and such a respectful and attentive young
+gentleman driving it?</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner disillusioned her.</p>
+
+<p>For many years he hadn’t tasted such quiet happiness, such contentment
+and well-being, as during the four weeks he had been without Sally. Her
+marriage to a gentleman, to one of the scholars from Cambridge, was
+known to every one in the village, and he was proud of it, very proud.
+Sally, besides having been handed over safe and sound to some one else’s
+care, had risen in life and was now a lady. He had every reason to be
+proud of her, and no further bother. Now for the first time he could
+live, after forty years of the other thing, free from females. Was it
+sinful, he asked himself occasionally, and at variance with God’s Word,
+to be so very happy all alone? He didn’t think it could be. He had
+served his time. Forty years in the wilderness he had had—just like the
+Israelites, who had come out of it too, just as he had, and enjoyed
+themselves too at last, as he was enjoying himself, quietly and nicely.
+No husband or father could have been fonder of his wife and daughter<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_213">{213}</a></span>
+than he had been of his, or done his duty by them more steadily. Surely
+now, both of them being safely settled, it couldn’t be wrong to like
+having a rest? He loved Sally, but she had been a back-breaking
+responsibility. For four weeks now he had enjoyed himself, and with such
+relish that when he got up in the morning and thought of the quiet, free
+hours ahead of him, he had often quavered into song. Then came the day
+when, peacefully dusting the toffee in his window, and thinking how
+prettily the birds were singing that fine spring morning, and of the
+little bit of mutton he was going to do in capers for his dinner, he saw
+an enormous closed car coming down the village street, and with
+astonishment beheld it stop in front of his shop, and Sally get out.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner knew enough of what cars cost to be sure this one wasn’t
+anyhow Mr. Luke’s. Things like that cost as much as two of Mr. Luke’s
+five hundreds a year; so that the car, of which Sally had been so proud,
+far from impressing him only frightened him. And when, after the
+chauffeur had handed her a bag, he saw him turn the car round and
+disappear, going away again without her while she came running up the
+steps, he was more frightened than ever.</p>
+
+<p>What had happened? Not a month married, and back again by herself with a
+bag.</p>
+
+<p>‘I come ’ome,’ said Sally in the doorway, still bright with the sheer
+enjoyment of the ride, yet, faced by her father’s amazement, conscious
+of a slight lowering of her temperature. ‘My! You ain’t ’alf small,
+Father,’ she added, surprised, after looking at the tall Jocelyn and the
+broad Mr. Thorpe, by how little there was of Mr. Pinner. ‘Almost count
+you on the fingers of one ’and,’ she said.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_214">{214}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Want more fingers than I got to count <i>you</i>,’ retorted Mr. Pinner,
+retreating behind the counter and feeling that these words somehow
+constituted a smart preliminary snub.</p>
+
+<p>He didn’t offer to kiss her. He stood entrenched behind his counter and
+stared up at her, struck, after having got out of the habit of her
+beauty, into a new astonishment at it. But it gave him no pleasure. It
+merely frightened him. For it blew up peace.</p>
+
+<p>‘Where’s your ’usband?’ he inquired, afraid and stern.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh—<i>’im</i>,’ said Sally, trying to look unconcerned, but flushing. ’E’s
+with ’is mother, ’e is. Ain’t you pleased to see me, Father?’ she asked,
+in an attempt to lead the conversation off husbands at least for a bit;
+and tighter to her side she hugged the box of chocolates, because the
+feel of it helped her to remember Father-in-law’s approval and
+encouragement. And he was a gentleman, wasn’t he? And a lot older even
+than Father, so must know what was what.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, indeed. With ’is mother, is ’e,’ said Mr. Pinner, ignoring her
+question. ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Oos car was that?’ he asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘Father-in-law’s,’ said Sally, hugging her chocolates.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, indeed. And ’oo may father-in-law be?’</p>
+
+<p>‘The gentleman as is—as was goin’ to marry Mr. Luke’s mother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, indeed. And you ride about in ’is car meanwhile. <i>I</i> see.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Lent it to me so I can come ’ome.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What do ’e want to send you ’ere for, then?’ asked Mr. Pinner, leaning
+on his knuckles, his blue eyes very bright. ‘Ain’t your ’ome where your
+’usband’s is? Ain’t that a married woman’s ’ome?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_215">{215}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<p>‘I only come on a visit,’ faltered Sally, whose spirits were by now in
+her shoes. Her father had often scolded her, but she had never been
+afraid of him. Now there was something in his eye that made her feel
+less sure that she had taken, as Mr. Thorpe had told her, the one
+possible and completely natural step. ‘I only come for a few days, while
+Mr. Luke——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Luke know you’re ’ere?’ interrupted her father.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>E don’t know yet,’ said Sally. ‘But I——’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s enough,’ said Mr. Pinner, holding up a hand. ‘That’s quite
+enough. No need for no more words. You go back right away to your
+’usband, my girl. Come to the wrong box, you ’ave, for ’arbourin’
+runaway wives.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But, Father—’ she stammered, not yet quite able to believe that in
+coming back to him she had only got out of the frying pan into the fire,
+‘you got to listen to <i>why</i> I come——’</p>
+
+<p>He held up his hand again, stopping her. He had no need to listen. He
+could see for himself that she was a runaway wife, which was against
+both man’s and God’s laws.</p>
+
+<p>Sally, however, persisted. She put her bag down on the counter, behind
+which he firmly remained, and facing him across it tried to give him an
+idea of what had been happening to her, and what had been going to
+happen to her much worse if she had stayed.</p>
+
+<p>He refused to be given an idea of it. He turned a deaf ear to all
+explanations. And he was merely scandalised when she said, crying by
+this time, that she couldn’t, couldn’t be left alone with Mr. Luke’s
+mother, for where a husband thinks fit to leave his wife, said Mr.
+Pinner, always supposing it is respectable, there that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_216">{216}</a></span> wife must remain
+till he fetches her. This he laid down to Sally as a law from which a
+married woman departs at her peril, and he laid it down with all the
+more emphasis, perhaps, because of knowing how unlikely it was that he
+himself would ever have had the courage to enforce it in the case of
+Mrs. Pinner, and that, if he had, how certain it was she wouldn’t have
+stayed five minutes in any place he tried to leave her in.</p>
+
+<p>Sally was in despair. What was she to do? The little shop looked like
+paradise to her, a haven of peaceful bliss after the life she had led
+since last she saw it. She cried and cried. She couldn’t believe that
+her father, who had always been so kind really, wouldn’t let her stay
+with him for the two days till Jocelyn got back to Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>But not even for one night would Mr. Pinner, who was secretly terrified
+of Jocelyn, and sure he would be hot on his wife’s tracks and make a
+scene and blame him if he gave her so much as an inch of encouragement,
+harbour her. Back she should go by the very next train to her husband
+and her duty; and the breaking of marriage vows, and the disregard of
+the injunctions in the New Testament which had so much shocked her in
+Jocelyn, were now thrown at her by Mr. Pinner, who accused her of
+precisely these. Useless for Sally, clinging to the hope of somehow
+being able to justify herself and be allowed to stay, to say through her
+tears that the Gospel didn’t mention what a woman had to do but only
+what a man had to, because to that Mr. Pinner replied that no Gospel
+could be expected to mention everything, and that in any case, when it
+came to sinning, the sexes couldn’t be kept apart.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_217">{217}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>He walked her off to the little station three miles away. The bag the
+respectful chauffeur had wanted to carry for her up those few steps she
+now carried three miles herself.</p>
+
+<p>‘Pity you was in such a ’urry to let that there car go,’ Mr. Pinner
+remarked sarcastically, as they trudged almost in silence along the
+lanes.</p>
+
+<p>Sally gulped; delicately, because even her gulps were little
+gulps,—gentle, delicate little things. She didn’t know what was to
+become of her, she really didn’t. Go back to that dreadful house, and
+arrive in the middle of the party? Face real wrath, real deserved wrath,
+from those who even when they were being kind had terrified her? So
+thoroughly had Mr. Pinner’s horror at what she had done cleared her mind
+of Mr. Thorpe’s points of view that she felt she hadn’t a leg to stand
+on, and would do anything, almost, sooner than, covered with shame, go
+back to the anger of the Lukes. But what? What could she do except go
+back? Yet if she had been miserable there while she was still good, how
+was she going to bear it now that she had become wicked? She shuddered
+to think of what Mrs. Luke would be like really angry—and Mr. Luke, who
+had the right not to leave her alone even at night....</p>
+
+<p>Sadly did Sally gulp from time to time, and every now and then emit a
+faint sob, as she walked in silence that morning beside the adamant Mr.
+Pinner to the branch-line station. She hadn’t been in the Woodles
+district very long, but it seemed to her as she passed along its quiet
+lanes that she loved every stick and stone of it. It was what she
+understood. It was peace. It was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_218">{218}</a></span> home. Her father went with her as far
+as Cambridge, so as to put her safely into the express to Liverpool
+Street, and his instructions were, after buying her a first class
+ticket—he felt that Mr. Luke would wish her to travel first class, and
+it gave him a gloomy pride to buy it—that she was to take a taxi from
+Liverpool Street, and go in it all the way to South Winch.</p>
+
+<p>He then, with the ticket, gave her a pound note.</p>
+
+<p>‘It can’t be more than ten miles out,’ said Mr. Pinner, who had never in
+his life before squandered money, let alone a pound, on a taxi, but who
+tried to console himself with the thought that it would have been well
+spent if only it got Sally safe back to where she belonged; and though
+he was depressed he was also proud, for it, too, gave him a kind of
+sombre satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>‘Been an expensive day for me, this,’ he said, gloomy, but proud.</p>
+
+<p>Sally gulped.</p>
+
+<p>He kept her in the waiting-room at the station till the last moment, for
+she was attracting the usual too well-remembered attention, and beauty
+in tears was even more conspicuous than beauty placid, and then he
+hurried her along to the front of the train, and put her in a carriage
+in which there was only one lady—a real lady, of course, thought Mr.
+Pinner, anxiously taking stock of her, or she wouldn’t be travelling
+first class.</p>
+
+<p>‘Beg pardon, Madam,’ he said in his best behind-the-counter manner,
+taking his hat off. ‘You goin’ to London by any chance?’</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that the train didn’t stop till it got there, the lady couldn’t
+say anything but yes; and then Mr. Pinner asked her if she would mind
+keeping an eye on his daughter, who, though a married lady too—the
+lady<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_219">{219}</a></span> made a little bow of acknowledgement of this tribute to her
+evidently settled-down appearance, though she was, in fact, a
+spinster—yet didn’t know her way about very well.</p>
+
+<p>Then when the train began to move, and Sally’s face, as she leant out of
+the window to say goodbye, was a study in despair, Mr. Pinner relented
+enough to pat her tear-stained cheek, and running a few steps beside the
+carriage bade her not take on any more.</p>
+
+<p>‘What’s done’s done,’ he called out after the train, by way of cheering
+her.</p>
+
+<p>And Sally, dropping back into her corner, pulled out her handkerchief
+and wept.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Yes. What was done was done true enough, she thought, mopping the tears
+as they rolled down her face, including her having married Mr. Luke and
+his mother; for she now regarded him and his mother as all of a piece.</p>
+
+<p>The lady at the other end of the carriage, who, however hard she tried,
+couldn’t take her eyes off her—and she did try very hard, for she hated
+staring at grief—ventured after a while to repeat Mr. Pinner’s advice,
+and suggested, though in more Luke-like language, that Sally shouldn’t
+take on. Whereupon Sally, the voice being sympathetic and the face kind,
+took on more than ever.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, <i>please</i> don’t,’ said the lady, much concerned, moving up to the
+seat opposite her. Such liquefaction she had never seen, nor such
+loveliness in spite of it. When she herself cried, which was very
+rarely—what was the good?—she became a swollen thing of lumps.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_220">{220}</a></span> ‘You
+mustn’t, really,’ she begged. ‘Your eyes—you simply mustn’t do anything
+to hurt them. What is it? Can I help at all? I’d love to if I could——’</p>
+
+<p>By the time they were rushing through Bishops Stortford Sally had told
+her everything. Incoherent and sobbing at first, there was something
+about this lady that comforted her into calmness. She wasn’t at all like
+Mr. Thorpe, yet she took his sort of view, not Mr. Pinner’s, and was
+even more sympathetic, and even more understanding. It really seemed,
+from the questions she asked, as if she must know the Lukes personally.
+She said she didn’t, when Sally inquired if this were so, and laughed.
+She was very cheerful, and laughed several times, though she was so kind
+and sorry about everything.</p>
+
+<p>‘You can’t go back there today, anyhow,’ she said at last. ‘Not into the
+middle of that party——’ she laughed and shuddered, for Sally had
+explained with a face of horror that nobody at all was going to be at
+the party who wasn’t either a lady or a gentleman except herself. ‘You
+shall come and stay with me for a few days till your Mr. Luke goes to
+Cambridge, and then we’ll see what happens. But I’m not going to let you
+go back into the clutches of that Mrs. Luke.’</p>
+
+<p>And she leant forward and took her hand, and smiled so kindly and
+cheerfully, and said, ‘You’ll come for a day or two to our house, won’t
+you? My father isn’t there just now, and I’ve got it all to myself. Come
+till we have made up our minds about what to do next.’</p>
+
+<p>This really seemed too good to be true. Sally turned scarlet. Was she
+saved? Saved, at the very last minute, from horror and disgrace?</p>
+
+<p>‘Just for a day or two,’ said her new friend, who<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_221">{221}</a></span> couldn’t take her
+eyes off Sally’s face, ’till your husband can find somewhere for you to
+live. We’ll help him to look. I’ll come with you, and help to find
+something. No, it doesn’t matter a bit about your not having any
+luggage—I can lend you everything. And we’ll write to him if you like,
+and tell him you can’t and won’t stay with his mother. Don’t you think
+this is quite the best plan? Don’t you, Sally?’</p>
+
+<p>And she smiled, and asked if she might call her Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘But,’ hesitated Sally, for she didn’t want to get anybody into
+difficulties, ‘Father says I’m a runaway wife, and ’e wouldn’t ’arbour
+me ’imself because of that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, but somebody must. And I’m the very one for it, because I’m so
+respectable, and not a wife. Don’t you worry, you lovely thing. We
+really must bring your Mr. Luke to his senses. By the way, hasn’t he got
+a Christian name?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You never ’<i>eard</i> such a name,’ said Sally earnestly, who felt, to her
+own great surprise, almost as comfortable and easy with this strange
+lady as she had with Mr. Soper. ‘Outlandish, I call it.’</p>
+
+<p>Her new friend laughed again when she told her it was Jocelyn. ‘Aren’t
+you delicious,’ she said, her bright eyes screwed up with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Sally liked being called delicious. It gave her assurance. Jocelyn had
+called her lots of things like that in his red-eared moments, but they
+hadn’t done her much good, because they never seemed to go on into next
+day. This lady was quite in her ordinary senses, her ears were proper
+pale ears, and what she said sounded as though it would last. And how
+badly Sally needed reassurance after the things Mr. Pinner had said to
+her that morning!<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_222">{222}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Now you come along with me,’ said her friend, jumping up as the train
+ran into Liverpool Street, her eyes, which were like little black
+marbles, dancing. ‘And please call me Laura, will you? Because it’s my
+name.’</p>
+
+<p>She leaned out of the window, and waved. A chauffeur came running down
+the platform and opened the door; a car was waiting; and in another
+minute Sally was in it, once more sunk in softness, and once more with a
+lovely fur rug over her knees, while sitting next to her, talking and
+laughing, was her new friend, and sitting opposite her, neither talking
+nor laughing, a smart young lady in black, carrying a bag, who had
+appeared from nowhere and wasn’t taken any notice of, and who looked
+steadily out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>‘What a <i>day</i> I’m ’avin’, thought Sally.</p>
+
+<p>But when presently the car stopped at a big house in a great square with
+trees in the middle, and a footman appeared at the door, and in the hall
+Sally could see another one just like him, and then another, and yet
+another, she was definitely frightened.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh lor,’ she whispered, shrinking back into the car.</p>
+
+<p>‘No—Laura,’ said her new friend, laughing and taking her hand; and
+drawing it through her arm she led her up the steps of the house, and
+into the middle of the first real fleshpots of her life.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Fleshpots.</p>
+
+<p>She had thought her honeymoon was a honeymoon of fleshpots; she had been
+sure Almond Tree Cottage was the very home of them; but now she saw the
+real thing: fleshpots <i>in excelsis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Her father had said, ‘Beware of fleshpots,’ when he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_223">{223}</a></span> was expounding the
+doings of the Children of Israel to her of a Sunday afternoon, ‘they
+don’t do no one no good.’ And she had been brought up so carefully, so
+piously, so privately, that she had never come across that literature of
+luxury, those epics of fat things, that are lavishly provided for the
+poor and skimped. The flunkeys and the frocks, the country castles and
+the town palaces, the food, the jewels and the dukes, had remained
+outside her imaginative experience. What she had read had been her
+Bible, and a few books of her mother’s childhood in which people were
+sad, and good and ill, and died saying things that made her cry very
+much. There was nothing to set her dreaming in these. Life, she thought,
+was like that, except for the lucky ones such as herself, who had kind
+parents and a nice back parlour to sit and sew in when their work was
+done. There were the gentry, of course; they existed, she knew, but only
+knew vaguely. Entirely vague they had been in her mind till she became a
+Luke, and found herself engulfed by them; and what an awe-inspiring
+engulfing it had seemed to her, with Ammond handing round everything at
+meals, and tea on a table you didn’t sit up at!</p>
+
+<p>Now, as her new friend’s arm propelled her past the blank-faced footmen,
+across the great marble-floored and columned hall, she realised that
+Almond Tree Cottage had been the merest wheelbarrow in size and fittings
+compared to this. This was grand. More—this was terrible. It was her
+idea of a cathedral or a museum, but not of a place human beings washed
+their hands in, and talked out loud.</p>
+
+<p>‘P’raps,’ she murmured to the lady called Laura, holding back as she was
+about to be taken into a room<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_224">{224}</a></span> which she could see at once she would
+never feel comfortable in, and where far away in the distance was
+another of those tables with tea on it that one didn’t sit up at,
+‘p’raps, if you don’t mind, I’d better be gettin’ along after all——’
+for, being polite, she had forced herself to bow with a nervous smile to
+a gentleman in black, who was standing about and whose eye had met hers,
+and he hadn’t taken any notice but looked as blank-faced as everybody
+else, and the rebuff had terribly embarrassed her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Come along,’ was all Laura said to that, calling out over her shoulder
+to the same gentleman in black to see that a room was got ready for Mrs.
+Luke; and he answered, as polite and mild as milk, ‘Very good,
+m’lady——’ so he was a servant, and Laura was one of those ladies
+Sally had heard her parents sometimes allude to with awe, who are always
+being told they’re ladies every time any one speaks to them, and who
+were, so Mr. and Mrs. Pinner declared, the pick of the basket.</p>
+
+<p>‘P’raps,’ murmured Sally again, faintly, for the thought of having got
+among the pick of the basket unnerved her, ‘I’d best do what Father
+said, and take a taxi....’</p>
+
+<p>‘You shall if you really want to,’ said Laura, ‘but let’s have tea
+first. And think of that party! It’s raging at this minute. Oh,
+Sally—could you bear it?’</p>
+
+<p>Sally sat down on the chair Laura pushed up for her. She sat down
+obediently, but only on the edge of it, her long slender legs tucked
+sideways, as one sits who isn’t at ease. No, she couldn’t bear to go
+back to that party; nor could she, waiting till it was over, go back
+after it and face Mrs. Luke. It was more than flesh and blood could
+manage.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_225">{225}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, that being so, and seeing that her father wouldn’t have her, the
+only thing to do was to stay where she was till Usband went to Cambridge
+on Saturday, and be thankful she had this kind lady to be with, and try
+and swallow all the servants and marble, and do her best to behave
+grateful. It was only for a couple of days, for directly Usband got to
+Cambridge she would go after him as a wife should. Fallen on her feet
+wonderfully she had, Sally anxiously assured herself; but nevertheless,
+as she sat on the edge of her chair, and great pictures looked down at
+her from vast walls, she felt excessively uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>‘Tell me some more about the Lukes,’ said Laura gaily, arranging a
+little table in front of her on which her cup and plate had a nice lot
+of room, and nothing got spilt or dropped. ‘I think they’re such fun.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Fun?’ echoed Sally, her lips parting.</p>
+
+<p>She stared at Laura. Fun? The Lukes?</p>
+
+<p>‘I never ’eard of a ’usband bein’ fun,’ she said in a very low voice,
+her head drooping.</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps that isn’t quite the word,’ said Laura, ‘though I believe it’s
+a very good way of approaching them.’ And then she paused, teapot in
+hand, her eyes on Sally’s face. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you know you’re
+the most utterly beautiful thing?’</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Sally started, for this was the way Mrs. Luke had begun with
+her, and said quickly, even as she had said then, ‘But I can’t ’elp it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Help it?’ echoed Laura, astonished.</p>
+
+<p>‘People begins,’ said Sally anxiously, ‘with “Oh my, ain’t you
+beautiful,” and ends with bein’ angry. It ain’t as if I could ’<i>elp</i>
+it,’ she said, looking up at her new friend with eyes in which tears
+were gathering, for<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_226">{226}</a></span> it would be more than she could bear on her empty
+stomach—she had had no food since her breakfast in Mr. Thorpe’s car—if
+she too were going to be angry with her.</p>
+
+<p>Really such an extraordinary piece of good fortune as this had never yet
+come Laura’s way.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Now was Sally shovelled up by chance from the bottom of the social
+ladder to the top, for Laura was the spinster daughter of a duke. He was
+so aged that, by sheer going on living, everything he had ever done,
+good and bad, had been forgotten, and at last he had become an object of
+universal respect. Ninety-three next birthday; a great age. And his
+eldest son, the prospective duke, was sixty-five,—a great age too for
+anything that is still prospective. He was a marquis, Sally learned with
+surprise presently, when she was having her tea and Laura, who perceived
+she needed soothing, was trying to distract her by telling her about her
+relations; for she failed to understand why he shouldn’t be a duke.
+Pinners produced Pinners; why not dukes dukes?</p>
+
+<p>But Laura said these things couldn’t be explained, and hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>The old duke had married three times, and Laura was the product of what
+the neat-phrased French would call the third bed. All the beds, first,
+second, and third, had long vanished, and of the third, which had been
+very fruitful, Laura, and her brother Charles, and her married sister
+Terry, were the only surviving traces. The second bed had been barren;
+the first had provided the heir, and three ancient ladies old enough to
+be Laur<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_227">{227}</a></span>a’s mothers, who were scattered over England in varying degrees
+of resignation, one being the widow of a bishop, another the widow of a
+Cabinet Minister, and the third not yet the widow of a club man and
+expert bridge-player, who never came home till next day.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why don’t ’e?’ asked Sally, manners seeming to demand that she should
+say something when, for an instant, her friend paused.</p>
+
+<p>But Laura said these things couldn’t be explained, and hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>Much the liveliest of the beds had been the one she herself came out of,
+and her blood pressure—except during the last year of the War, when
+unceasing hard work, combined with a diet of practically continual
+boiled fish, reduced it to a comfortable normal—had always been higher
+than was convenient. This led her into excesses. She must be up and
+doing; she found it impossible to sit still. Vitality bubbled in her
+quick speech and danced in her black eyes. She was now thirty-five,
+round and stubby, fleet of foot and swift of reply, and her past was
+strewn with charities she had organised, dressmakers she had
+established, hat shops she had run, estate agencies she had started,
+hospital beds she had endowed, arts she had supported, geniuses she had
+discovered, and four lovers.</p>
+
+<p>Four weren’t many, she thought, considering the piles her sister Terry
+had got through. Laura’s lovers had come and gone, as lovers do, and she
+hadn’t minded much, because neither had they. There was something too
+electric about her for love. She seemed to crackle in their very arms.
+This disconcerted them; and each in his turn married some one else.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time now she had been bored, and bored<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_228">{228}</a></span> violently, and by the
+time she came across Sally she had seen everything, been everything,
+heard everything and done everything; and the prospect of seeing and
+being and hearing and doing over and over again, till her joints cracked
+and her hair fell out, was boring her into fits.</p>
+
+<p>Her father’s three wives had been the daughters of millionaires, whose
+pride it was to leave them all their money. Her father, rich before, had
+thus become incredibly richer. England was full of him. And the war had
+only made him richer, because he owned coal mines. Such riches, Laura
+considered, were disgusting, and she had plunged into Socialism, and
+come up dripping Labour. But whatever she did, whatever she was, her
+chief job was to look after her father, and see that his last years were
+peaceful; and she had now only left him in Cambridgeshire, where they
+had been spending Easter, for a day or two, and rushed up to London
+because of being obliged to go to a charity ball of which she was a
+patroness, to the first night of a play whose author she was
+encouraging, to a bazaar in aid of the Black and Blue League, of which
+she was vice-president and whose aims were the assistance of wives, and,
+if possible, to look in at a concert being given by a young violinist
+she had helped to have trained: and she had been thinking, as she sat in
+the empty railway carriage between Crippenham and Cambridge—the
+expresses stopped at Crippenham when the Duke was in residence—that all
+this was a great bore.</p>
+
+<p>What was the good of it, really? Oughtn’t charity to be approached quite
+differently? Weren’t bazaars essentially vicious? Did wives need
+assistance more than husbands? And there was her own stupid supper-party
+that night after the play, with the author coming<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_229">{229}</a></span> to it, and the
+leading lady, and Streatley her elder brother, who thought he admired
+the leading lady, and Terry her sister, who thought the author admired
+her, and Charles her younger brother, who was sure he admired nobody,
+and one or two others, including a dramatic critic; and how too
+perfectly awful if the play was a failure, and there they all were,
+boxed up with the person who had written it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Silly life,’ she had been thinking as the train ran into Cambridge.
+‘Round and round in a cage we go, and nothing is ever different except
+our whiskers, which keep on getting greyer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But then,’ she said leaning forward, her eyes twinkling and dancing as
+she looked at Sally, who by this time had finished her tea, ‘the door
+opened and you got in. Too marvellous, Sally. Divinely beautiful. And
+not an h in your whole delicious composition.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Pardon?’ said Sally, who hadn’t quite got that.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>She hadn’t understood more than a word here and there of all the words
+Laura had rattled off at her, and in her heart, while she steadily ate
+sandwiches, she had slowly come to the conclusion that the pick of the
+basket was a queer fish. An affectionate and friendly fish, but queer
+all right, thought Sally; and in spite of the good tea—the best she had
+ever had, outdoing the one at Truro, and infinitely better than any at
+Mrs. Luke’s,—in spite of the calming and balancing effect of
+nourishment after not having had a bite to eat since five o’clock that
+morning, in spite of Laura’s kindness and cheerfulness, Sally felt
+uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>She oughtn’t to be there. She oughtn’t to have come<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_230">{230}</a></span> with Laura. It was
+only for two days, but two days were enough to do wrong in. What would
+her father say, who thought she was at that moment in a taxi, paid for
+by his pound, if he could see her? What would Mrs. Luke say? What was
+Mrs. Luke saying, anyhow? As for Mr. Luke, what he would say didn’t so
+much matter, because almost before he had finished saying it she would
+have joined him in Cambridge, and started acting as a wife should. Of
+course he on his side must act as a husband should, and not try and send
+her away from him to his mother,—that was only fair, wasn’t it? Sally
+anxiously asked herself.</p>
+
+<p>And her uneasiness became acute when Laura, having taken her up a whole
+lot of stairs, every one of which looked like pure marble, and into a
+room she could only guess was a bedroom because there was a bed in it,
+but which was otherwise unidentifiable to Sally as such, sat down at a
+table and began telephoning to people to send round somebody at once
+with dresses and shoes to be tried on a young lady, who had to wear them
+that very evening.</p>
+
+<p>Sally listened in alarm. Impossible not to guess that she was the young
+lady; impossible not to gather that there was to be a party, and she was
+to be at it. Had she after all only escaped Mrs. Luke’s party to find
+herself caught in another? Was Laura, who had so much sympathised with
+her earnest wish not to be present at the one, going to plunge her into
+the other?</p>
+
+<p>Standing afraid and conscience-stricken in front of the blazing wood
+fire, while Laura telephoned—this all came of not obeying her
+father—Sally wondered whether anything could save her. Laura had saved
+her from Mrs. Luke, but who was going to save her from Laura?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_231">{231}</a></span> Laura
+lived in the middle of marble. She had servants at her beck and call,
+and could make the gentleman in black do anything she chose. And the
+smart young lady, who had sat on the small seat of the car and looked
+out of the window, presently, on Laura’s telling her to, crawled round
+the floor at Sally’s feet with her mouth full of pins, doing something
+to a petticoat of Laura’s that Sally, it seemed, was going to have to
+wear that evening.</p>
+
+<p>‘All you’ve got to do, Sally,’ said Laura, having finished telephoning,
+and coming briskly over to where her newest discovery was standing
+meekly without her frock and hat, while the petticoat was pinned
+narrower, ’is to enjoy yourself. Oh, you lovely, <i>lovely</i> thing!’ she
+burst out, beating her hands together with delight; for the more one
+took off Sally the more exquisite she became.</p>
+
+<p>Enjoy herself? She, a married woman? ‘Wonder ’ow,’ thought Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Say what you like, do what you like,’ said Laura, her eyes bulging with
+admiration, ‘and don’t care about anybody or anything. Don’t you bother
+about h’s, or silly things like that. Just say whatever comes into your
+darling, delicious head, and enjoy yourself.’</p>
+
+<p>In the presence of the young lady crawling on the floor, Sally was dumb.
+Laura, on the other hand, talked just as if she weren’t there; but when
+for a moment Sally found herself alone with Laura, she did make a mild
+protest.</p>
+
+<p>‘Might ’ave gone back to that there other party after all,’ she said,
+’an’ done what Father tell me, if I got to be at one any’ow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, but this isn’t a party,’ Laura hastily assured her,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_232">{232}</a></span> for Sally was
+distinctly drooping. ‘This is a theatre. You like going to a play, don’t
+you, Sally? Of course you do. I simply don’t believe the girl exists who
+doesn’t.’</p>
+
+<p>Yes; Sally liked going to a play. She hadn’t ever been to one, and the
+idea of a theatre did cheer her up. And Laura said nothing about the
+supper afterwards, because why say everything?</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>They went, then, to the first night of Mr. Gillespie’s new play. Sally
+was astonished when Laura, and the maid, and the head lady from
+Paquille’s and her two assistants, had finished with her and bade her
+look at herself in the glass.</p>
+
+<p>‘That me?’ she asked, her lips parting and her eyes widening, for it
+might have been a real grand lady. And she added doubtfully, ‘I ain’t
+’alf bare.’</p>
+
+<p>Laura, however, was just as bare, and there was ever so much more of her
+to be bare with, so she supposed it must be all right; but she did
+wonder what her father would say if he could see her now—‘Oh, my
+<i>goodness</i>,’ shuddered Sally, her mind slinking away from the thought.</p>
+
+<p>They had dressed her in a cloud of blue tulle over a cloud of green
+tulle. Her loveliness was startling. It was like nothing either Laura or
+the lady from Paquille’s had ever seen, and they had seen most of what
+there was of existing beauty. Even the maid, an expert in repression,
+showed excitement. And presently when the Paquille lady wrapped the
+cloak round her that went with that frock, and, swathed in its green and
+silver, she looked like a white flower in a slender sheath of green,
+Laura fairly danced with delight to think what Terry<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_233">{233}</a></span> would say, who was
+used to being so much prettier than anybody else, and what Charles would
+say, who long had declared there was no such thing as real beauty, and
+Streatley, who said the women nowadays couldn’t hold a candle to the
+women of his youth, and everybody.</p>
+
+<p>Such a find, such a haul, such a piece of luck had never yet befallen
+Laura. And the mischievous pleasure she took in thinking of the effect
+it was going to have on her relations and of the upsetting results it
+was going to produce, was all the more surprising because, at the bottom
+of her heart, she was devoted to them.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Among the opera-glasses that raked Sally as she followed Laura into the
+stage box three minutes before the curtain went up on Mr. Gillespie’s
+new play, were Terry’s. She was in the stalls, with the young man who
+just then was, as the Pinners would have said, walking out with her. He
+too was looking at Sally.</p>
+
+<p>‘Laura’s latest,’ remarked Terry, turning to him after a prolonged
+incredulous stare at the astonishing contents of the box; for Laura was
+well known for her successive discoveries of every kind—saints,
+geniuses, rugged men of labour—each of which, after a brief blare of
+publicity, disappeared and was not heard of again.</p>
+
+<p>The young man’s face, however, had the kind of expression on it as he
+looked at Sally that is apt to annoy the woman one is with; and Terry,
+who was strictly monogamous during each of her affairs, and expected the
+other person to be so too, didn’t like it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who is she?’ asked her young friend.</p>
+
+<p>‘God knows,’ said Terry, shrugging her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain went up and the lights went down, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_234">{234}</a></span> Sally disappeared
+into the darkness. When next she was visible, Charles Moulsford and Lord
+Streatley had joined their sister in the box. They were talking to
+Sally. She was politely smiling. The house had eyes for nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who <i>is</i> she?’ asked Terry’s young friend again, with a warmer
+insistence.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’d better go and ask her,’ said Terry, cross.</p>
+
+<p>‘All right, I will,’ said her young friend; and got up and left her; for
+by this time she had been monogamous with him for six months, and he
+long had wished she would love him less.</p>
+
+<p>The other three acts of the play took place in bright summer weather,
+and the glorious sunshine on the stage lit up Sally too in the stage
+box. The house had eyes only for her. Mr. Gillespie’s play accordingly
+fell flat. Nobody called for him at the end, what applause there was was
+absent-minded, and next morning the leading newspaper, after a
+perfunctory <i>résumé</i> of that which it unkindly described as the alleged
+plot, ended by remarking languidly, ‘Mr. Gillespie must try again.’</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange evening. The actors, who began well, seemed to get more
+and more bloodless as the play proceeded. Mr. Gillespie, crouching in
+the darkest corner of the box above Laura’s, a shelter out of which
+nothing would have dragged him except the most frenzied cries of
+enthusiasm, couldn’t imagine what was the matter with his players; but
+they had felt almost at once that no notice was being taken of them, and
+presently, discovering the reason, a blight settled on them, and its
+ravages, as the evening went on, became more marked. By the end there
+was practically complete anaemia, and Mr. Gillespie, fleeing from the
+theatre before the final curtain<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_235">{235}</a></span> so as to see and hear nothing more, so
+as to get away, so as to meet neither managers nor actors, so as to wipe
+from his mind that he had ever written plays, or ever hoped, or ever
+believed, or ever had dreams and ambitions, went straight for comfort to
+his friend Lady Laura Moulsford, who had been so kind and encouraging,
+and who had told him to come round to her that evening, laughingly
+promising to have the laurels ready.</p>
+
+<p>Laurels! Poor Mr. Gillespie now only wanted to hide his head in her kind
+lap. He winced to remember how happily he too had laughed, how sure he
+had been. But that was because of the great success of his first play;
+and this one, his second, was twenty times better, and was going to be
+twenty times greater a success.</p>
+
+<p>And so it would have been except for Sally. When, presently, after he
+had waited three quarters of an hour alone in the library at Goring
+House because Sally was being so much crowded round coming out of the
+theatre that it took all that time to extricate her and get her away,
+she came in with Laura and Laura’s brothers, he instantly realised what
+had happened; and even as Mr. Soper hadn’t grudged her his stew, though
+feeling aggrieved, so did Mr. Gillespie, though feeling heartbroken, not
+grudge her the laurels that should have been his.</p>
+
+<p>He turned very red; he bent low over her hand when Laura introduced him;
+he murmured, ‘I lay my failure at your feet and glory in it,’—this
+being the way Mr. Gillespie talked; and Sally, nervous and bewildered,
+but indomitably polite, said, ‘Pardon?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_236">{236}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_237">{237}</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_238">{238}</a></span> 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 <i>success</i>,’ thought Laura, suddenly ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But she was so unhappy,’ said Laura, trying to justify herself.</p>
+
+<p>‘You wouldn’t have cared in the very least if she had been plain,’ said
+Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘Am I as bad as all that?’ asked Laura.</p>
+
+<p>‘Every bit,’ said Charles, who was annoyed because of the way Sally was
+disturbing him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>How annoying for Charles, for instance, who was so<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_239">{239}</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>‘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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_240">{240}</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>‘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.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m not at all pleased,’ snapped Laura, ‘and I wish to goodness you’d
+all go home.’</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_241">{241}</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.’</p>
+
+<p>‘They’d think it unendurable,’ said Terry shortly.</p>
+
+<p>‘But you see,’ said Laura, who was cross with Terry, ‘she happens to be
+the most beautiful thing any of us have ever seen.’</p>
+
+<p>‘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.</p>
+
+<p>‘If one <i>likes</i> that sort of thing,’ said Terry, descending in her anger
+to primitive woman.</p>
+
+<p>‘Which one evidently does,’ said Laura maliciously, glancing at the
+infatuated group.</p>
+
+<p>‘Men are such fools,’ said Terry.</p>
+
+<p>‘Babies,’ sighed Lady Streatley.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_242">{242}</a></span>
+rearrangement of positions because of the bringing in of a tray of
+drinks.</p>
+
+<p>When he did, this was the conversation:</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe,’ said Charles in a low voice, ‘you’re every bit as beautiful
+inside as you are out.’</p>
+
+<p>‘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?’</p>
+
+<p>‘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——’</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘You never <i>see</i> such lovin’,’ said Sally earnestly, who didn’t mind
+this one of the gentlemen as much as the others.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Angry?’ said Charles, incredulously. ‘Angry with you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Gets angry a lot, Mr. Luke do,’ said Sally, bowing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_243">{243}</a></span> 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’.’</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_244">{244}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">He</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_245">{245}</a></span> floor at his feet, her eyes shut and her mouth a little open, and
+her hands flung out, palm upwards, in a queer defencelessness.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m <i>ashamed</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘How much you must love me,’ she remarked sarcastically, being, after a
+bad night, a little cross.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t love you at all at this moment,’ said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then is it breakfast you want?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘Can it be Sally?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ said Charles.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_246">{246}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Fancy,’ said Laura; and poured herself out some coffee.</p>
+
+<p>‘How is she?’ asked Charles after a pause, ignoring such silliness.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, quite well,’ said Laura. ‘She was tired last night.’</p>
+
+<p>‘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.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Rescue her, in fact,’ said Laura, munching, her back to him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Exactly,’ said Charles, who was angry.</p>
+
+<p>‘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. ‘<i>He</i> won’t
+bring his chauffeur either. Have some?’ she asked, holding up the
+coffee-pot.</p>
+
+<p>‘Can’t you be a little beast when you give your mind to it,’ said
+Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, you scolded me last night because <i>I</i> had rescued her, and now
+here you are——’</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_247">{247}</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>I</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.</p>
+
+<p>‘But, my darling,’ Laura had said, bending over her and smoothing back
+the hair from her damp forehead<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_248">{248}</a></span> with quick, anxious movements, ‘he’ll
+give you something to make you well again.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, ’e won’t,’ Sally had whispered, looking up at her with a faint,
+proud smile, ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>cos I ain’t ill. <i>I</i> know wot’s ’appenin’ all right. It’s
+a little baby.’</p>
+
+<p>And then she had told Laura, who had to stoop down close to hear, about
+Mrs. Ooper.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_249">{249}</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’s having breakfast upstairs,’ said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked, annoyed.</p>
+
+<p>‘Because you say I’m a little beast, so I may as well do the thing
+thoroughly.’</p>
+
+<p>Charles went across to the bell.</p>
+
+<p>‘No—don’t ring,’ said Laura jumping up. ‘I’ll go and tell her.’ And she
+went to the door, but hesitated, and came back to him, and laid her hand
+on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>He withdrew his arm.</p>
+
+<p>‘Charles—are you so angry with me?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ve behaved simply disgracefully,’ he answered in a voice of deep
+disgust. ‘You would sacrifice anybody to provide your friends with a new
+sensation.’</p>
+
+<p>Laura looked at him. It was true; or had been true. But she wasn’t going
+to ever any more, she was going to turn over a new leaf—next day, when
+she had finished with all her tiresome and important engagements.</p>
+
+<p>‘You sacrificed that child’—began Charles, passionately indignant when
+he thought of the unconscious figure on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t <i>you</i> sacrifice her,’ interrupted Laura. And when Charles stared
+at her, too angry for speech, she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_250">{250}</a></span> added hastily, ‘Oh, don’t let’s
+quarrel, Charles darling. I’m sure you’ll take the greatest care of her.
+I’ll go and fetch her. Drive slowly, won’t you—and bring her back safe.
+Tomorrow I’m going to hand her over to her husband.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Now in his heart Charles knew that this was the only right thing to do.
+Sally ought never to have been taken away from her husband, and, having
+been taken, ought to be returned to him. At once. Not tomorrow, but at
+once. He didn’t know the circumstances, except what Laura had hurriedly
+told him the night before after supper, about having found her in a
+train, dissolved in tears because her father was sending her back to a
+mother-in-law who was awful to her, and she had brought her home with
+her just to comfort her, just to let her recover; but it was plain that
+such conduct on Laura’s part was indefensible. If ever anybody ought to
+be safe at home it was Sally. She should be taken there without losing a
+moment. Disgraceful of Laura to put it off for another day and night,
+while she kept her fool engagements. Having behaved so wickedly, she
+ought, without losing an hour, to set things straight again.</p>
+
+<p>Charles felt strongly about Laura’s conduct; yet, though he himself
+could have set things straight by simply driving Sally back to the Lukes
+that morning, he didn’t do so. That was because he couldn’t. He was in
+love, and therefore couldn’t.</p>
+
+<p>There are some things it is impossible to do when you are in love,
+thought Charles, who recognised and admitted his condition, and one is
+to hand over the beloved to a brute. Luke was a brute. Clearly he was,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_251">{251}</a></span>
+from what Sally had said the night before. He was either angry—angry
+with that little angel!—or he oh-Sallied. A cold shudder ran down
+Charles’s spine. The thought made him feel really sick, for he was a
+tender-stomached as well as a tender-hearted young man, and possessed an
+imagination which was sometimes too lively for comfort. It wouldn’t be
+<i>his</i> hand that delivered her up to a young brute; nor, he suddenly
+determined, on the butler’s hurrying out to Laura, who was standing on
+the steps seeing him and Sally off, and saying with urgency, ‘Lord
+Streatley to speak to Mrs. Luke on the telephone,’ would it be his hand
+that delivered her up to an old one. At once on hearing the message he
+started the car, and was out of the square before Laura could say
+anything. There was Sally, tucked up beside him in Laura’s furs, and
+looking more beautiful in broad sunshine even than he remembered her the
+night before,—a child of light and grace if ever there was one, thought
+Charles, a thing of simple sweetness and obedience and trust; and was he
+going to bring her back to another evening’s exploitation by his sister
+and her precious friends, with that old scoundrel, his elder brother,
+all over her?</p>
+
+<p>Never, said Charles to himself; and headed his car for Crippenham.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Crippenham was where his father was. What so safe as a refuge for Sally
+as his father? He was ninety-three, and he was deaf. A venerable age; a
+convenient failing. Convenient indeed in this case, for the Duke, like
+Charles, took little pleasure in the speech of the lower classes. Also
+he was alone there till Laura<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_252">{252}</a></span> should come back to him on the following
+day, because nobody was ever invited to Crippenham, which was his yearly
+rest-cure, and nobody ever dared even try to disturb its guarded repose.</p>
+
+<p>Charles felt that it was, besides being the only, the very place. Here
+Sally could be kept remote and hidden till Laura—not he; he wouldn’t be
+able to do such a thing—restored her to where she belonged; here she
+would be safe from the advances of Streatley, who couldn’t follow her
+anywhere his father was, because the old man had an aversion to the four
+surviving fruits of his first marriage, and freely showed it; and here
+he would have her to himself for a whole evening, and part at least of
+the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Also, it would serve Laura right. She would get a fright, and think all
+sorts of things had happened when they didn’t come back. Well, thought
+Charles, she deserved everything she got. Under the cloak of protecting
+and comforting Sally she had been completely selfish and cruel. Charles
+was himself astonished at the violence of his feelings towards Laura,
+with whom he had always been such friends. He didn’t investigate these
+feelings, however; he didn’t investigate any of his other feelings
+either, not excepting the one he had when he asked Sally, soon after
+they had turned the corner out of the square, if she were warm enough,
+and she looked up shyly at him, and smiled as she politely thanked him,
+for his feelings since the evening before no longer bore investigation.
+They were a mixed lot, a strong lot. And it vexed Charles to know that
+even as early in the day as this, and not much after half past nine in
+the morning, he wished to kiss Sally.</p>
+
+<p>This wasn’t at all the proper spirit of rescue. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_253">{253}</a></span> drove in silence. He
+couldn’t remember having wished to kiss a woman before at half past nine
+in the morning, and it annoyed him.</p>
+
+<p>Sally, of course, was silent too. Not for her to speak without being
+spoken to, and she sat mildly wondering that she should be going along
+in a car at all. Laura had come up to her bedroom and said her brother
+was there, wanting to take her out for a little fresh air. Do her good,
+Laura had said, though Sally had never known good come of fresh air yet;
+but, passive as a parcel, she had let herself be taken. Why, however,
+she should be going for a joy-ride with this lord she didn’t know,
+though she supposed it was as good a way as another of getting through
+the intimidating day among the picks of the basket, and anyhow this way
+there was only one of them, and anyhow he wasn’t the big old one with
+the hairs on his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Queer lot, these picks, thought Sally. Didn’t seem to have anything to
+do to keep them at home; seemed to spend their time going somewhere
+else. Fidgety. And a vision of her own life as it was going to be once
+she was settled in those rooms at Cambridge, getting ready for her
+little baby, and cleaning up, and making things cosy for her man,
+flooded her heart with a delicious warmth. Laura had promised to help
+her find the rooms, and take her to where Mr. Luke would be. Mr. Luke
+wouldn’t be angry any more now, thought Sally—he’d be too pleased about
+the little baby; and Laura seemed to know exactly where they would find
+him, and had assured her he wouldn’t want to have Mrs. Luke living with
+them. Laura was queer too, in Sally’s eyes, but good. Indeed Sally,
+feeling very much the married woman after what had happened the evening
+before,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_254">{254}</a></span> feeling motherly already, feeling exalted by the coming of her
+baby to a height immensely above mere spinsterhood, went so far as to
+say to herself of Laura, with indulgent affection, ‘Nice kid.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>They lunched at Thaxted. It was still only half past twelve, and Charles
+had managed to be three hours doing the forty odd miles. There was a
+beautiful church at Thaxted in which he could linger with her, for he
+didn’t want to get to Crippenham till tea-time, and Crippenham was only
+about nine miles beyond Cambridge, off the Ely road between Waterbeach
+and Swaffham Prior.</p>
+
+<p>Up to Thaxted, Charles was filled with an embarrassingly strong desire
+to appropriate Sally for ever to himself. He hadn’t an idea how to do
+it, but that was his wish. She sat there silent, beautiful beyond his
+dreams—and how often and how wistfully had he not dreamt of what a
+woman’s beauty might be!—pathetic, defenceless in the midst of a rudely
+jostling, predatory world, like a child with a priceless pearl in its
+hand among the poor and hungry, and he passionately loved her. As the
+miles increased, so did Charles’s passion. He looked at her sideways,
+and each time with a fresh throb of wonder. He wove dreams about her; he
+saw visions of magic casements and perilous seas, and she behind them,
+protected, guarded, worshipped by him alone; his soul was filled with
+poetry; he was lifted above himself by this Presence, this
+Manifestation; he thought in terms of music; the whole of England sang.</p>
+
+<p>But at Thaxted he felt different, and began to think Sally ought to be
+with those she belonged to; and by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_255">{255}</a></span> time it was evening, and he was
+meditating alone in the garden at Crippenham, he was quite sure of it.</p>
+
+<p>At Thaxted he ordered the best lunch he could—Sally’s mouth watered as
+she listened,—and while it was being got ready he took her into the
+church. She was inattentively polite. The brisk movements of a big,
+close-cropped man in a cassock, who strode busily about and made what
+seemed to Sally a curtsey each time he crossed the middle aisle,
+appeared to interest her much more than Charles’s remarks on the clear,
+pale beauty of the building. It was rather like taking a dog to look at
+things. Charles didn’t consciously think this, but there was an
+unawareness about Sally when faced by the beauties of Thaxted Church,
+and when faced, coming down, by the beauties of certain bits of the
+country that singing April morning, which was very like, Charles
+subconsciously thought, the unawareness of a dog. Ah, but how far, far
+more beautiful she herself was than anything else, he thought; how
+exquisite she looked in Laura’s chinchilla wrap, with the exalted
+thoughts of the men who had built the church, thoughts frozen into the
+delicate greys, and silvers, and rose-colours of that fair wide place,
+for her background.</p>
+
+<p>The man in the cassock left off doing whatever he was doing on catching
+sight of Sally, and, after looking at her a moment, came up and offered,
+his eyes on her face, to show them round the church; a little cluster of
+Americans dissolved, and flowed towards her; and a woman dressed like a
+nun broke off her prayers, and presently sidled up to where she stood.</p>
+
+<p>Charles removed her.</p>
+
+<p>Thaxted is a quiet place, and he strolled with her through its streets
+till their food should be ready. Its<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_256">{256}</a></span> streets, quiet to begin with,
+didn’t stay quiet. The people of Thaxted, for some reason
+incomprehensible to Charles, because no two women could be more unlike,
+seemed to think Sally was Mary Pickford. He heard whispers to that
+effect. Did they then think, too, that he was the person known, he
+understood, as Doug?</p>
+
+<p>He removed her a second time.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the inn was as good a place as any to wait in. He had, however,
+to engage a private room for their lunch, because so many people came in
+and wished to lunch too; and it was when Sally had eaten a great deal of
+greengage tart and cream—bottled greengages, Charles feared, but she
+said she liked them—and drunk a great deal of raspberry syrup which
+had, he was sure, never been near real raspberries and couldn’t be very
+good for her, and then, while he was having coffee and she tea—he had
+somehow stumbled on the fact that she liked tea after meals, and he
+watched with concern the strength and number of the cups she drank—it
+was then that she began to thaw, and to talk.</p>
+
+<p>Alas, that she should. Alas, that she didn’t remain for ever silent,
+wonderful, mysterious, of God.</p>
+
+<p>Once having started thawing, it wasn’t in Sally’s generous nature to
+stop. She thawed and thawed, and Charles became more and more afflicted.
+Lord Charles—so, the night before, she had learned he was called—was
+evidently a chip off the same block as her friend Laura; kind, that is.
+See what a lovely dinner he was giving her. Also he had been much more
+like a gentleman that day, and less like somebody who wanted to be a
+husband; and after the greengage tart she began to warm up, and by the
+time she had got to the cups of tea she felt great confidence in
+Charles.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_257">{257}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Kind, ain’t you,’ she said with her enchanting smile, when he
+suggested, much against his convictions, another pot of tea.</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t everybody?’ asked Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘Does their best,’ said Sally charitably. ‘But it’s up ’ill all the way
+for some as I could mention.’</p>
+
+<p>By this time Charles was already feeling chilled. The raspberry syrup
+and the cups of strong tea had estranged him. This perfect girl, he
+thought, ought to be choice too in her food, ought instinctively to
+reject things out of bottles, and have no desire for a second helping of
+obviously bad pastry. Still, she was very young. He too, at Eton, had
+liked bad tuck. After all, queer as it seemed, she had only got to the
+age he was at then.</p>
+
+<p>He made excuses for her; and, it appearing to him important that he
+should be in possession of more facts about her than those Laura had
+told him the evening before, said encouragingly, ‘Do mention them.’</p>
+
+<p>Sally did. She mentioned everybody and everything; and soon he knew as
+much about her hasty marriage, hurried on within a fortnight to the
+first man who came along, her return from her honeymoon to South Winch,
+the determination of her mother-in-law to keep her apart from her
+husband, her flight, helped by her father-in-law, back to her father,
+his rejection of her, and her intention to rejoin her husband next day
+at Cambridge whether he liked it or not, as he could bear.</p>
+
+<p>He couldn’t bear much. It wasn’t only how she said it, but what she
+said. Charles, who had at first been afflicted by her language, was now
+afflicted by her facts. He shifted uneasily in his chair. He smoked
+cigarette after cigarette. His thin brown face was flushed, and he
+looked distressed. In that strange, defective, yet all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_258">{258}</a></span> too vivid speech
+which he so deeply deplored, she drew for him a picture of what seemed
+sheer exploitation, culminating in his own sister’s flinging herself
+hilariously into the game. This child; this helpless child, who would
+obey anybody, go anywhere, do anything she was told—in Charles’s eyes,
+as he listened and drew her out, she became the most pathetic thing on
+earth. Everybody, it appeared, first grabbed at her and then wanted to
+get rid of her. Everybody; himself too. Yes, he too had grabbed at her,
+under a mealy-mouthed pretence of helping her, and now he too
+wanted—not to get rid of her, that seemed too violent, too brutal a way
+of putting it, but to hand her over, to pass her on, to send her back to
+that infernal young Luke, who himself was trying to escape from her and
+leave her to his mother. And the courage of the child! It was the
+courage of ignorance, of course, but still it seemed to Charles a lovely
+thing, that was afraid of nothing, of no discomfort, of no hard work, if
+only she might be with her husband in their own home. Charles discovered
+that that was Sally’s one wish, and that her simple ambition appeared to
+be to do what she called work her fingers to the bone on behalf of that
+odious youth.</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Luke,’ said Sally, who was unacquainted with any reason why she
+shouldn’t say everything she knew to anyone who wished to hear, ‘Mr.
+Luke, ’e thinks ’e can’t afford a ’ome yet for me, and so——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then he oughtn’t to have married you,’ flashed out Charles, infuriated
+by the young brute.</p>
+
+<p>‘Seemed ’e couldn’t ’elp it,’ said Sally. ‘Seemed as if it ’ad to be.
+’E——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh yes, <i>yes</i>,’ interrupted Charles impatiently, for he hated hearing
+anything about Jocelyn’s emotions. ‘Of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_259">{259}</a></span> course, of course. That was a
+quite foolish remark of mine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Five ’undred pounds a year ’e got,’ went on Sally, ‘and me able to make
+sixpence go twice as far as most can. Dunno wot ’e’s talkin’ about.’</p>
+
+<p>And indeed she didn’t know, for she shared Mr. Pinner’s opinion that
+five hundred a year was wealth.</p>
+
+<p>‘Fair beats me,’ she added, after a thoughtful pause.</p>
+
+<p>Well, thought Charles, the Moulsford family had behaved badly, and,
+under the cloak of sympathy and wishing to help, his and Laura’s conduct
+had been most base; but they were certainly going to make up for it now.
+By God, yes. Crippenham, which he had at first thought of from sheer
+selfishness as the very place to get Sally to himself in, was evidently
+now the place of all others from which she could be helped. Quite close
+to Cambridge, within easy reach of young Luke, and in it, all-powerful
+even now in spite of his age, certainly all-powerful when it came to
+putting the fear of God into an undergraduate, or whatever he was, his
+ancient but still inflammable father. Naturally at ninety-three the old
+man consisted principally of embers; but these embers could still be
+fanned into a partial glow by the sight of a good horse or a beautiful
+woman, and Charles would only need to show Sally to him to have the old
+man on her side. Not able to hear, but able to see: what combination
+could, in the case of Sally, possibly be more admirable?</p>
+
+<p>He drove on after lunch, his conscience clear; so clear that before
+leaving Thaxted he sent Laura a telegram telling her they were going to
+Crippenham, because he no longer wanted her to be made anxious,—for
+those only, thought Charles, are angry and wish to make others<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_260">{260}</a></span>
+uncomfortable who are themselves in the wrong. He was no longer in the
+wrong; or, rather, he was no longer thinking with rapture of the wrong
+he would like to be in if Sally could be in it with him. Her speech made
+a gulf between them which his fastidious soul couldn’t cross. There had
+to be h’s before Charles could love with passion. Where there were none,
+passion with him collapsed and died. On this occasion it died at the inn
+at Thaxted towards the end of lunch; and he was grateful, really,
+however unpleasant at the moment its dying was. For what mightn’t have
+happened if she had gone on being silent and only saying yes and no, and
+smiling the divine, delicious smile that didn’t only play in her dimples
+but laughed and danced in her darling eyes? Charles was afraid that in
+that case he would have been done for. Talking, she had saved him; and
+though he still loved her, for no man could look at Sally and not love
+her, he loved her differently,—kindly, gently, with a growingly
+motherly concern for her welfare. After Thaxted there was no further
+trace in his looks and manner of that which had made Sally suspect him
+of a wish to be a husband.</p>
+
+<p>But she was surprised when he asked her, as they drove along, whether
+she would mind if he took her to his father in the country for the
+night, instead of back to what he called noisy London. Laura was in
+London; why should she be taken somewhere else, away from her? And to
+his father too—to more picks, fresh ones; just as she was beginning to
+shake down nicely with the ones she knew. Surely the father of the picks
+would be the most frightening of all?</p>
+
+<p>So she said, ‘Pardon?’ and looked so much alarmed that Charles, smiling,
+explained that his father was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_261">{261}</a></span> staying at that moment quite near
+Cambridge, and it would be convenient for the search for rooms she had
+told him Laura had promised to undertake with her next day.</p>
+
+<p>‘He’s quite harmless,’ Charles assured her, for she continued to look
+alarmed—if where she was to be taken to next was near Cambridge, it
+must also be near Woodles, and suppose her father were to happen to see
+her?—‘and he’s all alone there till Laura goes back to him tomorrow. It
+will cheer him up to have us. He’s ninety-three.’</p>
+
+<p>Ninety-three? ‘Oh, my,’ said Sally politely. ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>E ain’t ’alf old. Poor
+old gentleman,’ she added with compassion, old people having been
+objects of special regard and attention in the Pinner circle.</p>
+
+<p>But for the rest of the drive she was silent, for she was trying to
+thread her way among her indistinct and entangled thoughts, all of which
+seemed confusedly to press upon her notice that she oughtn’t to be where
+she was at all, that if she was anywhere it ought to be with her
+husband, and that with every hour that passed she was sinking deeper and
+deeper in wrong-doing.</p>
+
+<p>‘Soon be in right up to the neck,’ she said to herself with resigned
+unhappiness; and sincerely wished it were that time tomorrow, and she
+safely joined up with Mr. Luke, and finished for good and all with these
+soft-spoken but headstrong picks.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_262">{262}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">While</span> they, along the roads, were drawing every minute nearer, the
+unconscious Duke was sitting in his plain study, having his plain tea,
+which had been set beside him by his plain parlourmaid. This is not to
+say that the parlourmaid was ill-favoured, but only that she wasn’t a
+footman.</p>
+
+<p>There were no footmen at Crippenham. There was hardly anything there,
+except the Duke. For years it had been his conviction that this annual
+fortnight of the rest that is obtained by complete contrast prolonged
+his life. Something evidently prolonged it, and the Duke was sure it was
+Crippenham. There he went every Easter alone with Laura, because it was
+a small house, and an ugly house, and a solitary house, and had nothing
+to recommend it except that it was the exact opposite of every other
+Moulsford possession.</p>
+
+<p>Only Charles could come and go as he pleased; only he could dare break
+in without notice on the sacred yearly business of prolonging life.
+Although he had had ninety-three years of it, the Duke still wanted
+more. He liked being alive, and it pleased him to keep Streatley
+waiting. Streatley, and the other three children of his first
+marriage—absurd, he thought, to have to refer to those four old things
+as children—were unpopular with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_263">{263}</a></span> their father. He had never at any time
+cared much for them, and had begun to be really angry with them when he
+was a lively seventy, and perceived that the possession of children
+bordering on a heavy fifty made him seem less young than he felt himself
+to be. Now that they were practically seventy themselves, and old
+seventies too, and he not looking a day different, he hoped, from what
+he had looked thirty years before, he was angrier with them than ever.
+He admitted that other people might be old at ninety-three, but he
+wasn’t; he was the exception. He didn’t feel old, and he didn’t, he
+considered, look old, so what was all this talk of age? The press never
+mentioned him without the prefix venerable; people pretended he was
+deaf, when he could hear as well as any man if he wasn’t mumbled at;
+Laura was continually making him sit out of draughts, just as if he were
+a damned invalid; arms were offered him if he wanted to walk a few
+steps—he couldn’t appear in the House without some officious member of
+it, usually that ass Chepstow, who was eighty if a day himself, ambling
+across to help; and every time he had a birthday the newspapers tumbled
+over each other with their offensively astonished congratulations.
+Couldn’t a man be over ninety without having it perpetually rubbed into
+him that he was old?</p>
+
+<p>What he loved was his brood of young ones—Laura, Terry, and Charles;
+and of this lively trio the dearest to him was Charles. So that, looking
+up from his seedcake and seeing his last born coming into the room, not
+only entirely unexpectedly but with a young woman, though he was
+surprised he wasn’t angry; and when on their coming close to him he
+perceived the exceeding fairness of the young woman, his surprise
+became<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_264">{264}</a></span> pleasurable; very pleasurable; in fact, pleasurable to excess.</p>
+
+<p>He stared up at Sally a moment, not listening to what Charles was
+saying, and then struggled to get on to his feet. Younger than his three
+young ones ... much, much younger than his three young ones ... youth,
+ah, youth ... lovely, lovely youth....</p>
+
+<p>Charles wanted to help him, but was thrust aside. ‘Poor old gentleman,’
+said Sally, catching him by the arm as he seemed about to lose his
+balance and drop back into the chair.</p>
+
+<p>‘Married?’ asked the Duke, breathing hard after his exertion, and
+looking at Charles.</p>
+
+<p>Charles shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Course I’m married,’ said Sally with heat.</p>
+
+<p>‘He means us,’ said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘Us?’ repeated Sally, much shocked.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’re going to be, then,’ said the Duke, looking first at her and then
+at Charles, his face red with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Charles shook his head again, and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>But the Duke didn’t laugh. He stared at him a minute, and then said,
+‘Fool.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I <i>got</i> a nusband,’ said Sally indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>‘He can’t hear,’ said Charles. ‘He’s very deaf.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke. ‘Speak clearly, my dear—no, don’t
+shout,’ he added; though Sally, far from going to shout, wasn’t even
+opening her mouth. Poor old gentleman, she thought, gazing at him in
+silent compassion; fancy him still being anybody’s father.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke took her hand in a dry, cold grip.</p>
+
+<p>‘Like shakin’ ’ands with a tombstone,’ thought Sally.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_265">{265}</a></span> And she was
+filled with so great a pity for anything so old that she didn’t feel shy
+of him at all, and in the coaxing voice of one who is addressing a baby
+she said, ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot—do, now.’</p>
+
+<p>Charles looked at her astonished. Nearly everybody was afraid of his
+father. She reminded him of the weaned child in Isaiah, who put its hand
+fearlessly on the cockatrice’s den.</p>
+
+<p>‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke, gazing at her with delight.</p>
+
+<p>‘This is Mrs. Luke, Father—a friend of Laura’s,’ shouted Charles, ‘and
+I’ve brought her——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Write it down, my dear,’ said the Duke, not heeding Charles, and
+drawing Sally into a chair next his own and pushing paper and a pencil
+towards her with his shaking old hands. ‘Write down what you were saying
+to me.’</p>
+
+<p>Charles became anxious. He felt sure Sally couldn’t write anything down.
+Nor could she; for if her spoken words were imperfect her written ones
+were worse, so that to be given a pencil and paper by the Duke and told
+to write might have been embarrassing if she hadn’t, owing to his
+extreme age and evident dilapidation, felt he wasn’t, as she said to
+herself, all there. Poor old gentleman, she thought, full of pity. What
+she saw, sitting heavily in the chair, breathing hard and blinking at
+her so kindly, was just, thought Sally, the remains, the left-overs;
+like, she said to herself, her images being necessarily domestic,
+Sunday’s dinner by the time one got to Friday,—not much good, that is,
+but had to be put up with. No; there was nothing frightening about
+<i>him</i>, poor old gentleman. More like a baby than anything else.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot,’ she said again, gently<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_266">{266}</a></span> putting the paper
+and pencil aside. ‘Do you good,’ she encouraged, ‘a nice ’ot cup of tea
+will.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He can’t hear, you know,’ said Charles, much relieved by Sally’s
+attitude. But with what confidence, he thought, couldn’t a thing so
+gracious approach the most churlish, disgruntled of human beings; and
+his father wasn’t either churlish or disgruntled,—he only looked as if
+he were, and frightened people, and when he saw they were frightened he
+didn’t like them, and frightened them more than ever.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke, watching Sally’s every movement with rapt attention, thought
+when she put her hand on the teapot to feel if it was still hot that she
+wanted tea herself, and bade Charles ring the bell and order more to be
+brought, and meanwhile he took the cup she offered him obediently, his
+eyes on her face. He hadn’t got as far, being still in too great a
+condition of amazement at her beauty, as wondering which of the ancient
+families of England had produced this young shoot of perfection, and not
+being able to hear a word she said took it for granted that the
+delicate-ankled—he was of the practically extinct generation that looks
+first at a woman’s ankles,—slender-fingered creature belonged to his
+own kind. True her hands were red hands; surprisingly red, he thought,
+on her presently taking off her gloves, which she rolled up together
+into a neat tight ball, compared to the flawless fairness of her face;
+but they were the authentic shape of good-breeding, even if her
+nails——</p>
+
+<p>The Duke was really surprised when his eyes reached Sally’s nails.</p>
+
+<p>Charles drew a chair close up to his father, and began his explanations.
+He was determined the old man<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_267">{267}</a></span> should attend, and shouted well into his
+ear as he told him that he had motored Laura’s friend, Mrs. Luke, down
+from London, where she had been staying with Laura at Goring House, to
+Crippenham for the night because it was quieter, and she hadn’t been
+well——</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>I’m</i> all right,’ interrupted Sally, who had been listening in an
+attitude of polite attention.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, my dear child—when you fainted,’ protested Charles in his ordinary
+voice, raising a deprecating hand.</p>
+
+<p>‘Speak up,’ said the Duke, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Course I fainted,’ said Sally, looking pleased.</p>
+
+<p>‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes—and were unconscious for at least half an hour,’ said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s right. <i>And</i> sick,’ said Sally, looking proud.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sick? Were you sick as well? Then see how really ill——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Speak up, speak up,’ said the Duke testily.</p>
+
+<p>But Sally said nothing further, and merely smiled indulgently at
+Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘What did she say?’ asked the Duke, not wishing to lose a word that fell
+from that enchanting mouth.</p>
+
+<p>‘She said,’ shouted Charles, ‘that she is quite well now.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course she is,’ said the Duke, staring at her face and forgetting
+her nails. ‘Anyone can see she is as perfectly well as she is perfectly
+beautiful.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh lor,’ thought Sally, ‘now <i>’e’s</i> goin’ to begin.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>That afternoon and evening were a triumph for her if she had known it,
+but all she knew was that she was counting the hours to next day, and
+Jocelyn, and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_268">{268}</a></span> settling down at last to her home and her duties. The
+old man was her slave. Crippenham and everything in it was laid at her
+feet, and the Duke only lamented that it should be to this one of his
+houses that she had come, where he couldn’t, he was afraid, make her
+even decently comfortable. Positively at Crippenham there was only one
+bathroom. The Duke seemed to regard this as a calamity, and Sally
+listened with mild wonder to the amount he had to say about it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Fair ’arps on it, don’t ’e, poor old gentleman,’ she remarked to
+Charles; and bending over to the Duke’s ear—Charles looked on in
+astonishment at the fearless familiarity of the gesture—she tried to
+convey to him that it wasn’t Saturday night till the next night, and
+that by then she’d be in Cambridge, so there was no need for him to take
+on.</p>
+
+<p>‘Eh?’ said the Duke. ‘What does she say?’ he asked Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘She says,’ shouted Charles, ‘that it doesn’t matter.’</p>
+
+<p>How very glad he was that his father was so deaf. Often he had found his
+deafness trying, but how glad he was of it now. Not Saturday night....
+Charles fell silent. It was then Friday. Could it be that since the
+previous Saturday——?</p>
+
+<p>The Duke, however, knew nothing of Sally except what his eyes told him,
+and accordingly he was her slave. When she presently went up to Laura’s
+room with the housekeeper, who had instructions to place everything of
+Lady Laura’s at Mrs. Luke’s disposal—Crippenham had no spare rooms,
+only a room each for the Duke, and Charles, and Laura, the other six or
+seven bedrooms being left unfurnished and kept locked up—and Charles,
+who from long practice could make his father hear better<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_269">{269}</a></span> than anyone
+except Laura, settled down to telling him as much about Sally as he
+thought prudent, the old man listened eagerly, his hand behind his ear,
+drinking in every word and asking questions which showed that if he was
+really interested in a subject he still could be most shrewd.</p>
+
+<p>He was delighted that Sally should have run away from her mother-in-law,
+said it was proof of a fine, thoroughbred spirit, and asked who her
+father was.</p>
+
+<p>Charles said his name was Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke then inquired whether he were one of the Worcestershire
+Pinners, and Charles said he didn’t know.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke then rambled off among his capacious memories, and presently
+brought back a Pinner who had been at Christchurch with him, and who had
+married, he said, one of the Dartmoors, an extremely handsome woman,
+fair too, who was probably the girl’s grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>Charles merely bowed his head.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke then asked who the Lukes, apart from this boy-husband at
+Ananias, were; for, he said, except the fellow in the Bible, he couldn’t
+recollect ever having heard of a Luke before.</p>
+
+<p>Charles said all he knew was that they lived at South Winch.</p>
+
+<p>‘What?’ cried the Duke. ‘Has she married beneath her?’—and was so
+really upset that for a time he blinked at Charles in silence. Because
+he felt that if only this dear son of his had secured the beautiful
+young creature he could have died content; and it seemed to him a double
+catastrophe that not only should his boy have missed her, but that she
+should have been caught into a misalliance with some obscure family in a
+suburb.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_270">{270}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Upon my word, Charles,’ he said, after a dismayed silence, ‘that’s a
+pity. A very great pity.’</p>
+
+<p>And rambling off into his memories again, he said it was a good thing
+that poor Jack Pinner was dead, for no man had a keener family feeling
+than he, and it would have broken his heart to think his grand-daughter
+had made a mistake of that kind.</p>
+
+<p>He couldn’t get over it. He had never, in the whole of his long life,
+seen anyone to touch this girl for beauty, and that she should, at the
+very outset of what ought to have been a career of unparalleled
+splendour and success, have dropped out of her proper sphere and become
+entangled in a suburb really shocked him. Kings at her feet, all Europe
+echoing with her name—this seemed to the Duke such beauty’s proper
+accompaniment.</p>
+
+<p>‘Tut, tut,’ he said, his hands, clasped on the top of his stick, shaking
+more than usual, ‘tut, tut, tut. What was her mother thinking of?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Her mother is dead,’ said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘Her father, then. Jack Pinner was no fool. I don’t understand how his
+son—where is he, by the way? I heard something about the Worcestershire
+estates having been sold after the war——’</p>
+
+<p>Charles said he didn’t know where her father was, because, although
+Sally had told him the shop was at Woodles, he had never heard of
+Woodles, which indeed is not marked on any map, so that he felt he
+wasn’t lying in saying he didn’t know.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke, however, appeared to be seized by a sudden fierce desire to
+track down his old friend’s reprehensible son and tell him what he
+thought of him, and Charles was dismayed, for no good, he was sure,
+could come of tracking down Mr. Pinner. Sally, he knew, was anxious<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_271">{271}</a></span> her
+father shouldn’t find out her disobedience to his orders, and though of
+this disobedience Charles held Laura guilty, not Sally, yet he didn’t
+suppose Mr. Pinner would look at it like that, and it was, besides,
+important, Charles considered, that his father, who had always had a
+rooted objection to any woman who wasn’t well-bred, should go on
+thinking Sally was a Worcestershire Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed, then, to Charles a good thing to keep his father and Mr.
+Pinner apart, and it was therefore with regret that he listened to the
+old man asking Sally the moment he next saw her, which wasn’t till
+dinner, for she stayed up in her room till fetched down by the
+scandalised housekeeper, to whom it was a new experience that His Grace
+should be kept waiting even a minute after the gong had sounded, where
+her father was.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Im?’ said Sally, turning pale but forced by nature and her upbringing
+to an obedient truthfulness. ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>E’s at Woodles, ’<i>e</i> is.’ And, ‘Oh my
+gracious,’ she added to herself, ‘they ain’t goin’ to tell ’im I’m
+’ere?’</p>
+
+<p>‘What does she say?’ the Duke asked Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘She says,’ shouted Charles, following his father, who was shuffling
+along leaning on Sally’s arm, to the dining-room, and shouting with
+outward composure but inward regret, ‘that he is at Woodles.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Woodles? Woodles?’ repeated the Duke. ‘Never heard of it. Is it in
+Worcestershire?’</p>
+
+<p>Sally shook her head. She didn’t know where Worcestershire was, but she
+felt pretty sure Woodles wasn’t in it.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>I</i> dunno wot it’s in,’ she said. And then, impelled as always to the
+naked truth, she added, ‘Close by$1’ere, any’ow.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_272">{272}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<p>‘What does she say?’ inquired the Duke, turning again to Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘She says,’ shouted Charles, obliged to hand on the answer correctly
+with Sally listening, but doing so with increased regret, ‘that it isn’t
+far from here.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How very lucky,’ said the Duke, ‘and how very odd that I shouldn’t have
+known he was so near.’ And he added, when he had been lowered into his
+chair at the head of the table by the parlourmaid, who held one arm, and
+his servant, who held the other, ‘I’d like to have a talk with that
+father of yours, my dear.’</p>
+
+<p>Sally turned paler.</p>
+
+<p>‘Your grandfather was one of my oldest friends,’ continued the Duke,
+with difficulty unfolding his table-napkin because of how much his hands
+shook.</p>
+
+<p>‘I ain’t <i>got</i> no grandfather,’ said Sally anxiously, who had never
+heard of him till that moment.</p>
+
+<p>‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>‘She says,’ began Charles reluctantly—‘You know,’ he muttered quickly
+to Sally, for how could he tell the old man what she had said? ‘you
+<i>have</i> a grandfather—or had. You must have. Everybody has them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What? What?’ said the Duke impatiently. ‘Send a message round tonight,
+Charles, and say with my compliments that I’d very much like to see
+Pinner. Tell him I’m too old to go to him, so perhaps he’ll be obliging
+enough to come to me some time tomorrow. You can say his father was at
+Oxford with me if you like, and that I’ve only just heard he is in the
+neighbourhood. Say his daughter——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now don’t—now <i>don’t</i> go doin’ a thing like that,’ Sally faintly
+begged of Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_273">{273}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘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.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But ’e <i>ask</i> me,’ said Sally, distressed.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’re not obliged to tell everybody everything,’ said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘But if they <i>asks</i> me——’ said Sally, almost in tears.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke became suddenly cross. ‘I hate all this muttering,’ he said.
+‘Why on earth can’t you speak up, Charles?’</p>
+
+<p>Charles spoke up. ‘It’s impossible to send tonight, Father,’ he shouted.
+‘If you won’t keep servants here you can’t send messages.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you can go yourself tomorrow,’ said the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now don’t—now <i>don’t</i> go doin’ a thing like that,’ implored Sally
+again.</p>
+
+<p>‘And bring him back in your car,’ said the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe Mrs. Luke would rather not see her father,’ shouted Charles.</p>
+
+<p>‘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
+<i>quick</i>,’ she thought; and hung her head.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_274">{274}</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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>I</i> will. I really must have a talk with him.’</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_275">{275}</a></span> deserted, a relic of vanished youth, a reminder that one was
+getting old.</p>
+
+<p>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——</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_276">{276}</a></span> 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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_277">{277}</a></span>
+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——</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Charles stood still.</p>
+
+<p>Those Lukes....</p>
+
+<p>Queer, but the words had sounded in his ears like a cry of pain.</p>
+
+<p>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——</p>
+
+<p>Charles stood motionless.</p>
+
+<p>Those Lukes ... what must they not, since yesterday, have suffered?</p>
+
+<p>Extraordinary, that he hadn’t thought of it before.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_278">{278}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Speaking</span> of this time later on, Mrs. Luke was accustomed to say, ‘It was
+a <i>mauvais quart d’heure</i>,’ and to smile; but in her heart, when she
+thought of it, there was no smile.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn came down to breakfast in a good humour too. He had slept like a
+log, after his series of interrupted nights.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sally’s late,’ he said presently.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_279">{279}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Sorry, Mother. No. I’ll remember.’</p>
+
+<p>And soon after that they made their discovery.</p>
+
+<p>‘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?’</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>mauvais quart
+d’heure</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘But why? But why?’ Mrs. Luke kept on asking, pressing her cold hands
+together.</p>
+
+<p>Jocelyn said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o’clock, when it was plain she wasn’t coming back, he went out
+and fetched his car.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’s gone to her father,’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>‘But why? Oh, Jocelyn—why?’</p>
+
+<p>‘We’ve made her unhappy,’ he said, pulling on his gloves, his face set.</p>
+
+<p>‘Unhappy?’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>I</i> have, anyway. I’ve been an infernal cad—I tell you I <i>have</i>,’ he
+said, turning on his mother. ‘It’s no good your telling me I haven’t—I
+<i>have</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>And he drove off, leaving her at the gate pressing her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_280">{280}</a></span> cold hands
+together, and staring after him with wide-open eyes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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——’</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah. <i>Now</i> we shall have the bulletin,’ said the Canon cheerfully; for
+the illness, probably slight, of an unknown young lady’s almost
+certainly inglorious father<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_281">{281}</a></span> 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.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll go and see,’ said Mrs. Luke, getting up quickly, and almost
+running out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>‘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.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you mean the father?’ asked Mrs. Walker.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who <i>is</i> the father?’ asked Miss Cartwright.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nobody knows,’ said the Canon.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not really?’ said Miss Cartwright.</p>
+
+<p>‘Hush——’ said the Canon, raising his hand.</p>
+
+<p>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?’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_282">{282}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>But what did one <i>do</i>? Who did one go to? What <i>could</i> one do but still,
+in the dark, not speaking, hardly breathing so intently were they
+listening, wait?</p>
+
+<p>Fragments of what Mr. Pinner had said drifted in and out of Jocelyn’s
+brain——</p>
+
+<p>‘Told ’er to take a taxi all the way....’</p>
+
+<p>‘Give ’er a pound, I did....’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mistake was, lettin’ that there car go....’</p>
+
+<p>That car? What car?</p>
+
+<p>‘Mother,’ he said suddenly, ‘what car?’</p>
+
+<p>‘What car, my darling?’</p>
+
+<p>‘She arrived there in a car. Her father said so. I forgot to tell you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A car?’</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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——’</p>
+
+<p>A car. Whose car but Edgar’s? Had Edgar——? Was Edgar——?</p>
+
+<p>No, no. Impossible. She had arrived alone at her father’s, and the car
+had left her there.</p>
+
+<p>But Edgar must know—he could tell her....<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_283">{283}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘Edgar,’ she said, coming quickly across to him, holding Jocelyn’s coat
+together at her neck with shaking fingers, ‘where is Salvatia?’</p>
+
+<p>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?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_284">{284}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Thorpe, in his turn, was frightened. Not with her father? Not
+come home?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>What had he done?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_285">{285}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Damned pity, eh?’ he repeated, though not as one who requires an
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s so beastly <i>dark</i>,’ was all Jocelyn said, huddled, whitefaced and
+sick, in the other corner.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Scotland Yard took down particulars.</p>
+
+<p>‘Expense no object,’ said Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t pay,’ said Jocelyn, who was shivering.</p>
+
+<p>‘But I can,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘What you’ve got to do,’ he continued to
+the official, ‘is to find her instantly—<i>instantly</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘Upset,’ said Mr. Thorpe confidentially to the official. ‘Husband. Bound
+to be.’</p>
+
+<p>The official nodded, and began telephoning.</p>
+
+<p>‘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?’</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_286">{286}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘Come on,’ said Mr. Thorpe, laying hold of Jocelyn’s arm.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>She arrived at one in the morning. Mr. Thorpe by that time had taken
+three bedrooms, and a sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t pay,’ said the unhappy Jocelyn on seeing these arrangements.</p>
+
+<p>‘But I can,’ said Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know why——’ began Jocelyn, shrinking under the accumulating
+weight of obligations.</p>
+
+<p>‘But <i>I</i> do,’ said Mr. Thorpe, cutting him short.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>‘There’s been too much of that—there’s been too<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_287">{287}</a></span> <i>much</i> of that,’
+Jocelyn raved, when she attempted, faintly, for she was exhausted, to
+defend herself.</p>
+
+<p>She soon gave up. She soon said nothing more at all, but sat crying
+softly, the tears dropping unnoticed on her folded hands.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>At this Jocelyn, roused from his stupor, looked round at Mr. Thorpe with
+heavy-eyed amazement.</p>
+
+<p>‘Couldn’t stand my mother?’ he said in tones of wonder, his mouth
+remaining open, so much was he surprised.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s the ticket,’ said Mr. Thorpe; and drank more whiskey.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_288">{288}</a></span> life, genuinely and
+deeply shocked at what she regarded as his disobedience to God’s laws.</p>
+
+<p>‘But my mother,’ said Jocelyn, ‘has been nothing but——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Sees red about your mother, that girl does,’ interrupted Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>‘But <i>why</i>?’ said Jocelyn, sitting up straight now, his brows knitted in
+the most painful bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t ask <i>me</i>,’ said Mr. Thorpe; and drank more whiskey.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>‘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—<i>look</i> at her, I say.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, damn you!’ shouted Jocelyn, springing to his feet, unable to bear
+any more, ‘Damn you—damn you! How dare you, how dare you, when it’s
+you—<i>you</i>——’</p>
+
+<p>And he came towards Mr. Thorpe, his arms lifted as<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_289">{289}</a></span> if to strike him;
+but he suddenly dropped them to his sides, and turning away gripped hold
+of the chimneypiece, and, laying his head on his hands, sobbed.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Charles Moulsford, then, was right, and the Lukes suffered. So did Mr.
+Thorpe, for it was all his fault really. He was amazed at the ease and
+swiftness with which he had slipped away from being evidently and
+positively a decent man into being equally evidently and positively an
+evil-doer. That he had done evil, and perhaps irreparable evil, was
+plain. Yet its beginning was after all quite small. He had only helped
+the girl to go to her father. Such an act hadn’t deserved this
+tremendous punishment. Mr. Thorpe couldn’t help feeling that fate was
+behaving unfairly by him. If all his impulses and indiscretions
+throughout his life had been punished like this, where would he have
+been by now?</p>
+
+<p>But that was neither here nor there. This terrible thing had happened,
+and it was his fault. Without him she couldn’t have budged; and, weighed
+down by his direct responsibility, when Jocelyn advanced on him with his
+fists uplifted ready to strike him he rather hoped he would actually do
+it, and when instead the poor devil broke down and began to cry, Mr.
+Thorpe was very unhappy indeed. Perhaps he hadn’t been quite tactful in
+the things he had said to him. Perhaps he had been clumsy. Whiskey was
+tricky stuff. He had only meant——</p>
+
+<p>Then Margery arrived, with her white face and great, scared eyes, and
+found her son standing there holding on to the chimneypiece and crying,
+and—well, Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_290">{290}</a></span> Thorpe felt he had overdone the getting even business
+altogether, and discovered with a shock that he could no longer regard
+himself as a decent man.</p>
+
+<p>He went away to his bedroom, leaving them alone. He didn’t know what
+they were saying to each other, but he could hear that Jocelyn seemed to
+be talking a good deal. Couldn’t stop, the poor devil couldn’t; went on
+and on.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe sat down to think out plans, the ceaseless sound of that
+voice in his ears. It was he who had lost the girl, and it was he who
+was going to find her. If Scotland Yard found her first so much the
+better, but he wasn’t going to sit still till they did, he was going off
+on his own account next morning. He’d begin by sending Margery home, who
+was doing no good here, he could tell by the sounds coming through the
+door, pack Jocelyn, who was doing no good here either raving like that,
+off to Cambridge because of the remote chance that the girl was going to
+be able after all to do what she said and join him there, and he himself
+would meanwhile make a bee-line for her father.</p>
+
+<p>Pinner was the man. Pinner was the point to start from. Pinner and
+Woodles. She had said his name was Pinner, and that he lived at Woodles.
+Woodles? Funny sort of name that, thought Mr. Thorpe, trying to cheer
+himself up by being amused at it. The sounds coming through the door
+weren’t very cheering. Raving, the poor young devil was,—raving at his
+mother. Mr. Thorpe feared he had perhaps been quite beastly tactless,
+telling him of Sally’s not being able to stand his mother. He felt very
+uncomfortable about it, sitting there with those sounds in his ears. And
+meanwhile the night was slipping along, and where was that girl?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_291">{291}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were so many possible answers to this question, and all of them so
+very unpleasant, that Mr. Thorpe couldn’t, he found, sit quiet in his
+chair. Three o’clock. Fourteen hours now since last she was seen....</p>
+
+<p>He got up and walked about. In the next room he could hear Jocelyn doing
+the same thing. No—dash it all, thought Mr. Thorpe after listening for
+some time to the ceaseless voice, he couldn’t be allowed to go on at his
+mother like that. He’d had close on a couple of hours of it. All very
+well being heartbroken, all very well being out of one’s senses, but he
+couldn’t be allowed——</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thorpe opened the door and went in. There was Jocelyn, striding
+about the room, up and down, round and round, enough to make one giddy
+just to see him, his words pouring out, his face convulsed, and there
+sitting looking at him, not saying a word, with tears rolling down her
+face, was his mother.</p>
+
+<p>No—damn it all—there were limits——</p>
+
+<p>‘Better shut up now, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe firmly to the demented young
+man. ‘Said all there’s to say long ago, I bet. Won’t help, you
+know—this sort of thing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m telling my mother—I’m making it clear to her once and for all,’
+raved Jocelyn, who indeed no longer had the least control of himself,
+‘that if I ever find Sally never again as long as I <i>live</i> shall she
+come between us, never shall she set <i>foot</i>——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, shut up. We know all that, don’t we, Margery. Who’s going to come
+between you, you silly young ass? Look here—no good crying, you know,’
+said Mr. Thorpe, going to Mrs. Luke and putting his arm round her. It
+seemed natural. For two pins he would have kissed her. Habit. Can’t get
+away from habits.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Luke didn’t appear to know he was there.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_292">{292}</a></span> Her eyes, from which
+the tears dropped slowly and unnoticed, were fixed only on Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>‘He’s so tired—so tired,’ she kept on whispering to herself. ‘Oh, my
+darling—you’re so <i>tired</i>.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>It was Mr. Pinner’s turn next day to have a bad time, and he had it. He
+had a most miserable day, from noon on, when the same car that had
+brought Sally drew up in front of his shop, and a stout elderly
+gentleman with a red face and a bristly moustache got out, and came and
+spent half an hour with him.</p>
+
+<p>What a half hour that was; but all of a piece with the life he seemed
+now to be living. The day before there had been first Sally, and then
+Mr. Luke, and now there was this gentleman. Mr. Luke had soon been
+pacified, and only wanted to be getting home again, but the stout
+gentleman came in and sat down square to it, and at the end of half an
+hour Mr. Pinner felt as if he had been turned inside out, and wouldn’t
+ever be able to look himself in the face again.</p>
+
+<p>For Sally hadn’t gone home, and it was his fault that she hadn’t. These
+were the facts; the gentleman said so. Terrible, terrible, thought Mr.
+Pinner, shrinking further than ever into his trousers. The first fact
+was terrible enough, but the second seemed even worse to Mr. Pinner.
+Responsibility, again—and he who had supposed when he got Sally safely
+married that he had done with it for good and all!</p>
+
+<p>At first he had tried to make a stand and hold up his head, and had said
+politely—nothing lost by manners,—‘Excuse me, sir, but are you by any
+chance the gentleman my daughter mentioned to me as ’er father-<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_293">{293}</a></span>in-law?’
+And when the gentleman, after a minute, said he was, Mr. Pinner told him
+that in that case it was he who was responsible for her loss, for it was
+he who had lent her the car in which she had left her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Wasn’t this true? Anybody would have thought so; but before Mr. Pinner
+could say knife the boot had been put on the other leg, and he found
+that it was his fault and his only that she was lost, because he hadn’t,
+as the gentleman said was his plain duty, taken her back himself to the
+very door.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner, constitutionally unable not to feel guilty if anybody told
+him loud enough that he was, at once saw the truth of this. Terrible.
+Awful. Fancy. Yes, indeed—a daughter like that. Yes, indeed—<i>any</i>
+daughter, but a daughter like that, a daughter in a million. No,
+indeed—he didn’t know how he came not to do such a thing——</p>
+
+<p>And the more Mr. Thorpe cross-examined him about the details of that
+seeing-off at the station, the more did Mr. Pinner’s conduct appear
+criminal; for, under Mr. Thorpe’s searching questions, Mr. Pinner
+somehow began to be sure the lady in the carriage hadn’t been a lady at
+all, but something quite different, something terrible and wicked, who
+had carried Sally off into the sort of place one doesn’t mention. He
+remembered her black eyes, and how they rolled——</p>
+
+<p>‘Rolled, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe, who was snatching at Mr. Pinner’s words
+almost before they appeared, trembling, on the edge of his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Yes—rolled. And bold-looking, she was too,—bold-looking, and pat as
+you please at answering. Not Mr. Pinner’s idea at all of a modest woman.
+Yes, and the compartment smelt of scent, now he came to think of
+it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_294">{294}</a></span>—yes, he dared say it was cheap scent. And powdered, her face
+was—he had remarked on it to himself, after the train had gone.</p>
+
+<p>Thus did Mr. Thorpe’s own fears get by cross-examination into Mr.
+Pinner’s mind, and by the end of the half hour Mr. Pinner was as much
+convinced as Mr. Thorpe that Sally had fallen into the hands of somebody
+of whom Mr. Thorpe used an expression that Mr. Pinner wouldn’t have
+soiled his lips with for any sum one cared to mention. And then, after
+swearing at him, and asking him what sort of a father he thought he was,
+and Mr. Pinner, who by this time was wishing with all his heart that he
+wasn’t a father at all, tremblingly begging him not to blaspheme, Mr.
+Thorpe went away.</p>
+
+<p>‘What ’ad I better do now, sir?’ Mr. Pinner asked, following him out on
+to the steps in much distress, clinging to him in spite of his
+horrifying language.</p>
+
+<p>‘You? What can <i>you</i> do? You’ve done your damnedest——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Sir, sir——’</p>
+
+<p>And he got into his car, and Mr. Pinner heard him tell the chauffeur to
+drive like the devil to London and go to Liverpool Street Station; and
+it seemed as if in a flash the street were empty, and he alone.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>That afternoon Mr. Pinner himself arrived at Liverpool Street
+Station—an anxious little man in his Sunday clothes, his blue eyes
+staring with anxiety. He couldn’t just stay in his shop, and as likely
+as not never hear anything more, either one way or the other. He must do
+something. He must ask questions. Nobody would tell him if Sally were
+found or not, if he didn’t. She<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_295">{295}</a></span> herself might some day perhaps drop him
+a line, but she wasn’t much of a one for writing, and besides he had
+been harsh to her. ‘Don’t believe you loves me,’ she had said, crying
+bitterly when he scolded her so and wouldn’t let her stay with him. Love
+her? He loved her dearly. She was all he had in the world. If anything
+had happened to that girl——</p>
+
+<p>He timidly stopped a porter, and began to inquire. The porter, who was
+busy, stared at him and hurried on. He then tried a guard, who said,
+‘Eh?’ very loud, looked past him along the platform, waved a green flag,
+jumped on to a train, and departed.</p>
+
+<p>He then tried another porter; several porters; and at last, more timid
+than ever by this time, approached a ticket-collector.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody seemed to have time for Mr. Pinner. His trousers were against
+him. So was his hat; so was everything he said and did. The
+ticket-collector, who didn’t like shabbiness and meekness, ignored him.
+He knew perfectly well who Mr. Pinner was talking about, for the whole
+station was invariably aware of any of the Duke’s family passing through
+it, and everybody the day before had seen Lady Laura and the young lady.
+Mr. Pinner hadn’t got beyond his first words of description before the
+ticket-collector knew what he was driving at, but he only looked down
+his long nose at the flushed little man in the corkscrew trousers, and
+said nothing. Give a thing like that information about her ladyship’s
+movements? Not much.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this same ticket-collector, only an hour or two before, had been wax
+in the gloved hands of Mr. Thorpe, and with these words had parted from
+him:</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank you, sir. Don’t mention it, sir. No trouble<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_296">{296}</a></span> at all. Yes—a very
+striking young lady indeed, sir. Her ladyship was going to Goring House
+for a couple of days, so the chauffeur told me. Much obliged, sir. Yes,
+sir—Lady Laura Moulsford. That’s right, sir—the Duke of Goring’s
+daughter.’</p>
+
+<p>This same ticket-collector had said all that; and to Mr. Pinner he said
+not a word. He merely down his long nose looked at him, and when the
+little man explained that he was the fair young lady’s father he looked
+at him more glassily than ever. So that presently for very shame Mr.
+Pinner couldn’t go on standing there asking questions that got no
+answers, and after lingering awhile uncertainly in the
+ticket-collector’s neighbourhood, for something told him that this man
+could throw light on Sally’s disappearance if he would, he went
+sorrowfully, but unresentfully, away.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he found himself in South Winch. He seemed to have drifted
+there, not knowing what to do or where to go next, and unable to bear
+the thought of his lonely shop and of nobody’s letting him know about
+anything. He had thought it fine and peaceful at first to be independent
+and at last alone, but it didn’t seem so now. He missed his wife. Nobody
+now to mind what he did, good or bad. Nobody.</p>
+
+<p>In South Winch he sought out the grocer, so as to get Jocelyn’s address,
+preferring him to the Post Office because the smell of currants and
+bacon made him feel less lonely, and, having followed the directions the
+grocer gave him, found the road and the house, and opened the white gate
+with deferential trepidation. Timidly at the door he asked if he might
+say a word to Mr. Luke, and the little maid, at once at ease with his
+sort of clothes, inquired pleasantly if Mrs. Luke wouldn’t do<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_297">{297}</a></span> just as
+well; better, suggested the little maid, because she was there, and Mr.
+Jocelyn wasn’t. In fact she offered Mrs. Luke to Mr. Pinner, she pressed
+her upon him,—a lady he wouldn’t have dreamt of disturbing if left to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>So that Mr. Pinner, without apparently in the least wanting to, found
+himself in a beautiful drawing-room, and there by the fire sat a lady,
+leaning back on some cushions as though she were tired.</p>
+
+<p>At first he thought she was asleep, and he was beginning to feel
+extremely awkward when she turned her head and looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>A pale lady. A very pale lady; with a face that seemed all eyes.</p>
+
+<p>‘Beg pardon, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner, wishing he hadn’t come.</p>
+
+<p>The lady went on looking at him. She didn’t move. Her hands were hanging
+down over the arms of the chair as though she were tired. She just
+turned her head, but didn’t move else.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s about Sally,’ said Mr. Pinner. ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Appened to be passin’, and
+thought I’d——’</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, for now he came to think of it he didn’t rightly know what
+he had thought.</p>
+
+<p>The lady leant forward in her chair. ‘Do you know where she is?’ she
+asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, mum. Do you?’ asked Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said the lady in a queer sort of voice, her head drooping.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pinner stood there very awkward indeed.</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you her father?’ she asked, after a minute.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>Then she got up and came across to him.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_298">{298}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid you are very unhappy,’ she said, looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand, her eyes on his face.</p>
+
+<p>He shook it respectfully, but without enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, you’re cold,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘Won’t you come to the fire and get warm?’ she said; and before he had
+time to consider what he ought to do next, Mr. Pinner found himself
+sitting on the edge of the low chair the lady pushed up for him, warming
+his knees and not saying anything.</p>
+
+<p>The lady talked a little. She had some nice hot tea made for him, and
+while he drank it talked a little, and said she was sure they would hear
+good news soon, and he mustn’t worry, because she was sure....</p>
+
+<p>Then she fell silent too, and they sat there together looking into the
+fire; and it was funny, thought Mr. Pinner, how just to sit there
+quietly, and know she was sorry too about everything, seemed to make him
+feel better. A kind lady; a good lady. What did Sally mean, saying he
+wouldn’t be able to stand her either, if he knew her? The only thing
+wrong with her that Mr. Pinner could see, was that she looked so ill.
+Half dead, thought Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>And after being with her he had more courage to go back to the lonely
+shop, and she promised faithfully to let him know the minute there was
+any news, and again told him not to worry and everything would come all
+right, and he went away comforted.</p>
+
+<p>And she, watching him as he trotted off down to the gate, felt somehow
+comforted too; not quite so lonely; not quite so lost.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_299">{299}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mr. Thorpe, having lunched and tidied and generally freshened
+himself up, was on the steps of Goring House, asking for Lady Laura
+Moulsford.</p>
+
+<p>‘Her ladyship is hout,’ said the footman haughtily, for he knew at once
+when Mr. Thorpe added the word Moulsford that he was what the footman
+called not one of Our Lot. No good his having a car waiting there, and a
+fur coat, and suède gloves; he simply wasn’t one of Our Lot. And the
+footman, his head thrown back, looked at Mr. Thorpe very much as the
+ticket-collector was at that moment looking at Mr. Pinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘Out, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘When will she be in?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Her ladyship didn’t say,’ said the footman, his head well back.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ve got a young lady here of the name of Luke. She in?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mrs. Luke is hout,’ said the footman, beginning to shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is anybody in?’ asked Mr. Thorpe, getting angry.</p>
+
+<p>‘The family is hout,’ said the footman; and was going to shut the door
+quite when Mr. Thorpe went close up to him and damned him. And because
+Mr. Thorpe’s temper was quick and hot he damned him thoroughly, and the
+footman, as he heard the familiar words, strongly reminiscent not only
+of Lord Streatley but also of the different sergeants he had had during
+the war, who, however unlike each other to look at, were identical to
+listen to, thought he must be one of Lady Laura’s friends after all, and
+began to open the door again; and Mr. Thorpe advancing, damning as he
+went and saying things about flunkeys that were new to the footman,
+entered that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_300">{300}</a></span> marble hall which had struck such a chill into Sally’s
+unaspiring soul.</p>
+
+<p>The butler appeared. The butler was suave where the footman had been
+haughty. He had heard some of the things Mr. Thorpe was saying as he
+hurried from his private sitting-room into the echoing hall, and had no
+doubt that he was a friend of the family’s.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Laura had been in to lunch, but had gone out again; Mrs. Luke was
+motoring with Lord Charles—who the devil was <i>he</i>, Mr. Thorpe
+wondered—down to Crippenham, where she was going to stay the night. Her
+ladyship had had a telegram from his lordship to that effect, and she
+herself was going down the following morning.</p>
+
+<p>‘Where’s Crippenham?’ asked Mr. Thorpe.</p>
+
+<p>The butler was surprised. Up to that moment he had taken Mr. Thorpe for
+a friend, if an infrequent one, of Lady Laura’s.</p>
+
+<p>‘His Grace’s Cambridgeshire seat,’ he said, in his turn with <i>hauteur</i>.
+‘His Grace is at present in residence.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Crikey!’ thought Mr. Thorpe. ‘Got right in with the Duke himself, has
+she?’ And he felt fonder of Sally than ever.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>At this point Mr. Thorpe, who had been behaving so well, began to behave
+less well. The minute the pressure of anxiety was relaxed, the minute,
+that is, that he no longer suffered, he became callous to the sufferings
+of the Lukes; and instead of at once letting them know what he had
+discovered he kept it to himself, he hugged his secret, and deferred
+sending till some hours later a telegram to each of them saying, ‘<i>Hot
+on her tracks.</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_301">{301}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<p>Quite enough, thought Mr. Thorpe, as jolly again as a sand-boy, and
+immediately unable to imagine the world other than populated by
+sand-boys equally jolly,—quite enough that would be to go on with,
+quite enough to make them both feel better. If he told them more, they’d
+get rushing off to Crippenham and disturbing the Duke’s house-party. The
+whole thing should now be allowed to simmer, said Mr. Thorpe to himself.
+Sally should be given a fair field with her duke, and not have relations
+coming barging in and interrupting.</p>
+
+<p>But what a girl, thought Mr. Thorpe, slapping his knee—he was in his
+car, on the way to his club—what a girl. She only had to meet dukes for
+them to go down like ninepins at her feet. Apart from her beauty, what
+spirit, what daring, what initiative, what resource! It had been worth
+all the anxiety, this magnificent <i>dénouement</i>. Safe, and sounder than
+ever. A glorious girl; and he too had at once seen how glorious she was,
+and at once, like the Duke, fallen at her feet. That girl, thought Mr.
+Thorpe, who began to believe she would rise triumphant even over a
+handicap like Jocelyn, might do anything, might do any mortal thing,—no
+end at all, there wasn’t, to what that girl couldn’t do. And, glowing,
+he telephoned to Scotland Yard, and later on, after having had his tea
+and played a rubber of bridge, sent his telegrams.</p>
+
+<p>Then he went quietly home. Things should simmer. Things must now be left
+to themselves a little. He went quietly home to Abergeldie, and didn’t
+let Mrs. Luke know he was there. Her feelings, he considered, were
+sufficiently relieved for the present by his telegram; things must now
+be allowed to simmer. And he took a little walk in his shrubbery, and
+then had a hot bath,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_302">{302}</a></span> and dressed, and dined, ordering up a pint of the
+1911 <i>Cordon Rouge</i>, and sat down afterwards with a great sigh of
+satisfaction by his library fire.</p>
+
+<p>He smoked, and he thought; and the only thing he regretted in the whole
+business was the rude name he had called Lady Laura Moulsford to that
+fool Pinner. But, long as he smoked and thought, it never occurred to
+him to resent, or even to criticise, the conduct of the Moulsford
+family. Strange as it may seem, considering that family’s black
+behaviour, Mr. Thorpe dwelt on it in his mind with nothing but
+complacency.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_303">{303}</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">At</span> Crippenham next morning it was very fine. London and South Winch were
+in a mist, but the sun shone brightly in Cambridgeshire, and the Duke
+woke up with a curiously youthful feeling of eagerness to get up quickly
+and go downstairs. He knew he couldn’t do anything quickly, but the odd
+thing was that for years and years he hadn’t wanted to, and that now
+suddenly he did want to; and just to want to was both pleasant and
+remarkable.</p>
+
+<p>He had been thinking in the night,—or, rather, Charles’s thoughts,
+placed so insistently before him, had sunk in and become
+indistinguishable from his own; and he had thought so much that he
+hadn’t gone to sleep till nearly five. But then he slept soundly, and
+woke up to find his room flooded with sunshine, and to feel this
+curiously agreeable eagerness to be up and doing.</p>
+
+<p>The evening before, when Charles came in from the garden and packed his
+bewitching guest off to bed, he had been very cross, and had listened
+peevishly to all his son was explaining and pointing out; not because he
+wasn’t interested, or because he resented the suggestions being made,
+but simply because the moment that girl left the room it was as if the
+light had gone out,—the light, and the fire. She needn’t have obeyed<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_304">{304}</a></span>
+Charles. Why should she obey Charles? She might have stayed with him a
+little longer, warming him by the sight of her beauty and her youth. The
+instant she went he felt old and cold; back again in the condition he
+was in before she arrived, dropped back again into age and listlessness,
+and, however stoutly he pretended it wasn’t so, into a deathly chill.</p>
+
+<p>Now that, thought the Duke, himself surprised at the difference his
+guest’s not being in the room made, was what had happened to David too
+towards the end. They didn’t read it in the Lessons in church on
+Sundays, but he nevertheless quite well remembered, from his private
+inquisitive study of the Bible in his boyhood, how they covered David
+when he was old with clothes but he got no heat, and only a young person
+called the Shunammite was able, by her near presence, to warm him. The
+Duke didn’t ask such nearness as had been the Shunammite’s to David, for
+he, perhaps because he was less old, found all he needed of renewed life
+by merely looking at Sally; but he did, remembering David while Charles
+talked, feel aggrieved that so little as this, so little as merely
+wishing to look at her, should be taken from him, and she sent to bed at
+ten o’clock.</p>
+
+<p>So he was cross, and pretended not to understand, and anyhow not to be
+interested. But he had understood very well, and in the watches of the
+night had come to his decision. At his age it wouldn’t do to be too long
+coming to decisions; if he wished to secure the beautiful young
+creature—Charles said help, but does not helping, by means of the
+resultant obligations, also secure?—he must be quick.</p>
+
+<p>He rang for his servant half an hour before the usual time. He wanted to
+get up, to go to her again, to look<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_305">{305}</a></span> at her, to sit near her and have
+her fragrant, lovely youth flowing round him. The mere thought of Sally
+made him feel happier and more awake than he had felt for years. Better
+than the fortnight’s cure of silence and diet at Crippenham was one look
+at Sally, one minute spent with Sally. And she was so kind and
+intelligent, as well as so beautiful—listening to every word he said
+with the most obvious interest, and not once fidgeting or getting
+sleepy, as people nowadays seemed to have got into the habit of doing.
+It was like sitting in the sun to be with her; like sitting in the sun
+on a warm spring morning, and freshness everywhere, and flowers, and
+hope.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, having found this draught of new life the Duke wasn’t going
+to let it go. On the contrary, it was his firm intention, with all the
+strength and obstinacy still in him, to stick to Sally. How fortunate
+that she was poor, and he could be the one to help her. For she, owing
+all her happiness to him, couldn’t but let him often be with her.
+Charles had said it would be both new and desirable to do something in
+one’s life for nothing; but the Duke doubted if it were ever possible,
+however much one wished to, to do anything for nothing. In the case of
+Sally it was manifestly impossible. Whatever he did, whatever he gave,
+he would be getting far more back; for she by her friendship, and
+perhaps affection, and anyhow by her presence, would be giving him life.</p>
+
+<p>‘Come out into the garden, my dear,’ he said, when he had been safely
+helped downstairs—the stairs were each time an adventure—putting his
+shaking hand through her arm. ‘I want to see your hair in the sun, while
+I talk to you.’</p>
+
+<p>And leading him carefully out, Sally thought, ‘Poor<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_306">{306}</a></span> old gentleman,’ and
+minded nothing at all that he said. Her hair, her eyes, all that <i>Oh my
+ain’t you beautiful</i> business, of which she was otherwise both sick and
+afraid, didn’t matter in him she called the Jewk. He was just a poor old
+gentleman, an ancient and practically helpless baby, towards whom she
+felt like a compassionate mother; and when he said, sitting in the sunny
+sheltered seat she had lowered him on to and taking her hand and looking
+at her with his watery old eyes, that he was going to give her
+Crippenham, and that the only condition he made was that he might come
+and do a rest-cure there rather often, she smiled and nodded as sweetly
+and kindly as she smiled and nodded at everything else he said.</p>
+
+<p>Like the croonings of a baby were the utterances of the Duke in Sally’s
+ears; no more meaning in them, no more weight to be attached to them,
+than that. Give her Crippenham? Poor old gentleman. Didn’t know what he
+was talking about any more, poor old dear. She humoured him; she patted
+his arm; and she wished to goodness Laura would be quick and come and
+take her to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Sally now longed to get to Jocelyn as much as if she had passionately
+loved him. He was her husband. He was the father of the little baby. Her
+place was with him. She had had enough of this fleshpot business. She
+was homesick for the things she knew,—plain things, simple things,
+duties she understood. Kind, yes; kind as kind, the picks were, and they
+meant well; but she had had enough. It wasn’t right it wasn’t, at least
+it wasn’t right for her, to live so fat. What would her father have said
+if he had seen her in the night in Laura’s bedroom, among all that lot
+of silver bottles and brushes<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_307">{307}</a></span> and laces and silks, and herself in a
+thin silk nightgown the colour of skin, making her look stark naked?
+What would he have said if he had seen her having her breakfast up there
+as though she were ill,—and such a breakfast, too! Fleshpots, he’d have
+said; fleshpots. And he would have said, Sally, strong if inaccurate in
+her Bible, was sure, that she had sold her husband for a mess of
+fleshpots.</p>
+
+<p>This was no life for her, this was no place for her, she thought, her
+head bowed and the sun playing at games of miracles with her hair while
+the Duke talked. She drew impatient patterns with the tip of her shoe on
+the gravel. She hardly listened. Her ear was cocked for the first sounds
+of Laura. She ached to have done with all this wasting of time, she
+ached to be in her own home, getting on with her job of looking after
+her man and preparing for her child. ‘Saturday today,’ she mused, such a
+lovely look coming into her eyes that the Duke, watching her, was sure
+it was his proposed gift making her divinely happy. ‘We’d be ’avin’
+shepherd’s pie for dinner—or p’raps a nice little bit of fish....’</p>
+
+<p>And, coming out of that pleasant dream with a sigh, she thought,
+‘Oughtn’t never to ’ave met none of these ’ere. All comes of runnin’
+away from dooty.’</p>
+
+<p>Apologetically she turned her head and looked at the Duke, for she had
+forgotten him for a moment, besides having been thinking on lines that
+were hardly grateful. Poor old gentleman—still keeping on about giving
+her Crippenham. Crippenham? She’d as soon have the cleaning of
+Buckingham Palace while she was about it as of that great, frightening
+house—or, come to that, of a prison.</p>
+
+<p>But how like a bad dream it was, being kept there with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_308">{308}</a></span> the morning
+slipping past, and she unable to reach him across the gulf of his
+deafness. By eleven o’clock she was quite pale with unhappiness, she
+could hardly bear it any longer. Would she have to give manners the
+go-by and take to her heels once more? This time, though, there would be
+no kind father-in-law to lend her a car; this time she would have to
+walk,—walk all the way, and then when she got there find Jocelyn
+unaided. And the old gentleman kept on and on about Crippenham being
+hers, and everything in it....</p>
+
+<p>’E’s nothin’ but a nimage,’ she said to herself in despair. ‘Sits ’ere
+like a old idol. Wot do <i>’e</i> know about a married woman’s dooties?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Where’s Charles?’ asked the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>Sally shook her head. She hadn’t seen a sign of him that morning.</p>
+
+<p>‘I want him to get my solicitor down—no time to lose,’ said the Duke.
+‘You’re to have the place lock, stock and barrel, my dear, such as it
+is—servants and all.’</p>
+
+<p>Servants and all? Poor old gentleman. Why, she wouldn’t know which end
+of a servant to start with. She with servants? And these ones here who,
+however hard she tried up there in the bedroom, wouldn’t make friends.
+They called her Madam. She Madam? Oh, my gracious, thought Sally,
+shrinking in horror from such a dreadful picture.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s a hole of a place,’ went on the Duke, ‘and quite unworthy of you,
+but we can have more bathrooms put in, and it’ll do till we find
+something you like better. And Charles tells me you married rather
+suddenly, and haven’t got anywhere to go to at present. He also says you
+have to live close to Cambridge, because of your<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_309">{309}</a></span> husband’s studies. And
+he also says, and I entirely agree with him, my dear, that you oughtn’t
+to be in Cambridge itself, but somewhere more secluded—somewhere where
+you won’t be seen quite so much, somewhere hidden, in fact. Now I think,
+I really do think, that Crippenham, in spite of all its disadvantages,
+does exactly fulfil these requirements. And I want you to have it, my
+dear—to take it as my wedding present to you, and to live in it very
+happily, and bless it and make it beautiful by your presence.’</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>E don’t ’alf <i>talk</i>,’ thought Sally, quivering to be gone.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Charles, on being sent for by the Duke, was nowhere to be found. That
+was because he was in South Winch. He had gone off at daybreak in his
+car, and at the very moment his father woke up to the fact of his
+absence and asked where he was, he was standing in the drawing-room at
+Almond Tree Cottage, his eyes fixed eagerly on the door, waiting for
+Mrs. Luke.</p>
+
+<p>He hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking of her. Somehow he had got it
+into his head that she, more than her son, would suffer through Sally’s
+disappearance, and be afraid. Because, thought Charles, she would feel
+that it was from her the girl had run, and that any misfortune that
+might happen to her would be, terribly, laid at her door. For two whole
+days and two whole nights that unfortunate woman must have gone through
+torture. What Charles couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t thought of
+this before. Indeed his and Laura’s conduct had been utterly
+unpardonable. The least he could now do, he thought,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_310">{310}</a></span> as he lay wide
+awake throughout the night, was to get to South Winch without losing a
+minute, and put Mrs. Luke out of her misery, and beg her forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>She was in the garden when he arrived. The little maid, staring at the
+card he asked her to take to her mistress, said she would fetch her, and
+ushered him into the drawing-room, where he waited with the books, the
+bright cushions, the Tiepolo, and two withered tulips in a glass from
+which nearly all the water had dried away; and while he waited he fought
+with a feeling he considered most contemptible, in face of the facts,
+that he was somehow on an errand of mercy, and arriving with healing in
+his wings,—that he was somehow a benefactor.</p>
+
+<p>Sternly he told himself he ought to feel nothing but shame; sternly he
+tried to suppress his glow of misplaced self-satisfaction. There was
+nothing good about him and Laura in this business. They had, the pair of
+them, been criminally impulsive and selfish. He knew it; he acknowledged
+it. Yet here he was, secretly glowing, his eyes watching the door, as
+much excited as if he were going to bestow a most magnificently
+generous, unexpected present.</p>
+
+<p>Then it opened, and Mrs. Luke came in. He was sure it was Mrs. Luke, for
+no one else could look so unhappy; and the glow utterly vanished, and
+the feeling of shame and contrition became overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’s safe,’ said Charles quickly, eager to put a stop at once to the
+expression in her eyes. ‘She’s at my father’s. She’s going to Cambridge
+today to your son. She’s been with us the whole time——’</p>
+
+<p>And he went to her, and took her hand and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>‘If it weren’t so ridiculous,’ he said, his face flushed with painful
+contrition, still holding her hand and looking<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_311">{311}</a></span> into her heavy,
+dark-ringed eyes, ‘I’d very much like to go down on my knees to you, and
+beg your pardon.’</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>And while Charles was in South Winch, Laura was in Cambridge, dealing
+with Jocelyn. She, like Charles, had become conscious of the sufferings
+of the Lukes, and, like him, was obsessed by them and lost in
+astonishment that she hadn’t thought of them sooner; but for some
+obscure reason, or instinct, her compunctions and her sympathies were
+for Jocelyn rather than for his mother, and after a second sleepless
+night, during which she was haunted by the image of the unfortunate
+young husband and greatly tormented, she went down, much chastened, to
+Cambridge by the first possible train, with only one desire now, to put
+him out of his misery and beg his forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>So that Jocelyn, sitting doing nothing, his untouched breakfast still
+littering the table, sitting bent forward in the basket-chair common to
+the rooms of young men at Cambridge, his thin hands gripped so hard
+round his knees that the knuckles showed white, his ears strained for
+the slightest sound on the staircase, his eyes hollow from want of
+sleep, sitting as he had sat all the previous afternoon after getting
+Mr. Thorpe’s telegram and most of the night, sitting waiting, listening,
+and perhaps for the first time in his life, for his mother had not
+included religious exercises in his early education, doing something not
+unlike praying, did at last hear a woman’s step crossing Austen’s Court,
+hesitating at what he felt sure was his corner, then slowly coming up
+his staircase, and hesitating again at the first floor.</p>
+
+<p>All the blood in his body seemed to rush to his head<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_312">{312}</a></span> and throb there.
+His heart thumped so loud that he could hardly hear the steps any more.
+He struggled out of his low chair and stood listening, holding on to it
+to steady himself. Would they come up higher? Yes—they were coming up.
+Yes—it must be Sally. Sally—oh, oh, <i>Sally</i>!</p>
+
+<p>He flew to the door, pulled it open, and saw—Laura.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s all right,’ she panted, for the stairs were steep and she was fat,
+‘it is—about Sally—don’t look so——’ she stopped to get her
+breath—‘so dreadfully disappointed. She’s safe. If you’ll—oh, what
+<i>stairs</i>——’ she pressed her hand to her heaving bosom—‘come with me,
+I’ll—take you—to her——’</p>
+
+<p>And having got to the top, she staggered past him into his room, and
+dropped into the basket-chair, and for a minute or two did nothing but
+gasp.</p>
+
+<p>But how difficult she found him. Jocelyn, whose reactions were always
+violent, behaved very differently from the way his mother at that moment
+was behaving, placed in the same situation of being asked forgiveness by
+a Moulsford. Instead of forgiving, of being, as Laura had pictured, so
+much delighted at the prospect of soon having Sally restored to him that
+he didn’t mind anything, he appeared to mind very much, and quarrelled
+with her. She, accustomed to have everything she did that was perhaps a
+little wrong condoned and overlooked by all classes except her own, was
+astonished. Here she was, doing a thing she had never done before,
+begging a young man to forgive her, and he wouldn’t. On the contrary, he
+rated her. Rated her! Her, Laura Moulsford. She knew that much is
+forgiven those above by those below, and had frequently deplored the
+practice as one that has sometimes held up progress, but now<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_313">{313}</a></span> that the
+opposite was being done to herself she didn’t like it at all.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, what a nasty disposition you’ve got!’ she cried at last, when
+Jocelyn had been telling her for ten impassioned minutes, leaning
+against the chimney-piece and glowering down at her with eyes flashing
+with indignation, what he thought of her. ‘I’m glad now, instead of
+sorry, for what I did. At least Sally has had two days less of you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you’re going to rag me as well——’ began Jocelyn, taking a quick
+step forward as if to seize and shake this fat little incredibly
+officious stranger,—so like him, his mother would have said, to waste
+time being furious instead of at once making her take him to Sally.</p>
+
+<p>But Laura, unacquainted with his ways, was astonished.</p>
+
+<p>Then he pulled himself up. ‘It’s not you I’m cursing really at all,’ he
+said. ‘It’s myself.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, I don’t mind that,’ said Laura, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ve got the beastliest temper,’ said Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<p>‘So I see,’ said Laura.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think,’ he asked, for in spite of his anger he was all soft and
+bruised underneath after his two days of fear, and when the fat stranger
+smiled there was something very motherly about her, ‘I shall ever get
+over it?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps if you try—try hard.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But—look here, I don’t care what you say—what <i>business</i> had you to
+make away with my wife?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now you’re beginning all over again.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Make away with my wife, smash up everything between me and my
+mother——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, <i>oh</i>——’ interrupted Laura, stopping up her ears, and bowing her
+head before the storm.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_314">{314}</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>It was ten more minutes before she got him out of his rooms and into a
+taxi.</p>
+
+<p>‘We’ve lost twenty minutes,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘You’ve
+lost twenty kisses you might have had——’</p>
+
+<p>‘For God’s <i>sake</i> don’t rag me!’ cried Jocelyn, gripping her by the arm
+and bundling her into the taxi.</p>
+
+<p>‘But what,’ asked Laura, who had tumbled in a heap on the seat, yet who
+didn’t mind being thrown in because she knew she deserved worse than
+that, ‘what else can one do with a creature like you?’</p>
+
+<p>And she told him very seriously, as they heaved along towards
+Crippenham, that the real mistake had been Sally’s marrying beneath her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Beneath her?’ repeated Jocelyn, staring.</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t it apparent?’ said Laura. ‘Angels should only marry other angels,
+and not descend to entanglements with perfectly ordinary——’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, I’m damned if I’m ordinary,’ thought Jocelyn. ‘And who the devil is
+<i>she</i>, anyhow?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Bad-tempered,’ continued Laura.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, I’m beastly bad-tempered,’ he admitted.</p>
+
+<p>‘Conceited——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I swear I’m not conceited,’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Aren’t you?’ said Laura, turning her head and scrutinising him with
+bright, mocking eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And then, coming swift and silent as an arrow along the road towards
+their taxi, she saw her father’s car.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, stop!’ she cried, leaping to her feet and thrusting as much of
+herself as would go through the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_315">{315}</a></span> window. ‘Here’s my father—yes, and
+Sally. Stop—oh, <i>stop</i>!’ she cried, frantically waving her arms.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>It had been decreed by Fate that Jocelyn should be reunited to Sally in
+the middle of the road just beyond Waterbeach, at the point where the
+lane to Lyddiatt’s Farm turns off; for such was the Duke’s desire to
+help his lovely friend and such his infatuation, that he had actually
+broken his rule of never emerging from Crippenham, once he got there,
+till the day appointed for his departure, and was himself taking her to
+Ananias to hand her over in person to her husband, afterwards lunching
+with the Master,—a thing unheard of, this lunching, for the Duke
+disliked the Master’s politics and the Master disliked the Duke’s, but
+what wouldn’t one do to further the interests, by saying a good word for
+them, of the young couple?</p>
+
+<p>This he had arranged that morning before coming downstairs, his amazed
+servant telephoning the message and receiving the Master’s hypocritical
+expressions of pleasure in return, for apart from the Duke’s politics
+the Master was no fonder of a deaf guest than anybody else; and just as
+Sally, on that garden seat, was coming to the end of her patience and
+submissiveness and was seriously thinking of jumping up and taking to
+her heels, the parlourmaid appeared on the path; and when she was quite
+close she stood still, and opened her mouth very wide, and roared out
+that the car was at the door; and the Duke, with a final pat of
+benediction, bade Sally fetch her hat, and come with him to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>So there it was that they met,—the taxi and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_316">{316}</a></span> Rolls Royce, Laura and
+Jocelyn, Sally and the Duke. And on the Swaffham Prior side of
+Waterbeach, where the crooked signpost points to Lyddiatt’s Farm, the
+dull, empty road was made radiant for a moment that day by happiness.</p>
+
+<p>‘Stop! Stop!’ cried Laura, frantically waving.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sally! Oh—oh, <i>Sally</i>!’ shouted Jocelyn, standing up too, and trying
+too, behind Laura, to wave.</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur recognised Laura, and pulled up as soon as he could; the
+taxi pulled up with a great grinding of its brakes; Jocelyn jumped out
+of one door, and Laura of the other; and both ran.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why,’ said Sally, who didn’t know what had happened, turning her head
+and looking in astonishment at the two running figures coming along
+behind, ‘why,’ she said, forgetting the Duke was deaf, ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>ere <i>is</i> Mr.
+Luke——’</p>
+
+<p>And in another instant Jocelyn was there, up on the step of the car,
+leaning over the side, dragging her to him with both arms, hugging her
+to his heart, and kissing her as if there were no one in the world
+except themselves.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sally—oh, my <i>darling</i>! Oh, Sally—oh, oh, <i>Sally</i>!’ cried Jocelyn,
+raining kisses on her between each word. ‘How could you—why did
+you—oh, yes—I know, I know—I’ve been a beast to you—but I’m not
+going to be any more—I swear, I swear——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now don’t, Mr Luke,’ Sally managed to say, stifled though she was,
+‘don’t get swearin’ about it——’</p>
+
+<p>And pulling her head away from him she was able to attend to the
+proprieties, and introduce him.</p>
+
+<p>‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, looking over his arm, which was round
+her neck, at the old man beside<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_317">{317}</a></span> her. ‘The Jewk,’ she said, turning her
+face back to Jocelyn, who took no notice of the introduction, who didn’t
+indeed hear, because the moment she turned her face—oh, her divine,
+divine little face!—back to him, he fell to kissing it again.</p>
+
+<p>And Laura, coming panting up just then, got up on the step on the other
+side of the car, and shouted in her father’s ear, who could always hear
+everything she said, ‘This is Jocelyn Luke, Father—Sally’s husband.’</p>
+
+<p>And the Duke said, ‘I thought it must be.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_318">{318}</a></span>’</p>
+
+<h2><a id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Now</span> the end of this story, which is only the very beginning of Sally,
+the merest introduction to her, for it isn’t to be supposed that nothing
+more happened in her life,—the end of it is that she did as she was
+told about Crippenham, and if the Duke had been less than ninety-three
+there would have been a scandal.</p>
+
+<p>But after ninety there is little scandal. The worst that was said of the
+Lukes was that they had got hold of the old man, and nobody who saw
+Sally believed that. Indeed, the instant anyone set eyes on her the
+Duke’s behaviour was accounted for, and after five minutes in her
+company it became crystal clear that she was incapable of getting hold
+of anybody. So young, so shy, so acquiescent,—absurd to suppose she
+ever had such a thing as an ulterior motive. And the husband, too;
+impossible to imagine that silent scholar, also so young, and rather shy
+too, or else very sulky,—impossible to imagine him plotting. On the
+contrary, he didn’t seem to like what had happened to him much, and
+showed no signs whatever either of pleasure or gratitude. But of Jocelyn
+no one thought long. He was without interest for the great world. He was
+merely an obscure young man at Cambridge, somebody the Duke’s amazing
+beauty had married.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_319">{319}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sally did, then, as she was told about Crippenham. It was given her, and
+she took it; or rather, for her attitude was one of complete passivity,
+it became hers. But she had an unsuspected simple tenacity of purpose,
+which was later to develop disconcertingly, and she refused to live
+anywhere except in the four-roomed cottage in the corner of the garden,
+built years before as a playhouse for Laura and Charles.</p>
+
+<p>On this one point she was like a rock; a polite rock, against which
+persuasions, though received sweetly and amiably, should beat in vain.
+So the Duke had the little house fitted up with every known
+labour-saving appliance, none of which Sally would use because of having
+been brought up to believe only in elbow-grease, and two bathrooms, one
+for her and one for Jocelyn; and he attached such importance to these
+bathrooms, and he insisted so obstinately on their being built, that
+Sally could only conclude the picks must need a terrible lot of washing.
+Whited sepulchres they must be, she secretly thought; looking as clean
+as clean outside, fit to eat one’s dinner off if it came to that, but
+evidently nothing but show and take-in.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke, much concerned at first, settled down to this determination of
+Sally’s, and explained it to himself by remembering Marie-Antoinette.
+She had her Trianon. She too had played, as Sally wished to play, at
+being simple. He consoled himself by speaking of the cottage as Little
+Trianon; a name Sally accepted with patience, though she told
+Jocelyn—who was so much stunned at the strange turn his life had taken
+that she found she could be quite chatty with him, and he never
+corrected, and never even said anything back—she wouldn’t have thought
+of herself. Some day, the Duke was sure, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_320">{320}</a></span> marvellous child would
+grow up and get tired of her Trianon, and then, when she wanted to move
+into the house, she should find Versailles all ready for her, and very
+different from what it used to be.</p>
+
+<p>So, on the excuse of seeing to the alterations, he was hardly ever away
+from Crippenham, and if he had been less than ninety-three there would
+certainly have been a scandal.</p>
+
+<p>But Jocelyn, who woke up after the wild joy and relief of being reunited
+to Sally to find himself the permanent guest of a duke, didn’t know
+whether to be pleased or annoyed. The problems of his and Sally’s
+existence were solved, it was true, but he wasn’t sure that he didn’t
+prefer the problems. He rubbed his eyes. This was fantastic. It had no
+relation to real life, which was the life of hard work and constant
+progress in his cloister at Ananias. Also, its topsy-turviness
+bewildered him. Here was the Duke, convinced that Sally had married
+beneath her, and so unshakably convinced that Jocelyn had enormous
+difficulty in not beginning to believe it too. He couldn’t help being
+impressed by the Duke. He had never met a duke before, never come within
+miles of meeting one, and was impressed. That first afternoon, when he
+had been carried off in the Rolls Royce to Crippenham, he had spent the
+time between luncheon and tea shut up in the old man’s study being
+upbraided for having taken advantage, as he was severely told, of
+Sally’s youth and inexperience and motherlessness to persuade her into a
+marriage which was obviously socially disastrous for her; and he
+couldn’t even if he had wished to, which he certainly didn’t, tell him
+about Mr. Pinner, because he couldn’t get through the barrier of his
+deafness. There the old<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_321">{321}</a></span> man had sat, with beetling brows and great
+stern voice, booming away at him hour after hour, and there Jocelyn had
+sat, young, helpless, silent, his forehead beaded with perspiration,
+listening to a description, among other things, of the glories which
+would have been Sally’s if he hadn’t inveigled her into marrying him.
+And so sure was the Duke of his facts, and so indignant, that gradually
+Jocelyn began to think there was something in it, and every moment felt
+more of a blackguard. In the old man’s eyes, he asked himself, would
+there be much difference between him and Pinner? And was there, in
+anybody’s eyes, much difference? More education; that was all. But of
+family, in the Duke’s sense, he had as little as Pinner, and if Pinner
+had been to a decent school, as Jocelyn had, and then gone to
+Cambridge—no, Oxford for Pinner—he would probably have cut quite as
+good a figure, if not in science then in something else; perhaps as a
+distinguished cleric.</p>
+
+<p>He sat dumb and perspiring, feeling increasingly guilty; and if he could
+have answered back he wouldn’t have, because the Duke made him feel
+meek.</p>
+
+<p>This meekness, however, didn’t last. It presently, after a period of
+bewilderment, gave way to something very like resentment, which in its
+turn developed into a growing conviction that he had become just a cat’s
+paw,—he who, if left to himself, could have done almost anything.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally he didn’t like this. But how, for the moment, could he help
+it? Sally was going to have a baby. They had to live somewhere. It was
+really heaven-sent, the whole thing. Yet—Sally, whom he had been going
+to mould, was moulding him. Unconsciously; nothing to do with any
+intention or desire of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_322">{322}</a></span> her own. And what she was moulding him into,
+thought Jocelyn, as he drove himself backwards and forwards every day
+between Crippenham and Cambridge, between his domestic life and his
+work, between the strange mixture of emotions at the one end and the
+clear peace and self-respect at the other, turning over in his mind with
+knitted brows, as he drove, all that had happened to him in the brief
+weeks since he had added Sally to his life—what she was moulding him
+into was a cat’s paw.</p>
+
+<p>Yes. Just that.</p>
+
+<p>Were all husbands cat’s paws?</p>
+
+<p>Probably, thought Jocelyn.</p>
+
+<h3>§</h3>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke also reacted to the Moulsfords in terms of meekness. Hers,
+however, lasted. She found them permanently dazzling. Besides, there was
+nothing to be done. Jocelyn had gone; she had lost him for ever; he
+would never come back, she very well knew, to the old life of dependence
+on her. And if he must go, if she must lose him, there really was no one
+in the world she would more willingly lose him to than the Duke of
+Goring. For certainly it was a splendid, an exalted losing.</p>
+
+<p>When she had had time to think after that visit from Lord Charles—he
+had, she considered, a curious attractiveness—and was more herself
+again, when she had recovered a little from the extreme misery she had
+gone through and began not to feel quite so ill, she found it easy to
+forgive her <i>mauvais quart d’heure</i>. The Moulsfords were heaping
+benefits on her boy. They were settling all his difficulties. That
+morning when she was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_323">{323}</a></span> so unhappy, Lord Charles had been most
+delightfully kind and sympathetic, and had told her that the Duke, his
+father, intended to help the young couple,—‘You know my son won this
+year’s Rutherford Prize,’ she had said. ‘Indeed I do,’ he had answered
+in his charming, eager way, adding how much interested his father was in
+the careers of brilliant young men, especially at Cambridge, helping
+them in any way he could—and who would not, in such circumstances,
+forgive?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Luke forgave.</p>
+
+<p>The fact, however, remained that she was now alone, and she couldn’t
+think what her life was going to be without Jocelyn. For how, she
+wondered, did one live without an object, with no <i>raison d’être</i> of any
+sort? How did one live after one has left off being needed?</p>
+
+<p>That year the spring was late and cold. The days dragged along, each one
+emptier than the last. There was nothing in them at all; no reason,
+hardly, why one should so much as get up every morning and dress for
+days like that,—pithless, coreless, dead days. She tried to comfort
+herself by remembering that at least she wasn’t any longer beaten down
+and humiliated, that she could lift her head and look South Winch in the
+face, and look it in the face more proudly than ever before; but even
+that seemed to have lost its savour. Still, she mustn’t grumble. This
+happened to all mothers sooner or later, this casting loose, this final
+separation, and to none, she was sure, had it ever happened more
+magnificently. She mustn’t grumble. She must be very thankful. She <i>was</i>
+very thankful. Like Toussaint l’Ouverture—Wordsworth, again—she had,
+she said to herself, sitting solitary through the chilly spring evenings
+by her fire after yet another empty day, great allies; only<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_324">{324}</a></span> fortunately
+of a different kind from poor Toussaint’s, for however highly one might
+regard, theoretically, exultations and agonies and love and man’s
+unconquerable mind, she, for her part, preferred the Moulsfords.</p>
+
+<p>But did she?</p>
+
+<p>A bleak little doubt crept into her mind. As the weeks passed, the doubt
+grew bleaker. Invisible Moulsfords; Moulsfords delightful and most
+friendly when one met them, but whom one never did meet; Moulsfords full
+of almost intimacies; Moulsfords who said they were coming to see one
+again, and didn’t come; Moulsfords benignant, but somewhere else: were
+these in the long run, except as subjects of carefully modest
+conversation in South Winch—and South Winch, curiously, while it was
+plainly awe-struck by what had happened to Jocelyn yet was also
+definitely less friendly than it used to be—were these in the long run
+as life-giving, as satisfying, as fundamentally <i>filling</i> as Toussaint’s
+exultations and agonies?</p>
+
+<p>Ah, one had to <i>feel</i>; feel positively, feel acutely. Anything,
+anything, any anger, any pain, any anxiety, any exasperation, anything
+at all that stabbed one alive, was better than this awful numbness, this
+empty, deadly, settled, stagnant, back-water calm....</p>
+
+<p>And one evening, when it had been raining all day, after a period of
+standing at the drawing-room window looking out at the dripping front
+garden, where the almond-tree by the gate shivered in the grey twilight
+like a frail, half-naked ghost, she turned and went to her
+writing-table, and sat down and wrote a little note to Mr. Thorpe, and
+asked if he would not come in after his dinner, and chat, and show that
+they could still be good friends and neighbours; and when she had
+finished it,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_325">{325}</a></span> and signed herself Margery, with no Luke, she rang for the
+little maid, and bade her take it round to Abergeldie and bring back an
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>‘For after all,’ she said to herself while she waited, standing by the
+fire and slowly smoothing one cold hand with the other, ‘he has
+<i>sterling</i> qualities.’</p>
+
+<p class="fint">THE END<br><br><br>
+<small><i>Printed in Great Britain by</i> <span class="smcap">R. & R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.<br>
+</small></p>
+
+<div class="trans"><p><a id="transcrib"></a></p>
+<p>Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber:</p>
+
+<p>It it were a=> If it were a {pg 126}</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full">
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTRODUCTION TO SALLY ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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