Part 11
‘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!