Part 12

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.