Part 13

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.