§
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.