§
And while these things were happening in Almond Tree Cottage, Jocelyn,
in the private sitting-room of the Exeter hotel, was behaving, it seemed
to Sally, in the most strange way.
If this was what married gentlemen were like, then she wondered that
there should be any married ladies left. Enough to kill them off like
flies, thought Sally, helplessly involved in frequent and alarming
embraces. Still, she held on hard in her mind to what her father had
said to her the evening before, when she was going up to bed,--‘Sally,’
her father had said, calling her back a moment and looking solemn,
‘don’t you take no notice of what Mr. Luke do or don’t, once ’e’s your
’usband. ’Usbands ain’t gentlemen, remember--not ordinary, day-time
gentlemen, such as you thinks they are till you knows better. And you
just say to yourself as ’ow your mother went through it all before you
was so much as born, and she was a bit of all right, warn’t she? So you
just remember that, my girl, if by any chance you should ’appen to get
the fidgets.’
She did remember it, though it was Mr. Luke--so she thought of him--who
had the fidgets. He didn’t seem able to sit quiet for two minutes in his
chair, and eat his supper, and let her eat hers. Such a lovely supper,
too--a real shame to let it get cold. What was the good of ordering a
lovely supper if one wasn’t going to eat it properly?
More and more earnestly as the evening progressed did she wish herself
back in the peaceful parlour behind the shop; less and less did the
thought of her mother having been through all this too support her,
because she became surer every minute that she hadn’t been through it.
Never in his life could her father have behaved as Mr. Luke was
behaving. Entirely unused to kisses, except evenings and mornings, and
then just one on her cheek and over and done with at once, Sally
couldn’t get over the number and length of Mr. Luke’s. Also, it
surprised her very much to see a gentleman interrupt his supper--and
such a lovely supper--to run round the table and go down on his knees
and kiss her shoes,--new ones, of course, but still not things that
ought to be kissed; it surprised her so much, that she came over quite
queer each time.
She thought it a great mercy he had locked the door, so that the grand
waiter couldn’t get in, for the grand waiter, staring at her while he
handed her the dishes and calling her Madam, alarmed her in his way very
nearly as much as Mr. Luke alarmed her in his; yet, on the other hand,
if the waiter was locked out she was locked in, so that it cut both
ways, thought Sally, wishing she might be let eat the meringue the
waiter had left on her plate before being locked out. But every time she
tried to, Mr. Luke seemed to have to be kissed.
And the way Mr. Luke, when he did stay still a minute in his chair,
never took his eyes off her, and the things he said! And he didn’t seem
a bit happy either, in spite of talking such a lot about heaven and the
angels. If only he had seemed happy Sally wouldn’t have minded so much,
for then at least somebody would have been getting some good out of it;
but he looked all upset, and as if he were going to be ill,--sickening
for something, she concluded.
For a long time she kept up her manners, bravely clinging to them and
trying hard to guess when was the right moment to say Yes and when to
say No, which was very difficult because he talked so queerly, and she
hadn’t an idea what most of it meant; for a long time she was able to
smile politely, if anxiously, every time she looked up and caught his
fierce and burning eye; but all of a sudden, perpetually thwarted in her
efforts to eat the meringue, and very hot and uncomfortable from so much
kissing, she found she couldn’t do anything any more that was proper,
wasn’t able to smile, said No when it ought to have been Yes, lost her
nerve, and to her own surprise and excessive shame began to whimper.
Very quietly she whimpered, very beautifully, her head drooping
exquisitely on its adorable little neck, while the meringue she had so
badly wanted to be allowed to eat for the last quarter of an hour was
finally renounced, and left to waste and dribble away its expensive
cream on her plate.
Jocelyn was appalled.
‘Oh, Sally--oh, my angel--oh, my heavenly, heavenly child!’ he cried,
flinging himself once again at her feet, while she once again quickly
drew them up beneath her frock, as she had done each time before.
She apologised humbly. She was really terribly ashamed,--and he so good
to her, spending all that money on such a splendid supper.
‘I ain’t cried but once before in my life,’ she explained, fumbling for
her handkerchief, while the tears welled up in her enchanting sweet
eyes. ‘When mother died, that was, but I never didn’t not else. Dunno
what come over me, Mr. Luke----’
‘Only once before! When your mother died! And now on your wedding day!
Oh, Sally--it’s me--I’ve made you--I, who would die a thousand deaths to
spare a single perfect hair of your divine little head----’
‘Don’t say that, Mr. Luke--please now, don’t say that,’ Sally earnestly
begged, much perturbed by this perpetual harping on death and angels.
And having at last got out her handkerchief, she was just going to wipe
her eyes decently when he snatched it from her and didn’t let her do
anything, but actually kissed away the tears as they rolled out.
‘You ain’t ’alf fond of kissin’, are you, Mr. Luke,’ murmured Sally
miserably, helplessly obliged to hand over her tears to what seemed to
her a really horrid fate, while to herself she was saying in resigned,
unhappy astonishment, ‘And them my very own eyes, too, when all’s said
and done.’
§
It was three days later that Jocelyn, for the first time, said, ‘Don’t
say that, Sally,’ in a tone of command.
He had told her many times not to call him Mr. Luke, told her
entreatingly, caressingly, playfully, that he was her husband Jocelyn,
and no longer ever any more to be Mr. anything on her darling lips; and
when she forgot, for habits in Sally died hard, smilingly and adoringly
reminded her.
But this time, after three whole days’ honeymoon and three whole
nights, he commanded; adding in a tone of real annoyance, ‘And for God’s
sake don’t look at people when they pass.’
‘I ain’t lookin’ at them,’ protested Sally, flushing, who never wanted
to look at anybody, besides having been taught by the anxious Pinners
that no modest girl did. ‘They looks at me.’
It was true. Jocelyn knew it was true, but nevertheless was angry, and
caught hold of her arm and marched her up a side lane from the sea, up
to the less inhabited hill at the back of the village.
For they were at St. Mawes, the little cut-off fishing village in South
Cornwall which had lived in Jocelyn’s memory ever since, two years
before, on an Easter bicycling tour with his mother, he and she had
suddenly dropped down on it from the hill above, unaware of its
existence till they were right on it, so completely was it tucked away
and hidden. It had lived in his memory as the most difficult spot to get
at, and therefore probably the most solitary, of any he had come across.
Miles from a railway, miles from the nearest town, only to be reached,
unless one went to it by sea, along a most difficult and tortuous road
that ended by throwing one down a precipice on to a ferry-boat which
took one across the Fal and shot one out at the foot of another
precipice,--or so the two hills seemed to Jocelyn and his mother, who
had to push their bicycles up them--he considered it the place of places
to hide his honeymoon in; to hide, that is, the precious and conspicuous
Sally.
His recollection of it was just a village street along the sea, an inn
or two, a shop or two, a fisherman or two, and in the middle of the day
complete emptiness.
The very place.
He wrote, trembling with excitement, to its post office to get him
rooms, rooms for his wife and himself--his wife; oh, my God! thought
Jocelyn, still a week off his wedding day.
The post office got him rooms,--a tiny bedroom, almost filled by the
bed, a tiny parlour, almost filled by the table, and a fisherman and his
wife, who lived in the rest of the cottage, to look after them.
The first day they were out in a boat all day being shown coves by the
fisherman, who stared hard at Sally, and whenever they wanted to go back
took them to see another cove instead; but the second day, the
imperativeness of daily exercise having been part of Jocelyn’s early
training, he felt it his duty to exercise Sally, and emerged with her
during the quiet hour after their mid-day meal for a blow along the sea
front.
She had already said, when he asked her if she would like to go out,
that she didn’t mind if she did, and he had passed it over because he
happened to be looking at her when she said it, and no one who happened
to be looking at Sally when she said anything was able to pay much
attention to her words. Jocelyn couldn’t, anyhow, only three days
married; but out on the sea front, walking side by side, his eyes fixed
ahead in growing surprise at the number of people suddenly come out,
like themselves, apparently, for blows, when in answer to his remark
that the place seemed more populous than he had imagined, she said, ‘It
do, don’t it, Mr. Luke,’ he snapped at her.
Snapped at her. Snapped at his angel, his child of light, his being from
another sphere, who ought, he had told her, making her fidget a good
deal, for whatever did he mean? sit for ever on a sapphire throne, and
be crowned by stars, and addressed only in the language of Beethoven’s
symphonies. But then there were these confounded people suddenly sprung
from nowhere, and it was enough to make any man snap, the way they
looked at Sally. Where did they come from? Where were they going? What
did they want?
Jocelyn seized her, and hurried her up the side path that led over the
hill to the quiet country at the back. He was excessively put out. The
swine--the idle, ogling swine, he thought, rushing her up the steep path
at such a rate that the willing Sally, obediently putting her best leg
foremost, nevertheless, light and active as she was, arrived at the top
so breathless that she couldn’t speak.
Not that she wanted to speak. Never much of a hand at what her girl
friends, when she still had them, used to call back-chat, the brief
period of her honeymoon had taught her how safe and snug silence was
compared to the draughty dangers of speech. Marriage, she already felt,
groping dimly about in it, wasn’t at all like anything one was used to.
It seemed swampy underfoot. You started walking along it, and it looked
all right, when in you went. Husbands--difficult to know where one was
with _them_, thought Sally. They changed about so. One moment on their
knees as if one was a church, and the next rushing one off one’s feet up
a hill such as one couldn’t have believed possible if one hadn’t seen it
for oneself, and their face all angry. Angry? What for? wondered Sally,
who was never angry.
‘It’s that hair of yours,’ said Jocelyn, got to the top, and standing
still a moment, for he too was panting.
She looked at him uncomprehendingly, in a lovely surprise. He was
frowning at the sea, and the bit of road along it visible at their feet,
on which still crawled a few black specks.
‘’Ow?’ Sally was injudicious enough to ask; but after all it was only
one word--she was careful to say only one word.
One was enough, though.
‘How, Sally--_how_, HOW. You really _must_ learn to say _how_,’ said
Jocelyn, exasperated.
‘I did say ’ow,’ explained Sally meekly.
‘Yes. You did. Exactly,’ said Jocelyn.
‘Ain’t it right to say ’ow?’ she asked, anxious for instruction.
‘Haven’t you _any_ ear?’ was Jocelyn’s answer, turning to her with a
kind of pounce.
Sally was still more surprised. What a question. Of course she had an
ear. Two of them. And she was going to tell him so when his face, as he
looked at her, changed to the one he had when he got talking about
heaven and angels.
For how could Jocelyn stay irritated with anything like that? He had
only to turn and look at her for all his silly anger to shrivel up. In
the presence of her loveliness, what a mere mincing worm he was, with
his precise ways of speech, and his twopenny-halfpenny little bit of
superior education. As though it mattered, as though it mattered,
thought Jocelyn.
‘Oh, Sally, I didn’t mean it,’ he said, catching up her hand and kissing
it, which made her feel very awkward and ashamed, somehow, having a
thing like that done to her hand, and in broad daylight, too, and out of
doors. ‘But you should try and tuck your hair more out of sight--look,
this way,’ he went on, gently taking her hat off and arranging her hair
for her before putting it on again. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘it does
catch the eye so, doesn’t it, my beautiful, flaming seraphim--oh, my
God,’ he added under his breath, ‘how beautiful you are!’
‘It don’t make no difference,’ said Sally in a resigned voice.
‘What doesn’t?’
‘If you tucks it in or don’t. They always looks at me. We tried
everything at ’ome, Father and Mother did, but they always looks at me.’
She spoke with deprecation and apology. Best let him know the worst at
once, for she was thoroughly aware of her disabilities and the endless
trouble she had given her parents; while as for their scoldings, and
exhortations, and dark hints of bad things that might happen to her,
hadn’t they rung in her ears since she was twelve? But what could she
do? There she was. Having been born like that, how could she help it?
And another thing she couldn’t help, though she was unconscious that she
did it, was that every time she caught the amiable eye of a stranger,
and she had never yet met any stranger who hadn’t amiable eyes, she
smiled. Just a little; just an involuntary gratitude for the
friendliness in the eye that had been caught. And as she had two
dimples, otherwise invisible, the smile, which would anyhow have been
lovely on that face, was of exceeding loveliness, and complications
followed, and angry chidings from the worn-out Pinners, and, in Sally, a
resigned surprise.
It was while she was trying to convey to Jocelyn that whatever he did
with her hair she was doomed to be looked at, and was at the same time
shaking it back so as to help him to get it neat--it looked startlingly
vivid against the grey background of sea and sky--that a young man
called Carruthers, out for a run with his dog after a stuffy Sunday
family lunch, came round the bend of the path, whistling and swinging
his stick, and stopped dead when he saw her.
His dog rushed on, however, and ran up to the spirit-thing, and sniffed
and wagged round it, and seemed quite pleased; so it was real, it wasn’t
a spirit, it wasn’t the beginning in his own brain of hallucinations on
burning, Blake-like lines.
He stood gazing. He had never seen anything like that before,--no, by
Jove, nor had most other people. ‘Oh, I say--don’t, don’t, _don’t_ put
it on yet!’ he nearly cried out as he saw the hat in the dark,
Iberian-looking youth’s hands being raised quickly above the girl’s head
when that confounded dog disturbed them, and knew that in another
instant it would descend and the light go out.
The Iberian’s movements, however, were swift and decided, and the hat
was not only put on but pulled on,--tugged on with vigour as far down
over her eyes as it would go; and then, after a frowning glance round,
the fellow drew her hand through his arm and walked her off quickly in
the opposite direction.
There was nothing left for Carruthers but to call his dog--an attractive
bitch, who would have been a Sealyham if it hadn’t been for something
its mother did once,--and it wasn’t Carruthers’ fault that it too should
chance to be called Sally.
‘Sally! Sally!’ he therefore very naturally shouted, raising his voice
as much as possible, which was a great deal. ‘Sally! Come here! Sally!
Come _here_, I tell you!’
The hills round St. Mawes reverberated with entreaties that Sally should
come.
She did come, his Sally did, but behind it, running, came the Iberian as
well. The girl was out of sight round the corner. Young Carruthers
watched the hurrying approach of her companion with surprise, which
increased when he saw the expression on his face.
‘How dare you! How dare you!’ shouted Jocelyn directly he was near
enough; upon which Carruthers’ surprise became amazement.
‘What’s up?’ he inquired.
‘How dare you call out Sally, and tell her to come here? Eh? What do you
mean by it? You----’
‘I say--hold on,’ exclaimed Carruthers quickly, raising a defensive arm.
‘Hold on a bit. Look--here she is, here’s Sally----’ and he pointed to
the fawning sinner.
Jocelyn’s fists fell limply to his sides. He flushed, and looked
extremely foolish. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Carruthers, with immense sarcastic politeness.
‘It--it’s my wife’s name,’ stammered Jocelyn, ‘and I thought you knew
her, and were incredibly cheeking her----’
Carruthers, staring at his nervous twitching face, didn’t laugh, but
simply nodded. Having seen Sally he simply nodded.
‘That’s all right,’ he said gravely; and for some reason added
impulsively, ‘old man.’
He watched the thin figure hurrying off again. ‘A bit of
responsibility,’ he thought. ‘The poor chap looks all nerves and funk
already----’ for it was plain they couldn’t have been married long,
plain they were both too young to have been anything long.
Carruthers, who was as solid and matter-of-fact outside as he wasn’t
inside, turned away so as not again to interrupt, and went home across
the fields whistling sad tunes in minor keys. Marvellous beyond
imagining to be married to beauty like that, but--yes, by God, one would
be on wires the whole time, there’d be no end to one’s anxieties. And
his final conclusion was that Jocelyn was a poor devil.
§
He might have concluded it even more emphatically if he could have
followed him, and seen what he saw when he got round the corner where
Sally had been left for a moment--only for a moment, mind you, said
Jocelyn to himself indignantly,--and found her the centre of an absorbed
group.
She was smiling at two men and a woman, who were smiling and talking to
her with every appearance of profound and eager interest. She was, in
fact, being polite; a habit against which Mr. Pinner had repeatedly
warned her, but, for the reason that it wasn’t a habit at all but her
natural inability not to return smiles for smiles, had warned her in
vain.
These people, climbing up the hill on its other side and finding her
standing there alone, had asked her, their faces wreathed in smiles and
their eyes wide with astonishment and delight, the way; and she had only
politely told them she was a stranger in those parts, and they were only
asking her a few kindly questions, to which she had only answered, ‘’Ere
on my ’oneymoon,’ and they were only expressing hopes that she would
have a good time, when Jocelyn descended, swift, lean and vengeful, on
the otherwise harmonious group.
‘Yes?’ said Jocelyn, scowling round at them. ‘Yes?’
‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, with a gesture of all-including
friendliness.
But it was no use her being friendly. Jocelyn was rude. How not be rude,
with those two men standing there staring as if their eyes would bulge
right out?
‘I was under the impression,’ he said, glaring at them up and down, from
the top of their badly hatted heads, along their under-exercised and
over-coated bodies to their unsatisfactory feet, ‘that it was possible
in England to leave a lady alone for two minutes without her being
subject to annoyance.’
‘I’m sure----’ began the woman of the party, turning very red, while
the men looked both scared and sheepish.
‘Don’t mind ‘_im_,’ said Sally sweetly, desirous of mollifying.
‘On the contrary, I assure you that you had much better--much better,’
declared Jocelyn truculently. And again he pulled Sally’s hand through
his arm, and again he hurried her off.
‘Really,’ he said, when they were out of sight, and only green fields,
empty of everything but cows, were visible. ‘Really.’
He stopped and wiped his forehead.
‘’Ot?’ ventured Sally, timid but sympathetic.
‘To think that I can’t leave you alone a minute!’ he cried.
‘They ask me the way,’ Sally explained.
‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite. And what did you say, might I inquire?’
‘Said as ’ow I didn’t know it.’
‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite.’
‘Bein’, as one might say, a stranger in these parts,’ Sally explained
still further, for these repeated quites upset her into speech.
‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Quite.’
‘Now don’t say that, Mr. Luke--please don’t, now,’ she begged.
‘Perhaps you, on your part, won’t say Mr. Luke,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Not
quite so often. Not more than a dozen times a day, for instance.’
Sally was silent. She mustn’t think of him as Mr. Luke, she couldn’t
think of him by his outlandish other name, so she thought of him as
Husband. ’Usband’s cross,’ she thought; and withdrew into a prudent
dumbness.
He ended by scrambling her through the hedge, and across a field as far
from the path as possible; and, sitting her down with her back to
everything except another hedge, tried to tell her a few things of a
necessary but minatory nature.
‘Sally,’ he began, lying down on the grass beside her and taking her
hand in his, ‘you know, don’t you, that I love you?’
Sally, cautiously coming out of her silence for a moment, as one who
puts a toe into cold water and instantly draws it back again, said,
‘Yes, Mr.----’ stopping herself just in time, and hastily amending,
‘What I means is, yes.’
‘And you know, don’t you, that my one thought is for you and your
happiness?’
Yes, she supposed she knew that, thought Sally, fidgeting uneasily, for
though the voice and manner were the voice and manner of Mr. Luke there
was somehow a smack about them that reminded her of her father when he
was going to do what was known in the family as learning her.
‘Don’t you?’ insisted Jocelyn, as she said nothing. ‘Don’t you?’
He looked up into her face in search of an answer, and his voice
faltered, he forgot completely what he was going to say, and whispering
‘Oh, I _worship_ you!’ began kissing the hand he held, covering it with
kisses, and seizing the other one and covering it with kisses too, while
his ears, she could see, for his head lay in her lap, went crimson.
And Sally, who had already discovered that when Jocelyn’s ears turned
crimson he did nothing but kiss her and murmur words that were not,
however incomprehensible, anyhow angry ones, knew that for this time she
was being let off.
V
§
He kept her indoors for the rest of the day, and decided that in future
they would use the car as a means of getting well out of reach of St.
Mawes, and then, leaving it in some obscure village, take the necessary
exercise undisturbed. The boat would have done for getting away in, but
the fisherman wouldn’t let them have it without him, and he too stared
persistently at Sally. His ridiculous name was Cupp. ‘Serve him right,’
thought Jocelyn, who disliked him intensely.
These difficulties considerably interfered with the peace of the
honeymoon. Having to take precautions, and scheme before doing ordinary
things such as go out for a walk, seemed perfectly monstrous to Jocelyn.
He was inclined, though he struggled against it, to blame Sally. He knew
it was grossly unfair to blame her, but then it was outside his theories
that a modest woman, however lovely, shouldn’t be able in England to
proceed on her lawful occasions unmolested. There must be, he thought,
something in Sally’s behaviour, though he couldn’t quite see what.
He took her away the next morning for the whole day in the car, and,
leaving it at a lonely wayside inn, marched her off for the exercise
they both needed. He needed it, he knew, for he was getting quite
livery, and so, he dared say, was she; though it would have been as
easy to imagine a new-born flower having a liver as Sally. Anyhow, she
must be exercised; her health was now his concern, Jocelyn told himself.
Everything of hers was now his concern. The lovely child had been
miraculously handed over to him by Destiny--thus augustly did he dub Mr.
Pinner--and there was no one but him to protect and guide and teach her.
No one but him jolly well should, either, said Jocelyn to himself,
baring his teeth at the mere thought, savagely possessive, strongly
resembling a growling dog over a newly-acquired bone.
But it was trying, having to hide her like this. It came to that, that
he had to hide her if he was to have any peace. Well, when he took her
to London, and settled down there seriously, there wouldn’t be this
trouble, because he intended to live in the slums. Slums were the
places, he felt sure, for being let alone in. Not, of course, the more
cut-throat kind, but obscure streets where everybody was too busy being
poor to be interested in a girl’s beauty. To be interested in that,
Jocelyn thought he knew, you have to have had and be going to have a
properly filling dinner every day. No dinners, no love. One only had to
think a little to see this must be so. In such a street, how peaceful
they would be, he in one room writing, she in another room not writing.
Nor would there be any servant difficulty for them either, because Sally
was used to housework, and knew no other conditions than those in which
she had to do it herself. He and she were going to lead simple lives,
irradiated by her enchanting loveliness; and presently, when she had
begun to profit by the lessons he would give her in the art of correct
speech, she would be more of a companion to him, more able to--well,
converse.
For the moment, he couldn’t disguise from himself, she was weak in
conversation. To look at her, to look at her strangely noble little
head, with everything there that is supposed to go with mind--the broad
sweep of the brow, the beautifully moulded temples, the radiance in the
eyes, the light that seemed to play over the vivid face with its swiftly
changing expressions, each one more lovely than the last, and the whole
amazing creature a poem of delicate colouring, except where colour had
caught fire and become the flaming wonder of her hair--to look at this,
and then hear the meagre, the really most meagre and defective
observations that came out of it all, was a surprise. A growing
surprise. Frankly, a growingly painful surprise. Somehow he hadn’t
noticed it before, but now he every hour more plainly perceived a grave
discrepancy between Sally’s appearance and her reality. Or was what he
saw her reality, and what he heard mere appearance?
At night he was sure this was so. Next morning he was afraid it wasn’t.
In any case, she didn’t match.
§
Curious, thought Jocelyn a day or two later, how completely Sally didn’t
match. Perhaps he was getting livery, and beholding her with a jaundiced
eye. It wouldn’t be surprising if this were so, seeing the reversal of
his ordinary habits that marriage had made. His life till then had been
one of excessive intellectual activity, and excessive sexual inactivity.
Now it was just the opposite. It seemed to him that he was living
entirely on his emotions and his nerves, doing nothing but make love,
and never thinking a single thought worth thinking. This preoccupation
with Sally’s discrepances, for instance--what, after all, were a girl’s
discrepances compared to the importance, the interest, of his brain work
till he met her?
He would come down to breakfast, to the sober facts of bacon and grey
morning light, in a highly critical mood, feeling very old, and wise,
and mature, and of course--there could be no two opinions as to that--in
everything, except just physical beauty, Sally’s superior. Then she
would come down, and, cautiously saying nothing, smile at him; and he
would be forced, in spite of himself, to wonder, as he gazed at her in a
fresh surprise, whether there could be anything in the world superior to
such beauty. Not himself, anyhow, he thought, with his little inky
ambitions, his desire to express and impress himself, his craving to
find out and do. Sally had no cravings that he could discover; she was
mere lovely acquiescence, content--and with what exquisiteness--to be.
Still, in this world one couldn’t just sit silent, and serene, and
wonderful; and the minute circumstances obliged her to say something her
discrepances worried him again. It really was surprising: pure
perfection outside, and inside--he hated to think it, but more and more
feared he recognised--pure Pinner. He must take her in hand. He must
teach her, train her in the manners expected in her new sphere of life.
He pulled himself together, and took her in hand. During the second week
after their marriage she was, as it were, almost constantly in hand; and
towards its end Jocelyn’s consciousness of his responsibility and duty,
which at first had faded away in the evening and disappeared entirely
at night, stretched further and further across the day like a
lengthening shadow, till at last it reached right into his very bed. The
image of his mother had begun to loom nearer,--his mother, whom he had
forgotten in the first fever of passion, but to whom he would
undoubtedly soon now have to show Sally. Show her? Nothing so easy and
sure of its effect as showing Sally, but it was what would happen
immediately after she had been shown that Jocelyn, daily more able to
contemplate Sally objectively as his honeymoon grew longer, began to
consider.
There was no time to lose. He took her in hand. He started by attacking
her h’s, whose absence had early become acutely distressing to him.
Every day he devoted an hour the first thing after breakfast to them,
making her talk to him, to her regret, for she by then well knew that
little good came of talk, and patiently, each time she dropped one,
picking it up and handing it back to her, so to speak, with careful
marginal comments.
He found her most obtuse. Ordinary talk wasn’t enough. He had to invent
sentences, special sentences for her to learn by heart and practise on,
with little pitfalls in their middles which she was to avoid.
She seemed incapable of avoiding anything. Into each pitfall Sally
invariably fell; and unwilling to believe that she couldn’t keep out of
them if she really tried, Jocelyn said the sentences over and over again
to her, obstinately persevering, determined she should learn.
_Hefty Harry hurries after his hat._ Sally drew in long breaths, and
blew them out again at the beginning of each word, hoping they would
turn into h’s, though for the life of her she couldn’t see any
difference between the way she rendered _Hefty Harry_ and the way
Jocelyn did.
_Husbands inhabit heaven._ This was another one, worse than _Hefty
Harry_, because it wasn’t enough to blow out her breath at the beginning
of each word, but she had somehow to get it out in the middle of the
middle one as well; besides, husbands didn’t inhabit heaven till they
were dead, and Jocelyn’s habit of harping on heaven upset her, for
heaven meant death first, and ever since her mother’s death, at which
Sally had been present, she had had the poorest opinion of the whole
thing.
During the lesson Jocelyn carefully gazed out of the window, keeping his
eyes off her, because this was serious, this was important, and mustn’t
be interfered with by her face. There he sat, patient but determined,
holding her hand so as to reassure her, saying the sentences slowly and
distinctly, while Sally, moist with effort, diligently blew. Why was it
so important? she vaguely wondered. He seemed to love her a lot,
especially in the evenings, and kept on telling her at the times when
his ears were red how happy he was, so what more did he want? What was
the use of bothering over things like h’s, which he declared were there
but of which she could see no sign? She and her father, they had never
worried about them, and they had got along all right. But Sally was
docile; Sally was obedient and goodnatured; Sally earnestly wished to
give people what they wanted; and if what Husband wanted was h’s, then
she would try her utmost to provide them. If only she were quite clear
as to what they were! Perhaps, by plodding, she would some day discover.
She plodded; and the nearest she got to criticism of this new
development in her life was occasionally, when after breakfast Jocelyn
called her over to the window, where he had placed two chairs in
readiness for the lesson and pulled down the blind below the level of
her head, occasionally, very occasionally, to murmur to herself, ‘Them
h’s.’
§
But it wasn’t only her h’s, it wasn’t only the way she pronounced the
few words that seemed to be at her disposal; there were other things
that disquieted Jocelyn, as he awoke more and more from the wild first
worship of her beauty. He appeared to be surrounded, out of doors and
in, by an increasing number of difficulties. There was that business of
not being able to go out without becoming the instant centre of the
entire attention of St. Mawes,--most painful to Jocelyn, who had a fixed
notion, implanted in him early in the decent cover of Almond Tree
Cottage, that the truly well-bred were never conspicuous. How
unpleasant, how extraordinarily unpleasant when, the morning lesson over
and the need for exercise imperative, he went round to the garage to
fetch the car, to find on his return the sea-wall opposite their
lodgings black with expectant loungers; how unpleasant, how
extraordinarily unpleasant to have to hurry Sally into the thing, as if
she were the centre figure of a _cause célèbre_ leaving the Law Courts;
and the car, being an old one bought second-hand, sometimes wouldn’t
start--twice that happened--and then to see how those loungers sprang
into life and flocked across to help! Jocelyn, used only to quiet
comings and goings and no one taking the least notice of anything he
did, used, in fact to being what his mother described as well-bred,
felt as if he had suddenly turned into a circus.
And indoors, too, he had difficulties, apart from and in addition to the
difficulties at the lessons, for Sally showed a tendency, mild but
unmistakable, to coalesce with the Cupps. She wanted to help Mrs. Cupp
make the bed in the morning, she tried to clear away the breakfast, so
as to save her feet, as she put it, and once, on some excuse or other,
she actually left Jocelyn by himself in the parlour and got away into
the kitchen, where he found her presently, on going to look, kissing a
fat and hideous child that could only be a little Cupp.
To do her justice Mrs. Cupp in no way that Jocelyn could see encouraged
this; on the contrary, she seemed a particularly stand-offish sort of
woman, who not only knew her own place but knew Sally’s as well, and
wished to keep her in it. Unfortunate that Sally should be, apparently,
so entirely without that knowledge.
Jocelyn did his best to impart it. ‘You belong to me now, Sally,’ he
explained, ‘and my place and sphere is your place and sphere, and my
relations and friends your relations and friends. I don’t go and sit in
kitchens, nor am I friends, beyond what every one is in regard to that
class, with the Cupps. I don’t, and therefore you mustn’t.’
Was this speech snobbish? He hoped not; he trusted not. He despised
snobbishness. His mother had most carefully taught him to. She would
shudder at the mere word, and the shudder had got into his childhood’s
bones.
Sally gave herself great pains to understand, looking at him attentively
while he spoke and coming to the conclusion that what Usband was driving
at was that she had got to sit quiet and remember she was now a lady.
She sat quiet, remembering it. She made no attempt at any further
budging from her place, even when Mrs. Cupp dropped things off the
overloaded tray at her very feet, and her fingers itched to pick them
up. She managed not to; she managed to take no notice whatever of them,
and, bending her head over the paper Jocelyn had written her lesson out
on in a fair round hand, would bury herself in it instead, saying it out
loud as he had bidden her, conning it diligently.
The room re-echoed with _Hefty Harry_, and the deep preliminary drawings
in and blowings out of breaths that were meant to become h’s, and never
did.