§
They drove in total silence. Jocelyn had much to think of, and not for
anything would Sally have opened her mouth when Mr. Luke’s was shut in
that particular tight line. He had see-sawed back again, she knew, and
was at the opposite end to what she called his oh-Sally condition.
Besides, she never did say anything when she was in the car, however
much he tried to make her, for from the beginning, even before there
were hills, it had frightened her. Cars hadn’t come Mr. Pinner’s way,
and, except for the one drive with Jocelyn that first day of his
courting, she had had no experience of them till now.
This one gave her little joy. It went so fast; it had hairsbreadth
escapes at corners; it had twice run over chickens, causing words with
other angry gentlemen, and it was full inside, where she had to sit, of
important and dangerous-looking handles and pedals that had to have the
rug and her dress and her feet and her umbrella carefully kept clear of
them, or there would be that which she called to herself, catching her
breath with fear, an accident.
Jocelyn had said once, very peremptorily and making hurried movements
with his left hand, ‘For goodness sake don’t let that rug get mixed up
with the gears----’ for the car was a Morris-Cowley, and what Sally
thought of with anxiety as them ’andles were between her and Jocelyn,
and it had been enough. The tone of his voice on that occasion had
revealed to her that a combination of rug and gears, and therefore of
anything else and gears, such as dress, feet or umbrella, would be
instantly disastrous, and he never had to say it again.
For the rest of the honeymoon she sat squeezed together as far away from
the alarming things as she could, the rug tucked with anxious care
tightly round her legs, and her feet cramped up in the corner. She was
very uncomfortable, but that mattered nothing to Sally. Even if she
hadn’t been afraid of what might happen, her own comfort, when the
wishes of her elders and betters were in question, wouldn’t have been
given a thought. The Pinners were like that. Their humility and patience
would have been remarkable even in a saint, and as for their bumps of
veneration, they were so big that that country would indeed be easy to
govern which should be populated by many Pinners.
The late Mrs. Pinner, not of course herself a Pinner proper, but of the
more turbulent blood of a race from Tottenham called Skew, had disliked
these virtues in Mr. Pinner, and thought and frequently told him that a
shopkeeper shouldn’t have them at all. A shopkeeper’s job, she often
explained, was to leave off being poor as soon as possible, and Mr.
Pinner never at any time left off being that--all because, Mrs. Pinner
asserted, he had no go; and having no go was her way of describing
patience and humility. But in Sally, when these qualities began to
appear, she encouraged them, for they made for the child’s safety, they
kept her obedient and unquestioning, they sent her cheerfully to bed
when other girls were going to the pictures, and caused her to be happy
for hours on end by herself in the back parlour performing simple
duties. Besides, though Mrs. Pinner would have been hard put to it to
give it a name, in Sally patience and humility were somehow different
from what they were in Pinner. They held their heads up more. They
didn’t get their tails between their legs. They were in fact in Sally,
though Mrs. Pinner could only feel this dumbly, never getting anywhere
near thinking it, not abject things that quivered in corners, but
gracious things that came to meet one with a smile.
Filled, then, as ever, with these meek virtues, Sally, squeezed into as
little space as possible, and bracing herself, having got safely to the
top of the hill, to meet the next terror, which was the twisty,
slippery, narrow steep road down to the ferry, and the twisty, slippery,
narrow steep road up from it on the other side, and after that the
terror of every corner, round each of which she was sure would lurk a
broad-beamed charabanc,--was carried in the Morris-Cowley in the
direction of Truro. Here, Jocelyn supposed, they had better stay the
night. Here there were hotels, and he would be able to consider what he
would do next.
He urged the little car along as fast as it would go, for he was
possessed by the feeling that if he only got away fast enough he would
get away altogether. But get away altogether from what? Certainly from
St. Mawes, and Mrs. Cupp, and the loungers who all of course also
supposed he and Sally weren’t married. That was the first, the immediate
necessity. He had not only been turned out, but turned out, he said to
himself, with contumely,--no use saying it to Sally, because she
wouldn’t know what contumely was, and it did seem to him really rather
absurd to be going about with somebody who had never heard even of such
an ordinary thing as contumely.
It wasn’t her fault, of course, but the turning out and the contumely
were obviously because of her; there was no denying that. His mother
would have been sitting in those rooms at this moment, the most prized
and cherished of lodgers. Obviously the whole thing was Sally’s fault,
though he quite admitted she couldn’t help it. But it merely made it
worse that she couldn’t, for it took away one’s confidence in the
future, besides making it unfair to say anything unkind.
Feeling that if he did say anything it might easily be unkind, he kept
his mouth tight shut, and drove in total silence; and Sally, whenever
the road was fairly straight and could be left for a moment unwatched,
looked at him out of the corners of her eyelashes, and was very sorry
for Usband, who seemed upset again.
‘Stomach,’ concluded Sally, who could find no other explanation for
Jocelyn’s ups and downs; and wondered whether she would ever dare bring
to his notice a simple remedy her father, who sometimes suffered too but
with less reserve, always had by him.
Well, there was one thing to be said for all this, thought Jocelyn, his
stern eye fixed straight ahead, his brow severe, as he hurried the car
along the road to the ferry--he was now awake. At last. High time too.
Till then, from the day he first saw Sally, in spite of moments of grave
spiritual disturbance and annoyance, he had been in a feverish dream.
Out of this dream Mrs. Cupp’s conduct had shaken him, and he believed he
might now be regarded as through with the phase in which he thought of
nothing but the present and let the future go hang. Now he had to
think. Decisions were being forced on him. Holidays end, but life goes
on; honeymoons finish, but wives don’t. Here he was with a wife, and
upon his soul, thought Jocelyn, precious little else,--no career, no
plans, no lodgings.
What a position. The lodgings, of course, were a small thing, but how
being turned out of them rankled! His life had been so dignified. He and
his mother had never once come across a member of the lower classes who
was rude. At South Winch all was order, decency, esteem in their own set
and respectfulness from everybody else. At Ananias what order, what
decency, what esteem, what respectfulness. Impossible at Ananias,
however modest one might be, not to know that one was looked upon as a
present pride and a future adornment, with the Master at the top of the
scale invariably remembering who one was and graciously smiling, and at
the bottom the almost affectionate attentions of one’s warm and panting
bedmaker. Impossible, too, not to know, though this, except for the
pleasure it gave his mother, was of no sort of consequence, that South
Winch regarded him with interest. These attitudes hadn’t at all
disarranged Jocelyn’s grave balance, hadn’t at all turned his head,
because of his real and complete absorption in his work; but they had
been there--a fitting and seemly background, a sunny, sheltering wall
against which he could expand, in quiet security, the flowers of his
ambitions.
Now here he was, kicked out into the street--it amounted to that--by a
person of the utmost obscurity called Cupp. Conceive it. Conceive having
got into a position in which anybody called Cupp could humiliate him.
He banged his fist down on the electric horn as an outlet to his
feelings. It gave a brief squeak, and was silent.
‘Horn’s gone wrong,’ he said, pressing it hard but getting nothing more
out of it.
Sally’s heart gave a thump. To have anything go wrong at such a moment!
For they were on that road cut in the hillside, narrow, twisty, slippery
and steep, which leads on the St. Mawes side down through a wood,
charming that late March afternoon with the mild sun slanting through
the pale, grey-green branches of naked trees across flocks of primroses,
to the King Harry Ferry. Far down on Sally’s side she could have seen,
if she had dared look, the placid waters of the Fal, unruffled in their
deep shelter by the wind that was blowing along the open country at the
top. Her anxious eyes, however, were not in search of scenery--at no
time was she anything of a hand at scenery,--they were strained towards
each fresh corner as it came in sight; for one day they had met a
charabanc round one of those very corners, a great wide horror taking up
nearly all the road. But luckily that day they were coming up the hill,
not going down it, and so they had the inside, and not the unprotected,
terrifying outside edge. Now they were outside, and suppose....
‘Horn’s gone wrong,’ said Jocelyn, just as she was thinking that.
But did it matter? she asked herself, seeking comfort. She tried to hope
it didn’t. Horns weren’t like wheels. One didn’t depend on them for
getting along. They just made noises. Useful, as one’s voice was useful,
but not essential, like one’s legs.
No, it didn’t matter much, evidently, for Usband was saying he would
put it right while they were on the ferry,--and then her heart gave a
much bigger thump, and seemed to leap into her mouth and crouch there
trembling, for there, round the very next corner, a few yards in front
of them, was another charabanc.
‘My gracious goodness,’ thought Sally, the colour ebbing out of her face
as she stiffened in her seat and held on tighter. ‘My gracious
_goodness_----’
But it was going down too; thank heaven it was going down too--making,
even as they were making, for the ferry.
Jocelyn banged again on his horn, which gave another weak squeak and
then was silent.
‘Oh, ’e ain’t goin’ to try and pass it? ’E ain’t goin’ to try and pass
it?’ Sally asked herself, clutching the side of the car.
The charabanc, however, was unaware that anything had come down the hill
behind it, and continued in the middle of the narrow road; and to
Sally’s relief Jocelyn stole quietly along close up to its back, for he
thought that if he kept right up against it and made no noise the people
in it wouldn’t be able to see Sally, and he wouldn’t have to sit there
impotently watching the look spreading over their faces when they caught
sight of her that by now he knew only too well.
All went smoothly till they were on the ferry. The charabanc drove
straight to the farther end of it, and Jocelyn slipped along close
behind, and then, getting out, still unobserved, opened his bonnet and
began to deal with the horn.
He had no side-horn with him. It had been removed by an idiot who lived
on his staircase at Ananias, and who constantly saw fun where no one
else did. He saw fun in removing Jocelyn’s horn; and though on serious
representations being made he restored it, it hadn’t been fixed on
again, because Jocelyn soon after that met Sally, and everything else
was blotted from his mind. Now he remembered it, and cursed the silly
idiot through whose fault it wasn’t at that moment on the car. Still, he
would soon set the electric one right; there couldn’t be much the matter
with it.
He proceeded, his head inside the bonnet, to set it right, and Sally,
feeling safe for a bit with Jocelyn outside the car, looked on
sympathetically. She wanted to help, if only by holding something, but
knew she mustn’t move. The back of the great charabanc towered above
their little two-seater as the stern of a liner towers above a tug. All
was quiet up there. The tops of the heads of the last row of passengers
were motionless, their owners no doubt being engaged in contemplating
the scenery of the Fal.
Then suddenly under Jocelyn’s manipulations the horn began to blow, and
the row of heads, startled into attentiveness by this unexpected
shrieking immediately underneath them, turned and peered down over the
edge of the charabanc’s back. Then they saw Sally, and their peering
became fixed.
But Jocelyn had no time for that now; what was of importance at the
moment was that the horn wouldn’t stop. It shrieked steadily; and though
he leapt backwards and forwards from the part of it that was in the
bonnet to the part of it that was on the steering-wheel and did things
rapidly and violently in both places, it went on shrieking.
Here was a nice thing, he thought, to happen to a man whose one aim was
to be unnoticed. It was fortunate that the noise drowned what he was
saying, for so Sally hadn’t the shock of hearing him break his recent
promise; and, much surprised at the conduct of the horn, she was shaken
out of her usual prudent silence and was moved to draw Jocelyn’s
attention to its behaviour by remarking, on one of his flying visits to
the steering wheel, that it wasn’t half hollering.
‘Oh, shut _up_!’ cried Jocelyn, beside himself; and who knows whether he
meant Sally or the horn?
Sally took it that he was addressing the horn, and observed
sympathetically that it didn’t seem to want to.
‘If only I had a small screwdriver!’ cried Jocelyn, frantically throwing
out the contents of his tool-box in search of what wasn’t there. ‘I
don’t seem to have a small screwdriver--a _small_ screwdriver--has
anybody got a _small_ screwdriver?’
The ferryman had no screwdriver, big or small, and the driver of the
charabanc, descended from his place to come and look on, had none small
enough; while as for the passengers, now all standing on their seats and
craning their necks, nothing was to be expected of them except
absorption in Sally.
‘Scissors would do--scissors, scissors!’ cried Jocelyn, who felt that if
the horn didn’t stop he would go mad.
Nobody had any scissors except Sally, who got on her feet quickly and
delightedly, because now she could help--the heads craned more than
ever--and said she had a pair at the bottom of her trunk.
‘No, no,’ said Jocelyn, unable even for the sake of perhaps stopping the
horn to face uncording and unpacking before the whole ferry that
terrible tin trunk of hers. ‘Sit still, Sally----’
And he began to hit whatever part seemed nearest to the noise with his
clenched fist.
‘_That_ won’t do no good,’ said the driver of the charabanc, grinning.
The grin spread to the face of the ferryman, and began to appear on the
faces piled up over the top of the charabanc.
Jocelyn saw it, and suddenly froze into icy impassiveness. Whatever the
damned horn chose to do he wasn’t going to provide entertainment for a
lot of blasted trippers. Besides--was he losing his temper? He, who had
supposed for years that he hadn’t got one?
He slammed the bonnet to, flung the tools back into their box, got into
his seat again, and sat waiting to drive off the ferry with a completely
expressionless face, just as if nothing at all were happening; and
Sally, deluded by his calm into supposing that he thought the horn was
now all right, after waiting a moment anxiously and seeing that he
didn’t do anything more, nudged him gently and told him it was still
blowing.
‘Is it?’ said Jocelyn; and there was something in the look he gave her
that made her more sure than ever that speech with Usband was a mistake.
It blew all the way to Truro. That was the nearest place where the thing
could be taken to a garage, and kicked to pieces if nothing else would
stop it. For ten miles it blew steadily. They streamed, shrieking, along
the lanes and out on to the main road. The drive was a nightmare of
astonished faces, of people rushing out of cottages, of children
shouting, of laughter flashing and gone, to be succeeded by more and
more, till the whole of every mile seemed one huge exclamation.
Sally squeezed terror-stricken into her corner. Such speed as this she
had never dreamed of, nor had it ever yet been got out of the
Morris-Cowley. She could only cling and hope. The noise was deafening.
The little car leapt into the air at every bump in the road. Jocelyn’s
face was like a marble mask. The charabanc, being bound for Falmouth,
turned off to the left at the main road, and the passengers rose as one
man in their seats and waved handkerchiefs of farewell; while Sally,
even at such a moment unable not to be polite, let go the side of the
car an instant to search with trembling fingers for her handkerchief and
wave it back.
§
At Truro he stopped at the first garage he saw, a small one in the
outlying part of the town, where there were few passers-by. The few
there were, however, immediately collected round the car that swooped
down the hill on them hooting, and still went on hooting in spite of
having stopped.
How simple, if it had been his mother who was with him, to have asked
her to walk on to an hotel or a confectioner’s, and wait for him while
he had the horn seen to. She would have proceeded through the town
unobserved and unmolested, and the hotel or confectioner would have
received her without curiosity, and attended respectfully to her wants.
Or she might have waited in the car, and there too she would have
aroused neither interest nor comment. A lady, you see. A lady, turning,
like a decent Italian house, her plain and expressionless side to the
public of the street, and keeping her other side, her strictly private
and delightful other side, for her family and friends.
He hurried Sally into the garage, into the furthermost depths of the
garage. Not for her, he felt, were quiet walks alone through streets and
unquestioning acceptance at hotels; not for him the convenience, the
comfort, of a companion who in a crisis needn’t be bothered about, who
automatically became effaced. Nothing effaced Sally. Her deplorable
conspicuousness made it impossible for her to go anywhere without him.
She had to be accompanied and protected as watchfully as if she were the
Crown Jewels. Yes, or a perambulator with a baby in it that could never
be left alone for an instant, and was always having to be pushed about
by somebody. That somebody was himself, Jocelyn Luke; Jocelyn Luke, who
as recently as a month ago was working away, hopeful and absorbed,
immersed in profoundly interesting and important studies, independent,
with nothing at all to trammel him or hinder him--with, on the contrary,
everything and everybody conspiring to leave him as untrammelled and
unhindered as possible. What was he now? Why, the perambulator’s
nursemaid. Just that: the perambulator’s attendant nursemaid.
This seemed to Jocelyn fantastic.
‘Wait here, will you?’ he said, hurrying her into the garage and
depositing her like a parcel in the remotest corner. ‘Don’t move, will
you, till I fetch you----’
And he left her there, safe as far as he could see, and went back to the
shrieking car.
She sat down thankfully on a pile of empty petrol cans. If only she
could be left there for a good long while, if only she could spend the
rest of the day there.... ‘Don’t move,’ Usband had said; as though she
wanted to! Except that she was very hungry, really hungry now that her
fears were over, for she had had no dinner yet, and it was two o’clock,
how happy would she have been to stay there without moving for the rest
of the afternoon. The quiet corner, away from danger, away from having
to guess what she ought to say to Usband, and away from the look he gave
her when she had said it, seemed almost perfect. It would have been
quite perfect if there had been anything to eat.
And as if in answer to her wish, the little door into a shed at the back
opened, and in walked a youth, smudged and pasty-looking as those look
who work much in garages, bearing in his hand a basin tied up in a
crimson handkerchief.
This was young Mr. Soper, the most promising of the mechanics employed
at the garage, who daily ate his dinner in that corner. There he could
sit on the pile of empty petrol cans, out of sight and yet within
earshot should his services suddenly be called for; and on this
particular day, his firm having been by chance extra busy all the
morning, he had gone later than usual into the private shed at the back
to fetch the basin of food left there for him by his landlady’s little
son, so that when Jocelyn took Sally into the corner it was empty,
because Mr. Soper, instead of being in the middle of his dinner as he
would have been on other days, was in the act of collecting it in the
shed.
‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ he said, staring at Sally, his mouth dropping open.
‘Beg pardon, I’m sure, Miss----’
And he put his arm quickly back round the door he had just come through
and whipped out a chair. ‘Won’t you--won’t you sit more comfortable,
Miss?’
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Sally, getting up and smiling politely.
Mr. Soper’s pasty face became bright red at that smile. He proceeded to
dust the seat of the chair by rubbing the bottom of his handkerchiefed
basin up and down it, and then stood staring at the young lady, the
basin dangling sideways in his hand, held carelessly by the knotted
corners of its handkerchief, and some of its gravy accordingly dribbling
out.
‘It do smell nice, don’t it,’ remarked Sally as she sat down, unable to
refrain from sniffing.
‘What do, Miss?’ asked Mr. Soper, recognising with almost incredulous
pleasure a manner of speech with which he was at his ease.
‘Wot you got in that there basin,’ said Sally, also recognising, and
also with pleasure, accents since her marriage become very dear to her
because reminiscent of home.
She smiled with the utmost friendliness at him. Mr. Soper found it
difficult to believe his eyes.
‘It’s my dinner,’ said Mr. Soper, gazing at the vision.
‘Well, I didn’t suppose it was your Sunday ’at,’ said Sally, pleased to
find that she too, given a chance, could say clever things. ‘Tell by the
smell it ain’t a nat.’
Mr. Soper also seemed to think this clever, for he laughed, as Sally put
it to herself, like anything.
‘Stew?’ she asked, her delicate nose describing little half circles of
appreciative inquiry.
‘That’s right,’ said Mr. Soper. ‘Irish.’
‘Thought so,’ said Sally; and added with a sigh, ‘the best of the lot.’
Mr. Soper being intelligent, though handicapped at the moment by not
quite believing his eyes, thought he here perceived encouragement to
untie the handkerchief. He put the basin on the floor at the young
lady’s feet, and untied it. She gazed at the lovely contents, at
potatoes showing their sleek sides through the brimming gravy, at
little ends of slender cutlets, at glimpses of bright carrots, at
pearly-shouldered onions gleaming from luscious depths, with such
evident longing that he was emboldened to ask her if she wouldn’t oblige
him by tasting it, and telling him her opinion of it as a stew.
‘There’s stews and stews, you know, Miss,’ he said, hastily arranging it
on an empty packing-case convenient for her, ‘but my old woman’s who
looks after me is ’ard to beat----’
And he ran into the little shed he had come out of, and after a minute’s
rummaging brought her a spoon and plate. His own spoon was in his
pocket. He didn’t use a plate.
Sally tasted; and, having tasted, went on tasting. Soon there was danger
that Mr. Soper’s dinner would be so much tasted that there wouldn’t be
any left, but he cared nothing for that. If he had had a hundred stews,
and he starving, they should all have been the young lady’s.
Sally tried not to taste too much, but she was so hungry, and the stew
was so lovely. Besides, the young man kept urging her to go on. He was
more like a friend than any one she had yet met. That he should never
take his eyes off her didn’t disturb her in the least, for she had been
used to that all her life; and his language was her language, and he
didn’t make her feel nervous, and she knew instinctively that she could
do nothing wrong in his sight, and she talked more to him during the
half hour they ate the stew together--for she presently insisted on his
getting another plate and joining in--than she had talked to Jocelyn the
whole time they had known each other; talked more to him, indeed, than
she had ever talked to anybody, except, when she was little, to those
girl friends who had later fallen away.
How surprising, how delightful, the ease with which she said things to
Mr. Soper, and the things that came into her head to say! Quite clever,
she was; quite sharp, and quick at the take-up. And laugh--why, the
young fellow made her laugh so that she could hardly keep from choking.
Not in all her life had she laughed as Mr. Soper made her laugh. Bright,
he was, and no mistake. While as for Mr. Soper himself, who could be
much, much brighter, he was fortunately kept damped down to his simpler
jokes by the effect the strange young lady’s loveliness had on him; so
that he who in Truro was known as the life of his set, as the boldest of
its wits as well as the most daring of its ladies’ men, was as mild and
timid in his preliminary frisks with Sally as a lately born lamb
exploring, for the first time, the beautiful strange world it had
suddenly discovered.
§
Jocelyn found them there, the empty basin on the floor between them,
and, sticking up in it, two spoons.
‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, starting a little, for she had forgotten
Jocelyn; and Mr. Soper had what he afterwards described as the turn of
his life.
She with a husband? She who was hardly old enough, if you asked him, to
have a father even? Got a husband all the time, and eaten his stew. He
didn’t grudge her the stew, but he did think she ought to have told him
she had a husband. Fancy eating his stew, and knowing she had a husband
the whole time. It seemed to make it unfair. It seemed to make it
somehow false pretences. And one of these blinking gentlemen, too; one
of your haw-haw chaps with the brains of a rabbit, thought Mr. Soper,
looking Jocelyn up and down, who took no notice of him whatever. See
that written all over him, thought Mr. Soper, seeking comfort in
derision,--a silly fool who couldn’t even mend his own horn. Wicked, he
called it, wicked, to thieve this girl away from her own lot, filch her,
before she knew what she was about, from her natural mates, go-ahead
chaps like, for instance, himself, when there were thousands of female
rabbits in his own class who would have fitted him like so many blooming
gloves.
‘Class should stick to class,’ said Mr. Soper to himself, who belonged
to at least four societies for violently welding all classes into one,
the one being Mr. Soper’s.
Jocelyn ignored him. (‘Haw, haw,’ thought Mr. Soper derisively, hurt by
this, and sticking out a chin that no one noticed.) Shutting his eyes to
the hideous evidence of the two spoons in the basin, to which he would
refer, he decided, later, he took Sally’s arm and hurried her out to the
now silent Morris-Cowley. This had not been his intention when he came
in. He had intended to tell her that he had just discovered the loss of
the luggage, that he was going back at once to look for it, and leave
her there, where she was safe and private, till he came back.
The sight of the basin and spoons forced him to other decisions. She was
obviously neither safe nor private. He said nothing at all, but gripping
her arm with, perhaps, unnecessary vigour seeing how unresistingly she
went, hurried her out of the place and helped her, again with, perhaps,
unnecessary vigour into her seat, slamming the door on her and hastening
round to the other side to his own.
Mr. Soper, however, was hard on their heels. Nothing if not nippy, he
was determined to see the last of her who not only was the first human
being he had met to whom he could imagine going down on his knees, but
also--thus did romance and reality mingle in his mind--who contained at
that moment at least three-quarters of his Irish stew. It seemed to give
him a claim on her. Inside himself was the remaining quarter, and it did
seem to unite them. Mortified as he was, deceived as he felt himself to
be, he yet couldn’t help, in his mind, making a joke about this union,
which he thought so good that he decided to tell it to his friends that
night at the whist-drive he was going to--it need not be repeated
here,--and he was so excessively nippy, such a very smart, all-there,
seize-your-opportunity young man, that he actually managed to say in
Sally’s left ear during the brief moment Jocelyn was on his way round to
the other side, bending down ostensibly to examine the near back tyre,
‘Whatever did you want to go and marry one of them haw-haw fellers for,
when there was----’
But what there was Sally never heard, for at that instant the car leaped
forward, leaving him on the kerb alone.
There he stood, looking after it; apparently merely a pale, contemptuous
mechanic, full of the proper scorn for a shabby little four-year-old
two-seater--he could of course date it exactly--but really a baffled
young man who had just been pulled up and thwarted in the very act of
falling, for the first time in his life, passionately and humbly in
love.
§
The Thistle and Goat was where Jocelyn took her. It was the first hotel
he saw. He had to deposit her somewhere; he couldn’t take her with him
in search of the luggage, and have her hanging round while he picked it
up and corded it on again, and making friends with anybody who came
along. Would she obey him and stay in the bedroom, or would he be forced
to the absurdity of locking her in? He was so seriously upset by the
various misfortunes of the day that he was ready to behave with almost
any absurdity. He was quite ready, for instance, to fight that spotted
oaf at the garage; he had itched to knock him down, and had only been
restrained by a vision of the crowd that would collect, and a
consciousness of how it would advertise Sally. To lock her in her room
was, he admitted, a violent sort of thing to do, and violence, he had
been brought up to believe, was always vulgar and ridiculous, but it
would anyhow be effective. Definite and strongly simple measures were,
he perceived, needful with Sally, especially when one was in a hurry. He
couldn’t, with the luggage lying somewhere on the road between Truro and
St. Mawes, probably burst open and indecently scattered and exposed,
start explaining to Sally all the things she was on no account to do
while he was away collecting it. He certainly would explain; and fully;
and clearly; for the spoon and basin business had been simply
disgusting, and he was going to put a stop to that sort of thing once
and forever, but not now,--not till there was plenty of time, so that he
really might have a chance of getting into her head at least the
beginning of a glimmer of what a lady simply couldn’t do. And he was so
angry that he corrected this sentence, and instead of the word lady
substituted the wife of a gentleman.
He locked her in.
‘If any one knocks,’ he told her before leaving her, ‘you will call out
that you have locked the door, as you wish to be undisturbed. You
understand me, Sally? That’s what you are to say--nothing else. Exactly
and only that.’
‘Right O,’ said Sally, a little dejectedly, for his tone and expression
discouraged cheerfulness, and preparing to lock the door behind him.
But it was he who locked it, much to her surprise, deftly pulling the
key out of the inside of the door and slipping it into the outside
before she realised what he was doing; and she heard him, having turned
it, draw it out and go away.
Yes, she was locked in all right.
‘Whatever----’ began Sally in her thoughts; then gave it up, and sat
down patiently on the edge of the wicker arm-chair to wait for the next
thing that would happen to her.
‘Glad I ’ad that there stew,’ she reflected.
‘My wife,’ said Jocelyn to the lady in the office downstairs, as he went
out still with the frown on his face caused by the realisation that he
hadn’t given Sally any reason for his suddenly leaving her, and that she
hadn’t asked for any--was that companionship?--‘wishes to be undisturbed
till I come back.’
‘_I_ see,’ said the lady, with what seemed to him rather a curious
emphasis, and she was about to inquire where his luggage was, for the
Thistle and Goat liked to know where luggage was, when he strode away.
Now what did she see, Jocelyn asked himself. Nobody had ever said _I_
see like that to any orders given when he was travelling with his
mother. The emphasis was marked. It sounded, he thought, both
suspicious and pert. He went out to the car, strangling a desire to go
back and ask her what she saw. Did she too think he wasn’t really
married? No, no--nonsense. Probably she saw and meant nothing. Really he
was becoming sensitive beyond all dignity, he thought as he drove off on
his unpleasant and difficult quest.
But the lady in the office had merely expressed herself badly. What was
worrying her was not what she saw but what she didn’t see, and what she
didn’t see was luggage. The Thistle and Goat, in common with other
hotels, liked luggage. It preferred luggage to be left rather than
ladies. Now the gentleman had gone off without saying a word about it,
and she tried to reassure herself by hoping, what was indeed true, that
he had gone to fetch it, and that she need do nothing about it, anyhow
for the present. And hardly had she settled down to a cup of
after-luncheon tea in the back office when the luggage arrived, brought
in by a different gentleman, and one, to her great relief, whom she
knew--young Mr. Carruthers, of Trevinion Manor.
Great was the confidence the Thistle and Goat had in the family of
Carruthers, whom it had known all its life. No orders given by a passing
tourist could have any weight when balanced against a Carruthers
request. So that when young Mr. Carruthers, learning that Mr. Luke had
lately left in his car, asked to see Mrs. Luke in order to hand over her
luggage personally and desired his card to be sent up, regardless of the
orders given by Mr. Luke the card was sent up and the message given; and
Sally received both it and the message, for the chambermaid, finding the
door locked and getting no answer, because Sally thought that by saying
nothing she wouldn’t be telling any lies, unlocked it with her
pass-key; and Sally, having heard the message and received the card,
issued forth obediently. Naturally she did. Usband had said nothing
about not leaving the room. She wanted her tin box, and to get unpacked.
Besides, when anybody sent for her she always went.
What had happened was that young Carruthers, strolling down as usual
just before lunch across the fields to the sea-front, had found the
window of the Cupp parlour flung wide open, and Mrs. Cupp vigorously
shaking the hearth-rug out of it. Evidently her lodgers had left; and he
went in and began asking her about them, and very soon discovered that
the lean chap was Jocelyn Luke--Luke of Ananias, as Carruthers, himself
at Oxford, instantly identified him, for there couldn’t well be two
Jocelyn Lukes, and his reputation had ebbed across to Oxford, where he
was known not unfavourably, and perhaps as on the whole the least
hopelessly unpromising of the Cambridge crowd. And just as Mrs. Cupp was
proceeding to tell him her opinion of the alleged Mrs. Luke, and how
Cupp had only now been able to come out of his bedroom and have his
dinner, there came news of the dropped luggage on the hill.
Carruthers felt that he was the very man to deal with that. He rushed
off, thrust everybody aside, collected it reverently, for the tin trunk
had indeed burst open, and its modest contents, of a touching propriety
he thought, as he carefully put back things that felt like flannel, were
scattered on the road, and then, fetching his car, took it into Truro.
It was easy, at the turn to Falmouth, to discover which way the Lukes
had gone. It was also easy, on arriving in Truro, to discover which
hotel they were in. He only had to describe them. Everybody had noticed
them. Everybody on the road had heard their horn, and everybody had seen
the beautiful young lady. And because he went into the town by the
direct road, and as Jocelyn coming out of it, and sure the luggage
hadn’t anyhow been dropped nearer than the top of the hill beyond the
garage, took a round-about way, joining the main road only on the other
side of the garage so as not again to have to set eyes on the loathsome
oaf employed in it and risk being unable to resist going in and knocking
him down, they missed each other precisely there; and accordingly when
Jocelyn, having been all the way to St. Mawes, where he heard what had
been done, got back about five, tired, very hungry, and wondering how on
earth he was now going to find the officious person they said was trying
to restore his belongings to him, he was told by the boots that young
Mr. Carruthers had arrived just after he left, and was waiting to see
him upstairs in the drawing-room.
‘Thank heaven,’ thought Jocelyn, feeling the key in his pocket, ‘that I
locked her in.’
And he went into the drawing-room, and there at a table in a corner by
the fire, with the remains on it of what seemed to have been an
extraordinarily good and varied tea, she was sitting.
§
Carruthers--he recognised him at once as the man with the dog called
Sally--was worshipping her. Decently, for Carruthers was plainly a
decent chap, but worshipping her all right; it was written in every line
and twist of him, as he leaned forward eagerly, telling her stories,
apparently, for he was talking a great deal and she was only
listening,--amusing stories, for she was smiling.
She never smiled with him, thought Jocelyn; not like that, not a real
smile of just enjoyment. From the very first day, that day at tea in the
Pinner parlour, she had seemed frightened of him. But she couldn’t be
much frightened, for here she was openly disregarding his injunctions,
and somehow got out of her locked room. That seemed to Jocelyn anything
but being frightened; it seemed to him to the last degree fearless and
resourceful. And how strangely at variance with her apparent shyness and
retiringness that twice in one day she should have allowed strange men
to feed her.
He approached their corner, pale and grim. He was tired to death after
the vexatious day he had had, and very hungry after not having had
anything to eat since breakfast. Carruthers had watched his opportunity,
of course--waited somewhere till he had seen him go, and then taken the
luggage in and asked for Sally. And Sally, somehow getting out of that
room, had defied his orders and come down. Well, he couldn’t do anything
with her at that moment. He was too tired to flare up. Besides--scenes;
he couldn’t for ever make scenes. What a revolting form of activity to
have thrust upon him! But the amount of ideas that would, he perceived,
have to be got into her head if life was to be even approaching
tolerable was so great that his mind, in his fatigued state, refused to
consider it.
She saw him first, and, much pleased with everything, with the beautiful
tea, with Mr. Carruthers’ funny stories and with her pleasant afternoon
altogether, continued to smile, but at him now, and said to Carruthers,
‘’Ere comes Mr. Luke.’
And on Carruthers getting up and Jocelyn arriving at the table,
introduced them.
‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally; explaining Carruthers to Jocelyn by
saying, ‘The gentleman as brought our traps.’
Jocelyn couldn’t be angry with Carruthers; he looked at him so
friendlily, and shook his hand with what surely was a perfectly sincere
heartiness. And though he was obviously bowled over by Sally--naturally,
thought Jocelyn, seeing that he had none of the responsibility and only
the fun--there was something curiously sympathetic in his attitude to
Jocelyn himself, something that seemed, oddly, to understand.
Sally, his wife, said, for instance, ‘’Ad yer tea?’--just that, and made
no attempt to give him any. But what Carruthers said, quickly going
across and ringing the bell, was, ‘I bet you haven’t. You’ve had the
sort of rotten day there’s no time for anything in but swearing. They’ll
bring some fresh stuff in a moment. It’s a jolly good tea they give one
in this place,--don’t they, Mrs. Luke.’
‘’_Eav_enly,’ said Sally. And turning to Jocelyn she said, more timidly,
‘’Ad to come out of the bedroom. The servant----’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ interrupted Jocelyn hastily, earnestly desiring
to keep from Carruthers the knowledge that he had locked her in. Things
look so different, especially domestic actions, in the eyes of a third
person unaware of the attendant circumstances, thought Jocelyn.
He dropped into a chair. What a comfort it was, after a fortnight of
being dog alone with Sally, to hear that decent voice. It really was
like music. He hadn’t, at Cambridge, cared much for the Oxford way of
speaking, but how beautiful it seemed after the Pinner way. He wanted to
shut his eyes and just listen to it. ‘Go on, go on,’ he wanted to say,
when Carruthers paused for a moment in his pleasant talk; and he sat
there, listening and eating and drinking in silence, and Carruthers
looked after him, and fed him, and talked pleasantly to him, and talked
pleasantly to Sally as well, and did, in fact, all the talking. There
was something about Jocelyn that made Carruthers feel maternal. He was
so thin. His shoulder blades stuck out so, and his lean, nervous face
twitched. Carruthers thought, as he had thought on that first occasion,
only this time, knowing who he was and aware of Sally’s class, with ten
times more conviction, ‘Poor devil’; but he also thought, his eyes
resting on the lovely thing in the corner--he had established her in the
farthermost corner of the Thistle and Goat’s drawing-room, for he too
had instantly begun to hide her, and she lit up its gloom as a white
flower lights up the dusk--he also thought, ‘Poor angel.’
§
Yes, she was an angel, and a poor one; he was sure of that. Carruthers,
so romantic inside, so square and unemotional outside, told himself she
was a forlorn child-angel torn out of her natural heaven, which
obviously was completely h--less and obscure, but comfortable and
unexacting, and pitched into a world of strangers, the very ABC of whose
speech and behaviour she didn’t understand.
After two hours _tête à tête_ with Sally, two hours which seemed like
ten minutes, so deeply was he interested, this was his conclusion. She
hadn’t been very shy, not after he left off being shy, which he was for
a moment or two, confused by the sheer shock of her beauty seen close;
but he had soon recovered and got into his stride, which was an easy one
for her to keep up with, his one idea being to please her and make her
happy.
It wasn’t difficult to please Sally and make her happy; you had only to
avoid frightening her. Mr. Soper hadn’t frightened her, he had fed
her,--always a good beginning with a woman. Carruthers knew this, and
immediately ordered tea, in spite of its still being only three o’clock;
and, since the Thistle and Goat specialised in teas, the one which was
presently brought was of such a conspicuous goodness, with so many
strange Cornish cakes and exciting little sandwiches, besides a bowl of
the Cornish cream Sally liked altogether best of anything she had
learned to know on her honeymoon, that she soon felt as comfortable and
friendly with Carruthers as she had with Mr. Soper.
She was at the age of jam. Cream was still enough to make her happy. And
she wasn’t used to quantities. In her frugal life there had never been
quantities of anything, and they excited her. Quantities combined with
kindness--what could be more delightful? She didn’t suppose she had
enjoyed anything so much ever as that tea. And it was sheer enjoyment,
nothing to do with hunger at all, for hunger had been done away with by
Mr. Soper’s stew, and this was a deliberate choosing, a splendid
unnecessariness, a sense of wide margin, of freedom, of power, and no
need to think of putting away what was left over for next day.
So by the time that Carruthers said, with that simplicity which made his
mother sure there was no one in the world like her Gerry, ‘I’ve never
seen any one as beautiful as you, and I didn’t know there could be
anybody,’ Sally, unstiffened and lubricated by all the cream, was quite
ready to discuss her appearance or anything else with him as far as she,
restricted of speech as she was, could discuss at all, and he discovered
to his deep surprise that she regarded her beauty as a thing to be
apologised for, as a pity, as the same thing really as a deformity,
forcing her to be conspicuous and nothing but a worry to those she loved
and who loved her, and she not able to help it or alter it, or do
anything at all except be sorry.
‘Father,’ she said, ‘was in a state--you’ve no idea. If any one just
looked my way. And they was always lookin’.’
Carruthers nodded. Just what he had been thinking when first he saw her
on the hill behind St. Mawes, with Luke trying to cover her up, to
extinguish her quickly in her hat,--the responsibility, the anxiety....
But that she herself should regard it like that astonished him. Surely
any woman....
‘And Mr. Luke--_’e’s_ frightened too. ‘Ides me, same as Father and
Mother used.’
‘You’re really imprisoned, then,’ said Carruthers, staring at her.
‘Imprisoned in your beauty.’
But seeing a puzzled expression come into her eyes he began to talk of
other things, to tell her stories, to amuse her; for after all it wasn’t
very fair to Luke, somehow, whose back happened to be turned, much
against his will Carruthers was sure, to let her tell him about herself
and her life. She was too defenceless. She was a child, who would talk
to any stranger who was kind; and he could guess all he was entitled to
know, he could see for himself the gift she held in her hands, the
supreme gift for a woman, the gift beyond all others in power for the
brief time it lasted, and he could see she was entirely unconscious of
its value, of what might be done with it if only she knew how. And every
time she opened her touchingly beautiful mouth of quick smiles and
painstaking response, her h’s dropped about him in showers.
Well, who cared? She might say anything she liked, and it wouldn’t
matter; in any voice, with any accent, and it wouldn’t matter. Not even
if she said coy common things, or arch common things, as he half
expected she would when first she spoke and startled him with the
discovery of her class, would it matter, For one needn’t listen. One
could always just sit and watch. Yes--who cared?
But the answer to that, he knew, wasn’t simply Nobody, it was Jocelyn
Luke. Luke would care. He quite obviously did care already, though they
couldn’t have been married more than two or three weeks; and she dumbly
felt it, Carruthers was sure, for, after having been eager to get out of
her imprisoning shell of illiteracy and say what she could while she was
alone with him, directly Luke joined them she retired into a kind of
anxious caution, looking at him before she said anything in answer to a
question, and keeping as much as possible to Yes and No.
‘He’s been teaching her,’ thought Carruthers. ‘He’s been going for her
h’s. She’s on his nerves, and she knows it--no, not knows it, but feels
it. She doesn’t _know_ anything about anything yet, but she feels a
jolly lot, I’ll swear.’
Deeply interesting Lukes. What would their fate be, he wondered.
§
After Carruthers had gone, pensively driving himself back to St. Mawes
in the pale spring twilight, Jocelyn, soothed by his agreeable talk and
manifest friendliness, and also by the good tea, felt quite different.
He no longer wanted to admonish Sally. He didn’t even want to ask her
why she had come out of the bedroom. He was ashamed of that; ashamed of
having locked her in, degrading her to God knew what level of
childishness, of slavery, of, indeed, some pet animal that might
stray--in fact, a dog. He shuddered a little, and looked at her
deprecatingly, and leaning over the table took her hand and kissed it.
‘Sally,’ he murmured, suddenly for the first time since he grew up,
feeling very young,--and how painfully young to be married!
Marriage. It wasn’t just love-making, he thought as he kissed her hand;
love-making, and then done with it and get on with your work. It was
responsibility constant and lasting, not only for the other life so
queerly and suddenly and permanently joined on to one, but also for
oneself in a quite new way, a way one had never till then at all
considered.
He kissed her hand again.
‘Tea done ’im good,’ thought Sally.
But it was the half hour with one of his own kind, and one who, while
definitely charming to him, yet so obviously and with a kind of
reverence admired Sally, that had done him good. It had restored him to
a condition of tranquillity, and he felt more normal, more really
happy--he didn’t count his moments of wild rapture as happiness, because
they somehow weren’t--than he had done since the days, now so curiously
far away, before he had met her. Carruthers had reassured him. His
behaviour to Sally had immensely reassured him. The world was, after
all, chiefly decent. It didn’t consist solely of foul-minded Cupps, nor
of impudent young men in garages. Just as there were more people in it
healthy than sick, so there were more people in it who were appreciative
and kindly than there were people who weren’t. Carruthers had known all
about him, too. Jocelyn hadn’t credited Oxford with so much intelligent
awareness. It was infinitely pleasant, after a fortnight with Sally who,
wonderful as she was, uniquely wonderful he freely admitted, yet hadn’t
the remotest idea of what he had done and still hoped to do--yes, by
God, still hoped to do. Why not? Why chuck Cambridge after all? Why not
face it with Sally, and train her who was, he knew, most obedient and
only needing showing, to behave in such a way that no one, if she lived
there, would dare make himself a nuisance?--it was infinitely pleasant
after this to have been with somebody who knew all about him. He hadn’t
got very far, of course, in his work; nobody knew that better than
himself. But it had been a good enough beginning for Carruthers and
Oxford to have heard of him. And the desire to go on, to proceed along
the glorious path, came back to him in a mighty flood as he sat in the
Thistle and Goat’s drawing-room, with that other desire appeased and
seeming to be getting ready to fall into its proper place.
If Sally too could be got into her proper place, mightn’t life even yet
be a triumph?
§
He wrote to his mother that night, after Sally had gone to bed. He sent
her there early, and with a return of irritability, because of the way
the people in the dining-room at dinner, and afterwards in the
drawing-room where he and she sat in a remote corner while he had his
coffee, behaved. It was really outrageous. This was his first experience
of dining with her in a public place. And it was no good his glaring at
the creatures, because they never gave him so much as a glance.
So he sent her to bed, and then he wrote to his mother. Better go home.
Better now go home to South Winch, and not wander about in expensive
hotels, with hateful old men in dinner jackets and fat women in beads
staring their eyes out. Hotels were impossible with Sally; and so were
lodgings, with the risk of another suspicious and insulting landlady.
Besides, a fortnight was enough for a honeymoon, and for this particular
honeymoon, with all its difficulties, quite enough. Home was the place.
Almond Tree Cottage, and its quiet. He wanted to go home. He wanted to
go home to his mother, and get her meeting with Sally over, and sit in
that little study of his at the top of the house where not a soul could
see him, and think out what was best to do next.
His mother would help him. She had always understood and helped. Never
yet had she failed him. And she would help him, too, in the business of
looking after Sally,--take her off his hands sometimes, and perhaps
succeed in getting her quite soon to talk like a civilised being.
It had been the last thing he had originally intended, to go with Sally
to stay at his mother’s. Introduce her, of course; take her down for a
day; but not stay there, for well did he know his marriage would fall
like a sword on his mother, cleaving her heart. Things, however, had
changed since then. He had in his haste, in his blind passion, written
to her that he was going to chuck Cambridge, and now that his passion
was no longer blind and he wasn’t going to chuck it--no, he’d be damned
if he would; not anyhow till he had tried what it was like there with
Sally--he was anxious to go to his mother and heal up at least one of
the wounds he knew his letter must have made. He would ask her what she
thought, having seen Sally, of the idea of her living in Cambridge.
Perhaps--it flashed into his mind like light--his mother would live
there too; give up Almond Tree Cottage, and live with them in Cambridge.
What a solution. Then she could look after Sally, and be such a comfort,
such a blessed comfort, to him as well. What a splendid, simple
solution.
He threw down his pen, and stared straight in front of him. They would
all be happy then--he going on with his work, Sally being taught by his
mother, and his mother not separated from him.
When he went to bed, and Sally stirred in her sleep as if she were
waking up, he took her in his arms and asked her if she would like to
live in Cambridge.
‘Yes,’ murmured Sally, even though half asleep remembering to stick to
monosyllables.
‘It’ll be better than London,’ said Jocelyn, holding her close. ‘Won’t
it, my love? Won’t it, my _beautiful_ love?’ he added in a whisper, for
there was something about Sally’s hair, against which his face was, a
softness, a sweetness....
‘And perhaps my mother will come and live with us too there. You’d like
that, wouldn’t you, darling?’
There was a brief pause. Then, ‘Yes,’ murmured Sally.
He kissed her delicious hair. ‘Darling,’ he said tenderly, pleased by
this absence of all difficulty. ‘You’re half asleep,’ he added in her
ear, pushing aside the hair that lay over it with his mouth.
But was she? For, after another pause, she said, her face still turned
away from him, something that sounded like Father.
‘Yes, darling?’ said Jocelyn, as she didn’t go on.
‘’E might come too, p’raps,’ murmured Sally.
‘What?’ said Jocelyn, not sure he could have heard right, bending his
face nearer. ‘Your father?’
‘Yes,’ murmured Sally.
‘Your _father_?’ said Jocelyn again.
‘Yes,’ murmured Sally. ‘Then--we’d be tidy like--you’d ’ave ’er, and I’d
’ave ’im.’
‘Go to sleep Sally,’ said Jocelyn with sudden authority. ‘Do you know
what time it is? Nearly eleven.’