§
At Crippenham next morning it was very fine. London and South Winch were
in a mist, but the sun shone brightly in Cambridgeshire, and the Duke
woke up with a curiously youthful feeling of eagerness to get up quickly
and go downstairs. He knew he couldn’t do anything quickly, but the odd
thing was that for years and years he hadn’t wanted to, and that now
suddenly he did want to; and just to want to was both pleasant and
remarkable.
He had been thinking in the night,--or, rather, Charles’s thoughts,
placed so insistently before him, had sunk in and become
indistinguishable from his own; and he had thought so much that he
hadn’t gone to sleep till nearly five. But then he slept soundly, and
woke up to find his room flooded with sunshine, and to feel this
curiously agreeable eagerness to be up and doing.
The evening before, when Charles came in from the garden and packed his
bewitching guest off to bed, he had been very cross, and had listened
peevishly to all his son was explaining and pointing out; not because he
wasn’t interested, or because he resented the suggestions being made,
but simply because the moment that girl left the room it was as if the
light had gone out,--the light, and the fire. She needn’t have obeyed
Charles. Why should she obey Charles? She might have stayed with him a
little longer, warming him by the sight of her beauty and her youth. The
instant she went he felt old and cold; back again in the condition he
was in before she arrived, dropped back again into age and listlessness,
and, however stoutly he pretended it wasn’t so, into a deathly chill.
Now that, thought the Duke, himself surprised at the difference his
guest’s not being in the room made, was what had happened to David too
towards the end. They didn’t read it in the Lessons in church on
Sundays, but he nevertheless quite well remembered, from his private
inquisitive study of the Bible in his boyhood, how they covered David
when he was old with clothes but he got no heat, and only a young person
called the Shunammite was able, by her near presence, to warm him. The
Duke didn’t ask such nearness as had been the Shunammite’s to David, for
he, perhaps because he was less old, found all he needed of renewed life
by merely looking at Sally; but he did, remembering David while Charles
talked, feel aggrieved that so little as this, so little as merely
wishing to look at her, should be taken from him, and she sent to bed at
ten o’clock.
So he was cross, and pretended not to understand, and anyhow not to be
interested. But he had understood very well, and in the watches of the
night had come to his decision. At his age it wouldn’t do to be too long
coming to decisions; if he wished to secure the beautiful young
creature--Charles said help, but does not helping, by means of the
resultant obligations, also secure?--he must be quick.
He rang for his servant half an hour before the usual time. He wanted to
get up, to go to her again, to look at her, to sit near her and have
her fragrant, lovely youth flowing round him. The mere thought of Sally
made him feel happier and more awake than he had felt for years. Better
than the fortnight’s cure of silence and diet at Crippenham was one look
at Sally, one minute spent with Sally. And she was so kind and
intelligent, as well as so beautiful--listening to every word he said
with the most obvious interest, and not once fidgeting or getting
sleepy, as people nowadays seemed to have got into the habit of doing.
It was like sitting in the sun to be with her; like sitting in the sun
on a warm spring morning, and freshness everywhere, and flowers, and
hope.
Naturally, having found this draught of new life the Duke wasn’t going
to let it go. On the contrary, it was his firm intention, with all the
strength and obstinacy still in him, to stick to Sally. How fortunate
that she was poor, and he could be the one to help her. For she, owing
all her happiness to him, couldn’t but let him often be with her.
Charles had said it would be both new and desirable to do something in
one’s life for nothing; but the Duke doubted if it were ever possible,
however much one wished to, to do anything for nothing. In the case of
Sally it was manifestly impossible. Whatever he did, whatever he gave,
he would be getting far more back; for she by her friendship, and
perhaps affection, and anyhow by her presence, would be giving him life.
‘Come out into the garden, my dear,’ he said, when he had been safely
helped downstairs--the stairs were each time an adventure--putting his
shaking hand through her arm. ‘I want to see your hair in the sun, while
I talk to you.’
And leading him carefully out, Sally thought, ‘Poor old gentleman,’ and
minded nothing at all that he said. Her hair, her eyes, all that _Oh my
ain’t you beautiful_ business, of which she was otherwise both sick and
afraid, didn’t matter in him she called the Jewk. He was just a poor old
gentleman, an ancient and practically helpless baby, towards whom she
felt like a compassionate mother; and when he said, sitting in the sunny
sheltered seat she had lowered him on to and taking her hand and looking
at her with his watery old eyes, that he was going to give her
Crippenham, and that the only condition he made was that he might come
and do a rest-cure there rather often, she smiled and nodded as sweetly
and kindly as she smiled and nodded at everything else he said.
Like the croonings of a baby were the utterances of the Duke in Sally’s
ears; no more meaning in them, no more weight to be attached to them,
than that. Give her Crippenham? Poor old gentleman. Didn’t know what he
was talking about any more, poor old dear. She humoured him; she patted
his arm; and she wished to goodness Laura would be quick and come and
take her to her husband.
Sally now longed to get to Jocelyn as much as if she had passionately
loved him. He was her husband. He was the father of the little baby. Her
place was with him. She had had enough of this fleshpot business. She
was homesick for the things she knew,--plain things, simple things,
duties she understood. Kind, yes; kind as kind, the picks were, and they
meant well; but she had had enough. It wasn’t right it wasn’t, at least
it wasn’t right for her, to live so fat. What would her father have said
if he had seen her in the night in Laura’s bedroom, among all that lot
of silver bottles and brushes and laces and silks, and herself in a
thin silk nightgown the colour of skin, making her look stark naked?
What would he have said if he had seen her having her breakfast up there
as though she were ill,--and such a breakfast, too! Fleshpots, he’d have
said; fleshpots. And he would have said, Sally, strong if inaccurate in
her Bible, was sure, that she had sold her husband for a mess of
fleshpots.
This was no life for her, this was no place for her, she thought, her
head bowed and the sun playing at games of miracles with her hair while
the Duke talked. She drew impatient patterns with the tip of her shoe on
the gravel. She hardly listened. Her ear was cocked for the first sounds
of Laura. She ached to have done with all this wasting of time, she
ached to be in her own home, getting on with her job of looking after
her man and preparing for her child. ‘Saturday today,’ she mused, such a
lovely look coming into her eyes that the Duke, watching her, was sure
it was his proposed gift making her divinely happy. ‘We’d be ’avin’
shepherd’s pie for dinner--or p’raps a nice little bit of fish....’
And, coming out of that pleasant dream with a sigh, she thought,
‘Oughtn’t never to ’ave met none of these ’ere. All comes of runnin’
away from dooty.’
Apologetically she turned her head and looked at the Duke, for she had
forgotten him for a moment, besides having been thinking on lines that
were hardly grateful. Poor old gentleman--still keeping on about giving
her Crippenham. Crippenham? She’d as soon have the cleaning of
Buckingham Palace while she was about it as of that great, frightening
house--or, come to that, of a prison.
But how like a bad dream it was, being kept there with the morning
slipping past, and she unable to reach him across the gulf of his
deafness. By eleven o’clock she was quite pale with unhappiness, she
could hardly bear it any longer. Would she have to give manners the
go-by and take to her heels once more? This time, though, there would be
no kind father-in-law to lend her a car; this time she would have to
walk,--walk all the way, and then when she got there find Jocelyn
unaided. And the old gentleman kept on and on about Crippenham being
hers, and everything in it....
’E’s nothin’ but a nimage,’ she said to herself in despair. ‘Sits ’ere
like a old idol. Wot do _’e_ know about a married woman’s dooties?’
‘Where’s Charles?’ asked the Duke.
Sally shook her head. She hadn’t seen a sign of him that morning.
‘I want him to get my solicitor down--no time to lose,’ said the Duke.
‘You’re to have the place lock, stock and barrel, my dear, such as it
is--servants and all.’
Servants and all? Poor old gentleman. Why, she wouldn’t know which end
of a servant to start with. She with servants? And these ones here who,
however hard she tried up there in the bedroom, wouldn’t make friends.
They called her Madam. She Madam? Oh, my gracious, thought Sally,
shrinking in horror from such a dreadful picture.
‘It’s a hole of a place,’ went on the Duke, ‘and quite unworthy of you,
but we can have more bathrooms put in, and it’ll do till we find
something you like better. And Charles tells me you married rather
suddenly, and haven’t got anywhere to go to at present. He also says you
have to live close to Cambridge, because of your husband’s studies. And
he also says, and I entirely agree with him, my dear, that you oughtn’t
to be in Cambridge itself, but somewhere more secluded--somewhere where
you won’t be seen quite so much, somewhere hidden, in fact. Now I think,
I really do think, that Crippenham, in spite of all its disadvantages,
does exactly fulfil these requirements. And I want you to have it, my
dear--to take it as my wedding present to you, and to live in it very
happily, and bless it and make it beautiful by your presence.’
Thus the Duke.
‘’E don’t ’alf _talk_,’ thought Sally, quivering to be gone.
§
Charles, on being sent for by the Duke, was nowhere to be found. That
was because he was in South Winch. He had gone off at daybreak in his
car, and at the very moment his father woke up to the fact of his
absence and asked where he was, he was standing in the drawing-room at
Almond Tree Cottage, his eyes fixed eagerly on the door, waiting for
Mrs. Luke.
He hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking of her. Somehow he had got it
into his head that she, more than her son, would suffer through Sally’s
disappearance, and be afraid. Because, thought Charles, she would feel
that it was from her the girl had run, and that any misfortune that
might happen to her would be, terribly, laid at her door. For two whole
days and two whole nights that unfortunate woman must have gone through
torture. What Charles couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t thought of
this before. Indeed his and Laura’s conduct had been utterly
unpardonable. The least he could now do, he thought, as he lay wide
awake throughout the night, was to get to South Winch without losing a
minute, and put Mrs. Luke out of her misery, and beg her forgiveness.
She was in the garden when he arrived. The little maid, staring at the
card he asked her to take to her mistress, said she would fetch her, and
ushered him into the drawing-room, where he waited with the books, the
bright cushions, the Tiepolo, and two withered tulips in a glass from
which nearly all the water had dried away; and while he waited he fought
with a feeling he considered most contemptible, in face of the facts,
that he was somehow on an errand of mercy, and arriving with healing in
his wings,--that he was somehow a benefactor.
Sternly he told himself he ought to feel nothing but shame; sternly he
tried to suppress his glow of misplaced self-satisfaction. There was
nothing good about him and Laura in this business. They had, the pair of
them, been criminally impulsive and selfish. He knew it; he acknowledged
it. Yet here he was, secretly glowing, his eyes watching the door, as
much excited as if he were going to bestow a most magnificently
generous, unexpected present.
Then it opened, and Mrs. Luke came in. He was sure it was Mrs. Luke, for
no one else could look so unhappy; and the glow utterly vanished, and
the feeling of shame and contrition became overwhelming.
‘She’s safe,’ said Charles quickly, eager to put a stop at once to the
expression in her eyes. ‘She’s at my father’s. She’s going to Cambridge
today to your son. She’s been with us the whole time----’
And he went to her, and took her hand and kissed it.
‘If it weren’t so ridiculous,’ he said, his face flushed with painful
contrition, still holding her hand and looking into her heavy,
dark-ringed eyes, ‘I’d very much like to go down on my knees to you, and
beg your pardon.’
§
And while Charles was in South Winch, Laura was in Cambridge, dealing
with Jocelyn. She, like Charles, had become conscious of the sufferings
of the Lukes, and, like him, was obsessed by them and lost in
astonishment that she hadn’t thought of them sooner; but for some
obscure reason, or instinct, her compunctions and her sympathies were
for Jocelyn rather than for his mother, and after a second sleepless
night, during which she was haunted by the image of the unfortunate
young husband and greatly tormented, she went down, much chastened, to
Cambridge by the first possible train, with only one desire now, to put
him out of his misery and beg his forgiveness.
So that Jocelyn, sitting doing nothing, his untouched breakfast still
littering the table, sitting bent forward in the basket-chair common to
the rooms of young men at Cambridge, his thin hands gripped so hard
round his knees that the knuckles showed white, his ears strained for
the slightest sound on the staircase, his eyes hollow from want of
sleep, sitting as he had sat all the previous afternoon after getting
Mr. Thorpe’s telegram and most of the night, sitting waiting, listening,
and perhaps for the first time in his life, for his mother had not
included religious exercises in his early education, doing something not
unlike praying, did at last hear a woman’s step crossing Austen’s Court,
hesitating at what he felt sure was his corner, then slowly coming up
his staircase, and hesitating again at the first floor.
All the blood in his body seemed to rush to his head and throb there.
His heart thumped so loud that he could hardly hear the steps any more.
He struggled out of his low chair and stood listening, holding on to it
to steady himself. Would they come up higher? Yes--they were coming up.
Yes--it must be Sally. Sally--oh, oh, _Sally_!
He flew to the door, pulled it open, and saw--Laura.
‘It’s all right,’ she panted, for the stairs were steep and she was fat,
‘it is--about Sally--don’t look so----’ she stopped to get her
breath--‘so dreadfully disappointed. She’s safe. If you’ll--oh, what
_stairs_----’ she pressed her hand to her heaving bosom--‘come with me,
I’ll--take you--to her----’
And having got to the top, she staggered past him into his room, and
dropped into the basket-chair, and for a minute or two did nothing but
gasp.
But how difficult she found him. Jocelyn, whose reactions were always
violent, behaved very differently from the way his mother at that moment
was behaving, placed in the same situation of being asked forgiveness by
a Moulsford. Instead of forgiving, of being, as Laura had pictured, so
much delighted at the prospect of soon having Sally restored to him that
he didn’t mind anything, he appeared to mind very much, and quarrelled
with her. She, accustomed to have everything she did that was perhaps a
little wrong condoned and overlooked by all classes except her own, was
astonished. Here she was, doing a thing she had never done before,
begging a young man to forgive her, and he wouldn’t. On the contrary, he
rated her. Rated her! Her, Laura Moulsford. She knew that much is
forgiven those above by those below, and had frequently deplored the
practice as one that has sometimes held up progress, but now that the
opposite was being done to herself she didn’t like it at all.
‘Oh, what a nasty disposition you’ve got!’ she cried at last, when
Jocelyn had been telling her for ten impassioned minutes, leaning
against the chimney-piece and glowering down at her with eyes flashing
with indignation, what he thought of her. ‘I’m glad now, instead of
sorry, for what I did. At least Sally has had two days less of you.’
‘If you’re going to rag me as well----’ began Jocelyn, taking a quick
step forward as if to seize and shake this fat little incredibly
officious stranger,--so like him, his mother would have said, to waste
time being furious instead of at once making her take him to Sally.
But Laura, unacquainted with his ways, was astonished.
Then he pulled himself up. ‘It’s not you I’m cursing really at all,’ he
said. ‘It’s myself.’
‘Well, I don’t mind that,’ said Laura, smiling.
‘I’ve got the beastliest temper,’ said Jocelyn.
‘So I see,’ said Laura.
‘Do you think,’ he asked, for in spite of his anger he was all soft and
bruised underneath after his two days of fear, and when the fat stranger
smiled there was something very motherly about her, ‘I shall ever get
over it?’
‘Perhaps if you try--try hard.’
‘But--look here, I don’t care what you say--what _business_ had you to
make away with my wife?’
‘Now you’re beginning all over again.’
‘Make away with my wife, smash up everything between me and my
mother----’
‘Oh, _oh_----’ interrupted Laura, stopping up her ears, and bowing her
head before the storm.
§
It was ten more minutes before she got him out of his rooms and into a
taxi.
‘We’ve lost twenty minutes,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘You’ve
lost twenty kisses you might have had----’
‘For God’s _sake_ don’t rag me!’ cried Jocelyn, gripping her by the arm
and bundling her into the taxi.
‘But what,’ asked Laura, who had tumbled in a heap on the seat, yet who
didn’t mind being thrown in because she knew she deserved worse than
that, ‘what else can one do with a creature like you?’
And she told him very seriously, as they heaved along towards
Crippenham, that the real mistake had been Sally’s marrying beneath her.
‘Beneath her?’ repeated Jocelyn, staring.
‘Isn’t it apparent?’ said Laura. ‘Angels should only marry other angels,
and not descend to entanglements with perfectly ordinary----’
‘No, I’m damned if I’m ordinary,’ thought Jocelyn. ‘And who the devil is
_she_, anyhow?’
‘Bad-tempered,’ continued Laura.
‘Yes, I’m beastly bad-tempered,’ he admitted.
‘Conceited----’
‘I swear I’m not conceited,’ he said.
‘Aren’t you?’ said Laura, turning her head and scrutinising him with
bright, mocking eyes.
And then, coming swift and silent as an arrow along the road towards
their taxi, she saw her father’s car.
‘Oh, stop!’ she cried, leaping to her feet and thrusting as much of
herself as would go through the window. ‘Here’s my father--yes, and
Sally. Stop--oh, _stop_!’ she cried, frantically waving her arms.
§
It had been decreed by Fate that Jocelyn should be reunited to Sally in
the middle of the road just beyond Waterbeach, at the point where the
lane to Lyddiatt’s Farm turns off; for such was the Duke’s desire to
help his lovely friend and such his infatuation, that he had actually
broken his rule of never emerging from Crippenham, once he got there,
till the day appointed for his departure, and was himself taking her to
Ananias to hand her over in person to her husband, afterwards lunching
with the Master,--a thing unheard of, this lunching, for the Duke
disliked the Master’s politics and the Master disliked the Duke’s, but
what wouldn’t one do to further the interests, by saying a good word for
them, of the young couple?
This he had arranged that morning before coming downstairs, his amazed
servant telephoning the message and receiving the Master’s hypocritical
expressions of pleasure in return, for apart from the Duke’s politics
the Master was no fonder of a deaf guest than anybody else; and just as
Sally, on that garden seat, was coming to the end of her patience and
submissiveness and was seriously thinking of jumping up and taking to
her heels, the parlourmaid appeared on the path; and when she was quite
close she stood still, and opened her mouth very wide, and roared out
that the car was at the door; and the Duke, with a final pat of
benediction, bade Sally fetch her hat, and come with him to her husband.
So there it was that they met,--the taxi and the Rolls Royce, Laura and
Jocelyn, Sally and the Duke. And on the Swaffham Prior side of
Waterbeach, where the crooked signpost points to Lyddiatt’s Farm, the
dull, empty road was made radiant for a moment that day by happiness.
‘Stop! Stop!’ cried Laura, frantically waving.
‘Sally! Oh--oh, _Sally_!’ shouted Jocelyn, standing up too, and trying
too, behind Laura, to wave.
The chauffeur recognised Laura, and pulled up as soon as he could; the
taxi pulled up with a great grinding of its brakes; Jocelyn jumped out
of one door, and Laura of the other; and both ran.
‘Why,’ said Sally, who didn’t know what had happened, turning her head
and looking in astonishment at the two running figures coming along
behind, ‘why,’ she said, forgetting the Duke was deaf, ‘’ere _is_ Mr.
Luke----’
And in another instant Jocelyn was there, up on the step of the car,
leaning over the side, dragging her to him with both arms, hugging her
to his heart, and kissing her as if there were no one in the world
except themselves.
‘Sally--oh, my _darling_! Oh, Sally--oh, oh, _Sally_!’ cried Jocelyn,
raining kisses on her between each word. ‘How could you--why did
you--oh, yes--I know, I know--I’ve been a beast to you--but I’m not
going to be any more--I swear, I swear----’
‘Now don’t, Mr Luke,’ Sally managed to say, stifled though she was,
‘don’t get swearin’ about it----’
And pulling her head away from him she was able to attend to the
proprieties, and introduce him.
‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, looking over his arm, which was round
her neck, at the old man beside her. ‘The Jewk,’ she said, turning her
face back to Jocelyn, who took no notice of the introduction, who didn’t
indeed hear, because the moment she turned her face--oh, her divine,
divine little face!--back to him, he fell to kissing it again.
And Laura, coming panting up just then, got up on the step on the other
side of the car, and shouted in her father’s ear, who could always hear
everything she said, ‘This is Jocelyn Luke, Father--Sally’s husband.’
And the Duke said, ‘I thought it must be.’