Chapter 15

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.