Introduction to Sally
Copyright© 2024 by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Chapter 4
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.
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