Chapter 9

Restored by the shock both of Sally’s loveliness and language to her normal self, Mrs. Luke’s tears dried up and her emotions calmed down, and she began to think rapidly and clearly.

This situation had to be dealt with. The only person who could deal with it with any hope at all of success was herself. She would, then, grasp it firmly, as if it were a nettle, and wear it proudly, as if it were a rose. Yes, that was the line to take: wear it proudly, as if it were a rose.

More clearly than if Jocelyn had explained for an hour she saw what had happened, what couldn’t have helped happening, once chance had shown him Salvatia. From those few words of Sally’s she reconstructed the Pinner family and its conditions, and as she stood gazing at her, with one hand still in Jocelyn’s, she grouped the whole Pinner lot into the single word Gutter. Jocelyn had found and picked up beauty in a gutter. The gutter was as evident as the beauty, and as impossible to hide. Accept it, then; accept it, and make South Winch accept it. Treat it as quaint, as amusing, as completely excused by the beauty. She had made South Winch accept Tiepolo, when it didn’t in the least want to, and now see into what an enthusiasm it had lashed itself! Even so would she make it accept Salvatia; and ceaselessly every hour, every minute, she herself would educate the girl, and train her patiently, and force her gently into proper ways of speech and behaviour. Seventeen, was she? Mrs. Luke felt that with seventeen all things were possible. A child. Wax. And she was so really exquisite, so really perfect of form and colour and movement, that it would be wonderful to watch her development, her unfolding into at least the semblance of a lady.

Salvatia—’No, no, dearest Jocelyn—not Sally, not Sally,’ she begged on his calling her that, for she had a theory that names had the power of making you be like them, and a Sally was foredoomed to unredeemable vulgarity—should have masters (perhaps mistresses would be better, ) down from London, when once Mrs. Luke was married to Mr. Thorpe and could afford things; regular teachers who would give her lessons at stated hours, while she herself would give her lessons at all the unstated ones. And she would take her everywhere, to each of the South Winch festivities, whether tea-parties, or debates, or lectures, or concerts or plays, and wherever she went Salvatia should be her open glory. It would be a mistake in tactics, besides being an impossibility, to try to hide her. She should be flaunted. For, confronted by a bull, Mrs. Luke remembered, quite the best thing to do was to take it by the horns.

So swiftly do thoughts gallop through minds like Mrs. Luke’s that she had planned out her attitude in those few instants in the sitting-room, while she stood gazing at Sally and holding Jocelyn’s hand.

‘We’re going to be great friends, are we not Salvatia?’ she said, laying her free hand on her daughter-in-law’s delicate little shoulder.

Great friends? She and the lady? The bare suggestion produced in Sally that physical condition known to the Pinner family as fit to drop.

Directly questioned, however, she was forced to answer, so she said faintly, ‘Right O,’ and Mrs. Luke, smiling elaborately and patting the shoulder, said, ‘You very quaint little girl,’—and in spite of the obvious inappropriateness of these adjectives as a description of the noble young angel standing before her, she was determined that they should, roughly, represent her attitude towards her.

‘Now we’ll all have tea,’ she said, suddenly becoming gaily business-like. These children—it was she who must take them in hand. No more emotions, she decided. Her beloved Jocelyn needed her help again, couldn’t do without her... ‘Won’t we, Jocelyn? Won’t we, Salvatia? I’ve had some already, but I’ll be greedy and have some more. Jocelyn, you go and tell Hammond——’ Hammond was the little maid’s surname, and by it, to her great astonishment who knew herself only as Lizz, she had been called since she entered Mrs. Luke’s service—’to make fresh tea and bring it in here. You must both be dying for it. And then you can say goodbye to the Walkers for me, Jocelyn, will you?’ she called after him. ‘Tell them I’ve got a most beautiful surprise for them—quite soon, perhaps to-morrow. You’re the beautiful surprise, Salvatia,’ she said, turning to Sally smilingly, who had made a sudden forward movement as if to follow Jocelyn, and who, on seeing him go out of the room and leave her alone with his mother, was so seriously alarmed that she again had a queer conviction about her stomach, but this time that it was turning what the Pinner family called as white as a sheet.

‘Of course you know you’re beautiful, don’t you?’ said Mrs. Luke, busily pulling out the little table the tea was to be put on in the absence of the proper table in the garden, and clearing Sir Thomas Browne off it, and also two bright tulips in a clear glass vessel. ‘You must have heard that ever since you can remember.’

‘But I can’t ’elp it,’ said Sally, very anxious, her eyes on the door.

‘‘Elp it? You quaint child. There’s an h in help, Salvatia dear. Help it? But why should you want to? It’s a wonderful gift, and you should thank God who gave it you, and use it entirely——’ Mrs. Luke was quite surprised at her own words, for she wasn’t at all religious, yet they came out glibly, and she concluded they were subconsciously inspired by the Canon in the garden—’entirely to His glory.’

‘Yes, m——’

‘No—stop there, stop there,’ cried Mrs. Luke, quickly holding up her hand and smiling. ‘You were going to say ma’am, were you not, Salvatia? Well, you mustn’t. Not to me. Not to anybody. Except, of course,’ she added, feeling she couldn’t begin too soon to help the child, ‘to the Queen, and other royal ladies.’

And before her eyes floated that vision she had so often contemplated of Sir Jocelyn Luke, of Lord Luke, and now was added to it Lady Luke, the lovely Lady Luke, being presented at Court, and by that time as perfect inside as out. Properly dealt with, Jocelyn’s marriage, instead of being his ruin, might end by being one of his chief glories.

‘Sit down, little girl.’

Sally dropped as if she were shot on to the nearest chair, which was Mrs. Luke’s.

‘Not there—not that one,’ said Mrs. Luke, smiling. ‘No, dear child—nor that one,’ she added, as Sally having hastily got up again was about to drop on to the next nearest one, which was Jocelyn’s—better get her into all the little ways at once. ‘Any chair, Salvatia dear, except just those two. Yes—that’s a very comfortable one. Is not it too strange to think that this time yesterday you and I never had seen each other, and had no more idea——’

Sally, sitting down more cautiously on the edge of the third chair, didn’t think that strange at all, but very natural and nice. There had been lots of yesterdays without the lady in them, and all of them had seemed quite natural. What really was strange was that they should have left off and landed her here, shut up alone with somebody so happily till then unknown. If only, thought Sally, she could now, having been introduced and that, go somewhere where the lady wasn’t. For Mrs. Luke terrified her more than any one she had yet in her brief life come across. Worse, far worse, than her parents when, for her good, they used to give her What for, and worse even than Mr. Luke when he turned and just looked at her and didn’t say anything after she had passed some remark, was this smiling lady who patted her. She couldn’t take her eyes off Mrs. Luke, watching her with a fascinated apprehension, not knowing where she mightn’t be going to be patted next.

Sitting sideways on the very edge of her chair, and still holding her wrap tightly about her, Sally’s eyes followed Mrs. Luke’s slightest movement. In any one else it would have been a stare, and Mrs. Luke would have explained that she mustn’t, but there was nothing wrong to be found with the look in Sally’s eyes, —nothing wrong, indeed, to be found in anything she did, thought Mrs. Luke, arranging things comfortably for everybody’s tea, so long as it wasn’t speaking.

Mrs. Luke knew she was being watched, but only, so it seemed, with a lovely and gracious attentiveness. She also knew Sally was sitting on the edge of her chair, with her legs drawn up under her just as if she were trying to keep them out of something not quite nice; but no need to disturb a position which somehow seemed sheer grace. What a pity, what a pity, flashed across Mrs. Luke’s mind, that the child hadn’t happened to be born dumb! Was that wicked? No, she didn’t think so. She herself could imagine being very happy dumb, with plenty of books, and not having to talk to bores.

‘Wouldn’t you like to take your hat off, Salvatia?’ she asked, drawing Jocelyn’s chair closer to the little table.

Sally started. ‘No thank you, please——’ she said hastily.

‘Do,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘I want you to.’

‘Yes, m—yes, Mrs. Luke,’ said Sally, instantly obeying.

‘Not Mrs. Luke, dear—Mother. You must call me Moth——’

Her voice died away, and she stood staring in silence. How wonderful. How really amazingly beautiful. Like sunsets. And the girl, crowned with that bright crown of waving light, like some royal child.

She stood staring, her hands dropped by her sides. ‘What a responsibility,’ she whispered.

‘Pardon?’ said Sally, nervously.

The Walkers were got rid of, and Jocelyn came back frowning. They had scolded him; him, who had been completely understood and unreproached by his mother, the one person with either a right or a grievance. Having known him since he was three didn’t excuse them, he considered; and it seemed merely silly to rebuke him for leaving Cambridge when he wasn’t going to leave it. He didn’t attempt to enlighten them; he just stood and glowered, waiting till they should have done. What could old Walker know of the way one was forced to react to beauty? He had probably never set eyes on it in his life. And as for passionate love, the fiery love that had been burning him up for the last few weeks, one had only to look at Mrs. Walker to know he could never have felt that.

So he simply repeated, when the Canon paused a moment, that his mother had asked him to say good-bye for her, and then, this second time, he added, ‘She can’t come herself, because she is with my wife.’

‘Conceited young monkey,’ thought Mrs. Walker, who remembered him in petticoats, and even then giving himself airs. ‘Wife, indeed.’ Both Mrs. Walker’s sons were without gifts.

‘Your mother is an angel, sir,’ said the Canon sternly.

‘So is my wife,’ said Jocelyn, glowering.

‘No doubt, no doubt,’ said the Canon, who didn’t for a moment believe it. Angels weren’t married in such a hurry. On the other hand, he was sure young devils frequently were. They got hold of one and made one. Jocelyn had been got hold of—lamentably, disastrously.

The Canon snatched up his hat. ‘Come along, Margaret,’ he said testily, squaring his shoulders.

And Margaret came along, and together they marched off into the house, along the passage, past the shut sitting-room door, accompanied by Jocelyn who showed them out in silence.

He had said no word of that pleasant part of his mother’s message, that part about having a beautiful surprise for the Walkers, perhaps to-morrow, because he was annoyed with them, and they went away more indignant with him than before, besides feeling they had been treacherously treated by their hitherto dear friend, Mrs. Luke. And Mrs. Walker, when they were safely out in the road, said what a very disagreeable young man he had grown into, and the Canon said he hoped Mr. Thorpe would lick him into shape, and Jocelyn, all unconscious of Mr. Thorpe, went back frowning to his mother, who was in the act, when he opened the door, of stroking Sally’s hair.

He forgot the tiresome Walkers, and his heart swelled with gratitude. That Sally should be taken at once to his mother’s arms like this had been outside his wildest hopes. Indeed, he had had no hopes, no clear thoughts about it at all; he only, driven by weariness of the burden of complications Sally brought into the simplest things, had come back to his mother’s feet as the Christian sinner, tired of or frightened by his sins, comes back to the feet of God. The analogy wasn’t perfect, of course; Sally, so good and beautiful, couldn’t be compared to sin. But he wanted to get back to his mother’s feet, he had a tremendous, almost childish, longing to lie there and let her kick him if she chose. He had treated her badly. He well knew he deserved it. Let her do anything in the way of rebuke and chastisement, if only he might lie there, he and his burden, safely cast down, both of them, at her feet. ‘I will arise and go to my Mother,’ had floated frequently through his head as he set the bonnet of the Morris-Cowley eastward towards London and South Winch. Naturally he hadn’t said it out loud. Sally was incapable of understanding even a simple reaction. This one, which was highly complicated, would have completely bewildered her. Besides, one can’t well speak of a reaction to its cause.