Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

Between these two men, both in a state of extreme nervous tension, Sally passed her last days under her father’s roof, amiably quiescent, completely good. She did as she was told; always she had done as she was told, and it was now a habit. She liked the look of the young man who so unexpectedly was to become her husband, and was pleased that he should be a gentleman. She knew nothing about gentlemen, but she liked the sort of sound their voices made when they talked. At Islington she had preferred the visits to the shop of the clergy for just that reason—the sound their voices made when they talked. She would have been perfectly happy during the fortnight between her first setting eyes on Jocelyn and her marriage to him, if there had been a few more smiles about.

There were none. Her father was tying her up with trembling haste, as if she were a parcel to be got rid of in a hurry. Her lover’s face was haggard, and drawn in the opposite directions to those that lead to smiles. Dumbly he would gaze at her from under his overhanging brows, and every now and then burst into a brief explosion of talk she didn’t understand and hadn’t an idea how to deal with; or he would steal a shaking hand along the edge of the tablecloth, where her father couldn’t see it, and touch her dress. He looked just like somebody in a picture, thought Sally, with his thin dark face, and eyes right far back in his head,—quite blue eyes, in spite of his dark skin and hair. She liked him very much. She liked everybody very much. If only somebody had sometimes smiled, how nice it all would have been; for then she would have known for certain they were happy, and were getting what they wanted. Sally liked to be certain people were happy, and getting what they wanted. As it was, nobody could tell from their faces that these two were pleased. Sometimes in the evening, after her lover had gone and the door was locked and bolted and barred behind him, and all the windows had been examined and fastened securely, her father would calm down and cheer up; but her lover never calmed down or cheered up.

Sally, who hardly had what could be called thoughts but only feelings, was conscious of this without putting it into words. Perhaps when he had got what he wanted, which was, she was thoroughly aware, herself, he would be different. There were no doubts whatever in her mind as to what he wanted. She was too much used to the sort of thing. Not, it is true, in quite such a violent form, but then none of the others who had admired her—that is, every single male she had ever come across—had been allowed to be what her father called her fiancy, which was, Sally understood, the name of the person one was going to marry, and who might say things and behave in a way no one else might, as distinguished from the name of the person one went to the pictures with and didn’t marry, and who was a fancy. She knew that, because, though she herself had only gone to the pictures wedged between her father and mother, she had heard the girls at school talk of going with their fancies,—those girls who had all been her friends till they began to grow up, and then all, after saying horrid things to her and crying violently, had got out of her way.

As though she could help it; as though she could help having the sort of face that made them angry.

‘I ain’t made my silly face,’ she said tearfully—her delicious mouth pronounced it fice—to the last of her girl friends, to the one she was fondest of, who had hung on longest, but who couldn’t, after all, stand the look that came into the eyes of him she spoke of as her boy one day that he chanced to come across Sally.

‘No. No more you didn’t, Sally Pinner,’ furiously retorted the friend. ‘But you would ’ave if you could ’ave, so you’re nothin’ but a nypocrite—see?’

And the friend forgot herself still further, and added that Sally was a blinkin’ nypocrite; which was, as Mr. Pinner would have said had he heard it, language.