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The departure was not unmarked, as is sometimes said, by incident. Cupp, when the luggage had to be brought down, wasn’t to be found, Mrs. Cupp seemed incommunicably absorbed over a saucepan, and Jocelyn, with some sharpness refusing Sally’s help, whose instinct after years spent doing such things was to lay hold of anything that had to be laid hold of and drag it, got the tin box and his suitcase downstairs himself, and said Damn very loud when he knocked his head at the turn of the little staircase.
Sally heard him, and was enormously surprised and shocked. This was swearing. This was what she had been most carefully taught to look upon as real sin. Nothing else had shocked her on the honeymoon, because she had nothing to go by when it came to husbands other than her father’s assurance that, except in the daytime, they weren’t gentlemen, and her own solemn vows in church to obey; but she knew all about swearing. It was wrong. It was strictly forbidden in God’s Holy Word. That and drink were the two evils spoken of most frequently in her home, and with most condemnation. They went hand in hand. Drink ruined people; and, on their way to ruin and when they had got to it, they swore.
This is what Sally had been brought up to believe, so that when, standing in the doorway of the parlour watching Jocelyn labouring down the stairs with her trunk and longing to give him a hand, she heard him, after knocking his head, say a most loud clear damn, she was horrified. Her husband swearing. And not been drinking, either. Just had his tea as usual at breakfast, and been with her ever since, so she knew he couldn’t have. Next thing she’d have to listen to would be God’s name being taken in vain; and at the thought of that the blood of all the Pinners, that strictly God-fearing, Sunday-observing, Bible-loving race, surged to her cheeks.
‘Mr. Luke!’ she exclaimed, throwing his teaching as to the avoidance of this name to the winds.
‘Hullo?’ said Jocelyn, stopping short on the stairs and peering down at her round the edge of the tin trunk, arrested by the note in her voice.
‘You didn’t ought to swear,’ said Sally, taking all her courage in both hands, her face scarlet. ‘There’s no call for it, and you didn’t ought to swear—you know you didn’t ought to.’
‘But I only said damn,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Wouldn’t you, if you bashed your head against this confounded sticking out bit of ceiling?’
‘Mr. Luke!’ cried Sally again, her eyes filling with tears. That he should not only say bad words himself but think her capable of them.... Often she had been bewildered by things he said and did, but now she looked up at him through the tears in her eyes in a complete non-comprehension. It was as though she were boxed away from him behind a great thick wall, or cut off across a great big river, alone on an island, while he stood far off and unreachable on the opposite bank, and she had somehow to get to him, to stay close to him, because he was her husband. Dimly these images presented themselves to her mind, dimly and confused, but nevertheless producing a very clear anxiety and discomfort.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jocelyn, carefully coming down the remaining stairs and depositing the trunk sideways in the narrow passage, for though the trunk, as a trunk, was small, the passage, as a passage, was smaller; and in his turn as he looked at her he grew red, for he had just remembered that he never said damn in the presence of his mother or of the other ladies of South Winch, which was a place one didn’t swear in, however much and unexpectedly he chanced to hurt himself. Was this laissez aller in Sally’s presence due to his consciousness that she wasn’t a lady, or due to the fact that she was his wife? Jocelyn disliked both these explanations, and accordingly, in his turn, grew red.
‘Forgive me, Sally,’ he said for the second time within half an hour.
This time she had no doubt as to what had to be forgiven.
‘Promise not to do it no more,’ she begged. ‘Promise now—do.’
‘Oh Sally, I’ll promise anything, anything,’ said Jocelyn staring at her, caught again into emotion by the extraordinary beauty of her troubled face.
‘Father says,’ said Sally, still looking at him through tears, ‘that if somebody swears, then they drinks. An’ if they drinks, then they swears. An’ it goes ‘and in ‘and, and they don’t stop ever, once they starts, till they gets to——.’
She broke off, and stood looking at him in silence. The picture was too awful a one. She couldn’t go on.
‘What do they get to, my angel, my beautiful angel?’ asked Jocelyn, kissing her softly, not listening any more.
‘’Ell,’ whispered Sally.
‘Now you’re swearing,’ murmured Jocelyn dreamily, no longer fully conscious, shutting her eyes with kisses. ‘Your sweet, sweet eyes,’ he murmured, kissing them over and over again.
No, Sally couldn’t make head or tail of Mr. Luke. Better not try. Better give it up. She swearing?