Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

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.

But how happy was Jocelyn at the moment when he opened the door, and saw her and his mother in that attitude of mutual affection; how deeply relieved. The cords were loosened, the weight shifted. Here this calm room, with everything in it just right, just so—its restraints, its browns and ivories, its flashes of colour, its books, its one picture; and upstairs, up under the roof, his own attic waiting for him, with its promise of work to be resumed, to be carried on as it used to be in the tranquil, fruitful days before he met Sally.

Jocelyn stood a moment looking at the scene, smiling his rare smile because he was so content. How unlike the places he had suffered in since he last was here. How unlike the Pinner lair at the back of the shop, where he had burnt in torment, and the hideous dwelling of the Cupps, where he had been insulted, and the dingy expensiveness of the Thistle and Goat, and the other three or four cynically ugly and uncomfortable rooms through which he had trailed his passion. Impossible not to smile, not to laugh almost, with gladness at getting home again. He had, he knew, all his life loved his mother, but it seemed as if he hadn’t loved her consciously till now, and he went quickly across to her and put his arm about her, and said, ‘Mother, you must never leave me. I can’t do without you. We can’t. When I go back to Cambridge—and of course I’m going back—you must come too. You’re going to live with us there. Everything depends on you. All my future, all my happiness——’

And Sally, over whose head these words were being tossed, sitting very rigid, for Mrs. Luke’s hand was still on her hair, and wholly unaccustomed to displays of family affection, once again said to herself, just for company’s sake and to keep her courage up, ‘Well, I’m blest.’