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Mrs. Luke made short work of the little maid. She merely said, in that gentle voice before which all servants went down flat as ninepins, ‘Hammond, I am surprised at your disturbing Mrs. Jocelyn’s sleep—’ and the little maid, very red and with downcast eyes, sidled deprecatingly out of the room.
Then Mrs. Luke took Sally in hand, sitting in her turn on the edge of the bed.
‘Salvatia, dear—’ she said, laying her hand on the arm outlined beneath the counterpane, and addressing the averted face. ‘Salvatia, dear——’
Sally’s tears dried up instantly, for she was much too much afraid to cry, but she buried her face still deeper, and kept her eyes tight shut.
‘Don’t make confidences to a servant, dear child,’ said Mrs. Luke gently. ‘Come to Jocelyn, or to me. We’re the natural ones for you to come to in any of your little troubles. Oh, I know honeymoons are trying for a girl, and often, without knowing why, she wants a good cry. Isn’t it so, Salvatia? Then come to me, or to your husband, when you feel like that, but don’t say things to Hammond you may afterwards regret. You see, Salvatia dear, you’re a lady, aren’t you—a grown-up married lady now, and your place is with your husband and me. What, dear child? What did you say?’
Sally, however, hadn’t said anything; she had only gulped, trying to choke down her misgivings at this picture of where her place was. With the lady? ‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ she thought, in great discomfort of mind as she more and more perceived that her marriage was going to include Mrs. Luke, ‘if I ain’t bitten off more as I can chew——’ and immediately was shocked at herself for having thought it. Manners were manners. They had to be inside one, as well as out. No good saying Excuse me, Pardon, and Sorry, if inside you were thinking rude. God saw. God knew. And if you were only polite with your lips, and it wasn’t going right through you, you were being, as she remembered from her father’s teaching, a whited sepulchre.
And Mrs. Luke, contemplating the profil perdu on the pillow, the tip of the little ear, the lovely curve of the flushed cheek, and the tangle of bright hair, bent down and kissed it with a view to comfort and encouragement, and Sally, trying not to shrink farther into the pillow, said to herself, ‘At it again.’
‘Why did you cry, Salvatia?’ asked Mrs. Luke, gently.
‘Dunno,’ murmured Sally, withdrawing into the furthermost corner of her shell.
‘Then, dear, it was simply childish, wasn’t it—to cry without a reason, and to cry before a servant too. Things like that lower one’s dignity, Salvatia. And you haven’t only your own dignity to consider now, but Jocelyn’s, your husband’s.’
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Sally to herself, recognising from the tone, through all its gentleness, that she was being given What for—a new kind, and one which it was extremely difficult to follow and understand, however painstakingly she listened. Which parts, for instance, of herself and Mr. Luke were their dignities? ‘Good job I ain’t a nursin’ mother,’ she thought, for she knew all about nursing mothers, ‘or the lady’d turn my milk sour’—and immediately was much shocked at herself for having thought it. Manners were manners. They had to be inside one, as well as out. ‘Never think what you wouldn’t say,’ had been her father’s teaching; and fancy saying what she had just thought!
‘Oh Gawd,’ silently prayed Sally, who had been made to repeat a collect every Sunday to Mr. Pinner, and in whose mind bits had stuck, ‘send down the ’Oly Spirit and cleanse the thoughts of my ’eart with ’im forasmuch as without thee I ain’t able to....’
‘Perhaps, dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, finding it difficult in the face of Sally’s silence to go on—not for want of things to say, for there were so many and all so important that she hardly knew where to begin,—‘the best thing you can do is to bathe your eyes in the nice hot water Hammond has put ready, and tidy yourself a little, and then come downstairs. What do you think of that? Isn’t it a good idea? It is dull for you up here alone. But bathe your eyes well. We don’t want Jocelyn to see we’ve been crying, do we, dear child——’
And in the act of stooping to give Sally a parting kiss she heard her name being called, loud and cheerily, downstairs in the hall.
She started to her feet.
‘Margery! Margery!’ called the voice, with the cheerful insistence of one who, being betrothed, has the right to be cheerful and insistent in his fiancée’s hall.
Edgar. Come hours before his time.