Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

Now to have caught Mr. Thorpe kissing somebody else—she didn’t like it when he kissed her, but she discovered she liked it still less when it was somebody else—was painful to Mrs. Luke. Every aspect of it was painful. The very word caught was an unpleasant one; and she felt that to be placed in a position in life in which she might be liable to catch would be most disagreeable. What she saw put everything else for the moment out of her head. Edgar must certainly be told that he couldn’t behave like this. No marriage could stand it. If a woman couldn’t trust her husband not to humiliate her, whom could she trust? And to behave like this to Salvatia, of all people! Salvatia, who was to live with them at Abergeldie during term time, while Jocelyn pursued his career undisturbed at Cambridge—this had been another of Mrs. Luke’s swift decisions,—live with them, and be given advantages, and be trained to become a fit wife for him,—how could any of these plans be realised if Edgar’s tendency to kiss, of which Mrs. Luke had only been too well aware, but which she had supposed was concentrated entirely on herself, included also Salvatia?

And if the situation was disagreeable to Mrs. Luke, it was very nearly as disagreeable to Mr. Thorpe. He didn’t like it one little bit. He knew quite well that there had been gusto in his embrace, and that Margery must have seen it. ‘Damn these women,’ he thought, unfairly.

The only person without disagreeable sensations was Sally, who, unconscious of anything but dutiful behaviour, was standing wiping her face with a big, honest-looking handkerchief, observing while she did so that she wasn’t half hot.

‘Jocelyn is in the garden, Salvatia,’ said Mrs. Luke.

Regarding this as mere news, imparted she knew not to what end, Sally could think of nothing to say back, though it was evident from the lady’s eyes that she was expected to make some sort of a reply. She searched, therefore, in her répertoire, and after a moment said, ‘Fancy that,’ and went on wiping her face.

‘Won’t you go to him?’ then said Mrs. Luke, speaking very distinctly.

‘Right O,’ said Sally, hastily then, for the lady’s eyebrows had suddenly become rather frightening; and, stuffing the handkerchief yard by yard into her pocket as she went, she exquisitely slid away.

‘I’ll be off too,’ said Mr. Thorpe briskly, who for the first time didn’t feel at home with Margery. ‘Back on the tick of ten to fetch ’em both——’

‘Oh, but please—wait just one moment,’ said Mrs. Luke, raising her hand as he began to move towards the door.

‘Got to have my wigging first, eh?’ he said, pausing and squaring his shoulders to meet it.

‘What is a wigging, Edgar?’ inquired Mrs. Luke gently, opening her clear grey eyes slightly wider.

‘Oh Lord, Margery, cut the highbrow cackle,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘Why shouldn’t I kiss the girl? She’s my daughter-in-law. Or will be soon.’

‘Really, Edgar, it would be very strange if you didn’t wish to kiss her,’ said Mrs. Luke, still with gentleness. ‘Anybody would wish to.’

‘Well, then,’ said Mr. Thorpe sulkily; for not only didn’t he see what Margery was driving at, but for the first time he didn’t think her particularly good-looking. Moth-eaten, thought Mr. Thorpe, eyeing her. A lady, of course, and all that; but having to sleep later on with a moth-eaten lady wouldn’t, it suddenly struck him, be much fun. ‘Need a pitch dark night to turn her into a handsome woman,’ he thought indelicately; but then he was angry, because he had been discovered doing wrong.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ said Mrs. Luke, ignoring for the moment what she had just witnessed, ‘that I have told Jocelyn.’

And Mr. Thorpe was so much relieved to find she wasn’t pursuing the kissing business further that he thought, ‘Not a bad old girl, Marge—’ in his thoughts he called her Marge, though not to her face because she didn’t like it—‘not a bad old girl. Better than Annie, anyhow.’

Yes, better than Annie; but less good—ah, how much less good—than young beauty.

‘That’s all right, then,’ he said, cheerful again. ‘Nothing like coughing things up.’

No—Edgar was too rough a diamond, Mrs. Luke said to herself, shrinking from this dreadful phrase. She hadn’t heard this one before. Was there no end to his dreadful phrases?

‘He is much annoyed,’ she said, her eyebrows still drawn together with the pain Mr. Thorpe’s last sentence had given her.

‘Annoyed, eh? Annoyed, is he? I like that,’ said Mr. Thorpe vehemently, his cheerfulness vanishing. Annoyed because his mother was making a rattling good match? Annoyed because the richest man for miles round was taking her on for the rest of her life? Of all the insolent puppies....

Mr. Thorpe had no words with which to express his opinion of Jocelyn; no words, that is, fit for a drawing-room—he supposed the room he was in would be called a drawing-room, though he was blest if there was a single stick of stuff in it to justify such a name—for, having now seen Sally, his feeling for Jocelyn, which had been one of simple contemptuous indifference, had changed into something much more active. Fancy him getting her, he thought—him, with only a beggarly five hundred a year, him, who wouldn’t even be able to dress her properly. Why, a young beauty like that ought to be a blaze of diamonds, and never put her feet to the ground except to step out of a Rolls.

‘I’m very sorry, Edgar,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘but he says he doesn’t wish to accept your hospitality.’

‘Doesn’t wish, eh? Doesn’t wish, does he? I like that,’ said Mr. Thorpe, more vehemently still.

That his good-natured willingness to help Marge out of a fix, and his elaborate preparations for the comfort of the first guests he had had for years should be flouted in this way not only angered but hurt him. And what would the servants say? And he had taken such pains to have the bridal suite filled with everything calculated to make the young prig, who thought his sorts of brains were the only ones worth having, see for himself that they weren’t. Brains, indeed. What was the good of brains that you couldn’t get enough butter out of to butter your bread properly? Dry-bread brains, that’s what this precious prig’s were. Crust-and-cold-water brains. Brains? Pooh.

This last word Mr. Thorpe said out loud; very loud; and Mrs. Luke shrank again. It strangely afflicted her when he said pooh.

‘And I’m afraid,’ she went on, her voice extra gentle, for it did seem to her that considering the position she had found him in Edgar was behaving rather high-handedly, ‘that if he knew you had kissed his wife, kissed her in the way you did kiss her, he might still less wish to.’

‘Now we’ve got it!’ burst out Mr. Thorpe, slapping his thigh. ‘Now we’re getting down to brass tacks!’

‘Brass tacks, Edgar?’ said Mrs. Luke, to whom this expression, too, was unfamiliar.

‘Spite,’ said Mr. Thorpe.

‘Spite?’ repeated Mrs. Luke, her grey eyes very wide.

‘Feminine spite. Don’t believe a word about him not wanting to come and stay at my place. You’ve made it up. Because I kissed the girl.’

And Mr. Thorpe in his anger inquired of Mrs. Luke whether she had ever heard about hell holding no fury like a woman scorned—for in common with other men who know little poetry he knew that—and he also called her Marge to her face, because he no longer saw any reason why he shouldn’t.

‘My dear Edgar,’ was all she could find to say, her shoulders drawn up slightly to her ears as if to ward off these blows of speech, violence never yet having crossed her path.

She didn’t get angry herself. She behaved with dignity. She remembered that she was a lady.

She did, however, at last suggest that perhaps it would be better if he went away, for not only was he making more noise than she cared about—really a most noisy man, she thought, gliding to the window and softly shutting it—but it had occurred to her as a possibility that Salvatia, out in the back garden, might be telling Jocelyn that Mr. Thorpe had kissed her, and that on hearing this Jocelyn, who in any case was upset, might be further upset into coming and joining Edgar and herself in the sitting-room.

This, she was sure, would be a pity; so she suggested to Mr. Thorpe that he should go.

‘Oh, I’m going all right,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who somehow, instead of being the one to be wigged, was the one who was wigging.

‘We’ll talk it all over quietly to-morrow, dear Edgar,’ said Mrs. Luke, attempting to placate.

‘Dear Edgar, eh?’ retorted Mr. Thorpe, not to be shaken by fair words from his conviction that Marge regarded herself as a woman scorned, and therefore that she outrivalled the worst of the ladies of hell. ‘Fed-up Edgar’s more like it,’ he said; and strode, banging doors, out of the house.