Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

What had taken place in the garden between Jocelyn and Sally was this:

She had gone out obediently to him, as she had been told. ‘Do as you’re told,’ her father and mother had taught her, ‘and not much can go wrong with you.’ Innocent Pinners. Inadequate teaching. It was to lead her, before she had done, into many difficulties.

She went, then, as she had been told, over to where she saw Jocelyn, and sat down beside him beneath the cedar.

He didn’t move, and didn’t look up, and she sat for a long while not daring to speak, because of the expression on his face.

Naturally she thought it was his stomach again, for what else could it be? Last time she had seen him he was smiling as happy as happy, and kissing his mother’s hand. Clear to Sally as daylight was it that he was having another of those attacks to which her father had been such a martyr, and which were familiar to the Pinners under the name of the Dry Heaves. So too had her father sat when they came on, frowning hard at nothing, and looking just like ink. The only difference was that Jocelyn, she supposed because of being a gentleman, held his head in his hands, and her father held the real place the heaves were in. But presently, when the simple remedy he took on these occasions had begun to work, he was better; and it seemed to Sally a great pity that she should be too much afraid of Usband to tell him about it,—a great pity, and wrong as well. Hadn’t she promised God in church the day she was married to look after him in sickness and in health? And here he was sick, plain as a pikestaff.

So at last she pulled her courage together, and did tell him.

‘Father’s stomach,’ she began timidly, ‘was just like that.’

‘What?’ said Jocelyn, roused from his black thoughts by this surprising remark, and turning his head and looking at her.

‘You got the same stomachs,’ said Sally, shrinking under his look but continuing to hold on to her courage, ‘you and Father ’as. Like as two peas.’

Jocelyn stared at her. What, in the name of all that was fantastic, had Pinner’s stomach to do with him?

‘Sit just like that, ’e would, when they come on,’ continued Sally, lashing herself forward.

‘Do you mind,’ requested Jocelyn with icy politeness, ‘making yourself clear?’

‘Now, Mr. Luke, don’t—please don’t talk that way, begged Sally. ‘I only want to tell you what Father did when they come on.’

‘When what comes on, and where?’

‘These ’ere dry ’eaves,’ said Sally. ‘You’d be better if you’d take what Father did. ’Ad them somethin’ awful, ’e did. And you’d be better——’

But her voice faded away. When Jocelyn looked at her like that and said not a word, her voice didn’t seem able to go on talking, however hard she tried to make it.

And Jocelyn’s thoughts grew if possible blacker. This was to be his life’s companion—his life’s, mind you, he said to himself. Alone and unaided, he was to live out the years with her. A child; and presently not a child. A beauty; and presently not a beauty. But always to the end, now that his mother had deserted him, unadulterated Pinner.

‘There’s an h in heaves,’ he said, glowering at her, his gloom really inspissate. ‘I don’t know what the beastly things are, but I’m sure they’ve got an h in them.’

‘Sorry,’ breathed Sally humbly, casting down her eyes before his look.

Then he became aware of the unusual flush on her face,—one side was quite scarlet.

‘Why are you so red?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Me?’ said Sally, starting at the peremptoriness in his tone. ‘Oh—that.’

She put up her hand and felt her burning cheek. ‘Father-in-law,’ she said.

‘Father who?’ asked Jocelyn, astonished out of his gloom.

‘In-law,’ said Sally. ‘’Im in the ’ouse. The old gentleman,’ she explained, as Jocelyn stared in greater and greater astonishment.

Thorpe? The man who was to be his stepfather? But why——?

A flash of something quite, quite horrible darted into his mind. ‘But why,’ he asked, ‘are you so very red? What has that to do——?’

He broke off, and caught hold of her wrist.

‘Daresay it ain’t the gentleman’s day for shavin’,’ suggested Sally.

And on Jocelyn’s flinging away her wrist and jumping up, she watched him running indoors with recovered complacency. ‘Soon be better now,’ she said to herself, pleased; for her father always ran like that too, just when the heaves were going to leave off.