Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

Jocelyn came home on the evening of the third day. He hadn’t found a house, and seemed dispirited about that, and looked a great deal at Salvatia, Mrs. Luke thought,—almost as if he had never seen her before; indeed he looked at her so much that he hardly had eyes or attention for anything else.

Mrs. Luke didn’t like it.

Certainly the girl was quite extraordinarily beautiful that evening, and seemed even more alight than usual with the strange, surprising flame-effect she somehow made, but one would have supposed that these outwardnesses, once one knew that they were not the symbols of any corresponding inwardnesses, could hardly be sufficient for a man like Jocelyn.

A little pang of something that hurt—it couldn’t of course be jealousy, for the very word in such a connection was ludicrous—shot through Mrs. Luke’s heart when she more than once caught a look in her boy’s eyes as they rested on his wife that she had never seen in any man’s eyes when they rested on her herself, but which she nevertheless instantly recognised. The love-look. The look of burning, impatient passion. She had been loved, but never like that, never with that intent adoration.

Sally sat quietly there, neither speaking nor moving, but over her face rippled gladness. Nice, she thought, to get Usband back. It hadn’t been half awful without him. Finished now, though; wouldn’t happen again. ‘Let’s forget it,’ she said to herself.

And that night, after every one was in bed, Mrs. Luke heard cautious steps creaking up the stairs, and the door of the room Sally slept in across the little landing was softly opened, and some one went in and softly shut it again; and Mrs. Luke didn’t like it at all, and ended by crying herself to sleep.

Next day, however, Jocelyn was restored to the self she knew, and was reasonable and detached. They talked over the house in Cambridge question, and he quite agreed with his mother that when he went up, which he was due to do in nine days time, while he continued in his spare moments there to search for one she would keep Sally with her at Almond Tree Cottage.

‘And even if you find one, dearest,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘remember we can’t afford to take it till I have got rid of this one.’

‘Quite, Mother,’ said Jocelyn—so reasonable, so completely detached.

‘And meanwhile, the best thing will be for Salvatia to stay quietly here with me.’

‘Far and away the best, Mother,’ said Jocelyn, whose thoughts had gone off with renewed eagerness to his work, to the two spacious months of undisturbed labour ahead of him in those quiet rooms of his in Austen’s Court.

What was Sally’s surprise to find that Jocelyn’s return made no difference to the lessons. They went on just the same; indeed, they seemed every day to get worse, and he, except at meals and when he crept into her room at night, stayed at the top of the house shut up by himself, or went out for his daily walk after lunch and didn’t take her with him.

At night she tried to ask him about these things, because this was the time he was most likely to answer, but he only whispered, ‘Hush—Mother will hear.’

‘Not if you whispers,’ whispered Sally.

‘She’d hear the whispers,’ whispered Jocelyn.

Why Mother shouldn’t hear whispers Sally was unable to make out.

And there at night was Usband, all for being friendly and loving, and in the day didn’t seem to know she was alive. Warmed up a bit, he did, towards evening, but else sat hardly opening his mouth, his eyes looking at something that wasn’t there. Was this, Sally might well in her turn have asked if she had been able to formulate such a question, companionship? But even if she had formulated it she wouldn’t have asked it, because she was so meek.

Strange, however, how the meek go on being meek till the very moment when they do something from which bold persons would shrink. This is what Sally did, after having progressed that week steadily towards despair.

Gradually but steadily, by piecing together bit by bit the things Mrs. Luke and Jocelyn said to each other at meals and in the evening, she became aware of what was in store for her. First, a party; an enormous party, at which everybody who wasn’t a gentleman was going to be a lady; and she was to be at it too, and it was for this that her mind and manners were being fattened up so ceaselessly by Mrs. Luke. Then, two days after the party, Jocelyn, her husband who had promised in church to cherish her, was going away to Cambridge, and going to stay there by himself till the summer, just as if he weren’t married. How could he cherish her from Cambridge? It was evident even to Sally that it couldn’t be done. Finally, she was to be left at Almond Tree Cottage alone with Mrs. Luke, being educated, being made fit, being fattened inside just as you fatten animals outside. What for? She hadn’t married Mrs. Luke. Wasn’t she able, just as she was, to be a good wife to Usband, and a good mother later on to the little babies? What more could a girl do than be ready to work her fingers to the bone for him? And she could cook so nicely, give her a chance; and she could mend as well as any one; and as for keeping the house clean, hadn’t her mother taught her never to dream of sitting down and taking up her sewing while there was so much as a single speck of dirt about?

With growing horror, and steadily increasing despair, Sally listened to the talk at meals. She had learned to say nothing now but yes, no, thank you, and please, and either kept her eyes on her plate or, through her eyelashes, watched with pangs of envy the happy Hammond’s free entrances and departures. She herself never moved without Mrs. Luke’s arm through hers or round her shoulders,—‘We are quite inseparable,’ Mrs. Luke would say, smiling at Jocelyn, when the meals were over and the time had arrived for going somewhere else, as she either encircled Sally’s shrinking shoulder or put her hand through her limp arm. ‘Aren’t we, Salvatia?’

And Sally, starting—she had got into a curious habit, which Mrs. Luke much deplored, of starting when she was spoken to, however gently—hurriedly said, ‘Yes.’

Queer, thought Mrs. Luke, who noticed everything but was without the power of correct deduction, seeing that the child so obviously was anxious to please and she herself so certainly was anxious to help her, queer how difficult it was to do anything with her in the way of confidence and love. And to Jocelyn in the evenings, after Sally had been told she was tired and must wish to go to bed, which she quickly learnt meant that she was to get up at once and say goodnight and go to it, Mrs. Luke would talk about her lovingly and humorously, and laughingly describe what she called the intensive methods of cultivation she was applying to the marvellous child.

‘You’ll see how beautifully she’ll behave at our little party,’ she said. ‘And as for what she’ll be like after a few months—well, dearest, all I can say is that I promise to hand her over to you fit to be your real companion, and not only—’ Mrs. Luke shivered slightly at the thought of the creaking stairs—‘just a wife.’

Two evenings before the day of the party, Mrs. Luke, who had made, she knew, no headway at all in spite of the most untiring efforts in winning the confidence and love she expected, remarked hesitatingly, when she and Jocelyn were alone together after Sally’s departure for bed, that the child appeared to have rather curious and disconcerting resistances.

‘Do you mean she doesn’t obey you?’ asked Jocelyn, much surprised.

‘Oh, with almost too much eagerness. No. I mean something mental. Or rather,’ amended Mrs. Luke, who by this time was definitely disappointed in Sally’s mind but was still prepared to concede her a soul, ‘spiritual. Spiritual resistances. Disconcerting spiritual resistances. She seems to shut herself up. And I ask myself, what in? A child like that, with a—well, really rather blank mind at present. What is she withdrawing into? Where does she go, Jocelyn?’

And that night when, having given his mother time to go to sleep and the house was quiet, Jocelyn stole upstairs to Sally, full of nothing but love for her, she made a scene. He called it a scene; she called it mentioning. She had screwed herself up to mentioning to him that it was wrong to leave her, as she now beyond any possibility of doubt knew that he was going to leave her, and go away by himself to Cambridge.

A scene with Sally. Jocelyn was as much amazed, and correspondingly outraged, as if his fountain-pen had turned on him and declared that what he was making it write was all wrong. For Sally took her stand on the New Testament, on the Gospel of St. Mark, Chapter X, Verses 7 and 8, and not only declared there was no mistaking the words, and that it wasn’t his wife a man had to leave but his father and mother, and that he had to leave them so as to cleave to his wife, and that they two were to be one flesh, but asked him how he could either cleave or be one flesh if he were in Cambridge and she in South Winch?

It was past midnight and pitch dark, so he couldn’t see her face, and accordingly wasn’t bewitched. Also, he had found her waiting up for him, not gone to bed at all, but dressed and sitting in a chair, so that, again, he wasn’t bewitched. When one neither saw nor touched Sally it was quite easy not to be bewitched.

‘For heaven’s sake don’t talk,’ he said in a low voice, when he had got over his first astonishment. ‘Don’t you know Mother will hear?’

Sally couldn’t help that. She had got to say it. God was on her side. His laws were going to be broken, and nothing made Sally so brave as having to take up the cudgels in defence of God’s laws. Besides, if the dark prevented Jocelyn from seeing her beauty it saved her from seeing the icy displeased look on his face that made her falter off into silence. And she was in despair. Apart from the right or the wrong of it, she felt she couldn’t possibly be left alone with Mrs. Luke. Therefore, having mentioned God’s laws to him, she proceeded to entreat him to take her with him, it didn’t matter into what hole, or let her go to her father’s, and he come and see her whenever he had time.

‘I told you—I told you the other day,’ said Sally, trying to subdue her voice to a whisper, but it kept on breaking through, ‘when you was only goin’ to be away for two days that I didn’t ’alf like it. ’Ow do you suppose I’m goin’ to like weeks and weeks? And it ain’t right, Mr. Luke—it ain’t right. You only got to read St. Mark——’

Jocelyn was amazed. Sally talking like this? Sally suddenly making difficulties, and having an opinion, and judging? Dragging in the Bible, too, just like somebody’s cook.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said in a low voice because of his mother, but a voice quite as full of anger as if he had been shouting. ‘How can you? What do you know about anything?’

‘I know what ain’t bein’ one flesh,’ persisted Sally, greatly helped in the matter of courage by the dark.

He gathered his dressing-gown round him; it sounded exactly as if a servant were daring to talk familiarly to him.

‘This isn’t the time,’ he whispered, infinitely disgusted, ‘to argue.’

‘P’raps you’ll tell me when the time is, then,’ said Sally, who knew she could never be alone with him in the day because of Mrs. Luke; and really in the dark, unable to see her, Jocelyn had the impression of some woman of the lower classes confronting him with arms akimbo.

‘Certainly not at one in the morning,’ he said freezingly. ‘I shall go downstairs again. I didn’t come up here to listen to outrageous rot.’

‘Mr. Luke! Rot? When it’s God’s Word I’m talkin’ about? Ain’t you my ’usband? Didn’t you vow——’

There was a tap at the door.

‘You see?’ said Jocelyn, starting and extraordinarily put out that Mrs. Luke should know he was in there. ‘You have disturbed my mother.’

‘What is it, Jocelyn?’ his mother’s voice asked anxiously from outside.

He opened the door. She too was in a dressing-gown, and her long hair hung down in thick plaits.

‘What is it, Jocelyn?’ she asked again.

‘Only that Sally has gone out of her senses,’ he said shortly; and he stalked away downstairs, ashamed to have been caught by his mother upstairs, angry with himself for being ashamed, and seriously enraged with Sally.

‘Salvatia, Jocelyn dearest—do remember,’ called Mrs. Luke plaintively after him.

‘Oh, Christ!’ muttered Jocelyn, banging the sitting-room door behind him and throwing himself on the hard narrow sofa from which, only a quarter of an hour before, he had got up, all warm with love, to go to his wife.

And in the room overhead Mrs. Luke put her arms round Sally, and did her best, while tactfully asking no questions, to soothe and calm the child. But how can one soothe and calm anything that behaves exactly as if it were a very rigid, unresponsive, and entirely dumb stone?