§
There were explanations next day. Mrs. Luke put the whole situation patiently and clearly before Sally. It wasn’t fair, she said to Jocelyn, after a private talk with him during which he had told her the sorts of things Sally had said in the night, it wasn’t fair to keep the child quite in the dark as to their arrangements. Even if she weren’t altogether able to understand, she should, Mrs. Luke said, be given the opportunity of doing so.
So when breakfast was cleared away, and Jocelyn had withdrawn to his attic, Mrs. Luke shut herself up as usual with Sally in the dining-room, and spent the morning patiently explaining.
Sally said nothing. This made it difficult for Mrs. Luke to know whether she had understood. And yet how simple it was. Jocelyn’s work, the paramount importance of his work, on which both his and Salvatia’s future and perhaps—who knew?—the world’s, depended; their present, but no doubt temporary, poverty, which made it out of the question for them to follow him to Cambridge till Almond Tree Cottage had been let; the necessity of teaching Salvatia, during long, quiet, uninterrupted days, all the little odds and ends, so small and yet so indispensable, that go to make up the wife of a gentleman; and the impossibility of asking Jocelyn to leave his rooms in College and live in anything as uncomfortable and makeshift as the sorts of lodgings within their means were bound to be. Of course had Salvatia been alone in the world, and with nowhere at all to go to, some such arrangement would have had to be made. But she wasn’t alone. She had her husband’s mother, and her husband’s mother’s home, and affection, and sympathy, and the warmest welcome.
‘Just a little patience, Salvatia dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, ‘and our little problems will all quite naturally solve themselves. We shall have got a tenant for this house, Jocelyn will have found a nice home for us in Cambridge, you will meanwhile have learnt everything necessary to make you able to be its perfect little mistress, and we’ll all live happily ever after.’
Now wasn’t this kind? Surely it was very kind, thought Mrs. Luke. And wasn’t it loving? Surely it was altogether loving. Yet Salvatia said never a word.
Indeed, Sally was necessarily dumb. She had too few words to enter into controversy with Mrs. Luke, and knew that if she tried to she would only collapse into tears. But after lunch, through which she sat saying nothing, when Mrs. Luke sent her out into the garden alone because she herself had to go down that afternoon to the shops to see about the cakes for her party next day, Sally went to the one corner which wasn’t overlooked by the windows of the house, owing to an intervening tool-shed, and, leaning against the iron rails that separated Mrs. Luke’s property from Mr. Thorpe’s, wept bitterly.
She clutched the top rail with both hands, and laying her head on them wept most bitterly; for it was plain now to her that her dream of two rooms and no lady was never to come true, and that meanwhile—what was the good of blinking facts?—her husband had deserted her. And she had no money; only five shillings her father had given her as a wedding present,—that was all. Handsome as a present, but not enough, she was sure, to get her home to him. If only she could go home to him, and escape any more of Mrs. Luke, and escape the terrible, the make-you-come-over-all-cold-to-think-of party! Then, when Usband arrived at his college, she could turn up there and give him a surprise, and find a room for herself somewhere close, and live in it as quiet as a mouse, not bothering him at all or interrupting, but near enough to feel still married.
Sally’s body was shaken by sobs; even the rail on which she leant her head, her head with its bright, tumbled hair, whose ends, getting into her eyes, were wet and darkened by her grief, was shaken. She could bear no more. She couldn’t bear any more of anything in the house behind the tool-shed. Yet what was she to do? Five shillings would get her nowhere——
‘Crying, eh?’ said a voice on the other side of the fence.
And looking up with a great start, Sally beheld Father-in-law.