Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

Fleshpots.

She had thought her honeymoon was a honeymoon of fleshpots; she had been sure Almond Tree Cottage was the very home of them; but now she saw the real thing: fleshpots in excelsis.

Her father had said, ‘Beware of fleshpots,’ when he was expounding the doings of the Children of Israel to her of a Sunday afternoon, ‘they don’t do no one no good.’ And she had been brought up so carefully, so piously, so privately, that she had never come across that literature of luxury, those epics of fat things, that are lavishly provided for the poor and skimped. The flunkeys and the frocks, the country castles and the town palaces, the food, the jewels and the dukes, had remained outside her imaginative experience. What she had read had been her Bible, and a few books of her mother’s childhood in which people were sad, and good and ill, and died saying things that made her cry very much. There was nothing to set her dreaming in these. Life, she thought, was like that, except for the lucky ones such as herself, who had kind parents and a nice back parlour to sit and sew in when their work was done. There were the gentry, of course; they existed, she knew, but only knew vaguely. Entirely vague they had been in her mind till she became a Luke, and found herself engulfed by them; and what an awe-inspiring engulfing it had seemed to her, with Ammond handing round everything at meals, and tea on a table you didn’t sit up at!

Now, as her new friend’s arm propelled her past the blank-faced footmen, across the great marble-floored and columned hall, she realised that Almond Tree Cottage had been the merest wheelbarrow in size and fittings compared to this. This was grand. More—this was terrible. It was her idea of a cathedral or a museum, but not of a place human beings washed their hands in, and talked out loud.

‘P’raps,’ she murmured to the lady called Laura, holding back as she was about to be taken into a room which she could see at once she would never feel comfortable in, and where far away in the distance was another of those tables with tea on it that one didn’t sit up at, ‘p’raps, if you don’t mind, I’d better be gettin’ along after all——’ for, being polite, she had forced herself to bow with a nervous smile to a gentleman in black, who was standing about and whose eye had met hers, and he hadn’t taken any notice but looked as blank-faced as everybody else, and the rebuff had terribly embarrassed her.

‘Come along,’ was all Laura said to that, calling out over her shoulder to the same gentleman in black to see that a room was got ready for Mrs. Luke; and he answered, as polite and mild as milk, ‘Very good, m’lady——’ so he was a servant, and Laura was one of those ladies Sally had heard her parents sometimes allude to with awe, who are always being told they’re ladies every time any one speaks to them, and who were, so Mr. and Mrs. Pinner declared, the pick of the basket.

‘P’raps,’ murmured Sally again, faintly, for the thought of having got among the pick of the basket unnerved her, ‘I’d best do what Father said, and take a taxi....’

‘You shall if you really want to,’ said Laura, ‘but let’s have tea first. And think of that party! It’s raging at this minute. Oh, Sally—could you bear it?’

Sally sat down on the chair Laura pushed up for her. She sat down obediently, but only on the edge of it, her long slender legs tucked sideways, as one sits who isn’t at ease. No, she couldn’t bear to go back to that party; nor could she, waiting till it was over, go back after it and face Mrs. Luke. It was more than flesh and blood could manage.

Then, that being so, and seeing that her father wouldn’t have her, the only thing to do was to stay where she was till Usband went to Cambridge on Saturday, and be thankful she had this kind lady to be with, and try and swallow all the servants and marble, and do her best to behave grateful. It was only for a couple of days, for directly Usband got to Cambridge she would go after him as a wife should. Fallen on her feet wonderfully she had, Sally anxiously assured herself; but nevertheless, as she sat on the edge of her chair, and great pictures looked down at her from vast walls, she felt excessively uneasy.

‘Tell me some more about the Lukes,’ said Laura gaily, arranging a little table in front of her on which her cup and plate had a nice lot of room, and nothing got spilt or dropped. ‘I think they’re such fun.’

‘Fun?’ echoed Sally, her lips parting.

She stared at Laura. Fun? The Lukes?

‘I never ’eard of a ’usband bein’ fun,’ she said in a very low voice, her head drooping.

‘Perhaps that isn’t quite the word,’ said Laura, ‘though I believe it’s a very good way of approaching them.’ And then she paused, teapot in hand, her eyes on Sally’s face. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you know you’re the most utterly beautiful thing?’

Whereupon Sally started, for this was the way Mrs. Luke had begun with her, and said quickly, even as she had said then, ‘But I can’t ’elp it.’

‘Help it?’ echoed Laura, astonished.

‘People begins,’ said Sally anxiously, ‘with “Oh my, ain’t you beautiful,” and ends with bein’ angry. It ain’t as if I could ’elp it,’ she said, looking up at her new friend with eyes in which tears were gathering, for it would be more than she could bear on her empty stomach—she had had no food since her breakfast in Mr. Thorpe’s car—if she too were going to be angry with her.

Really such an extraordinary piece of good fortune as this had never yet come Laura’s way.