Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

While they, along the roads, were drawing every minute nearer, the unconscious Duke was sitting in his plain study, having his plain tea, which had been set beside him by his plain parlourmaid. This is not to say that the parlourmaid was ill-favoured, but only that she wasn’t a footman.

There were no footmen at Crippenham. There was hardly anything there, except the Duke. For years it had been his conviction that this annual fortnight of the rest that is obtained by complete contrast prolonged his life. Something evidently prolonged it, and the Duke was sure it was Crippenham. There he went every Easter alone with Laura, because it was a small house, and an ugly house, and a solitary house, and had nothing to recommend it except that it was the exact opposite of every other Moulsford possession.

Only Charles could come and go as he pleased; only he could dare break in without notice on the sacred yearly business of prolonging life. Although he had had ninety-three years of it, the Duke still wanted more. He liked being alive, and it pleased him to keep Streatley waiting. Streatley, and the other three children of his first marriage—absurd, he thought, to have to refer to those four old things as children—were unpopular with their father. He had never at any time cared much for them, and had begun to be really angry with them when he was a lively seventy, and perceived that the possession of children bordering on a heavy fifty made him seem less young than he felt himself to be. Now that they were practically seventy themselves, and old seventies too, and he not looking a day different, he hoped, from what he had looked thirty years before, he was angrier with them than ever. He admitted that other people might be old at ninety-three, but he wasn’t; he was the exception. He didn’t feel old, and he didn’t, he considered, look old, so what was all this talk of age? The press never mentioned him without the prefix venerable; people pretended he was deaf, when he could hear as well as any man if he wasn’t mumbled at; Laura was continually making him sit out of draughts, just as if he were a damned invalid; arms were offered him if he wanted to walk a few steps—he couldn’t appear in the House without some officious member of it, usually that ass Chepstow, who was eighty if a day himself, ambling across to help; and every time he had a birthday the newspapers tumbled over each other with their offensively astonished congratulations. Couldn’t a man be over ninety without having it perpetually rubbed into him that he was old?

What he loved was his brood of young ones—Laura, Terry, and Charles; and of this lively trio the dearest to him was Charles. So that, looking up from his seedcake and seeing his last born coming into the room, not only entirely unexpectedly but with a young woman, though he was surprised he wasn’t angry; and when on their coming close to him he perceived the exceeding fairness of the young woman, his surprise became pleasurable; very pleasurable; in fact, pleasurable to excess.

He stared up at Sally a moment, not listening to what Charles was saying, and then struggled to get on to his feet. Younger than his three young ones ... much, much younger than his three young ones ... youth, ah, youth ... lovely, lovely youth....

Charles wanted to help him, but was thrust aside. ‘Poor old gentleman,’ said Sally, catching him by the arm as he seemed about to lose his balance and drop back into the chair.

‘Married?’ asked the Duke, breathing hard after his exertion, and looking at Charles.

Charles shook his head.

‘’Course I’m married,’ said Sally with heat.

‘He means us,’ said Charles.

‘Us?’ repeated Sally, much shocked.

‘You’re going to be, then,’ said the Duke, looking first at her and then at Charles, his face red with pleasure.

Charles shook his head again, and laughed.

But the Duke didn’t laugh. He stared at him a minute, and then said, ‘Fool.’

‘I got a nusband,’ said Sally indignantly.

‘He can’t hear,’ said Charles. ‘He’s very deaf.’

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke. ‘Speak clearly, my dear—no, don’t shout,’ he added; though Sally, far from going to shout, wasn’t even opening her mouth. Poor old gentleman, she thought, gazing at him in silent compassion; fancy him still being anybody’s father.

The Duke took her hand in a dry, cold grip.

‘Like shakin’ ’ands with a tombstone,’ thought Sally. And she was filled with so great a pity for anything so old that she didn’t feel shy of him at all, and in the coaxing voice of one who is addressing a baby she said, ‘’Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot—do, now.’

Charles looked at her astonished. Nearly everybody was afraid of his father. She reminded him of the weaned child in Isaiah, who put its hand fearlessly on the cockatrice’s den.

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke, gazing at her with delight.

‘This is Mrs. Luke, Father—a friend of Laura’s,’ shouted Charles, ‘and I’ve brought her——’

‘Write it down, my dear,’ said the Duke, not heeding Charles, and drawing Sally into a chair next his own and pushing paper and a pencil towards her with his shaking old hands. ‘Write down what you were saying to me.’

Charles became anxious. He felt sure Sally couldn’t write anything down. Nor could she; for if her spoken words were imperfect her written ones were worse, so that to be given a pencil and paper by the Duke and told to write might have been embarrassing if she hadn’t, owing to his extreme age and evident dilapidation, felt he wasn’t, as she said to herself, all there. Poor old gentleman, she thought, full of pity. What she saw, sitting heavily in the chair, breathing hard and blinking at her so kindly, was just, thought Sally, the remains, the left-overs; like, she said to herself, her images being necessarily domestic, Sunday’s dinner by the time one got to Friday,—not much good, that is, but had to be put up with. No; there was nothing frightening about him, poor old gentleman. More like a baby than anything else.

‘’Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot,’ she said again, gently putting the paper and pencil aside. ‘Do you good,’ she encouraged, ‘a nice ’ot cup of tea will.’

‘He can’t hear, you know,’ said Charles, much relieved by Sally’s attitude. But with what confidence, he thought, couldn’t a thing so gracious approach the most churlish, disgruntled of human beings; and his father wasn’t either churlish or disgruntled,—he only looked as if he were, and frightened people, and when he saw they were frightened he didn’t like them, and frightened them more than ever.

The Duke, watching Sally’s every movement with rapt attention, thought when she put her hand on the teapot to feel if it was still hot that she wanted tea herself, and bade Charles ring the bell and order more to be brought, and meanwhile he took the cup she offered him obediently, his eyes on her face. He hadn’t got as far, being still in too great a condition of amazement at her beauty, as wondering which of the ancient families of England had produced this young shoot of perfection, and not being able to hear a word she said took it for granted that the delicate-ankled—he was of the practically extinct generation that looks first at a woman’s ankles,—slender-fingered creature belonged to his own kind. True her hands were red hands; surprisingly red, he thought, on her presently taking off her gloves, which she rolled up together into a neat tight ball, compared to the flawless fairness of her face; but they were the authentic shape of good-breeding, even if her nails——

The Duke was really surprised when his eyes reached Sally’s nails.

Charles drew a chair close up to his father, and began his explanations. He was determined the old man should attend, and shouted well into his ear as he told him that he had motored Laura’s friend, Mrs. Luke, down from London, where she had been staying with Laura at Goring House, to Crippenham for the night because it was quieter, and she hadn’t been well——

‘I’m all right,’ interrupted Sally, who had been listening in an attitude of polite attention.

‘Oh, my dear child—when you fainted,’ protested Charles in his ordinary voice, raising a deprecating hand.

‘Speak up,’ said the Duke, impatiently.

‘’Course I fainted,’ said Sally, looking pleased.

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.

‘Yes—and were unconscious for at least half an hour,’ said Charles.

‘That’s right. And sick,’ said Sally, looking proud.

‘Sick? Were you sick as well? Then see how really ill——’

‘Speak up, speak up,’ said the Duke testily.

But Sally said nothing further, and merely smiled indulgently at Charles.

‘What did she say?’ asked the Duke, not wishing to lose a word that fell from that enchanting mouth.

‘She said,’ shouted Charles, ‘that she is quite well now.’

‘Of course she is,’ said the Duke, staring at her face and forgetting her nails. ‘Anyone can see she is as perfectly well as she is perfectly beautiful.’

‘Oh lor,’ thought Sally, ‘now ’e’s goin’ to begin.’