Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

That afternoon and evening were a triumph for her if she had known it, but all she knew was that she was counting the hours to next day, and Jocelyn, and the settling down at last to her home and her duties. The old man was her slave. Crippenham and everything in it was laid at her feet, and the Duke only lamented that it should be to this one of his houses that she had come, where he couldn’t, he was afraid, make her even decently comfortable. Positively at Crippenham there was only one bathroom. The Duke seemed to regard this as a calamity, and Sally listened with mild wonder to the amount he had to say about it.

‘Fair ’arps on it, don’t ’e, poor old gentleman,’ she remarked to Charles; and bending over to the Duke’s ear—Charles looked on in astonishment at the fearless familiarity of the gesture—she tried to convey to him that it wasn’t Saturday night till the next night, and that by then she’d be in Cambridge, so there was no need for him to take on.

‘Eh?’ said the Duke. ‘What does she say?’ he asked Charles.

‘She says,’ shouted Charles, ‘that it doesn’t matter.’

How very glad he was that his father was so deaf. Often he had found his deafness trying, but how glad he was of it now. Not Saturday night.... Charles fell silent. It was then Friday. Could it be that since the previous Saturday——?

The Duke, however, knew nothing of Sally except what his eyes told him, and accordingly he was her slave. When she presently went up to Laura’s room with the housekeeper, who had instructions to place everything of Lady Laura’s at Mrs. Luke’s disposal—Crippenham had no spare rooms, only a room each for the Duke, and Charles, and Laura, the other six or seven bedrooms being left unfurnished and kept locked up—and Charles, who from long practice could make his father hear better than anyone except Laura, settled down to telling him as much about Sally as he thought prudent, the old man listened eagerly, his hand behind his ear, drinking in every word and asking questions which showed that if he was really interested in a subject he still could be most shrewd.

He was delighted that Sally should have run away from her mother-in-law, said it was proof of a fine, thoroughbred spirit, and asked who her father was.

Charles said his name was Pinner.

The Duke then inquired whether he were one of the Worcestershire Pinners, and Charles said he didn’t know.

The Duke then rambled off among his capacious memories, and presently brought back a Pinner who had been at Christchurch with him, and who had married, he said, one of the Dartmoors, an extremely handsome woman, fair too, who was probably the girl’s grandmother.

Charles merely bowed his head.

The Duke then asked who the Lukes, apart from this boy-husband at Ananias, were; for, he said, except the fellow in the Bible, he couldn’t recollect ever having heard of a Luke before.

Charles said all he knew was that they lived at South Winch.

‘What?’ cried the Duke. ‘Has she married beneath her?’—and was so really upset that for a time he blinked at Charles in silence. Because he felt that if only this dear son of his had secured the beautiful young creature he could have died content; and it seemed to him a double catastrophe that not only should his boy have missed her, but that she should have been caught into a misalliance with some obscure family in a suburb.

‘Upon my word, Charles,’ he said, after a dismayed silence, ‘that’s a pity. A very great pity.’

And rambling off into his memories again, he said it was a good thing that poor Jack Pinner was dead, for no man had a keener family feeling than he, and it would have broken his heart to think his grand-daughter had made a mistake of that kind.

He couldn’t get over it. He had never, in the whole of his long life, seen anyone to touch this girl for beauty, and that she should, at the very outset of what ought to have been a career of unparalleled splendour and success, have dropped out of her proper sphere and become entangled in a suburb really shocked him. Kings at her feet, all Europe echoing with her name—this seemed to the Duke such beauty’s proper accompaniment.

‘Tut, tut,’ he said, his hands, clasped on the top of his stick, shaking more than usual, ‘tut, tut, tut. What was her mother thinking of?’

‘Her mother is dead,’ said Charles.

‘Her father, then. Jack Pinner was no fool. I don’t understand how his son—where is he, by the way? I heard something about the Worcestershire estates having been sold after the war——’

Charles said he didn’t know where her father was, because, although Sally had told him the shop was at Woodles, he had never heard of Woodles, which indeed is not marked on any map, so that he felt he wasn’t lying in saying he didn’t know.

The Duke, however, appeared to be seized by a sudden fierce desire to track down his old friend’s reprehensible son and tell him what he thought of him, and Charles was dismayed, for no good, he was sure, could come of tracking down Mr. Pinner. Sally, he knew, was anxious her father shouldn’t find out her disobedience to his orders, and though of this disobedience Charles held Laura guilty, not Sally, yet he didn’t suppose Mr. Pinner would look at it like that, and it was, besides, important, Charles considered, that his father, who had always had a rooted objection to any woman who wasn’t well-bred, should go on thinking Sally was a Worcestershire Pinner.

It seemed, then, to Charles a good thing to keep his father and Mr. Pinner apart, and it was therefore with regret that he listened to the old man asking Sally the moment he next saw her, which wasn’t till dinner, for she stayed up in her room till fetched down by the scandalised housekeeper, to whom it was a new experience that His Grace should be kept waiting even a minute after the gong had sounded, where her father was.

‘’Im?’ said Sally, turning pale but forced by nature and her upbringing to an obedient truthfulness. ‘’E’s at Woodles, ’e is.’ And, ‘Oh my gracious,’ she added to herself, ‘they ain’t goin’ to tell ’im I’m ’ere?’

‘What does she say?’ the Duke asked Charles.

‘She says,’ shouted Charles, following his father, who was shuffling along leaning on Sally’s arm, to the dining-room, and shouting with outward composure but inward regret, ‘that he is at Woodles.’

‘Woodles? Woodles?’ repeated the Duke. ‘Never heard of it. Is it in Worcestershire?’

Sally shook her head. She didn’t know where Worcestershire was, but she felt pretty sure Woodles wasn’t in it.

‘I dunno wot it’s in,’ she said. And then, impelled as always to the naked truth, she added, ‘Close by ’ere, any’ow.’

‘What does she say?’ inquired the Duke, turning again to Charles.

‘She says,’ shouted Charles, obliged to hand on the answer correctly with Sally listening, but doing so with increased regret, ‘that it isn’t far from here.’

‘How very lucky,’ said the Duke, ‘and how very odd that I shouldn’t have known he was so near.’ And he added, when he had been lowered into his chair at the head of the table by the parlourmaid, who held one arm, and his servant, who held the other, ‘I’d like to have a talk with that father of yours, my dear.’

Sally turned paler.

‘Your grandfather was one of my oldest friends,’ continued the Duke, with difficulty unfolding his table-napkin because of how much his hands shook.

‘I ain’t got no grandfather,’ said Sally anxiously, who had never heard of him till that moment.

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.

‘She says,’ began Charles reluctantly—‘You know,’ he muttered quickly to Sally, for how could he tell the old man what she had said? ‘you have a grandfather—or had. You must have. Everybody has them.’

‘What? What?’ said the Duke impatiently. ‘Send a message round tonight, Charles, and say with my compliments that I’d very much like to see Pinner. Tell him I’m too old to go to him, so perhaps he’ll be obliging enough to come to me some time tomorrow. You can say his father was at Oxford with me if you like, and that I’ve only just heard he is in the neighbourhood. Say his daughter——’

‘Now don’t—now don’t go doin’ a thing like that,’ Sally faintly begged of Charles.

‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.

‘Do you think it’s wise to break your rule of never seeing anybody while you’re here?’ shouted Charles. ‘You shouldn’t,’ he added to Sally, ‘have told him about Woodles.’

‘But ’e ask me,’ said Sally, distressed.

‘You’re not obliged to tell everybody everything,’ said Charles.

‘But if they asks me——’ said Sally, almost in tears.

The Duke became suddenly cross. ‘I hate all this muttering,’ he said. ‘Why on earth can’t you speak up, Charles?’

Charles spoke up. ‘It’s impossible to send tonight, Father,’ he shouted. ‘If you won’t keep servants here you can’t send messages.’

‘Then you can go yourself tomorrow,’ said the Duke.

‘Now don’t—now don’t go doin’ a thing like that,’ implored Sally again.

‘And bring him back in your car,’ said the Duke.

‘I believe Mrs. Luke would rather not see her father,’ shouted Charles.

‘That’s right,’ said Sally, nodding her head emphatically. It did sound awful though—not wanting to see one’s father. ‘Ain’t I gettin’ wicked quick,’ she thought; and hung her head.

He didn’t seem to think so, however, the old gentleman didn’t, for he leant across to her looking as pleasant as pleasant, and patted her shoulder with his poor shaky old hand, and said she was quite right. Right? Poor old gentleman, thought Sally—past even knowing good from bad.

The Duke bent across and patted her shoulder, a broad smile on his face. Such spirit—running away from her mother-in-law, and kicking at seeing her father—delighted him. She was a high-stepper, this lovely, noble little lady, and all his life he had admired only those women whose steps were high.

‘You shan’t see him, my dear,’ he said. ‘Quite right, quite right not to wish to.’ And just as she was heaving a sigh of thankfulness he added, ‘But I will. I really must have a talk with him.’

Strange, thought Charles, this determination to talk with Sally’s father. How much better, how much more really useful, to talk with her husband, or her mother-in-law.