Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

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.