But this time, after three whole days’ honeymoon and three whole nights, he commanded; adding in a tone of real annoyance, ‘And for God’s sake don’t look at people when they pass.’
‘I ain’t lookin’ at them,’ protested Sally, flushing, who never wanted to look at anybody, besides having been taught by the anxious Pinners that no modest girl did. ‘They looks at me.’
It was true. Jocelyn knew it was true, but nevertheless was angry, and caught hold of her arm and marched her up a side lane from the sea, up to the less inhabited hill at the back of the village.
For they were at St. Mawes, the little cut-off fishing village in South Cornwall which had lived in Jocelyn’s memory ever since, two years before, on an Easter bicycling tour with his mother, he and she had suddenly dropped down on it from the hill above, unaware of its existence till they were right on it, so completely was it tucked away and hidden. It had lived in his memory as the most difficult spot to get at, and therefore probably the most solitary, of any he had come across. Miles from a railway, miles from the nearest town, only to be reached, unless one went to it by sea, along a most difficult and tortuous road that ended by throwing one down a precipice on to a ferry-boat which took one across the Fal and shot one out at the foot of another precipice,—or so the two hills seemed to Jocelyn and his mother, who had to push their bicycles up them—he considered it the place of places to hide his honeymoon in; to hide, that is, the precious and conspicuous Sally.
His recollection of it was just a village street along the sea, an inn or two, a shop or two, a fisherman or two, and in the middle of the day complete emptiness.
He wrote, trembling with excitement, to its post office to get him rooms, rooms for his wife and himself—his wife; oh, my God! thought Jocelyn, still a week off his wedding day.
The post office got him rooms,—a tiny bedroom, almost filled by the bed, a tiny parlour, almost filled by the table, and a fisherman and his wife, who lived in the rest of the cottage, to look after them.
The first day they were out in a boat all day being shown coves by the fisherman, who stared hard at Sally, and whenever they wanted to go back took them to see another cove instead; but the second day, the imperativeness of daily exercise having been part of Jocelyn’s early training, he felt it his duty to exercise Sally, and emerged with her during the quiet hour after their mid-day meal for a blow along the sea front.
She had already said, when he asked her if she would like to go out, that she didn’t mind if she did, and he had passed it over because he happened to be looking at her when she said it, and no one who happened to be looking at Sally when she said anything was able to pay much attention to her words. Jocelyn couldn’t, anyhow, only three days married; but out on the sea front, walking side by side, his eyes fixed ahead in growing surprise at the number of people suddenly come out, like themselves, apparently, for blows, when in answer to his remark that the place seemed more populous than he had imagined, she said, ‘It do, don’t it, Mr. Luke,’ he snapped at her.