Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

‘Stomach,’ concluded Sally, who could find no other explanation for Jocelyn’s ups and downs; and wondered whether she would ever dare bring to his notice a simple remedy her father, who sometimes suffered too but with less reserve, always had by him.

Well, there was one thing to be said for all this, thought Jocelyn, his stern eye fixed straight ahead, his brow severe, as he hurried the car along the road to the ferry—he was now awake. At last. High time too. Till then, from the day he first saw Sally, in spite of moments of grave spiritual disturbance and annoyance, he had been in a feverish dream. Out of this dream Mrs. Cupp’s conduct had shaken him, and he believed he might now be regarded as through with the phase in which he thought of nothing but the present and let the future go hang. Now he had to think. Decisions were being forced on him. Holidays end, but life goes on; honeymoons finish, but wives don’t. Here he was with a wife, and upon his soul, thought Jocelyn, precious little else,—no career, no plans, no lodgings.

What a position. The lodgings, of course, were a small thing, but how being turned out of them rankled! His life had been so dignified. He and his mother had never once come across a member of the lower classes who was rude. At South Winch all was order, decency, esteem in their own set and respectfulness from everybody else. At Ananias what order, what decency, what esteem, what respectfulness. Impossible at Ananias, however modest one might be, not to know that one was looked upon as a present pride and a future adornment, with the Master at the top of the scale invariably remembering who one was and graciously smiling, and at the bottom the almost affectionate attentions of one’s warm and panting bedmaker. Impossible, too, not to know, though this, except for the pleasure it gave his mother, was of no sort of consequence, that South Winch regarded him with interest. These attitudes hadn’t at all disarranged Jocelyn’s grave balance, hadn’t at all turned his head, because of his real and complete absorption in his work; but they had been there—a fitting and seemly background, a sunny, sheltering wall against which he could expand, in quiet security, the flowers of his ambitions.

Now here he was, kicked out into the street—it amounted to that—by a person of the utmost obscurity called Cupp. Conceive it. Conceive having got into a position in which anybody called Cupp could humiliate him.

He banged his fist down on the electric horn as an outlet to his feelings. It gave a brief squeak, and was silent.

‘Horn’s gone wrong,’ he said, pressing it hard but getting nothing more out of it.

Sally’s heart gave a thump. To have anything go wrong at such a moment! For they were on that road cut in the hillside, narrow, twisty, slippery and steep, which leads on the St. Mawes side down through a wood, charming that late March afternoon with the mild sun slanting through the pale, grey-green branches of naked trees across flocks of primroses, to the King Harry Ferry. Far down on Sally’s side she could have seen, if she had dared look, the placid waters of the Fal, unruffled in their deep shelter by the wind that was blowing along the open country at the top. Her anxious eyes, however, were not in search of scenery—at no time was she anything of a hand at scenery,—they were strained towards each fresh corner as it came in sight; for one day they had met a charabanc round one of those very corners, a great wide horror taking up nearly all the road. But luckily that day they were coming up the hill, not going down it, and so they had the inside, and not the unprotected, terrifying outside edge. Now they were outside, and suppose....

‘Horn’s gone wrong,’ said Jocelyn, just as she was thinking that.

But did it matter? she asked herself, seeking comfort. She tried to hope it didn’t. Horns weren’t like wheels. One didn’t depend on them for getting along. They just made noises. Useful, as one’s voice was useful, but not essential, like one’s legs.

No, it didn’t matter much, evidently, for Usband was saying he would put it right while they were on the ferry,—and then her heart gave a much bigger thump, and seemed to leap into her mouth and crouch there trembling, for there, round the very next corner, a few yards in front of them, was another charabanc.