Introduction to Sally

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

§

He wrote to his mother that night, after Sally had gone to bed. He sent her there early, and with a return of irritability, because of the way the people in the dining-room at dinner, and afterwards in the drawing-room where he and she sat in a remote corner while he had his coffee, behaved. It was really outrageous. This was his first experience of dining with her in a public place. And it was no good his glaring at the creatures, because they never gave him so much as a glance.

So he sent her to bed, and then he wrote to his mother. Better go home. Better now go home to South Winch, and not wander about in expensive hotels, with hateful old men in dinner jackets and fat women in beads staring their eyes out. Hotels were impossible with Sally; and so were lodgings, with the risk of another suspicious and insulting landlady. Besides, a fortnight was enough for a honeymoon, and for this particular honeymoon, with all its difficulties, quite enough. Home was the place. Almond Tree Cottage, and its quiet. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home to his mother, and get her meeting with Sally over, and sit in that little study of his at the top of the house where not a soul could see him, and think out what was best to do next.

His mother would help him. She had always understood and helped. Never yet had she failed him. And she would help him, too, in the business of looking after Sally,—take her off his hands sometimes, and perhaps succeed in getting her quite soon to talk like a civilised being.

It had been the last thing he had originally intended, to go with Sally to stay at his mother’s. Introduce her, of course; take her down for a day; but not stay there, for well did he know his marriage would fall like a sword on his mother, cleaving her heart. Things, however, had changed since then. He had in his haste, in his blind passion, written to her that he was going to chuck Cambridge, and now that his passion was no longer blind and he wasn’t going to chuck it—no, he’d be damned if he would; not anyhow till he had tried what it was like there with Sally—he was anxious to go to his mother and heal up at least one of the wounds he knew his letter must have made. He would ask her what she thought, having seen Sally, of the idea of her living in Cambridge. Perhaps—it flashed into his mind like light—his mother would live there too; give up Almond Tree Cottage, and live with them in Cambridge. What a solution. Then she could look after Sally, and be such a comfort, such a blessed comfort, to him as well. What a splendid, simple solution.

He threw down his pen, and stared straight in front of him. They would all be happy then—he going on with his work, Sally being taught by his mother, and his mother not separated from him.

When he went to bed, and Sally stirred in her sleep as if she were waking up, he took her in his arms and asked her if she would like to live in Cambridge.

‘Yes,’ murmured Sally, even though half asleep remembering to stick to monosyllables.

‘It’ll be better than London,’ said Jocelyn, holding her close. ‘Won’t it, my love? Won’t it, my beautiful love?’ he added in a whisper, for there was something about Sally’s hair, against which his face was, a softness, a sweetness....

‘And perhaps my mother will come and live with us too there. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, darling?’