Chapter IX: §

Restored by the shock both of Sally’s loveliness and language to her normal self, Mrs. Luke’s tears dried up and her emotions calmed down, and she began to think rapidly and clearly.

This situation had to be dealt with. The only person who could deal with it with any hope at all of success was herself. She would, then, grasp it firmly, as if it were a nettle, and wear it proudly, as if it were a rose. Yes, that was the line to take: wear it proudly, as if it were a rose.

More clearly than if Jocelyn had explained for an hour she saw what had happened, what couldn’t have helped happening, once chance had shown him Salvatia. From those few words of Sally’s she reconstructed the Pinner family and its conditions, and as she stood gazing at her, with one hand still in Jocelyn’s, she grouped the whole Pinner lot into the single word Gutter. Jocelyn had found and picked up beauty in a gutter. The gutter was as evident as the beauty, and as impossible to hide. Accept it, then; accept it, and make South Winch accept it. Treat it as quaint, as amusing, as completely excused by the beauty. She had made South Winch accept Tiepolo, when it didn’t in the least want to, and now see into what an enthusiasm it had lashed itself! Even so would she make it accept Salvatia; and ceaselessly every hour, every minute, she herself would educate the girl, and train her patiently, and force her gently into proper ways of speech and behaviour. Seventeen, was she? Mrs. Luke felt that with seventeen all things were possible. A child. Wax. And she was so really exquisite, so really perfect of form and colour and movement, that it would be wonderful to watch her development, her unfolding into at least the semblance of a lady.

Salvatia--‘No, no, dearest Jocelyn--not Sally, not Sally,’ she begged on his calling her that, for she had a theory that names had the power of making you be like them, and a Sally was foredoomed to unredeemable vulgarity--should have masters (perhaps mistresses would be better,) down from London, when once Mrs. Luke was married to Mr. Thorpe and could afford things; regular teachers who would give her lessons at stated hours, while she herself would give her lessons at all the unstated ones. And she would take her everywhere, to each of the South Winch festivities, whether tea-parties, or debates, or lectures, or concerts or plays, and wherever she went Salvatia should be her open glory. It would be a mistake in tactics, besides being an impossibility, to try to hide her. She should be flaunted. For, confronted by a bull, Mrs. Luke remembered, quite the best thing to do was to take it by the horns.

So swiftly do thoughts gallop through minds like Mrs. Luke’s that she had planned out her attitude in those few instants in the sitting-room, while she stood gazing at Sally and holding Jocelyn’s hand.

‘We’re going to be _great_ friends, are we not Salvatia?’ she said, laying her free hand on her daughter-in-law’s delicate little shoulder.

Great friends? She and the lady? The bare suggestion produced in Sally that physical condition known to the Pinner family as fit to drop.

Directly questioned, however, she was forced to answer, so she said faintly, ‘Right O,’ and Mrs. Luke, smiling elaborately and patting the shoulder, said, ‘You very quaint little girl,’--and in spite of the obvious inappropriateness of these adjectives as a description of the noble young angel standing before her, she was determined that they should, roughly, represent her attitude towards her.

‘Now we’ll all have tea,’ she said, suddenly becoming gaily business-like. These children--it was she who must take them in hand. No more emotions, she decided. Her beloved Jocelyn needed her help again, couldn’t do without her.... ‘Won’t we, Jocelyn? Won’t we, Salvatia? I’ve had some already, but I’ll be greedy and have some more. Jocelyn, you go and tell Hammond----’ Hammond was the little maid’s surname, and by it, to her great astonishment who knew herself only as Lizz, she had been called since she entered Mrs. Luke’s service--‘to make fresh tea and bring it in here. You must both be dying for it. And then you can say goodbye to the Walkers for me, Jocelyn, will you?’ she called after him. ‘Tell them I’ve got a most beautiful surprise for them--quite soon, perhaps to-morrow. _You’re_ the beautiful surprise, Salvatia,’ she said, turning to Sally smilingly, who had made a sudden forward movement as if to follow Jocelyn, and who, on seeing him go out of the room and leave her alone with his mother, was so seriously alarmed that she again had a queer conviction about her stomach, but this time that it was turning what the Pinner family called as white as a sheet.

‘Of course you know you’re beautiful, don’t you?’ said Mrs. Luke, busily pulling out the little table the tea was to be put on in the absence of the proper table in the garden, and clearing Sir Thomas Browne off it, and also two bright tulips in a clear glass vessel. ‘You must have heard that ever since you can remember.’

‘But I can’t _’elp_ it,’ said Sally, very anxious, her eyes on the door.

‘’Elp it? You quaint child. There’s an h in help, Salvatia dear. Help it? But why should you want to? It’s a wonderful gift, and you should thank God who gave it you, and use it entirely----’ Mrs. Luke was quite surprised at her own words, for she wasn’t at all religious, yet they came out glibly, and she concluded they were subconsciously inspired by the Canon in the garden--‘entirely to His glory.’

‘Yes, m----’

‘No--stop there, stop there,’ cried Mrs. Luke, quickly holding up her hand and smiling. ‘You were going to say ma’am, were you not, Salvatia? Well, you mustn’t. Not to me. Not to anybody. Except, of course,’ she added, feeling she couldn’t begin too soon to help the child, ‘to the Queen, and other royal ladies.’

And before her eyes floated that vision she had so often contemplated of Sir Jocelyn Luke, of Lord Luke, and now was added to it Lady Luke, the lovely Lady Luke, being presented at Court, and by that time as perfect inside as out. Properly dealt with, Jocelyn’s marriage, instead of being his ruin, might end by being one of his chief glories.

‘Sit down, little girl.’

Sally dropped as if she were shot on to the nearest chair, which was Mrs. Luke’s.

‘Not there--not that one,’ said Mrs. Luke, smiling. ‘No, dear child--nor that one,’ she added, as Sally having hastily got up again was about to drop on to the next nearest one, which was Jocelyn’s--better get her into all the little ways at once. ‘_Any_ chair, Salvatia dear, except just those two. Yes--that’s a very comfortable one. Is not it too strange to think that this time yesterday you and I never had seen each other, and had no more idea----’

Sally, sitting down more cautiously on the edge of the third chair, didn’t think that strange at all, but very natural and nice. There had been lots of yesterdays without the lady in them, and all of them had seemed quite natural. What really was strange was that they should have left off and landed her here, shut up alone with somebody so happily till then unknown. If only, thought Sally, she could now, having been introduced and that, go somewhere where the lady wasn’t. For Mrs. Luke terrified her more than any one she had yet in her brief life come across. Worse, far worse, than her parents when, for her good, they used to give her What for, and worse even than Mr. Luke when he turned and just looked at her and didn’t say anything after she had passed some remark, was this smiling lady who patted her. She couldn’t take her eyes off Mrs. Luke, watching her with a fascinated apprehension, not knowing where she mightn’t be going to be patted next.

Sitting sideways on the very edge of her chair, and still holding her wrap tightly about her, Sally’s eyes followed Mrs. Luke’s slightest movement. In any one else it would have been a stare, and Mrs. Luke would have explained that she mustn’t, but there was nothing wrong to be found with the look in Sally’s eyes,--nothing wrong, indeed, to be found in anything she did, thought Mrs. Luke, arranging things comfortably for everybody’s tea, so long as it wasn’t speaking.

Mrs. Luke knew she was being watched, but only, so it seemed, with a lovely and gracious attentiveness. She also knew Sally was sitting on the edge of her chair, with her legs drawn up under her just as if she were trying to keep them out of something not quite nice; but no need to disturb a position which somehow seemed sheer grace. What a pity, what a pity, flashed across Mrs. Luke’s mind, that the child hadn’t happened to be born dumb! Was that wicked? No, she didn’t think so. She herself could imagine being very happy dumb, with plenty of books, and not having to talk to bores.

‘Wouldn’t you like to take your hat off, Salvatia?’ she asked, drawing Jocelyn’s chair closer to the little table.

Sally started. ‘No thank you, please----’ she said hastily.

‘Do,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘I want you to.’

‘Yes, m--yes, Mrs. Luke,’ said Sally, instantly obeying.

‘Not Mrs. Luke, dear--Mother. You must call me Moth----’

Her voice died away, and she stood staring in silence. How wonderful. How really amazingly beautiful. Like sunsets. And the girl, crowned with that bright crown of waving light, like some royal child.

She stood staring, her hands dropped by her sides. ‘What a _responsibility_,’ she whispered.

‘Pardon?’ said Sally, nervously.

§

The Walkers were got rid of, and Jocelyn came back frowning. They had scolded him; him, who had been completely understood and unreproached by his mother, the one person with either a right or a grievance. Having known him since he was three didn’t excuse them, he considered; and it seemed merely silly to rebuke him for leaving Cambridge when he wasn’t going to leave it. He didn’t attempt to enlighten them; he just stood and glowered, waiting till they should have done. What could old Walker know of the way one was forced to react to beauty? He had probably never set eyes on it in his life. And as for passionate love, the fiery love that had been burning him up for the last few weeks, one had only to look at Mrs. Walker to know he could never have felt that.

So he simply repeated, when the Canon paused a moment, that his mother had asked him to say good-bye for her, and then, this second time, he added, ‘She can’t come herself, because she is with my wife.’

‘Conceited young monkey,’ thought Mrs. Walker, who remembered him in petticoats, and even then giving himself airs. ‘Wife, indeed.’ Both Mrs. Walker’s sons were without gifts.

‘Your mother is an angel, sir,’ said the Canon sternly.

‘So is my wife,’ said Jocelyn, glowering.

‘No doubt, no doubt,’ said the Canon, who didn’t for a moment believe it. Angels weren’t married in such a hurry. On the other hand, he was sure young devils frequently were. They got hold of one and made one. Jocelyn had been got hold of--lamentably, disastrously.

The Canon snatched up his hat. ‘Come along, Margaret,’ he said testily, squaring his shoulders.

And Margaret came along, and together they marched off into the house, along the passage, past the shut sitting-room door, accompanied by Jocelyn who showed them out in silence.

He had said no word of that pleasant part of his mother’s message, that part about having a beautiful surprise for the Walkers, perhaps to-morrow, because he was annoyed with them, and they went away more indignant with him than before, besides feeling they had been treacherously treated by their hitherto dear friend, Mrs. Luke. And Mrs. Walker, when they were safely out in the road, said what a very disagreeable young man he had grown into, and the Canon said he hoped Mr. Thorpe would lick him into shape, and Jocelyn, all unconscious of Mr. Thorpe, went back frowning to his mother, who was in the act, when he opened the door, of stroking Sally’s hair.

He forgot the tiresome Walkers, and his heart swelled with gratitude. That Sally should be taken at once to his mother’s arms like this had been outside his wildest hopes. Indeed, he had had no hopes, no clear thoughts about it at all; he only, driven by weariness of the burden of complications Sally brought into the simplest things, had come back to his mother’s feet as the Christian sinner, tired of or frightened by his sins, comes back to the feet of God. The analogy wasn’t perfect, of course; Sally, so good and beautiful, couldn’t be compared to sin. But he wanted to get back to his mother’s feet, he had a tremendous, almost childish, longing to lie there and let her kick him if she chose. He had treated her badly. He well knew he deserved it. Let her do anything in the way of rebuke and chastisement, if only he might lie there, he and his burden, safely cast down, both of them, at her feet. ‘_I will arise and go to my Mother_,’ had floated frequently through his head as he set the bonnet of the Morris-Cowley eastward towards London and South Winch. Naturally he hadn’t said it out loud. Sally was incapable of understanding even a simple reaction. This one, which was highly complicated, would have completely bewildered her. Besides, one can’t well speak of a reaction to its cause.

But how happy was Jocelyn at the moment when he opened the door, and saw her and his mother in that attitude of mutual affection; how deeply relieved. The cords were loosened, the weight shifted. Here this calm room, with everything in it just right, just _so_--its restraints, its browns and ivories, its flashes of colour, its books, its one picture; and upstairs, up under the roof, his own attic waiting for him, with its promise of work to be resumed, to be carried on as it used to be in the tranquil, fruitful days before he met Sally.

Jocelyn stood a moment looking at the scene, smiling his rare smile because he was so content. How unlike the places he had suffered in since he last was here. How unlike the Pinner lair at the back of the shop, where he had burnt in torment, and the hideous dwelling of the Cupps, where he had been insulted, and the dingy expensiveness of the Thistle and Goat, and the other three or four cynically ugly and uncomfortable rooms through which he had trailed his passion. Impossible not to smile, not to laugh almost, with gladness at getting home again. He had, he knew, all his life loved his mother, but it seemed as if he hadn’t loved her consciously till now, and he went quickly across to her and put his arm about her, and said, ‘Mother, you must never leave me. I can’t do without you. _We_ can’t. When I go back to Cambridge--and of course I’m going back--you must come too. You’re going to live with us there. Everything depends on you. All my future, all my happiness----’

And Sally, over whose head these words were being tossed, sitting very rigid, for Mrs. Luke’s hand was still on her hair, and wholly unaccustomed to displays of family affection, once again said to herself, just for company’s sake and to keep her courage up, ‘Well, I’m blest.’

§

Mrs. Luke, however, was brought back by Jocelyn’s words to a vivid sense of Mr. Thorpe. He had sunk aside in her mind during the emotions of the last half hour. He now became distinct; extremely distinct, and frightfully near. That very evening he would be coming round after supper--he had agreed that the meal itself should be given over to reunion--in order to collect his young guests.

Jocelyn, she knew, had no idea of his existence. Mr. Thorpe, though living in South Winch, had not till then been of it. His world had been different. His wealth had separated him, and his obvious disharmony--South Winch had only to look at him to perceive it--with the things of the spirit. Also, there had been his wife. So that if mentioned, which was rarely, it had merely been with vague uninterest as the rich man in the big house in Acacia Avenue.

Now he had to be mentioned, and Jocelyn’s words made it difficult.

Mrs. Luke stood silent, her hand still on Sally’s head, encircled by Jocelyn’s arm, while he told her of the plans he had been making for the last two days, ever since it suddenly dawned on him that that was to be their future. How could she interrupt him with Mr. Thorpe? Yet Mr. Thorpe was, she was sure, the real solution. Salvatia was going to be expensive, very, if the gutter was to be properly scraped off her, and no further stretching could possibly be got out of her own income, while Jocelyn’s, of course, would be all needed for Cambridge. Yes--Mr. Thorpe, who had begun by being a refuge, had now become a godsend. Jocelyn would see it himself, when he had had him properly explained.

But how difficult to explain him--now, with the sweet balm of her boy’s dependence on her and his love being poured into her ears, her boy, who in his whole life hadn’t shown so much of either as he had in the half hour since he came home. Yet it wasn’t her fault, it was Jocelyn’s. It was his marriage that had precipitated Mr. Thorpe into their lives. Still, she didn’t blame Jocelyn, for no young man, let alone her imaginative, beauty-appreciating son, could have resisted Salvatia.

She stood silent, smiling nervously. To have to quench this happy hopefulness with Mr. Thorpe was most painful. She smiled more and more nervously. Apart from everything else, it embarrassed her, her coming marriage, it embarrassed her dreadfully, somehow, faced by her grown-up son. The memory of that almost snapped tendon last night ... suppose Jocelyn were to think she was marrying Mr. Thorpe for anything but convenience, with anything but reluctance ... suppose he were to take up a Hamlet-like attitude to her, and think--he would never, she knew, say--rude things....

‘How delightful it all sounds,’ she said at last, removing her hand from Sally’s head, who at once felt better. ‘Quite, quite delightful. But----’

‘Now, Mother, there mustn’t be any buts,’ interrupted Jocelyn. ‘It’s all settled.’ And rashly--but then he felt so happy and safe--he appealed to Sally. ‘Isn’t it, Sally,’ he said. ‘We want Mother, don’t we. And we’re going to have her, aren’t we.’

‘Yes--and Father,’ said Sally, whose ideas were simple but tenacious.

‘Father?’ repeated Mrs. Luke, touched. ‘Dear child, your poor Jocelyn has no----’

‘Mother, you and I must really have a good talk together,’ hastily interposed Jocelyn, who saw Sally’s mouth opening again. She shouldn’t _say_ anything; she really shouldn’t _say_ anything; the less she said the better for everybody. ‘You and I. By ourselves. This evening, when Sally----’

‘Salvatia, Jocelyn. Please, please.’

‘---- has gone up to bed.’

‘But you know, Jocelyn dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, loosening herself from his clasp and withdrawing a little, ‘that’s just what the dear child can’t go up to. Not here. Not in this tiny house. You didn’t think, of course, but there isn’t an inch of room really--not for three people. So I wanted to tell you--’ she began putting his tie straight, her eyes on it, not looking at him--‘what I’ve arranged. You’re both going to be taken in next door.’

‘Next door, Mother?’ said Jocelyn, much surprised, for he couldn’t at all recollect the next door people.

‘Well, nearly next door,’ said Mrs. Luke, diligent over his tie, and excessively annoyed to feel she was turning red. ‘At Abergeldie.’

‘Abergeldie?’ echoed Jocelyn, to whom the name was completely unfamiliar.

‘I tell you what we’ll do,’ said Mrs. Luke, as though she had suddenly had a brilliant idea, on the little maid’s appearing in the door bearing a tray that seemed twice as big as she was, and all but dropping it when she caught sight of the young lady on the chair. ‘After tea Salvatia shall go and lie down in my bedroom and rest--won’t you, Salvatia,--and you and I will have a quiet talk, dear Jocelyn--no, no, Hammond, not there; here, where I’ve put the table ready--and I’ll tell you all about--we want three cups, Hammond, not two--I’ll tell you all about----’

But she still couldn’t bring herself to mention Mr. Thorpe, and again said Abergeldie.

‘Is that lodgings?’ asked Jocelyn, who didn’t at all like the sound of it.

‘Oh, no--it isn’t _lodgings_,’ said Mrs. Luke brightly, giving his tie a final pat.

§

How was she to tell him about Mr. Thorpe? In what words, once she had got Salvatia upstairs out of the way, could she most quickly create in Jocelyn’s mind the image she wished to have there of a good, and honourable, and wealthy man, a man elderly and settled down, who respected and esteemed her, and because he respected and esteemed her wished to make her his wife? A good man, who would be a solid background for them all. A good man, whose feeling for her--Mrs. Luke was most anxious that Jocelyn shouldn’t suppose there was anything warm about Mr. Thorpe--was that of a kind, and much older, brother.

Preoccupied and perturbed, she poured out the tea and drank some herself, and hardly noticed what Sally was doing who, faced for the first time in her life by no table to sit up to and only her lap to put her cup and saucer and spoon and things to eat on, kept on either dropping them or spilling them.

‘Well, Mother, you’ll just have to be very patient,’ said Jocelyn, himself deeply annoyed when Sally’s spoon fell off for the third time, and for the third time made a noise on the varnished floor, which only had two rugs on it, and those far apart.

And Mrs. Luke smiled, and said ‘Of course,’ and hardly noticed, because of her deep preoccupation with Mr. Thorpe.

But when the cup itself slid sideways on the saucer and upset, and Sally’s frock was soaked and the cup broken, she was startled into awareness again, and for the moment forgot Mr. Thorpe.

‘Oh, _my_!’ cried Sally, shaken into speech.

‘It really isn’t of the slightest consequence, Salvatia,’ said Mrs. Luke, who was particularly fond of her teacups, of which none had ever yet been broken. ‘Pray don’t try to pick up anything. Hammond will do so. Jocelyn, ring the bell, will you? But I shouldn’t,’ she added, for naturally she was vexed at the set being spoilt, and though breeding, she knew, forbids vexation at such _contretemps_ being shown, yet it has to get out in some form or other, ‘I shouldn’t say, “Oh, _my_,” when anything unexpected happens.’

‘Right O,’ murmured Sally, shattered, all Jocelyn’s teaching vanishing from her mind.

‘Nor,’ remarked Mrs. Luke, gently and very clearly, ‘should I say, “Right O”.’

‘I’ve told her not to a hundred times,’ said Jocelyn, wiping Sally’s frock with his handkerchief.

‘That’s right,’ murmured Sally, who had now lost her head, and only wanted to admit her evil-doing and be forgiven.

‘Nor, dear Salvatia,’ said Mrs. Luke, still more gently and clearly, ‘should I, I think, say that.’

So then Sally said nothing, for there seemed nothing left to say.

‘She’ll be perfectly all right ultimately,’ said Mrs. Luke, coming down to Jocelyn when presently she had taken her upstairs, and tucked her up on the bed, and told her she was tired and must rest. ‘Perfectly.’

Jocelyn was waiting in the sitting-room. He and his mother were now, having got Sally out of the way, going to have their talk.

‘You’re wonderful, Mother,’ he said.

‘Darling Jocelyn,’ smiled his mother. ‘It’s that child who is wonderful,’ she added. ‘Or will be, when she has been properly----’ she was going to say scraped, the word gutter coming once more into her mind, but of course she didn’t, and substituted something milder. ‘When she has been properly trained,’ finished Mrs. Luke.

‘It sounds like a servant,’ said Jocelyn, who was sensitive because of the tin trunk (got rid of in Truro,) and the stiff nightgowns (got rid of in Truro too,) and several other distinct and searing memories.

‘Servant? You absurd boy. She’s a duchess, who happens not to have been born right--the most beautiful duchess the world would ever have seen. Now never,’ said Mrs. Luke with much seriousness--she felt she must take this situation thoroughly in hand--‘never, never let such a word as the one you just used enter your mind in connection with Salvatia again, my dear Jocelyn.’

No, he wouldn’t tell his mother about the way Sally had seemed to drift, as if drawn, towards the Cupps, quite obviously wanting to make friends with them, nor about the way she actually had made friends with the spotted mechanic in the Truro garage. And as for Mr. Pinner, for whom he had a curious distaste and of whom the remembrance was definitely grievous to him, Jocelyn wouldn’t tell his mother about him either. He would skim over Mr. Pinner. Why intrude him? Why dot the i’s of Sally’s beginnings? His mother had heard for herself how she spoke, and knew approximately what her father must be like. Let her knowledge remain approximate.

So they went together into the garden--again Mrs. Luke instinctively sought Nature,--Jocelyn determined to keep Mr. Pinner out of his mother’s consciousness, and Mrs. Luke determined to get Mr. Thorpe into his.

§

Arm in arm they paced up and down what Mr. Thorpe persisted in calling the drying ground, in spite of Mrs. Luke’s steady reference to it as the lawn, and Jocelyn said, ‘Her family come from Islington.’

‘Suburbans. Like ourselves,’ replied his mother, with a really heavenly tact, Jocelyn thought.

But she wasn’t thinking of what he was saying and what she was answering; she was seeking a formula for Mr. Thorpe. And, to gain yet a further moment’s grace,--queer how nervous she felt--she stopped a moment in front of the Kerria japonica in the angle of the wall by the kitchen window, and asked him if he didn’t think it was doing very well that year.

‘Wonderful,’ said Jocelyn. ‘It’s all perfect.’

He sighed with contentment at his mother’s progressive and amazing tactfulness. How had she not from the first moment grasped the situation, and needed no explanation at all. Now she was grasping the Pinners, and dismissing them without a single question. ‘Suburbans. Like ourselves.’ At that moment Jocelyn positively adored his mother.

‘Quite perfect,’ he said, admiring the Kerria. ‘Wherever you are, things grow as they should, and there’s peace, and order, and exact _rightness_.’

‘Marriage has turned you into a flatterer,’ smiled Mrs. Luke, still putting off Mr. Thorpe.

‘It has made me realise what a mother I’ve got,’ said Jocelyn, pressing her arm.

‘Darling Jocelyn. But surely rather an unusual result?’

‘My marriage is unusual.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Luke, bracing herself. ‘Yes. I suppose--we had better talk about it.’

‘But we _are_ talking about it.’

‘I mean the future.’

‘Well, I’ve told you my plans.’

‘But I haven’t told you mine.’

‘Yours, Mother?’

He turned his head and looked at her. Surely she was rather red?

‘You know, Jocelyn,’ she said, in a queer altered voice, ‘I was very miserable. Very, very miserable. You mustn’t forget that. I really _was_.’

§

How differently Mrs. Luke had meant to introduce Mr. Thorpe; how clearly she recognised that in their present situation he was their only hope, and that he should be explained with the appreciation and praise due to an only hope. And here she was prefacing him by a solemn declaration of her own unhappiness. It wasn’t at all the proper beginning. It couldn’t but be damaging to Mr. Thorpe. Besides, her pride had always been to appear before Jocelyn in every situation as completely content and calm. Breeding, she had preached to him ever since he was a tot, was invariably calm, and behaved very much like the great description of charity in St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. Whatever it felt it didn’t show it. But she had had a bad time lately, a bad, bad time, and her nerves had been tried beyond, apparently, their endurance.

‘What is it, Mother?’ asked Jocelyn, surprised and troubled. Had his mother been speculating, and lost?

She made a great effort to recover her self-control, and tried to smile. ‘Really some very good news,’ she said, resuming their walk. ‘We’ll go and sit under the cedar, and I’ll----’

‘Mother, what is it?’ asked Jocelyn again anxiously as she broke off, a cold foreboding creeping round his heart. ‘You’re not going to--you’re not going to fail me now?’

‘I’m going to help you more than I’ve ever done. In fact, if it hadn’t been for this--’ she was going to say windfall, but found she couldn’t think of Mr. Thorpe as a windfall,--‘if it hadn’t been for this, I could do very little for Salvatia. She will need----’

Had his mother been speculating, and won?

But what Salvatia would need Mrs. Luke didn’t on that occasion explain, for as on their way to the cedar they passed below the open window of the bedroom Sally had been left in, they heard voices coming from it, and Mrs. Luke, much astonished, stood still.

Almond Tree Cottage was a small low house, and its first floor windows were not very far above the heads of those walking beneath them in the garden. Standing there astonished--for who could Salvatia possibly be talking to?--Mrs. Luke listened, her surprised eyes on Jocelyn’s face. He too listened, but with less surprise, for from past experience he could guess--it was painful to him--what was happening, and he guessed that Sally was reverting to type again, and coalescing with the servant.

At first there was only a murmuring--one voice by itself, then another voice by itself, then two voices together; and his mother’s face was frankly bewildered. But presently Sally’s voice emerged, and it rose in a distinct, surprising wail, and they heard it say, or rather cry, ‘Oh, Ammond--oh, Ammond----’

Twice. Just like that.

Whereupon Mrs. Luke let go suddenly of Jocelyn’s arm, and hurried indoors and upstairs.

§

‘Are you unwell, Salvatia?’ she asked quickly, opening the bedroom door.

On the edge of the bed, her stockinged feet trailing on the floor, sat Sally, and beside her, also on the edge of the bed, the little maid. Mrs. Luke couldn’t believe her eyes. Their arms were round each other. She hadn’t realised, somehow, that Hammond had any arms; not the sort that go round other people, not the sort that do anything except carry trays and sweep floors.

It came upon her with an odd shock. If Salvatia were ill, of course Hammond’s arms would be in an explainable and excusable position. But Salvatia wasn’t ill. Mrs. Luke saw that at once. She wasn’t ill, for she was crying; and people who are ill, she had observed, do not as a rule cry.

The little maid jumped up, and stood, very red and scared, with alarmed eyes fixed on her mistress. Sally did just the opposite--she lay down quickly on the bed again, and pulled the counterpane up to her chin and tried to look as if she hadn’t stirred from the position the lady had tucked her into when she left her. What she was ashamed of was crying; crying when everybody was so good to her and kind, patting and kissing her and that, even after she had broken the cup. It was terribly ungrateful of her to cry, thought Sally. But she wasn’t ashamed of having put her arm round Ammond. Friendly, she was; friendly, and seemed to know a lot for her age, which was six months less than Sally’s own. A bit shy she had been and stand-offish at first, but soon got used to Sally, who was feeling ever so lonely and strange, and when Ammond--of all the names for a girl!--came in with hot water for the lady to wash in before the next meal, Sally, taken by her friendly eye, began talking to her, and it was as great a relief as talking to the young fellow in the garage, only with the young fellow she had laughed, and with Ammond, to her confusion and shame, she did nothing but cry. But then the lady ... enough to make a cat cry, that lady ... going to live with them, and never leave them any more ... keeping on smiling smiles that looked like smiles, and weren’t....

‘_I_ know,’ said the little maid, nodding gravely.

Knew a lot, Ammond did, for her age.

§

Sally had been very thankful when that dreadful tea was somehow finished--they had actually tried to make her have more tea, and begin the cup and lap business all over again, but she wasn’t to be caught a second time,--she had been very thankful to follow Mrs. Luke upstairs, and let herself be laid out on a bed and told she must rest till supper. Till breakfast next day she would rest if they liked, till kingdom come. She didn’t want any supper. There were forks for supper, which were worse than spoons, and perhaps they had that too just sitting round with nothing but their laps. She didn’t want anything, not anything in the world, except to be somewhere where the lady wasn’t. And the lady had drawn the curtains, and then covered her up with a counterpane, and smoothed back her hair, and told her sleep would refresh her, and bent over her and kissed her, and at last had gone away--and how thankful Sally had been, just to be alone.

Kissed her. In spite of the cup, thought Sally, who lay still as she had been told, and reflected upon all that had been her lot that afternoon. They didn’t seem able to stop kissing in that family, thought Sally, in whose own there had been a total absence of what the Pinner circle knew and condemned as pawings about. The Pinners never pawed, nor did any of their friends. Nice, that was, thought Sally wistfully; knew where you were. Among these here Lukes--so ran her dejected thoughts, with no intention of irreverence but unable, from her habit of language, to run otherwise--one never could tell where one wasn’t going to be kissed next. Hands, hair, face--nothing seemed to come amiss to them when they once got going. Kept one on the hop; made one squirmy. And Mr. Luke--_he_ was different here. But then he kept on being different. While as for that there lady----

At this point of her meditations Sally had turned her face to the pillow and buried it, and to her surprise she found the pillow was wet, and on looking into this she discovered that it was her own tears making it wet. Then she was ashamed. But being ashamed didn’t stop her crying; once she had begun she seemed to get worse every minute. And the little maid, coming in with the hot water, had found her crying quite hard.

§

Mrs. Luke made short work of the little maid. She merely said, in that gentle voice before which all servants went down flat as ninepins, ‘Hammond, I am surprised at your disturbing Mrs. Jocelyn’s sleep--’ and the little maid, very red and with downcast eyes, sidled deprecatingly out of the room.

Then Mrs. Luke took Sally in hand, sitting in her turn on the edge of the bed.

‘Salvatia, dear--’ she said, laying her hand on the arm outlined beneath the counterpane, and addressing the averted face. ‘Salvatia, dear----’

Sally’s tears dried up instantly, for she was much too much afraid to cry, but she buried her face still deeper, and kept her eyes tight shut.

‘Don’t make confidences to a servant, dear child,’ said Mrs. Luke gently. ‘Come to Jocelyn, or to me. We’re the _natural_ ones for you to come to in any of your little troubles. Oh, I know honeymoons are trying for a girl, and often, without knowing why, she wants a good cry. Isn’t it so, Salvatia? Then come to me, or to your husband, when you feel like that, but don’t say things to Hammond you may afterwards regret. You see, Salvatia dear, you’re a lady, aren’t you--a grown-up married lady now, and your place is with your husband and me. What, dear child? What did you say?’

Sally, however, hadn’t said anything; she had only gulped, trying to choke down her misgivings at this picture of where her place was. With the lady? ‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ she thought, in great discomfort of mind as she more and more perceived that her marriage was going to include Mrs. Luke, ‘if I ain’t bitten off more as I can chew----’ and immediately was shocked at herself for having thought it. Manners were manners. They had to be inside one, as well as out. No good saying Excuse me, Pardon, and Sorry, if inside you were thinking rude. God saw. God knew. And if you were only polite with your lips, and it wasn’t going right through you, you were being, as she remembered from her father’s teaching, a whited sepulchre.

And Mrs. Luke, contemplating the _profil perdu_ on the pillow, the tip of the little ear, the lovely curve of the flushed cheek, and the tangle of bright hair, bent down and kissed it with a view to comfort and encouragement, and Sally, trying not to shrink farther into the pillow, said to herself, ‘At it again.’

‘Why did you cry, Salvatia?’ asked Mrs. Luke, gently.

‘Dunno,’ murmured Sally, withdrawing into the furthermost corner of her shell.

‘Then, dear, it was simply childish, wasn’t it--to cry without a reason, and to cry before a servant too. Things like that lower one’s dignity, Salvatia. And you haven’t only your own dignity to consider now, but Jocelyn’s, your husband’s.’

‘Oh dear,’ sighed Sally to herself, recognising from the tone, through all its gentleness, that she was being given What for--a new kind, and one which it was extremely difficult to follow and understand, however painstakingly she listened. Which parts, for instance, of herself and Mr. Luke were their dignities? ‘Good job I ain’t a nursin’ mother,’ she thought, for she knew all about nursing mothers, ‘or the lady’d turn my milk sour’--and immediately was much shocked at herself for having thought it. Manners were manners. They had to be inside one, as well as out. ‘Never think what you wouldn’t say,’ had been her father’s teaching; and fancy saying what she had just thought!

‘_Oh Gawd_,’ silently prayed Sally, who had been made to repeat a collect every Sunday to Mr. Pinner, and in whose mind bits had stuck, ‘_send down the ’Oly Spirit and cleanse the thoughts of my ’eart with ’im forasmuch as without thee I ain’t able to...._’

‘Perhaps, dear,’ said Mrs. Luke, finding it difficult in the face of Sally’s silence to go on--not for want of things to say, for there were so many and all so important that she hardly knew where to begin,--‘the best thing you can do is to bathe your eyes in the nice hot water Hammond has put ready, and tidy yourself a little, and then come downstairs. What do you think of that? Isn’t it a good idea? It is dull for you up here alone. But bathe your eyes well. We don’t want Jocelyn to see we’ve been crying, do we, dear child----’

And in the act of stooping to give Sally a parting kiss she heard her name being called, loud and cheerily, downstairs in the hall.

She started to her feet.

‘Margery! Margery!’ called the voice, with the cheerful insistence of one who, being betrothed, has the right to be cheerful and insistent in his fiancée’s hall.

Edgar. Come hours before his time.

§

‘Oh, hush, _hush_----’ besought Mrs. Luke, hurrying down to him.

‘Hush, eh?’

‘Jocelyn----’

She glanced fearfully along the passage to the backdoor.

‘He’s arrived,’ said Mr. Thorpe, not hushing at all. ‘Know that. Saw his--well, you can hardly call it a car, can you--his contraption, outside the gate.’

‘But I haven’t had time yet to tell him----’

‘That he’s been a fool?’ interrupted Mr. Thorpe.

‘Come in here,’ said Mrs. Luke, taking him by the arm and pressing him into the parlour, the door of which she shut.

‘Brought you this,’ said Mr. Thorpe, holding up a fish-basket, a big one, in front of her face. ‘Salmon. Prime cut. Thought it would be a bit of something worth eating for your--well, you don’t have dinner, do you--meal, then, to-night. Came back early from the City on purpose to get it here soon enough.’

‘How kind, how kind,’ murmured Mrs. Luke distractedly.

‘Plenty of it, too,’ said Mr. Thorpe, slapping the basket.

‘Too much, too much,’ murmured Mrs. Luke, not quite sure whether it were the salmon she was talking about.

‘Too much? Not a bit of it,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘I hate skimp.’

And he was going to put down his present on the nearest chair and then, she knew, fold her in one of those strong hugs that scrunched, when she bent forward and hastily took the basket from him. She couldn’t, she simply couldn’t, on this occasion be folded--not with Jocelyn sitting out there, all unsuspecting, under the cedar.

‘Never mind the basket,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who felt he had deserved well of Margery in this matter of the fish.

‘I must take it to the kitchen at once,’ said Mrs. Luke, evading his wide-opened arms, ‘or it won’t be ready in time for supper.’

‘What? No thanks, eh?’

‘Yes, yes--afterwards,’ said Mrs. Luke, slipping away to the door. ‘Jocelyn doesn’t know yet. About us, I mean. I haven’t had time----’

‘Time, eh? Not had time to tell him, you’ve netted me?’

Mr. Thorpe took out his watch. ‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Two would be enough, but I’ll give you five. Trot along now, and come back to me sharp in five minutes. If you don’t, I’ll fetch you. Trot along.’

Trot along....

Mrs. Luke, shutting him into the parlour, asked herself, as she went down the passage bearing the heavy basket in both her delicate hands, how long it would take after marriage to weed out Mr. Thorpe’s language. To be told to trot along, however, was so grotesque--she to trot, she, surely the most dignified of South Winch’s ladies!--that it seemed to restore her composure. She would not trot. Nor would she, in the emotional sphere, do anything that corresponded to it. She would neither trot nor hurry; neither physically, nor spiritually. She declined to be bound by five minutes, and a watch in Edgar’s hand. Really he must, somehow, come up more to her level, and not be so comfortably certain that she was coming down to his. And what a way to speak of their marriage--that she had netted him!

Frozen, then, once more into calm by Mr. Thorpe’s words, she proceeded down the passage with almost more than her usual dignity, and as she passed the kitchen door she held out the fish-basket to the little maid, who came out of the shady corner where the sink was with reluctance, merely saying, ‘Boil it.’ Then, with her head held high as the heads of those are held who face the inevitable, she went out into the garden, and crossed the grass to where Jocelyn was waiting for her on the seat beneath the cedar.

This took her one minute out of the five. In another four Mr. Thorpe would come out too into the garden, to see why she didn’t return. Let him, thought Mrs. Luke, filled with the courage of the cornered. This thing couldn’t be done in five minutes; it couldn’t be fired off at Jocelyn’s head like a pistol. Foolish Edgar.

§

‘Well, Mother?’ said Jocelyn, getting up as she approached.

He had been smoking, content to leave whatever it was Sally had been doing in his mother’s capable hands, yet wishing to goodness Sally hadn’t done it. This trick of wanting to be with servants must revolt his mother. It revolted him; how much more, then, his fastidious mother.

‘I can guess what it is, I’m afraid,’ he said, as she sat down beside him.

‘No,’ said Mrs. Luke. ‘You haven’t any idea.’

‘_What_ has she been doing, Mother?’ he asked, seriously alarmed, and throwing away his cigarette.

‘Salvatia? Nothing. Nothing that matters, poor dear child. It’s not about her I want to talk. It’s about Mr. Thorpe.’

‘Mr. Thorpe?’

‘Yes. Abergeldie. That’s Mr. Thorpe’s. That’s why you are going there--because it is Mr. Thorpe’s.’

‘But why should we----?’

‘Now Jocelyn,’ she interrupted, ‘please keep well in mind that Mr. Thorpe is the most absolutely reliable, trustworthy, excellent, devoted man. I can find no flaw in his character. He is generous to a fault--really to a fault. He has a perfect genius for kindness. Indeed, I can’t tell you how highly I think of him.’

Jocelyn’s heart went cold and heavy with foreboding.

There was a little silence.

‘Yes, Mother. And?’ he said, after a minute.

‘And he is rich. Very.’

‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn, as she paused.

‘When I got your first letter I was, of course, very much upset,’ said Mrs. Luke, looking straight in front of her.

‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn, for she paused again.

‘Everything seemed to go to pieces--all I had believed in and hoped for.’

There was a longer pause.

‘Yes, Mother. And?’ said Jocelyn at last, keeping his voice as level as possible.

‘I’m not a religious woman, as you know. I hadn’t got God.’

‘No, Mother. So?’

‘So I--I turned to Mr. Thorpe.’

‘Yes, Mother. Quite.’

The bitterness of Jocelyn’s soul was complete. A black fog of anger, jealousy, wounded trust, hurt pride and cruellest disappointment engulfed him.

‘Why not say at once,’ he said, lighting another cigarette with hands he was grimly determined should be perfectly steady, ‘that you are going to marry him?’

‘If it hadn’t been for your marriage it never would have happened,’ said Mrs. Luke.

‘Quite,’ said Jocelyn, very bitter, pitching the newly-lit cigarette away. ‘Oh, quite.’

Sally again. Always, at the bottom of everything, Sally.

Then he thought, ashamed, ‘My God, I’m a mean cur’--and sat in silence, his head in his hands, not looking up at all, while his mother did her best to make him see Mr. Thorpe as she wanted him to be seen.

In her low voice, the low, educated voice Jocelyn had so much loved, she explained Mr. Thorpe and his advantages, determined that at this important, this vital moment she would not allow herself to be vexed by anything Jocelyn said.

He, however, said nothing. It simply was too awful for speech--his mother, who never during his whole life had shown signs of wanting to marry, going now, now that she was at an age when she might surely, in Jocelyn’s twenty-two year old vision, be regarded as immune, to give herself to a complete stranger, and leave him, her son who needed her, God knew, more than ever before, to his fate. That he should hate this Thorpe with a violent hatred seemed natural. Who cared for his damned money? Why should Sally--his mother kept on harping on that--be going to be expensive? As if money, much money, according to what his mother was saying, now that Sally had come on the scene, Sally who was used to being penniless, was indispensable. Masters? What need was there for masters? His mother could teach her. Clothes? Why, whatever she put on seemed to catch beauty from her--he had seen that in the shop in London where he bought the wrap: every blessed thing the women tried on her, however unattractive to begin with, the minute it touched her body became part of beauty. And how revolting, anyhow--marriage. Oh, how he hated the thought of it, how he wanted now beyond anything in the world to be away from its footling worries and complications, away from women altogether, and back at Cambridge, back in a laboratory, absorbed once more in the great tranquil splendours of research!

‘He is in the sitting-room,’ said Mrs. Luke, when she had said everything she could think of that she wished Jocelyn to suppose was true.

‘Who is?’ said Jocelyn.

‘Ah, I was afraid you would be angry,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm, ‘but I hoped that when it was all explained you would understand, and see the great, the immense advantages. Apparently you don’t, or----’ she sighed--‘won’t. Then I must be patient till you do, or will. But Mr. Thorpe is waiting.’

‘Who cares?’ inquired Jocelyn, his head in his hands; and it suddenly struck Mrs. Luke that Mr. Thorpe was waiting very quietly. The five minutes must have been up long ago; she must have been sitting there quite twenty, and yet he hadn’t come after her as he had threatened. Knowing him, as she did, for a man absolutely of his word, this struck her as odd.

‘Dear Jocelyn,’ she said, remembering the fits of dark obstinacy that had at times seized her boy in his childhood, and out of which he had only been got by the utmost patience and gentleness, ‘I won’t bother you to come in now and see Mr. Thorpe. But as he is going to be your host to-night----’

‘He isn’t,’ said Jocelyn, his head still in his hands, and his eyes still fixed on the grass at his feet.

‘But, _dearest_ boy----’

‘I decline to go near him.’

‘But there’s _positively_ no room here for you both----’

‘There’s London, and hotels, I suppose?’

‘Oh, Jocelyn!’

She looked at him in dismay. He didn’t move. She again put her hand on his arm. He took no notice. And aware, from past experiences, that for the next two hours at least he would probably be completely inaccessible to reason, she got up with a sigh and left him.

Well, she had told him; she had done what she had to do. She would now go back to Mr. Thorpe.

And she did go back; and opening the parlour door slowly and gently, for she was absorbed in painful thought, she found Mr. Thorpe sitting on the sofa, busily kissing Sally.