Chapter XV: §

At Crippenham next morning it was very fine. London and South Winch were in a mist, but the sun shone brightly in Cambridgeshire, and the Duke woke up with a curiously youthful feeling of eagerness to get up quickly and go downstairs. He knew he couldn’t do anything quickly, but the odd thing was that for years and years he hadn’t wanted to, and that now suddenly he did want to; and just to want to was both pleasant and remarkable.

He had been thinking in the night,--or, rather, Charles’s thoughts, placed so insistently before him, had sunk in and become indistinguishable from his own; and he had thought so much that he hadn’t gone to sleep till nearly five. But then he slept soundly, and woke up to find his room flooded with sunshine, and to feel this curiously agreeable eagerness to be up and doing.

The evening before, when Charles came in from the garden and packed his bewitching guest off to bed, he had been very cross, and had listened peevishly to all his son was explaining and pointing out; not because he wasn’t interested, or because he resented the suggestions being made, but simply because the moment that girl left the room it was as if the light had gone out,--the light, and the fire. She needn’t have obeyed Charles. Why should she obey Charles? She might have stayed with him a little longer, warming him by the sight of her beauty and her youth. The instant she went he felt old and cold; back again in the condition he was in before she arrived, dropped back again into age and listlessness, and, however stoutly he pretended it wasn’t so, into a deathly chill.

Now that, thought the Duke, himself surprised at the difference his guest’s not being in the room made, was what had happened to David too towards the end. They didn’t read it in the Lessons in church on Sundays, but he nevertheless quite well remembered, from his private inquisitive study of the Bible in his boyhood, how they covered David when he was old with clothes but he got no heat, and only a young person called the Shunammite was able, by her near presence, to warm him. The Duke didn’t ask such nearness as had been the Shunammite’s to David, for he, perhaps because he was less old, found all he needed of renewed life by merely looking at Sally; but he did, remembering David while Charles talked, feel aggrieved that so little as this, so little as merely wishing to look at her, should be taken from him, and she sent to bed at ten o’clock.

So he was cross, and pretended not to understand, and anyhow not to be interested. But he had understood very well, and in the watches of the night had come to his decision. At his age it wouldn’t do to be too long coming to decisions; if he wished to secure the beautiful young creature--Charles said help, but does not helping, by means of the resultant obligations, also secure?--he must be quick.

He rang for his servant half an hour before the usual time. He wanted to get up, to go to her again, to look at her, to sit near her and have her fragrant, lovely youth flowing round him. The mere thought of Sally made him feel happier and more awake than he had felt for years. Better than the fortnight’s cure of silence and diet at Crippenham was one look at Sally, one minute spent with Sally. And she was so kind and intelligent, as well as so beautiful--listening to every word he said with the most obvious interest, and not once fidgeting or getting sleepy, as people nowadays seemed to have got into the habit of doing. It was like sitting in the sun to be with her; like sitting in the sun on a warm spring morning, and freshness everywhere, and flowers, and hope.

Naturally, having found this draught of new life the Duke wasn’t going to let it go. On the contrary, it was his firm intention, with all the strength and obstinacy still in him, to stick to Sally. How fortunate that she was poor, and he could be the one to help her. For she, owing all her happiness to him, couldn’t but let him often be with her. Charles had said it would be both new and desirable to do something in one’s life for nothing; but the Duke doubted if it were ever possible, however much one wished to, to do anything for nothing. In the case of Sally it was manifestly impossible. Whatever he did, whatever he gave, he would be getting far more back; for she by her friendship, and perhaps affection, and anyhow by her presence, would be giving him life.

‘Come out into the garden, my dear,’ he said, when he had been safely helped downstairs--the stairs were each time an adventure--putting his shaking hand through her arm. ‘I want to see your hair in the sun, while I talk to you.’

And leading him carefully out, Sally thought, ‘Poor old gentleman,’ and minded nothing at all that he said. Her hair, her eyes, all that _Oh my ain’t you beautiful_ business, of which she was otherwise both sick and afraid, didn’t matter in him she called the Jewk. He was just a poor old gentleman, an ancient and practically helpless baby, towards whom she felt like a compassionate mother; and when he said, sitting in the sunny sheltered seat she had lowered him on to and taking her hand and looking at her with his watery old eyes, that he was going to give her Crippenham, and that the only condition he made was that he might come and do a rest-cure there rather often, she smiled and nodded as sweetly and kindly as she smiled and nodded at everything else he said.

Like the croonings of a baby were the utterances of the Duke in Sally’s ears; no more meaning in them, no more weight to be attached to them, than that. Give her Crippenham? Poor old gentleman. Didn’t know what he was talking about any more, poor old dear. She humoured him; she patted his arm; and she wished to goodness Laura would be quick and come and take her to her husband.

Sally now longed to get to Jocelyn as much as if she had passionately loved him. He was her husband. He was the father of the little baby. Her place was with him. She had had enough of this fleshpot business. She was homesick for the things she knew,--plain things, simple things, duties she understood. Kind, yes; kind as kind, the picks were, and they meant well; but she had had enough. It wasn’t right it wasn’t, at least it wasn’t right for her, to live so fat. What would her father have said if he had seen her in the night in Laura’s bedroom, among all that lot of silver bottles and brushes and laces and silks, and herself in a thin silk nightgown the colour of skin, making her look stark naked? What would he have said if he had seen her having her breakfast up there as though she were ill,--and such a breakfast, too! Fleshpots, he’d have said; fleshpots. And he would have said, Sally, strong if inaccurate in her Bible, was sure, that she had sold her husband for a mess of fleshpots.

This was no life for her, this was no place for her, she thought, her head bowed and the sun playing at games of miracles with her hair while the Duke talked. She drew impatient patterns with the tip of her shoe on the gravel. She hardly listened. Her ear was cocked for the first sounds of Laura. She ached to have done with all this wasting of time, she ached to be in her own home, getting on with her job of looking after her man and preparing for her child. ‘Saturday today,’ she mused, such a lovely look coming into her eyes that the Duke, watching her, was sure it was his proposed gift making her divinely happy. ‘We’d be ’avin’ shepherd’s pie for dinner--or p’raps a nice little bit of fish....’

And, coming out of that pleasant dream with a sigh, she thought, ‘Oughtn’t never to ’ave met none of these ’ere. All comes of runnin’ away from dooty.’

Apologetically she turned her head and looked at the Duke, for she had forgotten him for a moment, besides having been thinking on lines that were hardly grateful. Poor old gentleman--still keeping on about giving her Crippenham. Crippenham? She’d as soon have the cleaning of Buckingham Palace while she was about it as of that great, frightening house--or, come to that, of a prison.

But how like a bad dream it was, being kept there with the morning slipping past, and she unable to reach him across the gulf of his deafness. By eleven o’clock she was quite pale with unhappiness, she could hardly bear it any longer. Would she have to give manners the go-by and take to her heels once more? This time, though, there would be no kind father-in-law to lend her a car; this time she would have to walk,--walk all the way, and then when she got there find Jocelyn unaided. And the old gentleman kept on and on about Crippenham being hers, and everything in it....

’E’s nothin’ but a nimage,’ she said to herself in despair. ‘Sits ’ere like a old idol. Wot do _’e_ know about a married woman’s dooties?’

‘Where’s Charles?’ asked the Duke.

Sally shook her head. She hadn’t seen a sign of him that morning.

‘I want him to get my solicitor down--no time to lose,’ said the Duke. ‘You’re to have the place lock, stock and barrel, my dear, such as it is--servants and all.’

Servants and all? Poor old gentleman. Why, she wouldn’t know which end of a servant to start with. She with servants? And these ones here who, however hard she tried up there in the bedroom, wouldn’t make friends. They called her Madam. She Madam? Oh, my gracious, thought Sally, shrinking in horror from such a dreadful picture.

‘It’s a hole of a place,’ went on the Duke, ‘and quite unworthy of you, but we can have more bathrooms put in, and it’ll do till we find something you like better. And Charles tells me you married rather suddenly, and haven’t got anywhere to go to at present. He also says you have to live close to Cambridge, because of your husband’s studies. And he also says, and I entirely agree with him, my dear, that you oughtn’t to be in Cambridge itself, but somewhere more secluded--somewhere where you won’t be seen quite so much, somewhere hidden, in fact. Now I think, I really do think, that Crippenham, in spite of all its disadvantages, does exactly fulfil these requirements. And I want you to have it, my dear--to take it as my wedding present to you, and to live in it very happily, and bless it and make it beautiful by your presence.’

Thus the Duke.

‘’E don’t ’alf _talk_,’ thought Sally, quivering to be gone.

§

Charles, on being sent for by the Duke, was nowhere to be found. That was because he was in South Winch. He had gone off at daybreak in his car, and at the very moment his father woke up to the fact of his absence and asked where he was, he was standing in the drawing-room at Almond Tree Cottage, his eyes fixed eagerly on the door, waiting for Mrs. Luke.

He hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking of her. Somehow he had got it into his head that she, more than her son, would suffer through Sally’s disappearance, and be afraid. Because, thought Charles, she would feel that it was from her the girl had run, and that any misfortune that might happen to her would be, terribly, laid at her door. For two whole days and two whole nights that unfortunate woman must have gone through torture. What Charles couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t thought of this before. Indeed his and Laura’s conduct had been utterly unpardonable. The least he could now do, he thought, as he lay wide awake throughout the night, was to get to South Winch without losing a minute, and put Mrs. Luke out of her misery, and beg her forgiveness.

She was in the garden when he arrived. The little maid, staring at the card he asked her to take to her mistress, said she would fetch her, and ushered him into the drawing-room, where he waited with the books, the bright cushions, the Tiepolo, and two withered tulips in a glass from which nearly all the water had dried away; and while he waited he fought with a feeling he considered most contemptible, in face of the facts, that he was somehow on an errand of mercy, and arriving with healing in his wings,--that he was somehow a benefactor.

Sternly he told himself he ought to feel nothing but shame; sternly he tried to suppress his glow of misplaced self-satisfaction. There was nothing good about him and Laura in this business. They had, the pair of them, been criminally impulsive and selfish. He knew it; he acknowledged it. Yet here he was, secretly glowing, his eyes watching the door, as much excited as if he were going to bestow a most magnificently generous, unexpected present.

Then it opened, and Mrs. Luke came in. He was sure it was Mrs. Luke, for no one else could look so unhappy; and the glow utterly vanished, and the feeling of shame and contrition became overwhelming.

‘She’s safe,’ said Charles quickly, eager to put a stop at once to the expression in her eyes. ‘She’s at my father’s. She’s going to Cambridge today to your son. She’s been with us the whole time----’

And he went to her, and took her hand and kissed it.

‘If it weren’t so ridiculous,’ he said, his face flushed with painful contrition, still holding her hand and looking into her heavy, dark-ringed eyes, ‘I’d very much like to go down on my knees to you, and beg your pardon.’

§

And while Charles was in South Winch, Laura was in Cambridge, dealing with Jocelyn. She, like Charles, had become conscious of the sufferings of the Lukes, and, like him, was obsessed by them and lost in astonishment that she hadn’t thought of them sooner; but for some obscure reason, or instinct, her compunctions and her sympathies were for Jocelyn rather than for his mother, and after a second sleepless night, during which she was haunted by the image of the unfortunate young husband and greatly tormented, she went down, much chastened, to Cambridge by the first possible train, with only one desire now, to put him out of his misery and beg his forgiveness.

So that Jocelyn, sitting doing nothing, his untouched breakfast still littering the table, sitting bent forward in the basket-chair common to the rooms of young men at Cambridge, his thin hands gripped so hard round his knees that the knuckles showed white, his ears strained for the slightest sound on the staircase, his eyes hollow from want of sleep, sitting as he had sat all the previous afternoon after getting Mr. Thorpe’s telegram and most of the night, sitting waiting, listening, and perhaps for the first time in his life, for his mother had not included religious exercises in his early education, doing something not unlike praying, did at last hear a woman’s step crossing Austen’s Court, hesitating at what he felt sure was his corner, then slowly coming up his staircase, and hesitating again at the first floor.

All the blood in his body seemed to rush to his head and throb there. His heart thumped so loud that he could hardly hear the steps any more. He struggled out of his low chair and stood listening, holding on to it to steady himself. Would they come up higher? Yes--they were coming up. Yes--it must be Sally. Sally--oh, oh, _Sally_!

He flew to the door, pulled it open, and saw--Laura.

‘It’s all right,’ she panted, for the stairs were steep and she was fat, ‘it is--about Sally--don’t look so----’ she stopped to get her breath--‘so dreadfully disappointed. She’s safe. If you’ll--oh, what _stairs_----’ she pressed her hand to her heaving bosom--‘come with me, I’ll--take you--to her----’

And having got to the top, she staggered past him into his room, and dropped into the basket-chair, and for a minute or two did nothing but gasp.

But how difficult she found him. Jocelyn, whose reactions were always violent, behaved very differently from the way his mother at that moment was behaving, placed in the same situation of being asked forgiveness by a Moulsford. Instead of forgiving, of being, as Laura had pictured, so much delighted at the prospect of soon having Sally restored to him that he didn’t mind anything, he appeared to mind very much, and quarrelled with her. She, accustomed to have everything she did that was perhaps a little wrong condoned and overlooked by all classes except her own, was astonished. Here she was, doing a thing she had never done before, begging a young man to forgive her, and he wouldn’t. On the contrary, he rated her. Rated her! Her, Laura Moulsford. She knew that much is forgiven those above by those below, and had frequently deplored the practice as one that has sometimes held up progress, but now that the opposite was being done to herself she didn’t like it at all.

‘Oh, what a nasty disposition you’ve got!’ she cried at last, when Jocelyn had been telling her for ten impassioned minutes, leaning against the chimney-piece and glowering down at her with eyes flashing with indignation, what he thought of her. ‘I’m glad now, instead of sorry, for what I did. At least Sally has had two days less of you.’

‘If you’re going to rag me as well----’ began Jocelyn, taking a quick step forward as if to seize and shake this fat little incredibly officious stranger,--so like him, his mother would have said, to waste time being furious instead of at once making her take him to Sally.

But Laura, unacquainted with his ways, was astonished.

Then he pulled himself up. ‘It’s not you I’m cursing really at all,’ he said. ‘It’s myself.’

‘Well, I don’t mind that,’ said Laura, smiling.

‘I’ve got the beastliest temper,’ said Jocelyn.

‘So I see,’ said Laura.

‘Do you think,’ he asked, for in spite of his anger he was all soft and bruised underneath after his two days of fear, and when the fat stranger smiled there was something very motherly about her, ‘I shall ever get over it?’

‘Perhaps if you try--try hard.’

‘But--look here, I don’t care what you say--what _business_ had you to make away with my wife?’

‘Now you’re beginning all over again.’

‘Make away with my wife, smash up everything between me and my mother----’

‘Oh, _oh_----’ interrupted Laura, stopping up her ears, and bowing her head before the storm.

§

It was ten more minutes before she got him out of his rooms and into a taxi.

‘We’ve lost twenty minutes,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘You’ve lost twenty kisses you might have had----’

‘For God’s _sake_ don’t rag me!’ cried Jocelyn, gripping her by the arm and bundling her into the taxi.

‘But what,’ asked Laura, who had tumbled in a heap on the seat, yet who didn’t mind being thrown in because she knew she deserved worse than that, ‘what else can one do with a creature like you?’

And she told him very seriously, as they heaved along towards Crippenham, that the real mistake had been Sally’s marrying beneath her.

‘Beneath her?’ repeated Jocelyn, staring.

‘Isn’t it apparent?’ said Laura. ‘Angels should only marry other angels, and not descend to entanglements with perfectly ordinary----’

‘No, I’m damned if I’m ordinary,’ thought Jocelyn. ‘And who the devil is _she_, anyhow?’

‘Bad-tempered,’ continued Laura.

‘Yes, I’m beastly bad-tempered,’ he admitted.

‘Conceited----’

‘I swear I’m not conceited,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you?’ said Laura, turning her head and scrutinising him with bright, mocking eyes.

And then, coming swift and silent as an arrow along the road towards their taxi, she saw her father’s car.

‘Oh, stop!’ she cried, leaping to her feet and thrusting as much of herself as would go through the window. ‘Here’s my father--yes, and Sally. Stop--oh, _stop_!’ she cried, frantically waving her arms.

§

It had been decreed by Fate that Jocelyn should be reunited to Sally in the middle of the road just beyond Waterbeach, at the point where the lane to Lyddiatt’s Farm turns off; for such was the Duke’s desire to help his lovely friend and such his infatuation, that he had actually broken his rule of never emerging from Crippenham, once he got there, till the day appointed for his departure, and was himself taking her to Ananias to hand her over in person to her husband, afterwards lunching with the Master,--a thing unheard of, this lunching, for the Duke disliked the Master’s politics and the Master disliked the Duke’s, but what wouldn’t one do to further the interests, by saying a good word for them, of the young couple?

This he had arranged that morning before coming downstairs, his amazed servant telephoning the message and receiving the Master’s hypocritical expressions of pleasure in return, for apart from the Duke’s politics the Master was no fonder of a deaf guest than anybody else; and just as Sally, on that garden seat, was coming to the end of her patience and submissiveness and was seriously thinking of jumping up and taking to her heels, the parlourmaid appeared on the path; and when she was quite close she stood still, and opened her mouth very wide, and roared out that the car was at the door; and the Duke, with a final pat of benediction, bade Sally fetch her hat, and come with him to her husband.

So there it was that they met,--the taxi and the Rolls Royce, Laura and Jocelyn, Sally and the Duke. And on the Swaffham Prior side of Waterbeach, where the crooked signpost points to Lyddiatt’s Farm, the dull, empty road was made radiant for a moment that day by happiness.

‘Stop! Stop!’ cried Laura, frantically waving.

‘Sally! Oh--oh, _Sally_!’ shouted Jocelyn, standing up too, and trying too, behind Laura, to wave.

The chauffeur recognised Laura, and pulled up as soon as he could; the taxi pulled up with a great grinding of its brakes; Jocelyn jumped out of one door, and Laura of the other; and both ran.

‘Why,’ said Sally, who didn’t know what had happened, turning her head and looking in astonishment at the two running figures coming along behind, ‘why,’ she said, forgetting the Duke was deaf, ‘’ere _is_ Mr. Luke----’

And in another instant Jocelyn was there, up on the step of the car, leaning over the side, dragging her to him with both arms, hugging her to his heart, and kissing her as if there were no one in the world except themselves.

‘Sally--oh, my _darling_! Oh, Sally--oh, oh, _Sally_!’ cried Jocelyn, raining kisses on her between each word. ‘How could you--why did you--oh, yes--I know, I know--I’ve been a beast to you--but I’m not going to be any more--I swear, I swear----’

‘Now don’t, Mr Luke,’ Sally managed to say, stifled though she was, ‘don’t get swearin’ about it----’

And pulling her head away from him she was able to attend to the proprieties, and introduce him.

‘My ’usband,’ introduced Sally, looking over his arm, which was round her neck, at the old man beside her. ‘The Jewk,’ she said, turning her face back to Jocelyn, who took no notice of the introduction, who didn’t indeed hear, because the moment she turned her face--oh, her divine, divine little face!--back to him, he fell to kissing it again.

And Laura, coming panting up just then, got up on the step on the other side of the car, and shouted in her father’s ear, who could always hear everything she said, ‘This is Jocelyn Luke, Father--Sally’s husband.’

And the Duke said, ‘I thought it must be.’