The French Lieutenant's Woman (15 page)

It so happened that the
avalanche for the morning after Charles's discovery of the Undercliff
was appointed to take place at Marlborough House. There was nothing
fortuitous or spontaneous about these visits. There could not be,
since the identities of visitors and visited spread round the little
town with incredible rapidity; and that both made and maintained a
rigorous sense of protocol. Mrs. Poulteney's interest in Charles was
probably no greater than Charles's in her; but she would have been
mortally offended if he had not been dragged in chains for her to
place her fat little foot on--and pretty soon after his arrival,
since the later the visit during a stay, the less the honor.

These "foreigners"
were, of course, essentially counters in a game. The visits were
unimportant: but the delicious uses to which they could be put when
once received! "Dear Mrs. Tranter, she wanted me to be the first
to meet ..." and "I am most surprised that Ernestina has
not called on you yet-- she has spoiled us--already two calls . . ."
and "I am sure it is an oversight--Mrs. Tranter is an
affectionate old soul, but so absent-minded ..." These, and
similar mouthwatering opportunities for twists of the social dagger
depended on a supply of "important" visitors like Charles.
And he could no more have avoided his fate than a plump mouse
dropping between the claws of a hungry cat--several dozen hungry
cats, to be exact. When Mrs. Tranter and her two young companions
were announced on the morning following that woodland meeting, Sarah
rose at once to leave the room. But Mrs. Poulteney, whom the thought
of young happiness always made petulant, and who had in any case
reason enough--after an evening of Lady Cotton--to be a good deal
more than petulant, bade her stay. Ernestina she considered a
frivolous young woman, and she was sure her intended would be a
frivolous young man; it was almost her duty to embarrass them. She
knew, besides, that such social occasions were like a hair shirt to
the sinner. All conspired.

The visitors were
ushered in. Mrs. Tranter rustled forward, effusive and kind. Sarah
stood shyly, painfully out of place in the background; and Charles
and Ernestina stood easily on the carpet behind the two elder ladies,
who had known each other sufficient decades to make a sort of token
embrace necessary. Then Ernestina was presented, giving the faintest
suspicion of a curtsy before she took the reginal hand.

"How are you, Mrs.
Poulteney? You look exceedingly well."

"At my age, Miss
Freeman, spiritual health is all that counts."

"Then I have no
fears for you."

Mrs. Poulteney would
have liked to pursue this interesting subject, but Ernestina turned
to present Charles, who bent over the old lady's hand.

"Great pleasure,
ma'm. Charming house."

"It is too large
for me. I keep it on for my dear husband's sake. I know he would have
wished--he wishes it so."

And she stared past
Charles at the house's chief icon, an oil painting done of Frederick
only two years before he died in 1851, in which it was clear that he
was a wise, Christian, dignified, good-looking sort of man--above
all, superior to most. He had certainly been a Christian, and
dignified in the extreme, but the painter had drawn on imagination
for the other qualities. The long-departed Mr. Poulteney had been a
total, though very rich, nonentity; and the only really significant
act of his life had been his leaving it. Charles surveyed this
skeleton at the feast with a suitable deference.

"Ah. Indeed. I
understand. Most natural."

"Their wishes must
be obeyed."

"Just so."

Mrs. Tranter, who had
already smiled at Sarah, took her as an opportunity to break in upon
this sepulchral Introit.

"My
dear Miss Woodruff, it is a pleasure to see you." And she went
and pressed Sarah's hand, and gave her a genuinely solicitous look,
and said in a lower voice, "Will you come to see me--when dear
Tina has gone?" For a second then, a rare look crossed Sarah's
face. That computer in her heart had long before assessed Mrs.
Tranter and stored the resultant tape. That reserve, that
independence so perilously close to defiance which had become her
mask in Mrs. Poulteney's presence, momentarily dropped. She smiled
even, though sadly, and made an infinitesimal nod: if she could, she
would.

Further introductions
were then made. The two young ladies coolly inclined heads at one
another, and Charles bowed. He watched closely to see if the girl
would in any way betray their two meetings of the day before, but her
eyes studiously avoided his. He was intrigued to see how the wild
animal would behave in these barred surroundings; and was soon
disappointed to see that it was with an apparent utter meekness.
Unless it was to ask her to fetch something, or to pull the bell when
it was decided that the ladies would like hot chocolate, Mrs.
Poulteney ignored Sarah absolutely. So also, Charles was not pleased
to note, did Ernestina. Aunt Tranter did her best to draw the girl
into the conversation; but she sat slightly apart, with a kind of
blankness of face, a withdrawnness, that could very well be taken for
consciousness of her inferior status. He himself once or twice turned
politely to her for the confirmation of an opinion--but it was
without success. She made the least response possible; and still
avoided his eyes.

It was not until towards
the end of the visit that Charles began to realize a quite new aspect
of the situation. It became clear to him that the girl's silent
meekness ran contrary to her nature; that she was therefore playing a
part; and that the part was one of complete disassociation from, and
disapprobation of, her mistress. Mrs. Poulteney and Mrs. Tranter
respectively gloomed and bubbled their way through the schedule of
polite conversational subjects--short, perhaps, in number, but
endlessly long in process ... servants; the weather; impending
births, funerals and marriages; Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone (this
seemingly for Charles's benefit, though it allowed Mrs. Poulteney to
condemn severely the personal principles of the first and the
political ones of the second);* then on to last Sunday's sermon, the
deficiencies of the local tradesmen and thence naturally back to
servants. As Charles smiled and raised eyebrows and nodded his way
through this familiar purgatory, he decided that the silent Miss
Woodruff was laboring under a sense of injustice--and, very
interestingly to a shrewd observer, doing singularly little to
conceal it.
[*
Perhaps, in fairness to the lady, it might be said that in that
spring of 1867 her blanket disfavor was being shared by many others.
Mr. Gladraeli and Mr. Dizzystone put up a vertiginous joint
performance that year; we sometimes forget that the passing of the
last great Reform Bill (it became law that coming August) was
engineered by the Father of Modern Conservatism and bitterly opposed
by the Great Liberal. Tories like Mrs. Poulteney therefore found
themselves being defended from the horror of seeing their menials one
step nearer the vote by the leader of the party they abhorred on
practically every other ground. Marx remarked, in one of his New York
Daily Tribune articles, that in reality the British Whigs "represent
something quite different from their professed liberal and
enlightened principles. Thus they are in the same position as the
drunkard brought up before the Lord Mayor, who declared that he
represented the
Temperance principle, but from some accident or other always got
drunk on Sundays."
The
type is not extinct.]
 
This
was perceptive of Charles, for he had noticed something that had
escaped almost everyone else in Lyme. But perhaps his deduction would
have remained at the state of a mere suspicion, had not his hostess
delivered herself of a characteristic Poulteneyism.

"That girl I
dismissed--she has given you no further trouble?"

Mrs. Tranter smiled.
"Mary? I would not part with her for the world."

"Mrs. Fairley
informs me that she saw her only this morning talking with a person."
Mrs. Poulteney used "person" as two patriotic Frenchmen
might have said "Nazi" during the occupation. "A young
person. Mrs. Fairley did not know him."

Ernestina gave Charles a
sharp, reproachful glance; for a wild moment he thought he was being
accused himself--then realized.

He smiled. "Then no
doubt it was Sam. My servant, madam," he added for Mrs.
Poulteney's benefit. Ernestina avoided his eyes. "I meant to
tell you. I too saw them talking together yesterday."

"But surely ... we
are not going to forbid them to speak together if they meet?"

"There is a world
of difference between what may be accepted in London and what is
proper here. I think you should speak to Sam. The girl is too easily
led."

Mrs. Tranter looked
hurt. "Ernestina my dear ... she may be high-spirited. But I've
never had the least cause to--"

"My dear, kind
aunt, I am well aware how fond you are of her."

Charles heard the
dryness in her voice and came to the hurt Mrs. Tranter's defense.

"I wish that more
mistresses were as fond. There is no surer sign of a happy house than
a happy maidservant at its door."

Ernestina looked down at
that, with a telltale little tightening of her lips. Good Mrs.
Tranter blushed slightly at the compliment, and also looked down.
Mrs. Poulteney had listened to this crossfire with some pleasure; and
she now decided that she disliked Charles sufficiently to be rude to
him. "Your future wife is a better judge than you are of such
matters, Mr. Smithson. I know the girl in question. I had to dismiss
her. If you were older you would know that one cannot be too strict
in such matters."

And she too looked down,
her way of indicating that a subject had been pronounced on by her,
and was therefore at a universal end.

"I bow to your far
greater experience, madam."

But his tone was
unmistakably cold and sarcastic.

The three ladies all sat
with averted eyes: Mrs. Tranter out of embarrassment, Ernestina out
of irritation with herself--for she had not meant to bring such a
snub on Charles's head, and wished she had kept silent; and Mrs.
Poulteney out of being who she was. It was thus that a look unseen by
these ladies did at last pass between Sarah and Charles. It was very
brief, but it spoke worlds; two strangers had recognized they shared
a common enemy. For the first time she did not look through him, but
at him; and Charles resolved that he would have his revenge on Mrs.
Poulteney, and teach Ernestina an evidently needed lesson in common
humanity.

He remembered, too, his
recent passage of arms with Ernestina's father on the subject of
Charles Darwin. Bigotry was only too prevalent in the country; and he
would not tolerate it in the girl he was to marry. He would speak to
Sam; by heavens, yes, he would speak to Sam.

How he spoke, we shall
see in a moment. But the general tenor of that conversation had, in
fact, already been forestalled, since Mrs. Poulteney's "person"
was at that moment sitting in the downstairs kitchen at Mrs.
Tranter's.

Sam had met Mary in
Coombe Street that morning; and innocently asked if the soot might be
delivered in an hour's time. He knew, of course, that the two ladies
would be away at Marlborough House. The conversation in that kitchen
was surprisingly serious, really a good deal more so than that in
Mrs. Poulteney's drawing room. Mary leaned against the great dresser,
with her pretty arms folded, and a strand of the corn-colored hair
escaping from under her dusting cap. Now and then she asked
questions, but Sam did most of the
talking,
though it was mainly to the scrubbed deal of the long table. Only
very occasionally did their eyes meet, and then by mutual accord they
looked shyly away from each other.
 

15

... as regards
the laboring classes, the half-savage manners of the last generation
have been exchanged for a deep and almost universally pervading
sensuality ...
--
Report
from the Mining Districts (1850)

Or in the light
of deeper eyes
Is
matter for a flying smile.
--
Tennyson,
In Memoriam (1850)

When the next morning
came and Charles took up his ungentle probing of Sam's Cockney heart,
he was not in fact betraying Ernestina, whatever may have been the
case with Mrs. Poulteney. They had left shortly following the
exchange described above, and Ernestina had been very silent on the
walk downhill to Broad Street. Once there she had seen to it that she
was left alone with Charles; and no sooner had the door shut on her
aunt's back than she burst into tears (without the usual preliminary
self-accusations) and threw herself into his arms. It was the first
disagreement that had ever darkened their love, and it horrified her:
that her sweet gentle Charles should be snubbed by a horrid old
woman, and all because of a fit of pique on her part. When he had
dutifully patted her back and dried her eyes, she said as much.
Charles stole a kiss on each wet eyelid as a revenge, and forthwith
forgave her.