The French Lieutenant's Woman (27 page)

Mary saved him. Suddenly she pushed Sam aside and laughing, ran
down the slope back towards the path; poising a moment, her
mischievous face flashed back at Sam, before she raised her skirts
and skittered down, a thin line of red petticoat beneath the
viridian, through the violets and the dog's mercury. Sam ran after
her. Their figures dwindled between the gray stems; dipped,
disappeared, a flash of green, a flash of blue; a laugh that ended in
a little scream; then silence.

Five minutes passed, during which the hidden pair spoke not a word
to each other. Charles remained staring fixedly down the hill, as if
it were important that he should keep such intent watch. All he
wanted, of course, was to avoid looking at Sarah. At last he broke
the silence.

"You had better go." She bowed her head. "I will
wait a half-hour." She bowed her head again, and then moved past
him. Their eyes did not meet.

Only when she was out among the ash trees did she turn and look
back for a moment at him. She could not have seen his face, but she
must have known he was watching. And her face had its old lancing
look again. Then she went lightly on down through the trees.
 

22

I too have felt the load I bore
In a too strong
emotion's sway;
I too have wished, no woman more,
This
starting, feverish heart, away.

I too have longed for trenchant force
And will like a
dividing spear;
Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course,
Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.

But in the world I learnt, what there
Thou too will
surely one day prove,
That will, that energy, though rare,
And
yet far, far less rare than love.
--Matthew Arnold, "A
Farewell" (1853)

Charles's thoughts on his own eventual way back to Lyme were all
variations on that agelessly popular male theme: "You've been
playing with fire, my boy." But it was precisely that theme, by
which I mean that the tenor of his thoughts matched the verbal tenor
of the statement. He had been very foolish, but his folly had not
been visited on him. He had run an absurd risk; and escaped
unscathed. And so now, as the great stone claw of the Cobb came into
sight far below, he felt exhilarated.

And how should he have blamed himself very deeply? From the outset
his motives had been the purest; he had cured her of her madness; and
if something impure had for a moment threatened to infiltrate his
defenses, it had been but mint sauce to the wholesome lamb. He would
be to blame, of course, if he did not now remove himself, and for
good, from the fire. That, he would take very good care to do. After
all, he was not a moth infatuated by a candle; he was a highly
intelligent being, one of the fittest, and endowed with total free
will. If he had not been sure of that latter safeguard, would he ever
have risked himself in such dangerous waters? I am mixing
metaphors--but that was how Charles's mind worked. And so, leaning on
free will quite as much as on his ashplant, he descended the hill to
the town. All sympathetic physical feelings towards the girl he would
henceforth rigorously suppress, by free will. Any further
solicitation of a private meeting he would adamantly discountenance,
by free will. All administration of his interest should be passed to
Aunt Tranter, by free will. And he was therefore permitted, obliged
rather, to continue to keep Ernestina in the dark, by the same free
will. By the time he came in sight of the White Lion, he had
free-willed himself most convincingly into a state of
self-congratulation ... and one in which he could look at Sarah as an
object of his past.

A remarkable young woman, a remarkable young woman. And baffling.
He decided that that was--had been, rather-- her attraction: her
unpredictability. He did not realize that she had two qualities as
typical of the English as his own admixture of irony and convention.
I speak of passion and imagination. The first quality Charles perhaps
began dimly to perceive; the second he did not. He could not, for
those two qualities of Sarah's were banned by the epoch, equated in
the first case with sensuality and in the second with the merely
fanciful. This dismissive double equation was Charles's greatest
defect--and here he stands truly for his age.

There was still deception in the flesh, or Ernestina, to be faced.
But Charles, when he arrived at his hotel, found that family had come
to his aid.

A telegram awaited him. It was from his uncle at Winsyatt. His
presence was urgently requested "for most important reasons."
I am afraid Charles smiled as soon as he read it; he very nearly
kissed the orange envelope. It removed him from any immediate further
embarrassment; from the need for further lies of omission. It was
most marvelously convenient. He made inquiries ... there was a train
early the next morning from Exeter, then the nearest station to Lyme,
which meant that he had a good pretext for leaving at once and
staying there overnight. He gave orders for the fastest trap in Lyme
to be procured. He would drive himself. He felt inclined to make such
an urgent rush of it as to let a note to Aunt Tranter's suffice. But
that would have been too cowardly. So telegram in hand, he walked up
the street. The good lady herself was full of concern, since
telegrams for her meant bad news. Ernestina, less superstitious, was
plainly vexed. She thought it "too bad" of Uncle Robert to
act the grand vizir in this way. She was sure it was nothing; a whim,
an old man's caprice, worse--an envy of young love. She had, of
course, earlier visited Winsyatt, accompanied by her parents; and she
had not fallen for Sir Robert. Perhaps it was because she felt
herself under inspection; or because the uncle had sufficient
generations of squirearchy behind him to possess, by middle-class
London standards, really rather bad manners--though a kinder critic
might have said agreeably eccentric ones; perhaps because she
considered the house such an old barn, so dreadfully old-fashioned in
its furnishings and hangings and pictures; because the said uncle so
doted on Charles and Charles was so provokingly nephewish in return
that Ernestina began to feel positively jealous; but above all,
because she was frightened.

Neighboring ladies had been summoned to meet her. It was all very
well knowing her father could buy up all their respective fathers and
husbands lock, stock and barrel; she felt herself looked down on
(though she was simply envied) and snubbed in various subtle ways.
Nor did she much relish the prospect of eventually living at
Winsyatt, though it allowed her to dream of one way at least in which
part of her vast marriage portion should be spent exactly as she
insisted-- in a comprehensive replacement of all those absurd scrolly
wooden chairs (Carolean and almost priceless), gloomy cupboards
(Tudor), moth-eaten tapestries (Gobelins), and dull paintings
(including two Claudes and a Tintoretto) that did not meet her
approval.

Her distaste for the uncle she had not dared to communicate to
Charles; and her other objections she hinted at with more humor than
sarcasm. I do not think she is to be blamed. Like so many daughters
of rich parents, before and since, she had been given no talent
except that of conventional good taste ... that is, she knew how to
spend a great deal of money in dressmakers', milliners' and furniture
shops. That was her province; and since it was her only real one, she
did not like it encroached upon.

The urgent Charles put up with her muted disapproval and pretty
poutings, and assured her that he would fly back with as much speed
as he went. He had in fact a fairly good idea what his uncle wanted
him so abruptly for; the matter had been tentatively broached when he
was there with Tina and her parents ... most tentatively since his
uncle was a shy man. It was the possibility that Charles and his
bride might share Winsyatt with him--they could "fit up"
the east whig. Charles knew his uncle did not mean merely that they
should come and stay there on occasion, but that Charles should
settle down and start learning the business of running the estate.
Now this appealed to him no more than it would have, had he realized,
to Ernestina. He knew it would be a poor arrangement, that his uncle
would alternate between doting and disapproving ... and that
Ernestina needed educating into Winsyatt by a less trammeled early
marriage. But his uncle had hinted privately to him at something
beyond this: that Winsyatt was too large for a lonely old man, that
he didn't know if he wouldn't be happier in a smaller place. There
was no shortage of suitable smaller places in the environs ...
indeed, some figured on the Winsyatt rent roll. There was one such,
an Elizabethan manor house in the village of Winsyatt, almost in view
of the great house.

Charles guessed now that the old man was feeling selfish; and that
he was called to Winsyatt to be offered either the manor house or the
great house. Either would be agreeable. It did not much matter to him
which it should be, provided his uncle was out of the way. He felt
certain that the old bachelor could now be maneuvered into either
house, that he was like a nervous rider who had come to a jump and
wanted to be led over it.

Accordingly, at the end of the brief trio in Broad Street, Charles
asked for a few words alone with Ernestina; and as soon as Aunt
Tranter had retired, he told her what he suspected.

"But why should he have not discussed it sooner?"

"Dearest, I'm afraid that is Uncle Bob to the life. But tell
me what I am to say."

"Which should you prefer?"
 

"Whichever you choose. Neither, if needs be. Though he would
be hurt..."

Ernestina uttered a discreet curse against rich uncles. But a
vision of herself, Lady Smithson in a Winsyatt appointed to her
taste, did cross her mind, perhaps because she was in Aunt Tranter's
not very spacious back parlor. After all, a title needs a setting.
And if the horrid old man were safely from under the same roof . . .
and he was old. And dear Charles. And her parents, to whom she owed
...

"This house in the village--is it not the one we passed in
the carriage?"

"Yes, you remember, it had all those picturesque old
gables--"

"Picturesque to look at from the outside."

"Of course it would have to be done up."

"What did you call it?"

"The villagers call it the Little House. But only by
comparison. It's many years since I was in it, but I fancy it is a
good deal larger than it looks."

"I know those old houses. Dozens of wretched little rooms. I
think the Elizabethans were all dwarfs."

He smiled (though he might have done better to correct her curious
notion of Tudor architecture), and put his arm round her shoulders.
"Then Winsyatt itself?"

She gave him a straight little look under her arched eyebrows.

"Do you wish it?"

"You know what it is to me."

"I may have my way with new decorations?"

"You may raze it to the ground and erect a second Crystal
Palace, for all I care."

"Charles! Be serious!"

She pulled away. But he soon received a kiss of forgiveness, and
went on his way with a light heart. For her part, Ernestina went
upstairs and drew out her copious armory of catalogues.
 

23

Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew ...
--Hardy, "Transformations"

The chaise, its calash down to allow Charles to enjoy the spring
sunshine, passed the gatehouse. Young Hawkins stood by the opened
gates, old Mrs. Hawkins beamed coyly at the door of the cottage. And
Charles called to the under-coachman who had been waiting at
Chippenham and now drove with Sam beside him on the box, to stop a
moment. A special relationship existed between Charles and the old
woman. Without a mother since the age of one, he had had to put up
with a series of substitutes as a little boy; in his stays at
Winsyatt he had attached himself to this same Mrs. Hawkins,
technically in those days the head laundrymaid, but by right of
service and popularity second only below stairs to the august
housekeeper herself. Perhaps Charles's affection for Aunt Tranter was
an echo of his earlier memories of the simple woman--a perfect
casting for Baucis--who now hobbled down the path to the garden gate
to
greet him.

He had to answer all her eager inquiries about the forthcoming
marriage; and to ask in his turn after her children. She seemed more
than ordinarily solicitous for him, and he detected in her eye that
pitying shadow the kind-hearted poor sometimes reserve for the
favored rich. It was a shadow he knew of old, bestowed by the
innocent-shrewd country woman on the poor motherless boy with the
wicked father--for gross rumors of Charles's surviving parent's
enjoyment of the pleasures of London life percolated down to
Winsyatt. It seemed singularly out of place now, that mute sympathy,
but Charles permitted it with an amused tolerance. It came from love
of him, as the neat gatehouse garden, and the parkland, beyond, and
the clumps of old trees--each with a well-loved name, Carson's Stand,
Ten-pine Mound, Ramillies (planted in celebration of that battle),
the Oak-and-Elm, the Muses' Grove and a dozen others, all as familiar
to Charles as the names of the parts of his body--and the great
avenue of limes, the iron railings, as all in his view of the domain
came that day also, or so he felt, from love of him. At last he
smiled down at the old laundrymaid. "I must get on. My uncle
expects me." Mrs. Hawkins looked for a moment as if she would
not let herself be so easily dismissed; but the servant overcame the
substitute mother. She contented herself with touching his hand as it
lay on the chaise door. "Aye, Mr. Charles. He expects you."

The coachman flicked the rump of the leading horse with his whip
and the chaise pulled off up the gentle incline and into the
fenestrated shadow of the still-leafless limes. After a while the
drive became flat, again the whip licked lazily onto the bay haunch,
and the two horses, remembering the manger was now near, broke into a
brisk trot. The swift gay crunch of the ironbound wheels, the slight
screech of an insufficiently greased axle, the old affection revived
by Mrs. Hawkins, his now certainty of being soon in real possession
of this landscape, all this evoked in Charles that ineffable feeling
of fortunate destiny and right order which his stay in Lyme had
vaguely troubled. This piece of England belonged to him, and he
belonged to it; its responsibilities were his, and its prestige, and
its centuries-old organization.