The French Lieutenant's Woman (32 page)

At last Charles spoke.

"I am not made for
marriage. My misfortune is to have realized it too late."

"Have you read
Malthus?" Charles shook his head. "For him the tragedy of
Homo sapiens is that the least fit to survive breed the most. So
don't say you aren't made for marriage, my boy. And don't blame
yourself for falling for that girl. I think I know why that French
sailor ran away. He knew she had eyes a man could
drown
in."

Charles swiveled round
in agony. "On my most sacred honor, nothing improper has passed
between us. You must believe that."

"I believe you. But
let me put you through the old catechism. Do you wish to hear her? Do
you wish to see her? Do you wish to touch her?"

Charles turned away
again and sank into the chair, his face in his hands. It was no
answer, yet it said everything. After a moment, he raised his face
and stared into the fire.

"Oh my dear Grogan,
if you knew the mess my life was in ... the waste of it ... the
uselessness of it. I have no moral purpose, no real sense of duty to
anything. It seems only a few months ago that I was twenty-one--full
of hopes...all disappointed. And now to get entangled in this
miserable business..."

Grogan moved beside him
and gripped his shoulder. "You are not the first man to doubt
his choice of bride." "She understands so little of what I
really am." "She is--what?--a dozen years younger than
yourself? And she has known you not six months. How could she
understand you as yet? She is hardly out of the schoolroom."

Charles nodded gloomily.
He could not tell the doctor his real conviction about Ernestina:
that she would never understand him. He felt fatally disabused of his
own intelligence. It had let him down in his choice of a life
partner; for like so many Victorian, and perhaps more recent, men
Charles was to live all his life under the influence of the ideal.
There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women
less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the
knowledge that there are more attractive. Charles now saw only too
well which category he belonged to. He murmured, "It is not her
fault. It cannot be."

"I should think
not. A pretty young innocent girl like that."

"I shall honor my
vows to her."

"Of course."

A silence.

"Tell me what to
do."

"First tell me your
real sentiments as regards the other."

Charles looked up in
despair; then down to the fire, and tried at last to tell the truth.

"I cannot say,
Grogan. In all that relates to her, I am an enigma to myself. I do
not love her. How could I? A woman so compromised, a woman you tell
me is mentally diseased. But ... it is as if ... I feel like a man
possessed against his will--against all that is better in his
character. Even now her face rises before me, denying all you say.
There is something in her. A knowledge, an apprehension of nobler
things than are compatible with either evil or madness. Beneath the
dross ... I cannot explain."

"I did not lay evil
at her door. But despair."

No sound, but a
floorboard or two that creaked as the doctor paced. At last Charles
spoke again. "What do you advise?"

"That you leave
matters entirely in my hands."

"You will go to see
her?"

"I shall put on my
walking boots. I shall tell her you have been unexpectedly called
away. And you must go away, Smithson."

"It so happens I
have urgent business in London."

"So much the
better. And I suggest that before you go you lay the whole matter
before Miss Freeman."

"I had already
decided upon that." Charles got to his feet. But still that face
rose before him. "And she--what will you do?"

"Much depends upon
her state of mind. It may well be that all that keeps her sane at the
present juncture is her belief that you feel sympathy--perhaps
something sweeter-- for her. The shock of your not appearing may, I
fear, produce a graver melancholia. I am afraid we must anticipate
that." Charles looked down. "You are not to blame that upon
yourself. If it had not been you, it would have been some other. In a
way, such a state of affairs will make things easier. I shall know
what course to take."

Charles stared at the
carpet. "An asylum."

"That colleague I
mentioned--he shares my views on the treatment of such cases. We
shall do our best. You would be prepared for a certain amount of
expense?"

"Anything to be rid
of her--without harm to her."

"I know a private
asylum in Exeter. My friend Spencer has patients there. It is
conducted in an intelligent and enlightened manner. I should not
recommend a public institution at this stage."

"Heaven forbid. I
have heard terrible accounts of them."

"Rest assured. This
place is a model of its kind."

"We are not talking
of committal?"

For there had arisen in
Charles's mind a little ghost of treachery: to discuss her so
clinically, to think of her locked in some small room...

"Not at all. We are
talking of a place where her spiritual wounds can heal, where she
will be kindly treated, kept occupied--and will have the benefit of
Spencer's excellent experience and care. He has had similar cases. He
knows what to do."

Charles hesitated, then
stood and held out his hand. In his present state he needed orders
and prescriptions, and as soon as he had them, he felt better.

"I feel you have
saved my life."

"Nonsense, my dear
fellow."

"No, it is not
nonsense. I shall be in debt to you for the rest of my days."

"Then let me
inscribe the name of your bride on the bill of credit."

"I shall honor the
debt."

"And give the
charming creature time. The best wines take the longest to mature, do
they not?"

"I fear that in my
own case the same is true of a very inferior vintage."

"Bah. Poppycock."
The doctor clapped him on the shoulder. "And by the bye, I think
you read French?"

Charles gave a surprised
assent. Grogan sought through his shelves, found a book, and then
marked a passage in it with a pencil before passing it to his guest.

"You need not read
the whole trial. But I should like you to read this medical evidence
that was brought by the defense."

Charles stared at the
volume. "A purge?"

The little doctor had a
gnomic smile.

"Something of the
kind."
 

28

Assumptions,
hasty, crude, and vain,
Full
oft to use will Science deign;
The
corks the novice plies today
The
swimmer soon shall cast away.
--
A.
H. Clough, Poem (1840)

Again I spring
to make my choice;
Again
in tones of ire
I
hear a God's tremendous voice--
"Be
counsel'd, and retire!"
--
Matthew
Arnold, "The Lake" (1853)

The trial of Lieutenant
Emile de La Ronciere in 1835 is psychiatrically one of the most
interesting of early nineteenth-century cases. The son of the
martinet Count de La Ronciere, Emile was evidently a rather
frivolous--he had a mistress and got badly into debt--yet not unusual
young man for his country, period and profession. In 1834 he was
attached to the famous cavalry school at Saumur in the Loire valley.
His commanding officer was the Baron de Morell, who had a highly
strung daughter of sixteen, named Marie. In those days commanding
officers' houses served in garrison as a kind of mess for their
subordinates. One evening the Baron, as stiffnecked as Emile's
father, but a good deal more influential, called the lieutenant up to
him and, in the presence of his brother officers and several ladies,
furiously ordered him to leave the house. The next day La Ronciere
was presented with a vicious series of poison-pen letters threatening
the Morell family. All displayed an uncanny knowledge of the most
intimate details of the life of the household, and all--the first
absurd flaw in the prosecution case--were signed with the
lieutenant's initials.

Worse was to come. On
the night of September 24th, 1834, Marie's English governess, a Miss
Allen, was
woken
by her sixteen-year-old charge, who told in tears how La Ronciere, in
full uniform, had just forced his way through the window into her
adjacent bedroom, bolted the door, made obscene threats, struck her
across the breasts and bitten her hand, then forced her to raise her
night-chemise and wounded her in the upper thigh. He had then escaped
by the way he had come.

The very next morning
another lieutenant supposedly favored by Marie de Morell received a
highly insulting letter, again apparently from La Ronciere. A duel
was fought. La Ronciere won, but the severely wounded adversary and
his second refused to concede the falsity of the poison-pen charge.
They threatened La Ronciere that his father would be told if he did
not sign a confession of guilt; once that was done, the matter would
be buried. After a night of agonized indecision, La Ronciere
foolishly agreed to sign.

He then asked for leave
and went to Paris, in the belief that the affair would be hushed up.
But signed letters continued to appear in the Morells' house. Some
claimed that Marie was pregnant, others that her parents would soon
both be murdered, and so on. The Baron had had enough. La Ronciere
was arrested. The number of circumstances in the accused's favor was
so large that we can hardly believe today that he should have been
brought to trial, let alone convicted. To begin with, it was common
knowledge in Saumur that Marie had been piqued by La Ronciere's
obvious admiration for her handsome mother, of whom the daughter was
extremely envious. Then the Morell mansion was surrounded by sentries
on the night of the attempted rape; not one had noticed anything
untoward, even though the bedroom concerned was on the top floor and
reachable only by a ladder it would have required at least three men
to carry and "mount"--therefore a ladder that would have
left traces in the soft soil beneath the window ... and the defense
established that there had been none. Furthermore, the glazier
brought in to mend the pane broken by the intruder testified that all
the broken glass had fallen outside the house and that it was in any
case impossible to reach the window catch through the small aperture
made. Then the defense asked why during the assault Marie had never
once cried for help; why the light-sleeping Miss Allen had not been
woken by the scuffling; why she and Marie then went back to sleep
without waking Madame de Morell, who slept through the whole incident
on the floor below; why the thigh wound was not examined until months
after the incident (and was then pronounced to be a light scratch,
now fully healed); why Marie went to a ball only two evenings later
and led a perfectly normal life until the arrest was finally
made--when she promptly had a nervous breakdown (again, the defense
showed that it was far from the first in her young life); how the
letters could still appear in the house, even when the penniless La
Ronciere was in jail awaiting trial; why any poison-pen letter-writer
in his senses should not only not disguise his writing (which was
easily copiable) but sign his name; why the letters showed an
accuracy of spelling and grammar (students of French will be pleased
to know that La Ronciere invariably forgot to make his past
participles agree) conspicuously absent from genuine correspondence
produced for comparison; why twice he even failed to spell his own
name correctly; why the incriminating letters appeared to be written
on paper--the greatest contemporary authority witnessed as much--
identical to a sheaf found in Marie's escritoire. Why and why and
why, in short. As a final doubt, the defense also pointed out that a
similar series of letters had been found previously in the Morells'
Paris house, and at a time when La Ronciere was on the other side of
the world, doing service in Cayenne.

But the ultimate
injustice at the trial (attended by Hugo, Balzac and George Sand
among many other celebrities) was the court's refusal to allow any
cross-examination of the prosecution's principal witness: Marie de
Morell. She gave her evidence in a cool and composed manner; but the
president of the court, under the cannon-muzzle eyes of the Baron and
an imposing phalanx of distinguished relations, decided that her
"modesty" and her "weak nervous state" forbade
further interrogation.