The French Lieutenant's Woman (64 page)

"I think you lie. I
think you reveled in the thought of my misery. And I think it was you
who sent that letter to my solicitor." She looked him a sharp
denial, but he met her with a cold grimace. "You forget I
already know, to my cost, what an accomplished actress you can be
when it suits your purpose. I can guess why I am now summoned to be
given the
coup
de grace
.
You have a new victim. I may slake your insatiable and unwomanly
hatred of my sex one last time ... and now I may be dismissed."

"You misjudge me."

But she said it far too
calmly, as if she remained proof to all his accusations; even, deep
in herself, perversely savored them. He gave a bitter shake of the
head.

"No. It is as I
say. You have not only planted the dagger in my breast, you have
delighted in twisting it."

She stood now staring at
him, as if against her will, but hypnotized, the defiant criminal
awaiting sentence. He pronounced it. "A day will come when you
shall be called to account for what you have done to me. And if there
is justice in heaven--your punishment shall outlast eternity."

Melodramatic words; yet
words sometimes matter less than the depth of feeling behind
them--and these came out of Charles's whole being and despair. What
cried out behind them was not melodrama, but tragedy. For a long
moment she continued to stare at him; something of the terrible
outrage in his soul was reflected in her eyes. With an acute
abruptness she lowered her head.

He hesitated one last
second; his face was like the poised-crumbling wall of a dam, so vast
was the weight of anathema pressing to roar down. But as suddenly as
she had looked guilty, he ground his jaws shut, turned on his heel
and marched towards the door.

Gathering her skirt in
one hand, she ran after him. He spun round at the sound, she stood
lost a moment. But before he could move on she had stepped swiftly
past him to the door. He found his exit blocked. "I cannot let
you go believing that."

Her breast rose, as if
she were out of breath; her eyes on his, as if she put all reliance
on stopping him in their directness. But when he made an angry
gesture of his hand, she spoke.

"There is a lady in
this house who knows me, who understands me better than anyone else
in the world. She wishes to see you. I beg you to let her do so. She
will explain ... my real nature far better than I can myself. She
will explain that my conduct towards you is less blameworthy than you
suppose."

His eyes blazed upon
hers; as if he would now let that dam break. He made a visibly
difficult effort to control himself; to lose the flames, regain the
ice; and succeeded.

"I am astounded
that you should think a stranger to me could extenuate your behavior.
And now--"

"She is waiting.
She knows you are here."

"I do not care if
it is the Queen herself. I will not see her."

"I shall not be
present."

Her cheeks had grown
very red, almost as red as Charles's. For the first--and last--time
in his life he was tempted to use physical force on a member of the
weaker sex.

"Stand aside!"

But she shook her head.
It was beyond words now; a matter of will. Her demeanor was intense,
almost tragic; and yet something strange haunted her eyes--something
had happened, some dim air from another world was blowing
imperceptibly between them. She watched him as if she knew she had
set him at bay; a little frightened, uncertain what he would do; and
yet without hostility. Almost as if, behind the surface, there was
nothing but a curiosity: a watching for the result of an experiment.
Something in Charles faltered. His eyes fell. Behind all his rage
stood the knowledge that he loved her still; that this was the one
being whose loss he could never forget. He spoke to the gilt clasp.

"What am I to
understand by this?"

"What a less
honorable gentleman might have guessed some time ago."

He ransacked her eyes.
Was there the faintest smile in them? No, there could not be. There
was not. She held him in those inscrutable eyes a moment more, than
left the door and crossed the room to a bellpull by the fireplace. He
was free to go; but he watched her without moving. "What a less
honorable gentleman ..." What new enormity was threatened now!
Another woman, who knew and understood her better than ... that
hatred of man ... this house inhabited by ... he dared not say it to
himself. She drew back the brass button and then came towards him
again.

"She will come at
once." Sarah opened the door; gave him an oblique look. "I
beg you to listen to what she has to say ... and to accord her the
respect due to her situation and age."

And she was gone. But
she had, in those last words, left an essential clue. He divined at
once whom he was about to meet. It was her employer's sister, the
poetess (I will hide names no more) Miss Christina Rossetti. Of
course! Had he not always found in her verse, on the rare occasions
he had looked at it, a certain incomprehensible mysticism? A
passionate obscurity, the sense of a mind too inward and femininely
involute; to be frank, rather absurdly muddled over the frontiers of
human and divine love?

He strode to the door
and opened it. Sarah was at a door at the far end of the landing,
about to enter. She looked round and he opened his mouth to speak.
But there was a quiet sound below. Someone was mounting the stairs.
Sarah raised a finger to her lips and disappeared inside the room.

Charles hesitated, then
went back inside the studio and walked to the window. He saw now who
was to blame for Sarah's philosophy of life--she whom Punch had once
called the sobbing abbess, the hysterical spinster of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. How desperately he wished he had not
returned! If only he had made further inquiries before casting
himself into this miserable situation! But here he was; and he
suddenly found himself determining, and not without a grim relish,
that the lady poetess should not have it all her own way. To her he
might be no more than a grain of sand among countless millions, a
mere dull weed in this exotic garden of...

There was a sound. He
turned, and with a very set-cold face. But it was not Miss Rossetti,
merely the girl who had shown him up, and holding a small child
crooked in her arm. It seemed she had seen the door ajar, and simply
peeped in on her way to some nursery. She appeared surprised to see
him alone.

"Mrs. Roughwood has
left?"

"She gave me to
understand ... a lady wishes to have a few words in private with me.
She is rung for."

The girl inclined her
head. "I see."

But instead of
withdrawing, as Charles had expected, she came forward into the room
and set the child down on a carpet by the easel. She felt in the
pocket of her apron and handed down a rag doll, then knelt a brief
moment, as if to make sure the child was perfectly happy. Then
without warning she straightened and moved gracefully towards the
door. Charles stood meanwhile with an expression somewhere between
offense and
puzzlement.

"I trust the lady
will come very shortly?"

The girl turned. She had
a small smile on her lips. Then she glanced down at the child on the
carpet.

"She is come."

For at least ten seconds
after the door closed Charles stared. It was a little girl, with dark
hair and chubby arms; a little more than a baby, yet far less than a
child. She seemed suddenly to realize that Charles was animate. The
doll was handed up towards him, with a meaningless sound. He had an
impression of solemn gray irises in a regular face, a certain timid
doubt, a not being quite sure what he was ... a second later he was
kneeling in front of her on the carpet, helping her to stand on her
uncertain legs, scanning that small face like some archaeologist who
has just unearthed the first example of a lost ancient script. The
little girl showed unmistakable signs of not liking this scrutiny.
Perhaps he gripped the fragile arms too tightly. He fumbled hastily
for his watch, as he had once before in a similar predicament. It had
the same good effect; and in a few moments he was able to lift the
infant without protest and carry her to a chair by the window. She
sat on his knees, intent on the silver toy; and he, he was intent on
her face, her hands, her every inch.

And on every word that
had been spoken in that room. Language is like shot silk; so much
depends on the angle at which it is held.

He heard the quiet
opening of the door. But he did not turn. In a moment a hand lay on
the high backrail of the wooden chair on which he sat. He did not
speak and the owner of the hand did not speak; absorbed by the watch,
the child too was silent. In some distant house an amateur, a lady
with time on her hands--not in them, for the execution was poor,
redeemed only by distance--began to play the piano: a Chopin mazurka,
filtered through walls, through leaves and sunlight. Only that
jerkily onward sound indicated progression. Otherwise it was the
impossible: History reduced to a living stop, a photograph in flesh.

But the little girl grew
bored, and reached for her mother's arms. She was lifted, dandled,
then carried away a few steps. Charles remained staring out of the
window a long moment. Then he stood and faced Sarah and her burden.
Her eyes were still grave, but she had a little smile. Now, he was
being taunted. But he would have traveled four million miles to be
taunted so.

The child reached
towards the floor, having seen its doll there. Sarah stooped a
moment, retrieved it and gave it to her. For a moment she watched the
absorption of the child against her shoulder in the toy; then her
eyes came to rest on Charles's feet. She could not look him in the
eyes.

"What is her name?"

"Lalage." She
pronounced it as a dactyl, the g hard. Still she could not raise her
eyes. "Mr. Rossetti approached me one day in the street. I did
not know it, but he had been watching me. He asked to be allowed to
draw me. She was not yet born. He was most kind in all ways when he
knew of my
circumstances.
He himself proposed the name. He is her godfather." She
murmured, "I know it is strange."

Strange certainly were
Charles's feelings; and the ultimate strangeness was only increased
by this curious soliciting of his opinion on such, in such
circumstances, a trivial matter; as if at the moment his ship had
struck a reef his advice was asked on the right material for the
cabin upholstery. Yet numbed, he found himself answering.

"It is Greek. From
lalageo
,
to babble like a brook."

Sarah bowed her head, as
if modestly grateful for this etymological information. Still Charles
stared at her, his masts crashing, the cries of the drowning in his
mind's ears. He would never forgive her.

He heard her whisper,
"You do not like it?"

"I..." he
swallowed. "Yes. It is a pretty name."

And again her head
bowed. But he could not move, could not rid his eyes of their
terrible interrogation; as a man stares at the fallen masonry that
might, had he passed a moment later, have crushed him to extinction;
at hazard, that element the human mentality so habitually disregards,
dismisses to the lumber room of myth, made flesh in this figure, this
double figure before him. Her eyes stayed down, masked by the dark
lashes. But he saw, or sensed, tears upon them. He took two or three
involuntary steps towards her. Then again he stopped. He could not,
he could not ... the words, though low, burst from him.

"But why? Why? What
if I had never ..."

Her head sank even
lower. He barely caught her answer.

"It had to be so."

And he comprehended: it
had been in God's hands, in His forgiveness of their sins. Yet still
he stared down at her hidden face.

"And all those
cruel words you spoke ... forced me to speak in answer?"

"Had to be spoken."

At last she looked up at
him. Her eyes were full of tears, and her look unbearably naked. Such
looks we have all once or twice in our lives received and shared;
they are those in which worlds melt, pasts dissolve, moments when we
know, in the resolution of profoundest need, that the rock of ages
can never be anything else but love, here, now, in these two hands'
joining, in this blind silence in which one head comes to rest
beneath the other; and which Charles, after a compressed eternity,
breaks, though the question is more breathed than spoken.