The French Lieutenant's Woman / Любовница французского лейтенанта

© Шитова Л. Ф., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2024

© ООО «ИД «Антология», 2024

1

In the late March of 1867, on a stormy morning, the pair began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, a small town in Lime Bay, the most beautiful sea bastion on the south coast of England. Evidently, these two were strangers, people of a very good taste as regards[1] their appearance, interested in solitude.

The young lady was dressed in the height of fashion: a violet skirt of an almost daring narrowness – and shortness, since two white ankles could be seen under the rich green coat and above the black boots, and put over the chignon, one of the little flat hats with plumes at the side; while the taller man was dressed in a light gray, with his top hat held in his free hand.

But there was the other figure on that curving mole. It stood right at the pier end, leaning against an old cannon barrel[2]. Its clothes were black. The wind moved them, but the figure stood motionless, staring out to sea, like a living memorial to the drowned.

2

“My dear Tina, we have paid our homage[3] to Neptune. He will forgive us if we now turn our backs on him.”

“You are not very gallant.”

“What does that mean, dear?”

“I thought you might wish to prolong an opportunity to hold my arm without indecency.”

“How delicate we've become.”

“We are not in London now.”

“At the North Pole, if I'm not mistaken.”

“I wish to walk to the end.”

And so the couple continued down the pier.

“And I wish to hear what passed between you and Papa last Thursday.”

“ Your father and I had a small philosophical disagreement.”

“And what was the subject of your conversation?”

“Your father expressed the opinion that Mr. Darwin should be demonstrated in a cage in the zoological gardens. In the monkey house. I tried to explain some of the scientific arguments behind the Darwinian position. I was unsuccessful. Et voila tout[4].”

“How could you – when you know Papa's views!”

“I was most respectful.”

“Which means you were most hateful.”

“He said that he would not let his daughter marry a man who considered his grandfather to be an ape. But I think he will recall that in my case it was a titled ape.”

She looked at him then as they walked. Her father was a very rich man; but her grandfather had been a draper, and Charles's had been a baronet. He smiled and pressed the gloved hand that was hooked lightly to his left arm.

“Dearest, we have settled that between us. It is right that you should be afraid of your father. But I am not marrying him. And you forget that I'm a scientist. I have written a monograph, so I must be. And if you smile like that, I shall devote all my time to the fossils and none to you.”

“I am not jealous of the fossils.” She left an artful pause[5]. “Since you've been walking on them now for at least a minute – and haven't even remarked them.”

He glanced down and kneeled. Portions of the mole are paved with fossil-bearing stone.

She led him to the side of the rampart, where flat stones inserted into the wall served as steps down to a lower walk.

“Shall we make the dangerous descent?” he said.

“On the way back.”

Once again they walked on. It was only then that he noticed, or at least realized the sex of, the figure at the end.

“Good heavens, I took that to be a fisherman[6]. But isn't it a woman?”

Ernestina peered – her gray, pretty eyes, were shortsighted, and all she could see was a dark shape.

“Is she young?”

“It's too far to tell.”

“But I can guess who it is. It must be poor Tragedy.”

“Tragedy?”

“A nickname. One of her nicknames.”

“And what are the others?”

“The fishermen have a bad name for her.”

“My dear Tina, you can surely – ”

“They call her the French Lieutenant's… Woman.”

“And has she to spend her days out here now?”

“She is…a little mad. Let us turn. I don't like to go near her.”

They stopped. He stared at the black figure.

“But I'm intrigued. Who is this French lieutenant?”

“A man she is said to have.”

“Fallen in love with?”

“Worse than that.”

“And he abandoned her? There is a child?” “No. I think no child. It is all gossip.” “But what is she doing there?” “They say she waits for him to return.” “But… does no one care for her?”

“She is a servant of some kind to old Mrs. Poulteney. She is never to be seen when we visit. But she lives there. Please let us turn back.” But he smiled.

“If something goes wrong, I shall defend you and prove my gallantry. Come.”

So they went closer to the figure by the cannon. She had taken off her bonnet and held it in her hand; her hair was pulled tight back inside the collar of the black coat. Charles made some loud remark, to warn her that she was no longer alone, but she did not turn. The couple moved to where they could see her face in profile; and how her stare was aimed at the horizon. There came a stronger gust of wind, one that made Charles put his arm round Ernestina's waist to support her, and made the woman hold more tightly to the cannon. Without knowing why, he stepped forward as soon as the wind allowed.

“My good woman, we're alarmed for your safety. A stronger squall – ”

She turned to look at him – or as it seemed to Charles, through him. It was not a pretty face, like Ernestina's. It was certainly not a beautiful face. But it was an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. There was no hypocrisy there, no hysteria, no mask; and above all, no sign of madness.

Again and again, afterwards, Charles thought of that look. The woman said nothing. Her look back lasted two or three seconds at most; then she resumed her stare to the south. Ernestina plucked Charles's sleeve, and he turned away, with a shrug and a smile at her. When they were nearer land he said, “I wish you hadn't told me the dirty facts. That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.”

3

Back in his rooms at the White Lion after lunch Charles stared at his face in the mirror. His thoughts were too vague to be described. But they contained mysterious elements: he asked himself if his interest in paleontology was a sufficient use for his natural abilities; if Ernestina would ever really understand him as well as he understood her. And he finally concluded that it was the threat of a long and now wet afternoon to pass. After all, it was only 1867. He was only thirty-two years old. And he had always asked life too many questions.

Though Charles liked to think of himself as a scientific young man and would probably not have been too surprised had news reached him out of the future of the airplane, the jet engine, television, radar: what would have surprised him was the changed attitude to time itself. The great misery of our century is the lack of time; that is why we devote such a huge proportion of the talent and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things – as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning flash. But for Charles, and for almost all his contemporaries, the time went adagio[7].

One of the commonest symptoms of wealth today is destructive neurosis; in his century it was quiet boredom. There were many reasons why Charles wasn't pessimist. His grandfather the baronet had collected books principally; but in his later years had spent a lot of his money and his family's patience on the excavation of the hummocks of earth[8] that filled his three thousand Wiltshire acres where he had found neolithic graves. His elder son sold all the trophies when he came into his inheritance. But heaven had punished this son, or blessed him, by seeing that he never married. So the old man's younger son, Charles's father, was left with a lot of land and money.

There was only one tragedy in his life – the simultaneous death of his young wife and the stillborn child who would have been a sister to the one-year-old Charles. But he swallowed his grief. He lavished a series of tutors on his son, whom he liked only slightly less than himself. He sold his portion of land, invested in railway stock and at the gambling-tables, in short, lived very largely for pleasure and died in 1856. Charles was thus his only heir; heir not only to his father's fortune but eventually to his uncle's very considerable one.

Charles liked him, and his uncle liked Charles. But this was by no means[9] always apparent in their relationship. Though he would occasionally agree to shoot partridge and pheasant, Charles refused to hunt the fox. He had an unnatural fondness for walking instead of riding; and walking was not a gentleman's pastime except in the Swiss Alps.[10] He had nothing very much against the horse in itself, but he had the born naturalist's hatred of not being able to observe at close range and at leisure[11].

Charles had faults. He did not always write once a week; and he had a fondness for spending the afternoons in the library, a room his uncle seldom if ever used.

He had had graver faults than these, however. At Cambridge, he had (unlike most young men of his time) actually begun to learn something. But in his second year there he had drifted into a bad set[12] and ended up, one foggy night in London, in the arms of a naked girl. He rushed from her plump Cockney arms into those of the Church, horrifying his father by announcing that he wished to take Holy Orders[13]. There was only one answer to a crisis: the wicked youth was sent to Paris. There his tarnished virginity was soon blackened out of recognition; but so, as his father had hoped, was his intended marriage with the Church.

He returned from his six months in the City of Sin in 1856. His father had died three months later. The big house in Belgravia was let, and Charles installed himself in a smaller house in Kensington, more suitable to a young bachelor. There he was looked after by a manservant, a cook and two maids. He was happy there, and besides, he spent a great deal of time traveling. He offered one or two essays on his journeys to the fashionable magazines; indeed an enterprising publisher asked him to write a book after the nine months he spent in Portugal. He toyed with the idea, and dropped it. Indeed toying with ideas was his chief occupation during his third decade.

Yet he was not a frivolous young man. During the last three years he had become increasingly interested in paleontology; that, he had decided, was his field. He began to frequent the meetings of the Geological Society.

Charles was an interesting young man. There was a certain cynicism about him, but he never entered society without being looked at by the mamas, clapped on the back by the papas and simpered at by the girls. Charles quite liked pretty girls and he often led them, and their ambitious parents, on. Thus he had gained a reputation for coldness, by the time he was thirty he would sniff the bait[14] and then run away from the matrimonial traps.

His uncle often talked to him on the matter. The old man would grumble.

“I never found the right woman.”

“Nonsense. You never looked for her.”

“Indeed I did. When I was your age…”

“You lived for your hounds and the partridge season.”

The old fellow would stare gloomily at his claret. He did not really regret having no wife; but he bitterly lacked not having children to buy ponies and guns for.

“I was blind. Blind.”

“My dear uncle, I have excellent eyesight. Console yourself. I too have been looking for the right girl. And I have not found her.”

4

The basement kitchen of Mrs. Poulteney's large Regency house, which stood on one of the steep hills behind Lyme Regis, was a real hell, with its three fires, all of which had to be stoked twice a day. Never mind[15] how hot a summer's day was – the furnaces had to be fed. At the head of it was a Mrs. Fairley[16], a thin, small person who always wore black.

As Mrs. Poulteney's standards were very high, butlers, footmen, gardeners, upstairs maids, downstairs maids had worked for some time and soon fled. Exactly how Mrs. Fairley herself had stood her mistress so long was one of the local wonders. Most probably it was because she would, had life so fallen out[17], have been a Mrs. Poulteney on her own account[18]. In short, both women were sadistic; and it was to their advantage[19] to tolerate each other.

Mrs. Poulteney had two obsessions. One was Dirt and the other was Immorality. In neither field did anything wrong escape her eagle eye[20].

She was like some vulture, endlessly circling around the house looking for dust, finger-marks, poorly starched linen, smells, stains, breakages and other ills. A gardener would be dismissed for being seen to come into the house with earth on his hands; a butler for having a spot of wine on his stock; a maid for having wool under her bed.

Heaven help the maid seen out walking on one of her rare free afternoons with a young man. There would have been a place in the Gestapo for the lady; she could bring the strongest girls to tears in the first five minutes. Her only notion of justice was that she must be right.

Yet among her own class, a very limited circle, she was known for her charity. And if you had disputed that reputation, your opponents would have said: had not dear, kind Mrs. Poulteney taken in the French Lieutenant's Woman?

This remarkable event had taken place in the spring of 1866, exactly a year before the time of which I write; and it had to do with the great secret of Mrs. Poulteney's life. It was a very simple secret. She believed in hell.

The vicar of Lyme knew very well on which side his pastoral bread was buttered. He suited Lyme very well. He had the knack of a good eloquence[21] in his sermons; and he kept his church free of all signs of the Romish cancer[22]. Mrs. Poulteney's purse was as open to calls from him as it was closed where her thirteen domestics' wages were concerned. She had given considerable sums to the church.

One day she took advantage of the vicar's visits and examined her conscience. At first he wanted to rid her of spiritual worries.

The vicar smiled. “My dear madam, the Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. It is not for us to doubt His mercy or His justice.”

“But supposing He should ask me if my conscience is clear?” There was a silence.

“If only poor Frederick had not died. It was a warning. A punishment. He would have advised me.”

“Doubtless”.

“I have given. But I have not done good deeds.”

“To give is a most excellent deed.”

A long silence followed, in which the vicar meditated on his dinner, still an hour away, and Mrs. Poulteney on her wickedness. She then came out, with an unusual timidity.

“If you knew of some lady, some nice person who is in a difficult situation.”

“I am not quite clear what you mean.”

“I wish to take a companion. I have difficulty in writing now. And Mrs. Fairley reads so poorly. I should be happy to give a home for such a person.”

“Very well. If you so wish it. I will make inquiries.”

“She must be of perfect moral character. I have my servants to consider[23].”

“My dear lady, of course, of course.” The vicar stood.

“And preferably without relations. They can become so very tiresome.”

“Rest assured[24] that I shall not present anyone unsuitable.” He pressed her hand and moved towards the door. “And Mr. Forsythe, not too young a person.” He bowed and left the room. But halfway down the stairs to the ground floor, he stopped. He remembered. He reflected. And an impulse made him turn and go back to her drawing room. He stood in the doorway.

“An eligible[25] has occurred to me. Her name is Sarah Woodruff.”

5

Ernestina had exactly the right face for her age; that is, small-chinned, oval, delicate as a violet. At first meetings she could cast down her eyes very prettily, as if she might faint should any gentleman dare to address her. To a man like Charles she was irresistible. When Charles left Aunt Tranter's house in Broad Street to walk a hundred paces or so down to his hotel, there to mount the stairs to his rooms and look at his face in the mirror, Ernestine excused herself and went to her room.

She wanted to catch a last glimpse[26] of her betrothed through the lace curtains.

She admired the way he walked and the manner in which he raised his top hat to Aunt Tranter's maid; though she hated him for doing it, because the girl had beautiful eyes and a fine complexion, and Charles had been strictly forbidden ever to look again at any woman under the age of sixty. Then Ernestina turned back into her room. It had been furnished for her and to her taste, which was emphatically French. The rest of Aunt Tranter's house was in the style of a quarter-century before: that is, a museum of objects.

Nobody could dislike Aunt Tranter as she had the optimism of successful old maids. She had begun by making the best of things for herself, and ended by making the best of them for the rest of the world as well.

However, Ernestina was angry with her; on the impossibility of having dinner at five; on the subject of her aunt's excessive care for her fair name[27] (she would not believe that the bridegroom and bride-to-be might wish to sit alone, and walk out alone); and above all on the subject of Ernestina's being in Lyme at all.

The poor girl had suffered the agony of every only child[28] since time began[29] – that is, parental worry. Since birth her slightest cough would bring doctors; since puberty her slightest whim called decorators and dressmakers. This was all very well when it came to new dresses. But not when it was her health. Her mother and father were convinced she was consumptive. They had only to smell damp in a basement to move house[30], only to have two days' rain to change districts. All doctors had examined her, and found nothing; she had never had a serious illness in her life. She could have danced and played all night. They weren't able to see into the future! For Ernestina was to outlive all her generation. She was born in 1846. And she died on the day that Hitler invaded Poland.

An indispensable part of her life was thus her annual stay with her mother's sister in Lyme. Usually she came to recover from the season; this year she was sent early to gather strength for the marriage. No doubt the Channel[31] breezes did her some good, but she always went to Lyme with the gloom of a prisoner arriving in Siberia. The society of the place was as up-to-date as Aunt Tranter's old furniture; and as for the entertainment, to a young lady familiar with the best that London can offer it was worse than nil[32]. So her relation with Aunt Tranter was much more than what one would expect of niece and aunt. Ernestina had certainly a very strong will of her own. But fortunately she had a deep respect for tradition; and she shared with Charles a sense of self-irony. Without this and a sense of humor she would have been a horrid spoiled child.

In her room that afternoon she unbuttoned her dress and stood before her mirror in her chemise and petticoats. For a few moments she became lost in a highly narcissistic selfcontemplation. Her neck and shoulders did her face justice; she was really very pretty, one of the prettiest girls she knew. And as if to prove it she raised her arms and unloosed her hair, a thing she knew to be sinful. She imagined herself for a moment as someone wicked – a dancer, an actress. And then, if you had been watching, you would have seen something very curious. For she suddenly stopped turning and admiring herself in profile; gave an abrupt look up at the ceiling. Her lips moved. And she hastily opened one of the wardrobes and drew on a peignoir.

For what had crossed her mind was a sexual thought. It was not only her profound ignorance of the reality of copulation that frightened her; it was the aura of pain and brutality that the act seemed to require. She had once or twice seen animals couple; the violence haunted her mind. She tried not to think about those things but she wanted a husband, wanted Charles to be that husband, wanted children; but the payment she would have to make for them seemed excessive.

Ernestina went to her dressing table, unlocked a drawer and there pulled out her diary. From another drawer she took a hidden key and unlocked the book. She turned immediately to the back page. There she had written out, on the day of her betrothal to Charles, the dates of all the months and days that lay between it and her marriage. Some ninety numbers remained till March 26th. Then she turned to the front of the book: some fifteen pages of close handwriting[33] in, there came a blank, upon which she had pressed a sprig of jasmine. She stared at it a moment, then bent to smell it. Her loosened hair fell over the page, and she closed her eyes to see if once again she could imagine the day she had thought she would die of joy…

But she heard Aunt Tranter's feet on the stairs, hastily put the book away, and began to comb her brown hair.

6

Mrs. Poulteney's face, that afternoon when the vicar returned and made the announcement, expressed ignorance. “I do not know her.”

“I did not suppose you would. She is a Charmouth[34] girl.”

“A girl?”

“That is, I am not quite sure of her age, a woman, a lady of some thirty years of age. Perhaps more.” The vicar felt that he was making a poor start. “But a most distressing case. Most deserving of your charity.”

“Has she an education?”

“Yes indeed. She was trained to be a governess. She was a governess.”

“And what is she now?”

“I believe she is without employment.”

“Why?”

“That is a long story.”

“I should certainly wish to hear it before taking her in.”

So the vicar sat down again, and told her what he knew of Sarah Woodruff.

“ The girl's father was a farmer merely, but a man of excellent principles and highly respected in the neighborhood. He most wisely gave the girl a good education.”

“He is dead?”

“Some several years ago. The girl became a governess to Captain John Talbot's family at Charmouth.”

“Will he give a letter of reference[35]?”

“My dear Mrs. Poulteney, we are discussing, if I understood our earlier conversation right, an object of charity, not an object of employment. No doubt such a letter can be obtained. She left his home at her own request[36]. What happened was this. You will recall the French ship that was driven ashore[37] under Stonebarrow last December? And you will no doubt recall that three of the crew were saved and were taken in by the people of Charmouth? Two were simple sailors. One, I understand, was the lieutenant of the vessel. His leg had been crushed, but he clung to a spar[38] and was washed ashore. You must surely have read of this.”

“Very probably. I do not like the French.”

“Captain Talbot, as a naval officer himself, most kindly offered hospitality to the foreign officer. He spoke no English. And Miss Woodruff was called upon to interpret and look after his needs.”

“She speaks French?” Mrs. Poulteney's alarm at this awful news was nearly enough to sink the vicar. But he smiled.

“My dear madam, so do most governesses. It is not their fault if the world requires such quality of them. But to return to the French gentleman. I regret to say that he did not deserve that name.”

“Mr. Forsythe!”

“I want to add that no misconduct took place at Captain Talbot's. Or so far as Miss Woodruff is concerned, at any place or time. But the Frenchman managed to gain Miss Woodruff's affections[39]. When his leg was mended he took coach to Weymouth, there to find a home passage[40]. Two days after he had gone Miss Woodruff asked Mrs. Talbot to allow her to leave her post. I am told that Mrs. Talbot tried to learn the woman's reasons. But without success.”

“And she let her leave without notice[41]?”

The vicar took his chance. “I agree – it was most foolish. But I will make my story short. Miss Woodruff joined the Frenchman in Weymouth. Her conduct should be criticized, but I am informed that she stayed with a female cousin.”