The French Lieutenant's Woman / Любовница французского лейтенанта

7

In the morning, when Sam drew the curtains, Charles sat up, took off his nightcap, told Sam to throw open the windows and stared at the sunlight that went into the room. The gloom that had oppressed him the previous day had blown away with the clouds. He felt the warm spring air through his nightshirt. In the cobbled street below, a rider clopped peacefully down towards the sea. All was supremely well. The world would always be this, and this moment.

Charles wished he could draw. Really, the country was charming. He turned to his man.

“Upon my word, Sam, on a day like this I could never see London again.”

“If you goes on a-standin' in the hair, sir, you won't, neither[49].”

His master gave him a dry look. He and Sam had been together for four years and knew each other very well.

“Sam, you've been drinking again.”

“No, sir.”

“ The new room is better?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sam tested the blade of the razor on the edge of his small thumb, with an expression on his face that suggested that at any moment he might change his mind[50] and try it on his own throat; or perhaps even on his smiling master's.

“It's that there kitchen-girl's at Mrs. Tranter's, sir. I ain't 'alf going to…”

“Kindly put that instrument down. And explain yourself.”

“I sees her. Dahn out there.” He jerked his thumb at the window. “Right across the street she calls.”

“And what did she call?”

Sam's expression deepened to outrage. “'Ave yer got a bag o' soot?'” He paused. “Sir.”

Charles grinned.

“I know the girl. That one in the gray dress? Who is so ugly to look at?” This was unkind of Charles, since he was speaking of the girl he had raised his hat to on the previous afternoon.

“Not exackly hugly. Leastways in looks.”

“A-ha. So. Cupid is being unfair to Cockneys.”

Sam gave an indignant look. “I woulden touch 'er with a bargepole[51]! Bloomin[52]' milkmaid.”

“I trust you're using the adjective in its literal sense[53], Sam.” “It's the 'oomiliation, Mr. Charles. Hall the hosslers 'eard.” As “all the ostlers” included exactly two persons, one of whom was stone deaf, Charles showed little sympathy. He smiled, then gestured to Sam to pour him his hot water.

“Now get me my breakfast, there's a good fellow. I'll shave myself this morning. And let me have a double dose of muffins.”

“Yes, sir.”

But Charles stopped Sam at the door.

“These country girls are much too timid to call such rude things at distinguished London gentlemen – unless they've first been provoked. I suspect, Sam, that you've been fast.” Sam stood with his mouth open. “And if you're not doubly fast with my breakfast I shall fasten my boot onto the posterior portion of your miserable anatomy[54].”

The door was shut then, and none too gently. Charles winked at himself in the mirror. Then he smiled at his own face contemplating his features. He had indeed very regular ones – a wide forehead, a moustache as black as his hair. His skin was rather pale, though less so than that of many London gentlemen – for this was a time when a suntan was not at all a desirable social-sexual status symbol, but the reverse: an indication of low rank. Yes, upon examination, it was a rather foolish face, at such a moment. Too innocent a face, when it was stripped of its formal outdoor mask. There was really only the Doric nose[55], the cool gray eyes. Breeding and self-knowledge, he most certainly had[56].

He began to cover his face in lather.

8

Ernestina had woken in a mood that the brilliant day only worsened. The ill was familiar; but it was out of the question that she should inform Charles about her problem. And so, when he called dutifully at ten o'clock at Aunt Tranter's house, he was greeted only by that lady: Ernestina had passed a slightly disturbed night, and wished to rest. Might he not return that afternoon to take tea, when no doubt she would recover?

Charles's polite questions – should the doctor not be called? – were politely answered in the negative, and he took his leave[57]. He told Sam to buy flowers and take them to the charming invalid's house, and accompanied his request with the permission and advice to present a blossom or two of his own to his young lady. Now Charles faced his own free hours.

Lyme is situated in the center of one of the rare outcrops of a stone known as blue lias[58]. To the mere landscape enthusiast this stone is not attractive. Moreover, it is treacherous, since this little stretch of blue lias coast has lost more land to the sea in the course of history than almost any other in England. But it's a Mecca for the British paleontologist.

Charles had already visited what was perhaps the most famous shop in the Lyme of those days – the Old Fossil Shop. There he paid his cash for various species he kept in the cabinets that walled his study in London.

This was petrified sea urchin[59]. These beautiful little objects are of great scientific value; and they have the added charm that they are always difficult to find. You may search for days and not come on one; and a morning in which you find two or three is indeed a morning to remember.

Some half-hour after he had called on Aunt Tranter, Charles was once again at the Cobb[60].

The great mole was far from isolated that day. There were fishermen, better-class people, early visitors, local residents, walking beside the now mild sea. Of the woman who stared, Charles noted, there was no sign. But he did not give her a second thought[61] and set out for his destination.

He was carefully equipped for his role. He wore nailed boots and canvas gaiters. There was a tight and absurdly long coat to match; a canvas wideawake hat[62]; and a huge rucksack, from which you might have shaken out hammers, wrappings, notebooks, pillboxes[63], and heaven knows what else.

As Charles hammered and bent and examined his way along the shore, trying to jump over a wide gap between boulders, he slipped on his back. He didn't mind slipping, for the day was beautiful, the liassic fossils were plentiful and he soon found himself completely alone.

The sea sparkled, birds cried, and an idea drifted across the poor fellow's brain – would it not be more fun, perhaps to give up London, to live in Lyme… but Ernestina would never allow that.

Finally he came across a very fine fragment of lias with ammonite impressions, exquisitely clear. Having duly filled a label with the date and place of finding, he once again switched to another theme – this time, to love. He determined to give it to Ernestina when he returned. It was pretty enough for her to like; and after all, very soon it would come back to him, with her. Even better, the increased weight on his back made it a labor, as well as a gift.

And Charles wandered more slowly than he meant. He unbuttoned his coat and took out his silver half-hunter[64]. Two o'clock! He looked sharply back then, and saw the waves lapping the foot of a point a mile away. He was in no danger of being cut off, since he could see a steep but safe path just ahead of him which led up the cliff to the dense woods above. But he could not return along the shore. His destination had indeed been this path, but he took it much too fast, and had to sit a minute to recover. He heard a little stream nearby and quenched his thirst[65]; wetted his handkerchief and patted his face; and then he began to look around him.

9

Sarah was intelligent, but her real intelligence belonged to a rare kind; one that would certainly pass unnoticed in any of our modern tests. It was not in the least analytical or problem-solving, nor did it demonstrate itself in the form of any particular vivacity or wit, even in her happier days. It was rather an unusual – unusual in one who had never been to London, never mixed in the world – ability to classify other people's worth: to understand them, in the fullest sense of that word.

She had some sort of psychological equivalent of the experienced horse dealer's skill – the ability to know almost at the first glance the good horse from the bad one. She could see people as they were and not as they tried to seem.

She got her education in a third-rate young ladies' seminary in Exeter, where she had learned during the day and paid for her learning during the evening – and sometimes well into the night – by darning and other small tasks. She did not get on well with the other pupils. They looked down on her; and she looked up through them. Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry. They served her as a substitute for experience. Without realizing it she judged people as much by the standards of Walter Scott[66] and Jane Austen[67]. She was a perfect victim of a caste society. Her father had forced her out of her own class, but could not raise her to the next. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to, she remained too banal.

This father sent her to boarding school not out of concern for his daughter but because of obsession with his own ancestry. Four generations back on the paternal side they were clearly established gentlemen. There was even a remote relationship with the Drake[68] family. Perhaps he was disappointed when his daughter came home from school at the age of eighteen and sat across the table from him and watched him when he boasted, annoyed him like a piece of useless machinery. He bought a farm of his own; but he bought it too cheap, and what he thought was a good bargain[69] turned out to be a bad one. He went quite literally mad and was sent to Dorchester Asylum. He died there a year later. By that time Sarah had been earning her own living[70] for a year – at first with a family in Dorchester, to be near her father. Then when he died, she had taken her post with the Talbots.

She was too good-looking a girl not to have had suitors, in spite of the lack of a dowry of any kind. But she always saw through the too confident pretendants. She saw their meannesses, their stupidities. Thus she was doomed to spinsterhood.

Sarah stayed with Mrs. Poulteney for a year and there happened great changes which did credit[71] to their relationship.

It had begun one morning only a few weeks after Miss Sarah had taken up her duties. The old lady had noticed that the upstairs maid whose duty it was each Tuesday to water the ferns in the drawing room hadn't done so. The girl was called and she confessed that she had forgotten; and Mrs. Poulteney began, like a bulldog about to sink its teeth into a burglar's ankles[72], to speak.

“I will tolerate much, but I will not tolerate this.”

“I'll never do it again, mum.”

“You will most certainly never do it again in my house.”

“Oh, mum. Please, mum.”

“Mrs. Fairley will give you your wages.”

Miss Sarah was present at this conversation, since Mrs. Poulteney had been dictating letters. She now asked a question; and the effect was remarkable. It was, to begin with, the first question she had asked in Mrs. Poulteney's presence that was not directly connected with her duties. Secondly, it opposed the old lady's judgment[73]. Thirdly, it was spoken not to Mrs. Poulteney, but to the girl.

“Are you quite well, Millie?”

Miss Sarah was beside her; and within the next minute had learned that the girl was indeed not well, had fainted twice within the last week, had been too afraid to tell anyone…

When, some time later, Miss Sarah returned from the room in which the maids slept, and where Millie had now been put to bed, it was Mrs. Poulteney's turn to ask a question.

“What am I to do?”

“As you think best, ma'm.”

On Mrs. Poulteney's birthday Sarah presented her with an antimacassar[74] embroidered with ferns and lilies-of-the-valley. It pleased Mrs. Poulteney highly.

But there was a debit side of the relationship. It had been initially arranged that Miss Sarah should have one afternoon a week free. All seemed well for two months. Then one morning Miss Sarah did not appear at the Marlborough House matins; and when the maid was sent to look for her, it was discovered that she had not risen. Mrs. Poulteney went to see her. Sarah was in tears, but on this occasion Mrs. Poulteney felt only irritation. However, she sent for the doctor. He remained closeted with Sarah a long time. When he came down to Mrs. Poulteney, he gave her a brief lecture on melancholia and ordered her to allow her sinner more fresh air and freedom.

“If you insist on the most urgent necessity for it.”

“My dear madam, I do. And I will not be responsible otherwise.”

And on his strict order it was that Sarah achieved a daily demi-liberty.

Mrs. Poulteney wanted her charity to be seen, which meant that Sarah had to be present with visitors. Once again Sarah showed her diplomacy. With certain old-established visitors, she remained; with others she discreetly left when they were announced. This latter reason was why Ernestina had never met her at Marlborough House.

But I have left the worst matter to the end. Mrs. Poulteney had made several more attempts to learn the details of the sin. But every time Mrs. Poulteney approached the subject, the sinner's answers to direct questions were always the same as the one she had given at her first interrogation.

Now Mrs. Poulteney seldom went out, so that she had to rely on other eyes for news of Sarah's activities outside her house. Fortunately for her such a pair of eyes existed – this spy, of course, was none other than Mrs. Fairley, a woman whose only pleasures were knowing the worst or fearing the worst; thus she developed for Sarah a hatred.

She had a wide network of relations and acquaintances at her command. To these latter she said that Mrs. Poulteney wanted to be informed of Miss Woodruff's behavior outside the tall stone walls of the gardens of Marlborough House. The result was that Sarah's every movement and expression in her free hours was soon known to Mrs. Fairley.

Sarah always went to the Cobb Gate. There she would stand at the wall and look out to sea. On the way, she would most often turn into the parish church, and pray for a few minutes. She could be seen walking up the grassland, with frequent turns towards the sea. This walk she would do when the Cobb seemed crowded; but when weather made it deserted, she would more often turn that way and end by standing where Charles had first seen her; there, it was supposed, she felt herself nearest to France.

All this came back to Mrs. Poulteney.

“I am told, Miss Woodruff, that you are always to be seen in the same places when you go out.” Sarah looked down before the accusing eyes. “You look to sea.” Still Sarah was silent. “I am satisfied that you are in a state of repentance.”

“I am grateful to you, ma'm.”

“I am not concerned with your gratitude to me. There is One Above[75] us all.”

The girl murmured, “How should I not know it?”

“To the ignorant it may seem that you are persistent in your sin.”

“If they know my story, ma'm, they cannot think that.”

“But they do think that. I am told they say you are looking for Satan's sails.”

Sarah rose then and went to the window. She gazed for a moment out over that sea, then turned back to the old lady, who sat in her armchair as the Queen on her throne.

“Do you wish me to leave, ma'm?”

Mrs. Poulteney was shocked. She moderated her tone.

“I wish you to show that this… person is crossed out from your heart. I know that he is. But you must show it.”

“How am I to show it?”

“By walking elsewhere. If for no other reason, because I ask for it.”

Sarah stood with bowed head, and there was a silence. But then she looked Mrs. Poulteney in the eyes and for the first time since her arrival, she gave the faintest smile.

“I will do as you wish, ma'm.”

Sarah kept her side of the bargain[76]. She now went very rarely to the Cobb, though when she did, she still sometimes allowed herself to stand and stare, as on the day we have described.

Mrs. Fairley, then, had a poor time of it for many months. But one day, not a fortnight before the beginning of my story, Mrs. Fairley had come to Mrs. Poulteney with the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend.

“I have something unhappy to communicate, ma'm.”

“It cannot concern Miss Woodruff?”

“Would that it did not, ma'm[77]. But I fear it is my duty to tell you.”

“We must never fear what is our duty.”

“No, ma'm.”

“She has taken to walking, ma'm, on Ware Commons[78].”

Mrs. Poulteney's mouth did something extraordinary. It fell open.

10

The Undercliff, a mile-long slope caused by erosion, makes one of the strangest coastal landscapes in Southern England. It is very steep: flat places are as rare as visitors in it. But this steepness pulls its vegetation towards the sun; and this fact gives the area its botanical strangeness – its wild trees rarely seen growing in England; its enormous ashes and beeches; fern that grows seven, eight feet tall; its flowers that bloom a month earlier than anywhere else in the district. It has also, like all land that has never been worked or lived on by man, its mysteries, its shadows, its dangers. Strange as it may seem, it was less solitary a hundred years ago than it is today. There is not a single cottage in the Undercliff now; in 1867 there were several, lived in by gamekeepers or woodmen. Now the Undercliff is in a state of total wildness.

It was this place that Charles had entered when he had climbed the path from the shore; and this same place was called Ware Commons.

When Charles had quenched his thirst and cooled his brow with his wetted handkerchief he began to look around him. He forgot science and enjoyed nature. A distant woodpecker drummed in the branches of some high tree. When he turned he saw the blue sea, now washing far below.

He started thinking about man and nature. Eventually science won, and he began to search for his tests. He found a pretty fragment of fossil scallop, but the sea urchins evaded him. He had no luck. An hour passed, and his duty towards Ernestina began to outweigh his lust for echinoderms[79]. He looked at his watch, and made his way back to where he had left his rucksack. Some way up the slope, with the declining sun on his back, he came on a path and set off for Lyme. The path climbed and curved slightly inward beside an ivy-grown stone wall and then forked without indication. He hesitated, then walked some fifty yards or so along the lower path. But then he came to a solution to his problem, for yet another path suddenly branched to his right, up a steep small slope, and from which he could plainly orientate himself. He therefore pushed up through the bramble shrubs to the little green plateau.

It opened out very pleasantly, like a tiny alpine meadow. Charles stood in the sunlight. Then he moved forward to the edge of the plateau.

And there, below him, he saw a figure.

For one terrible moment he thought he had come upon a corpse. But it was a woman asleep. Charles's immediate instinct had been to draw back out of the woman's view. He did not see who she was. He stood at a loss, looking at but not seeing the fine landscape the place offered. He hesitated, he was about to leave; but then his curiosity drew him forward again.

The girl lay in deep sleep, on her back. Her coat had fallen open over her blue dress with a small white collar at the throat. The sleeper's face was turned away from him, her right arm thrown back, bent in a childlike way. There was something very tender and yet sexual in the way she lay; it awakened Charles's memory of a moment from his time in Paris. Another girl, whose name now he could not even remember, perhaps had never known, seen sleeping so, one dawn, in a bedroom overlooking the Seine.