The French Lieutenant's Woman (20 page)

Gradually he worked his
way up to the foot of the bluffs where the fallen flints were
thickest, and the tests less likely to be corroded and abraded. He
kept at this level, moving westward. In places the ivy was
dense--growing up the cliff face and the branches of the nearest
trees indiscriminately, hanging in great ragged curtains over
Charles's head. In one place he had to push his way through a kind of
tunnel of such foliage; at the far end there was a clearing, where
there had been a recent fall of flints. Such a place was most likely
to yield tests; and Charles set himself to quarter the area, bounded
on all sides by dense bramble thickets, methodically. He had been at
this task perhaps ten minutes, with no sound but the lowing of a calf
from some distant field above and inland; the clapped wings and
cooings of the wood pigeons; and the barely perceptible wash of the
tranquil sea far through the trees below. He heard then a
sound as of a falling
stone. He looked, and saw nothing, and presumed that a flint had
indeed dropped from the chalk face above. He searched on for another
minute or two; and then, by one of those inexplicable intuitions,
perhaps the last remnant of some faculty from our paleolithic past,
knew he was not alone. He glanced sharply round.

She stood above him,
where the tunnel of ivy ended, some forty yards away. He did not know
how long she had been there; but he remembered that sound of two
minutes before. For a moment he was almost frightened; it seemed
uncanny that she should appear so silently. She was not wearing
nailed boots, but she must even so have moved with great caution. To
surprise him; therefore she had deliberately followed him.

"Miss Woodruff!"
He raised his hat. "How come you here?"

"I saw you pass."

He moved a little closer
up the scree towards her. Again her bonnet was in her hand. Her hair,
he noticed, was loose, as if she had been in wind; but there had been
no wind. It gave her a kind of wildness, which the fixity of her
stare at him aggravated. He wondered why he had ever thought she was
not indeed slightly crazed.

"You have something
... to communicate to me?"

Again that fixed stare,
but not through him, very much down at him. Sarah had one of those
peculiar female faces that vary very much in their attractiveness; in
accordance with some subtle chemistry of angle, light, mood. She was
dramatically helped at this moment by an oblique shaft of wan
sunlight that had found its way through a small rift in the clouds,
as not infrequently happens in a late English afternoon. It lit her
face, her figure standing before the entombing greenery behind her;
and her face was suddenly very beautiful, truly beautiful,
exquisitely grave and yet full of an inner, as well as outer, light.
Charles recalled that it was just so that a peasant near Gavarnie, in
the Pyrenees, had claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary standing on a
deboulis beside his road . . . only a few weeks before Charles once
passed that way. He was taken to the place; it had been most
insignificant. But if such a figure as this had stood before him!

However, this figure
evidently had a more banal mission. She delved into the pockets of
her coat and presented to him, one in each hand, two excellent
Micraster tests. He climbed close enough to distinguish them for what
they were. Then he looked up in surprise at her unsmiling face. He
remembered-- he had talked briefly of paleontology, of the importance
of sea urchins, at Mrs. Poulteney's that morning. Now he stared again
at the two small objects in her hands.

"Will you not take
them?"

She wore no gloves, and
their fingers touched. He examined the two tests; but he thought only
of the touch of those cold fingers.

"I am most
grateful. They are in excellent condition."

"They are what you
seek?"

"Yes indeed."

"They were once
marine shells?"

He hesitated, then
pointed to the features of the better of the two tests: the mouth,
the ambulacra, the anus. As he talked, and was listened to with a
grave interest, his disapproval evaporated. The girl's appearance was
strange; but her mind--as two or three questions she asked
showed--was very far from deranged. Finally he put the two tests
carefully in his own pocket.

"It is most kind of
you to have looked for them."

"I had nothing
better to do."

"I was about to
return. May I help you back to the path?"

But she did not move. "I
wished also, Mr. Smithson, to thank you ... for your offer of
assistance."

"Since you refused
it, you leave me the more grateful."

There was a little
pause. He moved up past her and parted the wall of ivy with his
stick, for her to pass back. But she stood still, and still facing
down the clearing.

"I should not have
followed you."

He wished he could see
her face, but he could not.

"I think it is
better if I leave."

She said nothing, and he
turned towards the ivy. But he could not resist a last look back at
her. She was staring back over her shoulder at him, as if body
disapproved of face and turned its back on such shamelessness;
because her look, though it still suggested some of the old universal
reproach, now held an intensity that was far more of appeal. Her eyes
were anguished ... and anguishing; an outrage in them, a weakness
abominably raped. They did not accuse Charles of the outrage, but of
not seeing that it had taken place. A long moment of locked eyes; and
then she spoke to the ground between them, her cheeks red.

"I have no one to
turn to."

"I hoped I had made
it clear that Mrs. Tranter--"

"Has the kindest
heart. But I do not need kindness."

There was a silence. He
still stood parting the ivy.

"I am told the
vicar is an excellently sensible man."

"It was he who
introduced me to Mrs. Poulteney."

Charles stood by the
ivy, as if at a door. He avoided her eyes; sought, sought for an exit
line.

"If I can speak on
your behalf to Mrs. Tranter, I shall be most happy ... but it would
be most improper of me to ..."

"Interest yourself
further in my circumstances."

"That is what I
meant to convey, yes." Her reaction was to look away; he had
reprimanded her. Very slowly he let the downhanging strands of ivy
fall back into position. "You haven't reconsidered my
suggestion--that you should leave this place?"

"If I went to
London, I know what I should become." He stiffened inwardly. "I
should become what so many women who have lost their honor become in
great cities." Now she turned fully towards him. Her color
deepened. "I should become what some already call me in Lyme."

It was outrageous, most
unseemly. He murmured, "My dear Miss Woodruff . . ." His
own cheeks were now red as well.

"I am weak. How
should I not know it?" She added bitterly, "I have sinned."

This new revelation, to
a stranger, in such circumstances-- it banished the good the
attention to his little lecture on fossil sea urchins had done her in
his eyes. But yet he felt the two tests in his pockets; some kind of
hold she had on him; and a Charles in hiding from himself felt
obscurely flattered, as a clergyman does whose advice is sought on a
spiritual problem.

He stared down at the
iron ferrule of his ashplant.

"Is this the fear
that keeps you at Lyme?"

"In part."

"That fact you told
me the other day as you left. Is anyone else apprised of it?"

"If they knew, they
would not have missed the opportunity of telling me."

There was a longer
silence. Moments like modulations come in human relationships: when
what has been until then an objective situation, one perhaps
described by the mind to itself in semiliterary terms, one it is
sufficient merely to classify under some general heading (man with
alcoholic problems, woman with unfortunate past, and so on) becomes
subjective; becomes unique; becomes, by empathy, instantaneously
shared rather than observed. Such a metamorphosis took place in
Charles's mind as he stared at the bowed head of the sinner before
him. Like most of us when such moments come--who has not been
embraced by a drunk?--he sought for a hasty though diplomatic
restoration of the status quo.

"I am most sorry
for you. But I must confess I don't understand why you should seek to
... as it were ... make me your confidant."

She began then--as if
the question had been expected--to speak rapidly; almost repeating a
speech, a litany learned by heart.

"Because you have
traveled. Because you are educated. Because you are a gentleman.
Because ... because, I do not know, I live among people the world
tells me are kind, pious, Christian people. And they seem to me
crueler than the cruelest heathens, stupider than the stupidest
animals. I cannot believe that the truth is so. That life is without
understanding or compassion. That there are not spirits generous
enough to understand what I have suffered and why I suffer . . . and
that, whatever sins I have committed, it is not right that I should
suffer so much." There was silence. Unprepared for this
articulate account of her feelings, this proof, already suspected but
not faced, of an intelligence beyond convention, Charles said
nothing. She turned away and went on in a quieter voice. "My
only happiness is when I sleep. When I wake, the nightmare begins. I
feel cast on a desert island, imprisoned, condemned, and I know not
what crime it is for."

Charles looked at her
back in dismay, like a man about to be engulfed by a landslide; as if
he would run, but could not; would speak, but could not.

Her eyes were suddenly
on his. "Why am I born what I am? Why am I not born Miss
Freeman?" But the name no sooner passed her lips than she turned
away, conscious that she had presumed too much. "That question
were better not asked."

"I did not mean to
..."

"Envy is forgivable
in your--"

"Not envy.
Incomprehension."

"It is beyond my
powers--the powers of far wiser men than myself--to help you here."

"I do not--I will
not believe that."

Charles had known
women--frequently Ernestina herself-- contradict him playfully. But
that was in a playful context. A woman did not contradict a man's
opinion when he was being serious unless it were in carefully
measured terms. Sarah seemed almost to assume some sort of equality
of intellect with him; and in precisely the circumstances where she
should have been most deferential if she wished to encompass her end.
He felt insulted, he felt ... he could not say. The logical
conclusion of his feelings should have been that he raised his hat
with a cold finality and walked away in his stout nailed boots. But
he stood where he was, as if he had taken root. Perhaps he had too
fixed an idea of what a siren looked like and the circumstances in
which she appeared--long tresses, a chaste alabaster nudity, a
mermaid's tail, matched by an Odysseus with a face acceptable in the
best clubs. There were no Doric temples in the Undercliff; but here
was a Calypso.

She murmured, "Now
I have offended you."

"You bewilder me,
Miss Woodruff. I do not know what you can expect of me that I haven't
already offered to try to effect for you. But you must surely realize
that any greater intimacy . . . however innocent in its intent . . .
between us is quite impossible in my present circumstances."

There was a silence; a
woodpecker laughed in some green recess, mocking those two static
bipeds far below.

"Would I have ...
thrown myself on your mercy in this way if I were not desperate?"

"I don't doubt your
despair. But at least concede the impossibility of your demand."
He added, "Whose exact nature I am still ignorant of."

"I should like to
tell you of what happened eighteen months ago."

A silence. She looked to
see his reaction. Again Charles stiffened. The invisible chains
dropped, and his conventional side triumphed. He drew himself up, a
monument to suspicious shock, rigidly disapproving; yet in his eyes a
something that searched hers ... an explanation, a motive ... he
thought she was about to say more, and was on the point of turning
through the ivy with no more word. But as if she divined his
intention, she did, with a forestalling abruptness, the most
unexpected thing. She sank to her knees. Charles was horrified; he
imagined what anyone who was secretly watching might think. He took a
step back, as if to keep out of view. Strangely, she seemed calm. It
was not the kneeling of a hysteric. Only the eyes were more intense:
eyes without sun, bathed in an eternal moonlight.