The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (30 page)

Besides, Mrs. Tomkins, who
was very much as Ernestina suspected, an upper-middle-class adventuress,
had shrewdly gone out of her way to ingratiate herself with the housekeeper
and the butler; and those two worthies had set their imprimatur--or ducatur
in matrimonium--upon the plump and effusive widow; who furthermore had,
upon being shown a long-unused suite in the before-mentioned east wing,
remarked to the housekeeper how excellent a nursery the rooms would make.
It was true that Mrs. Tomkins had a son and two daughters by her first
marriage; but in the housekeeper's opinion--graciously extended to Mr.
Benson, the butler--Mrs. Tomkins was as good as expecting again.

"It could be daughters, Mrs.
Trotter."

"She's a trier, Mr. Benson.
You mark my words. She's a trier."

The butler sipped his dish
of tea, then added, "And tips well." Which Charles, as one of the family,
did not.

The general substance of
all this had come to Sam's ears, while he waited down in the servants'
hall for Charles. It had not come pleasantly in itself or pleasantly inasmuch
as Sam, as the servant of the grasshopper, had to share part of the general
judgment on him; and all this was not altogether unconnected with a kind
of second string Sam had always kept for his bow: a
faute de mieux
dream
in which he saw himself in the same exalted position at Winsyatt that Mr.
Benson now held. He had even casually planted this seed-- and one pretty
certain to germinate, if he chose--in Mary's mind. It was not nice to see
one's tender seedling, even if it was not the most cherished, so savagely
uprooted. Charles himself, when they left Winsyatt, had not said a word
to Sam, so officially Sam knew nothing about his blackened hopes. But his
master's blackened face was as good as knowledge.

And now this.

Sam at last ate his congealing
mutton, and chewed it, and swallowed it; and all the time his eyes stared
into the future.

Charles's interview with
his uncle had not been stormy, since both felt guilty--the uncle for what
he was doing, the nephew for what he had failed to do in the past. Charles's
reaction to the news, delivered bluntly but with telltale averted eyes,
had been, after the first icy shock, stiffly polite.

"I can only congratulate
you, sir, and wish you every happiness."

His uncle, who had come upon
him soon after we left Charles in the drawing room, turned away to a window,
as if to gain heart from his green acres. He gave a brief account of his
passion. He had been rejected at first: that was three weeks ago. But he
was not the man to turn tail at the first refusal. He had sensed a certain
indecision in the lady's voice. A week before he had taken train to London
and "galloped straight in again"; the obstinate hedge was triumphantly
cleared. "She said 'no' again, Charles, but she was weeping. I knew I was
over." It had apparently taken two or three days more for the definitive
"Yes" to be spoken.

"And then, my dear boy, I
knew I had to face you. You are the very first to be told."

But Charles remembered then
that pitying look from old Mrs. Hawkins; all Winsyatt had the news by now.
His uncle's somewhat choked narration of his amorous saga had given him
time to absorb the shock. He felt whipped and humiliated; a world less.
But he had only one defense: to take it calmly, to show the stoic and hide
the raging boy.

"I appreciate your punctiliousness,
Uncle."

"You have every right to
call me a doting old fool. Most of my neighbors will."

"Late choices are often the
best."

"She's a lively sort of woman,
Charles. Not one of your damned niminy-piminy modern misses." For one sharp
moment Charles thought this was a slight on Ernestina--as it was, but not
intended. His uncle went obliviously on. "She says what she thinks. Nowadays
some people consider that signifies a woman's a thruster. But she's not."
He enlisted the agreement of his parkland. "Straight as a good elm."

"I never for a moment supposed
she could be anything else."

The uncle cast a shrewd look
at him then; just as Sam played the meek footman with Charles, so did Charles
sometimes play the respectful nephew with the old man.

"I would rather you were
angry than ..." he was going to say a cold fish, but he came and put his
arm round Charles's shoulder; for he had tried to justify his decision
by working up anger against Charles--and he was too good a sportsman not
to know it was a mean justification. "Charles, now damn it, it must be
said. This brings an alteration to your prospects. Though at my age, heaven
knows ..." that "bullfinch" he did refuse. "But if it should happen, Charles,
I wish you to know that whatever may come of the marriage, you will not
go unprovided for. I can't give you the Little House; but I wish emphatically
that you take it as yours for as long as you live. I should like that to
be my wedding gift to Ernestina and yourself--and the expenses of doing
the place up properly, of course."

"That is most generous of
you. But I think we have more or less decided to go into the Belgravia
house when the lease falls in."

"Yes, yes, but you must have
a place in the country. I will not have this business coming between us,
Charles. I shall break it off tomorrow if--"

Charles managed a smile.
"Now you are being absurd. You might well have married many years ago."

"That may be. But the fact
is I didn't."

He went nervously to the
wall and placed a picture back into alignment. Charles was silent; perhaps
he felt less hurt at the shock of the news than at the thought of all his
foolish dream of possession as he drove up to Winsyatt. And the old devil
should have written. But to the old devil that would have been a cowardice.
He turned from the painting.

"Charles, you're a young
fellow, you spend half your life traveling about. You don't know how deuced
lonely, bored, I don't know what it is, but half the time I feel I might
as well be dead."

Charles murmured, "I had
no idea . .."

"No, no, I don't mean to
accuse you. You have your own life to lead." But he did still, secretly,
like so many men without children, blame Charles for falling short of what
he imagined all sons to be--dutiful and loving to a degree ten minutes'
real fatherhood would have made him see was a sentimental dream. "All the
same there are things only a woman can bring one. The old hangings in this
room, now. Had you noticed? Mrs. Tomkins called them gloomy one day. And
damn it, I'm blind, they were gloomy. Now that's what a woman does. Makes
you see what's in front of your nose." Charles felt tempted to suggest
that spectacles performed the same function a great deal more cheaply,
but he merely bowed his head in understanding. Sir Robert rather unctuously
waved his hand.

"What say you to these new
ones?"

Charles then had to grin.
His uncle's aesthetic judgments had been confined for so long to matters
such as the depth of a horse's withers and the superiority of Joe Manton
over any other gunmaker known to history that it was rather like hearing
a murderer ask his opinion of a nursery rhyme.

"A great improvement."

"Just so. Everyone says the
same."

Charles bit his lip. "And
when am I going to meet the lady?"

"Indeed, I was coming to
that. She is most anxious to get to know you. And Charles, most delicate
in the matter of ... well, the ... how shall I put it?"

"Limitations of my prospects?"

"Just so. She confessed last
week she first refused me for that very reason." This was, Charles realized,
supposed to be a commendation, and he showed a polite surprise. "But I
assured her you had made an excellent match. And would understand and approve
my choice of partner . . . for my last years."

"You haven't yet answered
my question, Uncle."

Sir Robert looked a little
ashamed. "She is visiting family in Yorkshire. She is related to the Daubenys,
you know."

"Indeed."

"I go to join her there tomorrow."

"Ah."

"And I thought it best to
get it over man to man. But she is most anxious to meet you." His uncle
hesitated, then with a ludicrous shyness reached in his waistcoat pocket
and produced a locket. "She gave me this last week."

And Charles stared at a miniature,
framed in gold and his uncle's heavy fingers, of Mrs. Bella Tomkins. She
looked disagreeably young; firm-lipped; and with assertive eyes--not at
all unattractive, even to Charles. There was, curiously, some faint resemblance
to Sarah in the face; and a subtle new dimension was added to Charles's
sense of humiliation and dispossession. Sarah was a woman of profound inexperience,
and this was a woman of the world; but both in their very different ways--his
uncle was right--stood apart from the great niminy-piminy flock of women
in general. For a moment he felt himself like a general in command of a
weak army looking over the strong dispositions of the enemy; he foresaw
only too clearly the result of a confrontation between Ernestina and the
future Lady Smithson. It would be a rout.

"I see I have further reason
to congratulate you."

"She's a fine woman. A splendid
woman. Worth waiting for, Charles." His uncle dug him in the ribs.

"You'll be jealous. Just
see if you won't." He gazed fondly again at the locket, then closed it
reverentially and replaced it in his pocket. And then, as if to counteract
the soft sop, he briskly made Charles accompany him to the stables to see
his latest brood mare, bought for "a hundred guineas less than she was
worth"; and which seemed a totally unconscious but distinct equine parallel
in his mind to his other new acquisition.

They were both English gentlemen;
and they carefully avoided further discussion of, if not further reference
to (for Sir Robert was too irrepressibly full of his own good luck not
to keep on harking back), the subject uppermost in both their minds. But
Charles insisted that he must return to Lyme and his fiancee that evening;
and his uncle, who in former days would, at such a desertion, have sunk
into a black gloom, made no great demur now. Charles promised to discuss
the matter of the Little House with Ernestina, and to bring her to meet
the other bride-to-be as soon as could be conveniently arranged. But all
his uncle's last-minute warmth and hand-shaking could not disguise the
fact that the old man was relieved to see the back of him.

Pride had buoyed Charles
up through the three or four hours of his visit; but his driving away was
a sad business. Those lawns, pastures, railings, landscaped groves seemed
to slip through his fingers as they slipped slowly past his eyes. He felt
he never wanted to see Winsyatt again. The morning's azure sky was overcast
by a high veil of cirrus, harbinger of that thunderstorm we have already
heard in Lyme, and his mind soon began to plummet into a similar climate
of morose introspection.

This latter was directed
not a little against Ernestina. He knew his uncle had not been very impressed
by her fastidious little London ways; her almost total lack of interest
in rural life. To a man who had devoted so much of his life to breeding
she must have seemed a poor new entry to such fine stock as the Smithsons.
And then one of the bonds between uncle and nephew had always been their
bachelorhood--perhaps Charles's happiness had opened Sir Robert's eyes
a little: if he, why not I? And then there was the one thing about Ernestina
his uncle had thoroughly approved of: her massive marriage portion. But
that was precisely what allowed him to expropriate Charles with a light
conscience.

But above all, Charles now
felt himself in a very displeasing position of inferiority as regards Ernestina.
His income from his father's estate had always been sufficient for his
needs; but he had not increased the capital. As the future master of Winsyatt
he could regard himself as his bride's financial equal; as a mere rentier
he must become her financial dependent. In disliking this, Charles was
being a good deal more fastidious than most young men of his class and
age. To them dowry-hunting (and about this time, dollars began to be as
acceptable as sterling) was as honorable a pursuit as fox-hunting or gaming.
Perhaps that was it: he felt sorry for himself and yet knew very few would
share his feeling. It even exacerbated his resentment that circumstances
had not made his uncle's injustice even greater: if he had spent more time
at Winsyatt, say, or if he had never met Ernestina in the first place ...

But it was Ernestina, and
the need once again to show the stiff upper lip, that was the first thing
to draw him out of his misery that day.