The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (52 page)

This--the fact that every
Victorian had two minds--is the one piece of equipment we must always take
with us on our travels back to the nineteenth century. It is a schizophrenia
seen at its clearest, its most notorious, in the poets I have quoted from
so often--in Tennyson, Clough, Arnold, Hardy; but scarcely less clearly
in the extraordinary political veerings from Right to Left and back again
of men like the younger Mill and Gladstone; in the ubiquitous neuroses
and psychosomatic illnesses of intellectuals otherwise as different as
Charles Kingsley and Darwin; in the execration at first poured on the Pre-Raphaelites,
who tried--or seemed to be trying--to be one-minded about both art and
life; in the endless tug-of-war between Liberty and Restraint, Excess and
Moderation, Propriety and Conviction, between the principled man's cry
for Universal Education and his terror of Universal Suffrage; transparent
also in the mania for editing and revising, so that if we want to know
the real Mill or the real Hardy we can learn far more from the deletions
and alterations of their autobiographies than from the published versions
. . . more from correspondence that somehow escaped burning, from private
diaries, from the petty detritus of the concealment operation. Never was
the record so completely confused, never a public facade so successfully
passed off as the truth on a gullible posterity; and this, I think, makes
the best guidebook to the age very possibly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Behind
its latterday Gothick lies a very profound and epoch-revealing truth.

Every Victorian had two minds;
and Charles had at least that. Already, as he walked up Fore Street towards
the Ship, he was rehearsing the words his white balloon would utter when
the wicked child saw Sarah again; the passionate yet honorable arguments
that would reduce her to a tearful gratitude and the confession that she
could not live without him. He saw it all, so vividly I feel tempted to
set it down. But here is reality, in the form of Sam, standing at the doors
of the ancient inn.

"The service was hagreeable,
Mr. Charles?"

"I ... I lost my way, Sam.
And I've got damnably wet." Which was not at all the adjective to apply
to Sam's eyes. "Fill a tub for me, there's a good fellow. I'll sup in my
rooms."

"Yes, Mr. Charles."

Some fifteen minutes later
you might have seen Charles stark naked and engaged in an unaccustomed
occupation: that of laundering. He had his bloodstained garments pressed
against the side of the vast hip bath that had been filled for him and
was assiduously rubbing them with a piece of soap. He felt foolish, and
did not make a very good job of it. When Sam came, some time later, with
the supper tray, the garments lay as if thrown negligently half in and
half out of the bath. Sam collected them up without remark; and for once
Charles was grateful for his notorious carelessness in such matters.

Having eaten his supper,
he opened his writing case.

My dearest,
One half of me is inexpressibly
glad to address you thus, while the other wonders how he can so speak of
a being he yet but scarcely understands. Something in you I would fain
say I know profoundly: and something else I am as ignorant of as when I
first saw you. I say this not to excuse, but to explain my behavior this
evening. I cannot excuse it; yet I must believe that there was one way
in which it may be termed fortunate, since it prompted a searching of my
conscience that was long overdue. I shall not go into all the circumstance.
But I am resolved, my sweet and mysterious Sarah, that what now binds us
shall bind us forevermore. I am but too well aware that I have no right
to see you again, let alone to ask to know you fully, in my present situation.
My first necessity is therefore to terminate my engagement. A premonition
that it was folly to enter into that arrangement has long been with me--before
ever you came into my life. I implore you, therefore, not to feel guilt
in that respect. What is to blame is a blindness in myself as to my own
real nature. Had I been ten years younger, had I not seen so much in my
age and my society with which I am not in sympathy, I have no doubt I could
have been happy with Miss Freeman. My mistake was to forget that I am thirty-two,
not twenty-two.

I therefore go early
tomorrow on the most painful journey to Lyme. You will appreciate that
to conclude its purpose is the predominant thought in my mind at this moment.
But my duty in that respect done, my thoughts shall be only of you--nay,
of our future. What strange fate brought me to you I do not know, but,
God willing, nothing shall take you from me unless it be yourself that
wishes it so. Let me say no more now, my sweet enigma, than that you will
have to provide far stronger proofs and arguments than you have hitherto
adduced. I cannot believe you will attempt to do so. Your heart knows I
am yours and that I would call you mine.

Need I assure you,
my dearest Sarah, that my intentions are henceforth of the most honorable?
There are a thousand things I wish to ask you, a thousand attentions to
pay you, a thousand pleasures to give you. But always with every regard
to whatever propriety your delicacy insists on.

I am he who will
know no peace, no happiness until he holds you in his arms again.

C.S.

P.S. On re-reading
what I have written I perceive a formality my heart does not intend. Forgive
it. You are both so close and yet a stranger--I know not how to phrase
what I really feel.

Your fondest C.

If these were the thorns
and the stones that threatened about him, he could bear them. He did think
a moment of one small thorn: Sam. But Sam was like all servants, dismissable.

And summonable. Summoned
he was, at a surprisingly early hour that next morning. He found Charles
in his dressing gown, with a sealed letter and packet in his hands.

"Sam, I wish you to take
these to the address on the envelope. You will wait ten minutes to see
if there is an answer. If there is none--I expect none, but wait just in
case--if there is none, you are to come straight back here. And hire a
fast carriage. We go to Lyme." He added, "But no baggage. We return here
tonight."

"Tonight, Mr. Charles! But
I thought we was--" "Never mind what you thought. Just do as I say." Sam
put on his footman face, and withdrew. As he went slowly downstairs it
became clear to him that his position was intolerable. How could he fight
a battle without information? With so many conflicting rumors as to the
disposition of the enemy forces? He stared at the envelope in his hand.
Its destination was flagrant: Miss Woodruff, at Endicott's Family Hotel.
And only one day in Lyme? With portmanteaux to wait here! He turned the
small packet over, pressed the envelope.

It seemed fat, three pages
at least. He glanced round surreptitously, then examined the seal. Sam
cursed the man who invented wax.

And now he stands again before
Charles, who has dressed.

"Well?"

"No answer, Mr. Charles."

Charles could not quite control
his face. He turned away.

"And the carriage?"

"Ready and waitin', sir."

"Very well. I shall be down
shortly."

Sam withdrew. The door had
no sooner closed when Charles raised his hands to his head, then threw
them apart, as if to an audience, an actor accepting applause, a smile
of gratitude on his lips. For he had, upon his ninety-ninth re-reading
of his letter that previous night, added a second postscript. It concerned
that brooch we have already seen in Ernestina's hands. Charles begged Sarah
to accept it; and by way of a sign, to allow that her acceptance of it
meant that she accepted his apologies for his conduct. This second postscript
had ended: "The bearer will wait till you have read this. If he should
bring the contents of the packet back ... but I know you cannot be so cruel."

Yet the poor man had been
in agony during Sam's absence.

And here Sam is again, volubly
talking in a low voice, with frequent agonized looks. The scene is in the
shadow of a lilac bush, which grows outside the kitchen door in Aunt Tranter's
garden and provides a kind of screen from the garden proper. The afternoon
sun slants through the branches and first white buds. The listener is Mary,
with her cheeks flushed and her hand almost constantly covering her mouth.

"'Tisn't possible, 'tisn't
possible."

"It's 'is uncle. It's turned
'is "ead."

"But young mistress--oh,
what'll 'er do now, Sam?"

And both their eyes traveled
up with dread, as if they thought to hear a scream or see a falling body,
to the windows through the branches above.

"And bus, Mary. What'll us
do?"

"Oh Sam--'tisn't fair ..."

"I love yer, Mary."

"Oh Sam ..."

"'Tweren't just bein' wicked.
I'd as soon die as lose yer now."

"Oh what'll us do?"

"Don't cry, my darling, don't
cry. I've 'ad enough of hupstairs. They're no better'n us," He gripped
her by the arms. "If 'is lordship thinks like master, like servant, 'e's
mistook, Mary. If it's you or 'im, it's you." He stiffened, like a soldier
about to charge. "I'll leave 'is hemploy."

"Sam!"

"I will. I'll 'aul coals.
Hanything!"

"But your money--'e woan'
give'ee that no more now!"

"'E ain't got it to give."
His bitterness looked at her dismay. But then he smiled and reached out
his hands.

"But shall I tell yer someone
who 'as? If you and me play our cards right?"
 
 

I think it inevitably
follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural
selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The
forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification
and improvement will naturally suffer most.
--
Darwin, The Origin of
Species (1859)

Mary, with a broad grin as
soon as she saw him, opened the door. He practiced his gravity on her.
"Good afternoon. Is Miss Ernestina at home?" But before she could answer
Ernestina herself appeared at the end of the hall. She had a little smile.

"No. My duenna is out to
lunch. But you may come in."

She disappeared back into
the sitting room. Charles gave his hat to Mary, set his lapels, wished
he were dead, then went down the hall and into his ordeal. Ernestina, in
sunlight, by a window overlooking the garden, turned gaily.

"I received a letter from
Papa this ... Charles! Charles? Is something wrong?"