The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (55 page)

"But what reasons has he
given?"

"She would not speak. Now
don't alarm yourself. She needs sleep. What I have given her will ensure
that. Tomorrow all will be explained."

"Not all the explanations
in the world ..."

She began to cry. "There,
there, my dear lady. Cry. Nothing relieves the feelings better."

"Poor darling. She will die
of a broken heart."

"I think not. I have never
yet had to give that as a cause of death."

"You do not know her as I
do ... and oh, what will Emily say? It will all be my fault." Emily was
her sister, Mrs. Freeman.

"I think she must be telegraphed
at once. Allow me to see to that."

"Oh heavens--and where shall
she sleep?"

The doctor smiled, but very
gently, at this non sequitur. He had had to deal with such cases before;
and he knew the best prescription was an endless female fuss.

"Now, my dear Mrs. Tranter,
I wish you to listen to me. For a few days you must see to it that your
niece is watched day and night. If she wishes to be treated as an invalid,
then treat her so. If she wishes tomorrow to get up and leave Lyme, then
let her do so. Humor her, you understand. She is young, in excellent health.
I guarantee that in six months she will be as gay as a linnet."

"How can you be so cruel!
She will never get over it. That wicked ... but how ..." A thought struck
her and she reached out and touched the doctor's sleeve. "There is another
woman!"

Dr. Grogan pinched his nose.
"That, I cannot say."

"He is a monster."

"But not so much of a monster
that he has not declared himself one. And lost a party a good many monsters
would have greedily devoured."

"Yes. Yes. There is that
to be thankful for." But her mind was boxed by contradictions. "I shall
never forgive him." Another idea struck her. "He is still in the town?
I shall go tell him my mind."

He took her arm. "That I
must forbid. He himself called me here. He waits now to hear that the poor
girl is not in danger. I shall see him. Rest assured that I shall not mince
matters. I'll have his hide for this."

"He should be whipped and
put in the stocks. When we were young that would have been done. It ought
to be done. The poor, poor angel." She stood. "I must go to her."

"And I must see him."

"You will tell him from me
that he has ruined the happiness of the sweetest, most trusting--"

"Yes yes yes ... now calm
yourself. And do find out why that serving-lass of yours is taking on so.
Anyone would think her heart had been broken."

Mrs. Tranter saw the doctor
out, then drying her tears, climbed the stairs to Ernestina's room. The
curtains were drawn, but daylight filtered round the edges. Mary sat beside
the victim. She rose as her mistress entered. Ernestina lay deep in sleep,
on her back, but with her head turned to one side. The face was strangely
calm and composed, the breathing quiet. There was even the faintest suggestion
of a smile on those lips. The irony of that calm smote Mrs. Tranter again;
the poor dear child, when she awoke . . . tears sprang again. She raised
herself and dabbed her eyes, then looked at Mary for the first time. Now
Mary really did look like a soul in the bottom-most pit of misery, in fact
everything that Tina ought to have looked, but didn't; and Mrs. Tranter
remembered the doctor's somewhat querulous parting words. She beckoned
to the maid to follow her and they went out on the landing. With the door
ajar, they spoke there in whispers.

"Now tell me what happened,
child."

"Mr. Charles 'e called down,
m'm, and Miss Tina was a-lying in faints an' 'e run out fer the doctor
'n Miss Tina 'er opens 'er eyes on'y 'er doan' say no thin' so's I 'elps
'er up yere, I didden know 'ow to do, for soon's 'er's on 'er bed, m'm,
'er's tooken by the istricks 'n oh m'm I was so frighted 'twas like 'er
was laffin' and screamin' and 'er woulden stop. An' then Doctor Grogan
'e come 'n 'e calm 'er down. Oh m'm."

"There, there, Mary, you
were a good girl. And did she say nothing?"

"On'y when us was a-comin"
up the stairs, m'm, an' 'er asked where Mr. Charles was to, m'm. I tol'er
'e'd agone to the doctor. 'Twas what started the istricks, m'm."

"Sh. Sh."

For Mary's voice had begun
to rise and there were strong symptoms in her as well of the hysterics.
Mrs. Tranter had, in any case, a strong urge to console something, so she
took Mary into her arms and patted her head. Although she thereby broke
all decent laws on the matter of the mistress-servant relationship, I rather
think that that heavenly butler did not close his doors in her face. The
girl's body was racked with pent-up sobs, which she tried to control for
the other sufferer's sake. At last she quietened.

"Now what is it?"

"It's Sam, m'm. 'E's downstairs.
'E's 'ad bad words with Mr. Charles, m'm, an' given in 'is notice 'n Mr.
Charles woan' giv'un no reffrums now." She stifled a late sob. "Us doan'
know what's to become of us."

"Bad words? When was this,
child?"

"Jus" afore 'ee come in,
m'm. On account o' Miss Tina, m'm."

"But how was that?"

"Sam 'e knew 'twas goin'
to 'appen. That Mr. Charles--Vs a wicked wicked man, m'm. Oh m'm, us wanted
to tell 'ee but us didden dare."

There was a low sound from
the room. Mrs. Tranter went swiftly and looked in; but the face remained
calm and deeply asleep. She came out again to the girl with the sunken
head.

"I shall watch now, Mary.
Let us talk later." The girl bent her head even lower. "This Sam, do you
truly love him?"

"Yes, m'm."

"And does he love you?"

"'Tis why 'e woulden go with
'is master, m'm."

"Tell him to wait. I should
like to speak to him. And we'll find him a post."

Mary's tear-stained face
rose then.

"I doan' ever want to leav'ee,
m'm."

"And you never shall, child--till
your wedding day."

Then Mrs. Tranter bent forward
and kissed her forehead. She went and sat by Ernestina, while Mary went
downstairs. Once in the kitchen she ran, to the cook's disgust, outside
and into the lilac shadows and Sam's anxious but eager arms.
 
 

For we see whither
it has brought us ... the insisting on perfection in one part of our nature
and not in all; the singling out of the moral side, the side of obedience
and action, for such intent regard; making strictness of the moral conscience
so far the principal thing, and putting off for hereafter and for another
world the care of being complete at all points, the full and harmonious
development of our humanity.
--
Matthew Arnold, Culture
and Anarchy (1869)

"I have put her to sleep."

The doctor walked across
the room and stood with his hands behind his back, staring down Broad Street
to the sea.

"She ... she said nothing?"

The doctor shook his head
without turning; was silent a moment; then he burst round on Charles.

"I await your explanation,
sir!"

And Charles gave it, baldly,
without self-extenuation. Of Sarah he said very little. His sole attempt
at an excuse was over his deception of Grogan himself; and that he blamed
on his conviction that to have committed Sarah to any asylum would have
been a gross injustice. The doctor listened with a fierce, intent silence.
When Charles had finished he turned again to the window.

"I wish I could remember
what particular punishments Dante prescribed for the Antinomians. Then
I could prescribe them for you."

"I think I shall have punishment
enough."

"That is not possible. Not
by my tally."

Charles left a pause.

"I did not reject your advice
without much heart-searching."

"Smithson, a gentleman remains
a gentleman when he rejects advice. He does not do so when he tells
lies."

"I believed them necessary."

"As you believed the satisfaction
of your lust necessary."

"I cannot accept that word."

"You had better learn to.
It is the one the world will attach to your conduct."

Charles moved to the central
table, and stood with one hand resting on it. "Grogan, would you have had
me live a lifetime of pretense? Is our age not full enough as it is of
a mealy-mouthed hypocrisy, an adulation of all that is false in our natures?
Would you have had me add to that?"

"I would have had you think
twice before you embroiled that innocent girl in your pursuit of self-knowledge."

"But once that knowledge
is granted us, can we escape its dictates? However repugnant their consequences?"

The doctor looked away with
a steely little grimace. Charles saw that he was huffed and nervous; and
really at a loss, after the first commination, how to deal with this monstrous
affront to provincial convention. There was indeed a struggle in progress
between the Grogan who had lived now for a quarter
of a century in Lyme and
the Grogan who had seen the world. There were other things: his liking
for Charles, his private opinion--not very far removed from Sir Robert's--that
Ernestina was a pretty little thing, but a shallow little thing; there
was even an event long buried in his own past whose exact nature need not
be revealed beyond that it made his reference to lust a good deal less
impersonal than he had made it seem. His tone remained reproving; but he
sidestepped the moral question he had been asked. "I am a doctor, Smithson.
I know only one overriding law. All suffering is evil. It may also be necessary.
That does not alter its fundamental nature."

"I don't see where good is
to spring from, if it is not out of that evil. How can one build a better
self unless on the ruins of the old?"

"And the ruins of that poor
young creature across the way?"

"It is better she suffers
once, to be free of me, than ..." he fell silent.

"Ah. You are sure of that,
are you?" Charles said nothing. The doctor stared down at the street. "You
have committed a crime. Your punishment will be to remember it all your
life. So don't give yourself absolution yet. Only death will give you that."
He took off his glasses, and polished them on a green silk handkerchief.
There was a long pause, a very long pause; and at the end of it his voice,
though still reproving, was milder.

"You will marry the other?"

Charles breathed a metaphorical
sigh of relief. As soon as Grogan had come into the room he had known that
his previous self-assertions--that he was indifferent to the opinion of
a mere bathing-place doctor--were hollow. There was a humanity in the Irishman
Charles greatly respected; in a way Grogan stood for all he respected.
He knew he could not expect a full remission of sins; but it was enough
to sense that total excommunication was not to be his lot.

"That is my most sincere
intent."

"She knows? You have told
her?"

"Yes."

"And she has accepted your
offer, of course?"

"I have every reason to believe
so." He explained the circumstances of Sam's errand that morning. The little
doctor turned to face him.

"Smithson, I know you are
not vicious. I know you would not have done what you have unless you believed
the girl's own account of her extraordinary behavior. But I warn you that
a doubt must remain. And such a doubt as must cast a shadow over any future
protection you extend to her."

"I have taken that into consideration."
Charles risked a thin smile. "As I have the cloud of obfuscating cant our
sex talks about women. They are to sit, are they not, like so many articles
in a shop and to let us men walk in and tarn them over and point at this
one or that one--she takes my fancy. If they allow this, we call them decent,
respectable, modest. But when one of these articles has the impertinence
to speak up for herself--"