The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (56 page)

"She has done rather more
than that, I gather."

Charles rode the rebuke.
"She has done what is almost a commonplace in high society. I do not know
why the countless wives in that milieu who dishonor their marriage vows
are to be granted exculpation, while . . . besides, I am far more to blame.
She merely sent me her address. I was perfectly free to avoid the consequences
of going to it."

The doctor threw him a mute
little glance. Honesty, now, he had to admit. He resumed his stare down
at the street. After a few moments he spoke, much more in his old manner
and voice.

"Perhaps I am growing old.
I know such breaches of trust as yours are becoming so commonplace that
to be shocked by them is to pronounce oneself an old fogey. But I will
tell you what bothers me. I share your distaste for cant, whether it be
of the religious or the legal variety. The law has always seemed to me
an ass, and a great part of religion very little better. I do not attack
you on those grounds, I will not attack you on any grounds. I will merely
give you my opinion. It is this. You believe yourself to belong to a rational
and scientific elect. No, no, I know what you would say, you are not so
vain. So be it. Nonetheless, you wish to belong to that elect. I do not
blame you for that. I have held the same wish myself all my life. But I
beg you to remember one thing, Smithson. All through human history the
elect have made their cases for election. But Time allows only one plea."
The doctor replaced his glasses and turned on Charles. "It is this. That
the elect, whatever the particular grounds they advance for their cause,
have introduced a finer and fairer morality into this dark world. If they
fail that test, then they become no more than despots, sultans, mere seekers
after their own pleasure and power. In short, mere victims of their own
baser desires. I think you understand what I am driving at--and its especial
relevance to yourself from this unhappy day on. If you become a better
and a more generous human being, you may be forgiven. But if you become
more selfish ... you are doubly damned."

Charles looked down from
those exacting eyes. "Though far less cogently, my own conscience had already
said as much."

"Then amen.
Jacta alea
est
." He picked up his hat and bag from the table and went to the door.
But there he hesitated-- then held out his hand. "I wish you well on your
march away from the Rubicon." Charles grasped the proffered hand, almost
as if he were drowning. He tried to say something, but failed. There was
a moment of stronger pressure from Grogan's fingers, then he turned and
opened the door. He looked back, a glint in his eyes.

"And if you do not leave
here within the hour I shall be back with the largest horsewhip I can find."
Charles stiffened at that. But the glint remained. Charles swallowed a
painful smile and bowed his head in assent. The door closed.

He was left alone with his
medicine.
 
 

My wind is turned
to bitter north
  That was so soft
a south before
--
A. H. Clough, Poem (1841)

It did not immediately brighten
Charles's spirits. Yet gradually, as he continued to draw away from Lyme,
he felt as if a burden had been lifted off his shoulders; a defeat suffered,
and yet he had survived it. Grogan's solemn warning--that the rest of his
life must be lived in proof of the justice of what he had done--he accepted.
But among the rich green fields and May hedgerows of the Devon countryside
it was difficult not to see the future as fertile--a new life lay ahead
of him, great challenges, but he would rise to them. His guilt seemed almost
beneficial: its expiation gave his life its hitherto lacking purpose. An
image from ancient Egypt entered his mind--a sculpture in the British Museum,
showing a pharaoh standing beside his wife, who had her arm round his waist,
with her other hand on his forearm. It had always seemed to Charles a perfect
emblem of conjugal harmony, not least since the figures were carved from
the same block of stone. He and Sarah were not yet carved into that harmony;
but they were of the same stone.

He gave himself then to thoughts
of the future, to practical arrangements. Sarah must be suitably installed
in London. They should go abroad as soon as his affairs could be settled,
the Kensington house got rid of, his things stored ... perhaps Germany
first, then south in winter to Florence or Rome (if the civil conditions
allowed) or perhaps Spain. Granada! The Alhambra! Moonlight, the distant
sound below of singing gypsies, such grateful, tender eyes ... and in some
jasmine-scented room they would lie awake, in each other's arms, infinitely
alone, exiled, yet fused in that loneliness, inseparable in that exile.

Night had fallen. Charles
craned out and saw the distant lights of Exeter. He called out to the driver
to take him first to Endicott's Family Hotel. Then he leaned back and reveled
in the scene that was to come. Nothing carnal should disfigure it, of course;
that at least he owed to Ernestina as much as to Sarah. But he once again
saw an exquisite tableau of tender silence, her hands in his ...

They arrived. Telling the
man to wait Charles entered the hotel and knocked on Mrs. Endicott's door.

"Oh it's you, sir."

"Miss Woodruff expects me.
I will find my own way."

Already he was turning away
towards the stairs.

"The young lady's left, sir!"

"Left! You mean gone out?"

"No, sir. I mean left." He
stared weakly at her. "She took the London train this morning, sir."

"But I ... are you sure?"

"Sure as I'm standing here,
sir. I distinctly heard her say the railway station to the cabman, sir.
And he asked what train, and she said, plain as I'm speaking to you now,
the London." The plump old lady came forward. "Well I was surprised myself,
sir. Her with three days still paid on her room."

"But did she leave no address?"

"Not a line, sir. Not a word
to me where she was going." That black mark very evidently cancelled the
good one merited by not asking for three days' money back.

"No message was left for
me?"

"I thought it might very
likely be you she was a-going off with, sir. That's what I took the liberty
to presume."

To stand longer there became
an impossibility. "Here is my card. If you hear from her--if you would
let me know. Without fail. Here. Something for the service and postage."

Mrs. Endicott smiled ingratiatingly.
"Oh thank you, sir. Without fail."

He went out; and as soon
came back.

"This morning--a manservant,
did he not come with a letter and packet for Miss Woodruff?" Mrs. Endicott
looked blank. "Shortly after eight o'clock?" Still the proprietress looked
blank. Then she called for Betsy Anne, who appeared and was severely cross-examined
by her mistress ... that is, until Charles abruptly left.

He sank back into his carriage
and closed his eyes. He felt without volition, plunged into a state of
abulia. If only he had not been so scrupulous, if only he had come straight
back after ... but Sam. Sam! A thief! A spy! Had he been tempted into Mr.
Freeman's pay? Or was his crime explicable as resentment over those wretched
three hundred pounds? How well did Charles now understand the scene in
Lyme-- Sam must have realized he would be discovered as soon as they returned
to Exeter; must therefore have read his letter ... Charles flushed a deep
red in the darkness. He would break the man's neck if he ever saw him again.
For a moment he even contemplated going to a police station office and
charging him with ... well, theft at any rate. But at once he saw the futility
of that. And what good would it do in the essential: the discovery of Sarah?

He saw only one light in
the gloom that descended on him. She had gone to London; she knew he lived
in London. But if her motive was to come, as Grogan had once suggested,
knocking on his door, would not that motive rather have driven her back
to Lyme, where she supposed him to be? And had he not decided that all
her intentions were honorable? Must it not seem to her that he was renounced,
and lost, forever? The one light flickered, and went out.

He did something that night
he had not done for many years. He knelt by his bed and prayed; and the
substance of his prayer was that he would find her; if he searched for
the rest of his life, he would find her.
 
 

"Why, about you!"
Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he left
off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?"
   "Where I am
now, of course," said Alice.
   "Not you!"
Tweedledee retorted contemptuously.
"You'd be nowhere. Why,
you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"
   "If that there
King was to wake," added Tweedle-
dum, "you'd go out--bang!--just
like a candle!"
   "I shouldn't!"
Alice exclaimed indignantly.
--
Lewis Carroll, Through
the Looking-Glass (1872)

The latecomer muttered a
"Pardon me, sir" and made his way to the far end of the compartment. He
sat, a man of forty or so, his top hat firmly square, his hands on his
knees, regaining his breath. There was something rather aggressively secure
about him; he was perhaps not quite a gentleman ... an ambitious butler
(but butlers did not travel first class) or a successful lay preacher--one
of the bullying tabernacle kind, a would-be Spurgeon, converting souls
by scorching them with the cheap rhetoric of eternal damnation. A decidedly
unpleasant man, thought Charles, and so typical of the age--and therefore
emphatically to be snubbed if he tried to enter into conversation.

As sometimes happens when
one stares covertly at people and speculates about them, Charles was caught
in the act; and reproved for it. There was a very clear suggestion in the
sharp look sideways that Charles should keep his eyes to himself. He hastily
directed his gaze outside his window and consoled himself that at least
the person shunned intimacy as much as he did.

Very soon the even movement
lulled Charles into a douce daydream. London was a large city; but she
must soon look for work. He had the time, the resources, the will; a week
might pass, two, but then she would stand before him; perhaps yet another
address would slip through his letter box. The wheels said it: she-could-not-be-so-cruel,
she-could-not-be-so-cruel, she-could-not-be-so-cruel ... the train passed
through the red and green valleys towards Cullompton. Charles saw its church,
without knowing where the place was, and soon afterwards closed his eyes.
He had slept poorly that previous night.

For a while his traveling
companion took no notice of the sleeping Charles. But as the chin sank
deeper and deeper-- Charles had taken the precaution of removing his hat--the
prophet-bearded man began to stare at him, safe in the knowledge that his
curiosity would not be surprised.

His look was peculiar: sizing,
ruminative, more than a shade disapproving, as if he knew very well what
sort of man this was (as Charles had believed to see very well what sort
of man he was) and did not much like the knowledge or the species. It was
true that, unobserved, he looked a little less frigid and authoritarian
a person; but there remained about his features an unpleasant aura of self-confidence--or
if not quite confidence in self, at least a confidence in his judgment
of others, of how much he could get out of them, expect from them, tax
them.