The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (59 page)

"'Twas 'er, Sam. I saw 'er
clear as--"

"I can't hardly believe it."

But he could; indeed, some
sixth or seventh sense in him had almost expected it. He had looked up
the old cook, Mrs. Rogers, on his return to London; and received from her
a detailed account of Charles's final black weeks in Kensington. That was
a long time ago now. Outwardly he had shared her
disapproval of their former
master. But inwardly something had stirred; being a matchmaker is one thing.
A match-breaker is something other.

Sam and Mary were staring
at each other--a dark wonderment in her eyes matching a dark doubt in his--in
a front parlor that was minuscule, yet not too badly furnished. A bright
fire burned in the grate. And as they questioned each other the door opened
and a tiny maid, an unprepossessing girl of fourteen, came in carrying
the now partly unswaddled infant--the last good crop, I believe, ever to
come out of Carslake's Barn. Sam immediately took the bundle in his arms
and dandled it and caused screams, a fairly invariable procedure when he
returned from work. Mary nastily took the precious burden and grinned at
the foolish father, while the little waif by the door grinned in sympathy
at both. And now we can see distinctly that Mary is many months gone with
another child.

"Well, my love, I'm hoff
to partake of refreshment. You put the supper on. 'Arriet?"

"Yes. sir. Read'in narf-n-nour,
sir."

"There's a good girl. My
love." And as if nothing was on his mind, he kissed Mary on the cheek,
then tickled the baby's ribs.

He did not look quite so
happy a man five minutes later, when he sat in the sawdusted corner of
a nearby public house, with a gin and hot water in front of him. He certainly
had everv outward reason to be happy. He did not own his own shop, but
he had something nearly as good. The first baby had been a girl, but that
was a small disappointment he felt confident would soon be remedied.

Sam had played his cards
very right in Lyme. Aunt Tranter had been a soft touch from the start.
He had thrown himself, with Mary's aid, on her mercy. Had he not lost all
his prospects by his brave giving in of notice? Was it not gospel that
Mr. Charles had promised him a loan, of four hundred (always ask a higher
price than you dare) to set him up in business? What business?

"Same as Mr. Freeman's, m'm,
honly in a very, very 'umble way."

And he had played the Sarah
card very well. For the first few days nothing would make him betray his
late master's guilty secrets; his lips were sealed. But Mrs. Tranter was
so kind--Colonel Locke at Jericho House was looking for a manservant, and
Sam's unemployment was of a very short duration. So was his remaining bachelorhood;
and the ceremony that concluded it was at the bride's mistress's expense.

Clearly he had to make some
return.

Like all lonely old ladies
Aunt Tranter was forever in search of someone to adopt and help; and she
was not allowed to forget that Sam wanted to go into the haberdashery line.
Thus it was that one day, when staying in London with her sister, Mrs.
Tranter ventured to broach the matter to her brother-in-law. At first he
was inclined to shake his head. But then he was gently reminded how honorably
the young servant had behaved; and he knew better than Mrs. Tranter to
what good use Sam's information had been and might still be put.

"Very well, Ann. I will see
what there is. There may be a vacancy."

Thus Sam gained a footing,
a very lowly one, in the great store. But it was enough. What deficiencies
he had in education he supplied with his natural sharpness. His training
as a servant stood him in good stead in dealing with customers. He dressed
excellently. And one day he did something better.

It was a splendid April morning
some six months after his married return to London, and just nine before
the evening that saw him so unchipper in his place of refreshment. Mr.
Freeman had elected to walk to his store from the Hyde Park house. He passed
at last along its serried windows and entered the store, the sign for a
great springing, scraping and bowing on the part of his ground-floor staff.
Customers were few at that early hour. He raised his hat in his customary
seigneurial way, but then to everyone's astonishment promptly turned and
went out again. The nervous superintendent of the floor stepped outside
as well. He saw the tycoon standing in front of a window and staring at
it. The superintendent's heart fell, but he sidled up discreetly behind
Mr. Freeman.

"An experiment, Mr. Freeman.
I will have it removed at once."

Three other men stopped beside
them. Mr. Freeman cast them a quick look, then took the superintendent
by the arm and led him a few steps away.

"Now watch, Mr. Simpson."

They stood there for some
five minutes. Again and again people passed the other windows and stopped
at that one. Some, as Mr. Freeman himself had done, took it in without
noticing, then retraced their steps to look at it.

I am afraid it will be an
anticlimax to describe it. But you would have had to see those other windows,
monotonously cluttered and monotonously ticketed, to appreciate its distinction;
and you have to remember that unlike our age, when the finest flower of
mankind devote their lives to the great god Publicity, the Victorians believed
in the absurd notion that good wine needs no bush. The back of the display
was a simple draped cloth of dark purple. Floating in front was a striking
array, suspended on thin wires, of gentlemen's collars of every conceivable
shape, size and style. But the cunning in the thing was that they were
arranged to form words. And they cried, they positively bellowed: Freeman's
For Choice. "That, Mr. Simpson, is the best window dressing we have done
this year."

"Exactly, Mr. Freeman. Very
bold. Very eye-catching."

"'Freeman's for Choice.'
That is precisely what we offer-- why else do we carry such a large stock?
'Freeman's for Choice'--excellent! I want that phrase in all our circulars
and advertisements from now on."

He marched back towards the
entrance. The superintendent smiled.

"We owe this to you in great
part, Mr. Freeman, sir. That young man--Mr. Farrow?--you remember you took
a personal interest in his coming to us?"

Mr. Freeman stopped. "Farrow--his
first name is Sam?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Bring him to me."

"He came in at five o'clock,
sir, especially to do it."

Thus Sam was at last brought
bashfully face to face with the great man. "Excellent work, Farrow."

Sam bowed deep. "It was my
hutmost pleasure to do it, sir."

"How much are we paying Farrow,
Mr. Simpson?"

"Twenty-five shillings, sir."

"Twenty-seven and sixpence."

And he walked on before Sam
could express his gratitude. Better was to come, for an envelope was handed
to him when he went to collect his money at the end of the week. In it
were three sovereigns and a card saying, "Bonus for zeal and invention."

Now, only nine months later,
his salary had risen to the giddy heights of thirty-two and sixpence; and
he had a strong suspicion, since he had become an indispensable member
of the window-dressing staff, that any time he asked for a rise he would
get it.

Sam bought himself another
and extraordinary supplement of gin and returned to his seat. The unhappy
thing about him--a defect that his modern descendants in the publicity
game have managed to get free of--was that he had a conscience ... or perhaps
he had simply a feeling of unjustified happiness and good luck. The Faust
myth is archetypal in civilized man; never mind that Sam's civilization
had not taught him enough even to know who Faust was, he was sufficiently
sophisticated to have heard of pacts with the Devil and of the course they
took. One did very well for a while, but one day the Devil would claim
his own. Fortune is a hard taskmaster; it stimulates the imagination into
foreseeing its loss, and in strict relation, very often, to its kindness.

And it worried him, too,
that he had never told Mary of what he had done. There were no other secrets
between them; and he trusted her judgment. Every now and again his old
longing to be his own master in his own shop would come back to him; was
there not now proof of his natural aptitude? But it was Mary, with her
sound rural sense of the best field to play, who gently--and once or twice,
not so gently-- sent him back to his Oxford Street grindstone.

Even if it was hardly yet
reflected in their accents and use of the language, these two were rising
in the world; and knew it. To Mary, it was all like a dream. To be married
to a man earning over thirty shillings a week! When her own father, the
carter, had never risen above ten! To live in a house that cost £19 a
year to rent!

And, most marvelous of all,
to have recently been able to interview eleven lesser mortals for a post
one had, only two years before, occupied oneself! Why eleven? Mary, I am
afraid, thought a large part of playing the mistress was being hard to
please--a fallacy in which she copied the niece rather than the aunt. But
then she also followed a procedure not unknown among young wives with good-looking
young husbands. Her selection of a skivvy had been based very little on
intelligence and efficiency; and very much on total unattractiveness. She
told Sam she finally offered Harriet the six pounds a year because she
felt sorry for her; it was not quite a lie.

When he returned home to
his mutton stew, that evening of the double ration of gin, he put his arm
round the swollen waist and kissed its owner; then looked down at the flower
mosaic brooch she wore between her breasts--always wore at home and always
took off when she went out, in case some thief garrotted her for it.

"'Ow's the old pearl and
coral then?"

She smiled and held it up
a little.

"Happy to know 'ee, Sam."

And they stayed there, staring
down at the emblem of their good fortune; always deserved, in her case;
and now finally to be paid for, in his.
 
 

I sought and sought.
But O her soul
    
Has not since thrown
    
Upon my own
One beam! Yes, she is gone,
is gone.
--
Hardy, "At a Seaside Town
in 1869"

Paleontology, now too emotionally
connected with the events of that fatal spring, no longer interested him.
When he had closed down the Kensington house, he had allowed the Geological
Museum to take the pick of his collection; the rest he had given to students.
His furniture had been stored;
Montague was told to offer
the lease of the Belgravia house anew when it fell in. Charles would never
live in it.

He read much, and kept a
journal of his travels; but it was an exterior thing, about places and
incidents, not about his own mind--a mere way of filling time in the long
evenings in deserted khans and alberghi. His only attempt to express his
deeper self was in the way of verse, for he discovered in Tennyson a greatness
comparable with that of Darwin in his field. The greatness he found was,
to be sure, not the greatness the age saw in the Poet Laureate. Maud, a
poem then almost universally despised--considered quite unworthy of the
master--became Charles's favorite; he must have read it a dozen times,
and parts of it a hundred. It was the one book he carried constantly with
him. His own verse was feeble in comparison; he would rather have died
than show it to anyone else. But here is one brief specimen just to show
how he saw himself during his exile.