The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

  "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.

  53

  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)

  * * *

  "She is ... recovered?" "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--"

  "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.

  54

  My wind is turned to bitter north

  That was so soft a south before

  --A. H. Clough, Poem (1841)

  * * *

  In fairness to Charles it must be said that he sent to find Sam before he left the White Lion. But the servant was not in the taproom or the stables. Charles guessed indeed where he was. He could not send there; and thus he left Lyme without seeing him again. He got into his four-wheeler in the yard, and promptly drew down the blinds. Two hearse-like miles passed before he opened them again, and let the slanting evening sunlight, for it was now five o'clock, brighten the dingy paintwork and upholstery of the carriage. 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.

  55

  "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)

  * * *

  Charles arrived at the stati
on in ridiculously good time the next morning; and having gone through the ungentlemanly business of seeing his things loaded into the baggage van and then selected an empty first-class compartment, he sat impatiently waiting for the train to start. Other passengers looked in from time to time, and were rebuffed by that Gorgon stare (this compartment is reserved for non-lepers) the English have so easily at command. A whistle sounded, and Charles thought he had won the solitude he craved. But then, at the very last moment, a massively bearded face appeared at his window. The cold stare was met by the even colder stare of a man in a hurry to get aboard. 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.