The French Lieutenant's Woman (30 page)

Downstairs at Winsyatt
they knew very well what was going on; the uncle was out to spite the
nephew. With the rural working class's innate respect for good
husbandry they despised Charles for not visiting more often--in
short, for not buttering up Sir Robert at every opportunity. Servants
in those days were regarded as little more than furniture, and their
masters frequently forgot they had both ears and intelli- gences;
certain abrasive exchanges between the old man and his heir had not
gone unnoticed and undiscussed. And though there was a disposition
among the younger female staff to feel sorry for the handsome
Charles, the sager part took a kind of ant's-eye view of the
frivolous grasshopper and his come-uppance. They had worked all their
lives for their wages; and they were glad to see Charles punished for
his laziness.

Besides, Mrs. Tomkins,
who was very much as Ernestina suspected, an upper-middle-class
adventuress, had shrewdly gone out of her way to ingratiate herself
with the housekeeper and the butler; and those two worthies had set
their imprimatur--or ducatur in matrimonium--upon the plump and
effusive widow; who furthermore had, upon being shown a long-unused
suite in the before-mentioned east wing, remarked to the housekeeper
how excellent a nursery the rooms would make. It was true that Mrs.
Tomkins had a son and two daughters by her first marriage; but in the
housekeeper's opinion--graciously extended to Mr. Benson, the
butler--Mrs. Tomkins was as good as expecting again.

"It could be
daughters, Mrs. Trotter."

"She's a trier, Mr.
Benson. You mark my words. She's a trier."

The butler sipped his
dish of tea, then added, "And tips well." Which Charles, as
one of the family, did not.

The general substance of
all this had come to Sam's ears, while he waited down in the
servants' hall for Charles. It had not come pleasantly in itself or
pleasantly inasmuch as Sam, as the servant of the grasshopper, had to
share part of the general judgment on him; and all this was not
altogether unconnected with a kind of second string Sam had always
kept for his bow: a
faute
de mieux
dream in which he saw himself in the same exalted position at
Winsyatt that Mr. Benson now held. He had even casually planted this
seed-- and one pretty certain to germinate, if he chose--in Mary's
mind. It was not nice to see one's tender seedling, even if it was
not the most cherished, so savagely uprooted. Charles himself, when
they left Winsyatt, had not said a word to Sam, so officially Sam
knew nothing about his blackened hopes. But his master's blackened
face was as good as knowledge.

And now this.

Sam at last ate his
congealing mutton, and chewed it, and swallowed it; and all the time
his eyes stared into the future.

Charles's interview with
his uncle had not been stormy, since both felt guilty--the uncle for
what he was doing, the nephew for what he had failed to do in the
past. Charles's reaction to the news, delivered bluntly but with
telltale averted eyes, had been, after the first icy shock, stiffly
polite.

"I can only
congratulate you, sir, and wish you every happiness."

His uncle, who had come
upon him soon after we left Charles in the drawing room, turned away
to a window, as if to gain heart from his green acres. He gave a
brief account of his passion. He had been rejected at first: that was
three weeks ago. But he was not the man to turn tail at the first
refusal. He had sensed a certain indecision in the lady's voice. A
week before he had taken train to London and "galloped straight
in again"; the obstinate hedge was triumphantly cleared. "She
said 'no' again, Charles, but she was weeping. I knew I was over."
It had apparently taken two or three days more for the definitive
"Yes" to be spoken.

"And then, my dear
boy, I knew I had to face you. You are the very first to be told."

But Charles remembered
then that pitying look from old Mrs. Hawkins; all Winsyatt had the
news by now. His uncle's somewhat choked narration of his amorous
saga had given him time to absorb the shock. He felt whipped and
humiliated; a world less. But he had only one defense: to take it
calmly, to show the stoic and hide the raging boy.

"I appreciate your
punctiliousness, Uncle."

"You have every
right to call me a doting old fool. Most of my neighbors will."

"Late choices are
often the best."

"She's a lively
sort of woman, Charles. Not one of your damned niminy-piminy modern
misses." For one sharp moment Charles thought this was a slight
on Ernestina--as it was, but not intended. His uncle went obliviously
on. "She says what she thinks. Nowadays some people consider
that signifies a woman's a thruster. But she's not." He enlisted
the agreement of his parkland. "Straight as a good elm."

"I never for a
moment supposed she could be anything else."

The uncle cast a shrewd
look at him then; just as Sam played the meek footman with Charles,
so did Charles sometimes play the respectful nephew with the old man.

"I would rather you
were angry than ..." he was going to say a cold fish, but he
came and put his arm round Charles's shoulder; for he had tried to
justify his decision by working up anger against Charles--and he was
too good a sportsman not to know it was a mean justification.
"Charles, now damn it, it must be said. This brings an
alteration to your prospects. Though at my age, heaven knows ..."
that "bullfinch" he did refuse. "But if it should
happen, Charles, I wish you to know that whatever may come of the
marriage, you will not go unprovided for. I can't give you the Little
House; but I wish emphatically that you take it as yours for as long
as you live. I should like that to be my wedding gift to Ernestina
and yourself--and the expenses of doing the place up properly, of
course."

"That is most
generous of you. But I think we have more or less decided to go into
the Belgravia house when the lease falls in."

"Yes, yes, but you
must have a place in the country. I will not have this business
coming between us, Charles. I shall break it off tomorrow if--"

Charles managed a smile.
"Now you are being absurd. You might well have married many
years ago."

"That may be. But
the fact is I didn't."

He went nervously to the
wall and placed a picture back into alignment. Charles was silent;
perhaps he felt less hurt at the shock of the news than at the
thought of all his foolish dream of possession as he drove up to
Winsyatt. And the old devil should have written. But to the old devil
that would have been a cowardice. He turned from the painting.

"Charles, you're a
young fellow, you spend half your life traveling about. You don't
know how deuced lonely, bored, I don't know what it is, but half the
time I feel I might as well be dead."

Charles murmured, "I
had no idea . .."

"No, no, I don't
mean to accuse you. You have your own life to lead." But he did
still, secretly, like so many men without children, blame Charles for
falling short of what he imagined all sons to be--dutiful and loving
to a degree ten minutes' real fatherhood would have made him see was
a sentimental dream. "All the same there are things only a woman
can bring one. The old hangings in this room, now. Had you noticed?
Mrs. Tomkins called them gloomy one day. And damn it, I'm blind, they
were gloomy. Now that's what a woman does. Makes you see what's in
front of your nose." Charles felt tempted to suggest that
spectacles performed the same function a great deal more cheaply, but
he merely bowed his head in understanding. Sir Robert rather
unctuously waved his hand.

"What say you to
these new ones?"

Charles then had to
grin. His uncle's aesthetic judgments had been confined for so long
to matters such as the depth of a horse's withers and the superiority
of Joe Manton over any other gunmaker known to history that it was
rather like hearing a murderer ask his opinion of a nursery rhyme.

"A great
improvement."

"Just so. Everyone
says the same."

Charles bit his lip.
"And when am I going to meet the lady?"

"Indeed, I was
coming to that. She is most anxious to get to know you. And Charles,
most delicate in the matter of ... well, the ... how shall I put it?"

"Limitations of my
prospects?"

"Just so. She
confessed last week she first refused me for that very reason."
This was, Charles realized, supposed to be a commendation, and he
showed a polite surprise. "But I assured her you had made an
excellent match. And would understand and approve my choice of
partner . . . for my last years."

"You haven't yet
answered my question, Uncle."

Sir Robert looked a
little ashamed. "She is visiting family in Yorkshire. She is
related to the Daubenys, you know."

"Indeed."

"I go to join her
there tomorrow."

"Ah."

"And I thought it
best to get it over man to man. But she is most anxious to meet you."
His uncle hesitated, then with a ludicrous shyness reached in his
waistcoat pocket and produced a locket. "She gave me this last
week."

And Charles stared at a
miniature, framed in gold and his uncle's heavy fingers, of Mrs.
Bella Tomkins. She looked disagreeably young; firm-lipped; and with
assertive eyes--not at all unattractive, even to Charles. There was,
curiously, some faint resemblance to Sarah in the face; and a subtle
new dimension was added to Charles's sense of humiliation and
dispossession. Sarah was a woman of profound inexperience, and this
was a woman of the world; but both in their very different ways--his
uncle was right--stood apart from the great niminy-piminy flock of
women in general. For a moment he felt himself like a general in
command of a weak army looking over the strong dispositions of the
enemy; he foresaw only too clearly the result of a confrontation
between Ernestina and the future Lady Smithson. It would be a rout.

"I see I have
further reason to congratulate you."

"She's a fine
woman. A splendid woman. Worth waiting for, Charles." His uncle
dug him in the ribs.

"You'll be jealous.
Just see if you won't." He gazed fondly again at the locket,
then closed it reverentially and replaced it in his pocket. And then,
as if to counteract the soft sop, he briskly made Charles accompany
him to the stables to see his latest brood mare, bought for "a
hundred guineas less than she was worth"; and which seemed a
totally unconscious but distinct equine parallel in his mind to his
other new acquisition.

They were both English
gentlemen; and they carefully avoided further discussion of, if not
further reference to (for Sir Robert was too irrepressibly full of
his own good luck not to keep on harking back), the subject uppermost
in both their minds. But Charles insisted that he must return to Lyme
and his fiancee that evening; and his uncle, who in former days
would, at such a desertion, have sunk into a black gloom, made no
great demur now. Charles promised to discuss the matter of the Little
House with Ernestina, and to bring her to meet the other bride-to-be
as soon as could be conveniently arranged. But all his uncle's
last-minute warmth and hand-shaking could not disguise the fact that
the old man was relieved to see the back of him.

Pride had buoyed Charles
up through the three or four hours of his visit; but his driving away
was a sad business. Those lawns, pastures, railings, landscaped
groves seemed to slip through his fingers as they slipped slowly past
his eyes. He felt he never wanted to see Winsyatt again. The
morning's azure sky was overcast by a high veil of cirrus, harbinger
of that thunderstorm we have already heard in Lyme, and his mind soon
began to plummet into a similar climate of morose introspection.

This latter was directed
not a little against Ernestina. He knew his uncle had not been very
impressed by her fastidious little London ways; her almost total lack
of interest in rural life. To a man who had devoted so much of his
life to breeding she must have seemed a poor new entry to such fine
stock as the Smithsons. And then one of the bonds between uncle and
nephew had always been their bachelorhood--perhaps Charles's
happiness had opened Sir Robert's eyes a little: if he, why not I?
And then there was the one thing about Ernestina his uncle had
thoroughly approved of: her massive marriage portion. But that was
precisely what allowed him to expropriate Charles with a light
conscience.

But above all, Charles
now felt himself in a very displeasing position of inferiority as
regards Ernestina. His income from his father's estate had always
been sufficient for his needs; but he had not increased the capital.
As the future master of Winsyatt he could regard himself as his
bride's financial equal; as a mere rentier he must become her
financial dependent. In disliking this, Charles was being a good deal
more fastidious than most young men of his class and age. To them
dowry-hunting (and about this time, dollars began to be as acceptable
as sterling) was as honorable a pursuit as fox-hunting or gaming.
Perhaps that was it: he felt sorry for himself and yet knew very few
would share his feeling. It even exacerbated his resentment that
circumstances had not made his uncle's injustice even greater: if he
had spent more time at Winsyatt, say, or if he had never met
Ernestina in the first place ...