The French Lieutenant's Woman (49 page)

"Perhaps I should
..."

"No. Please. Sit
down. Forgive me. I ... I did not expect..." He placed his
things on the chest of drawers, then sat at the only other, a wooden
chair by the table, across the room from her. How should she expect,
in spite of her letter, what he had himself so firmly ruled out of
the question? He sought for some excuse.

"You have
communicated your address to Mrs. Tranter?"

She shook her head.
Silence. Charles stared at the carpet.

"Only to myself?"

Again her head bowed. He
nodded gravely, as if he had guessed as much. And then there was more
silence. An angry flurry of rain spattered against the panes of the
window behind her.

Charles said, "That
is what I have come to discuss."

She waited, but he did
not go on. Again his eyes were fixed on her. The nightgown buttoned
high at the neck and at her wrists. Its whiteness shimmered rose in
the firelight, for the lamp on the table beside him was not turned up
very high. And her hair, already enhanced by the green shawl, was
ravishingly alive where the firelight touched it; as if all her
mystery, this most intimate self, was exposed before him: proud and
submissive, bound and unbound, his slave and his equal. He knew why
he had come: it was to see her again. Seeing her was the need; like
an intolerable thirst that had to be assuaged.

He forced himself to
look away. But his eyes lighted on the two naked marble nymphs above
the fireplace: they too took rose in the warm light reflected from
the red blanket. They did not help. And Sarah made a little movement.
He had to look back to her.

She had raised her hand
quickly to her bowed head. Her fingers brushed something away from
her cheek, then came to rest on her throat.

"My dear Miss
Woodruff, pray don't cry ... I should not have not come... I meant
not to ..."

But she shook her head
with a sudden vehemence. He gave her time to recover. And it was
while she made little dabbing motions with a handkerchief that he was
overcome with a violent sexual desire; a lust a thousand times
greater than anything he had felt in the prostitute's room. Her
defenseless weeping was perhaps the breach through which the
knowledge sprang--but suddenly he comprehended why her face haunted
him, why he felt this terrible need to see her again: it was to
possess her, to melt into her, to burn, to burn to ashes on that body
and in those eyes. To postpone such desire for a week, a month, a
year, several years even, that can be done. But for eternity is when
the iron bites.

Her next words, to
explain her tears, were barely audible.

"I thought never to
see you again."

He could not tell her
how close she had come to his own truth. She looked up at him and he
as quickly looked down. Those same mysterious syncopal symptoms as in
the barn swept over him. His heart raced, his hand trembled. He knew
if he looked into those eyes he was lost. As if to ban them, he shut
his own. The silence was terrible then, as tense as a bridge about to
break, a tower to fall; unendurable in its emotion, its truth
bursting to be spoken. Then suddenly there was a little cascade of
coals from the fire. Most fell inside the low guard, but one or two
bounced off and onto the edge of the blanket that covered Sarah's
legs. She jerked it hastily away as Charles knelt quickly and seized
the small shovel from the brass bucket. The coals on the carpet were
quickly replaced. But the blanket smoldered. He snatched it away from
her and throwing it on the ground hastily stamped out the sparks. A
smell of singed wool filled the room. One of Sarah's legs still
rested on the stool, but she had put the other to the ground. Both
feet were bare. He looked down at the blanket, made sure with one or
two slaps of his hand that it no longer smoldered, then turned and
placed it across her legs once more. He was bent close, his eyes on
the arranging. And then, as if by an instinctive gesture, yet one she
half dared to calculate, her hand reached shyly out and rested on
his. He knew she was looking up at him. He could not move his hand,
and
suddenly
he could not keep his eyes from hers.

There was gratitude in
them, and all the old sadness, and a strange concern, as if she knew
she was hurting him; but above all she was waiting. Infinitely timid,
yet waiting. If there had been the faintest smile on her lips,
perhaps he would have remembered Dr. Grogan's theory; but this was a
face that seemed almost self-surprised, as lost as himself. How long
they looked into each other's eyes he did not know. It seemed an
eternity, though in reality it was no more than three or four
seconds. Their hands acted first. By some mysterious communion, the
fingers interlaced. Then Charles fell on one knee and strained her
passionately to him. Their mouths met with a wild violence that
shocked both; made her avert her lips. He covered her cheeks, her
eyes, with kisses. His hand at last touched that hair, caressed it,
felt the small head through its softness, as the thin-clad body was
felt against his arms and breast.
Suddenly
he buried his face in her neck.

"We must not... we
must not... this is madness." But her arms came round him and
pressed his head closer. He did not move. He felt borne on wings of
fire, hurtling, but in such tender air, like a child at last let free
from school, a prisoner in a green field, a hawk rising. He raised
his head and looked at her: an almost savage fierceness. Then they
kissed again. But he pressed against her with such force that the
chair rolled back a little. He felt her flinch with pain as the
bandaged foot fell from the stool. He looked back to it, then at her
face, her closed eyes. She turned her head away against the back of
the chair, almost as if he repelled her; but her bosom seemed to arch
imperceptibly towards him and her hands gripped his convulsively. He
glanced at the door behind her; then stood and in two strides was at
it.

The bedroom was not lit
except by the dusk light and the faint street lamps opposite. But he
saw the gray bed, the washstand. Sarah stood awkwardly from the
chair, supporting herself against its back, the injured foot lifted
from the ground, one end of the shawl fallen from her shoulders. Each
reflected the intensity in each other's eyes, the flood, the being
swept before it. She seemed to half step, half fall towards him. He
sprang forward and caught her in his arms and embraced her. The shawl
fell. No more than a layer of flannel lay between him and her
nakedness. He strained that body into his, straining his mouth upon
hers, with all the hunger of a long frustration--not merely sexual,
for a whole ungovernable torrent of things banned, romance,
adventure, sin, madness, animality, all these coursed wildly through
him.

Her head lay back in his
arms, as if she had fainted, when he finally raised his lips from her
mouth. He swept her up and carried her through to the bedroom. She
lay where he threw her across the bed, half swooned, one arm flung
back. He seized her other hand and kissed it feverishly; it caressed
his face. He pulled himself away and ran back into the other room. He
began to undress wildly, tearing off his clothes as if someone was
drowning and
he was on the bank. A button from his frock coat flew off and rolled
into a corner, but he did not even look to see where it went. His
waistcoat was torn off, his boots, his socks, his trousers and
undertrousers ... his pearl tie pin, his cravat. He cast a glance at
the outer door, and went to twist the key in its lock. Then, wearing
only his long-tailed shirt, he went barelegged into the bedroom. She
had moved a little, since she now lay with her head on the pillow,
though still on top of the bed, her face twisted sideways and hidden
from his sight by a dark fan of hair. He stood over her a moment, his
member erect and thrusting out his shirt. Then he raised his left
knee onto the narrow bed and fell on her, raining burning kisses on
her mouth, her eyes, her throat. But the passive yet acquiescent body
pressed beneath him, the naked feet that touched his own ... he could
not wait. Raising himself a little, he drew up her nightgown. Her
legs parted. With a frantic brutality, as he felt his ejaculation
about to burst, he found the place and thrust. Her body flinched
again, as it had when her foot fell from the stool. He conquered that
instinctive constriction, and her arms flung round him as if she
would bind him to her for that eternity he could not dream without
her. He began to ejaculate at once.

"Oh my dearest. My
dearest. My sweetest angel . . . Sarah, Sarah ... oh Sarah."

A few moments later he
lay still. Precisely ninety seconds had passed since he had left her
to look into the bedroom.
 
 

47

Averse, as Dido
did with gesture stern
From
her false friend's approach in Hades turn,
Wave
us away, and keep thy solitude.
--
Matthew
Arnold, "The Scholar-Gipsy" (1853)

Silence.

They lay as if paralyzed
by what they had done. Congealed in sin, frozen with delight.
Charles--no gentle postcoital sadness for him, but an immediate and
universal horror--was like a city struck out of a quiet sky by an
atom bomb. All lay razed; all principle, all future, all faith, all
honorable intent. Yet he survived, he lay in the sweetest possession
of his life, the last man alive, infinitely isolated . . . but
already the radioactivity of guilt crept, crept through his nerves
and veins. In the distant shadows Ernestina stood and stared
mournfully at him. Mr. Freeman struck him across the face ... how
stone they were, rightly implacable, immovably waiting.

He shifted a little to
relieve Sarah of his weight, then turned on his back so that she
could lie against him, her head on his shoulder. He stared up at the
ceiling. What a mess, what an inutterable mess!

And he held her a little
closer. Her hand reached timidly and embraced his. The rain stopped.
Heavy footsteps, slow, measured, passed somewhere beneath the window.
A police officer, perhaps. The Law. Charles said, "I am worse
than Varguennes." Her only answer was to press his hand, as if
to deny and hush him. But he was a man.

"What is to become
of us?"

"I cannot think
beyond this hour."

Again he pressed her
shoulders, kissed her forehead; then stared again at the ceiling. She
was so young now, so overwhelmed.

"I must break my
engagement."

"I ask nothing of
you. I cannot. I am to blame."

"You warned me, you
warned me. I am wholly to blame. I knew when I came here ... I chose
to be blind. I put all my obligations behind me."

She murmured, "I
wished it so." She said it again, sadly. "I wished it so."

For a while he stroked
her hair. It fell over her shoulder, her face, veiling her.

"Sarah ... it is
the sweetest name."

She did not answer. A
minute passed, his hand smoothing her hair, as if she were a child.
But his mind was elsewhere. As if she sensed it, she at last spoke.

"I know you cannot
marry me."

"I must. I wish to.
I could never look myself in the face again if I did not."

"I have been
wicked. I have long imagined such a day as this. I am not fit to be
your wife."

"My dearest--"

"Your position in
the world, your friends, your . . . and she--I know she must love
you. How should I not know what she feels?"

"But I no longer
love her!"

She let his vehemence
drain into the silence.

"She is worthy of
you. I am not."

At last he began to take
her at her word. He made her turn her head and they looked, in the
dim outside light, into each other's penumbral eyes. His were full of
a kind of horror; and hers were calm, faintly smiling.

"You cannot mean I
should go away--as if nothing had happened between us?"

She said nothing; yet in
her eyes he read her meaning. He raised himself on one elbow. "You
cannot forgive me so much. Or ask so little."

She sank her head
against the pillow, her eyes on some dark future. "Why not, if I
love you?"

He strained her to him.
The thought of such sacrifice made his eyes smart with tears. The
injustice Grogan and he had done her! She was a nobler being than
either of them.

Charles was flooded with
contempt for his sex: their triviality, their credulity, their
selfishness. But he was of that sex, and there came to him some of
its old devious cowardice: Could not this perhaps be no more than his
last fling, the sowing of the last wild oats? But he no sooner
thought that than he felt like a murderer acquitted on some technical
flaw in the prosecution case. He might stand a free man outside the
court; but eternally guilty in his heart.