The French Lieutenant's Woman (56 page)

"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 Tweedledum, "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
station 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.