The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (17 page)

"He parts the masses
of her golden hair,
He lifts her, helpless,
with a shuddering care,
He looks into her face with
awestruck eyes;--
She dies--the darling of
his soul--she dies!"

Ernestina resumes.

"You might have
heard, through that thought's fearful shock,
The beating of his heart
like some huge clock;
And then the strong pulse
falter and stand still,
When lifted from that fear
with sudden thrill,
Which from those blanched
lips low and trembling came:

'Oh! Claud!' she
said: no more--but never yet
Through all the loving days
since first they met,
Leaped his heart's blood
with such a yearning vow
That she was all in all
to him, as now."

"'Oh! Claud--the
pain!'
'Oh! Gertrude, my beloved!'
Then faintly o'er her lips
a wan smile moved,
Which dumbly spoke of comfort
from his tone--
You've gone to sleep, you
hateful mutton-bone!"

"Ah! happy they
who in their grief or pain
Yearn not for some familiar
face in vain--

The poem suddenly becomes
a missile, which strikes Charles a glancing blow on the shoulder and lands
on the floor behind the sofa.

"Yes?" He sees Ernestina
on her feet, her hands on her hips, in a very untypical way. He sits up
and murmurs, "Oh dear."

"You are caught, sir. You
have no excuse."

But sufficient excuses or
penance Charles must have made, for the very next lunchtime he had the
courage to complain when Ernestina proposed for the nineteenth time to
discuss the furnishings of his study in the as yet unfound house. Leaving
his very comfortable little establishment in Kensington was not the least
of Charles's impending sacrifices; and he could bear only just so much
reminding of it. Aunt Tranter backed him up, and he was accordingly granted
an afternoon for his "wretched grubbing" among the stones.

He knew at once where he
wished to go. He had had no thought except for the French Lieutenant's
Woman when he found her on that wild cliff meadow; but he had just had
enough time to notice, at the foot of the little bluff whose flat top was
the meadow, considerable piles of fallen flint. It was certainly this which
made him walk that afternoon to the place. The new warmth, the intensification
of love between Ernestina and himself had driven all thought, or all but
the most fleeting, casual thought, of Mrs.
Poulteney's secretary from
his conscious mind.

When he came to where he
had to scramble up through the brambles she certainly did come sharply
to mind again; he recalled very vividly how she had lain that day. But
when he crossed the grass and looked down at her ledge, it was empty; and
very soon he had forgotten her. He found a way down to the foot of the
bluff and began to search among the scree for his tests. It was a colder
day than when he had been there before. Sun and clouds rapidly succeeded
each other in proper April fashion, but the wind was out of the north.
At the foot of the south-facing bluff, therefore, it was agreeably warm;
and an additional warmth soon came to Charles when he saw an excellent
test, seemingly not long broken from its flint matrix, lying at his feet.

Forty minutes later, however,
he had to resign himself to the fact that he was to have no further luck,
at least among the flints below the bluff. He regained the turf above and
walked towards the path that led back into the woods. And there, a dark
movement!

She was halfway up the steep
little path, too occupied in disengaging her coat from a recalcitrant bramble
to hear Charles's turf-silenced approach. As soon as he saw her he stopped.
The path was narrow and she had the right of way. But then she saw him.
They stood some fifteen feet apart, both clearly embarrassed, though with
very different expressions. Charles was smiling; and Sarah stared at him
with profound suspicion.

"Miss Woodruff!"

She gave him an imperceptible
nod, and seemed to hesitate, as if she would have turned back if she could.
But then she realized he was standing to one side for her and made hurriedly
to pass him. Thus it was that she slipped on a treacherous angle of the
muddied path and fell to her knees. He sprang forward and helped her up;
now she was totally like a wild animal, unable to look at him, trembling,
dumb. Very gently, with his hand on her elbow, he urged her forward on
to the level turf above the sea. She wore the same black coat, the same
indigo dress with the white collar. But whether it was because she had
slipped, or he held her arm, or the colder air, I do not know, but her
skin had a vigor, a pink bloom, that suited admirably the wild shyness
of her demeanor. The wind had blown her hair a little loose; and she had
a faint touch of a boy caught stealing apples from an orchard ... a guilt,
yet a mutinous guilt. Suddenly she looked at Charles, a swift sideways
and upward glance from those almost exophthalmic dark-brown eyes with their
clear whites: a look both timid and forbidding. It made him drop her arm.

"I dread to think, Miss Woodruff,
what would happen if you should one day turn your ankle in a place like
this."

"It does not matter."

"But it would most certainly
matter, my dear young lady. From your request to me last week I presume
you don't wish Mrs. Poulteney to know you come here. Heaven forbid that
I should ask for your reasons. But I must point out that if you were in
some way disabled I am the only person in Lyme who could lead your rescuers
to you. Am I not?"

"She knows. She would guess."

"She knows you come here--to
this very place?"

She stared at the turf, as
if she would answer no more questions; begged him to go. But there was
something in that face, which Charles examined closely in profile, that
made him determine not to go. All in it had been sacrificed, he now realized,
to the eyes. They could not conceal an intelligence, an independence of
spirit; there was also a silent contradiction of any sympathy; a determination
to be what she was. Delicate, fragile, arched eyebrows were then the fashion,
but Sarah's were strong, or at least unusually dark, almost the color of
her hair, which made them seem strong, and gave her a faintly tomboyish
air on occasion. I do not mean that she had one of those masculine, handsome,
heavy-chinned faces popular in the Edwardian Age--the Gibson Girl type
of beauty. Her face was well modeled, and completely feminine; and the
suppressed intensity of her eyes was matched by the suppressed sensuality
of her mouth, which was wide--and once again did not correspond with current
taste, which veered between pretty little almost lipless mouths and childish
cupid's bows. Charles, like most men of his time, was still faintly under
the influence of Lavater's Physiognomy. He noted that mouth, and was not
deceived by the fact that it was pressed unnaturally tight.

Echoes, that one flashed
glance from those dark eyes had certainly roused in Charles's mind; but
they were not English ones. He associated such faces with foreign women--to
be frank (much franker than he would have been to himself) with foreign
beds. This marked a new stage of his awareness of Sarah. He had realized
she was more intelligent and independent than she seemed; he now guessed
darker qualities. To most Englishmen of his age such an intuition of Sarah's
real nature would have been repellent; and it did very faintly repel--or
at least shock--Charles. He shared enough of his contemporaries' prejudices
to suspect sensuality in any form; but whereas they would, by one of those
terrible equations that take place at the behest of the superego, have
made Sarah vaguely responsible for being born as she was, he did not. For
that we can thank his scientific hobbies. Darwinism, as its shrewder opponents
realized, let open the floodgates to something far more serious than the
undermining of the Biblical account of the origins of man; its deepest
implications lay in the direction of determinism and behaviorism, that
is, towards philosophies that reduce morality to a hypocrisy and duty to
a straw hut in a hurricane. I do not mean that Charles completely exonerated
Sarah; but he was far less inclined to blame her than she might have imagined.

Partly then, his scientific
hobbies ... but Charles had also the advantage of having read--very much
in private, for the book had been prosecuted for obscenity--a novel that
had appeared in France some ten years before; a novel profoundly deterministic
in its assumptions, the celebrated Madame Bovary. And as he looked down
at the face beside him, it was suddenly, out of nowhere, that Emma Bovary's
name sprang into his mind. Such allusions are comprehensions; and temptations.
That is why, finally, he did not bow and withdraw.

At last she spoke.

"I did not know you were
here."

"How should you?"

"I must return."

And she turned. But he spoke
quickly.

"Will you permit me to say
something first? Something I have perhaps, as a stranger to you and your
circumstances, no right to say." She stood with bowed head, her back to
him. "May I proceed?"

She was silent. He hesitated
a moment, then spoke.

"Miss Woodruff, I cannot
pretend that your circumstances have not been discussed in front of me
... by Mrs. Tranter. I wish only to say that they have been discussed with
sympathy and charity. She believes you are not happy in your present situation,
which I am given to understand you took from force of circumstance rather
than from a more congenial reason. I have known Mrs. Tranter only a very
short time. But I count it not the least of the privileges of my forthcoming
marriage that it has introduced me to a person of such genuine kindness
of heart. I will come to the point. I am confident--"

He broke off as she looked
quickly round at the trees behind them. Her sharper ears had heard a sound,
a branch broken underfoot. But before he could ask her what was wrong,
he too heard men's low voices. But by then she had already acted; gathering
up her skirt she walked swiftly over the grass to the east, some forty
yards; and there disappeared behind a thicket of gorse that had crept out
a little over the turf. Charles stood dumbfounded, a mute party to her
guilt.

The men's voices sounded
louder. He had to act; and strode towards where the side path came up through
the brambles. It was fortunate that he did, for just as the lower path
came into his sight, so also did two faces, looking up; and both sharply
surprised. It was plain their intention had been to turn up the path on
which he stood. Charles opened his mouth to bid them good day; but the
faces disappeared with astonishing quickness. He heard a hissed voice--"Run
for 'un, Jem!"-- and the sound of racing footsteps. A few moments later
there was an urgent low whistle, and the excited whimper of a dog. Then
silence. He waited a minute, until he was certain they had gone, then he
walked round to the gorse. She stood pressed sideways against the sharp
needles, her face turned away.

"They have gone. Two poachers,
I fancy."

She nodded, but continued
to avoid his eyes. The gorse was in full bloom, the cadmium-yellow flowers
so dense they almost hid the green. The air was full of their honeyed musk.

He said, "I think that was
not necessary."

"No gentleman who cares for
his good name can be seen with the scarlet woman of Lyme."

And that too was a step;
for there was a bitterness in her voice. He smiled at her averted face.
"I think the only truly scarlet things about you are your cheeks."

Her eyes flashed round at
him then, as if he were torturing some animal at bay. Then she turned away
again.

Charles said gently, "Do
not misunderstand me. I deplore your unfortunate situation. As I appreciate
your delicacy in respect of my reputation. But it is indifferent to the
esteem of such as Mrs. Poulteney."