The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (26 page)

Now she stood, abruptly, and moved towards the edge of the bluff. Charles
hastily followed and stood beside her, ready to seize her arm--for he saw
his uninspired words of counsel had had the very contrary effect to that
intended. She stared out to sea, and something in the set of her face suggested
to him that she felt she had made a mistake; that he was trite, a mere
mouther of convention. There was something male about her there. Charles
felt himself an old woman; and did not like the feeling.

"Forgive me. I ask too much, perhaps. But I meant well."

She lowered her head, acknowledging the implicit apology; but then resumed
her stare out to sea. They were now more exposed, visible to anyone in
the trees below.

"And please step back a little. It is not safe here."

She turned and looked at him then. There was once again a kind of penetration
of his real motive that was disconcertingly naked. We can sometimes recognize
the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but never those of a century
to come. A moment, then she walked past him back to the thorn. He stood
in the center of the little arena.

"What you have told me does but confirm my previous sentiment. You must
leave Lyme."

"If I leave here I leave my shame. Then I am lost."

She reached up and touched a branch of the hawthorn. He could not be
sure, but she seemed deliberately to press her forefinger down; a second
later she was staring at a crimson drop of blood. She looked at it a moment,
then took a handkerchief from her pocket and surreptitiously dabbed the
blood away.

He left a silence, then sprang it on her.

"Why did you refuse Dr. Grogan's help last summer?" Her eyes flashed
round at him accusingly, but he was ready for that reaction. "Yes--I asked
him his opinion. You cannot deny that I had a right to."

She turned away again. "Yes. You had right."

"Then you must answer me."

"Because I did not choose to go to him for help. I mean nothing against
him. I know he wished to help."

"And was not his advice the same as mine?"

"Yes."

"Then with respect I must remind you of your promise to me."

She did not answer. But that was an answer. Charles went some steps
closer to where she stood staring into the thorn branches.

"Miss Woodruff?"

"Now you know the truth--can you still tender that advice?"

"Most certainly."

"Then you forgive me my sin?"

This brought up Charles a little short. "You put far too high a value
on my forgiveness. The essential is that you forgive yourself your sin.
And you can never do that here."

"You did not answer my question, Mr. Smithson."

"Heaven forbid I should pronounce on what only Our Maker can decide.
But I am convinced, we are all convinced that you have done sufficient
penance. You are forgiven."

"And may be forgotten."

The dry finality of her voice puzzled him a moment. Then he smiled.
"If you mean by that that your friends here intend no practical assistance--"

"I did not mean that. I know they mean kindly. But I am like this thorn
tree, Mr. Smithson. No one reproaches it for growing here in this solitude.
It is when it walks down Broad Street that it offends society."

He made a little puff of protest. "But my dear Miss Woodruff, you cannot
tell me it is your duty to offend society." He added, "If that is what
I am to infer."

She half turned. "But is it not that society wishes to remove me to
another solitude?"

"What you question now is the justice of existence."

"And that is forbidden?"

"Not forbidden. But fruitless."

She shook her head. "There are fruit. Though bitter."

But it was said without contradiction, with a deep sadness, almost to
herself. Charles was overcome, as by a backwash from her wave of confession,
by a sense of waste. He perceived that her directness of look was matched
by a directness of thought and language--that what had on occasion struck
him before as a presumption of intellectual equality (therefore a suspect
resentment against man) was less an equality than a proximity, a proximity
like a nakedness, an intimacy of thought and feeling hitherto unimaginable
to him in the context of a relationship with a woman.

He did not think this subjectively, but objectively: here, if only some
free man had the wit to see it, is a remarkable woman. The feeling was
not of male envy: but very much of human loss. Abruptly he reached out
his hand and touched her shoulder in a gesture of comfort; and as quickly
turned away. There was a silence.

As if she sensed his frustration, she spoke. "You think then that I
should leave?"

At once he felt released and turned eagerly back to her.

"I beg you to. New surroundings, new faces ... and have no worries as
regards the practical considerations. We await only your decision to interest
ourselves on your behalf."

"May I have a day or two to reflect?"

"If it so be you feel it necessary." He took his chance; and grasped
the normality she made so elusive. "And I propose that we now put the matter
under Mrs. Tranter's auspices. If you will permit, I will see to it that
her purse is provided for any needs you may have."

Her head bowed; she seemed near tears again. She murmured, "I don't
deserve such kindness. I..."

"Say no more. I cannot think of money better spent."

A delicate tinge of triumph was running through Charles. It had been
as Grogan prophesied. Confession had brought cure--or at least a clear
glimpse of it. He turned to pick up his ashplant by the block of flint.
"I must come to Mrs. Tranter's?"

"Excellent. There will of course be no necessity to speak of our meetings."

"I shall say nothing."

He saw the scene already; his polite but not too interested surprise,
followed by his disinterested insistence that any pecuniary assistance
desirable should be to his charge. Ernestina might very well tease him
about it--but that would ease his conscience. He smiled at Sarah.

"You have shared your secret. I think you will find it to be an unburdening
in many other ways. You have very considerable natural advantages. You
have nothing to fear from life. A day will come when these recent unhappy
years may seem no more than that cloud-stain over there upon Chesil Bank.
You shall stand in sunlight--and smile at your own past sorrows." He thought
he detected a kind of light behind the doubt in her eyes; for a moment
she was like a child, both reluctant and yet willing to be cozened--or
homilized--out of tears. His smile deepened. He added lightly, "And now
had we better not descend?" She seemed as if she would like to say something,
no doubt reaffirm her gratitude, but his stance of brisk waiting made her,
after one last lingering look into his eyes, move past him.

She led the way down as neat-footedly as she had led it up. Looking
down on her back, he felt tinges of regret. Not to see her thus again ...
regret and relief. A remarkable young woman. He would not forget her; and
it seemed some consolation that he would not be allowed to. Aunt Tranter
would be his future spy. They came to the base of the lower cliff, and
went through the first tunnel of ivy, over the clearing, and into the second
green corridor--and then!

There came from far below, from the main path through the Undercliff,
the sound of a stifled peal of laughter. Its effect was strange--as if
some wood spirit had been watching their clandestine meeting and could
now no longer bottle up her--for the laugh was unmistakably female--mirth
at their foolish confidence in being unseen.

Charles and Sarah stopped as of one accord. Charles's growing relief
was instantaneously converted into a shocked alarm. But the screen of ivy
was dense, the laugh had come from two or three hundred yards away; they
could not have been seen. Unless as they came down the slope ... a moment,
then she swiftly raised a finger to her lips, indicated that he should
not move, and then herself stole along to the end of the tunnel. Charles
watched her crane forward and stare cautiously down towards the path. Then
her face turned sharply back to him. She beckoned--he was to go to her,
but with the utmost quietness; and simultaneously that laugh came again.
It was quieter this time, yet closer. Whoever had been on the path had
left it and was climbing up through the ash trees toward them.

Charles trod cautiously towards Sarah, making sure of each place where
he had to put his wretchedly unstealthy boots. He felt himself flushing,
most hideously embarrassed. No explanation could hold water for a moment.
However he was seen with Sarah, it must be in
flagrante delicto
.

He came to where she stood, and where the ivy was fortunately at its
thickest. She had turned away from the interlopers and stood with her back
against a tree trunk, her eyes cast down as if in mute guilt for having
brought them both to this pass. Charles looked through the leaves and down
the slope of the ash grove--and his blood froze. Coming up towards them,
as if seeking their same cover, were Sam and Mary. Sam had his arm round
the girl's shoulders. He carried his hat, and she her bonnet; she wore
the green walking dress given her by Ernestina--indeed, the last time Charles
had seen it it had been on Ernestina--and her head lay back a little against
Sam's cheek. They were young lovers as plain as the ashes were old trees;
as greenly erotic as the April plants they trod on. Charles drew back a
little but kept them in view. As he watched Sam drew the girl's face round
and kissed her. Her arm came up and they embraced; and then holding hands,
stood shyly apart a little. Sam led the girl to where a bank of grass had
managed to establish itself between the trees. Mary sat and lay back, and
Sam leaned beside her, looking down at her; then he touched her hair aside
from her cheeks and bent and kissed her tenderly on the eyes.

Charles felt pierced with a new embarrassment: he glanced at Sarah,
to see if she knew who the intruders were. But she stared at the hart's-tongue
ferns at her feet, as if they were merely sheltering from some shower of
rain. Two minutes, then three passed. Embarrassment gave way to a degree
of relief--it was clear that the two servants were far more interested
in exploring each other than their surroundings. He glanced again at Sarah.
Now she too was watching, from round her tree trunk. She turned back, her
eyes
cast down. But then without warning she looked up at him.

A moment.

Then she did something as strange, as shocking, as if she had thrown
off her clothes.

She smiled.

It was a smile so complex that Charles could at the first moment only
stare at it incredulously. It was so strangely timed! He felt she had almost
been waiting for such a moment to unleash it upon him--this revelation
of her humor, that her sadness was not total. And in those wide eyes, so
somber, sad and direct, was revealed an irony, a new dimension of herself--one
little Paul and Virginia would have been quite familiar with in days gone
by, but never till now bestowed on Lyme.

Where are your pretensions now, those eyes and gently curving lips seemed
to say; where is your birth, your science, your etiquette, your social
order? More than that, it was not a smile one could stiffen or frown at;
it could only be met with a smile in return, for it excused Sam and Mary,
it excused all; and in some way too subtle for analysis, undermined all
that had passed between Charles and herself till then. It lay claim to
a far profounder understanding, acknowledgment of that awkward equality
melting into proximity than had been consciously admitted. Indeed, Charles
did not consciously smile in return; he found himself smiling; only with
his eyes, but smiling. And excited, in some way too obscure and general
to be called sexual, to the very roots of his being; like a man who at
last comes, at the end of a long high wall, to the sought-for door ...
but only to find it locked.

For several moments they stood, the woman who was the door, the man
without the key; and then she lowered her eyes again. The smile died. A
long silence hung between them. Charles saw the truth: he really did stand
with one foot over the precipice. For a moment he thought he would, he
must plunge. He knew if he reached out his arm she would meet with no resistance
. . . only a passionate reciprocity of feeling. The red in his cheeks deepened,
and at last he whispered.

"We must never meet alone again."

She did not raise her head, but gave the smallest nod of assent; and
then with an almost sullen movement she turned away from him, so that he
could not see her face. He looked again through the leaves. Sam's head
and shoulders were bent over the invisible Mary. Long moments passed, but
Charles remained watching, his mind still whirling down that precipice,
hardly aware that he was spying, yet infected, as each moment passed, with
more of the very poison he was trying to repel.

Mary saved him. Suddenly she pushed Sam aside and laughing, ran down
the slope back towards the path; poising a moment, her mischievous face
flashed back at Sam, before she raised her skirts and skittered down, a
thin line of red petticoat beneath the viridian, through the violets and
the dog's mercury. Sam ran after her. Their figures dwindled between the
gray stems; dipped, disappeared, a flash of green, a flash of blue; a laugh
that ended in a little scream; then silence.

Five minutes passed, during which the hidden pair spoke not a word to
each other. Charles remained staring fixedly down the hill, as if it were
important that he should keep such intent watch. All he wanted, of course,
was to avoid looking at Sarah. At last he broke the silence.

"You had better go." She bowed her head. "I will wait a half-hour."
She bowed her head again, and then moved past him. Their eyes did not meet.