The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (28 page)

These four turned as the chaise went past, and raised arms, and the
billycock. Charles waved seigneurially back. He knew all their lives, as
they knew his. He even knew how the rail had been bent. . . the great Jonas,
his uncle's favorite bull, had charged Mrs. Tomkins's landau. "Her own
d--d fault"--his uncle's letter had said--"for painting her mouth scarlet."
Charles smiled, remembering the dry inquiry in his answer as to why such
an attractive widow should be calling at Winsyatt unchaperoned ...

But it was the great immutable rural peace that was so delicious to
reenter. The miles of spring sward, the background of Wiltshire downland,
the distant house now coming into view, cream and gray, with its huge cedars,
the famous copper beech (all copper beeches are famous) by the west wing,
the almost hidden stable row behind, with its little wooden tower and clock
like a white exclamation mark between the intervening branches. It was
symbolic, that stable clock; though nothing--despite the telegram--was
ever really urgent at Winsyatt, green todays flowed into green tomorrows,
the only real hours were the solar hours, and though, except at haymaking
and harvest, there were always too many hands for too little work, the
sense of order was almost mechanical in its profundity, in one's feeling
that it could not be disturbed, that it would always remain thus: benevolent
and divine. Heaven--and Millie--knows there were rural injustices and poverties
as vile as those taking place in Sheffield and Manchester; but they shunned
the neighborhood of the great houses of England, perhaps for no better
reason than that the owners liked well-tended peasants as much as well-tended
fields and livestock. Their comparative kindness to their huge staffs may
have been no more than a side-product of their pursuit of the pleasant
prospect; but the underlings gained thereby. And the motives of "intelligent"
modern management are probably no more altruistic. One set of kind exploiters
went for the Pleasant Prospect; the others go for Higher Productivity.

As the chaise emerged from the end of the avenue of limes, where the
railed pasture gave way to smoother lawns and shrubberies, and the drive
entered its long curve up to the front of the house--a Palladian structure
not too ruthlessly improved and added to by the younger Wyatt--Charles
felt himself truly entering upon his inheritance. It seemed to him to explain
all his previous idling through life, his dallying with religion, with
science, with travel; he had been waiting for this moment ... his call
to the throne, so to speak. The absurd adventure in the Undercliff was
forgotten. Immense duties, the preservation of this peace and order, lay
ahead, as they had lain ahead of so many young men of his family in the
past. Duty--that was his real wife, his Ernestina and his Sarah, and he
sprang out of the chaise to welcome her as joyously as a boy not half his
real age.

He was greeted in return, however, by an empty hall. He broke into the
dayroom, or drawing room, expecting to see his uncle smilingly on his feet
to meet him. But that room was empty, too. And something was strange in
it, puzzling Charles a moment. Then he smiled. There were new curtains
--and the carpets, yes, they were new as well. Ernestina would not be pleased,
to have had the choice taken out of her hands--but what surer demonstration
could there be of the old bachelor's intention gracefully to hand on the
torch?

Yet something else had also changed. It was some moments before Charles
realized what it was. The immortal bustard had been banished; where its
glass case had last stood was now a cabinet of china. But still he did
not guess.

Nor did he--but in this case, how could he?--guess what had happened
to Sarah when she left him the previous afternoon. She had walked quickly
back through the woods until she came to the place where she normally took
the higher path that precluded any chance of her being seen from the Dairy.
An observer would have seen her hesitate, and then, if he had had as sharp
hearing as Sarah herself, have guessed why: a sound of voices from the
Dairy cottage some hundred yards away down through the trees. Slowly and
silently Sarah made her way forward until she came to a great holly bush,
through whose dense leaves she could stare down at the back of the cottage.
She remained standing some time, her face revealing nothing of what passed
through her mind. Then some development in the scene below, outside the
cottage, made her move ... but not back into the cover of the woods. Instead
she walked boldly from out behind the holly tree and along the path that
joined the cart track above the cottage. Thus she emerged in full view
of the two women at the cottage door, one of whom carried a basket and
was evidently about to set off on her way home.

Sarah's dark figure came into view. She did not look down towards the
cottage, towards those two surprised pairs of eyes, but went swiftly on
her way until she passed behind the hedge of one of the fields that ran
above the Dairy.

One of the women below was the dairyman's wife. The other was Mrs. Fairley.
 
 

I once heard it suggested that the typical Victorian saying
was, "You must remember he is your uncle ..."
--G. M. Young, Victorian Essays

"He has lost his sense of proportion. But that is not quite the same
thing."

"But at this juncture!"

"My dear Tina, Cupid has a notorious contempt for other people's convenience."

"You know very well that Cupid has nothing to do with it."

"I am afraid he has everything to do with it. Old hearts are the most
susceptible."

"It is my fault. I know he disapproves of me."

"Come now, that is nonsense."

"It is not nonsense. I know perfectly well that for him I am a draper's
daughter."

"My dear child, contain yourself."

"It is for you I am so angry."

"Very well--then let me be angry on my own behalf."

There was silence then, which allows me to say that the conversation
above took place in Aunt Tranter's rear parlor. Charles stood at the window,
his back to Ernestina, who had very recently cried, and who now sat twisting
a lace handkerchief in a vindictive manner.

"I know how much you love Winsyatt."

How Charles would have answered can only be conjectured, for the door
opened at that moment and Aunt Tranter appeared, a pleased smile of welcome
on her face.

"You are back so soon!" It was half past nine of the same day we saw
Charles driving up to Winsyatt House.

Charles smiled thinly. "Our business was soon . . . finished."

"Something terrible and disgraceful has happened." Aunt Tranter looked
with alarm at the tragic and outraged face of her niece, who went on: "Charles
had been disinherited."

"Disinherited!"

"Ernestina exaggerates. It is simply that my uncle has decided to marry.
If he should be so fortunate as to have a son and heir ..."

"Fortunate . . . !" Ernestina slipped Charles a scalding little glance.
Aunt Tranter looked in consternation from one face to the other.

"But... who is the lady?"

"Her name is Mrs. Tomkins, Mrs. Tranter. A widow."

"And young enough to bear a dozen sons."

Charles smiled. "Hardly that. But young enough to bear sons."

"You know her?"

Ernestina answered before Charles could, "That is what is so disgraceful.
Only two months ago his uncle made fun of the woman to Charles in a letter.
And now he is groveling at her feet."

"My dear Ernestina!"

"I will not be calm! It is too much. After all these years..." Charles
took a deep breath, and turned to Aunt Tranter. "I understand she has excellent
connections. Her husband was colonel in the Fortieth Hussars and left her
handsomely provided for. There is no suspicion of fortune hunting." Ernestina's
smoldering look up at him showed plainly that in her mind there was every
suspicion. "I am told she is a very attractive woman."

"No doubt she rides to hounds."

He smiled bleakly at Ernestina, who was referring to a black mark she
had earlier gained in the monstrous uncle's book. "No doubt. But that is
not yet a crime."

Aunt Tranter plumped down on a chair and looked again from one young
face to the other, searching, as ever in such situations, for some ray
of hope.

"But is he not too old to have children?"

Charles managed a gentle smile for her innocence. "He is sixty-seven,
Mrs. Tranter. That is not too old." "Even though she is young enough to
be his granddaughter."

"My dear Tina, all one has in such circumstances is one's dignity. I
must beg you for my sake not to be
bitter. We must accept the event with as good a grace as possible."

She looked up and saw how nervously stern he was; that she must play
a different role. She ran to him, and catching his hand, raised it to her
lips. He drew her to him and kissed the top of her head, but he was not
deceived. A shrew and a mouse may look the same; but they are not the same;
and though he could not find a word to describe Ernestina's reception of
his shocking and unwelcome news, it was not far removed from "unladylike."
He had leaped straight from the trap bringing him back from Exeter into
Aunt Tranter's house; and expected a gentle sympathy, not a sharp rage,
however flatteringly it was intended to resemble his own feelings. Perhaps
that was it--that she had not divined that a gentleman could never reveal
the anger she ascribed to him. But there seemed to him something only too
reminiscent of the draper's daughter in her during those first minutes;
of one who had been worsted in a business deal, and who lacked a traditional
imperturbability, that fine aristocratic refusal to allow the setbacks
of life ever to ruffle one's style.

He handed Ernestina back to the sofa from which she had sprung. An essential
reason for his call, a decision he had come to on his long return, he now
perceived must be left for discussion on the morrow. He sought for some
way to demonstrate the correct attitude; and could find none better than
that of lightly changing the subject.

"And what great happenings have taken place in Lyme today?"

As if reminded, Ernestina turned to her aunt. "Did you get news of her?"
And then, before Aunt Tranter could answer, she looked up at Charles, "There
has been an event. Mrs. Poulteney has dismissed Miss Woodruff."

Charles felt his heart miss a beat. But any shock his face may have
betrayed passed unnoticed in Aunt Tranter's eagerness to tell her news:
for that is why she had been absent when Charles arrived. The dismissal
had apparently taken place the previous evening; the sinner had been allowed
one last night under the roof of Marlborough House. Very early that same
morning a porter had come to collect her box-- and had been instructed
to take it to the White Lion. Here Charles quite literally blanched, but
Aunt Tranter allayed his fears in the very next sentence.

"That is the depot for the coaches, you know." The Dorchester to Exeter
omnibuses did not descend the steep hill to Lyme, but had to be picked
up at a crossroads some four miles inland on the main road to the west.
"But Mrs. Hunnicott spoke to the man. He is most positive that Miss Woodruff
was not there. The maid said she had left very early at dawn, and gave
only the instructions as to her box."

"And since?"

"Not a sign."

"You saw the vicar?"

"No, but Miss Trimble assures me he went to Marlborough House this forenoon.
He was told Mrs. Poulteney was unwell. He spoke to Mrs. Fairley. All she
knew was that some disgraceful matter had come to Mrs. Poulteney's knowledge,
that she was deeply shocked and upset ..." The good Mrs. Tranter broke
off, apparently almost as distressed at her ignorance as at Sarah's isappearance.
She sought her niece's and Charles's eyes. "What can it be--what can it
be?"

"She ought never to have been employed at Marlborough House. It was
like offering a lamb to a wolf."

Ernestina looked at Charles for confirmation of her opinion. Feeling
far less calm than he looked, he turned to Aunt Tranter.

"There is no danger of ..."

"That is what we all fear. The vicar has sent men to search along towards
Charmouth. She walks there, on the cliffs."

"And they have ...?"

"Found nothing."

"Did you not say she once worked for--"

"They have sent there. No word of her."

"Grogan--has he not been called to Marlborough House?" He skillfully
made use of his introduction of the name, turning to Ernestina. "That evening
when we took grog--he mentioned her. I know he is concerned for her situation."

"Miss Trimble saw him talking with the vicar at seven o'clock. She said
he looked most agitated. Angry. That was her word." Miss Trimble kept a
ladies' trinket shop at the bottom of Broad Street--and was therefore admirably
placed to be the general information center of the town. Aunt Tranter's
gentle face achieved the impossible--and looked harshly severe. "I shall
not call on Mrs. Poulteney, however ill she is."

Ernestina covered her face in her hands. "Oh, what a cruel day it's
been!"

Charles stared down at the two ladies. "Perhaps I should call on Grogan."

"Oh Charles--what can you do? There are men enough to search."

That, of course, had not been in Charles's mind. He guessed that Sarah's
dismissal was not unconnected with her wanderings in the Undercliff--and
his horror, of course, was that she might have been seen there with him.
He stood in an agony of indecision. It became imperative to discover how
much was publicly known about the reason for her dismissal. He suddenly
found the atmosphere of the little sitting room claustrophobic. He had
to be alone. He had to consider what to do. For if Sarah was still living--but
who could tell what wild decision she might have made in her night of despair,
while he was quietly sleeping in his Exeter hotel?--but if she still breathed,
he guessed where she was; and it oppressed him like a shroud that he was
the only person in Lyme to know. And yet dared not reveal his knowledge.
A few minutes later he was striding down the hill to the White Lion. The
air was mild, but the sky was overcast. Idle fingers of wet air brushed
his cheeks. There was thunder in the offing, as in his heart.