The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (40 page)

Charles at last broke the
silence. "I need hardly add that this decision of my uncle's comes as a
very great surprise to myself as well."

"Of course, of course."

"But I felt it my duty to
apprise you of it at once--and in person."

"Most correct of you. And
Ernestina ... she knows?"

"She was the first I told.
She is naturally influenced by the affections she has done me the honor
of bestowing on me." Charles hesitated, then felt in his pocket. "I bear
a letter to you from her." He stood and placed it on the desk, where Mr.
Freeman stared at it with those shrewd gray eyes, evidently preoccupied
with other thoughts.

"You have still a very fair
private income, have you not?"

"I cannot pretend to have
been left a pauper."

"To which we must add the
possibility that your uncle may not be so fortunate as eventually to have
an heir?"

"That is so."

"And the certainty that Ernestina
does not come to you without due provision?"

"You have been most generous."

"And one day I shall be called
to eternal rest."

"My dear sir, I--"

The gentleman had won. Mr.
Freeman stood. "Between ourselves we may say these things. I shall be very
frank with you, my dear Charles. My principal consideration is my daughter's
happiness. But I do not need to tell you of the prize she represents in
financial terms. When you asked my permission to solicit her hand, not
the least of your recommendations in my eyes was my assurance that the
alliance would be mutual respect and mutual worth. I have your assurance
that your changed circumstances have come on you like a bolt from the blue.
No stranger to your moral rectitude could possibly impute to you an ignoble
motive. That is my only concern."

"As it is most emphatically
mine, sir."

More silence followed. Both
knew what was really being said: that malicious gossip must now surround
the marriage. Charles would be declared to have had wind of his loss of
prospects before his proposal; Ernestina would be sneered at for having
lost the title she could so easily have bought elsewhere.

"I had better read the letter.
Pray excuse me." He raised his solid gold letter-knife and slit the envelope
open. Charles went to a window and stared out at the trees of Hyde Park.
There beyond the chain of carriages in the Bayswater Road, he saw a girl--a
shopgirl or maid by the look of her--waiting on a bench before the railings;
and even as he watched a red-jacketed soldier came up. He saluted-- and
she turned. It was too far to see her face, but the eagerness of her turn
made it clear that the two were lovers. The soldier took her hand and pressed
it momentarily to his heart. Something was said. Then she slipped her hand
under his arm and they began to walk slowly towards Oxford Street. Charles
became lost in this little scene; and started when Mr. Freeman came beside
him, the letter in hand. He was smiling.

"Perhaps I should read what
she says in a postscript." He adjusted his silver-rimmed spectacles. "
'If you listen to Charles's nonsense for one moment, I shall make him elope
with me to Paris.'" He looked drily up at Charles. "It seems we are given
no alternative."

Charles smiled faintly. "But
if you should wish for further time to reflect ..."

Mr. Freeman placed his hand
on the scrupulous one's shoulder. "I shall tell her that I find her intended
even more admirable in adversity than in good fortune. And I think the
sooner you return to Lyme the better it will be." "You do me great kindness."

"In making my daughter so
happy, you do me an even greater one. Her letter is not all in such frivolous
terms." He took Charles by the arm and led him back into the room. "And
my dear Charles ..." this phrase gave Mr. Freeman a certain pleasure, "...
I do not think the necessity to regulate one's expenditure a little when
first married is altogether a bad thing. But should circumstances ... you
know what I mean."

"Most kind ..." "Let us say
no more."

Mr. Freeman took out his
keychain and opened a drawer of his desk and placed his daughter's letter
inside, as if it were some precious state document; or perhaps he knew
rather more about servants than most Victorian employers. As he relocked
the desk he looked up at Charles, who now had the disagreeable impression
that he had himself become an employee--a favored one, to be sure, but
somehow now in this commercial giant's disposal. Worse was to follow; perhaps,
after all, the gentleman had not alone determined Mr. Freeman's kindness.

"May I now, since the moment
is convenient, open my heart to you on another matter that concerns Ernestina
and yourself?"

Charles bowed in polite assent,
but Mr. Freeman seemed for a moment at a loss for words. He rather fussily
replaced his letter-knife in its appointed place, then went to the window
they had so recently left. Then he turned.

"My dear Charles, I count
myself a fortunate man in every respect. Except one." He addressed the
carpet. "I have no son." He stopped again, then gave his son-in-law a probing
look. "I understand that commerce must seem abhorrent to you. It is not
a gentleman's occupation."

"That is mere cant, sir.
You are yourself a living proof that it is so."

"Do you mean that? Or are
you perhaps but giving me another form of cant?"

The iron-gray eyes were suddenly
very direct. Charles was at a loss for a moment. He opened his hands. "I
see what any intelligent man must--the great utility of commerce, its essential
place in our nation's--"

"Ah yes. That is just what
every politician says. They have to, because the prosperity of our country
depends on it. But would you like it to be said of you that you were ...
in trade?"

"The possibility has never
arisen."

"But say it should arise?"

"You mean ... I..."

At last he realized what
his father-in-law was driving at; and seeing his shock, the father-in-law
hastily made way for the gentleman.

"Of course I don't mean that
you should bother yourself with the day-to-day affairs of my enterprise.
That is the duty of my superintendents, my clerks, and the rest. But my
business is prospering, Charles. Next year we shall open emporia in Bristol
and Birmingham. They are but the beginning. I cannot offer you a geographical
or political empire. But I am convinced that one day an empire of sorts
will come to Ernestina and yourself." Mr. Freeman began to walk up and
down. "When it seemed clear that your future duties lay in the administration
of your uncle's estate I said nothing. But you have energy, education,
great ability ..."

"But my ignorance of what
you so kindly suggest is ... well, very nearly total."

Mr. Freeman waved the objection
aside. "Matters like probity, the capacity to command respect, to judge
men shrewdly--all those are of far greater import. And I do not believe
you poor in such qualities."

"I'm not sure I know fully
what you are suggesting."

"I suggest nothing immediate.
In any case for the next year or two you have your marriage to think of.
You will not want outside cares and interests at such a time. But should
a day come when it would ... amuse you to know more of the great commerce
you will one day inherit through Ernestina, nothing would bring me ...
or my wife, may I add ... greater pleasure than to further that interest."

"The last thing I wish is
to appear ungrateful, but ... that is, it seems so disconsonant with my
natural proclivities, what small talents I have ..."

"I am suggesting no more
than a partnership. In practical terms, nothing more onerous to begin with
than an occasional visit to the office of management, a most general supervision
of what is going on. I think you would be surprised at the type of man
I now employ in the more responsible positions. One need be by no means
ashamed to know them."

"I assure you my hesitation
is in no way due to social considerations."

"Then it can only be caused
by your modesty. And there, my dear young man, you misjudge yourself. That
day I mentioned must come--I shall be no longer there. To be sure, you
may dispose of what I have spent my life building up. You may find good
managers to look after it for you. But I know what I am talking about.
A successful enterprise needs an active owner just as much as a good army
needs a general. Not all the good soldiers in the world will help unless
he is there to command the battle."

Charles felt himself, under
the first impact of this attractive comparison, like Jesus of Nazareth
tempted by Satan. He too had had his days in the wilderness to make the
proposition more tempting. But he was a gentleman; and gentlemen cannot
go into trade. He sought for a way of saying so; and failed. In a business
discussion indecision is a sign of weakness. Mr. Freeman seized his chance.

"You will never get me to
agree that we are all descended from monkeys. I find that notion blasphemous.
But I thought much on some of the things you said during our little disagreement.
I would have you repeat what you said, what was it, about the purpose of
this theory of evolution. A species must change ... ?"

"In order to survive. It
must adapt itself to changes in the environment."

"Just so. Now that I can
believe. I am twenty years older than you. Moreover, I have spent my life
in a situation where if one does not--and very smartly--change oneself
to meet the taste of the day, then one does not survive. One goes bankrupt.
Times are changing, you know. This is a great age of progress. And progress
is like a lively horse. Either one rides it, or it rides one. Heaven forbid
I should suggest that being a gentleman is an insufficient pursuit in life.
That it can never be. But this is an age of doing, great doing, Charles.
You may say these things do not concern you--are beneath you. But ask yourself
whether they ought to concern you. That is all I propose. You must reflect
on this. There is no need for a decision yet. No need at all." He paused.
"But you will not reject the idea out of hand?"

Charles did indeed by this
time feel like a badly stitched sample napkin, in all ways a victim of
evolution. Those old doubts about the futility of his existence were only
too easily reawakened. He guessed now what Mr. Freeman really thought of
him: he was an idler. And what he proposed for him: that he should earn
his wife's dowry. He would have liked to be discreetly cold, but there
was a warmth in Mr. Freeman's voice behind the vehemence, an assumption
of relationship. It was to Charles as if he had traveled all his life among
pleasant hills; and now came to a vast plain of tedium--and unlike the
more famous pilgrim, he saw only Duty and Humiliation down there below--most
certainly not Happiness or Progress.

He managed a look into those
waiting, and penetrating, commercial eyes.

"I confess myself somewhat
overwhelmed."

"I ask no more than that
you should give the matter thought."

"Most certainly. Of course.
Most serious thought."

Mr. Freeman went and opened
the door. He smiled. "I fear you have one more ordeal. Mrs. Freeman awaits
us, agog for all the latest tittle-tattle of Lyme."

A few moments later the two
men were moving down a wide corridor to the spacious landing that overlooked
the grand hall of the house. Little in it was not in the best of contemporary
taste. Yet as they descended the sweep of stairs towards the attendant
footman, Charles felt obscurely debased; a lion caged. He had, with an
acute unexpectedness, a poignant flash of love for Winsyatt, for its "wretched"
old paintings and furniture; its age, its security, its
savoir-vivre
.
The abstract idea of evolution was entrancing; but its practice seemed
as fraught with ostentatious vulgarity as the freshly gilded Corinthian
columns that framed the door on whose threshold he and his tormentor now
paused a second-- "Mr. Charles Smithson, madam"--before entering.
 
 

Sooner or later
I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age--why not?
I have neither hope nor trust;
May make my heart as a millstone,
set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and
die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.
--T
ennyson, Maud (1855)