The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (46 page)

Sam had been waiting for
that cue. He flicked a glance at his master's back as he refilled the gilt
breakfast cup; and made his announcement as he extended the cup on a small
silver tray to Charles's reaching fingers.

"Mr. Charles, I'm a-goin'
to hask for 'er 'and."

"Are you indeed!"

"Or I would, Mr. Charles,
if it weren't I didn't 'ave such hexcellent prospecks under your hemploy."

Charles supped his tea.

"Out with it, Sam. Stop talking
riddles."

"If I was merrid I'd 'ave
to live out, sir."

Charles's sharp look of instinctive
objection showed how little he had thought about the matter. He turned
and sat by his fire.

"Now, Sam, heaven forbid
that I should be an impediment to your marriage--but surely you're not
going to forsake me so soon before mine?"

"You mistake my hintention,
Mr. Charles. I was a-thinkin' of harterwards."

"We shall be in a much larger
establishment. I'm sure my wife would be happy to have Mary there with
her ... so what is the trouble?"

Sam took a deep breath.

"I've been thinkin' of goin'
into business, Mr. Charles. When you're settled, that is, Mr. Charles.
I "ope you know I should never leave you in the hower of need."

"Business! What business?"

"I've set my 'eart on 'aving
a little shop, Mr. Charles."

Charles placed the cup back
on the speedily proffered salver.

"But don't you ... I mean,
you know, some of the ready?"
 

"I 'ave made heekomonies,
Mr. Charles. And so's my Mary."

"Yes, yes, but there is rent
to pay and heavens above, man, goods to buy ... What sort of business?"

"Draper's and 'aberdasher's,
Mr. Charles."

Charles stared at Sam rather
as if the Cockney had decided to turn Buddhist. But he recalled one or
two little past incidents; that penchant for the genteelism; and the one
aspect of his present profession where Sam had never given cause for complaint
was in his care of clothes. Charles had indeed more than once (about ten
thousand times, to be exact) made fun of him for his personal vanity in
that direction.

"And you've put by enough
to--"

"Halas no, Mr. Charles. We'd
'ave to save very 'ard."

There was a pregnant silence.
Sam was busy with milk and sugar. Charles rubbed the side of his nose in
a rather Sam-like manner. He twigged. He took the third cup of tea.

"How much?"

"I know a shop as I'd like,
Mr. Charles. 'E wants an 'undred an' fifty pound for the goodwill and an
'undred for the stock. An' there's thirty pound rent to be found." He sized
Charles up, then went on, "It ain't I'm not very 'appy with you, Mr. Charles.
On'y a shop's what I halways fancied."

"And how much have you put
by?"

Sam hesitated.

"Thirty pound, sir."

Charles did not smile, but
went and stood at his bedroom window.

"How long has it taken you
to save that?"

"Three years, sir."

Ten pounds a year may not
seem much; but it was a third of three years' wages, as Charles rapidly
calculated; and made proportionally a much better showing in the thrift
line than Charles himself could have offered. He glanced back at Sam, who
stood meekly waiting--but waiting for what?--by the side table with the
tea things. In the silence that followed Charles entered upon his first
fatal mistake, which was to give Sam his sincere opinion of the project.
Perhaps it was in a very small way a bluff, a pretending not even faintly
to suspect the whiff of for-services-rendered in Sam's approach; but it
was far more an assumption of the ancient responsibility--and not quite
synonymous with sublime arrogance--of the infallible master for the fallible
underling.

"I warn you, Sam, once you
take ideas above your station you will have nothing but unhappiness. You'll
be miserable without a shop. And doubly miserable with it." Sam's head
sunk a fraction lower. "And besides, Sam, I'm used to you ... fond of you.
I'm damned if I want to lose you."

"I know, Mr. Charles. Your
feelings is 'ighly reproskitated. With respeck, sir."

"Well then. We're happy with
each other. Let us continue that way."

Sam bowed his head and turned
to pick up the tea things. His disappointment was flagrant; he was Hope
Abandoned, Life Cut Short, Virtue Unrewarded, and a dozen other moping
statues.

"Now, Sam spare me the whipped
dog. If you marry this girl then of course you must have a married man's
wages. And something to set you up. I shall do handsomely by you, rest
assured of that." "That's very kind hindeed of you, Mr. Charles." But the
voice was sepulchral, those statues in no way demolished. Charles saw himself
a moment from Sam's eyes. He had been seen in their years together to spend
a great deal of money; Sam must know he had a great deal more money coming
to him on his marriage; and he might not unnaturally--that is, with innocent
motive--have come to believe that two or three hundred pounds was not much
to ask for.

"Sam, you must not think
me ungenerous. The fact is ... well, the reason I went to Winsyatt is that
... well, Sir Robert is going to get married."

"No, sir! Sir Robert! Never!"

Sam's surprise makes one
suspect that his real ambition should have been in the theater. He did
everything but drop the tray that he was carrying; but this was of course
ante Stanislavski. Charles faced the window and went on.

"Which means, Sam, that at
a time when I have already considerable expense to meet I haven't much
to spare."

"I 'ad no idea, Mr. Charles.
Why ... I can't 'ardly believe-- at 'is hage!"

Charles hastily stopped the
impending commiseration. "We must wish Sir Robert every happiness. But
there it is. It will soon all be public knowledge. However, Sam--you will
say nothing of this."

"Oh Mr. Charles--you knows
I knows 'ow to keep a secret."

Charles did give a sharp
look round at Sam then, but his servant's eyes were modestly down again.
Charles wished desperately that he could see them. But they remained averted
from his keen gaze; and drove him into his second fatal mistake--for Sam's
despair had come far less from being rebuffed than from suspecting his
master had no guilty secret upon which he could be levered.

"Sam, I ... that is, when
I'm married, circumstances will be easier ... I don't wish to dash your
hopes completely--let me think on it."

In Sam's heart a little flame
of exultation leaped into life. He had done it; a lever existed.

"Mr. Charles, sir, I wish
I 'adn't spoke. I 'ad no idea."

"No, no. I am glad you brought
this up. I will perhaps ask Mr. Freeman's advice if I find an opportunity.
No doubt he knows what is to be said for such a venture."

"Pure gold, Mr. Charles,
pure gold--that's 'ow I'd treat any words of hadvice from that gentleman's
mouth."

With this hyperbole Sam left.
Charles stared at the closed door. He began to wonder if there wasn't something
of a Uriah Heep beginning to erupt on the surface of Sam's personality;
a certain duplicity. He had always aped the gentleman in his clothes and
manners; and now there was vaguely something else about the spurious gentleman
he was aping. It was such an age of change! So many orders beginning to
melt and dissolve.

He remained staring for several
moments--but then bah! What would granting Sam his wish matter with Ernestina's
money in the bank? He turned to his escritoire and unlocked a drawer. From
it he drew a pocketbook and scribbled something: no doubt a reminder to
speak to Mr. Freeman.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Sam
was reading the contents of the two telegrams. One was to the White Lion,
informing the landlord of their return. The other read:

MISS FREEMAN AT
MRS. TRANTER'S, BROAD STREET, LYME REGIS. MY IMMEDIATE RETURN HAS BEEN
COMMANDED AND WILL BE MOST HAPPILY OBEYED BY YOUR MOST AFFECTIONATE CHARLES
SMITHSON.

This was not the first private
correspondence that had been under Sam's eyes that morning. The envelope
of the second letter he had brought to Charles had been gummed but not
sealed. A little steam does wonders; and Sam had had a whole morning in
which to find himself alone for a minute in that kitchen. Perhaps you have
begun to agree with Charles about Sam. He is not revealing himself the
most honest of men, that must be said. But the thought of marriage does
strange things. It makes the intending partners suspect an inequality in
things; it makes them wish they had more to give to each other; it kills
the insouciance of youth; its responsibilities isolate, and the more altruistic
aspects of the social contract are dimmed. It is easier, in short, to be
dishonest for two than for one. Sam did not think of his procedure as dishonest;
he called it "playing your cards right." In simple terms it meant now that
the marriage with
Ernestina must go through;
only from her dowry could he hope for his two hundred and fifty pounds;
if more spooning between the master and the wicked woman of Lyme were to
take place, it must take place under the cardplayer's sharp nose--and might
not be altogether a bad thing, since the more guilt Charles had the surer
touch he became; but if it went too far ... Sam sucked his lower lip and
frowned. It was no wonder he was beginning to feel rather above his station;
matchmakers always have.
 
 

Yet I thought I
saw her stand,
A shadow there at my feet,
High over the shadowy land.
--T
ennyson, Maud (1855)

It was easy to decide that
the implicit invitation must be ignored: he must never see her again. But
perhaps Sarah the prostitute had reminded Charles of the uniqueness of
Sarah the outcast: that total absence of finer feeling in the one only
affirmed its astonishing survival in the other. How shrewd and sensitive
she was, in her strange way . . . some of those things she had said after
her confession--they haunted one.

He thought a great deal--if
recollection is thought--about Sarah on the long journey down to the West.
He could not but feel that to have committed her to an institution, however
enlightened, would have been a betrayal. I say "her," but the pronoun is
one of the most terrifying masks man has invented; what came to Charles
was not a pronoun, but eyes, looks, the line of the hair over a temple,
a nimble step, a sleeping face. All this was not daydreaming, of course;
but earnest consideration of a moral problem and caused
by an augustly pure solicitude
for the unfortunate woman's future welfare.

The train drew into Exeter.
Sam appeared, within a brief pause of its final stopping whistle, at the
window of the compartment; he of course had traveled in the third class.

"Are we stayin' the night,
Mr. Charles?"

"No. A carriage. A four-wheeler.
It looks like rain."

Sam had bet himself a thousand
pounds that they would stay in Exeter. But he obeyed without hesitation,
just as his master had, at the sight of Sam's face, decided--and somewhere
deep in him a decision had remained to take-- without hesitation on his
course of action. It was really Sam that had determined it: Charles could
not face any more prevarication.