The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (53 page)

And she came towards him.
He could not look at her, but stared at the carpet. She stopped. Her frightened
and his grave, embarrassed eyes met.

"Charles?"

"I beg you to sit down."

"But what has happened?"

"That is ... why I have come."

"But why do you look at me
like that?"

"Because I do not know how
to begin to say what I must."

Still looking at him, she
felt behind her and sat on a chair by the window. Still he was silent.
She touched a letter on the table beside her.

"Papa ..." but his quick
look made her give up her sentence.

"He was kindness itself .
. . but I did not tell him the truth."

"The truth--what truth?"

"That I have, after many
hours of the deepest, the most painful consideration, come to the conclusion
that I am not worthy of you."

Her face went white. He thought
for a moment she would faint and stepped forward to catch her, but she
slowly reached a hand to her left arm, as if to feel she was awake.

"Charles ... you are joking."

"To my eternal shame ...
I am not joking."

"You are not worthy of me?"

"Totally unworthy."

"And you ... oh, but this
is some nightmare." She looked up at him with incredulous eyes, then smiled
timidly. "You forget your telegram. You are joking."

"How little you know me if
you think I could ever joke on such a matter."

"But... but... your telegram!"

"Was sent before my decision."

Only then, as he lowered
his eyes, did she begin to accept the truth. He had already foreseen that
it must be the crucial moment. If she fainted, became hysterical ... he
did not know; but he abhorred pain and it would not be too late to recant,
to tell all, to throw himself on her mercy. But though Ernestina's eyes
closed a long moment, and a kind of shiver seemed to pass through her,
she did not faint. She was her father's daughter; she may have wished she
might faint; but such a gross betrayal of ...

"Then kindly explain what
you mean."

A momentary relief came to
him. She was hurt, but not mortally.

"That I cannot do in one
sentence."

She stared with a kind of
bitter primness at her hands. "Then use several. I shall not interrupt."

"I have always had, and I
continue to have, the greatest respect and affection for you. I have never
doubted for a moment that you would make an admirable wife to any man fortunate
enough to gain your love. But I have also always been shamefully aware
that a part of my regard for you was ignoble. I refer to the fortune that
you bring--and the fact that you are an only child. Deep in myself, Ernestina,
I have always felt that my life has been without purpose, without achievement.
No, pray hear me out. When I realized last winter that an offer of marriage
might be favorably entertained by you, I was tempted by Satan. I saw an
opportunity, by a brilliant marriage, to reestablish my faith in myself.
I beg you not to think that I proceeded only by a cold-blooded calculation.
I liked you very much. I sincerely believed that that liking would grow
into love."

Slowly her head had risen.
She stared at him, but seemed hardly to see him.

"I cannot believe it is you
I hear speaking. It is some impostor, some cruel, some heartless . .."

"I know this must come as
a most grievous shock."

"Shock!" Her expression was
outraged. "When you can stand so cold and collected--and tell me you
have never loved me!"

She had raised her voice
and he went to one of the windows that was opened and closed it. Standing
closer to her bowed head, he spoke as gently as he could without losing
his distance.

"I am not seeking for excuses.
I am seeking simply to explain that my crime was not a calculated one.
If it were, how could I do what I am doing now? My one desire is to make
you understand that I am not a deceiver of anyone but myself. Call me what
else you will--weak, selfish . .. what you will--but not callous."

She drew in a little shuddery
breath.

"And what brought about this
great discovery?"

"My realization, whose heinousness
I cannot shirk, that I was disappointed when your father did not end our
engagement for me." She gave him a terrible look. "I am trying to be honest.
He was not only most generous in the matter of my changed circumstances.
He proposed that I should one day become his partner in business."

Her face flashed up again.
"I knew it, I knew it. It is because you are marrying into trade. Am I
not right?" He turned to the window. "I had fully accepted that. In any
case--to feel ashamed of your father would be the grossest snobbery."

"Saying things doesn't make
one any the less guilty of them."

"If you think I viewed his
new proposal with horror, you are quite right. But the horror was at my
own ineligibility for what was intended--certainly not at the proposal
itself. Now please let me finish my ... explanation."

"It is making my heart break."

He turned away to the window.

"Let us try to cling to that
respect we have always had for one another. You must not think I have considered
only myself in all this. What haunts me is the injustice I should be doing
you--and to your father--by marrying you without that love you deserve.
If you and I were different people-- but we are not, we know by a look,
a word, whether our love is returned--"

She hissed. "We thought we
knew."

"My dear Ernestina, it is
like faith in Christianity. One can pretend to have it. But the pretense
will finally out. I am convinced, if you search your heart, that faint
doubts must have already crossed it. No doubt you stifled them, you said,
he is--"

She covered her ears, then
slowly drew her fingers down over her face. There was a silence. Then she
said, "May I speak now?"

"Of course."

"I know to you I have never
been anything more than a pretty little ... article of drawing-room furniture.
I know I am innocent. I know I am spoiled. I know I am not unusual. I am
not a Helen of Troy or a Cleopatra. I know I say things that sometimes
grate on your ears, I bore you about domestic arrangements, I hurt you
when I make fun of your fossils. Perhaps I am just a child. But under your
love and protection ... and your education ... I believed I should become
better. I should learn to please you, I should learn to make you love me
for what I had become. You may not know it, you cannot know it, but that
is why I was first attracted to you. You do know that I had been . . .
dangled before a hundred other men. They were not all fortune hunters and
nonentities. I did not choose you because I was so innocent I could not
make comparisons. But because you seemed more generous, wiser, more experienced.
I remember--I will fetch down my diary if you do not believe me--that I
wrote, soon after we became engaged, that you have little faith in yourself.
I have felt that. You believe yourself a failure, you think yourself despised,
I know not what ... but that is what I wished to make my real bridal present
to you. Faith in yourself." There was a long silence. She stayed with lowered
head.

He spoke in a low voice.
"You remind me of how much I lose. Alas, I know myself too well. One can't
resurrect what was never there."

"And that is all what I say
means to you?"

"It means a great, a very
great deal to me."

He was silent, though she
plainly expected him to say more. He had not expected this containment.
He was touched, and ashamed, by what she had said; and that he could not
show either sentiment was what made him silent. Her voice was very soft
and downward.

"In view of what I have said
can you not at least ..." but she could not find the words.

"Reconsider my decision?"

She must have heard something
in his tone that he had not meant to be there, for she suddenly looked
at him with a passionate appeal. Her eyes were wet with suppressed tears,
her small face white and pitifully struggling to keep some semblance of
calm. He felt it like a knife: how deeply he had wounded. "Charles, I beg
you, I beg you to wait a little. It is true, I am ignorant, I do not know
what you want of me ... if you would tell me where I have failed ... how
you would wish me to be ... I will do anything, anything, because I would
abandon anything to make you happy."

"You must not speak like
that."

"I must--I can't help it--only
yesterday that telegram, I wept, I have kissed it a hundred times, you
must not think that because I tease I do not have deeper feelings. I would
. . ." but her voice trailed away, as an acrid intuition burst upon her.
She threw him a fierce little look. "You are lying. Something has happened
since you sent it."

He moved to the fireplace,
and stood with his back to her. She began to sob. And that he found unendurable.
He at last looked round at her, expecting to see her with her head bowed;
but she was weeping openly, with her eyes on him; and as she saw him look,
she made a motion, like some terrified,
lost child, with her hands
towards him, half rose, took a single step, and then fell to her knees.
There came to

Charles then a sharp revulsion--not
against her, but against the situation: his half-truths, his hiding of
the essential. Perhaps the closest analogy is to what a surgeon sometimes
feels before a particularly terrible battle or accident casualty; a savage
determination--for what else can be done?--to get on with the operation.
To tell the truth. He waited until a moment came without sobs.

"I wished to spare you. But
yes--something has happened."

Very slowly she got to her
feet and raised her hands to her cheeks, never for a moment quitting him
with her eyes.

"Who?"

"You do not know her. Her
name is unimportant."

"And she ... you ..."

He looked away.

"I have known her many years.
I thought the attachment was broken. I discovered in London ... that it
is
not."

"You love her?"

"Love? I don't know . . .
whatever it is that makes it impossible to offer one's heart freely to
another."

"Why did you not tell me
this at the beginning?"

There was a long pause. He
could not bear her eyes, which seemed to penetrate every lie he told. He
muttered, "I hoped to spare you the pain of it."

"Or yourself the shame of
it? You . . . you are a monster!"

She fell back into her chair,
staring at him with dilated eyes. Then she flung her face into her hands.
He let her weep, and stared fiercely at a china sheep on the mantelpiece;
and never till the day he died saw a china sheep again without a hot flush
of self-disgust. When at last she spoke, it was with such force that he
flinched.

"If I do not kill myself,
shame will!"

"I am not worth a moment's
regret. You will meet other men ... not broken by life. Honorable men,
who will ..." he halted, then burst out, "By all you hold sacred, promise
never to say that again!"

She stared fiercely at him.
"Did you think I should pardon you?" He mutely shook his head. "My parents,
my friends-- what am I to tell them? That Mr. Charles Smithson has decided
after all that his mistress is more important than his honor, his promise,
his ..."

There was the sound of torn
paper. Without looking round he knew that she had vented her anger on her
father's letter.

"I believed her gone forever
from my life. Extraordinary circumstances ..."

A silence: as if she considered
whether she could throw vitriol at him. Her voice was suddenly cold and
venomous.

"You have broken your promise.
There is a remedy for members of my sex."

"You have every right to
bring such an action. I could only plead guilty."

"The world shall know you
for what you are. That is all I care about."