“The service was hagreeable, Mr. Charles?”
“I… I lost my way, Sam. And I’ve got damnably wet.” Which was not at all the adjective to apply to Sam’s eyes. “Fill a tub for me, there’s a good fellow. I’ll sup in my rooms.”
“Yes, Mr. Charles.”
Some fifteen minutes later you might have seen Charles stark naked and engaged in an unaccustomed occupation: that of laundering. He had his bloodstained garments pressed against the side of the vast hip bath that had been filled for him and was assiduously rubbing them with a piece of soap. He felt foolish, and did not make a very good job of it. When Sam came, some time later, with the supper tray, the garments lay as if thrown negligently half in and half out of the bath. Sam collected them up without remark; and for once Charles was grateful for his notorious carelessness in such matters.
Having eaten his supper, he opened his writing case.
My dearest,
One half of me is inexpressibly glad to address you thus, while the other wonders how he can so speak of a being he yet but scarcely understands. Something in you I would fain say I know profoundly: and something else I am as ignorant of as when I first saw you. I say this not to excuse, but to explain my behavior this evening. I cannot excuse it; yet I must believe that there was one way in which it may be termed fortunate, since it prompted a searching of my conscience that was long overdue. I shall not go into all the circumstance. But I am resolved, my sweet and mysterious Sarah, that what now binds us shall bind us forevermore. I am but too well aware that I have no right to see you again, let alone to ask to know you fully, in my present situation. My first necessity is therefore to terminate my engagement.
A premonition that it was folly to enter into that arrangement has long been with me—before ever you came into my life. I implore you, therefore, not to feel guilt in that respect. What is to blame is a blindness in myself as to my own real nature. Had I been ten years younger, had I not seen so much in my age and my society with which I am not in sympathy, I have no doubt I could have been happy with Miss Freeman. My mistake was to forget that I am thirty-two, not twenty-two.
I therefore go early tomorrow on the most painful journey to Lyme. You will appreciate that to conclude its purpose is the predominant thought in my mind at this moment. But my duty in that respect done, my thoughts shall be only of you—nay, of our future. What strange fate brought me to you I do not know, but, God willing, nothing shall take you from me unless it be yourself that wishes it so. Let me say no more now, my sweet enigma, than that you will have to provide far stronger proofs and arguments than you have hitherto adduced. I cannot believe you will attempt to do so. Your heart knows I am yours and that I would call you mine.
Need I assure you, my dearest Sarah, that my intentions are henceforth of the most honorable? There are a thousand things I wish to ask you, a thousand attentions to pay you, a thousand pleasures to give you. But always with every regard to whatever propriety your delicacy insists on.
I am he who will know no peace, no happiness until he holds you in his arms again.
C.S.
P.S. On re-reading what I have written I perceive a formality my heart does not intend. Forgive it. You are both so close and yet a stranger—I know not how to phrase what I really feel.
Your fondest C.
This anabatic epistle was not arrived at until after several drafts. It had by then grown late, and Charles changed his mind about its immediate dispatch. She, by now, would have wept herself to sleep; he would let her suffer one more black night; but she should wake to joy. He re-read the letter several times; it had a little aftermath of the tone he had used, only a day or two before, in letters from London to Ernestina; but those letters had been agony to write, mere concessions to convention, which is why he had added that postscript. He still felt, as he had told Sarah, a stranger to himself; but now it was with a kind of awed pleasure that he stared at his face in the mirror. He felt a great courage in himself, both present and future—and a uniqueness, a having done something unparalleled. And he had his wish: he was off on a journey again, a journey made doubly delicious by its promised companion. He tried to imagine unknown Sarahs—a Sarah laughing, Sarah singing, Sarah dancing. They were hard to imagine, and yet not impossible… he remembered that smile when they had been so nearly discovered by Sam and Mary. It had been a clairvoyant smile, a seeing into the future. And that time he had raised her from her knees—with what infinite and long pleasure he would now do that in their life together!
If these were the thorns and the stones that threatened about him, he could bear them. He did think a moment of one small thorn: Sam. But Sam was like all servants, dismissable.
And summonable. Summoned he was, at a surprisingly early hour that next morning. He found Charles in his dressing gown, with a sealed letter and packet in his hands.
“Sam, I wish you to take these to the address on the envelope. You will wait ten minutes to see if there is an answer. If there is none—I expect none, but wait just in case—if there is none, you are to come straight back here. And hire a fast carriage. We go to Lyme.” He added, “But no baggage. We return here tonight.”
“Tonight, Mr. Charles! But I thought we was—“ “Never mind what you thought. Just do as I say.” Sam put on his footman face, and withdrew. As he went slowly downstairs it became clear to him that his position was intolerable. How could he fight a battle without information? With so many conflicting rumors as to the disposition of the enemy forces? He stared at the envelope in his hand. Its destination was flagrant: Miss Woodruff, at Endicott’s Family Hotel. And only one day in Lyme? With portmanteaux to wait here! He turned the small packet over, pressed the envelope.
It seemed fat, three pages at least. He glanced round surreptitously, then examined the seal. Sam cursed the man who invented wax.
And now he stands again before Charles, who has dressed.
“Well?”
“No answer, Mr. Charles.”
Charles could not quite control his face. He turned away.
“And the carriage?”
“Ready and waitin’, sir.”
“Very well. I shall be down shortly.”
Sam withdrew. The door had no sooner closed when Charles raised his hands to his head, then threw them apart, as if to an audience, an actor accepting applause, a smile of gratitude on his lips. For he had, upon his ninety-ninth re-reading of his letter that previous night, added a second postscript. It concerned that brooch we have already seen in Ernestina’s hands. Charles begged Sarah to accept it; and by way of a sign, to allow that her acceptance of it meant that she accepted his apologies for his conduct. This second postscript had ended: “The bearer will wait till you have read this. If he should bring the contents of the packet back… but I know you cannot be so cruel.”
Yet the poor man had been in agony during Sam’s absence.
And here Sam is again, volubly talking in a low voice, with frequent agonized looks. The scene is in the shadow of a lilac bush, which grows outside the kitchen door in Aunt Tranter’s garden and provides a kind of screen from the garden proper. The afternoon sun slants through the branches and first white buds. The listener is Mary, with her cheeks flushed and her hand almost constantly covering her mouth.
“’Tisn’t possible, ‘tisn’t possible.”
“It’s ‘is uncle. It’s turned ‘is “ead.”
“But young mistress—oh, what’ll ‘er do now, Sam?”
And both their eyes traveled up with dread, as if they thought to hear a scream or see a falling body, to the windows through the branches above.
“And bus, Mary. What’ll us do?”
“Oh Sam—‘tisn’t fair…”
“I love yer, Mary.”
“Oh Sam…”
“’Tweren’t just bein’ wicked. I’d as soon die as lose yer now.”
“Oh what’ll us do?”
“Don’t cry, my darling, don’t cry. I’ve ‘ad enough of hupstairs. They’re no
better’n us,” He gripped her by the arms. “If ‘is lordship thinks like master, like servant, ‘e’s mistook, Mary. If it’s you or ‘im, it’s you.” He stiffened, like a soldier about to charge. “I’ll leave ‘is hemploy.”
“Sam!”
“I will. I’ll ‘aul coals. Hanything!”
“But your money—‘e woan’ give’ee that no more now!”
“’E ain’t got it to give.” His bitterness looked at her dismay. But then he smiled and reached out his hands. “But shall I tell yer someone who ‘as? If you and me play our cards right?”
50
think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.
Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
They had arrived in Lyme just before two. For a few minutes Charles took possession of the room he had reserved. Again he paced up and down, but now in a nervous agony, steeling himself for the interview ahead. The existentialist terror invaded him again; perhaps he had known it would and so burned his boats by sending that letter to Sarah. He rehearsed again the thousand phrases he had invented on the journey from Exeter; but they fled through his mind like October leaves. He took a deep breath, then his hat, and went out.
Mary, with a broad grin as soon as she saw him, opened the door. He practiced his gravity on her.
“Good afternoon. Is Miss Ernestina at home?” But before she could answer Ernestina herself appeared at the end of the hall. She had a little smile.
“No. My duenna is out to lunch. But you may come in.”
She disappeared back into the sitting room. Charles gave his hat to Mary, set his lapels, wished he were dead, then went down the hall and into his ordeal. Ernestina, in sunlight, by a window overlooking the garden, turned gaily.
“I received a letter from Papa this… Charles! Charles? Is something wrong?”
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 anythi
ng 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.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman Page 36
