The French Lieutenant's Woman (26 page)

"And you have concealed it from everyone but myself?"

She waited a long time before answering. "Yes. For the reason
I said."

"To punish yourself?"

"To be what I must be. An outcast."

Charles remembered Dr. Grogan's commonsensical reaction to his own
concern for her. "But my dear Miss Woodruff, if every woman
who'd been deceived by some unscrupulous member of my sex were to
behave as you have--I fear the country would be full of outcasts."

"It is."

"Now come, that's absurd."

"Outcasts who are afraid to seem so."

He stared at her back; and recalled something else that Dr. Grogan
had said--about patients who refused to take medicine. But he
determined to make one more try. He leaned forward, his hands
clasped. "I can very well understand how unhappy some
circumstances must seem to a person of education and intelligence.
But should not those very qualities enable one to triumph--"

Now she stood, abruptly, and moved towards the edge of the bluff.
Charles hastily followed and stood beside her, ready to seize her
arm--for he saw his uninspired words of counsel had had the very
contrary effect to that intended. She stared out to sea, and
something in the set of her face suggested to him that she felt she
had made a mistake; that he was trite, a mere mouther of convention.
There was something male about her there. Charles felt himself an old
woman; and did not like the feeling.

"Forgive me. I ask too much, perhaps. But I meant well."

She lowered her head, acknowledging the implicit apology; but then
resumed her stare out to sea. They were now more exposed, visible to
anyone in the trees below.

"And please step back a little. It is not safe here."

She turned and looked at him then. There was once again a kind of
penetration of his real motive that was disconcertingly naked. We can
sometimes recognize the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but
never those of a century to come. A moment, then she walked past him
back to the thorn. He stood in the center of the little arena.

"What you have told me does but confirm my previous
sentiment. You must leave Lyme."

"If I leave here I leave my shame. Then I am lost."

She reached up and touched a branch of the hawthorn. He could not
be sure, but she seemed deliberately to press her forefinger down; a
second later she was staring at a crimson drop of blood. She looked
at it a moment, then took a handkerchief from her pocket and
surreptitiously dabbed the blood away.

He left a silence, then sprang it on her.

"Why did you refuse Dr. Grogan's help last summer?" Her
eyes flashed round at him accusingly, but he was ready for that
reaction. "Yes--I asked him his opinion. You cannot deny that I
had a right to."

She turned away again. "Yes. You had right."

"Then you must answer me."

"Because I did not choose to go to him for help. I mean
nothing against him. I know he wished to help."

"And was not his advice the same as mine?"

"Yes."

"Then with respect I must remind you of your promise to me."

She did not answer. But that was an answer. Charles went some
steps closer to where she stood staring into the thorn branches.

"Miss Woodruff?"

"Now you know the truth--can you still tender that advice?"

"Most certainly."

"Then you forgive me my sin?"

This brought up Charles a little short. "You put far too high
a value on my forgiveness. The essential is that you forgive yourself
your sin. And you can never do that here."

"You did not answer my question, Mr. Smithson."

"Heaven forbid I should pronounce on what only Our Maker can
decide. But I am convinced, we are all convinced that you have done
sufficient penance. You are forgiven."

"And may be forgotten."

The dry finality of her voice puzzled him a moment. Then he
smiled. "If you mean by that that your friends here intend no
practical assistance--"

"I did not mean that. I know they mean kindly. But I am like
this thorn tree, Mr. Smithson. No one reproaches it for growing here
in this solitude. It is when it walks down Broad Street that it
offends society."

He made a little puff of protest. "But my dear Miss Woodruff,
you cannot tell me it is your duty to offend society." He added,
"If that is what I am to infer."

She half turned. "But is it not that society wishes to remove
me to another solitude?"

"What you question now is the justice of existence."

"And that is forbidden?"

"Not forbidden. But fruitless."

She shook her head. "There are fruit. Though bitter."

But it was said without contradiction, with a deep sadness, almost
to herself. Charles was overcome, as by a backwash from her wave of
confession, by a sense of waste. He perceived that her directness of
look was matched by a directness of thought and language--that what
had on occasion struck him before as a presumption of intellectual
equality (therefore a suspect resentment against man) was less an
equality than a proximity, a proximity like a nakedness, an intimacy
of thought and feeling hitherto unimaginable to him in the context of
a relationship with a woman.

He did not think this subjectively, but objectively: here, if only
some free man had the wit to see it, is a remarkable woman. The
feeling was not of male envy: but very much of human loss. Abruptly
he reached out his hand and touched her shoulder in a gesture of
comfort; and as quickly turned away. There was a silence.

As if she sensed his frustration, she spoke. "You think then
that I should leave?"

At once he felt released and turned eagerly back to her.

"I beg you to. New surroundings, new faces ... and have no
worries as regards the practical considerations. We await only your
decision to interest ourselves on your behalf."

"May I have a day or two to reflect?"

"If it so be you feel it necessary." He took his chance;
and grasped the normality she made so elusive. "And I propose
that we now put the matter under Mrs. Tranter's auspices. If you will
permit, I will see to it that her purse is provided for any needs you
may have."

Her head bowed; she seemed near tears again. She murmured, "I
don't deserve such kindness. I..."

"Say no more. I cannot think of money better spent."

A delicate tinge of triumph was running through Charles. It had
been as Grogan prophesied. Confession had brought cure--or at least a
clear glimpse of it. He turned to pick up his ashplant by the block
of flint. "I must come to Mrs. Tranter's?"

"Excellent. There will of course be no necessity to speak of
our meetings."

"I shall say nothing."

He saw the scene already; his polite but not too interested
surprise, followed by his disinterested insistence that any pecuniary
assistance desirable should be to his charge. Ernestina might very
well tease him about it--but that would ease his conscience. He
smiled at Sarah.

"You have shared your secret. I think you will find it to be
an unburdening in many other ways. You have very considerable natural
advantages. You have nothing to fear from life. A day will come when
these recent unhappy years may seem no more than that cloud-stain
over there upon Chesil Bank. You shall stand in sunlight--and smile
at your own past sorrows." He thought he detected a kind of
light behind the doubt in her eyes; for a moment she was like a
child, both reluctant and yet willing to be cozened--or
homilized--out of tears. His smile deepened. He added lightly, "And
now had we better not descend?" She seemed as if she would like
to say something, no doubt reaffirm her gratitude, but his stance of
brisk waiting made her, after one last lingering look into his eyes,
move past him.

She led the way down as neat-footedly as she had led it up.
Looking down on her back, he felt tinges of regret. Not to see her
thus again ... regret and relief. A remarkable young woman. He would
not forget her; and it seemed some consolation that he would not be
allowed to. Aunt Tranter would be his future spy. They came to the
base of the lower cliff, and went through the first tunnel of ivy,
over the clearing, and into the second green corridor--and then!

There came from far below, from the main path through the
Undercliff, the sound of a stifled peal of laughter. Its effect was
strange--as if some wood spirit had been watching their clandestine
meeting and could now no longer bottle up her--for the laugh was
unmistakably female--mirth at their foolish confidence in being
unseen.

Charles and Sarah stopped as of one accord. Charles's growing
relief was instantaneously converted into a shocked alarm. But the
screen of ivy was dense, the laugh had come from two or three hundred
yards away; they could not have been seen. Unless as they came down
the slope ... a moment, then she swiftly raised a finger to her lips,
indicated that he should not move, and then herself stole along to
the end of the tunnel. Charles watched her crane forward and stare
cautiously down towards the path. Then her face turned sharply back
to him. She beckoned--he was to go to her, but with the utmost
quietness; and simultaneously that laugh came again. It was quieter
this time, yet closer. Whoever had been on the path had left it and
was climbing up through the ash trees toward them.

Charles trod cautiously towards Sarah, making sure of each place
where he had to put his wretchedly unstealthy boots. He felt himself
flushing, most hideously embarrassed. No explanation could hold water
for a moment. However he was seen with Sarah, it must be in
flagrante
delicto
.

He came to where she stood, and where the ivy was fortunately at
its thickest. She had turned away from the interlopers and stood with
her back against a tree trunk, her eyes cast down as if in mute guilt
for having brought them both to this pass. Charles looked through the
leaves and down the slope of the ash grove--and his blood froze.
Coming up towards them, as if seeking their same cover, were Sam and
Mary. Sam had his arm round the girl's shoulders. He carried his hat,
and she her bonnet; she wore the green walking dress given her by
Ernestina--indeed, the last time Charles had seen it it had been on
Ernestina--and her head lay back a little against Sam's cheek. They
were young lovers as plain as the ashes were old trees; as greenly
erotic as the April plants they trod on. Charles drew back a little
but kept them in view. As he watched Sam drew the girl's face round
and kissed her. Her arm came up and they embraced; and then holding
hands, stood shyly apart a little. Sam led the girl to where a bank
of grass had managed to establish itself between the trees. Mary sat
and lay back, and Sam leaned beside her, looking down at her; then he
touched her hair aside from her cheeks and bent and kissed her
tenderly on the eyes.

Charles felt pierced with a new embarrassment: he glanced at
Sarah, to see if she knew who the intruders were. But she stared at
the hart's-tongue ferns at her feet, as if they were merely
sheltering from some shower of rain. Two minutes, then three passed.
Embarrassment gave way to a degree of relief--it was clear that the
two servants were far more interested in exploring each other than
their surroundings. He glanced again at Sarah. Now she too was
watching, from round her tree trunk. She turned back, her eyes
cast
down. But then without warning she looked up at him.

A moment.

Then she did something as strange, as shocking, as if she had
thrown off her clothes.

She smiled.

It was a smile so complex that Charles could at the first moment
only stare at it incredulously. It was so strangely timed! He felt
she had almost been waiting for such a moment to unleash it upon
him--this revelation of her humor, that her sadness was not total.
And in those wide eyes, so somber, sad and direct, was revealed an
irony, a new dimension of herself--one little Paul and Virginia would
have been quite familiar with in days gone by, but never till now
bestowed on Lyme.

Where are your pretensions now, those eyes and gently curving lips
seemed to say; where is your birth, your science, your etiquette,
your social order? More than that, it was not a smile one could
stiffen or frown at; it could only be met with a smile in return, for
it excused Sam and Mary, it excused all; and in some way too subtle
for analysis, undermined all that had passed between Charles and
herself till then. It lay claim to a far profounder understanding,
acknowledgment of that awkward equality melting into proximity than
had been consciously admitted. Indeed, Charles did not consciously
smile in return; he found himself smiling; only with his eyes, but
smiling. And excited, in some way too obscure and general to be
called sexual, to the very roots of his being; like a man who at last
comes, at the end of a long high wall, to the sought-for door ... but
only to find it locked.

For several moments they stood, the woman who was the door, the
man without the key; and then she lowered her eyes again. The smile
died. A long silence hung between them. Charles saw the truth: he
really did stand with one foot over the precipice. For a moment he
thought he would, he must plunge. He knew if he reached out his arm
she would meet with no resistance . . . only a passionate reciprocity
of feeling. The red in his cheeks deepened, and at last he whispered.

"We must never meet alone again."

She did not raise her head, but gave the smallest nod of assent;
and then with an almost sullen movement she turned away from him, so
that he could not see her face. He looked again through the leaves.
Sam's head and shoulders were bent over the invisible Mary. Long
moments passed, but Charles remained watching, his mind still
whirling down that precipice, hardly aware that he was spying, yet
infected, as each moment passed, with more of the very poison he was
trying to repel.