The French Lieutenant's Woman (48 page)

45

And ah for a
man to arise in me,
That
the man I am may cease to be!
--
Tennyson,
Maud (1855)

And now, having brought
this fiction to a thoroughly traditional ending, I had better explain
that although all I have described in the last two chapters happened,
it did not happen quite in the way you may have been led to believe.

I said earlier that we
are all poets, though not many of us write poetry; and so are we all
novelists, that is,we have a habit of writing fictional futures for
ourselves, although perhaps today we incline more to put ourselves
into a film. We screen in our minds hypotheses about how we might
behave, about what might happen to us; and these novelistic or
cinematic hypotheses often have very much more effect on how
weactually do behave, when the real future becomes the present, than
we generally allow. Charles was no exception; and the last few pages
you have read are not what happened, but what he spent the hours
between London and Exeter imagining might happen. To be sure he did
not think in quite the detailed and coherent narrative manner I have
employed; nor would I swear that he followed Mrs. Poulteney's
postmortal career in quite such interesting detail. But he certainly
wished her to the Devil, so it comes to almost the same thing.

Above all he felt
himself coming to the end of a story; and to an end he did not like.
If you noticed in those last two chapters an abruptness, a lack of
consonance, a betrayal of Charles's deeper potentiality and a small
matter of his being given a life span of very nearly a century and a
quarter; if you entertained a suspicion, not uncommon in literature,
that the writer's breath has given out and he has rather arbitrarily
ended the race while he feels he's still winning, then do not blame
me; because all these feelings, or reflections of them, were very
present in Charles's own mind. The book of his existence, so it
seemed to him, was about to come to a distinctly shabby close.

And the "I,"
that entity who found such slickly specious reasons for consigning
Sarah to the shadows of oblivion, was not myself; it was merely the
personification of a certain massive indifference in things--too
hostile for Charles to think of as "God"--that had set its
malevolent inertia on the Ernestina side of the scales; that seemed
an inexorable onward direction as fixed as that of the train which
drew Charles along.

I was not cheating when
I said that Charles had decided, in London that day after his
escapade, to go through with his marriage; that was his official
decision, just as it had once been his official decision (reaction
might be a more accurate word) to go into Holy Orders. Where I have
cheated was in analyzing the effect that three-word letter continued
to have on him. It tormented him, it obsessed him, it confused him.
The more he thought about it the more Sarah-like that sending of the
address--and nothing more--appeared. It was perfectly in key with all
her other behavior, and to be described only by oxy-moron;
luring-receding, subtle-simple, proud-begging, defending-accusing.
The Victorian was a prolix age; and unaccustomed to the Delphic.

But above all it seemed
to set Charles a choice; and while one part of him hated having to
choose, we come near the secret of his state on that journey west
when we know that another part of him felt intolerably excited by the
proximity of the moment of choice. He had not the benefit of
existentialist terminology; but what he felt was really a very clear
case of the anxiety of freedom--that is, the realization that one is
free and the realization that being free is a situation of terror.

So let us kick Sam out
of his hypothetical future and back into his Exeter present. He goes
to his master's compartment when the train stops.

"Are we stayin' the
night, sir?"

Charles stares at him a
moment, a decision still to make, and looks over his head at the
overcast sky.

"I fancy it will
rain. We'll put up at the Ship."

And so Sam, a thousand
unpossessed pounds richer, stood a few minutes later with his master
outside the station, watching the loading of Charles's impedimenta on
to the roof of a tired fly. Charles showed a decided restlessness.
The portmanteau was at last tied down, and all waited on him.

"I think, Sam,
after that confounded train journey, I will stretch my legs. Do you
go on with the baggage."

Sam's heart sank.

"With respeck, Mr.
Charles, I wouldn't. Not with them rainclouds up there about to
break."

"A little rain
won't hurt me."

Sam swallowed, bowed.

"Yes, Mr. Charles.
Shall I give horders for dinner?"

"Yes . . . that is
... I'll see when I come in. I may attend Evensong at the Cathedral."

Charles set off up the
hill towards the city. Sam watched him gloomily on his way for a
little while, then turned to the cabby.

"Eh--'card of
Hendicott's Family 'Otel?"

"Aye."

"Know where it is?"

"Aye."

"Well, you dolly me
up to the Ship double quick and you may 'ear somethink to your
hadvantage, my man."

And with a suitable
aplomb Sam got into the carriage. It very soon overtook Charles, who
walked with a flagrant slowness, as if taking the air. But as soon as
it had gone out of sight he quickened his pace. Sam had plenty of
experience of dealing with sleepy provincial inns. The luggage was
unloaded, the best available rooms chosen, a fire lit, nightwear laid
out with other necessities--and all in seven minutes. Then he strode
sharply out into the street, where the cabby still waited. A short
further journey took place. From inside Sam looked cautiously round,
then descended and paid off his driver.

"First left you'll
find 'un, sir."

"Thank you, my man.
'Ere's a couple o' browns for you." And with this disgracefully
mean tip (even for Exeter) Sam tipped his bowler over his eyes and
melted away into the dusk. Halfway down the street he was in, and
facing the one the cabby had indicated, stood a Methodist Chapel,
with imposing columns under its pediment. Behind one of these the
embryo detective installed himself. It was now nearly night, come
early under a gray-black sky.

Sam did not have to wait
long. His heart leaped as a tall figure came into sight. Evidently at
a loss the figure addressed himself to a small boy. The boy promptly
led the way to the corner below Sam's viewpoint, and pointed, a
gesture that earned him, to judge by his grin, rather more than
twopence. Charles's back receded. Then he stopped and looked up. He
retraced a few steps back towards Sam. Then as if impatient with
himself he turned again and entered one of the houses. Sam slipped
from behind his pillar and ran down the steps and across to the
street in which Endicott's Family stood. He waited a while on the
corner. But Charles did not reappear. Sam became bolder and lounged
casually along the warehouse wall that faced the row of houses. He
came to where he could see the hallway of the hotel. It was empty.
Several rooms had lights. Some fifteen minutes passed and it began to
rain.

Sam bit his nails for a
while, in furious thought. Then he began to walk quickly away.
 
 

46

As yet, when
all is thought and said,
The
heart still overrules the head;
Still
what we hope we must believe,
And
what is given us receive;

Must still
believe, for still we hope
That
in a world of larger scope,
What
here is faithfully begun
Will
be completed, not undone.

My child, we
still must think, when we
That
ampler life together see,
Some
true results will yet appear
Of
what we are, together, here.
--
A.
H. Clough, Poem (1849)

Charles hesitated in the
shabby hall, then knocked on the door of a room that was ajar and
from which light came. He was bade enter, and so found himself face
to face with the proprietress. Much quicker than he summed her up,
she summed him: a fifteen-shillinger beyond mistake. Therefore she
smiled gratefully.

"A room, sir?"

"No. I ... that is,
I wish to speak with one of your ... a Miss Woodruff?" Mrs.
Endicott's smile abruptly gave way to a long face. Charles's heart
dropped. "She is not... ?"

"Oh the poor young
lady, sir, she was a-coming downstairs the day before yesterday
morning and she slipped, sir. She's turned her ankle something
horrible. Swole up big as a marrow. I wanted to ask the doctor, sir,
but she won't hear of it. 'Tis true a turned ankle mends itself. And
physicians come very expensive."

Charles looked at the
end of his cane. "Then I cannot see her."

"Oh bless me, you
can go up, sir. 'Twill raise her spirits. You'll be some relative, I
daresay?"

"I have to see her
... on a business matter."

Mrs. Endicott's respect
deepened. "Ah ... a gentleman of the law?"

Charles hesitated, then
said, "Yes."

"Then you must go
up, sir."

"I think ... would
you please send to ask if my visit were not better put off till she
is recovered?"

He felt very much at a
loss. He remembered Varguennes; sin was to meet in privacy. He had
come merely to inquire; had hoped for a downstairs sitting
room--somewhere both intimate and public. The old woman hesitated,
then cast a quick eye at a certain open box beside her rolltop desk
and apparently decided that even lawyers can be thieves--a
possibility few who have had to meet their fees would dispute.
Without moving and with a surprising violence she called for one
Betty Anne.

Betty Anne appeared and
was sent off with a visiting card. She seemed gone some time, during
which Charles had to repel a number of inquisitive attempts to
discover his errand. At last Betty Anne came back: he was prayed to
go up. He followed the plump maid's back to the top floor and was
shown the scene of the accident. The stairs were certainly steep; and
in those days, when they could rarely see their own feet, women were
always falling: it was a commonplace of domestic life.

They came to a door at
the end of a mournful corridor. Charles, his heart beating far faster
than even the three flights of steep stairs had warranted, was
brusquely announced.

"The gennelmun,
miss."

He stepped into the
room. Sarah was seated by the fire in a chair facing the door, her
feet on a stool, with both them and her legs covered by a red Welsh
blanket. The green merino shawl was round her shoulders, but could
not quite hide the fact that she was in a long-sleeved nightgown. Her
hair was loose and fell over her green shoulders. She seemed to him
much smaller--and agonizingly shy. She did not smile, but looked down
at her hands--only, as he first came in, one swift look up, like a
frightened penitent, sure of his anger, before she bowed her head
again. He stood with his hat in one hand, his stick and gloves in the
other.

"I was passing
through Exeter."

Her head bowed a
fraction deeper in a mingled understanding and shame.

"Had I not better
go at once and fetch a doctor?"

She spoke into her lap.
"Please not. He would only advise me to do what I am already
doing."

He could not take his
eyes from her--to see her so pinioned, so invalid (though her cheeks
were a deep pink), helpless. And after that eternal indigo dress--the
green shawl, the never before fully revealed richness of that hair. A
faint cedary smell of liniment crept into Charles's nostrils.

"You are not in
pain?"

She shook her head. "To
do such a thing ... I cannot understand how I should be so foolish."

"At any rate be
thankful that it did not happen in the Undercliff."

"Yes."

She seemed hopelessly
abashed by his presence. He glanced round the small room. A newly
made-up fire burned in the grate. There were some tired stems of
narcissus in a Toby jug on the mantelpiece. But the meanness of the
furnishing was painfully obvious, and an added embarrassment. On the
ceiling were blackened patches--fumes from the oil lamp; like so many
spectral relics of countless drab past occupants of the room.