The French Lieutenant's Woman (59 page)

A hansom approaches,
from the direction of central London. The blue-gray eyes watch it, in
a way that suggests the watcher still finds such banal elements of
the London scene fascinating and strange. It draws to a stop outside
a large house opposite. A woman emerges, steps down to the pavement,
takes a coin from her purse.

The mouth of the girl on
the embankment falls open. A moment's pallor attacks the pink, and
then she flushes. The cabby touches the brim of his hat with two
fingers. His fare walks quickly towards the front door of the house
behind her. The girl moves forward to the curb, half hiding behind a
tree trunk. The woman opens the front door, disappears inside.

"'Twas 'er, Sam. I
saw 'er clear as--"

"I can't hardly
believe it."

But he could; indeed,
some sixth or seventh sense in him had almost expected it. He had
looked up the old cook, Mrs. Rogers, on his return to London; and
received from her a detailed account of Charles's final black weeks
in Kensington. That was a long time ago now. Outwardly he had shared
her
disapproval
of their former master. But inwardly something had stirred; being a
matchmaker is one thing. A match-breaker is something other.

Sam and Mary were
staring at each other--a dark wonderment in her eyes matching a dark
doubt in his--in a front parlor that was minuscule, yet not too badly
furnished. A bright fire burned in the grate. And as they questioned
each other the door opened and a tiny maid, an unprepossessing girl
of fourteen, came in carrying the now partly unswaddled infant--the
last good crop, I believe, ever to come out of Carslake's Barn. Sam
immediately took the bundle in his arms and dandled it and caused
screams, a fairly invariable procedure when he returned from work.
Mary nastily took the precious burden and grinned at the foolish
father, while the little waif by the door grinned in sympathy at
both. And now we can see distinctly that Mary is many months gone
with another child.

"Well, my love, I'm
hoff to partake of refreshment. You put the supper on. 'Arriet?"

"Yes. sir. Read'in
narf-n-nour, sir."

"There's a good
girl. My love." And as if nothing was on his mind, he kissed
Mary on the cheek, then tickled the baby's ribs.

He did not look quite so
happy a man five minutes later, when he sat in the sawdusted corner
of a nearby public house, with a gin and hot water in front of him.
He certainly had everv outward reason to be happy. He did not own his
own shop, but he had something nearly as good. The first baby had
been a girl, but that was a small disappointment he felt confident
would soon be remedied.

Sam had played his cards
very right in Lyme. Aunt Tranter had been a soft touch from the
start. He had thrown himself, with Mary's aid, on her mercy. Had he
not lost all his prospects by his brave giving in of notice? Was it
not gospel that Mr. Charles had promised him a loan, of four hundred
(always ask a higher price than you dare) to set him up in business?
What business?

"Same as Mr.
Freeman's, m'm, honly in a very, very 'umble way."

And he had played the
Sarah card very well. For the first few days nothing would make him
betray his late master's guilty secrets; his lips were sealed. But
Mrs. Tranter was so kind--Colonel Locke at Jericho House was looking
for a manservant, and Sam's unemployment was of a very short
duration. So was his remaining bachelorhood; and the ceremony that
concluded it was at the bride's mistress's expense.

Clearly he had to make
some return.

Like all lonely old
ladies Aunt Tranter was forever in search of someone to adopt and
help; and she was not allowed to forget that Sam wanted to go into
the haberdashery line. Thus it was that one day, when staying in
London with her sister, Mrs. Tranter ventured to broach the matter to
her brother-in-law. At first he was inclined to shake his head. But
then he was gently reminded how honorably the young servant had
behaved; and he knew better than Mrs. Tranter to what good use Sam's
information had been and might still be put.

"Very well, Ann. I
will see what there is. There may be a vacancy."

Thus Sam gained a
footing, a very lowly one, in the great store. But it was enough.
What deficiencies he had in education he supplied with his natural
sharpness. His training as a servant stood him in good stead in
dealing with customers. He dressed excellently. And one day he did
something better.

It was a splendid April
morning some six months after his married return to London, and just
nine before the evening that saw him so unchipper in his place of
refreshment. Mr. Freeman had elected to walk to his store from the
Hyde Park house. He passed at last along its serried windows and
entered the store, the sign for a great springing, scraping and
bowing on the part of his ground-floor staff. Customers were few at
that early hour. He raised his hat in his customary seigneurial way,
but then to everyone's astonishment promptly turned and went out
again. The nervous superintendent of the floor stepped outside as
well. He saw the tycoon standing in front of a window and staring at
it. The superintendent's heart fell, but he sidled up discreetly
behind Mr. Freeman.

"An experiment, Mr.
Freeman. I will have it removed at once."

Three other men stopped
beside them. Mr. Freeman cast them a quick look, then took the
superintendent by the arm and led him a few steps away.

"Now watch, Mr.
Simpson."

They stood there for
some five minutes. Again and again people passed the other windows
and stopped at that one. Some, as Mr. Freeman himself had done, took
it in without noticing, then retraced their steps to look at it.

I am afraid it will be
an anticlimax to describe it. But you would have had to see those
other windows, monotonously cluttered and monotonously ticketed, to
appreciate its distinction; and you have to remember that unlike our
age, when the finest flower of mankind devote their lives to the
great god Publicity, the Victorians believed in the absurd notion
that good wine needs no bush. The back of the display was a simple
draped cloth of dark purple. Floating in front was a striking array,
suspended on thin wires, of gentlemen's collars of every conceivable
shape, size and style. But the cunning in the thing was that they
were arranged to form words. And they cried, they positively
bellowed: Freeman's For Choice. "That, Mr. Simpson, is the best
window dressing we have done this year."

"Exactly, Mr.
Freeman. Very bold. Very eye-catching."

"'Freeman's for
Choice.' That is precisely what we offer-- why else do we carry such
a large stock? 'Freeman's for Choice'--excellent! I want that phrase
in all our circulars and advertisements from now on."

He marched back towards
the entrance. The superintendent smiled.

"We owe this to you
in great part, Mr. Freeman, sir. That young man--Mr. Farrow?--you
remember you took a personal interest in his coming to us?"

Mr. Freeman stopped.
"Farrow--his first name is Sam?"

"I believe so,
sir."

"Bring him to me."

"He came in at five
o'clock, sir, especially to do it."

Thus Sam was at last
brought bashfully face to face with the great man. "Excellent
work, Farrow."

Sam bowed deep. "It
was my hutmost pleasure to do it, sir."

"How much are we
paying Farrow, Mr. Simpson?"

"Twenty-five
shillings, sir."

"Twenty-seven and
sixpence."

And he walked on before
Sam could express his gratitude. Better was to come, for an envelope
was handed to him when he went to collect his money at the end of the
week. In it were three sovereigns and a card saying, "Bonus for
zeal and invention."

Now, only nine months
later, his salary had risen to the giddy heights of thirty-two and
sixpence; and he had a strong suspicion, since he had become an
indispensable member of the window-dressing staff, that any time he
asked for a rise he would get it.

Sam bought himself
another and extraordinary supplement of gin and returned to his seat.
The unhappy thing about him--a defect that his modern descendants in
the publicity game have managed to get free of--was that he had a
conscience ... or perhaps he had simply a feeling of unjustified
happiness and good luck. The Faust myth is archetypal in civilized
man; never mind that Sam's civilization had not taught him enough
even to know who Faust was, he was sufficiently sophisticated to have
heard of pacts with the Devil and of the course they took. One did
very well for a while, but one day the Devil would claim his own.
Fortune is a hard taskmaster; it stimulates the imagination into
foreseeing its loss, and in strict relation, very often, to its
kindness.

And it worried him, too,
that he had never told Mary of what he had done. There were no other
secrets between them; and he trusted her judgment. Every now and
again his old longing to be his own master in his own shop would come
back to him; was there not now proof of his natural aptitude? But it
was Mary, with her sound rural sense of the best field to play, who
gently--and once or twice, not so gently-- sent him back to his
Oxford Street grindstone.

Even if it was hardly
yet reflected in their accents and use of the language, these two
were rising in the world; and knew it. To Mary, it was all like a
dream. To be married to a man earning over thirty shillings a week!
When her own father, the carter, had never risen above ten! To live
in a house that cost £19 a year to rent!

And, most marvelous of
all, to have recently been able to interview eleven lesser mortals
for a post one had, only two years before, occupied oneself! Why
eleven? Mary, I am afraid, thought a large part of playing the
mistress was being hard to please--a fallacy in which she copied the
niece rather than the aunt. But then she also followed a procedure
not unknown among young wives with good-looking young husbands. Her
selection of a skivvy had been based very little on intelligence and
efficiency; and very much on total unattractiveness. She told Sam she
finally offered Harriet the six pounds a year because she felt sorry
for her; it was not quite a lie.

When he returned home to
his mutton stew, that evening of the double ration of gin, he put his
arm round the swollen waist and kissed its owner; then looked down at
the flower mosaic brooch she wore between her breasts--always wore at
home and always took off when she went out, in case some thief
garrotted her for it.

"'Ow's the old
pearl and coral then?"

She smiled and held it
up a little.

"Happy to know 'ee,
Sam."

And they stayed there,
staring down at the emblem of their good fortune; always deserved, in
her case; and now finally to be paid for, in his.
 
 

58

I sought and
sought. But O her soul
Has
not since thrown
Upon
my own
One
beam! Yes, she is gone, is gone.
--
Hardy,
"At a Seaside Town in 1869"

And what of Charles? I
pity any detective who would have had to dog him through those twenty
months. Almost every city in Europe saw him, but rarely for long. The
pyramids had seen him; and so had the Holy Land. He saw a thousand
sights, and sites, for he spent time also in Greece and Sicily, but
unseeingly; they were no more than the thin wall that stood between
him and nothingness, an ultimate vacuity, a total purposelessness.
Wherever he stopped more than a few days, an intolerable lethargy and
melancholia came upon him. He became as dependent on traveling as an
addict on his opium. Usually he traveled alone, at most with some
dragoman or courier-valet of the country he was in. Very occasionally
he took up with other travelers and endured their company for a few
days; but they were almost always French or German gentlemen. The
English he avoided like the plague; a whole host of friendly fellow
countrymen received a drench of the same freezing reserve when they
approached him.

Paleontology, now too
emotionally connected with the events of that fatal spring, no longer
interested him. When he had closed down the Kensington house, he had
allowed the Geological Museum to take the pick of his collection; the
rest he had given to students. His furniture had been stored;
Montague was told to
offer the lease of the Belgravia house anew when it fell in. Charles
would never live in it.