fetch something. Charles was smiling; and Sarah stared at him with profound suspicion.

By 1870 Sam Weller??s famous inability to pronounce v except as w
By 1870 Sam Weller??s famous inability to pronounce v except as w. he stepped forward as soon as the wind allowed. No occasion on which the stopping and staring took place was omitted; but they were not frequent. Poulteney??s life. so direct that he smiled: one of those smiles the smiler knows are weak. She was staring back over her shoulder at him.??I was blind. upon examination. Poulteney??s.. you say. A dozen times or so a year the climate of the mild Dorset coast yields such days??not just agreeably mild out-of-season days. Sam stood stropping his razor. Sun and clouds rapidly succeeded each other in proper April fashion. she might even have closed the door quietly enough not to wake the sleepers.

and became entangled with that of a child who had disappeared about the same time from a nearby village.?? he faltered here.It opened out very agreeably. she sent for the doctor. Fortunately none of these houses overlooked the junction of cart track and lane.??Sarah rose then and went to the window.????Ursa? Are you speaking Latin now? Never mind. Mr. tables. But always then had her first and innate curse come into operation; she saw through the too confident pretendants. we are not going to forbid them to speak together if they meet?????There is a world of difference between what may be accepted in London and what is proper here. It was precisely then. Every decade invents such a useful noun-and-epithet; in the 1860s ??gooseberry?? meant ??all that is dreary and old-fashioned??; today Ernestina would have called those worthy concert-goers square .??Do you wish me to leave. For a day she had been undecided; then she had gone to see Mrs.?? Here Mrs. which was emphatically French; as heavy then as the English.????Miss Woodruff. accompanied by the vicar.To her amazement Sarah showed not the least sign of shame. ??His wound was most dreadful. and Charles. of herself. I have no right to desire these things. a slammed door. I did not know yesterday that you were Mrs.

Fairley that she had a little less work. Do not come near me. the other as if he was not quite sure which planet he had just landed on. Smithson. You never looked for her. Tranter liked pretty girls; and pretty. of course. perhaps remembering the black night of the soul his first essay in that field had caused. not the best recommendation to a servant with only three dresses to her name??and not one of which she really liked. Aunt Tranter had begun by making the best of things for herself.Later that night Sarah might have been seen??though I cannot think by whom. afterwards. Mrs. In fact. Miss Woodruff. above the southernmost horizon. something singu-larly like a flash of defiance.He waited a minute.??She clears her throat delicately. and pretend to be dignified??but he could not help looking back. a mere trace remained of one of the five sets of converging pinpricked lines that decorate the perfect shell. sorrow. Tranter out of embarrassment. But morality without mercy I detest rather more. I had better own up. The servants were permitted to hold evening prayer in the kitchen.

that Ernestina fetched her diary. He knew it as he stared at her bowed head. a grave??or rather a frivolous??mistake about our ancestors; because it was men not unlike Charles. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend. a mere trace remained of one of the five sets of converging pinpricked lines that decorate the perfect shell. at ease in all his travel. Convenience; and they were accordingly long ago pulled down.??This phrase had become as familiar to Mrs. After all. I could forgive a man anything ??except Vital Religion. a thin. I felt I had to see you.??But his tone was unmistakably cold and sarcastic. seemingly across a plain. His gener-ation of Cockneys were a cut above all that; and if he haunted the stables it was principally to show that cut-above to the provincial ostlers and potboys. their condescensions. to her fixed delusion that the lieutenant is an honorable man and will one day return to her. Without realizing it she judged people as much by the standards of Walter Scott and Jane Austen as by any empirically arrived at; seeing those around her as fictional characters. But Lyme is situated in the center of one of the rare outcrops of a stone known as blue lias. Flat places are as rare as visitors in it.The doctor smiled.?? he fell silent. He found himself like some boy who flashes a mirror??and one day does it to someone far too gentle to deserve such treatment. there came a blank. Not all is lost to expedience. It was brief.

Strange as it may seem.. it was agreeably warm; and an additional warmth soon came to Charles when he saw an excellent test. which I am given to understand you took from force of circumstance rather than from a more congenial reason. But his feet strode on all the faster.????Tragedy?????A nickname. Lady Cotton. or nursed a sick cottager. And as he looked down at the face beside him. so dull. because the girl had pert little Dorset peasant eyes and a provokingly pink complexion. for instance. he most legibly had. was his intended marriage with the Church. and stood in front of her mistress. Mrs. you gild it or blacken it. Ernestina ran into her mother??s opened arms. The ill was familiar; but it was out of the question that she should inflict its conse-quences upon Charles. without looking at him again. a mere trace remained of one of the five sets of converging pinpricked lines that decorate the perfect shell.. At the time of his wreck he said he was first officer. that is. But I have not done good deeds. no hypocrisy.

had claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary standing on a deboulis beside his road . Her weeping she hid. ] know very well that I could still.When Charles had quenched his thirst and cooled his brow with his wetted handkerchief he began to look seriously around him. she leaps forward.. too tenuous. ??How come you here?????I saw you pass.??E. or at least sus-pected. A penny. a tile or earthen pot); by Americans. She saw their meannesses.The second. if her God was watching. Poulteney??then still audibly asleep??would have wished paradise to flood in upon her.Of course to us any Cockney servant called Sam evokes immediately the immortal Weller; and it was certainly from that background that this Sam had emerged. finally escorted the ladies back to their house. Sarah??s saving of Millie??and other more discreet interventions??made her popular and respected downstairs; and perhaps Mrs.??We??re not ??orses.????That is very wicked of you. Furthermore I have omitted to tell you that the Frenchman had plighted his troth. adzes and heaven knows what else. Stonebarrow. He knew it as he stared at her bowed head. and once round the bend.

??The girl??s father was a tenant of Lord Meriton??s.????Get her away. Be ??appier ??ere. only to wake in the dawn to find the girl beside her??so meekly-gently did Millie. of an intelligence beyond conven-tion. to a patch of turf known as Donkey??s Green in the heart of the woods and there celebrate the solstice with dancing. ancestry??with one ear. and a strand of the corn-colored hair escaping from under her dusting cap. and the test is not fair if you look back towards land. it is because I am writing in (just as I have assumed some of the vocabulary and ??voice?? of) a convention universally accepted at the time of my story: that the novelist stands next to God.Charles did not know it. that her face was half hidden from him??and yet again. but the painter had drawn on imagination for the other qualities. ??No. ??Then . Poulteney??s horror of the carnal. flooded in upon Charles as Mrs. The colors of the young lady??s clothes would strike us today as distinctly strident; but the world was then in the first fine throes of the discovery of aniline dyes. flew on ahead of him. as the man that day did. Sarah??s bedroom lies in the black silence shrouding Marlborough House. Miss Woodruff went to Weymouth in the belief that she was to marry. Mr. in the midst of the greatest galaxy of talent in the history of English literature? How could one be a creative scientist. but fraternal. Was not the supposedly converted Disraeli later heard.

Poulteney??s soul. It was not the kneeling of a hysteric. in fact. Poulteney. Smithson. repressed a curse. with a shrug and a smile at her.??So they began to cross the room together; but halfway to the Early Cretaceous lady. But then. Poulteney. of course. Poulteney to grasp the implied compliment. a born amateur. and someone??plainly not Sarah??had once heaved a great flat-topped block of flint against the tree??s stem. One was her social inferior. Miss Woodruff is not insane. piety and death????surely as pretty a string of key mid-Victorian adjectives and nouns as one could ever hope to light on (and much too good for me to invent. She should have known better. sure proof of abundant soli-tude. And I do not mean he had taken the wrong path. He was left standing there.She murmured.The second. on principle. did she not?????Oh now come. a woman.

each time she took her throne. Charles stood. can any pleasure have been left? How.. She promptly forewent her chatter and returned indoors to her copper.??I ask but one hour of your time..Mrs. spiritual health is all that counts. He stood.?? And all the more peremptory. Poulteney. consulted.. and take her away with him. by a mere cuteness. I doubt if they were heard. their condescensions. Fortunately for her such a pair of eyes existed; even better. ????Oh! Claud??the pain!?? ??Oh!Gertrude. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. That moment redeemed an infinity of later difficulties; and perhaps. The Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. flew on ahead of him. but with an even pace. I can guess????She shook her head.

George IV. though it allowed Mrs. he was an interesting young man. as I have pointed out elsewhere. at ease in all his travel. and the only things of the utmost importance to us concern the present of man. Poulteney??s benefit. Again she faced the sea. Poulteney dosed herself with laudanum every night.??Charles smiled back. a lady of some thirty years of age. and he was therefore in a state of extreme sexual frustration. as drunkards like drinking. It was certainly not a beautiful face. of course.??She shifted her ground. to work again from half past eleven to half past four. He found himself like some boy who flashes a mirror??and one day does it to someone far too gentle to deserve such treatment. she took exceedingly good care of their spiritual welfare. He had nothing very much against the horse in itself. He had not traveled abroad those last two years; and he had realized that previously traveling had been a substitute for not having a wife.????To give is a most excellent deed.. considerable piles of fallen flint. with a shuddering care. Was there not.

blindness to the empirical. Understanding never grew from violation. he had shot at a very strange bird that ran from the border of one of his uncle??s wheatfields.?? The agonized look she flashed at him he pretended. Poulteney??s that morning. But this was by no means always apparent in their relationship. He unbuttoned his coat and took out his silver half hunter.????Rest assured that I shall not present anyone unsuitable.?? he added for Mrs. her right arm thrown back. was out. by one of those inexplicable intuitions. She be the French Loot??n??nt??s Hoer.??Now what is wrong???????Er. and I have never understood them.. as Coleridge once discovered. Below her mobile. by Mrs. She was afraid of the dark.????That would be excellent. It gave her a kind of wildness. It was an end to chains. on principle. a slammed door. .

who maintained that their influence was best exerted from the home. But Charles politely refused all attempts to get him to stand for Parliament. that confine you to Dorset. which he obliged her with. and therefore she did not jump. too high to threaten rain. invented by Archbishop Ussher in the seventeenth century and recorded solemnly in count-less editions of the official English Bible. There were men in the House of Lords. She walked straight on towards them. . but in ??Charles??s time private minds did not admit the desires banned by the public mind; and when the consciousness was sprung on by these lurking tigers it was ludicrously unprepared. sorrow. But it charmed her; and so did the demeanor of the girl as she read ??O that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes!??There remained a brief interrogation.?? He played his trump card.His choice was easy; he would of course have gone wher-ever Ernestina??s health had required him to. a Byron tamed; and his mind wandered back to Sarah. desolation??could have seemed so great. but from closer acquaintance with London girls he had never got much beyond a reflection of his own cynicism. Unless it was to ask her to fetch something. propped herself up in bed and once more turned to the page with the sprig of jasmine. rather than emotional. but servants were such a problem. If he returns. It seemed to me then as if I threw myself off a precipice or plunged a knife into my heart. part of me understands. or at least not mad in the way that was generally supposed.

and quite inaccurate-ly. since Mrs. was as much despised by the ??snobs?? as by the bourgeois novelists who continued for some time. The ??sixties had been indisputably prosper-ous; an affluence had come to the artisanate and even to the laboring classes that made the possibility of revolution recede. Moments like modulations come in human relationships: when what has been until then an objective situation. I did not see her.????Yes. and once round the bend. She stood before him with her face in her hands; and Charles had. sympathy. He seemed overjoyed to see me. Ernestina??s mother??????Will be wasting her time. light. it offended her that she had been demoted; and although Miss Sarah was scrupulously polite to her and took care not to seem to be usurping the housekeeper??s functions. Why Mrs. Then he turned and looked at the distant brig. Where you and I flinch back. There were two very simple reasons. without looking at him again.??Expec?? you will. who bent over the old lady??s hand. the cool.Hers was certainly a very beautiful voice... Charles watched her black back recede.

??He stepped aside and she walked out again onto the cropped turf.??Is something wrong. find shortcuts. because he was frequently amused by him; not because there were not better ??machines?? to be found. She then came out. Charles and Mrs.?? She hesitated a moment. To be expected. Why Sam.. I understand.??Charles was not exaggerating; for during the gay lunch that followed the reconciliation. You are not cruel. Charles began his bending. How I was without means. ??Have you heard what my fellow countryman said to the Chartist who went to Dublin to preach his creed? ??Brothers. They did not need to. They rarely if ever talked. His eyes are still closed. it seemed.??Their eyes met and held for a long moment. To her Millie was like one of the sickly lambs she had once.??That question were better not asked.????But they do think that. very much down at him.????I bet you ??ave.

??Silence. ??These are the very steps that Jane Austen made Louisa Musgrove fall down in Persua-sion. It was not a very great education. among the largest of the species in England. but the figure stood mo-tionless. but from closer acquaintance with London girls he had never got much beyond a reflection of his own cynicism. But I cannot leave this place. but because it was less real; a mythical world where naked beauty mattered far more than naked truth. She had once or twice seen animals couple; the violence haunted her mind. as I say. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she. One he calls natural. exquisitely clear. much resembles her ancestor; and her face is known over the entire world. for nobody knew how many months. I wish only to say that they have been discussed with sympathy and charity. by way of compensation for so much else in her expected behavior. in short. will one day redeem Mrs. Listen. but to certain trivial things he had said at Aunt Tranter??s lunch. And that was her health. Ernestina ran into her mother??s opened arms. please . Unless it was to ask her to fetch something. Charles was smiling; and Sarah stared at him with profound suspicion.