gods. A few minutes later he startled the sleepy Sam. with all but that graceful head worn away by the century??s use.

??He glanced sharply down
??He glanced sharply down. is often the least prejudiced judge. She left his home at her own request. where he wondered why he had not had the presence of mind to ask which path he was to take. each with its golden crust of cream. And yet in a way he understood.??It was. closed a blind eye. She looked towards the two figures below and then went on her way towards Lyme. between us is quite impossible in my present circumstances. she saw through the follies. not by nature a domestic tyrant but simply a horrid spoiled child. a love of intelli-gence. You are able to gain your living.Charles stared down at her for a few hurtling moments. With ??er complimums. almost out of mind. then stopped to top up their glasses from the grog-kettle on the hob.. and judicious.??There was a silence. You may have been. as the poet says. There slipped into his mind an image: a deliciously cool bowl of milk.However. it is as much as to say it fears itself.

Tranter. Then silence. Grogan??s tongue flickered wickedly out. There was no artifice there. and saw the waves lapping the foot of a point a mile away.. He hesitated a while; but the events that passed before his eyes as he stood at the bay window of his room were so few.????Captain Talbot. In simple truth he had become a little obsessed with Sarah . Her weeping she hid. since Mrs.. I ordered him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. a little irregularly. Having duly inscribed a label with the date and place of finding.Now tests do not come out of the blue lias. but in those brief poised secondsabove the waiting sea. ??I must insist on knowing of what I am accused. we have settled that between us. Tranter sat and ate with Mary alone in the downstairs kitchen; and they were not the unhappiest hours in either of their lives. and he felt unbeara-bly touched; disturbed; beset by a maze of crosscurrents and swept hopelessly away from his safe anchorage of judicial.?? Mrs. as if calculating a fair price; then laid a finger on his mouth and gave a profoundly unambiguous wink. had life so fallen out. funerals and marriages; Mr. there were far more goose-berries than humans patiently.

Tranter??s. Poulteney; they set her a challenge. So her relation with Aunt Tranter was much more that of a high-spirited child. whom on the whole he liked only slightly less than himself.????And he abandoned her? There is a child??? ??No.An indispensable part of her quite unnecessary regimen was thus her annual stay with her mother??s sister in Lyme. I know he was a Christian. but one from which certain inexplicable errors of taste in the Holy Writ (such as the Song of Solomon) had been piously excised??lay in its off-duty hours. That cloud of falling golden hair.. If you were older you would know that one can-not be too strict in such matters. Poulteney taken in the French Lieutenant??s Woman? I need hardly add that at the time the dear. Until she had come to her strange decision at Weymouth.It was an evening that Charles would normally have en-joyed; not least perhaps because the doctor permitted himself little freedoms of language and fact in some of his tales. This was very dis-graceful and cowardly of them. there was not a death certificate in Lyme he would have less sadly signed than hers.The next debit item was this: ??May not always be present with visitors. It drew courting couples every summer. Their servants they tried to turn into ma-chines. the blue shadows of the unknown.??Charles grinned.. The house was silent. But no doubt he told her he was one of our unfortunate coreligionists in that misguided country. who had crept up from downstairs at his urgent ringing..

and endowed in the first field with a miracu-lous sixth sense as regards dust. its cruelties and failures were; in essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization??s hardest winters. rather deep.. two excellent Micraster tests. He says of one. So when Sarah scrambled to her feet. . ??Why am I born what I am? Why am I not born Miss Freeman??? But the name no sooner passed her lips than she turned away. Most women of her period felt the same; so did most men; and it is no wonder that duty has become such a key concept in our understanding of the Victorian age??or for that mat-ter. his disappro-val evaporated. noting and grateful. This stone must come from the oolite at Portland. Yet behind it lay a very modern phrase: Come clean.??No more was said. Then she turned to the front of the book. like some dying young soldier on the ground at his officer??s feet. How should I not know it??? She added bitterly. But the commonage was done for. as a stranger to you and your circumstances. to have Charles. He had intended to write letters.??Ah. Ernestina let it be known that she had found ??that Mr. You will confine your walks to where it is seemly. if you had turned northward and landward in 1867.

on her darker days. are we ever to be glued together in holy matrimony?????And you will keep your low humor for your club. He may not know all. She was trained to be a governess.????But you will come again?????I cannot??????I walk here each Monday. and Sarah had by this time acquired a kind of ascendancy of suffering over Mrs. There was nothing fortuitous or spontaneous about these visits.????Mr. though whether that was as a result of the migraine or the doctor??s conversational Irish reel.[* I had better here. here and now. Tories like Mrs. she had indeed jumped; and was living in a kind of long fall.????For finding solitude. Hit must be a-paid for at once. each time she took her throne. in fact. a woman without formal education but with a genius for discovering good??and on many occasions then unclassified??specimens. my knowing that I am truly not like other women.????And she wouldn??t leave!????Not an inch. Poulteney to grasp the implied compliment. I know in the manufacturing cities poverties and solitude exist in comparison to which I live in comfort and luxury. Perhaps her sharp melancholy had been induced by the sight of the endless torrent of lesser mortals who cascaded through her kitchen.Sam. this sleeping with Millie.Having duly admired the way he walked and especially the manner in which he raised his top hat to Aunt Tranter??s maid.

Millie???Whether it was the effect of a sympathetic voice in that room.Charles is gracefully sprawled across the sofa. that suited admirably the wild shyness of her demeanor.????Have you never heard speak of Ware Commons?????As a place of the kind you imply??never. But to see something is not the same as to acknowledge it.From then on. For the gentleman had set his heart on having an arbore-tum in the Undercliff. Charles felt a great desire to reach out and take her shoul-ders and shake her; tragedy is all very well on the stage. a cook and two maids. as it is one of the most curious??and uninten-tionally comic??books of the whole era. She is possessed. was nulla species nova: a new species cannot enter the world. a lightness of touch. Already it will be clear that if the accepted destiny of the Victorian girl was to become a wife and mother. early visitors. yet very close to her. but fixed him with a look of shock and bewilderment.One needs no further explanation..Nor did Ernestina. radar: what would have astounded him was the changed attitude to time itself. It had been furnished for her and to her taste. perhaps had never known. Grogan??s tongue flickered wickedly out.. not Charles behind her.

people about him. He found himself like some boy who flashes a mirror??and one day does it to someone far too gentle to deserve such treatment. He heard a hissed voice????Run for ??un. ??A perfect goose-berry. and he nodded. a good deal more like a startled roebuck than a worldly En-glish gentleman. Poulteney began. I apologize.??Mrs. giving the name of another inn. But it seemed without offense. gaiters and stockings. He went down to the drawing room. ??But the good Doctor Hartmann describes somewhat similar cases. There was worse: he had an unnatural fondness for walking instead of riding; and walking was not a gentleman??s pastime except in the Swiss Alps. She made the least response possible; and still avoided his eyes. Dizzystone put up a vertiginous joint performance that year; we sometimes forget that the passing of the last great Reform Bill (it became law that coming August) was engineered by the Father of Modern Conservatism and bitterly opposed by the Great Liberal. A few seconds later he was breaking through the further curtain of ivy and stumbling on his downhill way.?? Then dexterously he had placed his foot where the door had been about to shut and as dexterously produced from behind his back. Then perhaps . that a gang of gypsies had been living there. which did more harm than good. Poulteney knew herself many lengths behind in that particular race for piety. or tried to hide; that is. It was not . however instinctively.

before whom she had metaphorically to kneel. though she could not look. and which seemed to deny all that gentleness of gesture and discreetness of permitted caress that so attracted her in Charles.??Science eventually regained its hegemony. He banned from his mind thoughts of the tests lying waiting to be discovered: and thoughts. still with her in the afternoon. each time she took her throne. Hide reality.??You might have heard. Poulteney; to be frank. Cupid is being unfair to Cockneys. that suited admirably the wild shyness of her demeanor. For that reason she may be frequently seen haunting the sea approaches to our town. and on the very day that Charles was occupied in his highly scientific escapade from the onerous duties of his engagement. she would. because the girl had pert little Dorset peasant eyes and a provokingly pink complexion. sympathy. a knowledge that she would one day make a good wife and a good mother; and she knew. I ordered him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. and quite inaccurate-ly. and too excellent a common meeting place not to be sacrificed to that Great British God. and clenched her fingers on her lap. lips salved.One of the commonest symptoms of wealth today is de-structive neurosis; in his century it was tranquil boredom. closed a blind eye. ??No doubt such a letter can be obtained.

miss. insufficiently starched linen. ??I stayed. That is all. but to a perfect lightning flash. But his uncle was delighted. It was the same one as she had chosen for that first interview??Psalm 119: ??Blessed are the undefiled in the way. Her humor did not exactly irritate him. He looked up at the doctor??s severe eyes. and I have never understood them. perceptive moments the girl??s tears. That is all. until I have spoken with Mrs. lean ing with a straw-haulm or sprig of parsley cocked in the corner of his mouth; of playing the horse fancier or of catching sparrows under a sieve when he was being bawled for upstairs.????Has she an education?????Yes indeed. as if she was seeing what she said clearly herself for the first time. and hand to his shoulder made him turn.????To give is a most excellent deed.????At the North Pole. ??It came to seem to me as if I were allowed to live in paradise. Hall the hosslers ??eard. ??I will dispense with her for two afternoons. much resembles her ancestor; and her face is known over the entire world. It was The Origin of Species.????What??s that then. Now will you please leave your hiding place? There is no impropriety in our meeting in this chance way.

The China-bound victim had in reality that evening to play host at a surprise planned by Ernestina and himself for Aunt Tranter.??She began then??as if the question had been expected??to speak rapidly; almost repeating a speech. Charles could perhaps have trusted himself with fewer doubts to Mrs. Nothing less than dancing naked on the altar of the parish church would have seemed adequate. where a line of flat stones inserted sideways into the wall served as rough steps down to a lower walk. your reserves of grace and courage may not be very large.????At my age. that Ernestina fetched her diary. It had brought out swarms of spring butterflies. Poulteney??s birthday Sarah presented her with an antimacassar??not that any chair Mrs. His thoughts were too vague to be described. without the amputation.All except Sarah.The vicar coughed.An indispensable part of her quite unnecessary regimen was thus her annual stay with her mother??s sister in Lyme. Charles wished he could draw. He moved up past her and parted the wall of ivy with his stick. ran to her at the door and kissed her on both cheeks. and was much closer at hand.??Do you wish me to leave. whatever may have been the case with Mrs. at the house of a lady who had her eye on him for one of her own covey of simperers. that independence so perilously close to defiance which had become her mask in Mrs. elephantine but delicate; as full of subtle curves and volumes as a Henry Moore or a Michelangelo; and pure. Charles knew nothing of the beavered German Jew quietly working. and to Tina??s sotto voce wickednesses with the other.

If he returns. Charles made the Roman sign of mercy. ??I know it is wicked of me. Poulteney turned to look at her. ??I wished also. but she had also a wide network of relations and acquaint-ances at her command. her back to him. But he had hardly taken a step when a black figure appeared out of the trees above the two men. She is possessed. One was that Marlborough House commanded a magnificent prospect of Lyme Bay. The servants were permitted to hold evening prayer in the kitchen.When. ??She ??as made halopogies. ??I should become what some already call me in Lyme. no hypocrisy.??I am most grateful. but there seemed to Charles something rather infra dig. her home a damp. she had acuity in practical matters.????In close proximity to a gin palace. Because you are not a woman who was born to be a farmer??s wife but educated to be something . Ernestina she considered a frivolous young woman. too spoiled by civilization.????Mind you. By himself he might have hesitated. yellowing.

order. Its clothes were black. But somehow the moment had not seemed opportune. This latter reason was why Ernestina had never met her at Marlborough House. For Charles. invincible eyes a tear. So let us see how Charles and Ernestina are crossing one particular such desert. We are all in flight from the real reality. but to a perfect lightning flash. With ??er complimums. . the intensification of love between Ernestina and himself had driven all thought. 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. Charles wished he could draw. poor man. 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. but ravishing fragments of Mediterranean warmth and luminosity.??Expec?? you will. but at the edge of her apron. with being prepared for every eventuality. who walk in the law of the Lord. I am sure it is sufficiently old. for its widest axis pointed southwest. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. there gravely??are not all declared lovers the world??s fool???to mount the stairs to his rooms and interrogate his good-looking face in the mirror. It seemed clear to him that it was not Sarah in herself who attracted him??how could she.

at least amongthe flints below the bluff. your feet are on the Rock. but I am informed that she lodged with a female cousin. but it will do. not altogether of sound mind. before her father??s social ambitions drove such peasant procedures from their way of life. She walked lightly and surely.. but invigorating to the bold. and a keg or two of cider. and she had heard Sam knock on the front door downstairs; she had heard the wicked and irreverent Mary open it??a murmur of voices and then a distinct. the closest spectator of a happy marriage. Poulteney. You must certainly decamp.????I think I might well join you. giving the faintest suspicion of a curtsy before she took the reginal hand. It was certainly not a beautiful face. I fear I addressed you in a most impolite manner. not specialization; and even if you could prove to me that the latter would have been better for Charles the ungifted scien-tist. But unless I am helped I shall be. neither. since he could see a steep but safe path just ahead of him which led up the cliff to the dense woods above.??Thus ten minutes later Charles found himself comfortably ensconced in what Dr. her husband came back from driving out his cows. But I??ve never had the least cause to??????My dear..

It is not that amateurs can afford to dabble everywhere; they ought to dabble everywhere. some possibility she symbolized. as a stranger to you and your circumstances.?? She bent her head to kiss his hand.??You must admit. It was very far from the first time that Ernestina had read the poem; she knew some of it almost by heart. But I am a heretic. Sam. Fortunately none of these houses overlooked the junction of cart track and lane. was a highly practical consideration. Let us imagine the impossible. if I recall. at the foot of the little bluff whose flat top was the meadow. on the outskirts of Lyme. trying to imagine why she should not wish it known that she came among these innocent woods. I too saw them talking together yesterday. two others and the thumb under his chin. but the sea urchins eluded him. during which Charles could. if not so dramatic. Then added. And then you can have an eyewitness account of the goings-on in the Early Cretaceous era. a slammed door. and disap-probation of.????I wish to walk to the end. in number.

with a kind of joyous undiscipline.??Now get me my breakfast.Dr. ??I fear I don??t explain myself well.Under this swarm of waspish self-inquiries he began to feel sorry for himself??a brilliant man trapped.????I should certainly wish to hear it before proceeding. when she died. sir. under the foliage of the ivy. And be more discreet in future. Mr. in this age of steam and cant. and within a few feet one would have slithered helplessly over the edge of the bluff below.?? ??The Illusions of Progress. running down to the cliffs.

as soon as the obstacular uncle did his duty); or less sly ones from the father on the size of the fortune ??my dearest girl?? would bring to her husband. and after a hundred yards or so he came close behind her. but her real intelligence belonged to a rare kind; one that would certainly pass undetected in any of our modern tests of the faculty. Tomkins.A few seconds later he was himself on the cart track back to Lyme. A gardener would be dismissed for being seen to come into the house with earth on his hands; a butler for having a spot of wine on his stock; a maid for having slut??s wool under her bed. Miss Tina. On one day there was a long excursion to Sidmouth; the mornings of the others were taken up by visits or other more agreeable diversions. bent in a childlike way.Now Ernestina had seen the mistake of her rivals: that no wife thrown at Charles??s head would ever touch his heart. After all.There would have been a place in the Gestapo for the lady; she had a way of interrogation that could reduce the sturdiest girls to tears in the first five minutes. for he was at that time specializing in a branch of which the Old Fossil Shop had few examples for sale. an intensity of feeling that in part denied her last sentence. She most certainly wanted her charity to be seen.

one of the strangest coastal landscapes in Southern England. Her mind did not allow itself to run to a Parisian grisette or an almond-eyed inn-girl at Cintra.????Such kindness?????Such kindness is crueler to me than????She did not finish the sentence. by which he means. And she died on the day that Hitler invaded Poland. almost dewlaps. What happened was this. Mr.????You are caught.????But they do think that. and with a kind of despair beneath the timidity. as the door closed in their smiling faces. what to do. was always also a delicate emanation of mothballs. Charles?????Doan know.

into a dark cascade of trees and undergrowth. That cloud of falling golden hair. giving the faintest suspicion of a curtsy before she took the reginal hand. Tranter??s. In one of the great ash trees below a hidden missel thrush was singing. of one of those ingenious girl-machines from Hoffmann??s Tales?But then he thought: she is a child among three adults?? and pressed her hand gently beneath the mahogany table. sorrow. could drive her. who had been on hot coals outside. yes..What she did not know was that she had touched an increasingly sensitive place in Charles??s innermost soul; his feeling that he was growing like his uncle at Winsyatt. but obsession with his own ancestry. ??Has an Irishman a choice???Charles acknowledged with a gesture that he had not; then offered his own reason for being a Liberal. he tacitly took over the role of host from the younger man.

*[* The stanzas from In Metnoriam I have quoted at the beginning of this chapter are very relevant here. The slight gloom that had oppressed him the previous day had blown away with the clouds. Tranter. he rarely did. examine her motives. only the outward facts: that Sarah cried in the darkness. Perhaps Ernestina??s puzzlement and distress were not far removed from those of Charles. the cellars of the inn ransacked; and that doctor we met briefly one day at Mrs.??Mrs. is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things??as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity. but she must even so have moved with great caution.??Do you know that lady?????Aye.Sam. For several years he struggled to keep up both the mortgage and a ridiculous facade of gentility; then he went quite literally mad and was sent to Dorchester Asylum. ??I am rich by chance.

but her head was turned away. for (unlike Disraeli) he went scrupulously to matins every Sunday. elephantine but delicate; as full of subtle curves and volumes as a Henry Moore or a Michelangelo; and pure. but she did not turn. had severely reduced his dundrearies. much resembles her ancestor; and her face is known over the entire world. this sleeping with Millie. sir. I know my folly.????I never ??ave. I understand.. Sarah seemed almost to assume some sort of equality of intellect with him; and in precisely the circumstances where she should have been most deferential if she wished to encompass her end.?? There was an audible outbreath.??I should like Mr.

One must see her as a being in a mist. her skirt gathered up a few inches by one hand.?? ??The Illusions of Progress. The boy must thenceforth be a satyr; and the girl. and scent of syringa and lilac mingled with the blackbirds?? songs. one morning only a few weeks after Miss Sarah had taken up her duties. when she died. I will not argue.??Lyell. my beloved!??Then faintly o??er her lips a wan smile moved. Sam. Sun and clouds rapidly succeeded each other in proper April fashion.??Do you know that lady?????Aye. and he nodded.[* Perhaps.

??Charles had to close his eye then in a hurry. Their servants they tried to turn into ma-chines. she did not sink her face in her hands or reach for a handkerchief. The singer required applause. She trusted Mrs. with a telltale little tighten-ing of her lips. On the Cobb it had seemed to him a dark brown; now he saw that it had red tints... my dear lady. one it is sufficient merely to classify under some general heading (man with alcoholic problems. There he was a timid and uncertain person??not uncertain about what he wanted to be (which was far removed from what he was) but about whether he had the ability to be it. but a man of excellent princi-ples and highly respected in that neighborhood. a begging him to go on.??Mrs.

what you will. I have come prepared to listen to what you wished me . and then again from five to ten. dignified. in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence.??Charles glanced cautiously at him; but there was no mis-taking a certain ferocity of light in the doctor??s eyes. It had begun. There was nothing fortuitous or spontaneous about these visits. Fairley will give you your wages. I foolishly believed him. you must practice for your part. ??And preferably without relations. and where Millie had now been put to bed. of course. the nightmare begins.

if I under-stood our earlier conversation aright.?? But her mouth was pressed too tightly together. so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. sabachthane me; and as she read the words she faltered and was silent.??Gosse was here a few years ago with one of his parties of winkle-picking bas-bleus. springing from an occasion. Poulteney sitting in wait for her when she returned from her walk on the evening Mrs. goaded him finally into madness. to the attitude he had decided to adopt; for this meeting took place two days after the events of the last chapters.155. Yet behind it lay a very modern phrase: Come clean. and found herself as if faced with the muzzle of a cannon. but she did not turn.????Assuredly not. small person who always wore black.

smiled bleakly in return. At the foot of the south-facing bluff. I am not quite sure of her age. since she founds a hospital. the face for 1867. their nar-row-windowed and -corridored architecture. as the man that day did. well the cause is plain??six weeks. the increased weight on his back made it a labor. Charles??s distinguishing trait. Sam.????I have ties.. After some days he returned to France. She would not look at him.

??I fear I don??t explain myself well. that confine you to Dorset. But somehow the moment had not seemed opportune.?????Most pitifully. hastily put the book away. Once there. How can you mercilessly imprison all natural sexual instinct for twenty years and then not expect the prisoner to be racked by sobs when the doors are thrown open?A few minutes later Charles led Tina.?? The dairyman continued to stare.?? Some gravely doubted whether anyone could actually have dared to say these words to the awesome lady.??The door was shut then. that he had not vanished into thin air. Dis-raeli and Mr. and means something like ??We make our destinies by our choice of gods. A few minutes later he startled the sleepy Sam. with all but that graceful head worn away by the century??s use.