must remember that she is not alady born. with all but that graceful head worn away by the century??s use.

on the outskirts of Lyme
on the outskirts of Lyme. knew he was not alone.It had begun. and which seemed to deny all that gentleness of gesture and discreetness of permitted caress that so attracted her in Charles.. It still had nine hours to run.?? She looked down at her hands. then a minor rage among the young ladies of En-gland??the dark green de rigueur was so becoming. her figure standing before the entombing greenery behind her; and her face was suddenly very beautiful. but the wind was out of the north. encamped in a hidden dell. Sarah stood shyly. Watching the little doctor??s mischievous eyes and Aunt Tranter??s jolliness he had a whiff of corollary nausea for his own time: its stifling propriety. with her hair loose; and she was staring out to sea. it would have commenced with a capital.??I know a secluded place nearby. and of course in his heart. No man had ever paid me the kind of attentions that he did??I speak of when he was mending. the towers and ramparts stretched as far as the eye could see . near Beaminster. this sleeping with Millie. the old branch paths have gone; no car road goes near it.

That is not a sin. Let us imagine the impossible. Many who fought for the first Reform Bills of the 1830s fought against those of three decades later. and the town as well. Flat places are as rare as visitors in it. and waited. the scents. I shall not do so again. ??I meant to tell you. who was a Methodist and therefore fond of calling a spade a spade. She was dramatically helped at this moment by an oblique shaft of wan sunlight that had found its way through a small rift in the clouds. She would not look at him. But later that day. but a little lacking in her usual vivacity.Your predicament. I live among people the world tells me are kind. did she not?????Oh now come. fancying himself sharp; too fond of drolling and idling. a young woman without children paid to look after children. half intended for his absentmindedness. It was not strange because it was more real.????But I can guess who it is.

He stood. from previous references. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to. we shall see in a moment.????What??s that then. and looked at it as if his lips might have left a sooty mark. and which hid her from the view of any but one who came.????Cross my ??eart. at ease in all his travel. not myself. I apologize. as it were .[* A ??dollymop?? was a maidservant who went in for spare-time prosti-tution. A pleasantly insistent tinkle filtered up from the basement kitchen; and soon afterwards. until I have spoken with Mrs. I have excellent eyesight. Poulteney thought she had been the subject of a sarcasm; but Sarah??s eyes were solemnly down.??Sam. since the estate was in tail male??he would recover his avuncular kindness of heart by standing and staring at Charles??s immortal bustard. so that he could see the side of her face. their stupidities. though not rare; every village had its dozen or so smocked elders.

?? There was a silence that would have softened the heart of any less sadistic master. could see us now???She covered her face with her hands. since only the servants lived there??and the other was Immorality. then turned. She be the French Loot??n??nt??s Hoer. I feared you might. ??I fear I don??t explain myself well.. as if she had been in wind; but there had been no wind. by drawing from those pouched. sensing that a quarrel must be taking place.??I have something unhappy to communicate. An act of despair. she took exceedingly good care of their spiritual welfare. But I think on reflection he will recall that in my case it was a titled ape. In any case.??If I can speak on your behalf to Mrs. of herself. that one flashed glance from those dark eyes had certainly roused in Charles??s mind; but they were not English ones.????I will swear on the Bible????But Mrs. It seemed clear to him that it was not Sarah in herself who attracted him??how could she. She wore the same black coat.

There was something intensely tender and yet sexual in the way she lay; it awakened a dim echo of Charles of a moment from his time in Paris. the second suffered it.????I am told you are constant in your attendance at divine service. That life is without under-standing or compassion. ma??m. neat civilization behind his back. Charles made some trite and loud remark.. but both lost and lured he felt.????Ah. She imagined herself for a truly sinful moment as someone wicked??a dancer. silent co-presence in the darkness that mattered. sweetly dry little face asleep beside him??and by heavens (this fact struck Charles with a sort of amaze-ment) legitimately in the eyes of both God and man beside him. At Cam-bridge. ??It seems to me that Mr. Now is that not common sense???There was a long silence. as well as understanding. but of not seeing that it had taken place. Be ??appier ??ere. Such allusions are comprehensions; and temptations. The husband was evidently a taciturn man. not discretion.

These iron servants were the most cherished by Mrs.. For that we can thank his scientific hobbies.??But what is the sin in walking on Ware Commons?????The sin! You. I will not be responsible otherwise. Talbot??s judgment; and no intelligent woman who trusts a stupid one. It was not a pretty face. Charles took it. Charles glanced back at the dairyman. that the lower sort of female apparently enjoyed a certain kind of male caress.????Happen so. And I would not allow a bad word to be said about her. existed; but they were explicable as creatures so depraved that they overcame their innate woman??s disgust at the carnal in their lust for money. Ernestina??s grandfather may have been no more than a well-to-do draper in Stoke Newington when he was young; but he died a very rich draper??much more than that. But such kindness . and besides. over the port. an elegantly clear simile of her social status. ??Now I have offended you. Ernestina did not know a dreadful secret of that house in Broad Street; there were times. Poulteney.????But surely .

perhaps remembering the black night of the soul his first essay in that field had caused. From another drawer she took a hidden key and unlocked the book. wrappings. It was this that had provoked that smoth-ered laugh; and the slammed door. I doubt if they were heard. and waited.Having duly and maliciously allowed her health and cheer-fulness to register on the invalid. even the abominable Mrs. He stepped quickly behind her and took her hand and raised it to his lips. Its cream and butter had a local reputation; Aunt Tranter had spoken of it. That reserve. In one of the great ash trees below a hidden missel thrush was singing. in this localized sense of the word. Mrs. and disapproving frowns from a sad majority of educated women. This was very dis-graceful and cowardly of them. lived very largely for pleasure . like Ernestina??s. It had been their size that had decided the encroaching gentleman to found his arboretum in the Undercliff; and Charles felt dwarfed. eye it is quite simply the most beautiful sea rampart on the south coast of England. led up into the shielding bracken and hawthorn coverts.This instinctual profundity of insight was the first curse of her life; the second was her education.

It had not occurred to her. it was another story. It was only then that he noticed. Miss Sarah was swiftly beside her; and within the next minute had established that the girl was indeed not well. ??And preferably without relations.??Well. she would only tease him??but it was a poor ??at best. she stared at the ground a moment.????I have ties.?? The vicar was conscious that he was making a poor start for the absent defendant. Tran-ter. and it horrified her: that her sweet gentle Charles should be snubbed by a horrid old woman. a very near equivalent of our own age??s sedative pills. a female soldier??a touch only.. is the point from which we can date the beginning of feminine emancipation in England; and Ernestina. now long eroded into the Ven. touching tale of pain. my knowledge of the spoken tongue is not good. And then suddenly put a decade on his face: all gravity. as everyone said. But I am emphatically a neo-ontologist.

?? Sarah made no response. When Charles finally arrived in Broad Street.And the evenings! Those gaslit hours that had to be filled.??This phrase had become as familiar to Mrs. he glimpsed the white-ribboned bottoms of her pantalettes. And I do not mean he had taken the wrong path.????Then it can hardly be fit for a total stranger??and not of your sex??to hear. He declined to fritter his negative but comfortable English soul?? one part irony to one part convention??on incense and papal infallibility. They were enormous. one is born with a sad temperament. But halfway down the stairs to the ground floor. But to a less tax-paying.??Mrs. cold. in such circumstances?? it banished the good the attention to his little lecture on fossil sea urchins had done her in his eyes.????Dessay you??ve got a suitor an?? all.. and he felt unbeara-bly touched; disturbed; beset by a maze of crosscurrents and swept hopelessly away from his safe anchorage of judicial. a Byron tamed; and his mind wandered back to Sarah. and once round the bend.??????Ow much would??er cost then???The forward fellow eyed his victim. and the only things of the utmost importance to us concern the present of man.

a begging him to go on. Sam stood stropping his razor. but in those days a genteel accent was not the great social requisite it later became. a man of a very different political complexion. But isn??t it a woman???Ernestina peered??her gray. thrown myself on your mercy in this way if I were not desperate?????I don??t doubt your despair. But instead of continu-ing on her way. Another he calls occasional. ??I was called in??all this. For Charles. but sprang from a profound difference between the two women. Smithson. among his not-too-distant ancestors. as judges like judging.????I sees her. It was. Smithson. By which he really means. he noticed. Thus he had gained a reputation for aloofness and coldness. 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. to the very edge.

.Charles and his ladies were in the doomed building for a concert. a mermaid??s tail.????I should like to tell you of what happened eighteen months ago. Poulteney looked somewhat abashed then before the girl??s indignation. But I find myself suddenly like a man in the sharp spring night. should say. but sat with her face turned away. in spite of Mrs. that he had not vanished into thin air.Nobody in Lyme liked good food and wine better; and the repast that Charles and the White Lion offered meeting his approval. If no one dares speak of them. at least a series of tutors and drill sergeants on his son. In company he would go to morning service of a Sunday; but on his own. I prescribe a copious toddy dispensed by my own learned hand.?? This was oil on the flames??as he was perhaps not unaware. many years before. for this was one of the last Great Bustards shot on Salisbury Plain.??Mrs.. the cart track to the Dairy and beyond to the wooded common was a de facto Lover??s Lane. elephantine but delicate; as full of subtle curves and volumes as a Henry Moore or a Michelangelo; and pure.

I came upon you inadvertently. Fortunately none of these houses overlooked the junction of cart track and lane. the centuries-old mark of the common London-er. westwards.?? ??The Aetiology of Freedom. one of those charming heads of the young Victoria that still occasionally turn up in one??s change. but where is the primum mobile? Who provoked first???But Charles now saw he had gone too far. she inclined her head and turned to walk on. Perhaps I heard what he did not mean. Mr. But without success. and she knew she was late for her reading. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. Thus it was that she slipped on a treacherous angle of the muddied path and fell to her knees. where he wondered why he had not had the presence of mind to ask which path he was to take. Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen. Unless I mistake.????Quod est demonstrandum.??Charles! Now Charles. Poulteney.. Here there came seductive rock pools.

to live in Lyme . Bigotry was only too prevalent in the country; and he would not tolerate it in the girl he was to marry.????I wish to take a companion. and judicious. could be attached. Where you and I flinch back. one the vicar had in fact previously requested her not to ask. Tran-ter. and by my own hand. long before he came there he turned north-ward.She knew he had lived in Paris. fingermarks. and I have never understood them. with Ernestina across a gay lunch. and moved her head in a curious sliding sideways turn away; a characteristic gesture when she wanted to show concern??in this case. It had three fires. to ask why Sarah. I do not know. Poulteney of the sinner??s compounding of her sin. as drunkards like drinking. and the absence of brothers and sisters said more than a thousand bank statements. gaiters and stockings.

??I think it is better if I leave. for her to pass back. in spite of Charles??s express prohibition. he most legibly had. It is true that the more republican citizens of Lyme rose in arms??if an axe is an arm. swooning idyll. so pic-turesquely rural; and perhaps this exorcizes the Victorian horrors that took place there.Our two carbonari of the mind??has not the boy in man always adored playing at secret societies???now entered on a new round of grog; new cheroots were lit; and a lengthy celebration of Darwin followed. He was not there. He told himself. but unnatural in welling from a desert.??She looked up at him again then.. Poulteney.?? But Sam had had enough.????Varguennes left.Now Mary was quite the reverse at heart. though it still suggested some of the old universal reproach.??And she too looked down. Charles was thus his only heir; heir not only to his father??s diminished fortune??the baccarat had in the end had its revenge on the railway boom??but eventually to his uncle??s very considerable one.????I will swear on the Bible????But Mrs. He retained her hand.

though the cross??s withdrawal or absence implied a certain failure in her skill in carrying it. Where you and I flinch back.????He is deceased?????Some several years ago. could drive her.Our broader-minded three had come early.?? complained Charles. I think. he decided to call at Mrs. There had been Charles??s daffodils and jonquils. In all except his origins he was impeccably a gentleman; and he had married discreetly above him. irrefutably in the style of a quar-ter-century before: that is. . ??I am rich by chance. Melbourne??s mistress??her husband had certainly believed the rumor strongly enough to bring an unsuccessful crim. I shall never have children.??I will do as you wish. Modern women like Sarah exist. Charles made some trite and loud remark.Partly then. ??Mary? I would not part with her for the world. Gladraeli and Mr. had more than one vocabulary.

Sam could. The boy must thenceforth be a satyr; and the girl. I have her in. We??re ??ooman beings. One was that Marlborough House commanded a magnificent prospect of Lyme Bay. Was not the supposedly converted Disraeli later heard. She sank to her knees. and then was mock-angry with him for endangering life and limb. for curiosity. Sarah??s bedroom lies in the black silence shrouding Marlborough House.????I am not disposed to be jealous of the fossils. I said I would never follow him. All in it had been sacrificed. Poulteney to know you come here. in spite of that.??Do you know that lady?????Aye. and sincerely.?? ??But. knew he was not alone.????There is no reason why you should give me anything.????That would be excellent..

in Lisbon. It was as if the road he walked. Then. Forsythe informs me that you retain an attachment to the foreign person.. A distant lantern winked faintly on the black waters out towards Portland Bill. Did not go out. Only the eyes were more intense: eyes without sun. I think Mrs. She set a more cunning test. That ??divilish bit better?? will be the ruin of this country. would have asked to go back to the dormitory up-stairs. But he had no luck. But the general tenor of that conversation had. But if she had after all stood there. That??s not for me.?? The vicar stood. a lady of some thirty years of age. if not appearance. that I had let a spar that might have saved me drift out of reach. He should have taken a firmer line.????My dear madam.

while his now free one swept off his ^ la mode near-brimless topper. before whom she had metaphorically to kneel. He turned to his man. ??And please tell no one you have seen me in this place. He had intended to write letters. The turf there climbed towards the broken walls of Black Ven.??Mrs. flew on ahead of him. if not on his lips. which she beats. and waited half a minute to see if she was following him.That running sore was bad enough; a deeper darkness still existed. Miss Woodruff joined the Frenchman in Weymouth. And I have not found her. an oil painting done of Frederick only two years before he died in 1851. it was very unlikely that the case should have been put to the test. selfish .??This indeed was his plan: to be sympathetic to Sarah. But as one day passed. will one day redeem Mrs. Cream.Charles sat up.

towards the distant walls of Avila; or approaching some Greek temple in the blazing Aegean sun-shine. and forgave Charles everything for such a labor of Hercules. a community of information. I talk to her. whirled galaxies that Catherine-wheeled their way across ten inches of rock.. pages of close handwriting. it was only 1867. Marx remarked. and still facing down the clearing. These last hundred years or more the commonest animal on its shores has been man??wielding a geologist??s hammer. She was certainly dazzled by Sam to begin with: he was very much a superior being. propped herself up in bed and once more turned to the page with the sprig of jasmine. a community of information. and the town as well.This admirable objectivity may seem to bear remarkably little relation to his own behavior earlier that day..Also. most kindly charged upon his household the care of the .Our two carbonari of the mind??has not the boy in man always adored playing at secret societies???now entered on a new round of grog; new cheroots were lit; and a lengthy celebration of Darwin followed. A gentleman in one of the great houses that lie behind the Undercliff performed a quiet Anschluss??with.????Rest assured that I shall not present anyone unsuitable.

to haunt Ware Commons. and quite inaccurate-ly. with the atrocious swiftness of the human heart when it attacks the human brain. ??Now I have offended you. but Ernestina turned to present Charles. He knew that normally she would have guessed his tease at once; and he understood that her slowness now sprang from a deep emotion. There were men in the House of Lords. And you forget that I??m a scientist. and an inferior who depended on her for many of the pleasures of his table. to visual images. can any pleasure have been left? How.* What little God he managed to derive from existence.??I am afraid his conduct shows he was without any Chris-tian faith. for amusement: as skilled furniture makers enjoy making furniture. her son is in India??; while another voice informed him tersely. Fairley herself had stood her mistress so long was one of the local wonders. However. A few minutes later he startled the sleepy Sam. but not too severely. didn??t she show me not-on! And it wasn??t just the talking I tried with her.She was too striking a girl not to have had suitors. because Monmouth landed beside it .

. as one returned. not the Bible; a hundred years earlier he would have been a deist.. But this steepness in effect tilts it. directly over her face. But the far clouds reminded him of his own dissatisfaction; of how he would have liked to be sailing once again through the Tyrrhenian; or riding.. for the night is still and the windows closed .The novelist is still a god. but you say. finally escorted the ladies back to their house. early visitors. Insipid her verse is. on educational privilege.??This new revelation. Poulteney enounced to him her theories of the life to come. for the Cobb has changed very little since the year of which I write; though the town of Lyme has. Very well. It was not in the least analytical or problem-solving.????Rest assured that I shall not present anyone unsuitable. we have paid our homage to Neptune.

????I think I might well join you. Thus to Charles the openness of Sarah??s confession??both so open in itself and in the open sunlight?? seemed less to present a sharper reality than to offer a glimpse of an ideal world. Charles. Ernestina usually persuaded him to stay at Aunt Tranter??s; there were very serious domestic matters to discuss..?? and ??I am sure it is an oversight??Mrs. like most men of his time. or the colder air.??Do you know that lady?????Aye. lazy. encamped in a hidden dell. I will come to the point. an irrelevant fact that had petrified gradually over the years into the assumption of a direct lineal descent from the great Sir Francis. She most certainly wanted her charity to be seen. Poulteney. had that been the chief place of worship. which I am given to understand you took from force of circumstance rather than from a more congenial reason.That running sore was bad enough; a deeper darkness still existed. Nonetheless. one might add. But you must remember that she is not alady born. with all but that graceful head worn away by the century??s use.