by John Fowles
"So I must sign."
"If you like I can go back and argue for different phrases-- some form that would reserve to you the right to plead extenuating circumstances if it came to trial. But I strongly advise against. The very harshness of this as it stands would argue far better for you. It pays us best to pay their price. Then if needs be we can argue the bill was a deuced sight too stiff."
Charles nodded, and they stood.
"There's one thing, Harry. I wish I knew how Ernestina is. I cannot ask him."
"I'll see if I can have a word with old Aubrey afterwards.
He's not such a bad old stick. He has to play it up for Papa."
So they returned; and the admission was signed, first by Charles, then by each of the others in turn. All remained standing. There was a moment's awkward silence. Then at last Mr. Freeman spoke. "And now, you blackguard, never darken my life again. I wish I were a younger man. If--"
"My dear Mr. Freeman!"
Old Aubrey's sharp voice silenced his client. Charles hesitated, bowed to the two lawyers, then left followed by Montague.
But outside Montague said, "Wait in the carriage for me."
A minute or two later he climbed in beside Charles.
"She is as well as can be expected. Those are his words. He also gave me to understand what Freeman intends to do if you go in for the marriage game again. Charles, he will show what you have just signed to the next father-in-law to be. He means you to remain a bachelor all your life."
"I had guessed as much."
"Old Aubrey also told me, by the way, to whom you owe your release on parole."
"To her? That too I had guessed."
"He would have had his pound of flesh. But the young lady evidently rules that household."
The carriage rolled on for a hundred yards before Charles spoke.
"I am defiled to the end of my life."
"My dear Charles, if you play the Muslim in a world of Puritans, you can expect no other treatment. I am as fond as the next man of a pretty ankle. I don't blame you. But don't tell me that the price is not fairly marked."
The carriage rolled on. Charles stared gloomily out at the sunny street.
"I wish I were dead."
"Then let us go to Verrey's and demolish a lobster or two. And you shall tell me about the mysterious Miss Woodruff before you die."
* * *
That humiliating interview depressed Charles for days. He wanted desperately to go abroad, never to see England again. His club, his acquaintances, he could not face them; he gave strict instructions--he was at home to no one. He threw himself into the search for Sarah. One day the detective office turned up a Miss Woodbury, newly employed at a girls' academy in Stoke Newington. She had auburn hair, she seemed to fit the description he had supplied. He spent an agonizing hour one afternoon outside the school. Miss Woodbury came out, at the head of a crocodile of young ladies. She bore only the faintest resemblance to Sarah.
June came, an exceptionally fine one. Charles saw it out, but towards the end of it he stopped searching. The detective office remained optimistic, but they had their fees to consider. Exeter was searched as London had been; a man was even sent to make discreet inquiries at Lyme and Char-mouth; and all in vain. One evening Charles asked Montague to have dinner with him at the Kensington house, and frankly, miserably, placed himself in his hands. What should he do? Montague did not hesitate to tell him. He should go abroad.
"But what can her purpose have been? To give herself to me--and then to dismiss me as if I were nothing to her."
"The strong presumption--forgive me--is that that latter possibility is the truth. Could not that doctor have been right? Are you sure her motive was not one of vindictive destruction? To ruin your prospects ... to reduce you to what you are, Charles?"
"I cannot believe it."
"But prima facieyou must believe it."
"Beneath all her stories and deceptions she had a candor ... an honesty. Perhaps she has died. She has no money. No family."
"Then let me send a clerk to look at the Register of Death."
Charles took this sensible advice almost as if it were an insult. But the next day he followed it; and no Sarah Woodruff's death was recorded.
He dallied another week. Then abruptly, one evening, he decided to go abroad.
57
Each for himself is still the rule:
We learn it when we go to school--
The devil take the hindmost, O!
--A. H. Clough, Poem (1849)
* * *
And now let us jump twenty months. It is a brisk early February day in the year 1869. Gladstone has in the interval at last reached No. 10 Downing Street; the last public execution in England has taken place; Mill's Subjection of Women and Girton College are about to appear. The Thames is its usual infamous mud-gray. But the sky above is derisively blue; and looking up, one might be in Florence. Looking down, along the new embankment in Chelsea, there are traces of snow on the ground. Yet there is also, if only in the sunlight, the first faint ghost of spring. I am ver ... I am sure the young woman whom I should have liked to show pushing a perambulator (but can't, since they do not come into use for another decade) had never heard of Catullus, nor would have thought much of all that going on about unhappy love even if she had. But she knew the sentiment about spring. After all, she had just left the result of an earlier spring at home (a mile away to the west) and so blanketed and swaddled and swathed that it might just as well have been a bulb beneath the ground. It is also clear, trimly though she contrives to dress, that like all good gardeners she prefers her bulbs planted en masse. There is something in that idle slow walk of expectant mothers; the least offensive arrogance in the world, though still an arrogance. This idle and subtly proud young woman leans for a moment over the parapet and stares at the gray ebb. Pink cheeks, and superb wheaten-lashed eyes, eyes that concede a little in blueness to the sky over her, but nothing in brilliance; London could never have bred a thing so pure. Yet when she turns and surveys the handsome row of brick houses, some new, some old, that front the river across the road it is very evident that she holds nothing against London. And it is a face without envy, as it takes in the well-to-do houses; but full of a naive happiness that such fine things exist.
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 precio
us 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;