The French Lieutenant’s Woman

by John Robert Fowles

  I do not mean to say Charles’s thoughts were so specific, so disgracefully Mohammedan. 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, arid scents in his nostrils, towards the distant walls of Avila; or approaching some Greek temple in the blazing Aegean sunshine. But even then a figure, a dark shadow, his dead sister, moved ahead of him, lightly, luringly, up the ashlar steps and into the broken columns’ mystery.

  21

  Forgive me! forgive me!

  Ah, Marguerite, fain

  Would these arms reach to clasp thee:—

  But see! ‘tis in vain.

  In the void air towards thee My strain’d arms are cast.

  But a sea rolls between us—

  Our different past.

  Matthew Arnold, Parting (1853)

  A minute’s silence. By a little upward movement of the head she showed she had recovered. She half turned.

  “May I finish? There is little more to add.”

  “Pray do not distress yourself.”

  She bowed in promise, then went on. “He left the next day. There was a ship. He had excuses. His family difficulties, his long stay from home. He said he would return at once. I knew he was lying. But I said nothing. Perhaps you think I should have returned to Mrs. Talbot and pretended that I had indeed been at Sherborne. But I could not hide my feelings, Mr. Smithson. I was in a daze of despair. It was enough to see my face to know some life-changing event had taken place in my absence. And I could not lie to Mrs. Talbot. I did not wish to lie.”

  “Then you told her what you have just told me?”

  She looked down at her hands. “No. I told her that I had met Varguennes. That he would return one day to marry me. I spoke thus… not out of pride. Mrs. Talbot had the heart to understand the truth—I mean to forgive me—but I could not tell her that it was partly her own happiness that had driven me.”

  “When did you learn that he was married?”

  “A month later. He made himself out an unhappy husband. He spoke still of love, of an arrangement… it was no shock. I felt no pain. I replied without anger. I told him my affection for him had ceased, I wished never to see him again.”

  “And you have concealed it from everyone but myself?”

  She waited a long time before answering. “Yes. For the reason I said.”

  “To punish yourself?”

  “To be what I must be. An outcast.”

  Charles remembered Dr. Grogan’s commonsensical reaction to his own concern for her. “But my dear Miss Woodruff, if every woman who’d been deceived by some unscrupulous member of my sex were to behave as you have—I fear the country would be full of outcasts.”

  “It is.”

  “Now come, that’s absurd.”

  “Outcasts who are afraid to seem so.”

  He stared at her back; and recalled something else that Dr. Grogan had said—about patients who refused to take medicine. But he determined to make one more try. He leaned forward, his hands clasped.

  “I can very well understand how unhappy some circumstances must seem to a person of education and intelligence. But should not those very qualities enable one to triumph—”

  Now she stood, abruptly, and moved towards the edge of the bluff. Charles hastily followed and stood beside her, ready to seize her arm—for he saw his uninspired words of counsel had had the very contrary effect to that intended. She stared out to sea, and something in the set of her face suggested to him that she felt she had made a mistake; that he was trite, a mere mouther of convention. There was something male about her there. Charles felt himself an old woman; and did not like the feeling.

  “Forgive me. I ask too much, perhaps. But I meant well.”

  She lowered her head, acknowledging the implicit apology; but then resumed her stare out to sea. They were now more exposed, visible to anyone in the trees below.

  “And please step back a little. It is not safe here.”

  She turned and looked at him then. There was once again a kind of penetration of his real motive that was disconcertingly naked. We can sometimes recognize the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but never those of a century to come. A moment, then she walked past him back to the thorn. He stood in the center of the little arena.

  “What you have told me does but confirm my previous sentiment. You must leave Lyme.”

  “If I leave here I leave my shame. Then I am lost.”

  She reached up and touched a branch of the hawthorn. He could not be sure, but she seemed deliberately to press her forefinger down; a second later she was staring at a crimson drop of blood. She looked at it a moment, then took a handkerchief from her pocket and surreptitiously dabbed the blood away.

  He left a silence, then sprang it on her.

  “Why did you refuse Dr. Grogan’s help last summer?” Her eyes flashed round at him accusingly, but he was ready for that reaction. “Yes—I asked him his opinion. You cannot deny that I had a right to.”

  She turned away again. “Yes. You had right.”

  “Then you must answer me.”

  “Because I did not choose to go to him for help. I mean nothing against him. I know he wished to help.”

  “And was not his advice the same as mine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then with respect I must remind you of your promise to me.”

  She did not answer. But that was an answer. Charles went some steps closer to where she stood staring into the thorn branches.

  “Miss Woodruff?”

  “Now you know the truth—can you still tender that advice?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “Then you forgive me my sin?”

  This brought up Charles a little short. “You put far too high a value on my forgiveness. The essential is that you forgive yourself your sin. And you can never do that here.”

  “You did not answer my question, Mr. Smithson.”

  “Heaven forbid I should pronounce on what only Our Maker can decide. But I am convinced, we are all convinced that you have done sufficient penance. You are forgiven.”

  “And may be forgotten.”

  The dry finality of her voice puzzled him a moment. Then he smiled. “If you mean by that that your friends here intend no practical assistance—”

  “I did not mean that. I know they mean kindly. But I am like this thorn tree, Mr. Smithson. No one reproaches it for growing here in this solitude. It is when it walks down Broad Street that it offends society.”

  He made a little puff of protest. “But my dear Miss Woodruff, you cannot tell me it is your duty to offend society.” He added, “If that is what I am to infer.”

  She half turned. “But is it not that society wishes to remove me to another solitude?”

  “What you question now is the justice of existence.”

  “And that is forbidden?”

  “Not forbidden. But fruitless.”

  She shook her head. “There are fruit. Though bitter.”

  But it was said without contradiction, with a deep sadness, almost to herself. Charles was overcome, as by a backwash from her wave of confession, by a sense of waste. He perceived that her directness of look was matched by a directness of thought and language—that what had on occasion struck him before as a presumption of intellectual equality (therefore a suspect resentment against man) was less an equality than a proximity, a proximity like a nakedness, an intimacy of thought and feeling hitherto unimaginable to him in the context of a relationship with a woman.

  He did not think this subjectively, but objectively: here, if only some free man had the wit to see it, is a remarkable woman. The feeling was not of male envy: but very much of human loss. Abruptly he reached out his hand and touched her shoulder in a gesture of comfort; and as quickly turned away. There was a silence.

  As if she sensed his frustration, she spoke. “You think then that I should leave?”

  At once he felt released and
turned eagerly back to her.

  “I beg you to. New surroundings, new faces… and have no worries as regards the practical considerations. We await only your decision to interest ourselves on your behalf.”

  “May I have a day or two to reflect?”

  “If it so be you feel it necessary.” He took his chance; and grasped the normality she made so elusive. “And I propose that we now put the matter under Mrs. Tranter’s auspices. If you will permit, I will see to it that her purse is provided for any needs you may have.”

  Her head bowed; she seemed near tears again. She murmured, “I don’t deserve such kindness. I…”

  “Say no more. I cannot think of money better spent.”

  A delicate tinge of triumph was running through Charles. It had been as Grogan prophesied. Confession had brought cure—or at least a clear glimpse of it. He turned to pick up his ashplant by the block of flint.

  “I must come to Mrs. Tranter’s?”

  “Excellent. There will of course be no necessity to speak of our meetings.”

  “I shall say nothing.”

  He saw the scene already; his polite but not too interested surprise, followed by his disinterested insistence that any pecuniary assistance desirable should be to his charge. Ernestina might very well tease him about it—but that would ease his conscience. He smiled at Sarah.

  “You have shared your secret. I think you will find it to be an unburdening in many other ways. You have very considerable natural advantages. You have nothing to fear from life. A day will come when these recent unhappy years may seem no more than that cloud-stain over there upon Chesil Bank. You shall stand in sunlight—and smile at your own past sorrows.” He thought he detected a kind of light behind the doubt in her eyes; for a moment she was like a child, both reluctant and yet willing to be cozened—or homilized—out of tears. His smile deepened. He added lightly, “And now had we better not descend?”

  She seemed as if she would like to say something, no doubt reaffirm her gratitude, but his stance of brisk waiting made her, after one last lingering look into his eyes, move past him.

  She led the way down as neat-footedly as she had led it up. Looking down on her back, he felt tinges of regret. Not to see her thus again… regret and relief. A remarkable young woman. He would not forget her; and it seemed some consolation that he would not be allowed to. Aunt Tranter would be his future spy.

  They came to the base of the lower cliff, and went through the first tunnel of ivy, over the clearing, and into the second green corridor—and then!

  There came from far below, from the main path through the Undercliff, the sound of a stifled peal of laughter. Its effect was strange—as if some wood spirit had been watching their clandestine meeting and could now no longer bottle up her—for the laugh was unmistakably female—mirth at their foolish confidence in being unseen.

  Charles and Sarah stopped as of one accord. Charles’s growing relief was instantaneously converted into a shocked alarm. But the screen of ivy was dense, the laugh had come from two or three hundred yards away; they could not have been seen. Unless as they came down the slope… a moment, then she swiftly raised a finger to her lips, indicated that he should not move, and then herself stole along to the end of the tunnel. Charles watched her crane forward and stare cautiously down towards the path. Then her face turned sharply back to him. She beckoned—he was to go to her, but with the utmost quietness; and simultaneously that laugh came again. It was quieter this time, yet closer. Whoever had been on the path had left it and was climbing up through the ash trees toward them.

  Charles trod cautiously towards Sarah, making sure of each place where he had to put his wretchedly unstealthy boots. He felt himself flushing, most hideously embarrassed. No explanation could hold water for a moment. However he was seen with Sarah, it must be in flagrante delicto.

  He came to where she stood, and where the ivy was fortunately at its thickest. She had turned away from the interlopers and stood with her back against a tree trunk, her eyes cast down as if in mute guilt for having brought them both to this pass. Charles looked through the leaves and down the slope of the ash grove—and his blood froze. Coming up towards them, as if seeking their same cover, were Sam and Mary. Sam had his arm round the girl’s shoulders. He carried his hat, and she her bonnet; she wore the green walking dress given her by Ernestina—indeed, the last time Charles had seen it it had been on Ernestina—and her head lay back a little against Sam’s cheek. They were young lovers as plain as the ashes were old trees; as greenly erotic as the April plants they trod on.

  Charles drew back a little but kept them in view. As he watched Sam drew the girl’s face round and kissed her. Her arm came up and they embraced; and then holding hands, stood shyly apart a little. Sam led the girl to where a bank of grass had managed to establish itself between the trees. Mary sat and lay back, and Sam leaned beside her, looking down at her; then he touched her hair aside from her cheeks and bent and kissed her tenderly on the eyes.

  Charles felt pierced with a new embarrassment: he glanced at Sarah, to see if she knew who the intruders were. But she stared at the hart’s-tongue ferns at her feet, as if they were merely sheltering from some shower of rain. Two minutes, then three passed. Embarrassment gave way to a degree of relief—it was clear that the two servants were far more interested in exploring each other than their surroundings. He glanced again at Sarah. Now she too was watching, from round her tree trunk. She turned back, her eyes cast down. But then without warning she looked up at him.

  A moment.

  Then she did something as strange, as shocking, as if she had thrown off her clothes.

  She smiled.

  It was a smile so complex that Charles could at the first moment only stare at it incredulously. It was so strangely timed! He felt she had almost been waiting for such a moment to unleash it upon him—this revelation of her humor, that her sadness was not total. And in those wide eyes, so somber, sad and direct, was revealed an irony, a new dimension of herself—one little Paul and Virginia would have been quite familiar with in days gone by, but never till now bestowed on Lyme.

  Where are your pretensions now, those eyes and gently curving lips seemed to say; where is your birth, your science, your etiquette, your social order? More than that, it was not a smile one could stiffen or frown at; it could only be met with a smile in return, for it excused Sam and Mary, it excused all; and in some way too subtle for analysis, undermined all that had passed between Charles and herself till then. It lay claim to a far profounder understanding, acknowledgment of that awkward equality melting into proximity than had been consciously admitted. Indeed, Charles did not consciously smile in return; he found himself smiling; only with his eyes, but smiling. And excited, in some way too obscure and general to be called sexual, to the very roots of his being; like a man who at last comes, at the end of a long high wall, to the sought-for door… but only to find it locked.

  For several moments they stood, the woman who was the door, the man without the key; and then she lowered her eyes again. The smile died. A long silence hung between them. Charles saw the truth: he really did stand with one foot over the precipice. For a moment he thought he would, he must plunge. He knew if he reached out his arm she would meet with no resistance… only a passionate reciprocity of feeling. The red in his cheeks deepened, and at last he whispered.

  “We must never meet alone again.”

  She did not raise her head, but gave the smallest nod of assent; and then with an almost sullen movement she turned away from him, so that he could not see her face. He looked again through the leaves. Sam’s head and shoulders were bent over the invisible Mary. Long moments passed, but Charles remained watching, his mind still whirling down that precipice, hardly aware that he was spying, yet infected, as each moment passed, with more of the very poison he was trying to repel.

  Mary saved him. Suddenly she pushed Sam aside and laughing, ran down the slope back towards the path; poising a moment, her mi
schievous face flashed back at Sam, before she raised her skirts and skittered down, a thin line of red petticoat beneath the viridian, through the violets and the dog’s mercury. Sam ran after her. Their figures dwindled between the gray stems; dipped, disappeared, a flash of green, a flash of blue; a laugh that ended in a little scream; then silence.

  Five minutes passed, during which the hidden pair spoke not a word to each other. Charles remained staring fixedly down the hill, as if it were important that he should keep such intent watch. All he wanted, of course, was to avoid looking at Sarah. At last he broke the silence.

  “You had better go.” She bowed her head. “I will wait a half-hour.” She bowed her head again, and then moved past him. Their eyes did not meet.

  Only when she was out among the ash trees did she turn and look back for a moment at him. She could not have seen his face, but she must have known he was watching. And her face had its old lancing look again. Then she went lightly on down through the trees.

  22

  I too have felt the load I bore

  In a too strong emotion’s sway;

  I too have wished, no woman more,

  This starting, feverish heart, away.

  I too have longed for trenchant force

  And will like a dividing spear;

  Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course,

  Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.

  But in the world I learnt, what there

  Thou too will surely one day prove,

  That will, that energy, though rare,

  And yet far, far less rare than love.

  Matthew Arnold, A Farewell (1853)