After a few moments he felt a little better and began seriously to undress; he laid his clothes neatly, much more neatly than he ever did in his own room, over the back of the chair. He had to sit to unbutton his boots. He stared into the fire as he took off his trousers and the undergarment, which reached, in the fashion of those days, somewhat below his knees. But his shirt he could not bring himself to remove. The nausea returned. He gripped the lace-fringed mantelpiece, his eyes closed, fighting for control.
This time she took his delay for shyness and threw back the bedclothes as if to come and lead him to bed. He forced himself to walk towards her. She sank back again, but without covering her body. He stood by the bed and stared down at her. She reached out her arms. He still stared, conscious only of the swimming sensation in his head, the now totally rebellious fumes of the milk punch, champagne, claret, port, that damnable hock…
“I don’t know your name.”
She smiled up at him, then reached for his hands and pulled him down towards her.
“Sarah, sir.”
He was racked by an intolerable spasm. Twisting sideways he began to vomit into the pillow beside her shocked, flungback head.
41
…Arise and fly The reeling faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850)
For the twenty-ninth time that morning Sam caught the cook’s eye, directed his own to a row of bells over the kitchen door and then eloquently swept them up to the ceiling. It was noon. One might have thought Sam glad to have a morning off; but the only mornings off he coveted were with more attractive female company than that of the portly Mrs. Rogers.
“’E’s not ‘imself,” said the dowager, also for the twenty-ninth time. If she felt irritated, however, it was with Sam, not the young lord upstairs. Ever since their return from Lyme two days before, the valet had managed to hint at dark goings-on. It is true he had graciously communicated the news about Winsyatt; but he had regularly added “And that ain’t ‘alf of what’s a-foot.” He refused to be drawn. “There’s sartin confidences” (a word he pronounced with a long i) “as can’t be yet spoken of, Mrs. R. But things ‘as ‘appened my heyes couldn’t ‘ardly believe they was seein’.”
Sam had certainly one immediate subject for bitterness. Charles had omitted to dismiss him for the evening when he went out to see Mr. Freeman. Thus Sam had waited in and up until after midnight, only to be greeted, when he heard the front door open, by a black look from a white face.
“Why the devil aren’t you in bed?”
“’Cos you didn’t say you was dinin’ out, Mr. Charles.”
“I’ve been at my club.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And take that insolent look off your damned face.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sam held out his hands and took—or caught—the various objects, beginning with sundry bits of outdoor apparel and terminating in a sulphurous glare, that Charles threw at him. Then the master marched majestically upstairs. His mind was now very sober, but his body was still a little drunk, a fact Sam’s bitter but unseen smirk had only too plainly reflected.
“You’re right, Mrs. R. ‘E’s not ‘imself. ‘E was blind drunk last night.”
“I wouldn’t ‘ave believed it possible.”
“There’s lots o’ things yours truly wouldn’t ‘ave believed possible, Mrs. R. As ‘as ‘appened hall the same.”
“’E never wants to cry off!”
“Wild ‘osses wouldn’t part my lips, Mrs. R.” The cook took a deep-bosomed breath. Her clock ticked beside her range. Sam smiled at her. “But you’re sharp, Mrs. R. Very sharp.”
Clearly Sam’s own feeling of resentment would very soon have accomplished what the wild horses were powerless to effect. But he was saved, and the buxom Mrs. Rogers thwarted, by the bell. Sam went and lifted the two-gallon can of hot water that had been patiently waiting all morning at the back of the range, winked at his colleague, and disappeared.
There are two kinds of hangover: in one you feel ill and incapable, in the other you feel ill and lucid. Charles had in fact been awake, indeed out of bed, some time before he rang. He had the second sort of hangover. He remembered only too clearly the events of the previous night.
His vomiting had driven the already precarious sexual element in that bedroom completely out of sight and mind. His unhappily named choice had hastily risen, pulled on her gown, and then proved herself to be as calm a nurse as she had promised to be a prostitute. She got Charles to his chair by the fire, where he caught sight of the hock bottle, and was promptly sick again. But this time she had ready a basin from the washstand. Charles kept groaning his apologies between his retches.
“Most sorry… most unfortunate… something disagreed…” “It’s all right, sir, it’s all right. You just let it come.”
And let it come he had had to. She went and got her shawl and threw it round his shoulders. He sat for some time ludicrously like an old granny, crouched over the basin on his knees, his head bowed. After a while he began to feel a little better. Would he like to sleep? He would, but in his own bed. She went and looked down into the street, then left the room while he shakily got dressed. When she came back she herself had put on her clothes. He looked at her aghast.
“You are surely not… ?”
“Get you a cab, sir. If you just wait…”
“Ah yes… thank you.”
And he sat down again, while she went downstairs and out of the house. Though he was by no means sure that his nausea was past, he felt in some psychological way profoundly relieved. Never mind what his intention had been; he had not committed the fatal deed. He stared into the glowing fire; and strange as it may seem, smiled wanly.
Then there came a low cry from the next room. A silence, then the sound came again, louder this time and more prolonged. The little girl had evidently wakened. Her crying—silence, wailing, choking, silence, wailing—became intolerable. Charles went to the window and opened the curtains. The mist prevented him seeing very far. There was not a soul to be seen. He realized how infrequent the sound of horses’ hooves had become; and guessed that the girl might have to go some way to find his hansom. As he stood undecided, there was a heavy thumping on the wall from the next house. A vindictive male voice shouted angrily. Charles hesitated, then laying his hat and stick on the table, he opened the door through to that other room. He made out by the reflected light a wardrobe and an old box-trunk. The room was very small. In the far corner, beside a closed commode, was a small truckle bed. The child’s cries, suddenly renewed, pierced the small room. Charles stood in the lit doorway, foolishly, a terrifying black giant.
“Hush now, hush. Your mother will soon return.” The strange voice, of course, only made things worse. Charles felt the whole neighborhood must wake, so penetrating were the screams. He struck his head in distress, then stepped forward into the shadow beside the child. Seeing how small she was he realized words were useless. He bent over her and gently patted her head. Hot small fingers seized his, but the crying continued. The minute, contorted face ejected its great store of fear with bewildering force. Some desperate expedient had to be found. Charles found it. He groped for his watch, freed its chain from his waistcoat and dangled it over the child. The effect was immediate. The cries turned to mewling whimpers. Then the small arms reached up to grab the delicious silver toy; and were allowed to do so; then lost it in the bedclothes and struggled to sit and failed. The screams began again.
Charles reached to raise the child a little against her pillow. A temptation seized him. He lifted her out of the bed in her long nightgown, then turned and sat on the commode. Holding the small body on his knees he dandled the watch in front of the now eager small arms. She was one of those pudgy-faced Victorian children with little black beads for eyes; an endearing little turnip with black hair. And her instant change of mood, a gurgle of delight
when at last she clasped the coveted watch, amused Charles. She began to lall. Charles muttered answers: yes, yes, very pretty, good little girl, pretty pretty. He had a vision of Sir Tom and the bishop’s son coming on him at that moment… the end of his great debauch. The strange dark labyrinths of life; the mystery of meetings.
He smiled; for it was less a sentimental tenderness that little child brought than a restoration of his sense of irony, which was in turn the equivalent of a kind of faith in himself. Earlier that evening, when he was in Sir Tom’s brougham, he had had a false sense of living in the present; his rejection then of his past and future had been a mere vicious plunge into irresponsible oblivion. Now he had a far more profound and genuine intuition of the great human illusion about time, which is that its reality is like that of a road—on which one can constantly see where one was and where one probably will be—instead of the truth: that time is a room, a now so close to us that we regularly fail to see it.
Charles’s was the very opposite of the Sartrean experience. The simple furniture around him, the warm light from the next room, the humble shadows, above all that small being he held on his knees, so insubstantial after its mother’s weight (but he did not think at all of her), they were not encroaching and hostile objects, but constituting and friendly ones. The ultimate hell was infinite and empty space; and they kept it at bay. He felt suddenly able to face his future, which was only a form of that terrible emptiness. Whatever happened to him such moments would recur; must be found, and could be found.
A door opened. The prostitute stood in the light. Charles could not see her face, but he guessed that she was for a moment alarmed. And then relieved.
“Oh sir. Did she cry?”
“Yes. A little. I think she has gone back to sleep now.”
“I ‘ad to go down to the Warren Street stand. They was all off ‘ere.”
“You are very kind.”
He passed her child to her, and watched her as she tucked it back into its bed; then abruptly turned and left the room. He felt in his pocket and counted out five sovereigns and left them on the table. The child had reawoken, and its mother was quietening it again. He hesitated, then silently left the room.
He was inside the waiting hansom when she came running down the steps and to the door. She stared up at him. Her look was almost puzzled, almost hurt.
“Oh sir… thank you. Thank you.”
He realized that she had tears in her eyes; no shock to the poor like unearned money.
“You are a brave, kind girl.”
He reached out and touched her hand where it clasped the front sill. Then he tapped with his stick.
42
History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.
Marx, Die Heilige Familie (1845)
Charles, as we have learned, did not return to Kensington in quite so philanthropic a mood as he finally left the prostitute’s. He had felt sick again during the hour’s journey; and had had time to work up a good deal of self-disgust into the bargain. But he woke in a better frame of mind. As men will, he gave his hangover its due, and stared awfully at his haggard face and peered into his parched and acrid mouth; and then decided he was on the whole rather well able to face the world. He certainly faced Sam when he came in with the hot water, and made some sort of apology for his bad temper of the previous night.
“I didn’t notice nuffink, Mr. Charles.”
“I had a somewhat tiresome evening, Sam. And now be a good fellow and fetch me up a large pot of tea. I have the devil’s own thirst.”
Sam left, hiding his private opinion that his master had the devil’s own something else as well. Charles washed and shaved, and thought about Charles. He was clearly not cut out to be a rake; but nor had he had much training in remorseful pessimism. Had not Mr. Freeman himself said that two years might pass before any decision as to his future need to be taken? Much could happen in two years. Charles did not actually say to himself, “My uncle may die”; but the idea hovered on the fringes of his mind. And then the carnal aspect of the previous night’s experience reminded him that legitimate pleasures in that direction would soon be his to enjoy. For now he must abstain. And that child—how many of life’s shortcomings children must make up for!
Sam returned with the tea—and with two letters. Life became a road again. He saw at once that the top envelope had been double postmarked; posted in Exeter and forwarded to Kensington from the White Lion in Lyme Regis. The other came direct from Lyme. He hesitated, then to allay suspicion picked up a paperknife and went to the window. He opened the letter from Grogan first; but before we read it, we must read the note Charles had sent on his return to Lyme that morning of his dawn walk to Carslake’s Barn. It had said the following:
My dear Doctor Grogan,
I write in great haste to thank you for your invaluable advice and assistance last night, and to assure you once again that I shall be most happy to pay for any care or attentions your colleague and yourself may deem necessary. You will, I trust, and in full understanding that I have seen the folly of my misguided interest, let me know what transpires concerning the meeting that will have taken place when you read this.
Alas, I could not bring myself to broach the subject in Broad Street this morning. My somewhat sudden departure, and various other circumstances with which I will not now bother you, made the moment most conspicuously inopportune. The matter shall be dealt with as soon as I return. I must ask you meanwhile to keep it to yourself.
I leave immediately. My London address is below. With profound gratitude,
C.S.
It had not been an honest letter. But it had had to be written. Now Charles nervously unfolded the reply to it.
My dear Smithson,
I have delayed writing to you in the hope of obtaining some eclaircissement of our little Dorset mystery. I regret to say that the only female I encountered on the morning of my expedition was Mother Nature—a lady whose conversation I began, after some three hours’ waiting, to find a trifle tedious. In short, the person did not appear. On my return to Lyme I sent out a sharp lad to do duty for me. But he too sat sub tegmine fagi in pleasant solitude. I pen these words lightly, yet I confess that when the lad returned that nightfall I began to fear the worst.
However, it came to my ears the next morning that instructions had been left at the White Lion for the girl’s box to be forwarded to Exeter. The author of the instructions I cannot discover. No doubt she sent the message herself. I think we may take it she has decamped.
My one remaining fear, my dear Smithson, is that she may follow you to London and attempt to thrust her woes upon you there. I beg you not to dismiss this contingency with a smile. If I had time I could cite you other cases where just such a course has been followed. I enclose an address. He is an excellent man, with whom I have long been in correspondence, and I advise you most strongly to put the business in his hands should further embarrassment come d la lettre knocking on your door.
Rest assured that no word has passed or shall pass my lips. I shall not repeat my advice regarding the charming creature—whom I had the pleasure of meeting in the street just now, by the bye—but I recommend a confession at the earliest opportunity. I don’t fancy the Absolvitur will require too harsh or long a penance.
Yr very sincere
Michael Grogan
Charles had drawn a breath of guilty relief long before he finished that letter. He was not discovered. He stared a long moment out of his bedroom window, then opened the second letter.
He expected pages, but there was only one.
He expected a flood of words, but there were only three.
An address.
He crumpled the sheet of paper in his hand, then returned to the fire that had been lit by the upstairs maid, to the accompaniment of his snores, at eight o’clock that morning, and threw it into the flames. In five seconds it was ashes. He took the
cup of tea that Sam stood waiting to hand to him. Charles drained it at one gulp, and passed the cup and saucer for more.
“I have done my business, Sam. We return to Lyme tomorrow. The ten o’clock train. You will see to the tickets. And take those two messages on my desk to the telegraph office. And then you may have the afternoon off to choose some ribbons for the fair Mary—that is, if you haven’t disposed of your heart elsewhere since our return.”
Sam had been waiting for that cue. He flicked a glance at his master’s back as he refilled the gilt breakfast cup; and made his announcement as he extended the cup on a small silver tray to Charles’s reaching fingers.
“Mr. Charles, I’m a-goin’ to hask for ‘er ‘and.”
“Are you indeed!”
“Or I would, Mr. Charles, if it weren’t I didn’t ‘ave such hexcellent prospecks under your hemploy.”
Charles supped his tea.
“Out with it, Sam. Stop talking riddles.”
“If I was merrid I’d ‘ave to live out, sir.”
Charles’s sharp look of instinctive objection showed how little he had thought about the matter. He turned and sat by his fire.
“Now, Sam, heaven forbid that I should be an impediment to your marriage—but surely you’re not going to forsake me so soon before mine?”
“You mistake my hintention, Mr. Charles. I was a-thinkin’ of harterwards.”
“We shall be in a much larger establishment. I’m sure my wife would be happy to have Mary there with her… so what is the trouble?”
Sam took a deep breath.
“I’ve been thinkin’ of goin’ into business, Mr. Charles. When you’re settled, that is, Mr. Charles. I “ope you know I should never leave you in the hower of need.”
The French Lieutenant’s Woman Page 31