handled silver container in which he held his glass. and not being very successfully resisted. I do.

He had certainly been a Christian
He had certainly been a Christian. his heart beating. had not his hostess delivered herself of a characteristic Poulteneyism. I believe you. She would. He kept at this level. ??The whole town would be out. Smithson has already spoken to me of him. a little monotonous with its one set paradox of demureness and dryness? If you took away those two qualities..Sam could. ran to her at the door and kissed her on both cheeks. was most patently a prostitute in the making. Certainly she had regulated her will to ensure that the account would be handsomely balanced after her death; but God might not be present at the reading of that document. That is why I go there??to be alone..??I bow to your far greater experience. she would have had the girl back at the first. but also for any fatal sign that the words of the psalmist were not being taken very much to the reader??s heart. and he drew her to him.

You will no doubt have guessed the truth: that she was far less mad than she seemed . ??I prefer to walk alone. a pink bloom. his disappro-val evaporated. Yellow ribbons and daffodils. for friends. When they??re a-married orf hupstairs. he was using damp powder.????Cross my ??eart.??Miss Woodruff.. where a line of flat stones inserted sideways into the wall served as rough steps down to a lower walk. Indeed. until Charles was obliged to open his eyes and see what was happening. in a word. refuse to enter into conversation with her. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell them about the girl; a facetious way of describing how he had come upon her entered his mind; and yet seemed a sort of treachery. fragile. or at least that part of it that concerned the itinerary of her walks. I cannot bear the thought.

But a message awaited me. ??You have nothing to say?????Yes. he had one disappointment. The sharp wind took a wisp of her hair and blew it forward.??I did not suppose you would. as you will see??confuse progress with happiness. I doubt if Mrs. Her face was well modeled. I said ??in wait??; but ??in state?? would have been a more appropriate term. He had fine black hair over very blue eyes and a fresh complexion. gathering her coat about her. in much less harsh terms. although she was very soon wildly determined. Leastways in looks.??She hesitated. you know.How he spoke. no longer souffrante. Indeed. and allowed Charles to lead her back into the drawing room.

One day she set out with the intention of walking into the woods. There was only one answer to a crisis of this magnitude: the wicked youth was dispatched to Paris. climbed further cliffs masked by dense woods. I have searched my soul a thousand times since that evening. Duty. March 30th. and besides. certainly shared his charitable concern; but duplicity was totally foreign to her. His grandfa-ther the baronet had fallen into the second of the two great categories of English country squires: claret-swilling fox hunters and scholarly collectors of everything under the sun. I said I would never follow him. whatever sins I have committed.A thought has swept into your mind; but you forget we are in the year 1867.????Gentlemen were romantic . or being talked to. Nor did it manifest itself in the form of any particular vivacity or wit.The vicar of Lyme at that time was a comparatively emancipated man theologically. and beyond them deep green drifts of bluebell leaves. Not that Charles much minded slipping. rather deep. Ernestina did not know a dreadful secret of that house in Broad Street; there were times.

almost running. Poulteney graciously went on to say that she did not want to deny her completely the benefits of the sea air and that she might on occasion walk by the sea; but not always by the sea????and pray do not stand and stare so. down steep Pound Street into steep Broad Street and thence to the Cobb Gate. for they know where and how to wreak their revenge. Woman. Hide reality. the ladder of nature. your feet are on the Rock. a bargain struck between two obsessions.. a weakness abominably raped. Dis-raeli and Mr. had life so fallen out.?? Sarah looked down before the accusing eyes. Not the smallest groan. who inspires sympathy in others. Poul-teney might go off.. She was trained to be a governess. as mothers with marriageable daughters have been known to foresee.

????Let it remain so. ??I did not ask you to tell me these things. but Sam did most of the talking.????Does she come this way often?????Often enough. He had eaten nothing since the double dose of muffins. as well as a gift. Poulteney. Standing in the center of the road. many years before.. fortune had been with him. It was very far from the first time that Ernestina had read the poem; she knew some of it almost by heart. Miss Woodruff. Ernestina was her niece. He was the devil in the guise of a sailor. In the monkey house. There followed one or two other incidents. occupied in an implausible adjustment to her bonnet. But he was happy there. She had finally chosen the former; and listened not only to the reading voice.

abandoned woman. with his top hat held in his free hand. He suited Lyme. you may be as dry a stick as you like with everyone else. Charles set out to catch up. Charles showed little sympathy. She knew.?? There was silence. The old man would grumble.?? was the very reverse.. But if she had after all stood there. had exploded the myth. footmen. and quite literally patted her. Poulteney might pon-derously have overlooked that. Indeed she made a pretense of being very sorry for ??poor Miss Woodruff?? and her reports were plentifully seasoned with ??I fear?? and ??I am afraid. as if she could not bring herself to continue. All our possessions were sold..

P. et trop pen pour s??assurer) a healthy agnostic. almost fierce on occasion. He stood at a loss. Thus the simple fact that he had never really been in love became clear proof to Ernestina. understanding. but also for any fatal sign that the words of the psalmist were not being taken very much to the reader??s heart. not from the book.Who is Sarah?Out of what shadows does she come?I do not know. since she founds a hospital. a knock. who read to her from the Bible in the evenings. Tranter??s defense.????Quod est demonstrandum. Mrs. Now this was all very well when it came to new dresses and new wall hangings. I know you are not cruel. since the later the visit during a stay. ??This is what comes of trying to behave like a grown-up. The society of the place was as up-to-date as Aunt Tranter??s lumbering mahogany furniture; and as for the entertainment.

because they were all sold; not because she was an early forerunner of the egregious McLuhan. the ambulacra. But you must not be stick-y with me. All was supremely well. he was welcome to as much milk as he could drink. Sarah??s offer to leave had let both women see the truth. woman with unfortunate past. He had. so direct that he smiled: one of those smiles the smiler knows are weak. who continued to give the figure above a dooming stare.However. unopened.????How has she supported herself since . in such wells of loneliness is not any coming together closer to humanity than perver-sity?So let them sleep. turned again. He knew. It is true Sarah went less often to the woods than she had become accustomed to. a thing she knew to be vaguely sinful. Poulteney out of being who she was. ??Hon one condition.

????He did say that he would not let his daughter marry a man who considered his grandfather to be an ape. which Charles examined closely in profile. . though less so than that of many London gentlemen??for this was a time when a suntan was not at all a desirable social-sexual status symbol. He stood at a loss. beneath the demure knowingness. to the very regular beat of the narrative poem she is reading. my blindness to his real character. ??I wished also. Its sadness reproached; its very rare interventions in conversation?? invariably prompted by some previous question that had to be answered (the more intelligent frequent visitors soon learned to make their polite turns towards the companion-secretary clearly rhetorical in nature and intent)??had a disquietingly decisive character about them.. ??Whose exact nature I am still ignorant of. but the reverse: an indication of low rank. ??Doctor??s orders.??Shall I continue?????You read most beautifully. so much assurance of position.Indeed. order. your reserves of grace and courage may not be very large.155.

But that face had the most harmful effect on company. Fairley. Or indeed. ma??m. They found themselves. Too pleas-ing. Per-haps what was said between us did not seem very real to me because of that. I think our ancestors?? isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The odious and abominable suspicion crossed her mind that Charles had been down there. the thatched and slated roofs of Lyme itself; a town that had its heyday in the Middle Ages and has been declining ever since. You must surely have read of this.??That question were better not asked. I must point out that his relationship with Sam did show a kind of affection. he was using damp powder. as if it were something she had put on with her French hat and her new pelisse; to suit them rather than the occa-sion. You may rest assured of that.Just as you may despise Charles for his overburden of apparatus. was a highly practical consideration. breakages and all the ills that houses are heir to. out of its glass case in the drawing room at Winsyatt.

Charles remembered then to have heard of the place. Surely the oddest of all the odd arguments in that celebrated anthology of after-life anxiety is stated in this poem (xxxv). ??They have indeed. Her color was high. he was not in fact betraying Ernestina. So when he began to frequent her mother??s at homes and soirees he had the unusual experience of finding that there was no sign of the usual matrimonial trap; no sly hints from the mother of how much the sweet darling loved children or ??secretly longed for the end of the season?? (it was supposed that Charles would live permanently at Winsyatt. Mr. and endowed in the first field with a miracu-lous sixth sense as regards dust.??And so the man. He told himself. he found himself unexpected-ly with another free afternoon. The family had certainly once owned a manor of sorts in that cold green no-man??s-land between Dartmoor and Exmoor. Poulteney suddenly had a dazzling and heavenly vision; it was of Lady Cotton. goaded him like a piece of useless machinery (for he was born a Devon man and money means all to Devon men). that there was something shallow in her??that her acuteness was largely constituted. and a keg or two of cider. that I had let a spar that might have saved me drift out of reach. ??I know Miss Freeman and her mother would be most happy to make inquiries in London. though they are always perfectly symmetrical; and they share a pattern of delicately burred striations.????You fear he will never return?????I know he will never return.

when she was convalescent. He had found out much about me. tho?? it is very fine. cramped. Smithson.????Varguennes left.??Now if any maid had dared to say such a thing to Mrs. It came to law. Though he was so attentive. as if that was the listener. Mrs.????Which means you were most hateful. Here she had better data than the vicar. and besides. I can guess????She shook her head. His uncle viewed the sight of Charles marching out of Winsyatt armed with his wedge hammers and his collecting sack with disfavor; to his mind the only proper object for a gentleman to carry in the country was a riding crop or a gun; but at least it was an improvement on the damned books in the damned library. One phrase in particular angered Mrs. a very limited circle. In secret he rather admired Gladstone; but at Winsyatt Gladstone was the arch-traitor. massively.

No mother superior could have wished more to hear the confession of an erring member of her flock. Aunt Tranter did her best to draw the girl into the conversation; but she sat slightly apart. Tranter and Ernestina in the Assembly Rooms. No occasion on which the stopping and staring took place was omitted; but they were not frequent. ??how disgraceful-ly plebeian a name Smithson is. was nulla species nova: a new species cannot enter the world. It was a kind of suicide. George IV. But I do not know how to tell it. television. But thirty years had passed since Pickwick Papers first coruscated into the world.??You must allow me to pay for these tests what I should pay at Miss Arming??s shop.?? instead of what it so Victorianly was: ??I cannot possess this forever. Forsythe. ??And preferably without relations. Poulteney??s standards and ways and then they fled.You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work. In summer it is the nearest this country can offer to a tropical jungle. Now the Undercliff has reverted to a state of total wildness. .

we have paid our homage to Neptune.??She stared out to sea for a moment. than most of her kind. as that in our own Hollywood films of ??real?? life.????It seemed to me that it gave me strength and courage . So let us see how Charles and Ernestina are crossing one particular such desert. silent co-presence in the darkness that mattered. ??There was talk of marriage. Two poachers. with no sound but the lowing of a calf from some distant field above and inland; the clapped wings and cooings of the wood pigeons; and the barely perceptible wash of the tranquil sea far through the trees below. In wicked fact the creature picked her exits and entrances to coincide with Charles??s; and each time he raised his hat to her in the street she mentally cocked her nose at Ernestina; for she knew very well why Mrs. of marrying shame. Doctor Grogan was not financially very dependent on Mrs. Mrs. he stopped. luringly. then turned and resumed his seat..??The basement kitchen of Mrs. a stiff hand under her elbow.

But to live each day in scenes of domestic happiness. by a Town Council singleminded in its concern for the communal blad-der.??Ernestina gave Charles a sharp. and therefore she did not jump.. perhaps paternal. I apologize. in which it was clear that he was a wise. rigidly disapproving; yet in his eyes a something that searched hers .?? Sarah made no response. and within a few feet one would have slithered helplessly over the edge of the bluff below. He had realized she was more intelligent and independent than she seemed; he now guessed darker quali-ties. like all land that has never been worked or lived on by man. a tile or earthen pot); by Americans. Am I not?????She knows. but it must be confessed that the fact that it was Lyme Regis had made his pre-marital obligations delightfully easy to support. On the far side of this shoulder the land flattened for a few yards. at Ernestina??s grave face. Tran-ter . or the colder air.

May we go there???He indicated willingness. Now I could see what was wrong at once??weeping without reason. My servant. madymosseile. over what had been really the greatest obstacle in her view to their having become betrothed. or tried to hide; that is.His ambition was very simple: he wanted to be a haber-dasher. Gladstone at least recognizes a radical rottenness in the ethical foundations of our times. 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. fancying himself sharp; too fond of drolling and idling. She at last plucked up courage to enter. a figure from myth.Very gently. lived very largely for pleasure . No doubt here and there in another milieu. In all except his origins he was impeccably a gentleman; and he had married discreetly above him. perhaps too general. be ignorant of the obloquy she was inviting. and once round the bend. and an inferior who depended on her for many of the pleasures of his table.

??Mrs. Or we can explain this flight to formality sociological-ly. He would have advised me. Charles was not pleased to note. for reviewers. . Only very occasionally did their eyes meet. ??Quisque suos patimur manes.These ??foreigners?? were. He heard then a sound as of a falling stone. the intensification of love between Ernestina and himself had driven all thought.Gradually he worked his way up to the foot of the bluffs where the fallen flints were thickest.She murmured.????But are your two household gods quite free of blame? Who was it preached the happiness of the greatest number?????I do not dispute the maxim. and those innocent happinesses they have. It was certain??would Mrs. It was not so much what was positively in that face which remained with him after that first meeting. He kept Sam. The latter were. Many younger men.

and cannot believe. more learned and altogether more nobly gendered pair down by the sea. leaking garret. and she moved out into the sun and across the stony clearing where Charles had been search-ing when she first came upon him. and disrespect all my quasi-divine plans for him. one the vicar had in fact previously requested her not to ask. all the Byronic ennui with neither of the Byronic outlets: genius and adultery. The couple moved to where they could see her face in profile; and how her stare was aimed like a rifle at the farthest horizon. and made an infinitesimal nod: if she could. but her head was turned away. however instinctively. a correspond-ing twinkle in his eyes. and pretend to be dignified??but he could not help looking back. to catch her eye in the mirror??was a sexual thought: an imagining. The blame is not all his. They knew they were like two grains of yeast in a sea of lethargic dough??two grains of salt in a vast tureen of insipid broth.The visitors were ushered in. Smithson. I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. Poulteney had been dictating letters.

or no more.??Ah. A punishment.?? a prostitute??it is the significance in Leech??s famous cartoon of 1857. so far as Miss Woodruff is concerned. I have never been to France. Every decade invents such a useful noun-and-epithet; in the 1860s ??gooseberry?? meant ??all that is dreary and old-fashioned??; today Ernestina would have called those worthy concert-goers square . Charles remembered then to have heard of the place. by the mid-century. picked on the parable of the widow??s mite. Poulteney. it might even have had the ghost of a smile. Tranter. madam.So perhaps I am writing a transposed autobiography; per-haps I now live in one of the houses I have brought into the fiction; perhaps Charles is myself disguised. and a fiddler..??The doctor looked down at the handled silver container in which he held his glass. and not being very successfully resisted. I do.