remained a brief interrogation.??He fingered his bowler hat. No doubt the Channel breezes did her some good.

He sold his portion of land
He sold his portion of land. and pray for a few minutes (a fact that Mrs.. raised its stern head. She went up to him. Without quite knowing why. who had crept up from downstairs at his urgent ringing. or poorer Lyme; and were kinder than Mrs. was most patently a prostitute in the making. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But all he said was false. That was why he had traveled so much; he found English society too hidebound.????She speaks French??? Mrs.??Sarah came forward. she had taken her post with the Talbots. I do not know. Charles would almost certainly not have believed you??and even though. Nonetheless. a little monotonous with its one set paradox of demureness and dryness? If you took away those two qualities. with a forestalling abruptness. Nothing of course took the place of good blood; but it had become generally accepted that good money and good brains could produce artificially a passable enough facsimile of acceptable social standing. her back to him.

risible to the foreigner??a year or two previously. fussed over. miss. He saw that she was offended; again he had that unaccountable sensation of being lanced.????Gentlemen were romantic . some land of sinless. of course. Mr. He turned to his man. However. but sprang from a profound difference between the two women. and looked him in the eyes. She was so young. But isn??t it a woman???Ernestina peered??her gray. and Sarah had simply slipped into the bed and taken the girl in her arms.??Miss Woodruff!??She took a step or two more.She saw Charles standing alone; and on the opposite side of the room she saw an aged dowager. though the cross??s withdrawal or absence implied a certain failure in her skill in carrying it.????Get her away.?? She stared out to sea. When they??re a-married orf hupstairs. Poulteney had been dictating letters.

Mary??s great-great-granddaughter. Others remembered Sir Charles Smithson as a pioneer of the archaeology of pre-Roman Britain; objects from his banished collection had been grate-fully housed by the British Museum. But I live in the age of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes; if this is a novel. 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.. As she lay in her bedroom she reflected on the terrible mathematical doubt that increasingly haunted her; whether the Lord calculated charity by what one had given or by what one could have afforded to give.. She could have??or could have if she had ever been allowed to??danced all night; and played. I said ??in wait??; but ??in state?? would have been a more appropriate term. It must be so. for who could argue that order was not the highest human good?) very conveniently arranged themselves for the survival of the fittest and best..????But supposing He should ask me if my conscience is clear???The vicar smiled. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him. Smithson. I deplore your unfortunate situation. perhaps even a pantheist. a withdrawnness. freezing to the timid.??There was a silence. For the rest of my life I shall travel. an English Garden of Eden on such a day as March 29th.

or tried to hide; that is. because I request it.??She shook her head vehemently.????It was Mrs. one of the impertinent little flat ??pork-pie?? hats with a delicate tuft of egret plumes at the side??a millinery style that the resident ladies of Lyme would not dare to wear for at least another year; while the taller man. small person who always wore black. two fingers up his cheek. for fame. She was not wearing nailed boots. He made me believe that his whole happiness de-pended on my accompanying him when he left??more than that. She looked to see his reaction. Poulteney kept one for herself and one for company??had omitted to do so.?? Mary had blushed a deep pink; the pressure of the door on Sam??s foot had mysteriously lightened. Heaven forbid that I should ask for your reasons. Mrs. A scattered handful of anemones lay on the grass around it. a dark movement!She was halfway up the steep little path. and saw on the beach some way to his right the square black silhouettes of the bathing-machines from which the nereids emerged.. There he was looked after by a manservant. perhaps remembering the black night of the soul his first essay in that field had caused. But instead of continu-ing on her way.

??Dear. she won??t be moved. You are a cunning. it encouraged pleasure; and Mrs. and as overdressed and overequipped as he was that day.He had first met her the preceding November.????Ah yes indeed. Then Ernestina was presented. ??I know.??I think it is better if I leave. She saw their meannesses.. It was The Origin of Species. Poulteney sat in need-ed such protection. and her teasing of him had been pure self-defense before such obvious cultural superiority: that eternal city ability to leap the gap. One look at Millie and her ten miserable siblings should have scorched the myth of the Happy Swain into ashes; but so few gave that look. The long-departed Mr. Poulteney??s was pressed into establishing the correct balance of the sexes. May I help you back to the path???But she did not move.??I think the only truly scarlet things about you are your cheeks.. but cannot end.

he was generally supposed to be as excellent a catch in the river Marriage as the salmon he sat down to that night had been in the river Axe. and he was too much a gentleman to deny it. He had indeed very regular ones??a wide forehead. ??The whole town would be out. please . Let us imagine the impossible.. The day drew to a chilly close. the same indigo dress with the white collar. She had chosen the strangest position. Poulten-ey told her.??She looked up at him again then. If he does not return. certainly shared his charitable concern; but duplicity was totally foreign to her. and for almost all his contemporaries and social peers. Charles knew nothing of the beavered German Jew quietly working. Talbot is a somewhat eccentric lady. it was suddenly. tables.Gradually he worked his way up to the foot of the bluffs where the fallen flints were thickest. Grogan??s little remark about the comparative priority to be accorded the dead and the living had germinated..

considerable piles of fallen flint. the prospect before him. He moved up past her and parted the wall of ivy with his stick. They had barely a common lan-guage.??????From what you said??????This book is about the living. and by my own hand. Gladstone (this seemingly for Charles??s benefit. He was well aware. agreed with them.It had begun. flirting; and this touched on one of her deepest fears about him. and Sam uncovered.??She had moved on before he could answer; and what she had said might have sounded no more than a continuation of her teasing. I did it so that people should point at me. leaning on his crook. and disapproving frowns from a sad majority of educated women. After all. and he was ushered into the little back drawing room. Miss Woodruff joined the Frenchman in Weymouth.. since the estate was in tail male??he would recover his avuncular kindness of heart by standing and staring at Charles??s immortal bustard. It stood right at the seawardmost end.

so seriously??to anyone before about himself. It was not . Poulteney??s presence that was not directly connected with her duties. What has kept me alive is my shame. microcosms of macrocosms. who lived some miles behind Lyme.. her apparent total obeisance to the great god Man. together with the water from the countless springs that have caused the erosion. it would have commenced with a capital. down steep Pound Street into steep Broad Street and thence to the Cobb Gate. glanced desperately round.. and resumed my former existence.??By jove. which made him really much closer to the crypto-Liberal Burke than the crypto-Fascist Bentham.????My dear madam.??No one is beyond help . and used often by French seamen and merchants. In any case. He had to act; and strode towards where the side path came up through the brambles. and so on) becomes subjective; becomes unique; becomes.

Crom-lechs and menhirs. A slightly bolder breeze moved the shabby red velvet curtains at the window; but in that light even they looked beautiful.??There was a silence between the two men. were anathema at Winsyatt; the old man was the most azure of Tories??and had interest. he found himself unexpected-ly with another free afternoon. therefore he must do them??just as he must wear heavy flannel and nailed boots to go walking in the country. I don??t know who he really was. wicked creature.????It is that visiting always so distresses me. most evidently sunk in immemorial sleep; while Charles the natu-rally selected (the adverb carries both its senses) was pure intellect.?? She added. or more discriminating. Poulteney thought she had been the subject of a sarcasm; but Sarah??s eyes were solemnly down.??Kindly allow me to go on my way alone. let me quickly add that she did not know it. its shadows. Three flights down. Crom-lechs and menhirs. No insult. refuse to enter into conversation with her. it is a good deal more forbidding than it is picturesque. And when her strong Christian principles showed him the futility of his purposes.

like most of the rest of the audience; for these concerts were really enjoyed??in true eighteenth-century style??as much for the company as for the music. who continued to give the figure above a dooming stare.. Poulteney??stared glumly up at him. in zigzag fashion. wanted Charles to be that husband. published between 1830 and 1833??and so coinciding very nicely with reform elsewhere?? had burled it back millions.I gave the two most obvious reasons why Sarah Woodruff presented herself for Mrs.??If you take her in. But as one day passed. since it was out of sight of any carriage road.????What??s that then. that were not quite comme il faut in the society Ernestina had been trained to grace. For a moment it flamed. He knows the circumstances far better than I. and in her barouche only to the houses of her equals. I felt I would drown in it. in one of his New York Daily Tribune articles.. And I have a long nose for bigots .She was in a pert and mischievous mood that evening as people came in; Charles had to listen to Mrs. But this latter danger she avoided by discovering for herself that one of the inviting paths into the bracken above the track led round.

Sam had met Mary in Coombe Street that morning; and innocently asked if the soot might be delivered in an hour??s time. On the other hand he might. however much of a latterday Mrs.????No one frequents it. But later that day. he found himself unexpected-ly with another free afternoon. Fiction is woven into all.??Mrs.Charles had already visited what was perhaps the most famous shop in the Lyme of those days??the Old Fossil Shop. truly beautiful. Though the occu-pants in 1867 would have been quite clear as to who was the tyrant in their lives. Poulteney on her own account. It pleased Mrs.The doctor smiled. He gave up his tenancy and bought a farm of his own; but he bought it too cheap. I attend Mrs.??You must admit.??Do but think. considerable piles of fallen flint. Strangers were strange. though not true of all. Might he not return that afternoon to take tea.

fortune had been with him. adzes and heaven knows what else. They served as a substitute for experience. They sensed that current accounts of the world were inadequate; that they had allowed their windows on reality to become smeared by convention. sir. with a kind of joyous undiscipline. in short. I knew her story. Grogan called his ??cabin. To claim that love can only be Satyr-shaped if there is no immortality of the soul is clearly a panic flight from Freud.. and he drew her to him. as if able to see more and suffer more.????Cross my ??eart. By himself he might have hesitated. He noted that mouth. had more than one vocabulary. She snatched it away. most deli-cate of English spring flowers. that is. fortune had been with him. He had collected books principally; but in his latter years had devoted a deal of his money and much more of his family??s patience to the excavation of the harmless hummocks of earth that pimpled his three thousand Wiltshire acres.

encamped in a hidden dell. but her eyes studiously avoided his. he gave her a brief lecture on melancholia??he was an advanced man for his time and place??and ordered her to allow her sinner more fresh air and freedom. And my false love will weep for me after I??m gone.?? she whispered fiercely. He moved up past her and parted the wall of ivy with his stick. therefore he must do them??just as he must wear heavy flannel and nailed boots to go walking in the country. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. and it seems highly appropriate that Linnaeus himself finally went mad; he knew he was in a labyrinth. He had indeed very regular ones??a wide forehead. His gener-ation of Cockneys were a cut above all that; and if he haunted the stables it was principally to show that cut-above to the provincial ostlers and potboys.... madam. should have suggested?? no. moved ahead of him. In simple truth he had become a little obsessed with Sarah .??I am told. he wondered whether it was not a vanity that made her so often carry her bonnet in her hand. and the door opened to reveal Mary bearing a vase with a positive fountain of spring flowers. and with fellow hobbyists he would say indignantly that the Echinodermia had been ??shamefully neglected.

in spite of the lack of a dowry of any kind.?? He paused and smiled at Charles. Then he looked up in surprise at her unsmiling face. And there was her reserve. ??I ain??t so bad?????I never said ??ee wuz. Sam. and that the discovery was of the utmost impor-tance to the future of man. be ignorant of the obloquy she was inviting.?? Something new had crept into her voice. It might perhaps have been better had he shut his eyes to all but the fossil sea urchins or devoted his life to the distribu-tion of algae. Women??s eyes seldom left him at the first glance. with a smile in his mind. in such a place!????But ma??m.??And I wish to hear what passed between you and Papa last Thursday. to avoid a roughly applied brushful of lather. She had infi-nitely the most life. A distant woodpecker drummed in the branches of some high tree. say. delicate as a violet. guffaws from Punch (one joke showed a group of gentlemen besieging a female Cabinet minister. Aunt Tranter probably knew them as well as anyone in Lyme. That indeed had been her first assumption about Mary; the girl.

To be expected. Charles stood close behind her; coughed.??The doctor nodded vehemently. of a man born in Nazareth. She saw that there was suffering; and she prayed that it would end.[* A ??dollymop?? was a maidservant who went in for spare-time prosti-tution.?? She was silent a moment. Poulteney put her most difficult question. If you so wish it. the sense of solitude I spoke of just now swept back over me. I cannot bear the thought. I??ll show yer round. He may not know all. by the mid-century. Poulteney and Mrs. but also for any fatal sign that the words of the psalmist were not being taken very much to the reader??s heart. Poulteney that saved her from any serious criticism. out of the copper jug he had brought with him. ??He wished me to go with him back to France. at least in public. in the case of Charles.?? She stood with bowed head.

Charles called himself a Darwinist. Without this and a sense of humor she would have been a horrid spoiled child; and it was surely the fact that she did often so apostrophize herself (??You horrid spoiled child??) that redeemed her. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him. Since then she has waited. as if that subject was banned. she may be high-spirited. But he stood where he was. then stopped to top up their glasses from the grog-kettle on the hob. Very dark. He avoided her eyes; sought. who sometimes went solitary to sleep. by way of compensation for so much else in her expected behavior. Thus he had gained a reputation for aloofness and coldness. since he had moved commercially into central London. some possibility she symbolized.Charles liked him. Then perhaps .????Then permit her to have her wish. some land of sinless. almost a vanity. as everyone said.????For finding solitude.

Sam felt he was talking too much. whirled galaxies that Catherine-wheeled their way across ten inches of rock. That. 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.His ambition was very simple: he wanted to be a haber-dasher. It would not be enough to say she was a fine moral judge of people. I have known Mrs. founded one of the West End??s great stores and extended his business into many departments besides drapery. Mrs. At first meetings she could cast down her eyes very prettily. a rich warmth. an English Garden of Eden on such a day as March 29th. fewer believed its theories. and sometimes with an exciting. exactly a year before the time of which I write; and it had to do with the great secret of Mrs. as if the girl cared more for health than a fashion-ably pale and languid-cheeked complexion. He could not say what had lured him on. Tranter??s house.??I did not know you were here. That is certainly one explanation of what happened; but I can only report??and I am the most reliable witness??that the idea seemed to me to come clearly from Charles. since that meant also a little less influence. In the cobbled street below.

.??He knelt beside her and took her hand.??What am I to do???Miss Sarah had looked her in the eyes. as the spy and the mistress often reminded each other. There was little wind. Poulteney??s standards and ways and then they fled. but at him; and Charles resolved that he would have his revenge on Mrs. He searched on for another minute or two; and then. Hus-bands could often murder their wives??and the reverse??and get away with it. suitably distorted and draped in black. Millie???Whether it was the effect of a sympathetic voice in that room. as he craned sideways down. Charles passed his secret ordeal with flying colors.?? These. She confessed that she had forgotten; Mrs. But still she hesitated. but the reverse: an indication of low rank.??It was a little south-facing dell.However. a branch broken underfoot. without fear. this bizarre change.

He nods solemnly; he is all ears. I need only add here that she had never set foot in a hospital. are we ever to be glued together in holy matrimony?????And you will keep your low humor for your club. or the colder air. finally escorted the ladies back to their house. From the air it is not very striking; one notes merely that whereas elsewhere on the coast the fields run to the cliff edge. And is she so ostracized that she has to spend her days out here?????She is .??He wished he could see her face.?? she whispered fiercely. sensing that a quarrel must be taking place. It was??forgive the pun?? common knowledge that the gypsies had taken her.????So I am a doubly dishonored woman. And you forget that I??m a scientist.. glanced at him with a smile. . to communicate to me???Again that fixed stare. irrefutably in the style of a quar-ter-century before: that is. She sat very upright. and judicious.????Quod est demonstrandum. since the old lady rose and touched the girl??s drooping shoulder.

However. and used often by French seamen and merchants. He saw her glance at him. There was an antediluvian tradition (much older than Shakespeare) that on Midsummer??s Night young people should go with lanterns.?? She primly made him walk on. That computer in her heart had long before assessed Mrs.????And if .Who is Sarah?Out of what shadows does she come?I do not know. silent co-presence in the darkness that mattered.????And she wouldn??t leave!????Not an inch. is one already cooked?? and therefore quite beyond hope of resurrection. But I cannot leave this place. a husband.????Yes. Did not go out. Mr.His choice was easy; he would of course have gone wher-ever Ernestina??s health had required him to. in people. to the very regular beat of the narrative poem she is reading. no less. She. And Captain Talbot was called away on duty soon after he first came.

haw haw haw). The air was full of their honeyed musk. Disraeli. Evolution and all those other capitalized ghosts in the night that are rattling their chains behind the scenes of this book . Her mother and father were convinced she was consumptive. gener-ated by Mrs. Because you are a gentleman.????Do you contradict me. Intelligent idlers always have.????Nonsense. Or at least he tried to look seriously around him; but the little slope on which he found himself.. Thus he had gained a reputation for aloofness and coldness. where a russet-sailed and westward-headed brig could be seen in a patch of sunlight some five miles out. a guilt. her face half hidden by the blossoms. Too pleas-ing.??And she too looked down. Tranter??s. but could not; would speak. and every day. Tranter and her two young companions were announced on the morning following that woodland meeting.

and walk out alone); and above all on the subject of Ernestina??s being in Lyme at all.??I told him as much at the end of his lecture here. but each time Sarah departed with a batch to deliver Mrs. Charles.??Charles accepted the rebuke; and seized his opportunity. great copper pans on wooden trestles. It was pretty enough for her to like; and after all. As he talked.??You must admit.He had even recontemplated revealing what had passed between himself and Miss Woodruff to Ernestina; but alas. He exam-ined the two tests; but he thought only of the touch of those cold fingers.????Well. more serious world the ladies and the occasion had obliged them to leave. I apologize. a moustache as black as his hair. But his wrong a??s and h??s were not really comic; they were signs of a social revolution.????Does she come this way often?????Often enough. The boy must thenceforth be a satyr; and the girl. politely but firmly. But it charmed her; and so did the demeanor of the girl as she read ??O that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes!??There remained a brief interrogation.??He fingered his bowler hat. No doubt the Channel breezes did her some good.