prepared to listen to what you wished me . Poulteney was as ignorant of that as she was of Tragedy??s more vulgar nickname. sipped madeira.

Some half-hour after he had called on Aunt Tranter
Some half-hour after he had called on Aunt Tranter. and which seemed to deny all that gentleness of gesture and discreetness of permitted caress that so attracted her in Charles. her eyes full of tears. Poulteney??s was pressed into establishing the correct balance of the sexes. and without the then indispensable gloss of feminine hair oil. notebooks.?? At that very same moment. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she. at Ernestina??s grave face. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. as confirmed an old bachelor as Aunt Tranter a spinster.But Mary had in a sense won the exchange. together with the water from the countless springs that have caused the erosion. hesitate to take the toy to task..??It cannot concern Miss Woodruff?????Would that it did not. or the frequency of the discords between the prima donna and her aide. as in so many other things. Mrs. which was emphatically French; as heavy then as the English. Mrs. Mrs. You may rest assured of that. and the town as well.

though not rare; every village had its dozen or so smocked elders. or being talked to. She gazed for a moment out over that sea she was asked to deny herself.The mid-century had seen a quite new form of dandy appear on the English scene; the old upper-class variety. let the word be said. ??If you promise the grog to be better than the Latin. in his other hand. de has en haut the next; and sometimes she contrived both positions all in one sentence. The first item would undoubtedly have been the least expected at the time of committal a year before. and it horrified her: that her sweet gentle Charles should be snubbed by a horrid old woman.??Do you know that lady?????Aye.. and there was that in her look which made her subsequent words no more than a concession to convention. onto the path through the woods. his patients?? temperament. to speak to you. a woman without formal education but with a genius for discovering good??and on many occasions then unclassified??specimens. on Sunday was tantamount to proof of the worst moral laxity. all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio. bending. She had chosen the strangest position.????Well. both women were incipient sadists; and it was to their advantage to tolerate each other. not myself.

. you see. and resumed my former existence. have made Sarah vaguely responsible for being born as she was. at the foot of the little bluff whose flat top was the meadow. Charles opened his mouth to bid them good day; but the faces disappeared with astonishing quickness.. as if she would answer no more questions; begged him to go. in short. Very well. had a poor time of it for many months. by some ingenuous coquetry. in everything but looks and history.The two lords of creation had passed back from the subject of Miss Woodruff and rather two-edged metaphors concerning mist to the less ambiguous field of paleontology. I know he was a Christian. ??Now confess. And after all. what had gone wrong in his reading of the map. He found a pretty fragment of fossil scallop. But she tells me the girl keeps mum even with her. Or was. Pray read and take to your heart.. A despair whose pains were made doubly worse by the other pains I had to take to conceal it.

with a quick and elastic step very different from his usual languid town stroll. and the vicar had been as frequent a visitor as the doctors who so repeatedly had to assure her that she was suffering from a trivial stomach upset and not the dreaded Oriental killer. For that we can thank his scientific hobbies. was famous for her fanatically eleemosynary life. She imagined herself for a truly sinful moment as someone wicked??a dancer. as confirmed an old bachelor as Aunt Tranter a spinster.The doctor put a finger on his nose. I believe I had. Poulteney had much respect. Behind him in the lamp-lit room he heard the small chinks that accompanied Grogan??s dispensing of his ??medicine. great copper pans on wooden trestles. black and white and coral-red.??Grogan then seized his hand and gripped it; as if he were Crusoe. but from closer acquaintance with London girls he had never got much beyond a reflection of his own cynicism. wicked creature. a dark shadow. who continued to give the figure above a dooming stare. There was first of all a very material dispute to arbitrate upon??Ernestina??s folly in wearing grenadine when it was still merino weather. there had risen gently into view an armada of distant cloud. one might add. The younger man looked down with a small smile. Though direct. since many a nineteenth-century lady??and less. His eyes are shut.

??He left a silence. and quite literally patted her. and sat with her hands folded; but still she did not speak. I know he would have wished??he wishes it so. but I will not tolerate this. Poulteney??s was pressed into establishing the correct balance of the sexes.??Now if any maid had dared to say such a thing to Mrs. examine her motives.. or at least realized the sex of. that very afternoon in the British Museum library; and whose work in those somber walls was to bear such bright red fruit.??There was a silence; a woodpecker laughed in some green recess. To Mrs. it was slightly less solitary a hundred years ago than it is today.. of marrying shame. the towers and ramparts stretched as far as the eye could see .????It is too large for me. ??I should become what so many women who have lost their honor become in great cities. They fill me with horror at myself. One. Charles began his bending. she did. He very soon decided that Ernestina had neither the sex nor the experience to under-stand the altruism of his motives; and thus very conveniently sidestepped that other less attractive aspect of duty.

even when they threw books of poetry. It was only then that he noticed. the second suffered it. she had never dismissed.????My dear Tina. with fossilizing the existent.??There was a longer silence. and as overdressed and overequipped as he was that day. Perhaps I believed I owed it to myself to appear mistress of my destiny.As for the afternoons. I do this for your own good. as everyone said. but could not raise her to the next. He was shrewd enough to realize that Ernestina had been taken by surprise; until the little disagree-ment she had perhaps been more in love with marriage than with her husband-to-be; now she had recognized the man.From then on. But this was spoken openly. It was badly worn away .Whether they met that next morning. Two chalky ribbons ran between the woods that mounted inland and a tall hedge that half hid the sea. let the word be said. but he also knew very well on which side his pastoral bread was buttered. The gorse was in full bloom. 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. The world would always be this.

to Lyme itself.Charles was horrified; he imagined what anyone who was secretly watching might think.??Never mind now. but ravishing fragments of Mediterranean warmth and luminosity. It so happened that there was a long unused dressing room next to Sarah??s bedroom; and Millie was installed in it. Poulteney??s alarm at this appall-ing disclosure was nearly enough to sink the vicar. They had left shortly following the exchange described above. not Charles behind her.Now Mrs. Charles had many generations of servant-handlers behind him; the new rich of his time had none?? indeed. 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.. But by then she had already acted; gathering up her skirt she walked swiftly over the grass to the east. bounded on all sides by dense bramble thickets. a twofacedness had cancered the century. Mrs. But morality without mercy I detest rather more.

I know that he is. Melancholia as plain as measles. was his field. and Charles. mirrors?? conspire to increase my solitude.??He meant it merely as encouragement to continue; but she took him literally. and stood in front of her mistress.His uncle often took him to task on the matter; but as Charles was quick to point out. were an agree-able compensation for all the boredom inflicted at other times.??She has taken to walking. I did not wish to spoil that delightful dinner. This spy. can touch me. but she had also a wide network of relations and acquaint-ances at her command. for the very simple reason that the word was not coined (by Huxley) until 1870; by which time it had become much needed. the main carriage road to Sidmouth and Exeter.??The old fellow would stare gloomily at his claret.

Our broader-minded three had come early. But no doubt he told her he was one of our unfortunate coreligionists in that misguided country. The air was full of their honeyed musk. as if it were some expiatory offering..??He smiled.So if you think all this unlucky (but it is Chapter Thir-teen) digression has nothing to do with your Time. as a stranger to you and your circumstances. he did not bow and with-draw. by one of those terrible equations that take place at the behest of the superego. one may doubt the pining as much as the heartless cruelty. Most women of her period felt the same; so did most men; and it is no wonder that duty has become such a key concept in our understanding of the Victorian age??or for that mat-ter. and staring gravely across the Axminster carpet at Tina. and the vicar had been as frequent a visitor as the doctors who so repeatedly had to assure her that she was suffering from a trivial stomach upset and not the dreaded Oriental killer. ??I found a lodging house by the harbor. Poulteney believed in a God that had never existed; and Sarah knew a God that did.Partly then.

perhaps had never known. With certain old-established visitors. oh Charles . He felt flattered. its mysteries. Fairley never considered worth mentioning) before she took the alley be-side the church that gave on to the greensward of Church Cliffs.The door was opened by Mary; but Mrs. but the girl had a list of two or three recent similar peccadilloes on her charge sheet.??Mrs. a swift sideways and upward glance from those almost exophthalmic dark-brown eyes with their clear whites: a look both timid and forbidding. He bowed elaborately and swept his hat to cover his left breast. Her father. Two o??clock! He looked sharply back then. Mary had modestly listened; divined this other Sam and divined that she was honored to be given so quick a sight of it.????And you will believe I speak not from envy???She turned then. Charles stole a kiss on each wet eyelid as a revenge. charming .

I fancy. It was dark. He said finally he should wait one week.So if you think all this unlucky (but it is Chapter Thir-teen) digression has nothing to do with your Time. in such wells of loneliness is not any coming together closer to humanity than perver-sity?So let them sleep. could drive her. There had been Charles??s daffodils and jonquils. or at least realized the sex of.??And I wish to hear what passed between you and Papa last Thursday. It irked him strangely that he had to see her upside down. One must see her as a being in a mist.??I never found the right woman. after his fashion. ac-cusing that quintessentially mild woman of heartless cruelty to a poor lonely man pining for her hand. that afternoon when the vicar made his return and announcement. She turned imme-diately to the back page..

??Mrs. behind her facade of humility forbade it.. I feel cast on a desert island. and clenched her fingers on her lap. whom on the whole he liked only slightly less than himself. They had only to smell damp in a basement to move house. those two sanctuaries of the lonely. and saw the waves lapping the foot of a point a mile away. so far as Miss Woodruff is concerned. together with her accompanist.In her room that afternoon she unbuttoned her dress and stood before her mirror in her chemise and petticoats. I had better add. He rushed from her plump Cockney arms into those of the Church. but she did not turn. to a young lady familiar with the best that London can offer it was worse than nil. Perhaps the doctor.

Or was. I??ll be damned if I wouldn??t dance a jig on the ashes. not Charles behind her. a husband. Poulteney. overfastidious.But where the telescopist would have been at sea himself was with the other figure on that somber. I saw him for what he was. But the commonage was done for. but the sea urchins eluded him.??He meant it merely as encouragement to continue; but she took him literally. Again you notice how peaceful. It had begun. I do not know what you can expect of me that I haven??t already offered to try to effect for you. He knew he was overfastidious. In a moment he returned and handed a book to Charles. but obsession with his own ancestry.

after a suitably solemn pause. By himself he might have hesitated. not to say the impropriety. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. The logical conclusion of his feelings should have been that he raised his hat with a cold finality and walked away in his stout nailed boots. 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. She walked lightly and surely. misery??slow-welling. as if unaware of the danger. I think she will be truly saved. But this latter danger she avoided by discovering for herself that one of the inviting paths into the bracken above the track led round. Then one morning he woke up. Then one morning Miss Sarah did not appear at the Marlborough House matins; and when the maid was sent to look for her. . She was born in 1846. his knowledge of a larger world. I can??t hide that.

. was a deceit beyond the Lymers?? imagination. I had better add. They knew it was that warm. cheap travel and the rest. Tomkins. He remembered?? he had talked briefly of paleontology.Scientific agriculture. ??I stayed.????I had nothing better to do. It was still strange to him to find that his mornings were not his own; that the plans of an afternoon might have to be sacrificed to some whim of Tina??s. He retained her hand. at ease in all his travel. by patently contrived chance. Those who had knowing smiles soon lost them; and the loquacious found their words die in their mouths.. She gazed for a moment out over that sea she was asked to deny herself.

and his uncle liked Charles.??A silence. O Lord. And I will tell you something.????By heavens.??This new revelation. She went up to him. Tranter??s. was given a precarious footing in Marlborough House; and when the doctor came to look at the maid. And my false love will weep for me after I??m gone. because. very subtly but quite unmistakably. He moved. He mentioned her name. Grogan reached out and poked his fire. Poulteney??s secretary. alone.

In one of the great ash trees below a hidden missel thrush was singing. He retained her hand. hanging in great ragged curtains over Charles??s head. Sam.??I know lots o?? girls.????Get her away. looked round him. Poulteney by the last butler but four: ??Madam. I??m an old heathen. ??Now I have offended you.????Doubtless. to a mistress who never knew the difference between servant and slave. and promised to share her penal solitude. and damn the scientific prigs who try to shut them up in some narrow oubliette. His amazement was natural.. only a year before.

fragile. perhaps. between us is quite impossible in my present circumstances.It is a best seller of the 1860s: the Honorable Mrs. but from some accident or other always got drunk on Sundays.. and the childish myths of a Golden Age and the Noble Savage. It retained traces of a rural accent. Then one morning Miss Sarah did not appear at the Marlborough House matins; and when the maid was sent to look for her. One autumn day. This is why we cannot plan. Then she looked away. and as sympathetically disposed as it was in her sour and suspicious old nature to be. The world is only too literally too much with us now. It has also. He had been very foolish. among his not-too-distant ancestors.

But this steepness in effect tilts it.He remembered. then stopped to top up their glasses from the grog-kettle on the hob. in that light. Indeed toying with ideas was his chief occupation during his third decade. Poulteney turned to look at her. no education. heavy eyebrows . he was about to withdraw; but then his curiosity drew him forward again. unless a passing owl??standing at the open window of her unlit bedroom. May I give it to Mary???Thus it was that later that same day Ernestina figured. or no more.????I do not take your meaning. that you??ve been fast.600. while she was ill. too high to threaten rain.

??Respectability is what does not give me offense. was the corollary of the collapse of the ladder of nature: that if new species can come into being.????No.?? He felt himself in suspension between the two worlds. and died very largely of it in 1856. however much of a latterday Mrs. . in John Leech??s.. Butlers. But it is not so. Then she turned to the front of the book. I don??t like to go near her. miss. The servants were permitted to hold evening prayer in the kitchen. She then came out.??Charles glanced cautiously at him; but there was no mis-taking a certain ferocity of light in the doctor??s eyes.

Charles saw she was faintly shocked once or twice; that Aunt Tranter was not; and he felt nostalgia for this more open culture of their respective youths his two older guests were still happy to slip back into. in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence. he was welcome to as much milk as he could drink. the hour when the social life of London was just beginning; but here the town was well into its usual long sleep. Sam? In twenty-four hours???Sam began to rub the washstand with the towel that was intended for Charles??s cheeks. it was supposed. .It had not occurred to her. for nobody knew how many months. to communicate to me???Again that fixed stare. eye it is quite simply the most beautiful sea rampart on the south coast of England. and kissed her. Varguennes had gone to sea in the wine commerce. Grogan??s little remark about the comparative priority to be accorded the dead and the living had germinated. it was discovered that she had not risen. yet respectfully; and for once Mrs. And when her strong Christian principles showed him the futility of his purposes.

It was true that in 1867 the uncle showed. 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 felt outwitted. in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence. the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior. in Mary??s prayers. was none other than Mrs. But I prefer you to be up to no good in London. From your request to me last week I presume you don??t wish Mrs. He realized he had touched some deep emotion in her. Charles stole a kiss on each wet eyelid as a revenge. It had been their size that had decided the encroaching gentleman to found his arboretum in the Undercliff; and Charles felt dwarfed. But before he could ask her what was wrong. and then up to the levels where the flint strata emerged. the kindest old soul. This stone must come from the oolite at Portland. But was that the only context??the only market for brides? It was a fixed article of Charles??s creed that he was not like the great majority of his peers and contemporaries.

Even if Charles had not had the further prospects he did. One was that Marlborough House commanded a magnificent prospect of Lyme Bay.. force the pace. Ernestina wanted a husband. the solemn young paterfamili-as; then smiled indulgently at his own faces and euphoria; poised.????Why. he saw Sam wait-ing. Their nor-mal face was a mixture of fear at Mrs. So her relation with Aunt Tranter was much more that of a high-spirited child. Perhaps I believed I owed it to myself to appear mistress of my destiny. her fat arms shiny with suds. a false scholarship. We got by very well without the Iron Civilizer?? (by which he meant the railway) ??when I was a young man. I prescribe a copious toddy dispensed by my own learned hand. Perhaps more. in a commanding position on one of the steep hills behind Lyme Regis.

then. to this wild place. It is true that to explain his obscure feeling of malaise. Talbot concealed her doubts about Mrs. Poulteney??s inspection. whereupon her fragile little hand reached out and peremptorily pulled the gilt handle beside her bed.The men??s voices sounded louder. Talbot provided an interminable letter of reference. when she was convalescent.????For finding solitude. creeping like blood through a bandage. and as abruptly kneeled. Her mind did not allow itself to run to a Parisian grisette or an almond-eyed inn-girl at Cintra.??Her head rose then. I have come prepared to listen to what you wished me . Poulteney was as ignorant of that as she was of Tragedy??s more vulgar nickname. sipped madeira.