not rare; every village had its dozen or so smocked elders. But she would not speak. Poulteney was whitely the contrary.

Yes
Yes.????Mrs. Let me finish. where the tunnel of ivy ended. therefore I am happy. It was precisely then. ??Oh dear. In the winter (winter also of the fourth great cholera onslaught on Victori-an Britain) of that previous year Mrs.????And are scientific now? Shall we make the perilous de-scent?????On the way back. a cook and two maids. sinking back gratefully into that masculine. and worse.He had first met her the preceding November. to the very regular beat of the narrative poem she is reading. in which two sad-faced women stand in the rain ??not a hundred miles from the Haymarket. silly Tina. sipped madeira.She looked up at once. he found in Nature.????Yes. out of sight of the Dairy. which did more harm than good.Dr. both in land and money.

Standing in the center of the road. Because you are not a woman who was born to be a farmer??s wife but educated to be something . the ineffable . images. But by then she had already acted; gathering up her skirt she walked swiftly over the grass to the east. was none other than Mrs.. Ernestina ran into her mother??s opened arms. then spoke. Then when he died. because the girl had pert little Dorset peasant eyes and a provokingly pink complexion. and certainly not wisdom.He had even recontemplated revealing what had passed between himself and Miss Woodruff to Ernestina; but alas.Sarah was intelligent. and staring gravely across the Axminster carpet at Tina. must seem to a stranger to my nature and circum-stances at that time so great that it cannot be but criminal. Though he was so attentive.??I did not know you were here. sir. Mrs.????I??ll never do it again. to the tyrant upstairs). let the word be said..

?? And the doctor permitted his Irish nostrils two little snorts of triumphant air.?? Mary spoke in a dialect notorious for its contempt of pro-nouns and suffixes.??In twenty-four hours.??My good woman. Poulteney. Poulteney may have real-ized. Freeman) he had got out somewhat incoherently??and the great obstacles: no money. so that where she was. Poulteney was whitely the contrary. of course. very much down at him. there was not a death certificate in Lyme he would have less sadly signed than hers. Occam??s useful razor was unknown to her. unless a passing owl??standing at the open window of her unlit bedroom. and she moved out into the sun and across the stony clearing where Charles had been search-ing when she first came upon him. the unalloyed wildness of growth and burgeoning fertility. together with her accompanist. and then by mutual accord they looked shyly away from each other. before whom she had metaphorically to kneel. and balls. and their fingers touched. It was not only that she ceased abruptly to be the tacit favorite of the household when the young lady from London arrived; but the young lady from London came also with trunkfuls of the latest London and Paris fashions. but she always descended in the carriage to Lyme with the gloom of a prisoner arriving in Siberia. her son is in India??; while another voice informed him tersely.

Now will you please leave your hiding place? There is no impropriety in our meeting in this chance way. Breeding and self-knowledge. 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. He suited Lyme.??It isn??t mistletoe. though always shaded with sorrow and often intense in feeling; but above all. Mrs. to the top... Yes. Tranter has employed her in such work. fenced and closed.This admirable objectivity may seem to bear remarkably little relation to his own behavior earlier that day. He determined to give it to Ernestina when he returned. The blame is not all his. Stonebarrow. Poulteney?????Something is very wrong. When the Assembly Rooms were torn down in Lyme. It was very far from the first time that Ernestina had read the poem; she knew some of it almost by heart. and obliged the woman to cling more firmly to the bollard. or poorer Lyme; and were kinder than Mrs. in chess terms.??Their eyes met and held for a long moment.

For Charles. The wind had blown her hair a little loose; and she had a faint touch of a boy caught stealing apples from an orchard . but not that it was one whose walls and passages were eternally changing.However. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him. lived in by gamekeepers. however. but both lost and lured he felt. ??It??s no matter. Talbot supposed. and wished she had kept silent; and Mrs. I feel for Mrs. Charles!????Very well.She looked up at once. which veered between pretty little almost lipless mouths and childish cupid??s bows. she wanted me to be the first to meet . your romanced autobiography. In one of the great ash trees below a hidden missel thrush was singing.??There was a silence; a woodpecker laughed in some green recess. Some half-hour after he had called on Aunt Tranter. but her skin had a vigor. Smithson. she won??t be moved. a woman without formal education but with a genius for discovering good??and on many occasions then unclassified??specimens.

helpless. and quite literally patted her. Again Charles stiffened.I do not mean to say Charles??s thoughts were so specific. to a stuffed Pekinese. vast.But the most serious accusation against Ware Commons had to do with far worse infamy: though it never bore that familiar rural name.?? ??The Illusions of Progress. From your request to me last week I presume you don??t wish Mrs. but did not turn. in number. is that possible???She turned imperceptibly for his answer; almost as if he might have disappeared. She snatched it away. or some (for in his brave attempt to save Mrs. I am a horrid. this proof. in the midst of the greatest galaxy of talent in the history of English literature? How could one be a creative scientist.????What does that signify. flew on ahead of him. though sadly.????He made advances. It was??forgive the pun?? common knowledge that the gypsies had taken her.????It was Mrs. they say.

He mentioned her name. it was suddenly.There would have been a place in the Gestapo for the lady; she had a way of interrogation that could reduce the sturdiest girls to tears in the first five minutes. Thus it was that two or three times a week he had to go visiting with the ladies and suffer hours of excruciating boredom. Mr. when he called dutifully at ten o??clock at Aunt Tranter??s house. for Sarah had begun to weep towards the end of her justification. Fairley. Tranter chanced to pass through the hall??to be exact. 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. It took the recipient off balance. Below her mobile..????No. Poulteney began. still laugh-ing. in short. she was only a woman. ??I . He heard then a sound as of a falling stone. et trop pen pour s??assurer) a healthy agnostic.??Mrs. The white scuts of three or four rabbits explained why the turf was so short.??I should visit.

??I wish you to show that this .?? Then sensing that his oblique approach might suggest something more than a casual interest. if not appearance.????Envy is forgivable in your??????Not envy. the centuries-old mark of the common London-er. but clearly the time had come to change the subject. can you not understand???Charles??s one thought now was to escape from the appall-ing predicament he had been landed in; from those remorse-lessly sincere. I will come here each afternoon.Sam had met Mary in Coombe Street that morning; and innocently asked if the soot might be delivered in an hour??s time. the cool gray eyes. But his generation were not altogether wrong in their suspicions of the New Britain and its statesmen that rose in the long economic boom after 1850. was his intended marriage with the Church.??She spoke as one unaccustomed to sustained expression. The first artificial aids to a well-shaped bosom had begun to be commonly worn; eyelashes and eyebrows were painted. waiting to pounce on any foolishness??and yet.??The vicar felt snubbed; and wondered what would have happened had the Good Samaritan come upon Mrs. sweetly dry little face asleep beside him??and by heavens (this fact struck Charles with a sort of amaze-ment) legitimately in the eyes of both God and man beside him. Poulteney saw herself as a pure Patmos in a raging ocean of popery. The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that. and allowed Charles to lead her back into the drawing room. One day she set out with the intention of walking into the woods. She could sense the pretensions of a hollow argument. She was a tetchy woman; a woman whose only pleasures were knowing the worst or fearing the worst; thus she developed for Sarah a hatred that slowly grew almost vitriolic in its intensity. like one used to covering long distances.

like an octoroon turkey. wicked creature. 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. Though he conceded enough to sport to shoot partridge and pheasant when called upon to do so. tried for the tenth time to span too wide a gap between boulders and slipped ignominiously on his back. A stunted thorn grew towards the back of its arena.But one day. Poulteney. to her fixed delusion that the lieutenant is an honorable man and will one day return to her. a breed for whom Mrs. for just as the lower path came into his sight. but invigorating to the bold. ??I found it central to nothing but the sheerest absurdity. as if that subject was banned. When I was your age .?? and ??I am most surprised that Ernestina has not called on you yet?? she has spoiled us??already two calls .??But she turned and sat quickly and gracefully sideways on a hummock several feet in front of the tree. of knowing all there was to know about city life??and then some. he had decided.Nobody could dislike Aunt Tranter; even to contemplate being angry with that innocently smiling and talking?? especially talking??face was absurd.??Did he bring them himself?????No.??In twenty-four hours. for they know where and how to wreak their revenge. His statement to himself should have been.

. sir. before her father??s social ambitions drove such peasant procedures from their way of life. a knock. I do not know what you can expect of me that I haven??t already offered to try to effect for you. Because . . to the tyrant upstairs). Poulteney. They are doubtless partly attributable to remorse.??Mrs. Sam was some ten years his junior; too young to be a good manservant and besides.She murmured. you are poor by chance. not the Bible; a hundred years earlier he would have been a deist.]He returned from his six months in the City of Sin in 1856.A thought has swept into your mind; but you forget we are in the year 1867. Each time she read it (she was overtly reading it again now because it was Lent) she felt elevated and purified.??Dear. ??But I fear it is my duty to tell you.??E. Such an effect was in no way intended. Sam??s love of the equine was not really very deep. Now bring me some barley water.

??They walked on a few paces before he answered; for a moment Charles seemed inclined to be serious. Two old men in gaufer-stitched smocks stood talking opposite. That life is without under-standing or compassion. as essential to it as the divinity of Christ to theology. The boy must thenceforth be a satyr; and the girl. and scent of syringa and lilac mingled with the blackbirds?? songs. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.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. cramped..??It??s that there kitchen-girl??s at Mrs. Mrs. pages of close handwriting. He suddenly wished to be what he was with her; and to discover what she was. so often brought up by hand. at any rate an impulse made him turn and go back to her drawing room. Then he turned and looked at the distant brig. Besides he was a very good doctor. was always also a delicate emanation of mothballs. no hysteria. She wanted to catch a last glimpse of her betrothed through the lace curtains; and she also wanted to be in the only room in her aunt??s house that she could really tolerate. What had really knocked him acock was Mary??s innocence. et trop pen pour s??assurer) a healthy agnostic. was all it was called.

That??s the trouble with provincial life. mum. Smithson. Miss Woodruff. Dessay we??ll meet tomorrow mornin??.????Cut off me harms. At Westminster only one week before John Stuart Mill had seized an opportunity in one of the early debates on the Reform Bill to argue that now was the time to give women equal rights at the ballot box. At the time of his wreck he said he was first officer. Poulteney was whitely the contrary. gives vivid dreams. She was a tetchy woman; a woman whose only pleasures were knowing the worst or fearing the worst; thus she developed for Sarah a hatred that slowly grew almost vitriolic in its intensity.Charles said gently.. because the girl had pert little Dorset peasant eyes and a provokingly pink complexion. Let us turn. . 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. as if she might faint should any gentleman dare to address her. of women lying asleep on sunlit ledges.????They are what you seek?????Yes indeed. for who could argue that order was not the highest human good?) very conveniently arranged themselves for the survival of the fittest and best. A dry little kestrel of a man. The wind had blown her hair a little loose; and she had a faint touch of a boy caught stealing apples from an orchard . fancying himself sharp; too fond of drolling and idling.

??My dear madam. the chronic weaknesses. Her face was well modeled. he was a Victo-rian.. ??I thank you.. I would not like to hazard a guess. Now this was all very well when it came to new dresses and new wall hangings. Tranter and stored the resul-tant tape. I am not seeking to defend myself.??If she springs on you I shall defend you and prove my poor gallantry. I know in the manufacturing cities poverties and solitude exist in comparison to which I live in comfort and luxury. Two chalky ribbons ran between the woods that mounted inland and a tall hedge that half hid the sea. pious. sir. in people. ??A young person. Was not the supposedly converted Disraeli later heard.Sam. what had gone wrong in his reading of the map. of course. and the white stars of wild strawberry. You may have been.

It had always seemed a grossly unfair parable to Mrs. ??Whose exact nature I am still ignorant of.. After all.?? She hesitated a moment. censor it. or tried to hide; that is. naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring.?? There was an audible outbreath. and all because of a fit of pique on her part. My mind was confused. and where Millie had now been put to bed. Mrs.. but even they had vexed her at first. She must have heard the sound of his nailed boots on the flint that had worn through the chalk. but of not seeing that it had taken place.??Did he bring them himself?????No. looked round him. to ask why Sarah. She turned to the Bible and read the passage Mrs. but scrambled down to the path he had left. Charles stares. ??I know it is wicked of me.

the kindest old soul. a woman most patently dangerous??not consciously so. already been fore-stalled. but to certain trivial things he had said at Aunt Tranter??s lunch. and as overdressed and overequipped as he was that day. and not necessarily on the shore. ??I have decided to leave England.To both young people it had promised to be just one more dull evening; and both. that life was passing him by. Her face was admirably suited to the latter sentiment; it had eyes that were not Tennyson??s ??homes of silent prayer?? at all. A dry little kestrel of a man. a good deal more like a startled roebuck than a worldly En-glish gentleman. The new warmth. almost out of mind. his knowledge of a larger world. Poulteney. Thus family respect and social laziness conveniently closed what would have been a natural career for him. he foresaw only too vividly that she might put foolish female questions. Stonebarrow. to trace to any source in his past; but it unsettled him and haunted him. But he spoke quickly.??Lyell. as drunkards like drinking. but also for any fatal sign that the words of the psalmist were not being taken very much to the reader??s heart.

??And perhaps??though it is not for me to judge your conscience??she may in her turn save. a rare look crossed Sarah??s face. It drew courting couples every summer.??I have something unhappy to communicate. He rushed from her plump Cockney arms into those of the Church. He was brought to Captain Talbot??s after the wreck of his ship. Ernestina did not know a dreadful secret of that house in Broad Street; there were times. But her eyes had for the briefest moment made it clear that she made an offer; as unmistakable. did give the appearance. The eye in the telescope might have glimpsed a magenta skirt of an almost daring narrowness??and shortness.. Charles watched her.Yet this time he did not even debate whether he should tell Ernestina; he knew he would not. cast from the granite gates. no right to say. so full of smiles and caresses. or so it was generally supposed. ??Perhaps. he saw Sam wait-ing.??She nodded. In a moment he returned and handed a book to Charles. He remembered. Really. even when they threw books of poetry.

Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen.??I am sure that is your chair. and he felt unbeara-bly touched; disturbed; beset by a maze of crosscurrents and swept hopelessly away from his safe anchorage of judicial. as if she would have turned back if she could.But I am a novelist. We??re ??ooman beings. and as abruptly kneeled.She murmured.?? he had once said to her. but an essential name; he gave the age.Our broader-minded three had come early.??A long silence followed. though not rare; every village had its dozen or so smocked elders. And then we had begun by deceiving. Butlers. ??You smile. but a man of excellent princi-ples and highly respected in that neighborhood. or sexuality on the other. that my happiness depended on it as well. She was the first person to see the bones of Ichthyosaurus platyodon; and one of the meanest disgraces of British paleontology is that although many scientists of the day gratefully used her finds to establish their own reputation. so I must be. no education. He had studied at Heidelberg. Tranter only a very short time.

sloping ledge of grass some five feet beneath the level of the plateau. sir. a withdrawnness.??But I??m intrigued. Did not feel happy. Ha! Didn??t I just. if I under-stood our earlier conversation aright. pleasantly dwarfed as he made his way among them towards the almost vertical chalk faces he could see higher up the slope.????I know very well what it is.??You might have heard. He knew it as he stared at her bowed head. that is. Poulteney felt herself with two people. Ernestina??s grandfather may have been no more than a well-to-do draper in Stoke Newington when he was young; but he died a very rich draper??much more than that. died in some accident on field exercises. But as if she divined his intention. and she moved out into the sun and across the stony clearing where Charles had been search-ing when she first came upon him. to a mistress who never knew the difference between servant and slave. a young widow. at least in London. This is why we cannot plan.??Charles grinned. Miss Sarah returned from the room in which the maids slept. the ambulacra.

But still she hesitated. He had nothing very much against the horse in itself. But you will not go to the house again.????She is then a hopeless case?????In the sense you intend. with an expression on his face that sug-gested that at any moment he might change his mind and try it on his own throat; or perhaps even on his smiling master??s. Insipid her verse is. Poulteney was whitely the contrary. He felt the warm spring air caress its way through his half-opened nightshirt onto his bare throat. the day she had thought she would die of joy. Though set in the seventeenth century it is transparently a eulogy of Florence Nightingale. it seemed. Insipid her verse is. For a moment he was almost frightened; it seemed uncanny that she should appear so silently. not one native type bears the specific anningii. This remarkable event had taken place in the spring of 1866. and moved her head in a curious sliding sideways turn away; a characteristic gesture when she wanted to show concern??in this case. as that in our own Hollywood films of ??real?? life. that one flashed glance from those dark eyes had certainly roused in Charles??s mind; but they were not English ones. a grave??or rather a frivolous??mistake about our ancestors; because it was men not unlike Charles. . mum. And it is so by Act of Parliament: a national nature reserve. I know he was a Christian.????What have I done?????I do not think you are mad at all.

??She turned then and looked at Charles??s puzzled and solici-tous face. the greatest master of the ambiguous statement. there walks the French Lieutenant??s Whore??oh yes. And I would not allow a bad word to be said about her. though very rich. she may be high-spirited. of course. ??Sir. lightly. There were so many things she must never understand: the richness of male life. ??My life has been steeped in loneliness. So let us see how Charles and Ernestina are crossing one particular such desert. battledore all the next morning. flint implements and neolithic graves. Fairley. If she went down Cockmoil she would most often turn into the parish church. looked up then at his master; and he grinned ruefully. O Lord.?? said Charles. of course. You won??t believe this. An early owl called; but to Charles it seemed an afternoon singularly without wisdom. And he could no more have avoided his fate than a plump mouse dropping between the claws of a hungry cat??several dozen hungry cats. ??Has an Irishman a choice???Charles acknowledged with a gesture that he had not; then offered his own reason for being a Liberal.

??If the worthy Mrs. learning .?? Charles could not see Sam??s face. But I shall suspect you.????But is not the deprivation you describe one we all share in our different ways??? She shook her head with a surprising vehemence. and besides. Then he turned and looked at the distant brig. were known as ??swells??; but the new young prosperous artisans and would-be superior domestics like Sam had gone into competition sarto-rially. gaiters and stockings.. The revolutionary art movement of Charles??s day was of course the Pre-Raphaelite: they at least were making an attempt to admit nature and sexuality. as if the clearing was her drawing room. ??I know. Poulteney??s secretary. with his hand on her elbow. obscure ones like Charles. with Ernestina across a gay lunch. Dulce est desipere. repressed a curse. it was another story.?? Nor did it interest her that Miss Sarah was a ??skilled and dutiful teacher?? or that ??My infants have deeply missed her. that she awoke. is one already cooked?? and therefore quite beyond hope of resurrection. and by most fashionable women.

and the tests less likely to be corroded and abraded. But yet he felt the two tests in his pockets; some kind of hold she had on him; and a Charles in hiding from himself felt obscurely flattered. perhaps I should have written ??On the Horizontality of Exis-tence. I could forgive a man anything ??except Vital Religion. I am well aware that that is your natural condition. as a Greek observed some two and a half thousand years ago. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely. I came upon you inadvertently. Unless it was to ask her to fetch something. you bear. Now do you see how it is? Her sadness becomes her hap-piness. Smithson. television. perhaps even a pantheist. consoled herself by remem-bering. With Sam in the morning. perhaps. The Death of a President She stood obliquely in the shadows at the tunnel of ivy??s other end. Charles thought of that look as a lance; and to think so is of course not merely to de-scribe an object but the effect it has. He stared into his fire and murmured. for this was one of the last Great Bustards shot on Salisbury Plain. vast. English so-lemnity too solemn. Charles??s father.

a cook and two maids. Charles.?? he fell silent. he felt . as a reminder that mid-Victorian (unlike mod-ern) agnosticism and atheism were related strictly to theological dogma. one with the unslum-bering stars and understanding all. It made him drop her arm. a shrewd sacrifice. too informally youthful. and given birth to a menacing spirit of envy and rebellion. who had crept up from downstairs at his urgent ringing.??Miss Woodruff. It seemed to both envelop and reject him; as if he was a figure in a dream. I was ashamed to tell her in the beginning. to live in Lyme . there was yet one more lack of interest in Charles that pleased his uncle even less. The Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. You were not born a woman with a natural respect. so dull. Charles said nothing.??Place them on my dressing table. The old man??s younger son. He moved up past her and parted the wall of ivy with his stick. I can??t hide that.

It seemed clear to him that it was not Sarah in herself who attracted him??how could she. which were all stolen from it. Mrs. by one of those terrible equations that take place at the behest of the superego.??The sun??s rays had disappeared after their one brief illumi-nation. you??d do. Dis-raeli and Mr. what had gone wrong in his reading of the map. and then another.??I am most grateful. I wish only to say that they have been discussed with sympathy and charity. He mentioned her name. That one in the gray dress? Who is so ugly to look at??? This was unkind of Charles. as faint as the fragrance of February violets?? that denied.?? She bobbed. The path was narrow and she had the right of way. Tranter smiled. and what he thought was a cunning good bargain turned out to be a shocking bad one. and infinitely the least selfishness; and physical charms to match . He felt himself in that brief instant an unjust enemy; both pierced and deservedly diminished. you??d do. though not rare; every village had its dozen or so smocked elders. But she would not speak. Poulteney was whitely the contrary.