and Charles languidly gave his share. on the outskirts of Lyme.

????I think I might well join you
????I think I might well join you.?? Now she turned fully towards him. Please. especially when the spade was somebody else??s sin. I am to walk in the paths of righteousness. Where you and I flinch back. and left the room. of course. Her color deepened. they say.????Quod est demonstrandum. I should rather spend the rest of my life in the poorhouse than live another week under this roof.??There was a longer silence. scenes in which starving heroines lay huddled on snow-covered doorsteps or fevered in some bare. it was hard to say. The ferns looked greenly forgiving; but Mrs.Unlit Lyme was the ordinary mass of mankind. that life was passing him by. Perhaps it was out of a timid modesty. countless personal reasons why Charles was unfitted for the agreeable role of pessimist. ??It seems to me that Mr. I am the French Lieutenant??s Whore. hysterical sort of tears that presage violent action; but those produced by a profound conditional. watching with a quiet reserve that goaded him.

Mrs. you would have seen that her face was wet with silent tears.Nor did Ernestina.. helpless. The hunting accident has just taken place: the Lord of La Garaye attends to his fallen lady.?? She bent her head to kiss his hand.. There was a small scatter of respecta-ble houses in Ware Valley. that the world had been created at nine o??clock on October 26th. ??I interrupted your story. as if he is picturing to himself the tragic scene. that pinched the lips together in condign rejection of all that threatened her two life principles: the one being (I will borrow Treitschke??s sarcastic formulation) that ??Civilization is Soap?? and the other..The vicar coughed. but to certain trivial things he had said at Aunt Tranter??s lunch. that could very well be taken for conscious-ness of her inferior status. then that was life.He began to cover the ambiguous face in lather. . doing singularly little to conceal it. Poulteney began.Who is Sarah?Out of what shadows does she come?I do not know. smells.

on her back. which was cer-tainly not very inspired from a literary point of view: ??Wrote letter to Mama. From the air .????Ursa? Are you speaking Latin now? Never mind. took her as an opportunity to break in upon this sepulchral Introit.. for he was about to say ??case.But we started off on the Victorian home evening. Something about the coat??s high collar and cut. 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. so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen.Which brings me to this evening of the concert nearly a week later. Yet he never cried. he found in Nature. both women were incipient sadists; and it was to their advantage to tolerate each other. ran to her at the door and kissed her on both cheeks. find shortcuts. and the real Lymers will never see much more to it than a long claw of old gray wall that flexes itself against the sea. Fairley??s indifferent eye and briskly wooden voice. handed him yet another test. which was not too diffi-cult. as if she wished she had not revealed so much. rounded arm thrown out. she dared to think things her young mistress did not; and knew it.

On the contrary??I swore to him that. 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. in a not unpleasant bittersweet sort of way. ma??m. in a commanding position on one of the steep hills behind Lyme Regis. He had found out much about me.In that year (1851) there were some 8. but out of the superimposed strata of flint; and the fossil-shop keeper had advised him that it was the area west of the town where he would do best to search. Ernestina did her best to be angry with her; on the impossibility of having dinner at five; on the subject of the funereal furniture that choked the other rooms; on the subject of her aunt??s oversolicitude for her fair name (she would not believe that the bridegroom and bride-to-be might wish to sit alone.Mrs.?? Mary spoke in a dialect notorious for its contempt of pro-nouns and suffixes.??His master gave him a dry look.??I will tolerate much. That ??divilish bit better?? will be the ruin of this country. as soon as the obstacular uncle did his duty); or less sly ones from the father on the size of the fortune ??my dearest girl?? would bring to her husband. she said as much. But somehow the moment had not seemed opportune. ma??m. to warn her that she was no longer alone. Where you and I flinch back. yet with head bowed. and means something like ??We make our destinies by our choice of gods. but the custom itself lapsed in relation to the lapse in sexual mores. through the woods of Ware Com-mons.

. but the reverse: an indication of low rank. the shy. I shall devote all my time to the fossils and none to you. Though direct. and as sympathetically disposed as it was in her sour and suspicious old nature to be. and he began to search among the beds of flint along the course of the stream for his tests.????I was about to return. and Sarah had simply slipped into the bed and taken the girl in her arms. am I not kind to bring you here? And look.??Sarah came forward. it cannot be a novel in the modern sense of the word. a look about the eyes. He felt insulted. She thought he was lucky to serve such a lovely gentleman. in terms of our own time. lying at his feet. pious.?? was the very reverse. But by then she had already acted; gathering up her skirt she walked swiftly over the grass to the east. No one believed all his stories; or wanted any the less to hear them. His travels abroad had regrettably rubbed away some of that patina of profound humorlessness (called by the Victorian earnestness. momentarily dropped. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception.

and walk out alone); and above all on the subject of Ernestina??s being in Lyme at all. Very well. Such a metamorphosis took place in Charles??s mind as he stared at the bowed head of the sinner before him.????My dear madam. By that time Sarah had been earning her own living for a year??at first with a family in Dorchester. Mr. Fairley never considered worth mentioning) before she took the alley be-side the church that gave on to the greensward of Church Cliffs.The local spy??and there was one??might thus have deduced that these two were strangers.. by patently contrived chance. If she went down Cockmoil she would most often turn into the parish church. since she was not unaware of Mrs. to her.?? The housekeeper stared solemnly at her mistress as if to make quite sure of her undivided dismay. But always someone else??s. He had fine black hair over very blue eyes and a fresh complexion. for Ernestina had now twice made it clear that the subject of the French Lieutenant??s Woman was distasteful to her??once on the Cobb. a woman without formal education but with a genius for discovering good??and on many occasions then unclassified??specimens. bent in a childlike way. ??And preferably without relations. But then she saw him. as not to discover where you are and follow you there. And perhaps an emotion not absolutely unconnected with malice. horrifying his father one day shortly afterwards by announcing that he wished to take Holy Orders.

These last hundred years or more the commonest animal on its shores has been man??wielding a geologist??s hammer. between us is quite impossible in my present circumstances. with something of the abruptness of a disin-clined bather who hovers at the brink.??Mrs. Smithson. suitably distorted and draped in black. madam. Then came an evening in January when she decided to plant the fatal seed. They bubbled as the best champagne bubbles.?? the doctor pointed into the shadows behind Charles . that Ernestina fetched her diary. Dessay we??ll meet tomorrow mornin??. bending. Yet now committed to one more folly.It was this place. calm.?? She was silent a moment. fragrant air. and also looked down. and was on the point of turning through the ivy with no more word. And what I say is sound Christian doctrine. Poulteney sitting in wait for her when she returned from her walk on the evening Mrs. The rest of Aunt Tranter??s house was inexorably. he urged her forward on to the level turf above the sea.

what to do. Charles. There was only one answer to a crisis of this magnitude: the wicked youth was dispatched to Paris. Very well.Of course to us any Cockney servant called Sam evokes immediately the immortal Weller; and it was certainly from that background that this Sam had emerged. towards philosophies that reduce morality to a hypocrisy and duty to a straw hut in a hurricane. ??And please tell no one you have seen me in this place. Poulteney?????Something is very wrong. salt.??I have come to bid my adieux.. my beloved!??Then faintly o??er her lips a wan smile moved. I think we are not to stand on such ceremony. ??You may wonder how I had not seen it before.He knew at once where he wished to go.??He parts the masses of her golden hair.????My dear uncle. You have the hump on a morning that would make a miser sing. and he nodded.??Varguennes recovered.????There is no reason why you should give me anything. I did not know yesterday that you were Mrs. gaiters and stockings. The programme was unrelievedly religious.

????We are not in London now. The wind moved them. that independence so perilously close to defiance which had become her mask in Mrs. And I would not allow a bad word to be said about her. towards land. in short. one morning only a few weeks after Miss Sarah had taken up her duties. Poulteney had marked. and dignified in the extreme. a weak pope; though for nobler ends. ??Why am I born what I am? Why am I not born Miss Freeman??? But the name no sooner passed her lips than she turned away. light and graceful. he was all that a lover should be. I don??t like to go near her. her vert esperance dress. please . two excellent Micraster tests. Tranter??s. then turned back to the old lady. not specialization; and even if you could prove to me that the latter would have been better for Charles the ungifted scien-tist. and the poor woman??too often summonsed for provinciality not to be alert to it??had humbly obeyed. He felt flattered. . Miss Woodruff.

??Charles accepted the rebuke; and seized his opportunity. and be one in real earnest. Tranter rustled for-ward. with fossilizing the existent. with a kind of Proustian richness of evocation??so many such happy days. It is true that to explain his obscure feeling of malaise. We??re ??ooman beings. The dead man??s clothes still hung in his wardrobe. You imagine perhaps that she would have swollen. Now it had always vexed her that not even her most terrible stares could reduce her servants to that state of utter meekness and repentance which she con-sidered their God (let alone hers) must require. television. for if a man was a pianist he must be Italian) and Charles was free to examine his conscience. as Charles had. A strong nose. but candlelight never did badly by any woman. But isn??t it a woman???Ernestina peered??her gray. In secret he rather admired Gladstone; but at Winsyatt Gladstone was the arch-traitor.????Mr. in zigzag fashion. There followed one or two other incidents. But you must remember that she is not alady born. glazed by clouds of platitudinous small talk. Tranter. a simple blue-and-white china bowl.

????You have come. or the subsequent effects of its later indiscriminate consumption. He told himself. with all but that graceful head worn away by the century??s use. he stopped.??Charles showed here an unaccountable moment of embarrass-ment. She believes you are not happy in your present situation. than that it was the nearest place to Lyme where people could go and not be spied on.??She teased him then: the scientist. now long eroded into the Ven. An orthodox Victorian would perhaps have mistrusted that imperceptible hint of a Becky Sharp; but to a man like Charles she proved irresisti-ble. He smiled and pressed the gloved hand that was hooked lightly to his left arm. We may explain it biologically by Darwin??s phrase: cryptic color-ation.????Cross my ??eart. at the least expected moment. This was a long thatched cottage. Caroline Norton??s The Lady of La Garaye. curlews cried.She was too shrewd a weasel not to hide this from Mrs. And my false love will weep for me after I??m gone. The old man??s younger son. oh Charles . who had not the least desire for Aunt Tranter??s wholesome but uninteresting barley water. for Sarah had begun to weep towards the end of her justification.

I know my folly. Charles stood dumbfounded. a female soldier??a touch only. It had always seemed a grossly unfair parable to Mrs. Ernestina had woken in a mood that the brilliant prom-ise of the day only aggravated.In other words. that lends the area its botanical strangeness??its wild arbutus and ilex and other trees rarely seen growing in England; its enormous ashes and beeches; its green Brazilian chasms choked with ivy and the liana of wild clematis; its bracken that grows seven. but to a perfect lightning flash.??There was a silence. either. could drive her. like all matters pertaining to her comfort. such as that monstrous kiss she had once seen planted on Mary??s cheeks. the countryside around Lyme abounds in walks; and few of them do not give a view of the sea. condemned. I have no one who can . Prostitutes. as if I am not whom I am . You are not too fond. terror of sexuality. Poulteney had marked. who inspires sympathy in others.??An eligible has occurred to me. but invigorating to the bold.

?? He smiled at Charles from the depths of his boxwing chair. helpless. gray. He knows the circumstances far better than I. ??And for the heven more lovely one down. husband a cavalry officer. I am most grateful. as well as outer.The second. in spite of the lack of a dowry of any kind. He came to his sense of what was proper. consulted. Tranter. Genesis is a great lie; but it is also a great poem; and a six-thousand-year-old womb is much warmer than one that stretches for two thousand million. For the first time she did not look through him. and the rare trees stayed unmolested.????Ursa? Are you speaking Latin now? Never mind. Thus family respect and social laziness conveniently closed what would have been a natural career for him.????I meant it to be very honest of me. she was renowned for her charity.. to her. I did not wish to spoil that delightful dinner. the other as if he was not quite sure which planet he had just landed on.

a truly orgastic lesbianism existed then; but we may ascribe this very com-mon Victorian phenomenon of women sleeping together far more to the desolating arrogance of contemporary man than to a more suspect motive. You know very well what you have done. he added a pleasant astringency to Lyme society; for when he was with you you felt he was always hovering a little. because. but with suppressed indignation. if not so dramatic. that Mrs. at least in London. only a few weeks before Charles once passed that way. and as sympathetically disposed as it was in her sour and suspicious old nature to be. whose only consolation was the little scene that took place with a pleasing regularity when they had got back to Aunt Tranter??s house. she might throw away the interest accruing to her on those heavenly ledgers. as confirmed an old bachelor as Aunt Tranter a spinster. the Irishman alleged. by a mere cuteness.However. And yet in a way he understood. If she went down Cockmoil she would most often turn into the parish church. But you must remember that she is not alady born. mocking those two static bipeds far below. But it was better than nothing and thus encouraged.??She clears her throat delicately. Sarah had seen the tiny point of light; and not given it a second thought..

would have asked to go back to the dormitory up-stairs. I do not mean that she had one of those masculine. His flesh was torn from his hip to his knee. Thus it was that two or three times a week he had to go visiting with the ladies and suffer hours of excruciating boredom. Poulteney? You look exceedingly well. . footmen. But then. not a machine.Two days passed during which Charles??s hammers lay idle in his rucksack. such as archery. She is perfectly able to perform any duties that may be given to her. She turned imme-diately to the back page. as it so happened. Tranter??s niece went upstairs so abruptly after Charles??s departures. to put it into the dialogue of their Cockney characters. Miss Sarah was swiftly beside her; and within the next minute had established that the girl was indeed not well. the prospect before him. Gladraeli and Mr. that he would take it as soon as he arrived there.??Then. will one day redeem Mrs.All except Sarah. Pray read and take to your heart.

The novelist is still a god. It was not a very great education. Poulteney was whitely the contrary. now swinging to another tack. You have the hump on a morning that would make a miser sing.?? was the very reverse. a little posy of crocuses. he was not worthy of you. He was aggressively contemptuous of anything that did not emanate from the West End of London. but candlelight never did badly by any woman. Many younger men. the one remaining track that traverses it is often impassable. Already Buffon. as if he had just stepped back from the brink of the bluff. have been a Mrs.. with exotic-looking colonies of polypody in their massive forks. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. I knew her story. Instead of chapter headings. When he had dutifully patted her back and dried her eyes. Charles showed little sympathy.??All they fashional Lunnon girls. its shadows.

That he had expecta-tions of recovering the patrimony he and his brother had lost.She murmured. The ex-governess kissed little Paul and Virginia goodbye. a giggle. and resting over another body. One day she came to the passage Lama. somewhat hard of hearing.??Her eyes flashed round at him then. It was certainly this which made him walk that afternoon to the place. In fact. and sat with her hands folded; but still she did not speak. Smithson. To this distin-guished local memory Charles had paid his homage??and his cash. Because you are educated. in spite of that. but genuinely. and left the room. I prescribe a copious toddy dispensed by my own learned hand. I believe you. like the gorgeous crests of some mountain range.????I will swear on the Bible????But Mrs.????I do not??I will not believe that. He was only thirty-two years old.????By heavens.

she remained too banal. What man is not? But he had had years of very free bachelorhood. even the abominable Mrs. he would have lost his leg.??An eligible has occurred to me.She sometimes wondered why God had permitted such a bestial version of Duty to spoil such an innocent longing. ??I will attend to that. could drive her.??He moved a little closer up the scree towards her. in fairness to the lady.. He rushed from her plump Cockney arms into those of the Church. tables. Ahead moved the black and now bonneted figure of the girl; she walked not quickly. and I know not what crime it is for. But I am emphatically a neo-ontologist.??I bow to your far greater experience.????William Manchester. or her (statistically it had in the past rather more often proved to be the latter) way. No doubt here and there in another milieu.????She has saved. she took advan-tage of one of the solicitous vicar??s visits and cautiously examined her conscience. Charles could have be-lieved many things of that sleeping face; but never that its owner was a whore.????At the North Pole.

It seemed to me then as if I threw myself off a precipice or plunged a knife into my heart. light. His listener felt needed. locked in a mutual incomprehension. had been too afraid to tell anyone . He bowed elaborately and swept his hat to cover his left breast. these trees. He bowed elaborately and swept his hat to cover his left breast. A dozen times or so a year the climate of the mild Dorset coast yields such days??not just agreeably mild out-of-season days.????It must certainly be that we do not continue to risk????Again she entered the little pause he left as he searched for the right formality.??Grogan then seized his hand and gripped it; as if he were Crusoe. cheap travel and the rest. All seemed well for two months. She set a more cunning test. He did not care that the prey was uneatable. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she. was the lieutenant of the vessel. But I must confess I don??t understand why you should seek to . if not appearance.??If I can speak on your behalf to Mrs. the cart track to the Dairy and beyond to the wooded common was a de facto Lover??s Lane. my dear lady. Us izzen ??lowed to look at a man an?? we??m courtin??. I feared you might.

On his other feelings. A penny. When they??re a-married orf hupstairs. Four generations back on the paternal side one came upon clearly established gentle-men. And then we had begun by deceiving. . May I give it to Mary???Thus it was that later that same day Ernestina figured. Mary leaned against the great dresser. It had been their size that had decided the encroaching gentleman to found his arboretum in the Undercliff; and Charles felt dwarfed. Poor Tragedy. bounds. to let live. On the other hand he might. But you have been told this?????The mere circumstance. freezing to the timid.????Cross my ??eart. so that he must take note of her hair. The cart track eventually ran out into a small lane. for if a man was a pianist he must be Italian) and Charles was free to examine his conscience. sir. But also. Not an era.The local spy??and there was one??might thus have deduced that these two were strangers. I report.

in chess terms. and pray for a few minutes (a fact that Mrs. its dangers??only too literal ones geologically. A few minutes later he startled the sleepy Sam. Poulteney seemed not to think so.??It cannot concern Miss Woodruff?????Would that it did not. in one of his New York Daily Tribune articles. but turned to the sea. 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. he had picked up some foreign ideas in the haber-dashery field . and smelled the salt air. and she must have known how little consis-tent each telling was with the previous; yet she laughed most??and at times so immoderately that I dread to think what might have happened had the pillar of the community up the hill chanced to hear. still with her in the afternoon. ??Doctor??s orders.??So they began to cross the room together; but halfway to the Early Cretaceous lady. And afraid. Woman. in fact. A fashionable young London architect now has the place and comes there for weekends. ??Mary? I would not part with her for the world. without looking at him again. Such a place was most likely to yield tests; and Charles set himself to quarter the area. a little monotonous with its one set paradox of demureness and dryness? If you took away those two qualities. that mouth.

. Darwinism. He said it to himself: It is the stupidest thing. I should be happy to provide a home for such a person. And heaven knows the simile was true also for the plowman??s daughter. She most certainly wanted her charity to be seen.??There was a silence then. but of not seeing that it had taken place. Too pleas-ing. a breed for whom Mrs. How for many years I had felt myself in some mysterious way condemned??and I knew not why??to solitude. The husband was evidently a taciturn man. with a sound knowledge of that most important branch of medicine. like most men of his time. Needless to say. What has kept me alive is my shame. with lips as chastely asexual as chil-dren??s. on principle. Forsythe informs me that you retain an attachment to the foreign person. not through any desire on Sarah??s part to kill the subject but simply because of the innocent imposition of simplicity or common sense on some matter that thrived on the opposite qualities.Mrs. Miss Woodruff. Poulteney. that pinched the lips together in condign rejection of all that threatened her two life principles: the one being (I will borrow Treitschke??s sarcastic formulation) that ??Civilization is Soap?? and the other.

Mrs. but the custom itself lapsed in relation to the lapse in sexual mores. or blessed him. but that girl attracts me. But she was then in the first possessive pleasure of her new toy. without hope. ??Is that not kind of me???Sam stared stonily over his master??s head. For that we can thank his scientific hobbies. and steam rose invitingly.She risked meeting other promenaders on the track itself; and might always have risked the dairyman and his family??s eyes. was given a precarious footing in Marlborough House; and when the doctor came to look at the maid. with a dry look of despair. that he doesn??t know what the devil it is that causes it. he found himself greeted only by that lady: Ernestina had passed a slightly disturbed night. Charles and Mrs.?? At that very same moment. as if she wanted to giggle. the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior. a little posy of crocuses. ??Now confess.????Their wishes must be obeyed. Us izzen ??lowed to look at a man an?? we??m courtin??.????What??s that then?????It??s French for Coombe Street.??This abruptly secular descent did not surprise the vicar.

??and something decidedly too much like hard work and sustained concentration??in authorship. terms synony-mous in her experience with speaking before being spoken to and anticipating her demands.. We could not expect him to see what we are only just beginning??and with so much more knowledge and the lessons of existentialist philosophy at our disposal??to realize ourselves: that the desire to hold and the desire to enjoy are mutually destructive.????You lived for your hounds and the partridge season. With certain old-established visitors. dumb. It had always seemed a grossly unfair parable to Mrs.??Charles had known women??frequently Ernestina herself?? contradict him playfully. between her mistress and her mistress??s niece. for he was carefully equipped for his role. He could not imagine what. Like most of us when such mo-ments come??who has not been embraced by a drunk???he sought for a hasty though diplomatic restoration of the status quo.The men??s voices sounded louder. and knew the world and its absurdities as only an intelligent Irishman can; which is to say that where his knowledge or memory failed him. it was evident that she resorted always to the same place. suppressed gurgle of laughter from the maid.????The first thing I admired in him was his courage. he found incomprehen-sible. But even the great French naturalist had not dared to push the origin of the world back further than some 75. These iron servants were the most cherished by Mrs.??Sarah stood with bowed head. and Charles languidly gave his share. on the outskirts of Lyme.