celebrated anthology of after-life anxiety is stated in this poem (xxxv).

that Charles had entered when he had climbed the path from the shore at Pinhay Bay; and it was this same place whose eastern half was called Ware Commons
that Charles had entered when he had climbed the path from the shore at Pinhay Bay; and it was this same place whose eastern half was called Ware Commons. har-bingers of his passage. Her lips moved. as a man with time to fill.??Your future wife is a better judge than you are of such matters.????Indeed. Mrs. I ain??t ??alf going to . His thoughts were too vague to be described. cramped.. ??Varguennes became insistent. tranced by this unexpected encounter. I do not know. He seemed to Charles to incarnate all the hypocriti-cal gossip??and gossips??of Lyme.?? His own cheeks were now red as well. Poulteney. a false scholarship. I believe.??May I not accompany you? Since we walk in the same direction???She stopped. And the sort of person who frequents it. And perhaps an emotion not absolutely unconnected with malice.??Mrs. He looked.

From another drawer she took a hidden key and unlocked the book. I told myself that if I had not suffered such unendurable loneliness in the past I shouldn??t have been so blind. that he would take it as soon as he arrived there.??You might have heard.????Let us elope. Thus I blamed circumstances for my situation.. at that moment. to be free of parents . ??Doctor??s orders. she goes to a house she must know is a living misery.????You lived for your hounds and the partridge season. Mr. But I am emphatically a neo-ontologist. a little recovered.. on his deathbed. and she closed her eyes to see if once again she could summon up the most delicious. directly over her face. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend. and buried her bones. Poulteney that saved her from any serious criticism.. like a tiny alpine meadow.

Charles could have be-lieved many things of that sleeping face; but never that its owner was a whore. 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. This marked a new stage of his awareness of Sarah. Poulteney was calculating.????And he abandoned her? There is a child??? ??No. Poulteney from the start. her responsibility for Mrs. but she must even so have moved with great caution.??Charles! Now Charles. Poulteney saw herself as a pure Patmos in a raging ocean of popery. Indeed she made a pretense of being very sorry for ??poor Miss Woodruff?? and her reports were plentifully seasoned with ??I fear?? and ??I am afraid. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend. of Sarah Woodruff. oh Charles . a darling man and a happy wife and four little brats like angels.?? She hesitated. Mr. It became clear to him that the girl??s silent meekness ran contrary to her nature; that she was therefore playing a part; and that the part was one of complete disassociation from.. their charities. ??I would rather die than you should think that of me. ??Ah yes. No occasion on which the stopping and staring took place was omitted; but they were not frequent. was out.

some possibility she symbolized. until I have spoken with Mrs.??But what is the sin in walking on Ware Commons?????The sin! You. but on this occasion Mrs. She was afraid of the dark.When the next morning came and Charles took up his un-gentle probing of Sam??s Cockney heart. though whether that was as a result of the migraine or the doctor??s conversational Irish reel. and she worried for her more; but Ernestina she saw only once or twice a year. She went up to him. and she was sure her intended would be a frivolous young man; it was almost her duty to embarrass them. He realized he had touched some deep emotion in her. Poulteney had made several more attempts to extract both the details of the sin and the present degree of repen-tance for it. great copper pans on wooden trestles. with a warm southwesterly breeze.Charles liked him. In company he would go to morning service of a Sunday; but on his own. For the first time she did not look through him. Charles stood close behind her; coughed. Sam??s love of the equine was not really very deep. their condescensions. ??and a divilish bit better too!???? Charles smiled. there. Nothing less than dancing naked on the altar of the parish church would have seemed adequate. But she had a basic solidity of character.

When I wake. to tell them of his meeting?? though of course on the strict understanding that they must speak to no one about Sarah??s wanderings over Ware Com-mons. Smithson has already spoken to me of him. But later that day. ??Varguennes became insistent. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live. I talk to her. But his feet strode on all the faster. of her protegee??s forgivable side. the ambulacra. Charles threw the stub of his cheroot into the fire.??Her eyes flashed round at him then. but he could not.??He stared at her. and he was too much a gentleman to deny it.??It cannot concern Miss Woodruff?????Would that it did not. Hide reality. as Ernestina. But that??s neither here nor the other place. neat civilization behind his back. ??I am rich by chance.His had been a life with only one tragedy??the simultane-ous death of his young wife and the stillborn child who would have been a sister to the one-year-old Charles.??He glanced sharply down. There was an antediluvian tradition (much older than Shakespeare) that on Midsummer??s Night young people should go with lanterns.

. He saw the cheeks were wet. I ordered him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. That is a basic definition of Homo sapiens. 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.??Great pleasure. 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. One must see her as a being in a mist. He perceived that the coat was a little too large for her. Their folly in that direction was no more than a symptom of their seriousness in a much more important one. then turned; and again those eyes both repelled and lanced him. The eye in the telescope might have glimpsed a magenta skirt of an almost daring narrowness??and shortness. He toyed with the idea. The air was full of their honeyed musk. Poul-teney discovered the perverse pleasures of seeming truly kind. and forgave Charles everything for such a labor of Hercules. They did not need to. ??Quisque suos patimur manes. must seem to a stranger to my nature and circum-stances at that time so great that it cannot be but criminal. would no doubt seem today almost in-tolerable for its functional inadequacies. to be free myself. . But I am not marrying him. quite a number could not read anything??never mind that not one in ten of those who could and did read them understood what the reverend writers were on about .

By which he means. a pink bloom. it encouraged pleasure; and Mrs. Come.. she had set up a home for fallen women??true. Poulteney had been dictating letters. But he would never violate a woman against her will. both clearly embarrassed. I??ll be damned if I wouldn??t dance a jig on the ashes. to trace to any source in his past; but it unsettled him and haunted him. stupider than the stupidest animals. I have her in. in spite of the lack of a dowry of any kind.Very gently. and was much closer at hand. by the simple trick of staring at the ground.????I was about to return.????In close proximity to a gin palace. He wore stout nailed boots and canvas gaiters that rose to encase Norfolk breeches of heavy flannel. with her. the one remaining track that traverses it is often impassable. he found in Nature. she had taken her post with the Talbots.

one with the unslum-bering stars and understanding all. and to which the memory or morals of the odious Prinny. but he abhorred the unspeakability of the hunters. She at last plucked up courage to enter. I??m an old heathen.?? And all the more peremptory. One day she came to the passage Lama. Now I want the truth. and the silence.??I will not have French books in my house. until I have spoken with Mrs. Her parents would not have allowed her to. She first turned rather sulkily to her entry of that morning. locked in a mutual incomprehension. in a word. my knowing that I am truly not like other women. 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. this proof. lazy. That life is without under-standing or compassion. ??is not one man as good as another??? ??Faith. and the woman who ladled the rich milk from a churn by the door into just what he had imagined. if he liked you. 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.

like all matters pertaining to her comfort. And with ladies of her kind. From the air it is not very striking; one notes merely that whereas elsewhere on the coast the fields run to the cliff edge. I too saw them talking together yesterday.. The Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. mum.????They are what you seek?????Yes indeed. though they are always perfectly symmetrical; and they share a pattern of delicately burred striations. So did the rest of Lyme. A time came when Varguennes could no longer hide the na-ture of his real intentions towards me. not one native type bears the specific anningii.. Fairley. little better than a superior cart track itself. it was evident that she resorted always to the same place.??Yes??? He sees Ernestina on her feet. her mauve-and-black pelisse. was the corollary of the collapse of the ladder of nature: that if new species can come into being. But later that day. for incumbents of not notably fat livings do not argue with rich parishioners. vain. a thing she knew to be vaguely sinful. did you not? .

And heaven knows the simile was true also for the plowman??s daughter.????Yes. and he kissed her on the lips.And the evenings! Those gaslit hours that had to be filled. Sam felt he was talking too much. Plucking a little spray of milkwort from the bank beside her. almost calm.. Poulteney. we shall never be yours. And as if to prove it she raised her arms and unloosed her hair. She was. a liar. the worst .But Mary had in a sense won the exchange. ????Ave yer got a bag o?? soot????? He paused bleakly. But you have been told this?????The mere circumstance. towards land. I can-not believe that the truth is so.The doctor put a finger on his nose. ??But the Frenchman managed to engage Miss Woodruff??s affec-tions. It has also.????And what has happened to her since? Surely Mrs. It is all gossip.

On the other hand he might. ??There was talk of marriage. but Sarah??s were strong. whose per-fume she now inhaled. it was supposed. cramped. there came a blank.??I have no one to turn to.. The odious and abominable suspicion crossed her mind that Charles had been down there. Indeed toying with ideas was his chief occupation during his third decade. and teach Ernestina an evidently needed lesson in common humanity. I apologize. and in her barouche only to the houses of her equals. a giggle. He did not look back. Again you notice how peaceful. In a way. Per-haps what was said between us did not seem very real to me because of that. except that his face bore a wide grin. I knew that if I hadn??t come he would have been neither surprised nor long saddened. he knew. one of the prettiest girls she knew. you bear.

Smithson.. the tall Charles with his vague resem-blance to the late Prince Consort and the thin little doctor. I do not know how to say it.To be sure.????But how was I to tell? I am not to go to the sea.Also. for loved ones; for vanity. He found himself like some boy who flashes a mirror??and one day does it to someone far too gentle to deserve such treatment. all of which had to be stoked twice a day. Where you and I flinch back. Tranter??s. a correspond-ing twinkle in his eyes. a thin gray shadow wedged between azures. fenced and closed.??The basement kitchen of Mrs. After all. in the most brutish of the urban poor. She believed me to be going to Sher-borne. and by my own hand. He could not say what had lured him on.??Charles grinned. though whether that was as a result of the migraine or the doctor??s conversational Irish reel. On his other feelings.

Tranter liked pretty girls; and pretty.??What you call my obstinacy is my only succor. He knows the circumstances far better than I. I can-not believe that the truth is so. most kindly charged upon his household the care of the . A penny.?? And then he turned and walked away. At first meetings she could cast down her eyes very prettily.????But is not the deprivation you describe one we all share in our different ways??? She shook her head with a surprising vehemence. a small red moroc-co volume in her left hand and her right hand holding her fireshield (an object rather like a long-paddled Ping-Pong bat. sir. that she awoke.?? ??But what is she doing there??? ??They say she waits for him to return. and she knew she was late for her reading. there was inevitably some conflict. And the sort of person who frequents it. These outcasts were promptly cast out; but the memory of their presence remained. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she. He winked again; and then he went. or nursed a sick cottager. Poulteney by sinking to her knees. for if a man was a pianist he must be Italian) and Charles was free to examine his conscience. a man of caprice.Now tests do not come out of the blue lias.

That life is without under-standing or compassion. I shall be most happy . and in his fashion was also a horrid. ??plump?? is unkind.Nor did Ernestina. He looked at his watch.She put the bonnet aside. a figure from myth. Sam had stiffened. for amusement: as skilled furniture makers enjoy making furniture.??The sun??s rays had disappeared after their one brief illumi-nation. In short. In the winter (winter also of the fourth great cholera onslaught on Victori-an Britain) of that previous year Mrs. up the ashlar steps and into the broken columns?? mystery. she had taken her post with the Talbots. hastily put the book away. watched to make sure that the couple did not themselves take the Dairy track; then retraced her footsteps and entered her sanctuary unob-served.. Ernestina was her niece. but he also knew very well on which side his pastoral bread was buttered. and none too gently. for pride. gives vivid dreams. flirtatious surface the girl had a gentle affectionateness; and she did not stint.

You must not think she is like us men. I think they learned rather more from those eyes than from the close-typed pamphlets thrust into their hands. He could not ask her not to tell Ernestina; and if Tina should learn of the meeting through her aunt. He could never have allowed such a purpose to dictate the reason for a journey. horrifying his father one day shortly afterwards by announcing that he wished to take Holy Orders. that I had let a spar that might have saved me drift out of reach.??My good woman. And what the feminine. The roedeer. spoiled child. real than the one I have just broken. He reflect-ed. I tried to explain some of the scientific arguments behind the Darwinian position. and pray for a few minutes (a fact that Mrs. Since they were holding hands. He passed a very thoughtful week. which Mrs. 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. but obsession with his own ancestry. No doubt he hoped to practice some abomination upon the poor creature in Weymouth. And she died on the day that Hitler invaded Poland. not ahead of him. repressed a curse. ??I am rich by chance.

It came to within a week of the time when he should take his leave. do you remember the Early Cretaceous lady???That set them off again; and thoroughly mystified poor Mrs.Unlit Lyme was the ordinary mass of mankind.??Miss Woodruff!????I beg you. Ernestina let it be known that she had found ??that Mr. So? In this vital matter of the woman with whom he had elected to share his life. was the lieutenant of the vessel. behind her facade of humility forbade it. ??And perhaps??though it is not for me to judge your conscience??she may in her turn save. Charles was smiling; and Sarah stared at him with profound suspicion. closed a blind eye. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. with the grim sense of duty of a bulldog about to sink its teeth into a burglar??s ankles. I had not eaten that day and he had food prepared. but it would be most improper of me to . I doubt if Mrs. was a highly practical consideration. Poulteney might pon-derously have overlooked that. too occupied in disengaging her coat from a recalcitrant bramble to hear Charles??s turf-silenced approach. He and Sam had been together for four years and knew each other rather better than the partners in many a supposedly more intimate me-nage.So if you think all this unlucky (but it is Chapter Thir-teen) digression has nothing to do with your Time. He could not ask her not to tell Ernestina; and if Tina should learn of the meeting through her aunt. their charities. even some letters that came ad-dressed to him after his death .

??They have gone. friends. No insult. Again she faced the sea. ??Tis the way ??e speaks. by one of those inexplicable intuitions. the dates of all the months and days that lay between it and her marriage. Poulteney. as well as the state.When Charles departed from Aunt Tranter??s house in Broad Street to stroll a hundred paces or so down to his hotel. Mr.?? His smile faltered. She did not get on well with the other pupils.?? And she went and pressed Sarah??s hand.????My dear Tina. she seemed calm..One of the commonest symptoms of wealth today is de-structive neurosis; in his century it was tranquil boredom. It is quite clear that the man was a heartless deceiver. I don??t like to go near her. the figure at the end. Now I could see what was wrong at once??weeping without reason. and then up to the levels where the flint strata emerged. ??But the Frenchman managed to engage Miss Woodruff??s affec-tions.

Sam had stiffened. But you will not go to the house again. as if he were torturing some animal at bay. Them. helpless. bade her stay.??Sam flashed an indignant look. not discretion.. and far more poetry. and a corre-sponding tilt at the corner of her lips??to extend the same comparison. he knew.????Have you never heard speak of Ware Commons?????As a place of the kind you imply??never.But where the telescopist would have been at sea himself was with the other figure on that somber. the scents. The hunting accident has just taken place: the Lord of La Garaye attends to his fallen lady. he the vicar of Lyme had described as ??a man of excellent principles. Some said that after midnight more reeling than dancing took place; and the more draconian claimed that there was very little of either. when she was convalescent. by one of those inexplicable intuitions. It was fortunate that he did. The new warmth. his recent passage of arms with Ernestina??s father on the subject of Charles Darwin. .

bent in a childlike way. Tranter has employed her in such work. Sherwood??s edifying tales??summed up her worst fears. Did not go out. like a tiny alpine meadow. Tranter and her two young companions were announced on the morning following that woodland meeting. redolent of seven hundred years of English history. and none too gently. Miss Woodruff.??Miss Woodruff!??She gave him an imperceptible nod. and stood. She was Sheridan??s granddaughter for one thing; she had been.It had not occurred to her. After all. sought for an exit line. mostly to bishops or at least in the tone of voice with which one addresses bishops. So. had given her only what he had himself received: the best education that money could buy. not the best recommendation to a servant with only three dresses to her name??and not one of which she really liked. slip into her place. a hedge-prostitute.??But I??m intrigued.However. the flood of mechanistic science??the ability to close one??s eyes to one??s own absurd stiffness was essential.

yet necessary. you would be quite wrong. her fat arms shiny with suds. He was especially solicitous to Ernestina.????I am not disposed to be jealous of the fossils.She did not create in her voice. Even better.. that can be almost as harmful. From your request to me last week I presume you don??t wish Mrs. they cannot think that. have been a Mrs. and stood in front of her mistress. they are spared. Very slowly he let the downhanging strands of ivy fall back into position. it encouraged pleasure; and Mrs. gaiters and stockings. Dis-raeli and Mr. you now threaten me with a scandal.????It was he who introduced me to Mrs. Poulteney put her most difficult question.When the front door closed. he had shot at a very strange bird that ran from the border of one of his uncle??s wheatfields. rose steeply from the shingled beach where Monmouth entered upon his idiocy.

They saw in each other a superiority of intelligence. what would happen if you should one day turn your ankle in a place like this. ????Ave yer got a bag o?? soot????? He paused bleakly. or nearly to the front. or rather the forbidden was about to engage in him. she felt in her coat pocket and silently. a small red moroc-co volume in her left hand and her right hand holding her fireshield (an object rather like a long-paddled Ping-Pong bat. Then he moved forward to the edge of the plateau. as if really to keep the conversation going.????No.The lady of the title is a sprightly French lord??s sprightly wife who has a crippling accident out hunting and devotes the rest of her excessively somber life to good works??more useful ones than Lady Cotton??s. Mrs. of course. She wants to be a sacrificial victim. I did it so that people should point at me.??But Charles stopped the disgruntled Sam at the door and accused him with the shaving brush. He suited Lyme. to have been humbled by the great new truths they were discussing; but I am afraid the mood in both of them??and in Charles especially.. and given birth to a menacing spirit of envy and rebellion. calm. took the same course; but only one or two. Aunt Tranter probably knew them as well as anyone in Lyme. Indeed she made a pretense of being very sorry for ??poor Miss Woodruff?? and her reports were plentifully seasoned with ??I fear?? and ??I am afraid.

and then again later at lunch afterwards when Aunt Tranter had given Charles very much the same information as the vicar of Lyme had given Mrs. I??ave haccepted them.. died in some accident on field exercises.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. They fill me with horror at myself. that house above Elm House. a look about the eyes. then he would be in very hot water indeed. on a day like this I could contem-plate never setting eyes on London again. deliberately came out into the hall??and insisted that he must not stand upon cere-mony; and were not his clothes the best proof of his excuses? So Mary smilingly took his ashplant and his rucksack. she turned fully to look at Charles. or rather the forbidden was about to engage in him.??It cannot concern Miss Woodruff?????Would that it did not. He was a bald... as those made by the women who in the London of the time haunted the doorways round the Haymarket.????If they know my story. He could not imagine what. over what had been really the greatest obstacle in her view to their having become betrothed. But to live each day in scenes of domestic happiness.????I sees her. order.

a weakness abominably raped. founded one of the West End??s great stores and extended his business into many departments besides drapery.??Ernestina had exactly the right face for her age; that is. and the excited whimper of a dog. now that he had rushed in so far where less metropolitan angels might have feared to tread. but ravishing fragments of Mediterranean warmth and luminosity. 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. and a fiddler. in which the vicar meditated on his dinner. my dear fellow. There were men in the House of Lords.He remembered. Now and then he would turn over a likely-looking flint with the end of his ashplant. 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.Which from those blanched lips low and trembling came:??Oh! Claud!?? she said: no more??but never yetThrough all the loving days since first they met. a mere trace remained of one of the five sets of converging pinpricked lines that decorate the perfect shell. in such a place!????But ma??m. At Cam-bridge. Incomprehension. husband a cavalry officer.??Do you wish me to leave. The couple moved to where they could see her face in profile; and how her stare was aimed like a rifle at the farthest horizon. or no more. and Sarah had simply slipped into the bed and taken the girl in her arms.

wicked creature. He had found out much about me. What you tell me she refused is precisely what we had considered. however innocent in its intent . Though the occu-pants in 1867 would have been quite clear as to who was the tyrant in their lives. ??I prefer to walk alone. but to be free. She had reminded him of that. Mr. Her only notion of justice was that she must be right; and her only notion of government was an angry bombardment of the impertinent populace. as I have pointed out elsewhere. I believe I had. perhaps not untinged with shame. which Mrs. sir.??Her eyes were suddenly on his. then. You may think that Mrs. but Charles had also the advantage of having read??very much in private. I took the omnibus to Weymouth.Yet among her own class. each with its golden crust of cream. in all ways protected. Surely the oddest of all the odd arguments in that celebrated anthology of after-life anxiety is stated in this poem (xxxv).