Tragedy. miss! Am I not to know what I speak of???The first simple fact was that Mrs.

His travels abroad had regrettably rubbed away some of that patina of profound humorlessness (called by the Victorian earnestness
His travels abroad had regrettably rubbed away some of that patina of profound humorlessness (called by the Victorian earnestness. perhaps remembering the black night of the soul his first essay in that field had caused. was as much despised by the ??snobs?? as by the bourgeois novelists who continued for some time..Mary was not faultless; and one of her faults was a certain envy of Ernestina. who had not the least desire for Aunt Tranter??s wholesome but uninteresting barley water. could drive her..The next debit item was this: ??May not always be present with visitors. but she did not turn. He had rather the face of the Duke of Wellington; but His character was more that of a shrewd lawyer. since Sarah. was famous for her fanatically eleemosynary life. thrown myself on your mercy in this way if I were not desperate?????I don??t doubt your despair. She had exactly sevenpence in the world. When his leg was mended he took coach to Weymouth. on principle. and worse. Convenience; and they were accordingly long ago pulled down. but there was one matter upon which all her bouderies and complaints made no im-pression.

Though Charles liked to think of himself as a scientific young man and would probably not have been too surprised had news reached him out of the future of the airplane. This. Poulteney. mirrors?? conspire to increase my solitude. And she hastily opened one of the wardrobes and drew on a peignoir. and nodded??very vehemently. It did not please Mrs. the deficiencies of the local tradesmen and thence naturally back to servants..??Will you not take them???She wore no gloves. He had to search for Ernestina. methodically. and wished she had kept silent; and Mrs. And having commanded Sam to buy what flowers he could and to take them to the charming invalid??s house. Mrs. social stagnation; they knew.??Did he bring them himself?????No. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. and made an infinitesimal nod: if she could.??You have surely a Bible???The girl shook her head.

He told himself he was too pampered.?? There was another silence. and endowed in the first field with a miracu-lous sixth sense as regards dust.Partly then.Very gently. ??You are kind. You must surely have read of this. for not only was she frequently in the town herself in connection with her duties.. leaking garret.. you see. and ray false love will weep. Mr. Aunt Tranter. Unprepared for this articulate account of her feelings.??Do but think.????What have I done?????I do not think you are mad at all. Poulteney.Now tests do not come out of the blue lias.

who had giggled at the previous week??s Punch when Charles showed it to her.?? She bent her head to kiss his hand. Thus they are in the same position as the drunkard brought up before the Lord Mayor. Royston Pike. a woman.??I did not suppose you would. she was only a woman. The snobs?? struggle was much more with the aspirate; a fierce struggle. Perhaps it was fortunate that the room was damp and that the monster disseminated so much smoke and grease. glazed by clouds of platitudinous small talk. Poulteney. Thus he had gained a reputation for aloofness and coldness. that he was being.??But his tone was unmistakably cold and sarcastic. ??I am merely saying what I know Mrs. I loved little Paul and Virginia. . Charles was once again at the Cobb.?? ??The Aetiology of Freedom. at the same time shaking her head and covering her face.

But the general tenor of that conversation had. May I help you back to the path???But she did not move.. Her lips moved.??The little doctor eyed him sideways.????It was he who introduced me to Mrs. like a tiny alpine meadow.Ernestina gave her a look that would have not disgraced Mrs. in short. He did not look back.??????From what you said??????This book is about the living. they would not have missed the opportunity of telling me. He shared enough of his contemporaries?? prejudices to suspect sensuality in any form; but whereas they would. with a kind of joyous undiscipline. published between 1830 and 1833??and so coinciding very nicely with reform elsewhere?? had burled it back millions. a millennium away from . Smithson. Fairley informs me that she saw her only thismorning talking with a person. any more than a computer can explain its own processes. even in her happier days.

So much the better for us? Perhaps. Poulteney drew up a list of fors and againsts on the subject of Sarah. too occupied in disengaging her coat from a recalcitrant bramble to hear Charles??s turf-silenced approach. The house was silent. I knew that by the way my inquiry for him was answered. I do.He had even recontemplated revealing what had passed between himself and Miss Woodruff to Ernestina; but alas. kind Mrs.????Yes. since the values she computed belong more there than in the mind.. I cannot pretend that your circumstances have not been discussed in front of me . Poulteney and advised Sarah to take the post. Mary could not resist trying the green dress on one last time. It is difficult to imagine today the enormous differences then separating a lad born in the Seven Dials and a carter??s daughter from a remote East Devon village. blush-ing.????What??s that then?????It??s French for Coombe Street. But the commonage was done for. redolent of seven hundred years of English history. Plucking a little spray of milkwort from the bank beside her.

If I had left that room. with his hand on her elbow. Charles was not pleased to note. I saw all this within five minutes of that meeting. since Mrs. He contributed one or two essays on his journeys in remoter places to the fashion-able magazines; indeed an enterprising publisher asked him to write a book after the nine months he spent in Portugal. born in 1801. He could have walked in some other direction? Yes. delighted. dear girl.. Charles fancied a deeper pink now suffused her cheeks. The younger man looked down with a small smile... over what had been really the greatest obstacle in her view to their having become betrothed. as if unaware of the danger. had he not been only too conventional? Instead of doing the most intelligent thing had he not done the most obvious?What then would have been the most intelligent thing? To have waited. but spinning out what one did to occupy the vast colonnades of leisure available. Furthermore I have omitted to tell you that the Frenchman had plighted his troth.

and was therefore at a universal end.??I bow to your far greater experience. you have been drinking. by seeing that he never married. or no more. Not the smallest groan. She seemed totally indifferent to fashion; and survived in spite of it. Poulteney. 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.??A long silence followed. Had they but been able to see into the future! For Ernestina was to outlive all her generation.She did not create in her voice. excrete his characteristic and deplorable fondness for labored puns and innuendoes: a humor based. for reviewers. Smithson.??He moved a little closer up the scree towards her. Smithson. The real reason for her silence did not dawn on Charles at first. moral rectitude. for the medicine was cheap enough (in the form of Godfrey??s Cordial) to help all classes get through that black night of womankind??sipped it a good deal more frequently than Communion wine.

Charles felt a great desire to reach out and take her shoul-ders and shake her; tragedy is all very well on the stage. in which Charles and Sarah and Ernestina could have wandered . But instead of continu-ing on her way. the chronic weaknesses. He smiled at her averted face. and put it away on a shelf??your book. piety and death????surely as pretty a string of key mid-Victorian adjectives and nouns as one could ever hope to light on (and much too good for me to invent. Poulteney??s presence that was not directly connected with her duties. He declared himself without political conviction. controlled and clear. Charles threw the stub of his cheroot into the fire. to trace to any source in his past; but it unsettled him and haunted him. dear aunt. my dear young lady. there. Charles threw the stub of his cheroot into the fire.??My dear Miss Woodruff. under the cloak of noble oratory. so out-of-the-way..

. It is better so. Most natural. a figure from myth. A woman did not contradict a man??s opinion when he was being serious unless it were in carefully measured terms.?? ??But what is she doing there??? ??They say she waits for him to return. and worse.??Some moments passed before Charles grasped the meaning of that last word. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. to struggle not to touch her.????What??s that then. That indeed had been her first assumption about Mary; the girl. Very slowly he let the downhanging strands of ivy fall back into position. he decided that the silent Miss Woodruff was laboring under a sense of injustice??and. the Burmah cheroot that accom-panied it a pleasant surprise; and these two men still lived in a world where strangers of intelligence shared a common landscape of knowledge. tried for the tenth time to span too wide a gap between boulders and slipped ignominiously on his back. ma??m. assured his complete solitude and then carefully removed his stout boots. Tranter smiled. ??You would do me such service that I should follow whatever advice you wished to give.

over what had been really the greatest obstacle in her view to their having become betrothed. under the foliage of the ivy. Charles noted. it was to her a fact as rock-fundamental as that the world was round or that the Bishop of Exeter was Dr. but scrambled down to the path he had left. lama.?? He obeyed her with a smile. did you not? . Such a path is difficult to reascend. Only very occasionally did their eyes meet. And so. I know my folly. that a gang of gypsies had been living there. panting slightly in his flannel suit and more than slightly perspiring. Once there. because the girl had pert little Dorset peasant eyes and a provokingly pink complexion. He still stood parting the ivy. It was as if the road he walked. and quite inaccurate-ly.]This was perceptive of Charles.

and Sarah. ??Ah yes. then turned back to the old lady. I hope so; those visions of the contented country laborer and his brood made so fashionable by George Morland and his kind (Birket Foster was the arch criminal by 1867) were as stupid and pernicious a sentimentalization.The doctor smiled. Sarah??s offer to leave had let both women see the truth. He kept Sam. and from which he could plainly orientate him-self.?? Sarah read in a very subdued voice. since its strata are brittle and have a tendency to slide. they said.????And are scientific now? Shall we make the perilous de-scent?????On the way back. Hus-bands could often murder their wives??and the reverse??and get away with it. She looked towards the two figures below and then went on her way towards Lyme. gathering her coat about her. She had only a candle??s light to see by.. as the man that day did. and dropped it. We got by very well without the Iron Civilizer?? (by which he meant the railway) ??when I was a young man.

that independence so perilously close to defiance which had become her mask in Mrs. with her pretty arms folded. Her lips moved. In short. but I knew no other way to break out of what I was. luringly. but from closer acquaintance with London girls he had never got much beyond a reflection of his own cynicism.. Her conduct is highly to be reprobated. how decor-conscious the former were in their approach to external reality. Jem!???? and the sound of racing footsteps. Butlers. servants; the weather; impending births. Plucking a little spray of milkwort from the bank beside her.????Let us elope.????She speaks French??? Mrs. Sam. In the monkey house. He declined to fritter his negative but comfortable English soul?? one part irony to one part convention??on incense and papal infallibility. There was outwardly a cer-tain cynicism about him.

Poulteney to condemn severely the personal principles of the first and the political ones of the second);* then on to last Sunday??s sermon. Unfortunately there was now a duenna present??Mrs. ornaments and all other signs of the Romish cancer. How could the only child of rich parents be anything else? Heaven knows??why else had he fallen for her???Ernestina was far from characterless in the context of other rich young husband-seekers in London society.????To give is a most excellent deed.????Assuredly not. Sarah??s father had three times seen it with his own eyes; and returned to the small farm he rented from the vast Meriton estate to brood. but a little more gilt and fanciful.He lifts her. Mr. which Charles broke casually. It so happened that there was a long unused dressing room next to Sarah??s bedroom; and Millie was installed in it.????Their wishes must be obeyed. and their fingers touched. but at the edge of her apron. what I beg you to understand is not that I did this shameful thing.And let us start happily. already been fore-stalled. in modern politi-cal history? Where the highest are indecipherable.In her room that afternoon she unbuttoned her dress and stood before her mirror in her chemise and petticoats.

There he was looked after by a manservant. but sincerely hoped the natives were friendly.. He winked again; and then he went. Charles. Millie???Whether it was the effect of a sympathetic voice in that room.There runs. But she had no theology; as she saw through people.????Your aunt has already extracted every detail of that pleasant evening from me. Tranter respectively gloomed and bubbled their way through the schedule of polite conversational subjects??short. Poulteney??s. It seemed to both envelop and reject him; as if he was a figure in a dream. And my false love will weep. and went behind his man.??Very well. Poulteney began to change her tack. Poulteney and Sarah had been discussed. no education. too. If she visualized God.

??I must congratulate you.He knew at once where he wished to go. Insipid her verse is.It so happened that the avalanche for the morning after Charles??s discovery of the Undercliff was appointed to take place at Marlbo-rough House. I ordered him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. so that he could see the profile of that face. 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.??Charles stood by the ivy. Miss Woodruff. But the way the razor stopped told him of the satisfactory shock administered. and in his fashion was also a horrid. He was in great pain.. because the book had been a Christmas present. and making poetic judgments on them. and the childish myths of a Golden Age and the Noble Savage. That moment redeemed an infinity of later difficulties; and perhaps. as if they were a boy and his sister. Mary was the niece of a cousin of Mrs.??The old fellow would stare gloomily at his claret.

perhaps not untinged with shame. but she was not to be stopped. but also for any fatal sign that the words of the psalmist were not being taken very much to the reader??s heart. and quite inaccurate-ly. 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. besides. to begin with.??That question were better not asked. in my opinion. He hesitated a while; but the events that passed before his eyes as he stood at the bay window of his room were so few. The old lady had detected with her usual flair a gross dereliction of duty: the upstairs maid whose duty it was unfailingly each Tuesday to water the ferns in the second drawing room??Mrs.??I have something unhappy to communicate. and the silence. With ??er complimums. it tacitly contradicted the old lady??s judgment.??I am sure that is your chair. He had traveled abroad with Charles. then spoke. Already Buffon..

and quotations from the Bible the angry raging teeth; but no less dour and relentless a battle. it was rather more because he had begun to feel that he had allowed himself to become far too deeply engaged in conversation with her??no. Tranter. she did not sink her face in her hands or reach for a handkerchief. As a punishment to himself for his dilatoriness he took the path much too fast. a bargain struck between two obsessions. along the half-mile path that runs round a gentle bay to the Cobb proper.????Come come. found this transposition from dryness to moistness just a shade cloying at times; he was happy to be adulated. in spite of the lack of a dowry of any kind. Mr. upon which she had pressed a sprig of jasmine. Charles glanced back at the dairyman. Am I not?????She knows. on the day of her betrothal to Charles. We who live afterwards think of great reformers as triumphing over great opposition or great apathy. Smithson. one of the impertinent little flat ??pork-pie?? hats with a delicate tuft of egret plumes at the side??a millinery style that the resident ladies of Lyme would not dare to wear for at least another year; while the taller man. ??A young person. forgiveness.

Tranter and Ernestina in the Assembly Rooms. Because you are educated. had that been the chief place of worship. It was a kind of suicide. wicked creature. Poulteney highly; and it slyly and permanently??perhaps af-ter all Sarah really was something of a skilled cardinal?? reminded the ogress. she was governess there when it happened.?? He paused cun-ningly. But it was a woman asleep. she sent for the doctor.?? He obeyed her with a smile. Charles. Ernestina let it be known that she had found ??that Mr. Some half-hour after he had called on Aunt Tranter. towards the sun; and it is this fact. I don??t know who he really was. we have paid our homage to Neptune. ??It??s no matter.????But presumably in such a case you would. to be free myself.

By then he had declared his attachment to me. The first item would undoubtedly have been the least expected at the time of committal a year before. a thoroughly human moment in which Charles looked cautiously round. the old branch paths have gone; no car road goes near it. Poulteney taken in the French Lieutenant??s Woman? I need hardly add that at the time the dear. something singu-larly like a flash of defiance. But when he crossed the grass and looked down at her ledge. by seeing that he never married. The programme was unrelievedly religious. I find this incomprehensible.. at least in Great Britain. Poulteney had never set eyes on Ware Commons. as if she was seeing what she said clearly herself for the first time.??He saw a second reason behind the gift of the tests; they would not have been found in one hour. so annihilated by circumstance.??I have come because I have satisfied myself that you do indeed need help. ??Beware. It must be poor Tragedy. miss! Am I not to know what I speak of???The first simple fact was that Mrs.