Джон Фаулз – The French Lieutenant's Woman / Любовница французского лейтенанта (страница 2)

He had had graver faults than these, however. At Cambridge, he had (unlike most young men of his time) actually begun to learn something. But in his second year there he had drifted into a bad set[12] and ended up, one foggy night in London, in the arms of a naked girl. He rushed from her plump Cockney arms into those of the Church, horrifying his father by announcing that he wished to take Holy Orders[13]. There was only one answer to a crisis: the wicked youth was sent to Paris. There his tarnished virginity was soon blackened out of recognition; but so, as his father had hoped, was his intended marriage with the Church.

He returned from his six months in the City of Sin in 1856. His father had died three months later. The big house in Belgravia was let, and Charles installed himself in a smaller house in Kensington, more suitable to a young bachelor. There he was looked after by a manservant, a cook and two maids. He was happy there, and besides, he spent a great deal of time traveling. He offered one or two essays on his journeys to the fashionable magazines; indeed an enterprising publisher asked him to write a book after the nine months he spent in Portugal. He toyed with the idea, and dropped it. Indeed toying with ideas was his chief occupation during his third decade.

Yet he was not a frivolous young man. During the last three years he had become increasingly interested in paleontology; that, he had decided, was his field. He began to frequent the meetings of the Geological Society.

Charles was an interesting young man. There was a certain cynicism about him, but he never entered society without being looked at by the mamas, clapped on the back by the papas and simpered at by the girls. Charles quite liked pretty girls and he often led them, and their ambitious parents, on. Thus he had gained a reputation for coldness, by the time he was thirty he would sniff the bait[14] and then run away from the matrimonial traps.

His uncle often talked to him on the matter. The old man would grumble.

“I never found the right woman.”

“Nonsense. You never looked for her.”

“Indeed I did. When I was your age…”

“You lived for your hounds and the partridge season.”

The old fellow would stare gloomily at his claret. He did not really regret having no wife; but he bitterly lacked not having children to buy ponies and guns for.

“I was blind. Blind.”

“My dear uncle, I have excellent eyesight. Console yourself. I too have been looking for the right girl. And I have not found her.”

4

The basement kitchen of Mrs. Poulteney's large Regency house, which stood on one of the steep hills behind Lyme Regis, was a real hell, with its three fires, all of which had to be stoked twice a day. Never mind[15] how hot a summer's day was – the furnaces had to be fed. At the head of it was a Mrs. Fairley[16], a thin, small person who always wore black.

As Mrs. Poulteney's standards were very high, butlers, footmen, gardeners, upstairs maids, downstairs maids had worked for some time and soon fled. Exactly how Mrs. Fairley herself had stood her mistress so long was one of the local wonders. Most probably it was because she would, had life so fallen out[17], have been a Mrs. Poulteney on her own account[18]. In short, both women were sadistic; and it was to their advantage[19] to tolerate each other.

Mrs. Poulteney had two obsessions. One was Dirt and the other was Immorality. In neither field did anything wrong escape her eagle eye[20].

She was like some vulture, endlessly circling around the house looking for dust, finger-marks, poorly starched linen, smells, stains, breakages and other ills. A gardener would be dismissed for being seen to come into the house with earth on his hands; a butler for having a spot of wine on his stock; a maid for having wool under her bed.

Heaven help the maid seen out walking on one of her rare free afternoons with a young man. There would have been a place in the Gestapo for the lady; she could bring the strongest girls to tears in the first five minutes. Her only notion of justice was that she must be right.

Yet among her own class, a very limited circle, she was known for her charity. And if you had disputed that reputation, your opponents would have said: had not dear, kind Mrs. Poulteney taken in the French Lieutenant's Woman?

This remarkable event had taken place in the spring of 1866, exactly a year before the time of which I write; and it had to do with the great secret of Mrs. Poulteney's life. It was a very simple secret. She believed in hell.

The vicar of Lyme knew very well on which side his pastoral bread was buttered. He suited Lyme very well. He had the knack of a good eloquence[21] in his sermons; and he kept his church free of all signs of the Romish cancer[22]. Mrs. Poulteney's purse was as open to calls from him as it was closed where her thirteen domestics' wages were concerned. She had given considerable sums to the church.

One day she took advantage of the vicar's visits and examined her conscience. At first he wanted to rid her of spiritual worries.

The vicar smiled. “My dear madam, the Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. It is not for us to doubt His mercy or His justice.”

“But supposing He should ask me if my conscience is clear?” There was a silence.

“If only poor Frederick had not died. It was a warning. A punishment. He would have advised me.”

“Doubtless”.

“I have given. But I have not done good deeds.”

“To give is a most excellent deed.”

A long silence followed, in which the vicar meditated on his dinner, still an hour away, and Mrs. Poulteney on her wickedness. She then came out, with an unusual timidity.

“If you knew of some lady, some nice person who is in a difficult situation.”

“I am not quite clear what you mean.”

“I wish to take a companion. I have difficulty in writing now. And Mrs. Fairley reads so poorly. I should be happy to give a home for such a person.”

“Very well. If you so wish it. I will make inquiries.”

“She must be of perfect moral character. I have my servants to consider[23].”

“My dear lady, of course, of course.” The vicar stood.

“And preferably without relations. They can become so very tiresome.”

“Rest assured[24] that I shall not present anyone unsuitable.” He pressed her hand and moved towards the door. “And Mr. Forsythe, not too young a person.” He bowed and left the room. But halfway down the stairs to the ground floor, he stopped. He remembered. He reflected. And an impulse made him turn and go back to her drawing room. He stood in the doorway.

“An eligible[25] has occurred to me. Her name is Sarah Woodruff.”

5

Ernestina had exactly the right face for her age; that is, small-chinned, oval, delicate as a violet. At first meetings she could cast down her eyes very prettily, as if she might faint should any gentleman dare to address her. To a man like Charles she was irresistible. When Charles left Aunt Tranter's house in Broad Street to walk a hundred paces or so down to his hotel, there to mount the stairs to his rooms and look at his face in the mirror, Ernestine excused herself and went to her room.

She wanted to catch a last glimpse[26] of her betrothed through the lace curtains.

She admired the way he walked and the manner in which he raised his top hat to Aunt Tranter's maid; though she hated him for doing it, because the girl had beautiful eyes and a fine complexion, and Charles had been strictly forbidden ever to look again at any woman under the age of sixty. Then Ernestina turned back into her room. It had been furnished for her and to her taste, which was emphatically French. The rest of Aunt Tranter's house was in the style of a quarter-century before: that is, a museum of objects.

Nobody could dislike Aunt Tranter as she had the optimism of successful old maids. She had begun by making the best of things for herself, and ended by making the best of them for the rest of the world as well.

However, Ernestina was angry with her; on the impossibility of having dinner at five; on the subject of her aunt's excessive care for her fair name[27] (she would not believe that the bridegroom and bride-to-be might wish to sit alone, and walk out alone); and above all on the subject of Ernestina's being in Lyme at all.

The poor girl had suffered the agony of every only child[28] since time began[29] – that is, parental worry. Since birth her slightest cough would bring doctors; since puberty her slightest whim called decorators and dressmakers. This was all very well when it came to new dresses. But not when it was her health. Her mother and father were convinced she was consumptive. They had only to smell damp in a basement to move house[30], only to have two days' rain to change districts. All doctors had examined her, and found nothing; she had never had a serious illness in her life. She could have danced and played all night. They weren't able to see into the future! For Ernestina was to outlive all her generation. She was born in 1846. And she died on the day that Hitler invaded Poland.

An indispensable part of her life was thus her annual stay with her mother's sister in Lyme. Usually she came to recover from the season; this year she was sent early to gather strength for the marriage. No doubt the Channel[31] breezes did her some good, but she always went to Lyme with the gloom of a prisoner arriving in Siberia. The society of the place was as up-to-date as Aunt Tranter's old furniture; and as for the entertainment, to a young lady familiar with the best that London can offer it was worse than nil[32]. So her relation with Aunt Tranter was much more than what one would expect of niece and aunt. Ernestina had certainly a very strong will of her own. But fortunately she had a deep respect for tradition; and she shared with Charles a sense of self-irony. Without this and a sense of humor she would have been a horrid spoiled child.