There was a tiny movement, a faint rustle; and then her head appeared, almost comically, as she knelt hastily up and peeped over the partition. He had a vague impression, through the motes, of shock and dismay.

"Oh forgive me, forgive me ..."

The head bobbed down out of sight. He withdrew into the sunlight outside. Two herring gulls flew over, screaming raucously. Charles moved out of sight of the fields nearer the Dairy. Grogan, he did not fear; or expect yet. But the place was too open; the dairyman might come for hay . . . though why he should when his fields were green with spring grass Charles was too nervous to consider.

"Mr. Smithson?"

He moved round back to the door, just in time to prevent her from calling, this time more anxiously, his name again. They stood some ten feet apart, Sarah in the door, Charles by the corner of the building. She had performed a hurried toilet, put on her coat, and held her scarf in her hand as if she had used it for a brush. Her eyes were troubled, but her features were still softened by sleep, though flushed at the rude awakening.

There was a wildness about her. Not the wildness of lunacy or hysteria-but that same wildness Charles had sensed in the wren's singing ... a wildness of innocence, almost an eagerness. And just as the sharp declension of that dawn walk had so confounded-and compounded-his earnest autobiographical gloom, so did that intensely immediate face confound and compound all the clinical horrors bred in Charles's mind by the worthy doctors Matthaei and Grogan. In spite of Hegel, the Victorians were not a dialectically minded age; they did not think naturally in opposites, of positives and negatives as aspects of the same whole. Paradoxes troubled rather than pleased them. They were not the people for existentialist moments, but for chains of cause and effect; for positive all-explaining theories, carefully studied and studiously applied. They were busy erecting, of course; and we have been busy demolishing for so long that now erection seems as ephemeral an activity as bubble-blowing. So Charles was inexplicable to himself. He managed a very unconvincing smile.

"May we not be observed here?"

She followed his glance towards the hidden Dairy.

"It is Axminster market. As soon as he has milked he will be gone."

But she moved back inside the barn. He followed her in, and they stood, still well apart, Sarah with her back to him.

"You have passed the night here?"

She nodded. There was a silence.

"Are you not hungry?"

Sarah shook her head; and silence flowed back again. But this time she broke it herself.

"You know?"

"I was away all yesterday. I could not come."

More silence. "Mrs. Poulteney has recovered?"

"I understand so."

"She was most angry with me."

"It is no doubt for the best. You were ill placed in her house."

"Where am I not ill placed?"

He remembered he must choose his words with care.

"Now come ... you must not feel sorry for yourself." He moved a step or two closer. "There has been great concern. A search party was out looking for you last night. In the storm."

Her face turned as if he might have been deceiving her. She saw that he was not; and he in his turn saw by her surprise that she was not deceiving him when she said, "I did not mean to cause such trouble."

"Well ... never mind. I daresay they enjoyed the excitement. But it is clear that you must now leave Lyme."

She bowed her head. His voice had been too stern. He hesitated, then stepped forward and laid his hand on her shoulder comfortingly.

"Do not fear. I come to help you do that."

He had thought by his brief gesture and assurance to take the first step towards putting out the fire the doctor had told him he had lit; but when one is oneself the fuel, firefighting is a hopeless task. Sarah was all flame. Her eyes were all flame as she threw a passionate look back at Charles. He withdrew his hand, but she caught it and before he could stop her raised it towards her lips. He snatched it away in alarm then; and she reacted as if he had struck her across the face.

"My dear Miss Woodruff, pray control yourself. I-"

"I cannot."

The words were barely audible, but they silenced Charles. He tried to tell himself that she meant she could not control her gratitude for his charity ... he tried, he tried. But there came on him a fleeting memory of Catullus: "Whenever I see you, sound fails, my tongue falters, thin fire steals through my limbs, an inner roar, and darkness shrouds my ears and eyes." Catullus was translating Sappho here; and the Sapphic remains the best clinical description of love in European medicine.

Sarah and Charles stood there, prey-if they had but known it-to precisely the same symptoms; admitted on the one hand, denied on the other; though the one who denied found himself unable to move away. Four or five seconds of intense repressed emotion passed. Then Sarah could quite literally stand no more. She fell to her knees at his feet. The words rushed out.

"I have told you a lie, I made sure Mrs. Fairley saw me, I knew she would tell Mrs. Poulteney."

What control Charles had felt himself gaining now slipped from his grasp again. He stared down aghast at the upraised face before him. He was evidently being asked for forgiveness; but he himself was asking for guidance, since the doctors had failed him again. The distinguished young ladies who had gone in for house-burning and anonymous letter-writing had all, with a nice deference to black-and-white moral judgments, waited to be caught before confession.

Tears had sprung in her eyes. A fortune coming to him, a golden world; and against that, a minor exudation of the lachrymatory glands, a trembling drop or two of water, so small, so transitory, so brief. Yet he stood like a man beneath a breaking dam, instead of a man above a weeping woman.

"But why ... ?"

She looked up then, with an intense earnestness and supplication; with a declaration so unmistakable that words were needless; with a nakedness that made any evasion-any other "My dear Miss Woodruff!"-impossible.

He slowly reached out his hands and raised her. Their eyes remained on each other's, as if they were both hypnotized. She seemed to him-or those wide, those drowning eyes seemed-the most ravishingly beautiful he had ever seen. What lay behind them did not matter. The moment overcame the age.

He took her into his arms, saw her eyes close as she swayed into his embrace; then closed his own and found her lips. He felt not only their softness but the whole close substance of her body; her sudden smallness, fragility, weakness, tenderness - He pushed her violently away.

An agonized look, as if he was the most debased criminal caught in his most abominable crime. Then he turned and rushed through the door-into yet another horror. It was not Doctor Grogan.

32.

And her, white-muslined, waiting there In the porch with high-expectant heart, While still the thin mechanic air Went on inside.

-Hardy, "The Musical Box"

Ernestina had, that previous night, not been able to sleep. She knew perfectly well which windows in the White Lion were Charles's, and she did not fail to note that his light was still on long after her aunt's snores began to creep through the silent house. She felt hurt and she felt guilty in about equal parts-that is, to begin with. But when she had stolen from her bed for quite the sixteenth time to see if the light still burned, and it did, her guilt began to increase. Charles was very evidently, and justly, displeased with her.

Now when, after Charles's departure, Ernestina had said to herself-and subsequently to Aunt Tranter-that she really didn't care a fig for Winsyatt, you may think that sour grapes would have been a more appropriate horticultural metaphor. She had certainly wooed herself into graciously accepting the role of chatelaine when Charles left for his uncle's, had even begun drawing up lists of "Items to be attended to" ... but the sudden death of that dream had come as a certain relief. Women who run great houses need a touch of the general about them; and Ernestina had no military aspirations whatever. She liked every luxury, and to be waited on, hand if not foot; but she had a very sound bourgeois sense of proportion. Thirty rooms when fifteen were sufficient was to her a folly. Perhaps she got this comparative thrift from her father, who secretly believed that "aristocrat" was a synonym of "vain ostentation," though this did not stop him basing a not inconsiderable part of his business on that fault, or running a London house many a nobleman would have been glad of- or pouncing on the first chance of a title that offered for his dearly beloved daughter. To give him his due, he might have turned down a viscount as excessive; a baronetcy was so eminently proper.

I am not doing well by Ernestina, who was after all a victim of circumstances; of an illiberal environment. It is, of course, its essentially schizophrenic outlook on society that makes the middle class such a peculiar mixture of yeast and dough. We tend nowadays to forget that it has always been the great revolutionary class; we see much more the doughy aspect, the bourgeoisie as the heartland of reaction, the universal insult, forever selfish and conforming. Now this Janus-like quality derives from the class's one saving virtue, which is this: that alone of the three great castes of society it sincerely and habitually despises itself. Ernestina was certainly no exception here. It was not only Charles who heard an unwelcome acidity in her voice; she heard it herself. But her tragedy (and one that remains ubiquitous) was that she misapplied this precious gift of self-contempt and so made herself a victim of her class's perennial lack of faith in itself. Instead of seeing its failings as a reason to reject the entire class system, she saw them as a reason to seek a higher. She cannot be blamed, of course; she had been hopelessly well trained to view society as so many rungs on a ladder; thus reducing her own to a mere step to something supposedly better.

Thus ("I am shameful, I have behaved like a draper's daughter") it was, in the small hours, that Ernestina gave up the attempt to sleep, rose and pulled on her peignoir, and then unlocked her diary. Perhaps Charles would see that her window was also still penitentially bright in the heavy darkness that followed the thunderstorm. Meanwhile, she set herself to composition.

I cannot sleep. Dearest C. is displeased with me-I was so very upset at the dreadful news from Winsyatt. I wished to cry, I was so very vexed, but I foolishly said many angry, spiteful things- which I ask God to forgive me, remembering I said them out of love for dearest C. and not wickedness. I did weep most terribly when he went away. Let this be a lesson to me to take the beautiful words of the Marriage Service to my conscience, to honor and obey my dearest Charles even when my feelings would drive me to contradict him. Let me earnestly and humbly learn to bend my horrid, spiteful willfulness to his much greater wisdom, let me cherish his judgment and chain myself to his heart, for "The sweet of true Repentance is the gate to Holy Bliss."

You may have noted a certain lack of Ernestina's normal dryness in this touching paragraph; but Charles was not alone in having several voices. And just as she hoped he might see the late light in her room, so did she envisage a day when he might coax her into sharing this intimate record of her prenuptial soul. She wrote partly for his eyes-as, like every other Victorian woman, she wrote partly for His eyes. She went relieved to bed, so totally and suitably her betrothed's chastened bride in spirit that she leaves me no alternative but to conclude that she must, in the end, win Charles back from his infidelity.

And she was still fast asleep when a small drama took place four floors below her. Sam had not got up quite as early as his master that morning. When he went into the hotel kitchen for his tea and toasted cheese-one thing few Victorian servants did was eat less than their masters, whatever their lack of gastronomic propriety-the boots greeted him with the news that his master had gone out; and that Sam was to pack and strap and be ready to leave at noon. Sam hid his shock. Packing and strapping was but half an hour's work. He had more pressing business.

He went immediately to Aunt Tranter's house. What he said we need not inquire, except that it must have been penetrated with tragedy, since when Aunt Tranter (who kept uncivilized rural hours) came down to the kitchen only a minute later, she found Mary slumped in a collapse of tears at the kitchen table. The deaf cook's sarcastic uplift of her chin showed there was little sympathy there. Mary was interrogated; and Aunt Tranter soon elicited, in her briskly gentle way, the source of misery; and applied a much kinder remedy than Charles had. The maid might be off till Ernestina had to be attended to; since Miss Ernestina's heavy brocade curtains customarily remained drawn until ten, that was nearly three hours' grace. Aunt Tranter was rewarded by the most grateful smile the world saw that day. Five minutes later Sam was to be seen sprawling in the middle of Broad Street. One should not run full tilt across cobbles, even to a Mary.

33.

O let me love my love unto myself alone, And know my knowledge to the world unknown, No witness to the vision call, Beholding, unbeheld of all...

-A. h. clough, Poem (1852)

It would be difficult to say who was more shocked-the master frozen six feet from the door, or the servants no less frozen some thirty yards away. So astounded were the latter that Sam did not even remove his arm from round Mary's waist. What broke the tableau was the appearance of the fourth figure: Sarah, wildly, in the doorway. She withdrew so swiftly that the sight was barely more than subliminal. But it was enough. Sam's mouth fell open and his arm dropped from Mary's waist.

"What the devil are you doing here?"

"Out walkin', Mr. Charles."

"I thought I left instructions to-"

"I done it, sir. S'all ready."

Charles knew he was lying. Mary had turned away, with a delicacy that became her. Charles hesitated, then strode up to Sam, through whose mind flashed visions of dismissal, assault "We didn't know, Mr. Charles. 'Onest we didn't."

Mary flashed a shy look back at Charles: there was shock in it, and fear, but the faintest touch of a sly admiration. He addressed her.

"Kindly leave us alone a moment." The girl bobbed and began to walk quickly out of earshot. Charles eyed Sam, who reverted to his humblest footman self and stared intently at his master's boots. "I have come here on that business I mentioned."

"Yes, sir."

Charles dropped his voice. "At the request of the physician who is treating her. He is fully aware of the circumstances."

"Yes, sir."

"Which must on no account be disclosed."

"I hunderstand, Mr. Charles."

"Does she?"

Sam looked up. "Mary won't say nuffink, sir. On my life."

Now Charles looked down. He was aware that his cheeks were deep red. "Very well. I ... I thank you. And I'll see that... here." He fumbled for his purse.

"Oh no, Mr. Charles." Sam took a small step back, a little overdramatically to convince a dispassionate observer. "Never."

Charles's hand came to a mumbling stop. A look passed between master and servant. Perhaps both knew a shrewd sacrifice had just been made.

"Very well. I will make it up to you. But not a word."

"On my slombest hoath, Mr. Charles."

With this dark superlative (most solemn and best) Sam turned and went after his Mary, who now waited, her back discreetly turned, some hundred yards off in the gorse and bracken.

Why their destination should have been the barn, one can only speculate; it may have already struck you as curious that a sensible girl like Mary should have burst into tears at the thought of a mere few days' absence. But let us leave Sam and Mary as they reeenter the woods, walk a little way in shocked silence, then covertly catch each other's eyes- and dissolve into a helpless paralysis of silent laughter; and return to the scarlet-faced Charles.

He watched them out of sight, then glanced back at the uninformative barn. His behavior had rent his profoundest being, but the open air allowed him to reflect a moment. Duty, as so often, came to his aid. He had flagrantly fanned the forbidden fire. Even now the other victim might be perishing in its flames, casting the rope over the beam ... He hesitated, then marched back to the barn and Sarah.

She stood by the window's edge, hidden from view from outside, as if she had tried to hear what had passed between Charles and Sam. He stood by the door.

"You must forgive me for taking an unpardonable advantage of your unhappy situation." He paused, then went on. "And not only this morning." She looked down. He was relieved to see that she seemed abashed, no longer wild. "The last thing I wished was to engage your affections. I have behaved very foolishly. Very foolishly. It is I who am wholly to blame." She stared at the rough stone floor between them, the prisoner awaiting sentence. "The damage is done, alas. I must ask you now to help me repair it." Still she refused his invitation to speak. "Business calls me to London. I do not know for how long." She looked at him then, but only for a moment. He stumbled on. "I think you should go to Exeter. I beg you to take the money in this purse-as a loan, if you wish ... until you can find a suitable position ... and if you should need any further pecuniary assistance ..." His voice tailed off. It had become progressively more formal. He knew he must sound detestable. She turned her back on him.

"I shall never see you again."

"You cannot expect me to deny that."

"Though seeing you is all I live for."

The terrible threat hung in the silence that followed. He dared not bring it into the open. He felt like a man in irons; and his release came as unexpectedly as to a condemned prisoner. She looked round, and patently read his thought.

"If I had wished to kill myself, I have had reason enough before now." She looked out of the window. "I accept your loan ... with gratitude."

His eyes closed in a moment of silent thanksgiving. He placed the purse-not the one Ernestina had embroidered for him-on a ledge by the door.

"You will go to Exeter?"

"If that is your advice."

"It most emphatically is."

She bowed her head.

"And I must tell you something else. There is talk in the town of committing you to an institution." Her eyes flashed round. "The idea emanates from Marlborough House, no doubt. You need not take it seriously. For all that, you may save yourself embarrassment if you do not return to Lyme." He hesitated, then said, "I understand a party is to come shortly searching for you again. That is why I came so early."