"My box ..."

"I will see to that. I will have it sent to the depot at Exeter. It occurred to me that if you have the strength, it might be wiser to walk to Axmouth Cross. That would avoid ..." scandal for them both. But he knew what he was asking. Axmouth was seven miles away; and the Cross, where the coaches passed, two miles farther still.

She assented.

"And you will let Mrs. Tranter know as soon as you have found a situation?"

"I have no references."

"You may give Mrs. Talbot's name. And Mrs. Tranter's. I will speak to her. And you are not to be too proud to call on her for further financial provision, should it be necessary. I shall see to that as well before I leave."

"It will not be necessary." Her voice was almost inaudible. "But I thank you."

"I think it is I who have to thank you."

She glanced up into his eyes. The lance was still there, the seeing him whole.

"You are a very remarkable person, Miss Woodruff. I feel deeply ashamed not to have perceived it earlier."

She said, "Yes, I am a remarkable person."

But she said it without pride; without sarcasm; with no more than a bitter simplicity. And the silence flowed back. He bore it as long as he could, then took out his half hunter, a very uninspired hint that he must leave. He felt his clumsiness, his stiffness, her greater dignity than his; perhaps he still felt her lips.

"Will you not walk with me back to the path?"

He would not let her, at this last parting, see he was ashamed. If Grogan appeared, it would not matter now. But Grogan did not appear. Sarah preceded him, through the dead bracken and living gorse in the early sunlight, the hair glinting; silent, not once turning. Charles knew very well that Sam and Mary might be watching, but it now seemed better that they should see him openly with her. The way led up through trees and came at last to the main path. She turned. He stepped beside her, his hand out.

She hesitated, then held out her own. He gripped it firmly, forbidding any further folly.

He murmured, "I shall never forget you."

She raised her face to his, with an imperceptible yet searching movement of her eyes; as if there was something he must see, it was not too late: a truth beyond his truths, an emotion beyond his emotions, a history beyond all his conceptions of history. As if she could say worlds; yet at the same time knew that if he could not apprehend those words without her saying them ...

It lasted a long moment. Then he dropped his eyes, and her hand.

A minute later he looked back. She stood where he had left her, watching him. He raised his hat. She made no sign.

Ten minutes later still, he stopped at a gateway on the seaward side of the track to the Dairy. It gave a view down across fields towards the Cobb. In the distance below a short figure mounted the fieldpath towards the gate where Charles stood. He drew back a little, hesitated a moment ... then went on his own way along the track to the lane that led down to the town.

34.

And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

-Hardy, "During Wind and Rain"

"You have been walking."

His second change of clothes was thus proved a vain pretense.

"I needed to clear my mind. I slept badly."

"So did I." She added, "You said you were fatigued beyond belief."

"I was."

"But you stayed up until after one o'clock."

Charles turned somewhat abruptly to the window. "I had many things to consider."

Ernestina's part in this stiff exchange indicates a certain failure to maintain in daylight the tone of her nocturnal self-adjurations. But besides the walking she also knew, via Sam, Mary and a bewildered Aunt Tranter, that Charles planned to leave Lyme that day. She had determined not to demand an explanation of this sudden change of intention; let his lordship give it in his own good time.

And then, when he had finally come, just before eleven, and while she sat primly waiting in the back parlor, he had had the unkindness to speak at length in the hall to Aunt Tranter, and inaudibly, which was the worst of all. Thus she inwardly seethed.

Perhaps not the least of her resentments was that she had taken especial pains with her toilet that morning, and he had not paid her any compliment on it. She wore a rosepink "breakfast" dress with bishop sleeves-tight at the delicate armpit, then pleating voluminously in a froth of gauze to the constricted wrist. It set off her fragility very prettily; and the white ribbons in her smooth hair and a delicately pervasive fragrance of lavender water played their part. She was a sugar Aphrodite, though with faintly bruised eyes, risen from a bed of white linen. Charles might have found it rather easy to be cruel. But he managed a smile and sitting beside her, took one of her hands, and patted it.

"My dearest, I must ask forgiveness. I am not myself. And I fear I've decided I must go to London."

"Oh Charles!"

"I wish it weren't so. But this new turn of events makes it imperative I see Montague at once." Montague was the solicitor, in those days before accountants, who looked after Charles's affairs.

"Can you not wait till I return? It is only ten more days."

"I shall return to bring you back."

"But cannot Mr. Montague come here?"

"Alas no, there are so many papers. Besides, that is not my only purpose. I must inform your father of what has happened."

She removed her hand from his arm.

"But what is it to do with him?"

"My dear child, it has everything to do with him. He has entrusted you to my care. Such a grave alteration in my prospects-"

"But you have still your own income!"

"Well ... of course, yes, I shall always be comfortably off. But there are other things. The title ..."

"I had forgotten that. Of course. It's quite impossible that I should marry a mere commoner." She glanced back at him with an appropriately sarcastic firmness.

"My sweet, be patient. These things have to be said-you bring a great sum of money with you. Of course our private affections are the paramount consideration. However, there is a ... well, a legal and contractual side to matrimony which-"

"Fiddlesticks!"

"My dearest Tina ..."

"You know perfectly well they would allow me to marry a Hottentot if I wanted."

"That may be so. But even the most doting parents prefer to be informed-"

"How many rooms has the Belgravia house?" "I have no idea." He hesitated, then added, "Twenty, I daresay."

"And you mentioned one day that you had two and a half thousand a year. To which my dowry will bring-"

"Whether our changed circumstances are still sufficient for comfort is not at issue."

"Very well. Suppose Papa tells you you cannot have my hand. What then?"

"You choose to misunderstand. I know my duty. One cannot be too scrupulous at such a juncture."

This exchange has taken place without their daring to look at each other's faces. She dropped her head, in a very plain and mutinous disagreement. He rose and stood behind her.

"It is no more than a formality. But such formalities matter."

She stared obstinately down.

"I am weary of Lyme. I see you less here than in town."

He smiled. "That is absurd."

"It seems less."

A sullen little line had set about her mouth. She would not be mollified. He went and stood in front of the fireplace, his arm on the mantelpiece, smiling down at her; but it was a smile without humor, a mask. He did not like her when she was willful; it contrasted too strongly with her elaborate clothes, all designed to show a total inadequacy outside the domestic interior. The thin end of the sensible clothes wedge had been inserted in society by the disgraceful Mrs. Bloomer a decade and a half before the year of which I write; but that early attempt at the trouser suit had been comprehensively defeated by the crinoline-a small fact of considerable significance in our understanding of the Victorians. They were offered sense; and chose a six-foot folly unparalleled in the most folly-ridden of minor arts.

However, in the silence that followed Charles was not meditating on the idiocy of high fashion, but on how to leave without more to-do. Fortunately for him Tina had at the same time been reflecting on her position: it was after all rather maidservantish (Aunt Tranter had explained why Mary was not able to answer the waking bell) to make such a fuss about a brief absence. Besides, male vanity lay in being obeyed; female, in using obedience to have the ultimate victory. A time would come when Charles should be made to pay for his cruelty. Her little smile up at him was repentant.

"You will write every day?"

He reached down and touched her cheek. "I promise."

"And return as soon as you can?"

"Just as soon as I can expedite matters with Montague."

"I shall write to Papa with strict orders to send you straight back."

Charles seized his opportunity. "And I shall bear the letter, if you write it at once. I leave in an hour."

She stood then and held out her hands. She wished to be kissed. He could not bring himself to kiss her on the mouth. So he grasped her shoulders and lightly embraced her on both temples. He then made to go. But for some odd reason he stopped. Ernestina stared demurely and meekly in front of her-at his dark blue cravat with its pearl pin. Why Charles could not get away was not immediately apparent; in fact two hands were hooded firmly in his lower waistcoat pockets. He understood the price of his release, and paid it. No worlds fell, no inner roar, no darkness shrouded eyes and ears, as he stood pressing his lips upon hers for several seconds. But Ernestina was very prettily dressed; a vision, perhaps more a tactile impression, of a tender little white body entered Charles's mind. Her head turned against his shoulder, she nestled against him; and as he patted and stroked and murmured a few foolish words, he found himself most suddenly embarrassed. There was a distinct stir in his loins. There had always been Ernestina's humor, her odd little piques and whims of emotion, a promise of certain buried wildnesses ... a willingness to learn perversity, one day to bite timidly but deliciously on forbidden fruit. What Charles unconsciously felt was perhaps no more than the ageless attraction of shallow-minded women: that one may make of them what one wants. What he felt consciously was a sense of pollution: to feel carnal desire now, when he had touched another woman's lips that morning!

He kissed Ernestina rather hastily on the crown of her head, gently disengaged her ringers from their holds, kissed them in turn, then left.

He still had an ordeal, since Mary was standing by the door with his hat and gloves. Her eyes were down, but her cheeks were red. He glanced back at the closed door of the room he had left as he drew on his gloves.

"Sam has explained the circumstances of this morning?"

"Yes, sir."

"You ... understand?"

"Yes, sir."

He took off a glove again and felt in his waistcoat pocket. Mary did not take a step back, though she lowered her head still further.

"Oh sir, I doan' want that."

But she already had it. A moment later she had closed the door on Charles. Very slowly she opened her small-and I'm afraid, rather red-hand and stared at the small golden coin in its palm. Then she put it between her white teeth and bit it, as she had always seen her father do, to make sure it was not brass; not that she could tell one from the other by bite, but biting somehow proved it was gold; just as being on the Undercliff proved it was sin.

What can an innocent country virgin know of sin? The question requires an answer. Meanwhile, Charles can get up to London on his own.

35.

In you resides my single power.

Of sweet continuance here.

-Hardy, "Her Immortality"

At the infirmary many girls of 14 years of age, and even girls of 13, up to 17 years of age, have been brought in pregnant to be confined here. The girls have acknowledged that their ruin has taken place ... in going or returning from their (agricultural) work. Girls and boys of this age go five, six, or seven miles to work, walking in droves along the roads and by-lanes. I have myself witnessed gross indecencies between boys and girls of 14 to 16 years of age. I saw once a young girl insulted by some five or six boys on the roadside. Other older persons were about 20 or 30 yards off, but they took no notice. The girl was calling out, which caused me to stop. I have also seen boys bathing in the brooks, and girls between 13 and 19 looking on from the bank.

-Children's Employment Commission Report (1867)

What are we faced with in the nineteenth century? An age where woman was sacred; and where you could buy a thirteen-year-old girl for a few pounds-a few shillings, if you wanted her for only an hour or two. Where more churches were built than in the whole previous history of the country; and where one in sixty houses in London was a brothel (the modern ratio would be nearer one in six thousand). Where the sanctity of marriage (and chastity before marriage) was proclaimed from every pulpit, in every newspaper editorial and public utterance; and where never-or hardly ever- have so many great public figures, from the future king down, led scandalous private lives. Where the penal system was progressively humanized; and flagellation so rife that a Frenchman set out quite seriously to prove that the Marquis de Sade must have had English ancestry. Where the female body had never been so hidden from view; and where every sculptor was judged by his ability to carve naked women. Where there is not a single novel, play or poem of literary distinction that ever goes beyond the sensuality of a kiss, where Dr. Bowdler (the date of whose death, 1825, reminds us that the Victorian ethos was in being long before the strict threshold of the age) was widely considered a public benefactor; and where the output of pornography has never been exceeded. Where the excretory functions were never referred to; and where the sanitation remained-the flushing lavatory came late in the age and remained a luxury well up to 1900-so primitive that there can have been few houses, and few streets, where one was not constantly reminded of them. Where it was universally maintained that women do not have orgasms; and yet every prostitute was taught to simulate them. Where there was an enormous progress and liberation in every other field of human activity; and nothing but tyranny in the most personal and fundamental.

At first sight the answer seems clear-it is the business of sublimation. The Victorians poured their libido into those other fields; as if some genie of evolution, feeling lazy, said to himself: We need some progress, so let us dam and divert this one great canal and see what happens.

While conceding a partial truth to the theory of sublimation, I sometimes wonder if this does not lead us into the error of supposing the Victorians were not in fact highly sexed. But they were quite as highly sexed as our own century-and, in spite of the fact that we have sex thrown at us night and day (as the Victorians had religion), far more preoccupied with it than we really are. They were certainly preoccupied by love, and devoted far more of their arts to it than we do ours. Nor can Malthus and the lack of birth-control appliances* quite account for the fact that they bred like rabbits and worshiped fertility far more ardently than we do. Nor does our century fall behind in the matter of progress and liberalization; and yet we can hardly maintain that that is because we have so much sublimated energy to spare. I have seen the Naughty Nineties represented as a reaction to many decades of abstinence; I believe it was merely the publication of what had hitherto been private, and I suspect we are in reality dealing with a human constant: the difference is a vocabulary, a degree of metaphor.

[* The first sheaths (of sausage skin) were on sale in the late eighteenth century. Malthus, of all people, condemned birth-control techniques as "improper," but agitation for their use began in the 1820s. The first approach to a modern "sex manual" was Dr. George Drysdale's somewhat obliquely entitled The Elements of Social Science; or Physical, Sexual and Natural Religion, An Exposition of the true Cause and only Cure of the Three Primary Evils: Poverty, Prostitution and Celibacy. It appeared in 1854, and was widely read and translated. Here is Drysdale's practical advice, with its telltale final parenthesis: "Impregnation is avoided either by the withdrawal of the penis immediately before ejaculation takes place (which is very frequently practiced by married and unmarried men); by the use of the sheath (which is also very frequent, but more so on the Continent than in this country); by the introduction of a piece of sponge into the vagina . . . ; or by the injection of tepid water into the vagina immediately after coition.