There must be wisdom with great Death; the dead shall look me thro' and thro'. Charles's whole being rose up against those two foul propositions; against this macabre desire to go backwards into the future, mesmerized eyes on one's dead fathers instead of on one's unborn sons. It was as if his previous belief in the ghostly presence of the past had condemned him, without his ever realizing it, to a life in the grave.

Though this may seem like a leap into atheism, it was not so; it did not diminish Christ in Charles's eyes. Rather it made Him come alive, it uncrucified Him, if not completely, then at least partially. Charles walked slowly back into the nave, turning his back on the indifferent wooden carving. But not on Jesus. He began again to pace up and down, his eyes on the paving stones. What he saw now was like a glimpse of another world: a new reality, a new causality, a new creation. A cascade of concrete visions-if you like, another chapter from his hypothetical autobiography-poured through his mind. At a similar high-flying moment you may recall that Mrs. Poulteney had descended, in three ticks of her marble and ormolu drawing-room clock, from eternal salvation to Lady Cotton. And I would be hiding the truth if I did not reveal that at this moment Charles thought of his uncle. He would not blame on Sir Robert a broken marriage and an alliance unworthy of the family; but his uncle would blame himself. Another scene leaped unbidden into his mind: Lady Bella faced with Sarah. Miraculous to relate, he saw who would come out with more dignity; for Ernestina would fight with Lady Bella's weapons, and Sarah ... those eyes- how they would swallow snubs and insults! Comprehend them in silence! Make them dwindle into mere specks of smut in an azure sky!

And dressing Sarah! Taking her to Paris, to Florence, to Rome!

This is clearly not the moment to bring in a comparison with St. Paul on the road to Damascus. But Charles was stopped-alas, with his back to the altar once more-and there was a kind of radiance in his face. It may simply have been that from the gaslight by the steps; he has not translated the nobler but abstract reasons that had coursed through his mind very attractively. But I hope you will believe that Sarah on his arm in the Uffizi did stand, however banally, for the pure essence of cruel but necessary (if we are to survive- and yes, still today) freedom.

He turned then and went back to his pew; and did something very irrational, since he knelt and prayed, though very briefly. Then he went down the aisle, pulled down the wire till the gaslight was a pale will-o'-the-wisp, and left the church.

49.

I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal . . .

-Tennyson, Maud (1855)

Charles found the curate's house and rang the bell. A maid answered, but the bewhiskered young man himself hovered in the hallway behind her. The maid retreated, as her master came forward to take the heavy old key.

"Thank you, sir. I celebrate Holy Communion at eight every morning. You stay long in Exeter?"

"Alas, no. I am simply en passage."

"I had hoped to see you again. I can be of no further assistance?"

And he gestured, the poor young shrimp, towards a door behind which no doubt lay his study. Charles had already noted a certain ostentation about the church furnishings; and he knew he was being invited to Confession. It did not need magical powers to see through the wall and discern a priedieu and a discreet statue of the Virgin; for this was one of the young men born too late for the Tractarian schism and who now dallied naughtily but safely-since Dr. Phillpotts was High Church-with rituals and vestments, a very prevalent form of ecclesiastical dandyism. Charles measured him a moment and took heart in his own new vision: it could not be more foolish than this. So he bowed and refused, and went on his way. He was shriven of established religion for the rest of his life.

His way ... you think, perhaps, that that must lead straight back to Endicott's Family Hotel. A modern man would no doubt have gone straight back there. But Charles's accursed sense of Duty and Propriety stood like castle walls against that. His first task was to cleanse himself of past obligations; only then could he present himself to offer his hand.

He began to understand Sarah's deceit. She knew he loved her; and she knew he had been blind to the true depth of that love. The false version of her betrayal by Varguennes, her other devices, were but stratagems to unblind him; all she had said after she had brought him to the realization was but a test of his new vision. He had failed miserably; and she had then used the same stratagems as a proof of her worthless-ness. Out of what nobility must such self-sacrifice spring! If he had but sprung forward and taken her into his arms again, told her she was his, ungainsayably!

And if only-he might have added, but didn't-there were not that fatal dichotomy (perhaps the most dreadful result of their mania for categorization) in the Victorians, which led them to see the "soul" as more real than the body, far more real, their only real self; indeed hardly connected with the body at all, but floating high over the beast; and yet, by some inexplicable flaw in the nature of things, reluctantly dragged along in the wake of the beast's movements, like a white captive balloon behind a disgraceful and disobedient child.

This-the fact that every Victorian had two minds-is the one piece of equipment we must always take with us on our travels back to the nineteenth century. It is a schizophrenia seen at its clearest, its most notorious, in the poets I have quoted from so often-in Tennyson, Clough, Arnold, Hardy; but scarcely less clearly in the extraordinary political veerings from Right to Left and back again of men like the younger Mill and Gladstone; in the ubiquitous neuroses and psychosomatic illnesses of intellectuals otherwise as different as Charles Kingsley and Darwin; in the execration at first poured on the Pre-Raphaelites, who tried-or seemed to be trying-to be one-minded about both art and life; in the endless tug-of-war between Liberty and Restraint, Excess and Moderation, Propriety and Conviction, between the principled man's cry for Universal Education and his terror of Universal Suffrage; transparent also in the mania for editing and revising, so that if we want to know the real Mill or the real Hardy we can learn far more from the deletions and alterations of their autobiographies than from the published versions . . . more from correspondence that somehow escaped burning, from private diaries, from the petty detritus of the concealment operation. Never was the record so completely confused, never a public facade so successfully passed off as the truth on a gullible posterity; and this, I think, makes the best guidebook to the age very possibly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Behind its latterday Gothick lies a very profound and epoch-revealing truth.

Every Victorian had two minds; and Charles had at least that. Already, as he walked up Fore Street towards the Ship, he was rehearsing the words his white balloon would utter when the wicked child saw Sarah again; the passionate yet honorable arguments that would reduce her to a tearful gratitude and the confession that she could not live without him. He saw it all, so vividly I feel tempted to set it down. But here is reality, in the form of Sam, standing at the doors of the ancient inn.

"The service was hagreeable, Mr. Charles?"

"I ... I lost my way, Sam. And I've got damnably wet." Which was not at all the adjective to apply to Sam's eyes. "Fill a tub for me, there's a good fellow. I'll sup in my rooms."

"Yes, Mr. Charles."

Some fifteen minutes later you might have seen Charles stark naked and engaged in an unaccustomed occupation: that of laundering. He had his bloodstained garments pressed against the side of the vast hip bath that had been filled for him and was assiduously rubbing them with a piece of soap. He felt foolish, and did not make a very good job of it. When Sam came, some time later, with the supper tray, the garments lay as if thrown negligently half in and half out of the bath. Sam collected them up without remark; and for once Charles was grateful for his notorious carelessness in such matters.

Having eaten his supper, he opened his writing case.

My dearest, One half of me is inexpressibly glad to address you thus, while the other wonders how he can so speak of a being he yet but scarcely understands. Something in you I would fain say I know profoundly: and something else I am as ignorant of as when I first saw you. I say this not to excuse, but to explain my behavior this evening. I cannot excuse it; yet I must believe that there was one way in which it may be termed fortunate, since it prompted a searching of my conscience that was long overdue. I shall not go into all the circumstance. But I am resolved, my sweet and mysterious Sarah, that what now binds us shall bind us forevermore. I am but too well aware that I have no right to see you again, let alone to ask to know you fully, in my present situation. My first necessity is therefore to terminate my engagement.

A premonition that it was folly to enter into that arrangement has long been with me-before ever you came into my life. I implore you, therefore, not to feel guilt in that respect. What is to blame is a blindness in myself as to my own real nature. Had I been ten years younger, had I not seen so much in my age and my society with which I am not in sympathy, I have no doubt I could have been happy with Miss Freeman. My mistake was to forget that I am thirty-two, not twenty-two.

I therefore go early tomorrow on the most painful journey to Lyme. You will appreciate that to conclude its purpose is the predominant thought in my mind at this moment. But my duty in that respect done, my thoughts shall be only of you-nay, of our future. What strange fate brought me to you I do not know, but, God willing, nothing shall take you from me unless it be yourself that wishes it so. Let me say no more now, my sweet enigma, than that you will have to provide far stronger proofs and arguments than you have hitherto adduced. I cannot believe you will attempt to do so. Your heart knows I am yours and that I would call you mine.

Need I assure you, my dearest Sarah, that my intentions are henceforth of the most honorable? There are a thousand things I wish to ask you, a thousand attentions to pay you, a thousand pleasures to give you. But always with every regard to whatever propriety your delicacy insists on.

I am he who will know no peace, no happiness until he holds you in his arms again.

C.S.

P.S. On re-reading what I have written I perceive a formality my heart does not intend. Forgive it. You are both so close and yet a stranger-I know not how to phrase what I really feel.

Your fondest C.

This anabatic epistle was not arrived at until after several drafts. It had by then grown late, and Charles changed his mind about its immediate dispatch. She, by now, would have wept herself to sleep; he would let her suffer one more black night; but she should wake to joy. He re-read the letter several times; it had a little aftermath of the tone he had used, only a day or two before, in letters from London to Ernestina; but those letters had been agony to write, mere concessions to convention, which is why he had added that postscript. He still felt, as he had told Sarah, a stranger to himself; but now it was with a kind of awed pleasure that he stared at his face in the mirror. He felt a great courage in himself, both present and future-and a uniqueness, a having done something unparalleled. And he had his wish: he was off on a journey again, a journey made doubly delicious by its promised companion. He tried to imagine unknown Sarahs- a Sarah laughing, Sarah singing, Sarah dancing. They were hard to imagine, and yet not impossible ... he remembered that smile when they had been so nearly discovered by Sam and Mary. It had been a clairvoyant smile, a seeing into the future. And that time he had raised her from her knees- with what infinite and long pleasure he would now do that in their life together!

If these were the thorns and the stones that threatened about him, he could bear them. He did think a moment of one small thorn: Sam. But Sam was like all servants, dismissable.

And summonable. Summoned he was, at a surprisingly early hour that next morning. He found Charles in his dressing gown, with a sealed letter and packet in his hands.

"Sam, I wish you to take these to the address on the envelope. You will wait ten minutes to see if there is an answer. If there is none-I expect none, but wait just in case-if there is none, you are to come straight back here. And hire a fast carriage. We go to Lyme." He added, "But no baggage. We return here tonight."

"Tonight, Mr. Charles! But I thought we was-" "Never mind what you thought. Just do as I say." Sam put on his footman face, and withdrew. As he went slowly downstairs it became clear to him that his position was intolerable. How could he fight a battle without information? With so many conflicting rumors as to the disposition of the enemy forces? He stared at the envelope in his hand. Its destination was flagrant: Miss Woodruff, at Endicott's Family Hotel. And only one day in Lyme? With portmanteaux to wait here! He turned the small packet over, pressed the envelope.

It seemed fat, three pages at least. He glanced round surreptitously, then examined the seal. Sam cursed the man who invented wax.

And now he stands again before Charles, who has dressed.

"Well?"

"No answer, Mr. Charles."

Charles could not quite control his face. He turned away.

"And the carriage?"

"Ready and waitin', sir."

"Very well. I shall be down shortly."

Sam withdrew. The door had no sooner closed when Charles raised his hands to his head, then threw them apart, as if to an audience, an actor accepting applause, a smile of gratitude on his lips. For he had, upon his ninety-ninth re-reading of his letter that previous night, added a second postscript. It concerned that brooch we have already seen in Ernestina's hands. Charles begged Sarah to accept it; and by way of a sign, to allow that her acceptance of it meant that she accepted his apologies for his conduct. This second postscript had ended: "The bearer will wait till you have read this. If he should bring the contents of the packet back ... but I know you cannot be so cruel."

Yet the poor man had been in agony during Sam's absence.

And here Sam is again, volubly talking in a low voice, with frequent agonized looks. The scene is in the shadow of a lilac bush, which grows outside the kitchen door in Aunt Tranter's garden and provides a kind of screen from the garden proper. The afternoon sun slants through the branches and first white buds. The listener is Mary, with her cheeks flushed and her hand almost constantly covering her mouth.

"'Tisn't possible, 'tisn't possible."

"It's 'is uncle. It's turned 'is "ead."

"But young mistress-oh, what'll 'er do now, Sam?"

And both their eyes traveled up with dread, as if they thought to hear a scream or see a falling body, to the windows through the branches above.

"And bus, Mary. What'll us do?"

"Oh Sam-'tisn't fair ..."

"I love yer, Mary."

"Oh Sam ..."

"'Tweren't just bein' wicked. I'd as soon die as lose yer now."

"Oh what'll us do?"

"Don't cry, my darling, don't cry. I've 'ad enough of hupstairs. They're no better'n us," He gripped her by the arms. "If 'is lordship thinks like master, like servant, 'e's mistook, Mary. If it's you or 'im, it's you." He stiffened, like a soldier about to charge. "I'll leave 'is hemploy."

"Sam!"

"I will. I'll 'aul coals. Hanything!"

"But your money-'e woan' give'ee that no more now!"

"'E ain't got it to give." His bitterness looked at her dismay. But then he smiled and reached out his hands. "But shall I tell yer someone who 'as? If you and me play our cards right?"

50.

I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.

-darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)

They had arrived in Lyme just before two. For a few minutes Charles took possession of the room he had reserved. Again he paced up and down, but now in a nervous agony, steeling himself for the interview ahead. The existentialist terror invaded him again; perhaps he had known it would and so burned his boats by sending that letter to Sarah. He rehearsed again the thousand phrases he had invented on the journey from Exeter; but they fled through his mind like October leaves. He took a deep breath, then his hat, and went out.

Mary, with a broad grin as soon as she saw him, opened the door. He practiced his gravity on her.

"Good afternoon. Is Miss Ernestina at home?" But before she could answer Ernestina herself appeared at the end of the hall. She had a little smile.

"No. My duenna is out to lunch. But you may come in."

She disappeared back into the sitting room. Charles gave his hat to Mary, set his lapels, wished he were dead, then went down the hall and into his ordeal. Ernestina, in sunlight, by a window overlooking the garden, turned gaily.

"I received a letter from Papa this ... Charles! Charles? Is something wrong?"

And she came towards him. He could not look at her, but stared at the carpet. She stopped. Her frightened and his grave, embarrassed eyes met.

"Charles?"

"I beg you to sit down."