The boats, the sands, the esplanade
The laughing crowd
Light-hearted, loud
Greetings from some not ill-endowed
The evening sunlit cliffs, the talk
Railings and halts
The keen sea-salts
The band, the Morgenbl?tter Waltz.
Still, when at night I drew inside
Forward she came
Sad, but the same . . .
Hardy, “At a Seaside Town in
That evening Charles found himself seated between Mrs. Tranter and Ernestina in the Assembly Rooms. The Lyme Assembly Rooms were perhaps not much, compared to those at Bath and Cheltenham; but they were pleasing, with their spacious proportions and windows facing the sea. Too pleas-ing, alas, and too excellent a common meeting place not to be sacrificed to that Great British God, Convenience; and they were accordingly long ago pulled down, by a Town Council singleminded in its concern for the communal blad-der, to make way for what can very fairly claim to be the worst-sited and ugliest public lavatory in the British Isles.
You must not think, however, that the Poulteney con-tingent in Lyme objected merely to the frivolous architecture of the Assembly Rooms. It was what went on there that really outraged them. The place provoked whist, and gentle-men with cigars in their mouths, and balls, and concerts. In short, it encouraged pleasure; and Mrs. Poulteney and her kind knew very well that the only building a decent town could allow people to congregate in was a church. When the Assembly Rooms were torn down in Lyme, the heart was torn out of the town; and no one has yet succeeded in putting it back.
Charles and his ladies were in the doomed building for a concert. It was not, of course—it being Lent—a secular concert. The programme was unrelievedly religious. Even that shocked the narrower-minded in Lyme, who professed, at least in public, a respect for Lent equal to that of the most orthodox Muslim for Ramadan. There were accordingly some empty seats before the fern-fringed dais at one end of the main room, where the concerts were held.
Our broader-minded three had come early, like most of the rest of the audience; for these concerts were really enjoyed—in true eighteenth-century style—as much for the company as for the music. It gave the ladies an excellent opportunity to assess and comment on their neighbors’ finery; and of course to show off their own. Even Ernestina, with all her contempt for the provinces, fell a victim to this vanity. At least here she knew she would have few rivals in the taste and luxury of her clothes; and the surreptitious glances at her little “plate” hat (no stuffy old bonnets for her) with its shamrock-and-white ribbons, her vert esperance dress, her mauve-and-black pelisse, her Balmoral boots, were an agree-able compensation for all the boredom inflicted at other times.
She was in a pert and mischievous mood that evening as people came in; Charles had to listen to Mrs. Tranter’s com-mentary—places of residence, relatives, ancestry—with one ear, and to Tina’s sotto voce wickednesses with the other. The John-Bull-like lady over there, he learned from the aunt, was “Mrs. Tomkins, the kindest old soul, somewhat hard of hearing, that house above Elm House, her son is in India”; while another voice informed him tersely, “A perfect goose-berry.” According to Ernestina, there were far more goose-berries than humans patiently, because gossipingly, waiting for the concert to begin. Every decade invents such a useful noun-and-epithet; in the 1860s “gooseberry” meant “all that is dreary and old-fashioned”; today Ernestina would have called those worthy concert-goers square ... which was certainly Mrs. Tomkins’s shape, at least from the back.
But at last the distinguished soprano from Bristol ap-peared, together with her accompanist, the even more distin-guished Signer Ritornello (or some such name, for if a man was a pianist he must be Italian) and Charles was free to examine his conscience.
At least he began in the spirit of such an examination; as if it was his duty to do so, which hid the awkward fact that it was also his pleasure to do so. In simple truth he had become a little obsessed with Sarah ... or at any rate with the enigma she presented. He had—or so he believed—fully intended, when he called to escort the ladies down Broad Street to the Assembly Rooms, to tell them of his meeting— though of course on the strict understanding that they must speak to no one about Sarah’s wanderings over Ware Com-mons. But somehow the moment had not seemed opportune. There was first of all a very material dispute to arbitrate upon—Ernestina’s folly in wearing grenadine when it was still merino weather, since “Thou shall not wear grenadine till May” was one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine com-mandments her parents had tacked on to the statutory ten. Charles killed concern with compliment; but if Sarah was not mentioned, 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, he had lost all sense of propor-tion. He had been very foolish, allowing a misplaced chivalry to blind his common sense; and the worst of it was that it was all now deucedly difficult to explain to Ernestina.
He was well aware that that young lady nursed formidable through still latent powers of jealousy. At worst, she would find his behavior incomprehensible and be angry with him; at best, she would only tease him—but it was a poor “at best.” He did not want to be teased on this subject. Charles could perhaps have trusted himself with fewer doubts to Mrs. Tran-ter. She, he knew, certainly shared his charitable concern; but duplicity was totally foreign to her. He could not ask her not to tell Ernestina; and if Tina should learn of the meeting through her aunt, then he would be in very hot water indeed. On his other feelings, his mood toward Ernestina that evening, he hardly dared to dwell. Her humor did not exactly irritate him, but it seemed unusually and unwelcomely artifi-cial, as if it were something she had put on with her French hat and her new pelisse; to suit them rather than the occa-sion. It also required a response from him ... a correspond-ing twinkle in his eyes, a constant smile, which he obliged her with, but also artificially, so that they seemed enveloped in a double pretense. Perhaps it was the gloom of so much Handel and Bach, or the frequency of the discords between the prima donna and her aide, but he caught himself stealing glances at the girl beside him—looking at her as if he saw her for the first time, as if she were a total stranger to him. She was very pretty, charming ... but was not that face a little characterless, a little monotonous with its one set paradox of demureness and dryness? If you took away those two qualities, what remained? A vapid selfishness. But this cruel thought no sooner entered Charles’s head than he dismissed it. 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. But was that the only context—the only market for brides? It was a fixed article of Charles’s creed that he was not like the great majority of his peers and contemporaries. That was why he had traveled so much; he found English society too hidebound, English so-lemnity too solemn, English thought too moralistic, English religion too bigoted. So? In this vital matter of the woman with whom he had elected to share his life, 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.
Under this swarm of waspish self-inquiries he began to feel sorry for himself—a brilliant man trapped, a Byron tamed; and his mind wandered back to Sarah, to visual images, attempts to recollect that face, that mouth, that generous mouth. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him, too tenuous, perhaps too general, to trace to any source in his past; but it unsettled him and haunted him, by calling to some hidden self he hardly knew existed. He said it to himself: It is the stupidest thing, but that girl attracts me. It seemed clear to him that it was not Sarah in herself who attracted him—how could she, he was betrothed—but some emotion, some possibility she symbolized. She made him aware of a deprivation. His future had always seemed to him of vast potential; and now suddenly it was a fixed voyage to a known place. She had reminded him of that.
Ernestina’s elbow reminded him gently of the present. The singer required applause, and Charles languidly gave his share. Placing her own hands back in their muff, Ernestina delivered a sidelong, humorous moue, half intended for his absentmindedness, half for the awfulness of the performance. He smiled at her. She was so young, such a child. He could not be angry with her. After all, she was only a woman. There were so many things she must never understand: the richness of male life, the enormous difficulty of being one to whom the world was rather more than dress and home and children.
All would be well when she was truly his; in his bed and in his bank ... and of course in his heart, too.
Sam, at that moment, was thinking the very opposite; how many things his fraction of Eve did understand. 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. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she, a Zulu. They had barely a common lan-guage, so often did they not understand what the other had just said.
Yet this distance, all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio, television, cheap travel and the rest, was not wholly bad. People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more indi-vidual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But I am a heretic, I think our ancestors’ isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The world is only too literally too much with us now.
Sam could, did give the appearance, in some back tap-room, of knowing all there was to know about city life—and then some. He was aggressively contemptuous of anything that did not emanate from the West End of London, that lacked its go. But deep down inside, it was another story. There he was a timid and uncertain person—not uncertain about what he wanted to be (which was far removed from what he was) but about whether he had the ability to be it.
Now Mary was quite the reverse at heart. She was certainly dazzled by Sam to begin with: he was very much a superior being, and her teasing of him had been pure self-defense before such obvious cultural superiority: that eternal city ability to leap the gap, find shortcuts, force the pace. But she had a basic solidity of character, a kind of artless self-confidence, a knowledge that she would one day make a good wife and a good mother; and she knew, in people, what was what ... the difference in worth, say, between her mistress and her mistress’s niece. After all, she was a peasant; and peasants live much closer to real values than town helots.
Sam first fell for her because she was a summer’s day after the drab dollymops and gays* who had constituted his past sexual experience. Self-confidence in that way he did not lack—few Cockneys do. He had fine black hair over very blue eyes and a fresh complexion. He was slim, very slightly built; and all his movements were neat and trim, though with a tendency to a certain grandiose exaggeration of one or two of Charles’s physical mannerisms that he thought particularly gentlemanly. Women’s eyes seldom left him at the first glance, but from closer acquaintance with London girls he had never got much beyond a reflection of his own cynicism. What had really knocked him acock was Mary’s innocence. He found himself like some boy who flashes a mirror—and one day does it to someone far too gentle to deserve such treatment. He suddenly wished to be what he was with her; and to discover what she was.
A “dollymop” was a maidservant who went in for spare-time prosti-tution. A “gay,” a prostitute—it is the significance in Leech’s famous cartoon of 1857, in which two sad-faced women stand in the rain “not a hundred miles from the Haymarket.” One turns to the other: “Ah! Fanny! How long have you been gay
This sudden deeper awareness of each other had come that morning of the visit to Mrs. Poulteney. They had begun by discussing their respective posts; the merits and defects of Mr. Charles and Mrs. Tranter. She thought he was lucky to serve such a lovely gentleman. Sam demurred; and then, to his own amazement, found himself telling this mere milkmaid something he had previously told only to himself.
His ambition was very simple: he wanted to be a haber-dasher. He had never been able to pass such shops without stopping and staring in the windows; criticizing or admiring them, as the case might require. He believed he had a flair for knowing the latest fashion. He had traveled abroad with Charles, he had picked up some foreign ideas in the haber-dashery field . . .
All this (and incidentally, his profound admiration for Mr. Freeman) he had got out somewhat incoherently—and the great obstacles: no money, no education. Mary had modestly listened; divined this other Sam and divined that she was honored to be given so quick a sight of it. Sam felt he was talking too much. But each time he looked nervously up for a sneer, a giggle, the least sign of mockery of his absurd pretensions, he saw only a shy and wide-eyed sympathy, a begging him to go on. His listener felt needed, and a girl who feels needed is already a quarter way in love.
The time came when he had to go. It seemed to him that he had hardly arrived. He stood, and she smiled at him, a little mischievous again. He wanted to say that he had never talked so freely—well, so seriously—to anyone before about himself. But he couldn’t find the words.
Well. Dessay we’ll meet tomorrow mornin’.
Happen so.
Dessay you’ve got a suitor an’ all.
None I really likes.
I bet you ‘ave. I ‘eard you ‘ave.
Tis all talk in this ol’ place. Us izzen ‘lowed to look at a man an’ we’m courtin’.
He fingered his bowler hat. “Like that heverywhere.” A silence. He looked her in the eyes. “I ain’t so bad
I never said ‘ee wuz.
Silence. He worked all the way round the rim of his bowler.
I know lots o’ girls. AH sorts. None like you.
Taren’t so awful hard to find.
I never ‘ave. Before.” There was another silence. She would not look at him, but at the edge of her apron. “’Ow about London then? Fancy seein’ London
She grinned then, and nodded—very vehemently.
Expec’ you will. When they’re a-married orf hupstairs. I’ll show yer round.
Would ‘ee
He winked then, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes brimmed at him over her pink cheeks.
All they fashional Lunnon girls, ‘ee woulden want to go walkin’ out with me.
If you ‘ad the clothes, you’d do. You’d do very nice.
Doan believe ‘ee.
Cross my ‘eart.
Their eyes met and held for a long moment. He bowed elaborately and swept his hat to cover his left breast.
A demang, madymosseile.
What’s that then
It’s French for Coombe Street, tomorrow mornin’— where yours truly will be waitin’.
She turned then, unable to look at him. He stepped quickly behind her and took her hand and raised it to his lips. She snatched it away, and looked at it as if his lips might have left a sooty mark. Another look flashed between them. She bit her pretty lips. He winked again; and then he went.
Whether they met that next morning, in spite of Charles’s express prohibition, I do not know. But later that day, when Charles came out of Mrs. Tranter’s house, he saw Sam wait-ing, by patently contrived chance, on the opposite side of the street. Charles made the Roman sign of mercy, and Sam uncovered, and once again placed his hat reverentially over his heart—as if to a passing bier, except that his face bore a wide grin.
Which brings me to this evening of the concert nearly a week later, and why Sam came to such differing conclusions about the female sex from his master’s; for he was in that kitchen again. Unfortunately there was now a duenna present—Mrs. Tranter’s cook. But the duenna was fast asleep in her Windsor chair in front of the opened fire of her range. Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen. They did not speak. They did not need to. Since they were holding hands. On Mary’s part it was but self-protection, since she had found that it was only thus that she could stop the hand trying to feel its way round her waist. Why Sam, in spite of that, and the silence, should have found Mary so understand-ing is a mystery no lover will need explaining.
