I too have felt the load I bore
In a too strong emotion’s sway
I too have wished, no woman more
This starting, feverish heart, away.
I too have longed for trenchant force
And will like a dividing spear
Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course
Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.
But in the world I learnt, what there
Thou too will surely one day prove
That will, that energy, though rare
And yet far, far less rare than love.
Matthew Arnold, “A Farewell
Charles’s thoughts on his own eventual way back to Lyme were all variations on that agelessly popular male theme: “You’ve been playing with fire, my boy.” But it was precisely that theme, by which I mean that the tenor of his thoughts matched the verbal tenor of the statement. He had been very foolish, but his folly had not been visited on him. He had run an absurd risk; and escaped unscathed. And so now, as the great stone claw of the Cobb came into sight far below, he felt exhilarated.
And how should he have blamed himself very deeply? From the outset his motives had been the purest; he had cured her of her madness; and if something impure had for a moment threatened to infiltrate his defenses, it had been but mint sauce to the wholesome lamb. He would be to blame, of course, if he did not now remove himself, and for good, from the fire. That, he would take very good care to do. After all, he was not a moth infatuated by a candle; he was a highly intelligent being, one of the fittest, and endowed with total free will. If he had not been sure of that latter safeguard, would he ever have risked himself in such dangerous waters? I am mixing metaphors—but that was how Charles’s mind worked.
And so, leaning on free will quite as much as on his ashplant, he descended the hill to the town. All sympathetic physical feelings towards the girl he would henceforth rigorously suppress, by free will. Any further solicitation of a private meeting he would adamantly discountenance, by free will. All administration of his interest should be passed to Aunt Tranter, by free will. And he was therefore permitted, obliged rather, to continue to keep Ernestina in the dark, by the same free will. By the time he came in sight of the White Lion, he had free-willed himself most convincingly into a state of self-congratulation ... and one in which he could look at Sarah as an object of his past.
A remarkable young woman, a remarkable young woman. And baffling. He decided that that was—had been, rather— her attraction: her unpredictability. He did not realize that she had two qualities as typical of the English as his own admix-ture of irony and convention. I speak of passion and imagina-tion. The first quality Charles perhaps began dimly to per-ceive; the second he did not. He could not, for those two qualities of Sarah’s were banned by the epoch, equated in the first case with sensuality and in the second with the merely fanciful. This dismissive double equation was Charles’s greatest defect—and here he stands truly for his age.
There was still deception in the flesh, or Ernestina, to be faced. But Charles, when he arrived at his hotel, found that family had come to his aid.
A telegram awaited him. It was from his uncle at Win-syatt. His presence was urgently requested “for most important reasons.” I am afraid Charles smiled as soon as he read it; he very nearly kissed the orange envelope. It removed him from any immediate further embarrassment; from the need for further lies of omission. It was most marvelously convenient. He made inquiries ... there was a train early the next morning from Exeter, then the nearest station to Lyme, which meant that he had a good pretext for leaving at once and staying there overnight. He gave orders for the fastest trap in Lyme to be procured. He would drive himself. He felt inclined to make such an urgent rush of it as to let a note to Aunt Tranter’s suffice. But that would have been too coward-ly. So telegram in hand, he walked up the street.
The good lady herself was full of concern, since telegrams for her meant bad news. Ernestina, less superstitious, was plainly vexed. She thought it “too bad” of Uncle Robert to act the grand vizir in this way. She was sure it was nothing; a whim, an old man’s caprice, worse—an envy of young love.
She had, of course, earlier visited Winsyatt, accompanied by her parents; and she had not fallen for Sir Robert. Perhaps it was because she felt herself under inspection; or because the uncle had sufficient generations of squirearchy behind him to possess, by middle-class London standards, really rather bad manners—though a kinder critic might have said agreeably eccentric ones; perhaps because she considered the house such an old barn, so dreadfully old-fashioned in its furnishings and hangings and pictures; because the said uncle so doted on Charles and Charles was so provokingly nephew-ish in return that Ernestina began to feel positively jealous; but above all, because she was frightened.
Neighboring ladies had been summoned to meet her. It was all very well knowing her father could buy up all their respective fathers and husbands lock, stock and barrel; she felt herself looked down on (though she was simply envied) and snubbed in various subtle ways. Nor did she much relish the prospect of eventually living at Winsyatt, though it al-lowed her to dream of one way at least in which part of her vast marriage portion should be spent exactly as she insisted— in a comprehensive replacement of all those absurd scrolly wooden chairs (Carolean and almost priceless), gloomy cup-boards (Tudor), moth-eaten tapestries (Gobelins), and dull paintings (including two Claudes and a Tintoretto) that did not meet her approval.
Her distaste for the uncle she had not dared to communi-cate to Charles; and her other objections she hinted at with more humor than sarcasm. I do not think she is to be blamed. Like so many daughters of rich parents, before and since, she had been given no talent except that of convention-al good taste ... that is, she knew how to spend a great deal of money in dressmakers’, milliners’ and furniture shops. That was her province; and since it was her only real one, she did not like it encroached upon.
The urgent Charles put up with her muted disapproval and pretty poutings, and assured her that he would fly back with as much speed as he went. He had in fact a fairly good idea what his uncle wanted him so abruptly for; the matter had been tentatively broached when he was there with Tina and her parents ... most tentatively since his uncle was a shy man. It was the possibility that Charles and his bride might share Winsyatt with him—they could “fit up” the east whig. Charles knew his uncle did not mean merely that they should come and stay there on occasion, but that Charles should settle down and start learning the business of running the estate. Now this appealed to him no more than it would have, had he realized, to Ernestina. He knew it would be a poor arrangement, that his uncle would alternate between doting and disapproving ... and that Ernestina needed edu-cating into Winsyatt by a less trammeled early marriage. But his uncle had hinted privately to him at something beyond this: that Winsyatt was too large for a lonely old man, that he didn’t know if he wouldn’t be happier in a smaller place. There was no shortage of suitable smaller places in the environs ... indeed, some figured on the Winsyatt rent roll. There was one such, an Elizabethan manor house in the village of Winsyatt, almost in view of the great house.
Charles guessed now that the old man was feeling selfish; and that he was called to Winsyatt to be offered either the manor house or the great house. Either would be agreeable. It did not much matter to him which it should be, provided his uncle was out of the way. He felt certain that the old bachelor could now be maneuvered into either house, that he was like a nervous rider who had come to a jump and wanted to be led over it.
Accordingly, at the end of the brief trio in Broad Street, Charles asked for a few words alone with Ernestina; and as soon as Aunt Tranter had retired, he told her what he suspected.
But why should he have not discussed it sooner
Dearest, I’m afraid that is Uncle Bob to the life. But tell me what I am to say.
Which should you prefer
Whichever you choose. Neither, if needs be. Though he would be hurt...
Ernestina uttered a discreet curse against rich uncles. But a vision of herself, Lady Smithson in a Winsyatt appointed to her taste, did cross her mind, perhaps because she was in Aunt Tranter’s not very spacious back parlor. After all, a title needs a setting. And if the horrid old man were safely from under the same roof . . . and he was old. And dear Charles. And her parents, to whom she owed ...
This house in the village—is it not the one we passed in the carriage
Yes, you remember, it had all those picturesque old gables
Picturesque to look at from the outside.
Of course it would have to be done up.
What did you call it
The villagers call it the Little House. But only by compar-ison. It’s many years since I was in it, but I fancy it is a good deal larger than it looks.
I know those old houses. Dozens of wretched little rooms. I think the Elizabethans were all dwarfs.
He smiled (though he might have done better to correct her curious notion of Tudor architecture), and put his arm round her shoulders. “Then Winsyatt itself
She gave him a straight little look under her arched eye-brows.
Do you wish it
You know what it is to me.
I may have my way with new decorations
You may raze it to the ground and erect a second Crystal Palace, for all I care.
Charles! Be serious
She pulled away. But he soon received a kiss of forgive-ness, and went on his way with a light heart. For her part, Ernestina went upstairs and drew out her copious armory of catalogues.
