As yet, when all is thought and said, The heart still overrules the head
Still what we hope we must believe
And what is given us receive
Must still believe, for still we hope
That in a world of larger scope
What here is faithfully begun
Will be completed, not undone.
My child, we still must think, when we
That ampler life together see
Some true results will yet appear
Of what we are, together, here.
A. H. Clough, Poem
Charles hesitated in the shabby hall, then knocked on the door of a room that was ajar and from which light came. He was bade enter, and so found himself face to face with the proprietress. Much quicker than he summed her up, she summed him: a fifteen-shillinger beyond mistake. Therefore she smiled gratefully.
A room, sir
No. I ... that is, I wish to speak with one of your ... a Miss Woodruff?” Mrs. Endicott’s smile abruptly gave way to a long face. Charles’s heart dropped. “She is not...
Oh the poor young lady, sir, she was a-coming downstairs the day before yesterday morning and she slipped, sir. She’s turned her ankle something horrible. Swole up big as a mar-row. I wanted to ask the doctor, sir, but she won’t hear of it. ‘Tis true a turned ankle mends itself. And physicians come very expensive.
Charles looked at the end of his cane. “Then I cannot see her.
Oh bless me, you can go up, sir. ‘Twill raise her spirits. You’ll be some relative, I daresay
I have to see her ... on a business matter.
Mrs. Endicott’s respect deepened. “Ah ... a gentleman of the law
Charles hesitated, then said, “Yes.
Then you must go up, sir.
I think ... would you please send to ask if my visit were not better put off till she is recovered
He felt very much at a loss. He remembered Varguennes; sin was to meet in privacy. He had come merely to inquire; had hoped for a downstairs sitting room—somewhere both intimate and public. The old woman hesitated, then cast a quick eye at a certain open box beside her rolltop desk and apparently decided that even lawyers can be thieves—a possi-bility few who have had to meet their fees would dispute. Without moving and with a surprising violence she called for one Betty Anne.
Betty Anne appeared and was sent off with a visiting card. She seemed gone some time, during which Charles had to repel a number of inquisitive attempts to discover his errand. At last Betty Anne came back: he was prayed to go up. He followed the plump maid’s back to the top floor and was shown the scene of the accident. The stairs were certainly steep; and in those days, when they could rarely see their own feet, women were always falling: it was a commonplace of domestic life.
They came to a door at the end of a mournful corridor. Charles, his heart beating far faster than even the three flights of steep stairs had warranted, was brusquely an-nounced.
The gennelmun, miss.
He stepped into the room. Sarah was seated by the fire in a chair facing the door, her feet on a stool, with both them and her legs covered by a red Welsh blanket. The green merino shawl was round her shoulders, but could not quite hide the fact that she was in a long-sleeved nightgown. Her hair was loose and fell over her green shoulders. She seemed to him much smaller—and agonizingly shy. She did not smile, but looked down at her hands—only, as he first came in, one swift look up, like a frightened penitent, sure of his anger, before she bowed her head again. He stood with his hat in one hand, his stick and gloves in the other.
I was passing through Exeter.
Her head bowed a fraction deeper in a mingled under-standing and shame.
Had I not better go at once and fetch a doctor
She spoke into her lap. “Please not. He would only advise me to do what I am already doing.
He could not take his eyes from her—to see her so pinioned, so invalid (though her cheeks were a deep pink), helpless. And after that eternal indigo dress—the green shawl, the never before fully revealed richness of that hair. A faint cedary smell of liniment crept into Charles’s nostrils.
You are not in pain
She shook her head. “To do such a thing ... I cannot understand how I should be so foolish.
At any rate be thankful that it did not happen in the Undercliff.
Yes.
She seemed hopelessly abashed by his presence. He glanced round the small room. A newly made-up fire burned in the grate. There were some tired stems of narcissus in a Toby jug on the mantelpiece. But the meanness of the furnishing was painfully obvious, and an added embarrassment. On the ceil-ing were blackened patches—fumes from the oil lamp; like so many spectral relics of countless drab past occupants of the room.
Perhaps I should ...
No. Please. Sit down. Forgive me. I ... I did not expect...” He placed his things on the chest of drawers, then sat at the only other, a wooden chair by the table, across the room from her. How should she expect, in spite of her letter, what he had himself so firmly ruled out of the question? He sought for some excuse.
You have communicated your address to Mrs. Tranter
She shook her head. Silence. Charles stared at the carpet.
Only to myself
Again her head bowed. He nodded gravely, as if he had guessed as much. And then there was more silence. An angry flurry of rain spattered against the panes of the window behind her.
Charles said, “That is what I have come to discuss.
She waited, but he did not go on. Again his eyes were fixed on her. The nightgown buttoned high at the neck and at her wrists. Its whiteness shimmered rose in the firelight, for the lamp on the table beside him was not turned up very high. And her hair, already enhanced by the green shawl, was ravishingly alive where the firelight touched it; as if all her mystery, this most intimate self, was exposed before him: proud and submissive, bound and unbound, his slave and his equal. He knew why he had come: it was to see her again. Seeing her was the need; like an intolerable thirst that had to be assuaged.
He forced himself to look away. But his eyes lighted on the two naked marble nymphs above the fireplace: they too took rose in the warm light reflected from the red blanket. They did not help. And Sarah made a little movement. He had to look back to her.
She had raised her hand quickly to her bowed head. Her fingers brushed something away from her cheek, then came to rest on her throat.
My dear Miss Woodruff, pray don’t cry ... I should not have not come... I meant not to ...
But she shook her head with a sudden vehemence. He gave her time to recover. And it was while she made little dabbing motions with a handkerchief that he was overcome with a violent sexual desire; a lust a thousand times greater than anything he had felt in the prostitute’s room. Her defenseless weeping was perhaps the breach through which the knowl-edge sprang—but suddenly he comprehended why her face haunted him, why he felt this terrible need to see her again: it was to possess her, to melt into her, to burn, to burn to ashes on that body and in those eyes. To postpone such desire for a week, a month, a year, several years even, that can be done. But for eternity is when the iron bites.
Her next words, to explain her tears, were barely audible.
I thought never to see you again.
He could not tell her how close she had come to his own truth. She looked up at him and he as quickly looked down. Those same mysterious syncopal symptoms as in the barn swept over him. His heart raced, his hand trembled. He knew if he looked into those eyes he was lost. As if to ban them, he shut his own.
The silence was terrible then, as tense as a bridge about to break, a tower to fall; unendurable in its emotion, its truth bursting to be spoken. Then suddenly there was a little cascade of coals from the fire. Most fell inside the low guard, but one or two bounced off and onto the edge of the blanket that covered Sarah’s legs. She jerked it hastily away as Charles knelt quickly and seized the small shovel from the brass bucket. The coals on the carpet were quickly replaced. But the blanket smoldered. He snatched it away from her and throwing it on the ground hastily stamped out the sparks. A smell of singed wool filled the room. One of Sarah’s legs still rested on the stool, but she had put the other to the ground. Both feet were bare. He looked down at the blanket, made sure with one or two slaps of his hand that it no longer smoldered, then turned and placed it across her legs once more. He was bent close, his eyes on the arranging. And then, as if by an instinctive gesture, yet one she half dared to calculate, her hand reached shyly out and rested on his. He knew she was looking up at him. He could not move his hand, and suddenly he could not keep his eyes from hers.
There was gratitude in them, and all the old sadness, and a strange concern, as if she knew she was hurting him; but above all she was waiting. Infinitely timid, yet waiting. If there had been the faintest smile on her lips, perhaps he would have remembered Dr. Grogan’s theory; but this was a face that seemed almost self-surprised, as lost as himself. How long they looked into each other’s eyes he did not know. It seemed an eternity, though in reality it was no more than three or four seconds. Their hands acted first. By some mysterious communion, the fingers interlaced. Then Charles fell on one knee and strained her passionately to him. Their mouths met with a wild violence that shocked both; made her avert her lips. He covered her cheeks, her eyes, with kisses. His hand at last touched that hair, caressed it, felt the small head through its softness, as the thin-clad body was felt against his arms and breast. Suddenly he buried his face in her neck.
We must not... we must not... this is madness.” But her arms came round him and pressed his head closer. He did not move. He felt borne on wings of fire, hurtling, but in such tender air, like a child at last let free from school, a prisoner in a green field, a hawk rising. He raised his head and looked at her: an almost savage fierceness. Then they kissed again. But he pressed against her with such force that the chair rolled back a little. He felt her flinch with pain as the bandaged foot fell from the stool. He looked back to it, then at her face, her closed eyes. She turned her head away against the back of the chair, almost as if he repelled her; but her bosom seemed to arch imperceptibly towards him and her hands gripped his convulsively. He glanced at the door behind her; then stood and in two strides was at it.
The bedroom was not lit except by the dusk light and the faint street lamps opposite. But he saw the gray bed, the washstand. Sarah stood awkwardly from the chair, support-ing herself against its back, the injured foot lifted from the ground, one end of the shawl fallen from her shoulders. Each reflected the intensity in each other’s eyes, the flood, the being swept before it. She seemed to half step, half fall towards him. He sprang forward and caught her in his arms and embraced her. The shawl fell. No more than a layer of flannel lay between him and her nakedness. He strained that body into his, straining his mouth upon hers, with all the hunger of a long frustration—not merely sexual, for a whole ungovernable torrent of things banned, romance, adventure, sin, madness, animality, all these coursed wildly through him.
Her head lay back in his arms, as if she had fainted, when he finally raised his lips from her mouth. He swept her up and carried her through to the bedroom. She lay where he threw her across the bed, half swooned, one arm flung back. He seized her other hand and kissed it feverishly; it caressed his face. He pulled himself away and ran back into the other room. He began to undress wildly, tearing off his clothes as if someone was drowning and he was on the bank. A button from his frock coat flew off and rolled into a corner, but he did not even look to see where it went. His waistcoat was torn off, his boots, his socks, his trousers and undertrousers ... his pearl tie pin, his cravat. He cast a glance at the outer door, and went to twist the key in its lock. Then, wearing only his long-tailed shirt, he went barelegged into the bed-room.
She had moved a little, since she now lay with her head on the pillow, though still on top of the bed, her face twisted sideways and hidden from his sight by a dark fan of hair. He stood over her a moment, his member erect and thrusting out his shirt. Then he raised his left knee onto the narrow bed and fell on her, raining burning kisses on her mouth, her eyes, her throat. But the passive yet acquiescent body pressed beneath him, the naked feet that touched his own ... he could not wait. Raising himself a little, he drew up her nightgown. Her legs parted. With a frantic brutality, as he felt his ejaculation about to burst, he found the place and thrust. Her body flinched again, as it had when her foot fell from the stool. He conquered that instinctive constriction, and her arms flung round him as if she would bind him to her for that eternity he could not dream without her. He began to ejaculate at once.
Oh my dearest. My dearest. My sweetest angel . . . Sarah, Sarah ... oh Sarah.
A few moments later he lay still. Precisely ninety seconds had passed since he had left her to look into the bedroom.
