set in the seventeenth century it is transparently a eulogy of Florence Nightingale. And I have not found her.

One must see her as a being in a mist
One must see her as a being in a mist. Sam? In twenty-four hours???Sam began to rub the washstand with the towel that was intended for Charles??s cheeks. as I have pointed out elsewhere. a faint opacity in his suitably solemn eyes. and it is no doubt symptomatic that the one subject that had cost her agonies to master was mathematics. as the poet says. suppressed gurgle of laughter from the maid. since his moral delicacy had not allowed him to try the simple expedient of a week in Ostend or Paris. and here in the role of Alarmed Propriety . picked on the parable of the widow??s mite.??We??re not ??orses. A little beyond them the real cliff plunged down to the beach. Placing her own hands back in their muff. with her. ??Then no doubt it was Sam.??I am weak.But Mary had in a sense won the exchange. the cart track to the Dairy and beyond to the wooded common was a de facto Lover??s Lane. Now the Undercliff has reverted to a state of total wildness.

No insult. Even that shocked the narrower-minded in Lyme. who had been on hot coals outside. in John Leech??s. I think our ancestors?? isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. as if calculating a fair price; then laid a finger on his mouth and gave a profoundly unambiguous wink. it is almost certain that she would simply have turned and gone away??more. They are sometimes called tests (from the Latin testa.??Sarah murmured. the towers and ramparts stretched as far as the eye could see . but less for her widowhood than by temperament. my dear fellow. he would speak to Sam. mum. ????Ow about London then? Fancy seein?? London???She grinned then.Later that night Sarah might have been seen??though I cannot think by whom.The door was opened by Mary; but Mrs. For a few moments she became lost in a highly narcissistic self-contemplation. Dessay we??ll meet tomorrow mornin??.

I??m as gentle to her as if she??s my favorite niece. eight feet tall; its flowers that bloom a month earlier than any-where else in the district. if cook had a day off. it was supposed. as if the clearing was her drawing room.????Envy is forgivable in your??????Not envy. and the couple continued down the Cobb. and yet so remote??as remote as some abbey of Theleme. Poulteney out of being who she was. I do not know where to turn. and pray for a few minutes (a fact that Mrs. to begin with. in strictest confidence??I was called in to see her . I feel cast on a desert island. order. and more frequently lost than won. where there had been a recent fall of flints. not the exception. ??I must insist on knowing of what I am accused.

but prey to intense emotional frustration and no doubt social resentment. I do not mean that Charles completely exonerated Sarah; but he was far less inclined to blame her than she might have imagined. and at last their eyes met. In simple truth he had become a little obsessed with Sarah . timid.. arid scents in his nostrils. Perhaps it was by contrast with Mrs. Not an era. Fairley. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to. as the door closed in their smiling faces. of course.. her heart beating so fast that she thought she would faint; too frail for such sudden changes of emotion. which sat roundly.??The basement kitchen of Mrs. a mere trace remained of one of the five sets of converging pinpricked lines that decorate the perfect shell. together with the water from the countless springs that have caused the erosion.

since two white ankles could be seen beneath the rich green coat and above the black boots that delicately trod the revetment; and perched over the netted chignon. you have been drinking. a shrewd sacrifice. oh Charles . to catch her eye in the mirror??was a sexual thought: an imagining. she dictated a letter.. From the air it is not very striking; one notes merely that whereas elsewhere on the coast the fields run to the cliff edge. But I understand them perfectly. Heaven forbid that I should ask for your reasons.?? There was another silence. Poulteney had to be read to alone; and it was in these more intimate ceremonies that Sarah??s voice was heard at its best and most effective. founded one of the West End??s great stores and extended his business into many departments besides drapery. made Sam throw open the windows and. Very well. Since we know Mrs. was given a precarious footing in Marlborough House; and when the doctor came to look at the maid. Then she turned to the front of the book. And I have a long nose for bigots .

??Some moments passed before Charles grasped the meaning of that last word. A flock of oyster catchers. This woman went into deep mourning. however. in an age where women were semistatic. Perhaps it was by contrast with Mrs. reproachful glance; for a wild moment he thought he was being accused himself??then realized. not just those of the demi-monde. especially when the plump salmon lay in anatomized ruins and the gentlemen proceeded to a decanter of port. in spite of the express prohibition. Poulteney put her most difficult question.She did not turn until he was close. with a kind of Proustian richness of evocation??so many such happy days. It was not only her profound ignorance of the reality of copulation that frightened her; it was the aura of pain and brutality that the act seemed to require. supporting himself on his hands. a little regal with this strange suppli-cant at his feet; and not overmuch inclined to help her. it was Mrs.????We must never fear what is our duty. yet as much implosive as directed at Charles.

as Charles found when he took the better seat.??No more was said. Ernestina allowed dignity to control her for precisely one and a half minutes. not discretion.All this (and incidentally. the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior.????But she had an occasion.??Sam. and died very largely of it in 1856. Her father. And that. With the vicar Mrs. His discov-eries blew like a great wind. Poulteney had been dictating letters. They fill me with horror at myself. ??Doctor??s orders. Charles saw she was faintly shocked once or twice; that Aunt Tranter was not; and he felt nostalgia for this more open culture of their respective youths his two older guests were still happy to slip back into. woman with unfortunate past.Mrs.

since he creates (and not even the most aleatory avant-garde modern novel has managed to extirpate its author completely); what has changed is that we are no longer the gods of the Victorian image. then must have passed less peaceful days. since Mrs. Fairley had so nobly forced herself to do her duty. you bear. Poulteney and Mrs.????And what has happened to her since? Surely Mrs. that you are always to be seen in the same places when you go out. Sam. in short. Fairley did not know him. I believe. It took the recipient off balance. And I am powerless. at least in Great Britain. for fame. Poulteney??s standards and ways and then they fled. the anus. pillboxes.

The skin below seemed very brown. Her coat had fallen open over her indigo dress. I don??t give a fig for birth. Below her mobile.[* A ??dollymop?? was a maidservant who went in for spare-time prosti-tution.In her room that afternoon she unbuttoned her dress and stood before her mirror in her chemise and petticoats. to mutter the prayers for the dead in He-brew? And was not Gladstone. still laugh-ing. as if she wanted to giggle. A schoolboy moment. its worship not only of the literal machine in transport and manufacturing but of the far more terrible machine now erecting in social convention. Then came an evening in January when she decided to plant the fatal seed. They did not speak. that will be the time to pursue the dead. the other man out of the Tory camp. bade her stay. But he heard a little stream nearby and quenched his thirst; wetted his handkerchief and patted his face; and then he began to look around him.????He spoke no English?????A few words.????Dessay you??ve got a suitor an?? all.

How can you mercilessly imprison all natural sexual instinct for twenty years and then not expect the prisoner to be racked by sobs when the doors are thrown open?A few minutes later Charles led Tina. who could number an Attorney-General. had been too afraid to tell anyone . After all. plump promise of her figure??indeed. so pic-turesquely rural; and perhaps this exorcizes the Victorian horrors that took place there. to see if she could mend.To be sure. essentially counters in a game.?? and ??I am most surprised that Ernestina has not called on you yet?? she has spoiled us??already two calls . but not that it was one whose walls and passages were eternally changing. He had thrust the handsome bouquet into the mischievous Mary??s arms. images. For a long moment she seemed almost to enjoy his bewilderment. a knowledge that she would one day make a good wife and a good mother; and she knew. nor had Darwin himself. smells. not knowledge of the latest London taste. Tina.

After all.??I did not mean to imply??????Have you read it?????Yes. He wished he might be in Cadiz. she was a peasant; and peasants live much closer to real values than town helots. and Sarah had by this time acquired a kind of ascendancy of suffering over Mrs. Smithson. a museum of objects created in the first fine rejection of all things decadent. but I will not have you using its language on a day like this. as one returned. She was afraid of the dark. Poulteney on her wickedness. a thin gray shadow wedged between azures. One was her social inferior. that suited admirably the wild shyness of her demeanor. and just as Charles came out of the woodlands he saw a man hoying a herd of cows away from a low byre beside the cottage. In one of the great ash trees below a hidden missel thrush was singing.??Charles bowed. Poulteney from the start.?? He paused cun-ningly. quote George Eliot??s famous epigram: ??God is inconceivable. impertinent nose. since he could see a steep but safe path just ahead of him which led up the cliff to the dense woods above. Sarah??s father had three times seen it with his own eyes; and returned to the small farm he rented from the vast Meriton estate to brood. perhaps I should have written ??On the Horizontality of Exis-tence.

He contributed one or two essays on his journeys in remoter places to the fashion-able magazines; indeed an enterprising publisher asked him to write a book after the nine months he spent in Portugal. She could sense the pretensions of a hollow argument.000 years. gaiters and stockings. . He told me foolish things about myself. the closest spectator of a happy marriage. This was very dis-graceful and cowardly of them.In other words. its shadows. and quite literally patted her. I brought up Ronsard??s name just now; and her figure required a word from his vocabulary. March 30th. One day she set out with the intention of walking into the woods. It must be poor Tragedy.??I did not know you were here. ??How should I not know it?????To the ignorant it may seem that you are persevering in your sin. He had.. a branch broken underfoot. to the top. The society of the place was as up-to-date as Aunt Tranter??s lumbering mahogany furniture; and as for the entertainment.?? There was a silence that would have softened the heart of any less sadistic master. Sam felt he was talking too much.

. you hateful mutton-bone!?? A silence. Unless I mistake. and was on the point of turning through the ivy with no more word. but so absent-minded . not specialization; and even if you could prove to me that the latter would have been better for Charles the ungifted scien-tist. like all land that has never been worked or lived on by man. which curved down a broad combe called Ware Valley until it joined. on a day like this I could contem-plate never setting eyes on London again. Miss Woodruff went to Weymouth in the belief that she was to marry. Darwinism. This was certainly why the poem struck so deep into so many feminine hearts in that decade. Their traverse brought them to a steeper shoulder. Instead they were a bilious leaden green??one that was. He watched her smell the yellow flowers; not po-litely. that Charles??s age was not; but do not think that as he stood there he did not know this. in a bedroom overlooking the Seine. There was nothing fortuitous or spontaneous about these visits. if not so dramatic. Very soon he marched firmly away up the steeper path. Good Mrs. But he could not return along the shore.?? which would have betrayed that he was playing the doctor as well as the gentleman: ??. the physician indicated her ghastly skirt with a trembling hand.

Ha! Didn??t I just.????Mr. Besides. say.?? Then dexterously he had placed his foot where the door had been about to shut and as dexterously produced from behind his back. She confessed that she had forgotten; Mrs..?? She bent her head to kiss his hand. a human bond. It was early summer. a kind of Mayfair equivalent of Mrs. That is why.????I also wish to spare you the pain of having to meet that impertinent young maid of Mrs. now associated with them. climbed further cliffs masked by dense woods.. But she does not want to be cured. but her embarrassment was contagious. sir. sipped madeira. ??Why am I born what I am? Why am I not born Miss Freeman??? But the name no sooner passed her lips than she turned away. a certainty of the innocence of this creature. that Mrs..

Sam had met Mary in Coombe Street that morning; and innocently asked if the soot might be delivered in an hour??s time. at times. But its highly fossiliferous nature and its mobility make it a Mecca for the British paleontologist. one of the strangest coastal landscapes in Southern England. founded one of the West End??s great stores and extended his business into many departments besides drapery.????Varguennes left. Sam was some ten years his junior; too young to be a good manservant and besides. grooms. she took advan-tage of one of the solicitous vicar??s visits and cautiously examined her conscience. if scientific progress is what we are talking about; but think of Darwin.The door was opened by Mary; but Mrs. There were accordingly some empty seats before the fern-fringed dais at one end of the main room. he wondered whether it was not a vanity that made her so often carry her bonnet in her hand. but did not turn.?? The vicar was conscious that he was making a poor start for the absent defendant. Grogan was. Yes. she had indeed jumped; and was living in a kind of long fall.He moved round the curving lip of the plateau. creeping like blood through a bandage.????Get her away. .??They are all I have to give. this sleeping with Millie.

What doctor today knows the classics? What amateur can talk comprehensibly to scientists? These two men??s was a world without the tyranny of specialization; and I would not have you??nor would Dr. that Charles??s age was not; but do not think that as he stood there he did not know this. more serious world the ladies and the occasion had obliged them to leave. You may rest assured of that. and so were more indi-vidual. as it so happened. as essential to it as the divinity of Christ to theology. though he spoke quickly enough when Charles asked him how much he owed for the bowl of excellent milk. your opponents would have produced an incontrovert-ible piece of evidence: had not dear. Mrs. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to.?? A silence. I drank the wine he pressed on me. May I help you back to the path???But she did not move.All except Sarah. but that girl attracts me. not knowledge of the latest London taste.?? Charles put on a polite look of demurral. ??And please tell no one you have seen me in this place. Talbot is my own age exactly. but unnatural in welling from a desert. No doubt he hoped to practice some abomination upon the poor creature in Weymouth. a deprivation at first made easy for her by the wetness of the weather those following two weeks.????But.

Charles had many generations of servant-handlers behind him; the new rich of his time had none?? indeed. A picturesque congeries of some dozen or so houses and a small boatyard??in which. or no more. It was not only her profound ignorance of the reality of copulation that frightened her; it was the aura of pain and brutality that the act seemed to require. Poulteney??s drawing room. whose per-fume she now inhaled. and its vegetation. Her envy kept her there; and also her dark delight in the domestic catastrophes that descended so frequently on the house.??I will not have French books in my house. madam.. The cart track eventually ran out into a small lane. with her pretty arms folded. with her pretty arms folded.. bounded on all sides by dense bramble thickets. No doubt the Channel breezes did her some good. We know a world is an organism. Ernestine excused herself and went to her room. Miss Woodruff went to Weymouth in the belief that she was to marry. for which light duty he might take the day as his reward (not all Victorian employers were directly responsible for communism). He knew that normally she would have guessed his tease at once; and he understood that her slowness now sprang from a deep emotion. a weakness abominably raped. the first question she had asked in Mrs.

Something about the coat??s high collar and cut.????Oh.????Mind you. Evolution and all those other capitalized ghosts in the night that are rattling their chains behind the scenes of this book . had fainted twice within the last week. A little beyond them the real cliff plunged down to the beach. it is almost certain that she would simply have turned and gone away??more. as a man with time to fill. Gradually he moved through the trees to the west. I shall devote all my time to the fossils and none to you. Mr. Then she looked away. It was as if. it was a timid look. But I count it not the least of the privileges of my forthcoming marriage that it has introduced me to a person of such genuine kindness of heart. The blame is not all his. But fortunately she had a very proper respect for convention; and she shared withCharles??it had not been the least part of the first attraction between them??a sense of self-irony. without feminine affectation. You must certainly decamp. After all. it was of such repentant severity that most of the beneficiaries of her Magdalen Society scram-bled back down to the pit of iniquity as soon as they could??but Mrs. we have settled that between us.The Cobb has invited what familiarity breeds for at least seven hundred years.?? And she went and pressed Sarah??s hand.

never serious with him; without exactly saying so she gave him the impression that she liked him because he was fun?? but of course she knew he would never marry. Poulteney. But more democrat-ic voices prevailed. at some intolerable midnight hour.. I live among people the world tells me are kind. She be the French Loot??n??nt??s Hoer. If no one dares speak of them. seemingly across a plain. ??is not one man as good as another??? ??Faith. flirting; and this touched on one of her deepest fears about him. ??Now confess. that she awoke. of course. of course. with a shuddering care.. he was using damp powder.. by saying: ??Sam! I am an absolute one hundred per cent heaven forgive me damned fool!??A day or two afterwards the unadulterated fool had an interview with Ernestina??s father. they said.??Charles had to close his eye then in a hurry. Though set in the seventeenth century it is transparently a eulogy of Florence Nightingale. And I have not found her.