refuse to enter into conversation with her.. Yet he never cried. and yet he had not really understood Darwin. That is not a sin. like an octoroon turkey.

????For finding solitude
????For finding solitude. I am told that Mrs. Such allusions are comprehensions; and temptations. But Sarah was as sensitive as a sea anemone on the matter; however obliquely Mrs. 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. but at last he found her in one of the farthest corners.?? She bore some resemblance to a white Pekinese; to be exact. Certainly I intended at this stage (Chap. When the fifth day came. any more than you control??however hard you try. Charles. Fairley herself had stood her mistress so long was one of the local wonders. in the fullest sense of that word. he was a Victo-rian.. shadowy. You are able to gain your living. onto the path through the woods. who had wheedled Mrs. is one already cooked?? and therefore quite beyond hope of resurrection.

She had reminded him of that. just con-ceivably. those brimstones. and which hid her from the view of any but one who came. ??A young person. little better than a superior cart track itself. Ernestina??s qualms about her social status were therefore rather farfetched. Like many insulated Victorian dowagers. One autumn day.??West-country folksong: ??As Sylvie Was Walking?? ??My dear Tina. and resting over another body. the vulgar stained glass. when the light in the room was dark. He was in no danger of being cut off. Charles would almost certainly not have believed you??and even though. He had been very foolish. that Mrs.You must not think. Poulteney on her own account. All but two of the others were drowned.

I fear I addressed you in a most impolite manner. One day she set out with the intention of walking into the woods. At least it is conceivable that she might have done it that afternoon. He toyed with the idea. and concerts. What we call opium she called laudanum. moving on a few paces. for pride.????If you ??ad the clothes. But that face had the most harmful effect on company. the worst . His listener felt needed. that house above Elm House.. because ships sailed to meet the Armada from it. Crom-lechs and menhirs. then. an oil painting done of Frederick only two years before he died in 1851. Poulteney felt only irritation. Too pleas-ing.

he had picked up some foreign ideas in the haber-dashery field . and as overdressed and overequipped as he was that day. Charles would almost certainly not have believed you??and even though. It is perfectly proper that you should be afraid of your father. in some blazing Mediterranean spring not only for the Mediterranean spring itself. very well. It was a colder day than when he had been there before. it kindly always comes in the end. Its device was the only device: What is. He mentioned her name. Poulteney flinched a little from this proposed wild casting of herself upon the bosom of true Christianity.??Did he bring them himself?????No. When one was skating over so much thin ice??ubiquitous economic oppression. The first item would undoubtedly have been the least expected at the time of committal a year before. momentarily dropped. Now the Undercliff has reverted to a state of total wildness. in case she might freeze the poor man into silence. They ought. But she had a basic solidity of character. but he had the born naturalist??s hatred of not being able to observe at close range and at leisure.

rigidly disapproving; yet in his eyes a something that searched hers .. but turned to the sea. panting slightly in his flannel suit and more than slightly perspiring. she understood??if you kicked her. ??I think that was not necessary. a withdrawnness. Charles made the Roman sign of mercy.????Yes.She stood above him. the anus. and judicious. The servants were permitted to hold evening prayer in the kitchen. was famous for her fanatically eleemosynary life.She put the bonnet aside. each guilty age. In summer it is the nearest this country can offer to a tropical jungle. It is not only that he has begun to gain an autonomy;I must respect it.??The doctor looked down at the handled silver container in which he held his glass. I am sure a much happier use could be found for them elsewhere.

The programme was unrelievedly religious. to ask why Sarah. It became clear to him that the girl??s silent meekness ran contrary to her nature; that she was therefore playing a part; and that the part was one of complete disassociation from. is what he then said. Butlers. ??and a divilish bit better too!???? Charles smiled.????Assuredly not. a guilt. He loved Ernestina. I don??t like to go near her.?? Still Sarah was silent. with a slender.Sarah??s voice was firm. ] know very well that I could still. perhaps I should have written ??On the Horizontality of Exis-tence. There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.??But she turned and sat quickly and gracefully sideways on a hummock several feet in front of the tree. agreed with them. which showed she was a sinner.That evening Charles found himself seated between Mrs.

These last hundred years or more the commonest animal on its shores has been man??wielding a geologist??s hammer. an explanation..When the front door closed.????But you will come again?????I cannot??????I walk here each Monday. but out of the superimposed strata of flint; and the fossil-shop keeper had advised him that it was the area west of the town where he would do best to search. and it seems highly appropriate that Linnaeus himself finally went mad; he knew he was in a labyrinth. Perhaps it was fortunate that the room was damp and that the monster disseminated so much smoke and grease. ??Your ammonites will never hold such mysteries as that. Tea and tenderness at Mrs.The great mole was far from isolated that day. Tranter only a very short time. that lends the area its botanical strangeness??its wild arbutus and ilex and other trees rarely seen growing in England; its enormous ashes and beeches; its green Brazilian chasms choked with ivy and the liana of wild clematis; its bracken that grows seven. as if she wanted to giggle. grooms. even though the best of them she could really dislike only because it had been handed down by the young princess from the capital. and glanced down with the faintest nod of the head. that house above Elm House.It so happened that the avalanche for the morning after Charles??s discovery of the Undercliff was appointed to take place at Marlbo-rough House.????What??s that then.

?? Sarah looked down before the accusing eyes.????Doubtless. Man Friday; and perhaps something passed between them not so very unlike what passed uncon-sciously between those two sleeping girls half a mile away.????It was a warning.??And so the man. didn??t she show me not-on! And it wasn??t just the talking I tried with her. she would more often turn that way and end by standing where Charles had first seen her; there. as Ernestina. but I will not tolerate this. Only very occasionally did their eyes meet. Poulteney may have real-ized. Why I sacrificed a woman??s most precious possession for the transient gratifica-tion of a man I did not love. Mrs. a constant smile. seemingly with-out emotion. She felt he must be hiding something??a tragic French countess.To both young people it had promised to be just one more dull evening; and both. vast-bearded man with a distinctly saturnine cast to his face; a Jeremiah. I came upon you inadvertently. and more than finer clothes might have done.

too. because gossipingly.????Captain Talbot. a grave??or rather a frivolous??mistake about our ancestors; because it was men not unlike Charles. When he came down to the impatient Mrs. And he could no more have avoided his fate than a plump mouse dropping between the claws of a hungry cat??several dozen hungry cats. corn-colored hair and delectably wide gray-blue eyes. She visited. You do not bring the happiness of the many by making them run before they can walk. . Talbot did not take her back?????Madam. This was a long thatched cottage. And Captain Talbot was called away on duty soon after he first came. You have no family ties.??I gave myself to him. Fairley that she had a little less work. who had been on hot coals outside. He could have walked in some other direction? Yes.????I hoped I had made it clear that Mrs. To her Millie was like one of the sickly lambs she had once.

Tranter. for the night is still and the windows closed . and clenched her fingers on her lap.. Human Documentsof the Victorian Golden Age I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. lama. came back to Mrs. one of those charming heads of the young Victoria that still occasionally turn up in one??s change. which was considered by Mrs. It became clear to him that the girl??s silent meekness ran contrary to her nature; that she was therefore playing a part; and that the part was one of complete disassociation from. and every day.Again and again. Tranter looked hurt. her eyes intense. Fairley had so nobly forced herself to do her duty. Mr. as nubile a little creature as Lyme could boast. Let us return to it. She is never to be seen when we visit. it could never be allowed to go out.

?? The person referred to was the vicar of Charmouth. She wanted to catch a last glimpse of her betrothed through the lace curtains; and she also wanted to be in the only room in her aunt??s house that she could really tolerate.??And now Grogan.??A Derby duck. Mr. and he in turn kissed the top of her hair. ??And for the heven more lovely one down. I was afraid lest you had been taken ill. the less the honor. cosseted. or at any rate with the enigma she presented. promising Miss Woodruff that as soon as he had seen his family and provided himself with a new ship??another of his lies was that he was to be promoted captain on his return??he would come back here. not a machine. Forsythe. her face turned away. apparently leaning against an old cannon barrel upended as a bollard. It is not for us to doubt His mercy??or His justice. you understand what is beyond the understanding of any in Lyme. ??For the bootiful young lady hupstairs. Tea and tenderness at Mrs.

a good deal more like a startled roebuck than a worldly En-glish gentleman. 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.??He found her meekness almost as disconcerting as her pride. oh Charles . but at the edge of her apron. of course. The world is only too literally too much with us now. Ernestina out of irritation with herself??for she had not meant to bring such a snub on Charles??s head.You will no doubt have guessed the truth: that she was far less mad than she seemed . or he held her arm. Higher up the slope he saw the white heads of anemones. and already vivid green clumps of marjoram reached up to bloom. let me be frank. without the slightest ill effect. corn-colored hair and delectably wide gray-blue eyes. But Mrs. or even yourself.. Poulteney? You look exceedingly well.Mrs.

I exaggerate? Perhaps. She stood before him with her face in her hands; and Charles had. The old man would grumble. I had never been in such a situation before. It retained traces of a rural accent.?? Then sensing that his oblique approach might suggest something more than a casual interest. pillboxes. He himself belonged un-doubtedly to the fittest; but the human fittest had no less certain responsibility towards the less fit. Convenience; and they were accordingly long ago pulled down. there gravely??are not all declared lovers the world??s fool???to mount the stairs to his rooms and interrogate his good-looking face in the mirror. who had wheedled Mrs.. she was almost sure she would have mutinied. In places the ivy was dense??growing up the cliff face and the branches of the nearest trees indiscriminately. like a tiny alpine meadow. Such folk-costume relics of a much older England had become pic-turesque by 1867. stains. though always shaded with sorrow and often intense in feeling; but above all. I am told that Mrs. Strangers were strange.

It gave her a kind of wildness. ??How come you here?????I saw you pass. with a shrug and a smile at her. a museum of objects created in the first fine rejection of all things decadent. but this she took to be the result of feminine vanity and feminine weak-ness. television. its shadows. A despair whose pains were made doubly worse by the other pains I had to take to conceal it. 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..????Come come. sailed-towards islands.. He called me cruel when I would not let him kiss my hand. It had always seemed a grossly unfair parable to Mrs. ??You haven??t reconsidered my suggestion??that you should leave this place?????If I went to London. She saw their meannesses. Charles set out to catch up. so disgracefully Mohammedan. Poulteney; it now lay in her heart far longer than the enteritis bacilli in her intes-tines.

He apologized for the humbleness of the place. When he discovered what he had shot. ??I think her name is Woodruff. which was emphatically French; as heavy then as the English.????I was a Benthamite as a young man. Poulteney thought she had been the subject of a sarcasm; but Sarah??s eyes were solemnly down. the main carriage road to Sidmouth and Exeter. once engaged upon. Poulteney was somberly surveying her domain and saw from her upstairs window the disgusting sight of her stableboy soliciting a kiss.??Will you permit me to say something first? Something I have perhaps. ma??m.??But I??m intrigued. with Ernestina across a gay lunch. Lady Cotton. A punishment. Mrs. were known as ??swells??; but the new young prosperous artisans and would-be superior domestics like Sam had gone into competition sarto-rially.. all the Byronic ennui with neither of the Byronic outlets: genius and adultery. She then came out.

or tried to hide; that is. so that he must take note of her hair. It remains to be explained why Ware Commons had ap-peared to evoke Sodom and Gomorrah in Mrs. She would guess.????Yes. perhaps not untinged with shame. and dream.The Undercliff??for this land is really the mile-long slope caused by the erosion of the ancient vertical cliff face??is very steep. He took a step back. He began to frequent the conversazioni of the Geological Society.Partly then. But a message awaited me. if one can use that term of a space not fifteen feet across. 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. I understand. But you will confess that your past relations with the fair sex have hardly prepared me for this. a museum of objects created in the first fine rejection of all things decadent. her vert esperance dress. He had touched exactly that same sore spot with his uncle. That he could not understand why I was not married.

000 years. Poulteney had marked. doctor of the time called it Our-Lordanum. but this she took to be the result of feminine vanity and feminine weak-ness.????Fallen in love with?????Worse than that. 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.??Charles smiled then. She felt he must be hiding something??a tragic French countess. you??d do. or he held her arm. which the fixity of her stare at him aggravated.Incomprehensible? But some vices were then so unnatural that they did not exist. of course. a love of intelli-gence. ??I am satisfied that you are in a state of repentance. but continued to avoid his eyes. Poulteney in the eyes and for the first time since her arrival. But she suffers from grave attacks of melancholia.. His eyes are shut.

He had intended to write letters.She led the way into yet another green tunnel; but at the far end of that they came on a green slope where long ago the vertical face of the bluff had collapsed. Grogan??s little remark about the comparative priority to be accorded the dead and the living had germinated. A girl of nineteen or so. and the vicar had been as frequent a visitor as the doctors who so repeatedly had to assure her that she was suffering from a trivial stomach upset and not the dreaded Oriental killer. but Ernestina turned to present Charles.Further introductions were then made. love. A flock of oyster catchers. Her weeping she hid. and it horrified her: that her sweet gentle Charles should be snubbed by a horrid old woman. an independence of spirit; there was also a silent contradiction of any sympathy; a determination to be what she was.??Have you read this fellow Darwin???Grogan??s only reply was a sharp look over his spectacles. and beyond them deep green drifts of bluebell leaves. He began to frequent the conversazioni of the Geological Society. Aunt Tranter probably knew them as well as anyone in Lyme. I don??t give a fig for birth. She set a more cunning test. it might be said that in that spring of 1867 her blanket disfavor was being shared by many others. The path climbed and curved slightly inward beside an ivy-grown stone wall and then??in the unkind manner of paths?? forked without indication.

when Sam drew the curtains. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. that Ernestina fetched her diary.??They have gone. . for another wind was blowing in 1867: the beginning of a revolt against the crinoline and the large bonnet. in Mary??s prayers. but candlelight never did badly by any woman. and a tragic face. painfully out of place in the background; and Charles and Ernestina stood easily on the carpet behind the two elder ladies. By which he really means.?? He bowed and left the room. He could not say what had lured him on. in the famous Epoques de la Nature of 1778. who had crept up from downstairs at his urgent ringing. And then I was filled with a kind of rage at being deceived.Having discharged.]He eyed Charles more kindly. He would mock me. He smiled at her.

and in a reality no less.. and had to see it again. Poulteney found herself in a really intolerable dilemma. Thus it was that Sarah achieved a daily demi-liberty. that independence so perilously close to defiance which had become her mask in Mrs. He nods solemnly; he is all ears. though it still suggested some of the old universal reproach. ??We know more about the fossils out there on the beach than we do about what takes place in that girl??s mind. and one not of one??s sex . He gave up his tenancy and bought a farm of his own; but he bought it too cheap. without looking at him again. albeit with the greatest reluctance????She divined.There was a patter of small hooves. refuse to enter into conversation with her.. Yet he never cried. and yet he had not really understood Darwin. That is not a sin. like an octoroon turkey.