It had begun, this bizarre change, one morning only a few weeks after Miss Sarah had taken up her duties, that is, her responsibility for Mrs. Poulteney’s soul. The old lady had detected with her usual flair a gross dereliction of duty: the upstairs maid whose duty it was unfailingly each Tuesday to water the ferns in the second drawing room—Mrs. Poulteney kept one for herself and one for company—had omitted to do so. The ferns looked greenly forgiving; but Mrs. Poulteney was whitely the contrary. The culprit was summoned. She confessed that she had forgotten; Mrs. Poulteney might ponderously have overlooked that, but the girl had a list of two or three recent similar peccadilloes on her charge sheet. Her knell had rung; and Mrs. Poulteney began, with the grim sense of duty of a bulldog about to sink its teeth into a burglar’s ankles, to ring it.
“I will tolerate much, but I will not tolerate this.”
“I’ll never do it again, mum.”
“You will most certainly never do it again in my house.”
“Oh, mum. Please, mum.”
Mrs. Poulteney allowed herself to savor for a few earnest, perceptive moments the girl’s tears.
“Mrs. Fairley will give you your wages.”
Miss Sarah was present at this conversation, since Mrs. Poulteney had been dictating letters, mostly to bishops or at least in the tone of voice with which one addresses bishops, to her. She now asked a question; and the effect was remarkable. It was, to begin with, the first question she had asked in Mrs. Poulteney’s presence that was not directly connected with her duties. Secondly, it tacitly contradicted the old lady’s judgment. Thirdly, it was spoken not to Mrs. Poulteney, but to the girl.
“Are you quite well, Millie?”
Whether it was the effect of a sympathetic voice in that room, or the girl’s condition, she startled Mrs. Poulteney by sinking to her knees, at the same time shaking her head and covering her face. Miss Sarah was swiftly beside her; and within the next minute had established that the girl was indeed not well, had fainted twice within the last week, had been too afraid to tell anyone…
When, some time later, Miss Sarah returned from the room in which the maids slept, and where Millie had now been put to bed, it was Mrs. Poulteney’s turn to ask an astounding question.
“What am I to do?”
Miss Sarah had looked her in the eyes, and there was that in her look which made her subsequent words no more than a concession to convention.
“As you think best, ma’m.”
So the rarest flower, forgiveness, was given a precarious footing in Marlborough House; and when the doctor came to look at the maid, and pronounced green sickness, Mrs. Poulteney discovered the perverse pleasures of seeming truly kind. There followed one or two other incidents, which, if not so dramatic, took the same course; but only one or two, since Sarah made it her business to do her own forestalling tours of inspection. Sarah had twigged Mrs. Poulteney, and she was soon as adept at handling her as a skilled cardinal, a weak pope; though for nobler ends.
The second, more expectable item on Mrs. Poulteney’s hypothetical list would have been: “Her voice.” If the mistress was defective in more mundane matters where her staff was concerned, she took exceedingly good care of their spiritual welfare. There was the mandatory double visit to church on Sundays; and there was also a daily morning service—a hymn, a lesson, and prayers—over which the old lady pompously presided. Now it had always vexed her that not even her most terrible stares could reduce her servants to that state of utter meekness and repentance which she considered their God (let alone hers) must require. Their normal face was a mixture of fear at Mrs. Poulteney and dumb incomprehension—like abashed sheep rather than converted sinners. But Sarah changed all that.
Hers was certainly a very beautiful voice, controlled and clear, though always shaded with sorrow and often intense in feeling; but above all, it was a sincere voice. For the first time in her ungrateful little world Mrs. Poulteney saw her servants with genuinely attentive and sometimes positively religious faces.
That was good; but there was a second bout of worship to be got through. The servants were permitted to hold evening prayer in the kitchen, under Mrs. Fairley’s indifferent eye and briskly wooden voice. Upstairs, Mrs. 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. Once or twice she had done the incredible, by drawing from those pouched, invincible eyes a tear. Such an effect was in no way intended, but sprang from a profound difference between the two women. Mrs. Poulteney believed in a God that had never existed; and Sarah knew a God that did.
She did not create in her voice, like so many worthy priests and dignitaries asked to read the lesson, an unconscious alienation effect of the Brechtian kind (“This is your mayor reading a passage from the Bible”) but the very contrary: she spoke directly of the suffering of Christ, of a man born in Nazareth, as if there was no time in history, almost, at times, when the light in the room was dark, and she seemed to forget Mrs. Poulteney’s presence, as if she saw Christ on the Cross before her. One day she came to the passage Lama, lama, sabachthane me; and as she read the words she faltered and was silent. Mrs. Poulteney turned to look at her, and realized Sarah’s face was streaming with tears. That moment redeemed an infinity of later difficulties; and perhaps, since the old lady rose and touched the girl’s drooping shoulder, will one day redeem Mrs. Poulteney’s now well-grilled soul.
I risk making Sarah sound like a bigot. But she had no theology; as she saw through people, she saw through the follies, the vulgar stained glass, the narrow literalness of the Victorian church. She saw that there was suffering; and she prayed that it would end. I cannot say what she might have been in our age; in a much earlier one I believe she would have been either a saint or an emperor’s mistress. Not because of religiosity on the one hand, or sexuality on the other, but because of that fused rare power that was her essence—understanding and emotion.
There were other items: an ability—formidable in itself and almost unique—not often to get on Mrs. Poulteney’s nerves, a quiet assumption of various domestic responsibilities that did not encroach, a skill with her needle.
On Mrs. Poulteney’s birthday Sarah presented her with an antimacassar—not that any chair Mrs. Poulteney sat in needed such protection, but by that time all chairs without such an adjunct seemed somehow naked—exquisitely embroidered with a border of ferns and lilies-of-the-valley. It pleased Mrs. Poulteney highly; and it slyly and permanently—perhaps after all Sarah really was something of a skilled cardinal—reminded the ogress, each time she took her throne, of her protegee’s forgivable side. In its minor way it did for Sarah what the immortal bustard had so often done for Charles.
Finally—and this had been the crudest ordeal for the victim—Sarah had passed the tract test. Like many insulated Victorian dowagers, Mrs. Poulteney placed great reliance on the power of the tract. Never mind that not one in ten of the recipients could read them—indeed, quite a number could not read anything—never mind that not one in ten of those who could and did read them understood what the reverend writers were on about… but each time Sarah departed with a batch to deliver Mrs. Poulteney saw an equivalent number of saved souls chalked up to her account in heaven; and she also saw the French Lieutenant’s Woman doing public penance, an added sweet. So did the rest of Lyme, or poorer Lyme; and were kinder than Mrs. Poulteney may have realized.
Sarah evolved a little formula: “From Mrs. Poulteney. Pray read and take to your heart.” At the same time she looked the cottager in the eyes. Those who had knowing smiles soon lost them; and the loquacious found their words die in their mouths. I think they learned rather more from those eyes than from the close-typed pamphlets thrust into their hands.