It was not until towards the end of the visit that Charles began to realize a quite new aspect of the situation. 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 disapprobation of, her mistress. Mrs. Poulteney and Mrs. Tranter respectively gloomed and bubbled their way through the schedule of polite conversational subjects—short, perhaps, in number, but endlessly long in process… servants; the weather; impending births, funerals and marriages; Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone (this seemingly for Charles’s benefit, though it allowed Mrs. Poulteney to condemn severely the personal principles of the first and the political ones of the second); [4] then on to last Sunday’s sermon, the deficiencies of the local tradesmen and thence naturally back to servants. As Charles smiled and raised eyebrows and nodded his way through this familiar purgatory, he decided that the silent Miss Woodruff was laboring under a sense of injustice—and, very interestingly to a shrewd observer, doing singularly little to conceal it.

This was perceptive of Charles, for he had noticed something that had escaped almost everyone else in Lyme. But perhaps his deduction would have remained at the state of a mere suspicion, had not his hostess delivered herself of a characteristic Poulteneyism.

“That girl I dismissed—she has given you no further trouble?”

Mrs. Tranter smiled. “Mary? I would not part with her for the world.”

“Mrs. Fairley informs me that she saw her only this morning talking with a person.” Mrs. Poulteney used “person” as two patriotic Frenchmen might have said “Nazi” during the occupation. “A young person. Mrs. Fairley did not know him.”

Ernestina gave Charles a sharp, reproachful glance; for a wild moment he thought he was being accused himself—then realized.

He smiled. “Then no doubt it was Sam. My servant, madam,” he added for Mrs. Poulteney’s benefit.

Ernestina avoided his eyes. “I meant to tell you. I too saw them talking together yesterday.”

“But surely… we are not going to forbid them to speak together if they meet?”

“There is a world of difference between what may be accepted in London and what is proper here. I think you should speak to Sam. The girl is too easily led.”

Mrs. Tranter looked hurt. “Ernestina my dear… she may be high-spirited. But I’ve never had the least cause to—”

“My dear, kind aunt, I am well aware how fond you are of her.”

Charles heard the dryness in her voice and came to the hurt Mrs. Tranter’s defense.

“I wish that more mistresses were as fond. There is no surer sign of a happy house than a happy maidservant at its door.”

Ernestina looked down at that, with a telltale little tightening of her lips. Good Mrs. Tranter blushed slightly at the compliment, and also looked down. Mrs. Poulteney had listened to this crossfire with some pleasure; and she now decided that she disliked Charles sufficiently to be rude to him.

“Your future wife is a better judge than you are of such matters, Mr. Smithson. I know the girl in question. I had to dismiss her. If you were older you would know that one cannot be too strict in such matters.”

And she too looked down, her way of indicating that a subject had been pronounced on by her, and was therefore at a universal end.

“I bow to your far greater experience, madam.”

But his tone was unmistakably cold and sarcastic.

The three ladies all sat with averted eyes: Mrs. Tranter out of embarrassment, Ernestina out of irritation with herself—for she had not meant to bring such a snub on Charles’s head, and wished she had kept silent; and Mrs. Poulteney out of being who she was. It was thus that a look unseen by these ladies did at last pass between Sarah and Charles. It was very brief, but it spoke worlds; two strangers had recognized they shared a common enemy. For the first time she did not look through him, but at him; and Charles resolved that he would have his revenge on Mrs. Poulteney, and teach Ernestina an evidently needed lesson in common humanity.

He remembered, too, his recent passage of arms with Ernestina’s father on the subject of Charles Darwin. Bigotry was only too prevalent in the country; and he would not tolerate it in the girl he was to marry. He would speak to Sam; by heavens, yes, he would speak to Sam.

How he spoke, we shall see in a moment. But the general tenor of that conversation had, in fact, already been forestalled, since Mrs. Poulteney’s “person” was at that moment sitting in the downstairs kitchen at Mrs. Tranter’s.

Sam had met Mary in Coombe Street that morning; and innocently asked if the soot might be delivered in an hour’s time. He knew, of course, that the two ladies would be away at Marlborough House.

The conversation in that kitchen was surprisingly serious, really a good deal more so than that in Mrs. Poulteney’s drawing room. Mary leaned against the great dresser, with her pretty arms folded, and a strand of the corn-colored hair escaping from under her dusting cap. Now and then she asked questions, but Sam did most of the talking, though it was mainly to the scrubbed deal of the long table. Only very occasionally did their eyes meet, and then by mutual accord they looked shyly away from each other.

15

When the next morning came and Charles took up his ungentle probing of Sam’s Cockney heart, he was not in fact betraying Ernestina, whatever may have been the case with Mrs. Poulteney. They had left shortly following the exchange described above, and Ernestina had been very silent on the walk downhill to Broad Street. Once there she had seen to it that she was left alone with Charles; and no sooner had the door shut on her aunt’s back than she burst into tears (without the usual preliminary self-accusations) and threw herself into his arms. It was the first disagreement that had ever darkened their love, and it horrified her: that her sweet gentle Charles should be snubbed by a horrid old woman, and all because of a fit of pique on her part. When he had dutifully patted her back and dried her eyes, she said as much. Charles stole a kiss on each wet eyelid as a revenge, and forthwith forgave her.

“And my sweet, silly Tina, why should we deny to others what has made us both so happy? What if this wicked maid and my rascal Sam should fall in love? Are we to throw stones?”

She smiled up at him from her chair. “This is what comes of trying to behave like a grown-up.”

He knelt beside her and took her hand. “Sweet child. You will always be that to me.” She bent her head to kiss his hand, and he in turn kissed the top of her hair.

She murmured, “Eighty-eight days. I cannot bear the thought.”

“Let us elope. And go to Paris.”

“Charles… what wickedness!”

She raised her head, and he kissed her on the lips. She sank back against the corner of the chair, dewy-eyed, blushing, her heart beating so fast that she thought she would faint; too frail for such sudden changes of emotion. He retained her hand, and pressed it playfully.

“If the worthy Mrs. P. could see us now?”

She covered her face with her hands, and began to laugh, choked giggles that communicated themselves to Charles and forced him to get to his feet and go to the window, and pretend to be dignified—but he could not help looking back, and caught her eyes between her fingers. There were more choked sounds in the silent room. To both came the same insight: the wonderful new freedoms their age brought, how wonderful it was to be thoroughly modern young people, with a thoroughly modern sense of humor, a millennium away from…