Charles and his ladies were in the doomed building for a concert. It was not, of course—it being Lent—a secular concert. The programme was unrelievedly religious. Even that shocked the narrower-minded in Lyme, who professed, at least in public, a respect for Lent equal to that of the most orthodox Muslim for Ramadan. There were accordingly some empty seats before the fern-fringed dais at one end of the main room, where the concerts were held.
Our broader-minded three had come early, 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. It gave the ladies an excellent opportunity to assess and comment on their neighbors’ finery; and of course to show off their own. Even Ernestina, with all her contempt for the provinces, fell a victim to this vanity. At least here she knew she would have few rivals in the taste and luxury of her clothes; and the surreptitious glances at her little “plate” hat (no stuffy old bonnets for her) with its shamrock-and-white ribbons, her vert esperance dress, her mauve-and-black pelisse, her Balmoral boots, were an agreeable compensation for all the boredom inflicted at other times.
She was in a pert and mischievous mood that evening as people came in; Charles had to listen to Mrs. Tranter’s commentary—places of residence, relatives, ancestry—with one ear, and to Tina’s sotto voce wickednesses with the other. The John-Bull-like lady over there, he learned from the aunt, was “Mrs. Tomkins, the kindest old soul, somewhat hard of hearing, that house above Elm House, her son is in India”; while another voice informed him tersely, “A perfect gooseberry.” According to Ernestina, there were far more gooseberries than humans patiently, because gossipingly, waiting for the concert to begin. Every decade invents such a useful noun-and-epithet; in the 1860s “gooseberry” meant “all that is dreary and old-fashioned”; today Ernestina would have called those worthy concert-goers square… which was certainly Mrs. Tomkins’s shape, at least from the back.
But at last the distinguished soprano from Bristol appeared, together with her accompanist, the even more distinguished Signer Ritornello (or some such name, for if a man was a pianist he must be Italian) and Charles was free to examine his conscience.
At least he began in the spirit of such an examination; as if it was his duty to do so, which hid the awkward fact that it was also his pleasure to do so. In simple truth he had become a little obsessed with Sarah… or at any rate with the enigma she presented. He had—or so he believed—fully intended, when he called to escort the ladies down Broad Street to the Assembly Rooms, to tell them of his meeting—though of course on the strict understanding that they must speak to no one about Sarah’s wanderings over Ware Commons. But somehow the moment had not seemed opportune. There was first of all a very material dispute to arbitrate upon—Ernestina’s folly in wearing grenadine when it was still merino weather, since “Thou shall not wear grenadine till May” was one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine commandments her parents had tacked on to the statutory ten. Charles killed concern with compliment; but if Sarah was not mentioned, it was rather more because he had begun to feel that he had allowed himself to become far too deeply engaged in conversation with her—no, he had lost all sense of proportion. He had been very foolish, allowing a misplaced chivalry to blind his common sense; and the worst of it was that it was all now deucedly difficult to explain to Ernestina.
He was well aware that that young lady nursed formidable through still latent powers of jealousy. At worst, she would find his behavior incomprehensible and be angry with him; at best, she would only tease him—but it was a poor “at best.” He did not want to be teased on this subject. Charles could perhaps have trusted himself with fewer doubts to Mrs. Tranter. She, he knew, certainly shared his charitable concern; but duplicity was totally foreign to her. He could not ask her not to tell Ernestina; and if Tina should learn of the meeting through her aunt, then he would be in very hot water indeed. On his other feelings, his mood toward Ernestina that evening, he hardly dared to dwell. Her humor did not exactly irritate him, but it seemed unusually and unwelcomely artificial, as if it were something she had put on with her French hat and her new pelisse; to suit them rather than the occasion. It also required a response from him… a corresponding twinkle in his eyes, a constant smile, which he obliged her with, but also artificially, so that they seemed enveloped in a double pretense. Perhaps it was the gloom of so much Handel and Bach, or the frequency of the discords between the prima donna and her aide, but he caught himself stealing glances at the girl beside him—looking at her as if he saw her for the first time, as if she were a total stranger to him. She was very pretty, charming… but was not that face a little characterless, a little monotonous with its one set paradox of demureness and dryness? If you took away those two qualities, what remained? A vapid selfishness. But this cruel thought no sooner entered Charles’s head than he dismissed it. How could the only child of rich parents be anything else? Heaven knows—why else had he fallen for her?—Ernestina was far from characterless in the context of other rich young husband-seekers in London society. But was that the only context—the only market for brides? It was a fixed article of Charles’s creed that he was not like the great majority of his peers and contemporaries. That was why he had traveled so much; he found English society too hidebound, English solemnity too solemn, English thought too moralistic, English religion too bigoted. So? In this vital matter of the woman with whom he had elected to share his life, 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.
Under this swarm of waspish self-inquiries he began to feel sorry for himself—a brilliant man trapped, a Byron tamed; and his mind wandered back to Sarah, to visual images, attempts to recollect that face, that mouth, that generous mouth. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him, too tenuous, perhaps too general, to trace to any source in his past; but it unsettled him and haunted him, by calling to some hidden self he hardly knew existed. He said it to himself: It is the stupidest thing, but that girl attracts me. It seemed clear to him that it was not Sarah in herself who attracted him—how could she, he was betrothed—but some emotion, some possibility she symbolized. She made him aware of a deprivation. His future had always seemed to him of vast potential; and now suddenly it was a fixed voyage to a known place. She had reminded him of that.
Ernestina’s elbow reminded him gently of the present. The singer required applause, and Charles languidly gave his share. Placing her own hands back in their muff, Ernestina delivered a sidelong, humorous moue, half intended for his absentmindedness, half for the awfulness of the performance. He smiled at her. She was so young, such a child. He could not be angry with her. After all, she was only a woman. There were so many things she must never understand: the richness of male life, the enormous difficulty of being one to whom the world was rather more than dress and home and children.
All would be well when she was truly his; in his bed and in his bank… and of course in his heart, too.
Sam, at that moment, was thinking the very opposite; how many things his fraction of Eve did understand. 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. Their coming together was fraught with almost as many obstacles as if he had been an Eskimo and she, a Zulu. They had barely a common language, so often did they not understand what the other had just said.