Sarah did not think this was a good enough reason. Hands on hips, blazing with defiance, she refused to bend. When my mother advanced on her, broom in hand, she made it clear that if my mother so much as laid a finger on her, she would thrash her back. Thrown out the house instantly, you might think? Not a bit of it. I wasn’t there at the time, otherwise the incident might never have occurred, but my sister said that within half an hour, Sarah and my mother were both sitting in front of the fire talking, with my mother almost apologizing to the child, a sight never witnessed before or since. Thereafter, my mother said not a word against her and, when Sarah’s time of trouble came, it was she who cooked food for her and took it to the prison.
What had happened? What did Sarah say or do which made my mother so charitable and generous for once? I did not know. When I asked, Sarah just smiled, and said that my mother was a good and kind woman who was not as fierce as she seemed. More than that she would not tell, and my mother said nothing either. She always grew secretive when caught out in a kindness, and it may be that it was simply that, shortly after, her ankle stopped giving her pain—it is often the case that simple things like this can bring remarkable changes in demeanor. I often wonder if Dr. Wallis would have been less cruel had he been less afraid of the blindness that began to creep up on him in this time. I myself have been unreasonably offensive to my fellows when blighted by toothache, and it is well known that the mistaken decisions that ultimately led to the fall of Lord Clarendon were taken when that nobleman was wracked with the agonizing pain of the gout.
I mentioned that I occupied two rooms on the top floor, from which other members of my family were excluded. I had books and papers everywhere, and was constantly afraid that someone, in a misguided act of kindness, would tidy them up and set my work back by months. Sarah was the only person I allowed in and even she tidied up only under my supervision. I came to dream of those visits to my scholarly aerie and, more and more, I passed time in conversation with her. My room got dirtier and dirtier, it is true, but I found myself waiting eagerly for the tread of her footsteps on the rickety stair that led to my attic. Initially, I would talk about her mother; but that soon became a pretense to prolong her presence. Even more so, perhaps, because I knew little of the world and less of women.
Perhaps any female would have interested me, but Sarah quickly had me entranced. Slowly the pleasure turned to pain, and the joy to anguish. The devil came to visit me at all hours; at night, while I was at my desk working, in the library, turning my mind from my work and leading me on to foul and lubricious thoughts. My sleep suffered, my work also and, although I prayed mightily for help, there was no answer. I begged the Lord to spare me this temptation, but in His wisdom He would not, but allowed instead ever more demons to come and taunt me with my weakness and hypocrisy. I woke in the morning thinking of Sarah, spent the day thinking of Sarah, and tossed myself to sleep at night, thinking of Sarah. And even when I slept there was no respite, for I dreamed of her eyes and her mouth and the way she laughed.
It was intolerable, of course—no respectable connection was possible, so great was the distance between us. But I thought I knew enough of her to believe she would never consent to be my harlot; she was too virtuous, no matter what her origins. I had never been in love, nor even shown half as much interest in a woman as in the least of the books in the Bodleian library, and I confess that I cursed God in my heart that, when I did fall (and the similarity with the fate of Adam I never felt so strongly), it was with an impossibility, a girl of no fortune or family, scorned even in taverns, and with a villain for a father.
And so I remained tongue-tied and miserable—anguished when she was there, worse when she was not. Would that I had been a robust, thoughtless man like Prestcott, who never bothered with the complexities of affection, or even like Wal-lis, with a heart so cold that no human being could warm it for long. Sarah, I believe, was not without affection for me either—although always respectful in my presence, I still felt something in her—a warmth, the way she looked and leaned forward as I showed her a book or a manuscript which indicated some regard. I think she liked talking to me; she was used to masculine conversation because of her father, who had instructed her, and she was hard put to confine her mind to topics suitable for women. As I was always ready to talk about my work, and was easily distracted into discussing anything else, she seemed to regard her visits to clean my quarters with as much eagerness as I did myself. I think I was the only man then who spoke to her for some reason other than to give her orders or make lewd remarks; I can find no other explanation. Her childhood, her upbringing and her father, however, remained something of a blank to me; she rarely spoke of them except on those occasions when a chance remark slipped from her lips; when I asked directly she generally changed the subject. I hoarded these occasional comments like a miser hoards his gold, remembering each chance phrase, and turning them over in my mind, adding each to each, like coin in a casket, until I had a good supply.
Initially I thought her reticence due to shame at the degradation to which she had descended; now I think it merely caution, lest it be misunderstood. She was ashamed of little and regretted less, but accepted that the days when people like her might hope of a new world were over—they had tried and failed miserably. I will give one important example of how I garnered my evidence. Shortly after the Restoration of His Majesty was proclaimed in the town, I came back from viewing the preparations for the festivities. Celebrations erupted all over the land that day, both from Parliament towns which felt the need to demonstrate their new loyalty, and from towns like Oxford which were able to rejoice with more genuine feeling. We were promised (by whom I cannot recall) that the fountains and gutters themselves would run with joyous wine that night, as in the days of ancient Rome. I found Sarah, sitting on my stool and weeping her heart out.
“Whatever is the matter, that you sob so on a glorious day like this?” I cried. It was some time before I got an answer.
“Oh, Anthony, it is not glorious for me,” she said. (This being our secret intimacy, that I permitted her to address me so in my room). Initially, I had thought that she had one of those mysterious womanly complaints, but quickly realized that grander matters were on her mind. She was never immodest or gross in her talk.
“But what is there to be so sorrowful about? It is a fine morning, we can drink and feed at the university’s expense, and the king is coming back to his own.”
“And everything has been in vain,” she said. “Does so much waste not make you want to weep, even as you celebrate? Near twenty years of fighting trying to build God’s kingdom here, and it is all swept away by the will of a few greedy grandees.”
Now, to refer thus to those great men whose wise intervention had been crucial to the recall of the king (so we were told and I believed until I read Wallis’s manuscript) should have alerted me, but I was in too good a mood.
“God works in mysterious ways,” I said cheerfully, “and sometimes chooses strange instruments to work His will.”
“God has spat in the face of His servants who worked for Him,” she said, her voice falling into a hiss of despair and rage.
“How can it be God’s will? How can God will that some men be subject to others? That some live in palaces while others die in the street? That some rule and others obey? How can God will that?”