The French Lieutenant's Woman Read Online Free PDF

even to contemplate being angry with that innocently
smiling and talking-- especially talking--face was absurd. She had
the profound optimism of successful old maids; solitude either sours
or teaches self-dependence. Aunt Tranter had begun by making the best
of things for herself, and ended by making the best of them for the
rest of the world as well.
    However, Ernestina did
her best to be angry with her; on the impossibility of having dinner
at five; on the subject of the funereal furniture that choked the
other rooms; on the subject of her aunt's oversolicitude for her fair
name (she would not believe that the bridegroom and bride-to-be might
wish to sit alone, and walk out alone); and above all on the subject
of Ernestina's being in Lyme at all.
    The poor girl had had to
suffer the agony of every only child since time began--that is, a
crushing and unrelenting canopy of parental worry. Since birth her
slightest cough would bring doctors; since puberty her slightest whim
summoned decorators and dressmakers; and always her slightest frown
caused her mama and papa secret hours of self-recrimination. Now this
was all very well when it came to new dresses and new wall hangings,
but there was one matter upon which all her bouderies and complaints
made no impression. And that was her health. Her mother and father
were convinced she was consumptive. They had only to smell damp in a
basement to move house, only to have two days' rain on a holiday to
change districts. Half Harley Street had examined her, and found
nothing; she had never had a serious illness in her life; she had
none of the lethargy, the chronic weaknesses, of the condition. She
could have--or could have if she had ever been allowed to--danced all
night; and played, without the slightest ill effect, battledore all
the next morning. But she was no more able to shift her doting
parents' fixed idea than a baby to pull down a mountain. Had they but
been able to see into the future! For Ernestina was to outlive all
her generation. She was born in 1846. And she died on the day that
Hitler invaded Poland.
    An indispensable part of
her quite unnecessary regimen was thus her annual stay with her
mother's sister in Lyme. Usually she came to recover from the season;
this year she was sent early to gather strength for the marriage. No
doubt the Channel breezes did her some good, but she always descended
in the carriage to Lyme with the gloom of a prisoner arriving in
Siberia. The society of the place was as up-to-date as Aunt Tranter's
lumbering mahogany furniture; and as for the entertainment, to a
young lady familiar with the best that London can offer it was worse
than nil. So her relation with Aunt Tranter was much more that of a
high-spirited child, an English Juliet with her flat-footed nurse,
than what one would expect of niece and aunt. Indeed, if Romeo had
not mercifully appeared on the scene that previous winter, and
promised to share her penal solitude, she would have mutinied; at
least, she was almost sure she would have mutinied. Ernestina had
certainly a much stronger will of her own than anyone about her had
ever allowed for--and more than the age allowed for. But fortunately
she had a very proper respect for convention; and she shared with
    Charles--it had not been
the least part of the first attraction between them--a sense of
self-irony. Without this and a sense of humor she would have been a
horrid spoiled child; and it was surely the fact that she did often
so apostrophize herself ("You horrid spoiled child") that
redeemed her.
    In her room that
afternoon she unbuttoned her dress and stood before her mirror in her
chemise and petticoats. For a few moments she became lost in a highly
narcissistic self-contemplation. Her neck and shoulders did her face
justice; she was really very pretty, one of the prettiest girls she
knew. And as if to prove it she raised her arms and unloosed her
hair, a thing she knew to be vaguely sinful, yet necessary, like a
hot bath or