Free The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles Page B

mistress. This spy, of course, was
none other than Mrs. Fairley. Though she had found no pleasure in
reading, it offended her that she had been demoted; and although Miss
Sarah was scrupulously polite to her and took care not to seem to be
usurping the housekeeper's functions, there was inevitably some
conflict. It did not please Mrs. Fairley that she had a little less
work, since that meant also a little less influence. Sarah's saving
of Millie--and other more discreet interventions--made her popular
and respected downstairs; and perhaps Mrs. Fairley's deepest rage was
that she could not speak ill of the secretary-companion to her
underlings. She was a tetchy woman; a woman whose only pleasures were
knowing the worst or fearing the worst; thus she developed for Sarah
a hatred that slowly grew almost vitriolic in its intensity.
    She was too shrewd a
weasel not to hide this from Mrs. Poulteney. Indeed she made a
pretense of being very sorry for "poor Miss Woodruff" and
her reports were plentifully seasoned with "I fear" and "I
am afraid." But she had excellent opportunities to do her
spying, for not only was she frequently in the town herself in
connection with her duties, but she had also a wide network of
relations and acquaintances at her command. To these latter she
hinted that Mrs. Poulteney was concerned--of course for the best and
most Christian of reasons--to be informed of Miss Woodruff's behavior
outside the tall stone walls of the gardens of Marlborough House. The
result, Lyme Regis being then as now as riddled with gossip as a drum
of Blue Vinny with maggots, was that Sarah's every movement and
expression-- darkly exaggerated and abundantly glossed--in her free
hours was soon known to Mrs. Fairley.
    The pattern of her
exterior movements--when she was spared the tracts--was very simple;
she always went for the same afternoon walk, down steep Pound Street
into steep Broad Street and thence to the Cobb Gate, which is a
square terrace overlooking the sea and has nothing to do with the
Cobb. There she would stand at the wall and look out to sea, but
generally not for long--no longer than the careful appraisal a ship's
captain gives when he comes out on the bridge--before turning either
down Cockmoil or going in the other direction, westwards, along the
half-mile path that runs round a gentle bay to the Cobb proper. If
she went down Cockmoil she would most often turn into the parish
church, and pray for a few minutes (a fact that Mrs. Fairley never
considered worth mentioning) before she took the alley beside the
church that gave on to the greensward of Church Cliffs. The turf
there climbed towards the broken walls of Black Ven. Up this
grassland she might be seen walking, with frequent turns towards the
sea, to where the path joined the old road to Charmouth, now long
eroded into the Ven, whence she would return to Lyme. This walk she
would do when the Cobb seemed crowded; but when weather or
circumstance made it deserted, she would more often turn that way and
end by standing where Charles had first seen her; there, it was
supposed, she felt herself nearest to France.
    All this, suitably
distorted and draped in black, came back to Mrs. Poulteney. But she
was then in the first possessive pleasure of her new toy, and as
sympathetically disposed as it was in her sour and suspicious old
nature to be. She did not, however, hesitate to take the toy to task.
    " I
am told, Miss Woodruff, that you are always to be seen in the same
places when you go out." Sarah looked down before the accusing
eyes. "You look to sea." Still Sarah was silent. "I am
satisfied that you are in a state of repentance. Indeed I cannot
believe that you should be anything else in your present
circumstances."
    Sarah took her cue. "I
am grateful to you, ma'm."
    " I
am not concerned with your gratitude to me. There is One Above who
has a prior claim."
    The girl murmured, "How
should I not know it?"
    " To
the ignorant it may seem that you are persevering in