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

such a pair of eyes existed; even
better, the mind behind those eyes was directed by malice and resentment,
and was therefore happy to bring frequent reports to the thwarted 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