He remained staring for several moments—but then bah! What would granting Sam his wish matter with Ernestina’s money in the bank? He turned to his escritoire and unlocked a drawer. From it he drew a pocketbook and scribbled something: no doubt a reminder to speak to Mr. Freeman.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Sam was reading the contents of the two telegrams. One was to the White Lion, informing the landlord of their return. The other read:

In those days only the uncouth Yankees descended to telegraphese.

This was not the first private correspondence that had been under Sam’s eyes that morning. The envelope of the second letter he had brought to Charles had been gummed but not sealed. A little steam does wonders; and Sam had had a whole morning in which to find himself alone for a minute in that kitchen.

Perhaps you have begun to agree with Charles about Sam. He is not revealing himself the most honest of men, that must be said. But the thought of marriage does strange things. It makes the intending partners suspect an inequality in things; it makes them wish they had more to give to each other; it kills the insouciance of youth; its responsibilities isolate, and the more altruistic aspects of the social contract are dimmed. It is easier, in short, to be dishonest for two than for one. Sam did not think of his procedure as dishonest; he called it “playing your cards right.” In simple terms it meant now that the marriage with Ernestina must go through; only from her dowry could he hope for his two hundred and fifty pounds; if more spooning between the master and the wicked woman of Lyme were to take place, it must take place under the cardplayer’s sharp nose—and might not be altogether a bad thing, since the more guilt Charles had the surer touch he became; but if it went too far… Sam sucked his lower lip and frowned. It was no wonder he was beginning to feel rather above his station; matchmakers always have.

Perhaps one can find more color for the myth of a rational human behavior in an iron age like the Victorian than in most others. Charles had certainly decided, after his night of rebellion, to go through with his marriage to Ernestina. It had never seriously entered his mind that he would not; Ma Terpsichore’s and the prostitute had but been, unlikely though it may seem, confirmations of that intention—last petulant doubts of a thing concluded, last questionings of the unquestionable. He had said as much to himself on his queasy return home, which may explain the rough treatment Sam received. As for Sarah… the other Sarah had been her surrogate, her sad and sordid end, and his awakening.

For all that, he could have wished her letter had shown a clearer guilt—that she had asked for money (but she could hardly have spent ten pounds in so short a time), or poured out her illicit feelings for him. But it is difficult to read either passion or despair into the three words. “Endicott’s Family Hotel”; and not even a date, an initial! It was certainly an act of disobedience, a by-passing of Aunt Tranter; but she could hardly be arraigned for knocking on his door.

It was easy to decide that the implicit invitation must be ignored: he must never see her again. But perhaps Sarah the prostitute had reminded Charles of the uniqueness of Sarah the outcast: that total absence of finer feeling in the one only affirmed its astonishing survival in the other. How shrewd and sensitive she was, in her strange way… some of those things she had said after her confession—they haunted one.

He thought a great deal—if recollection is thought—about Sarah on the long journey down to the West. He could not but feel that to have committed her to an institution, however enlightened, would have been a betrayal. I say “her,” but the pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented; what came to Charles was not a pronoun, but eyes, looks, the line of the hair over a temple, a nimble step, a sleeping face. All this was not daydreaming, of course; but earnest consideration of a moral problem and caused by an augustly pure solicitude for the unfortunate woman’s future welfare.

The train drew into Exeter. Sam appeared, within a brief pause of its final stopping whistle, at the window of the compartment; he of course had traveled in the third class.

“Are we stayin’ the night, Mr. Charles?”

“No. A carriage. A four-wheeler. It looks like rain.”

Sam had bet himself a thousand pounds that they would stay in Exeter. But he obeyed without hesitation, just as his master had, at the sight of Sam’s face, decided—and somewhere deep in him a decision had remained to take—without hesitation on his course of action. It was really Sam that had determined it: Charles could not face any more prevarication.

It was only when they were already drawing through the eastern outskirts of the city that Charles felt a sense of sadness and of loss, of having now cast the fatal die. It seemed to him astounding that one simple decision, one answer to a trivial question, should determine so much. Until that moment, all had been potential; now all was inexorably fixed. He had done the moral, the decent, the correct thing; and yet it seemed to betray in him some inherent weakness, some willingness to accept his fate, which he knew, by one of those premonitions that are as certain as facts, would one day lead him into the world of commerce; into pleasing Ernestina because she would want to please her father, to whom he owed so much… he stared at the countryside they had now entered and felt himself sucked slowly through it as if down some monstrous pipe.

The carriage rolled on, a loosened spring creaking a little at each jolt, as mournfully as a tumbril. The evening sky was overcast and it had begun to drizzle. In such circumstances, traveling on his own, Charles would usually have called Sam down and let him sit inside. But he could not face Sam (not that Sam, who saw nothing but gold on the wet road to Lyme, minded the ostracism). It was as if he would never have solitude again. What little was left, he must enjoy. He thought again of the woman he had left in the city behind them. He thought of her not, of course, as an alternative to Ernestina; nor as someone he might, had he chosen, have married instead. That would never have been possible. Indeed it was hardly Sarah he now thought of—she was merely the symbol around which had accreted all his lost possibilities, his extinct freedoms, his never-to-be-taken journeys. He had to say farewell to something; she was merely and conveniently both close and receding.

There was no doubt. He was one of life’s victims, one more ammonite caught in the vast movements of history, stranded now for eternity, a potential turned to a fossil.

After a while he committed the ultimate weakness: he fell asleep.