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?”
I shrugged, not knowing what to say or how to begin saying it, just wanting her to stop. I had never seen her like this, clutching at herself and rocking to and fro as she spoke with a passion that was as disgusting as it was fascinating. She frightened me, but I could not walk away from her. “He obviously does,” I said eventually.
“In that case He is no God of mine,” she said, with a sneer of contempt. “I hate Him, as He must hate me and all of His creation.”
I stood up. “I think this has gone far enough,” I said, appalled at what she was saying and alarmed that someone downstairs might overhear. “I will not have this sort of talk in my house. Remember who you are, girl.”
Thus earning from her a scornful look of contempt, the first time I had so totally and instantly lost her affections. I felt it deeply, being distressed at her blasphemy but even then more pained by my loss.
“Oh, Mr. Wood, I am just beginning to guess,” she said and walked straight out, not even doing me the honor of slamming the door. I, my good humor gone and strangely unable to recover my concentration, spent the rest of the afternoon on my knees, praying desperately for relief.
The loyal celebration that evening was everything that good Royalists could have hoped for—town and university vied with each other to be the more zealously loyal. Starting with my habitual friends (I had by that time made the acquaintance of Lower and his circle), we drank our fill of wine at the fountain in Carfax, ate beef at Christ Church, then proceeded to more wine and delicacies at Mer-ton. It was a delightful occasion, or should have been; but Sarah’s mood had affected me, and taken away my joy. There was dancing, which I merely watched; singing, where I was without song; speech-making and toast-giving, where I kept my silence. Food for all, and myself without appetite. How could anyone not be happy on a day like this? Above all someone like me, who had hoped for His Majesty’s return for so long? I did not understand myself, was desolate, and not good company.
“What is it, old friend?” asked Lower, pounding me merrily on the back as he came back breathless from a dance, already slightly the worse for drink. I pointed at a thin-faced man, dead drunk in the gutter, saliva dripping down his chin.