 Section 11 of The Good Soldier, A Tale of Passion. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. Read by Martina Hutchins. 5th of November 2009, in Berkeley, California. Part 3, Chapter 2 Immediately after Florence's death, Lenora began to put the leash upon Nancy Rufford and Edward. She had guessed what had happened under the trees near the casino. They stayed at Nahime some weeks after I went, and Lenora has told me that that was the most deadly time of her existence. It seemed like a long, silent duel with invisible weapons, so she said. And it was rendered all the more difficult by the girl's entire innocence. For Nancy was always trying to go off alone with Edward, as she had been doing all her life whenever she was home for holidays. She just wanted him to say nice things to her again. You see, the position was extremely complicated. It was as complicated as it well could be along delicate lines. There was the complication caused by the fact that Edward and Lenora never spoke to each other except when other people were present. Then, as I have said, their demeanors were quite perfect. There was the complication caused by the girl's entire innocence. There was the further complication that both Edward and Lenora really regarded the girl as their daughter. Or it might be more precise to say they regarded her as being Lenora's daughter. And Nancy was a queer girl. It is very difficult to describe her to you. She was tall and strikingly thin. She had a tortured mouth, agonized eyes, and a quite extraordinary sense of fun. You might put it that at times she was exceedingly grotesque and at times extraordinarily beautiful. While she had the heaviest head of black hair that I have ever come across, I used to wonder how she could bear the weight of it. She was just over 21 and at times she seemed as old as the hills. At times not much more than 16. At one moment she would be talking of the lives of the saints and at the next she would be tumbling all over the lawn with the same Bernard puppy. She could ride to hounds like a mean ad and she could sit for hours perfectly still. Steeping handkerchief after handkerchief in vinegar when Lenora had one of her headaches. She was, in short, a miracle of patience who could be almost miraculously impatient. It was, no doubt, the convent training that affected that. I remember that one of her letters to me when she was about 16 ran something like, On Corpus Christi, or it may have been some other saint's day. I cannot keep these things in my head. Our school played brohams and at hockey and seeing that our side was losing being three goals to one against us at half time, we retired into the chapel and prayed for victory. We won by five goals to three. And I remember that she seemed to describe afterwards the sort of Satanalia. Apparently, when the victorious 15 or 11 came into the refectory for supper, the whole school jumped upon the tables and cheered and broke the chairs on the floor and smashed the crockery for a given time until the Reverend Mother rang a handbell. That is, of course, the Catholic tradition. Satanalia, they can end in a moment like the crack of a whip. I don't, of course, like the tradition, but I am bound to say that it gave Nancy, or at any rate, Nancy had, a sense of rectitude that I have never seen surpassed. It was a thing like a knife that looked out of her eyes and that spoke with her voice just now and then. It positively frightened me. I suppose that I was almost afraid to be in a world where there could be so fine a standard. I remember when she was about 15 or 16. Going back to the convent, I once gave her a couple of English sovereigns as a tip. She thanked me in a particularly heartfelt way, saying it would come in extremely handy. I asked her why and she explained. There was a rule at the school that pupils were not to speak when they walked through the garden from the chapel to the refectory. And, since this rule appeared to be idiotic and arbitrary, she broke it on purpose day after day. In the evening the children were all asked if they had committed any faults during the day and every evening Nancy confessed that she had broken this particular rule. It cost her six pence of time. That being the fine attached to the offence, just for the information I asked her why she always confessed. And she answered in these exact words, Oh, well, the girls of the holy child have always been noted for their truthfulness. It's obviously bore, but I've got to do it. I dare say that the miserable nature of her childhood, coming before the mixture of Saturnalia and discipline that was her convent life, added something to her queerness. Her father was a violent madman of a fellow, a major of one of what I believe are called the Highland Regiments. He didn't drink, but he had an ungovernable temper. And the first thing that Nancy could remember was seeing her father strike her mother with his clenched fist after that her mother fell over sideways from the breakfast table and lay motionless. The mother was no doubt an irritating woman and the private of that regiment appeared to have been irritating too, so the house was a place of outcries and perpetual disturbances. Mrs. Rufford was Lenora's dearest friend and Lenora could be cutting enough at times, but I fancy she was as nothing to Mrs. Rufford. After she would come in to lunch, harassed and already spitting out oaths after an unsatisfactory morning's drilling of his stubborn men beneath a hot sun, and then Mrs. Rufford would make some cutting remark and pandemonium would break loose. Once, when she had been about twelve, Nancy had tried to intervene between the pair of them. Her father had struck her full upon the forehead, a blow so terrible that she had lain unconscious for three days. Nevertheless, Nancy seemed to prefer her father to her mother. She remembered rough kindnesses from him. Once or twice, when she had been quite small, he addressed her in a clumsy, impatient, but very tender way. It was nearly always impossible to get a servant to stay in the family, and for days at a time, apparently, Mrs. Rufford would be incapable. I fancy she drank. At any rate, she had so cutting a tongue that even Nancy was afraid of her. So she made fun of any tenderness, so she sneered at all emotional display. Nancy must have been a very emotional child. Then, one day, quite suddenly, on her return from a ride at Fort William, Nancy had been sent, with her governess, who had a white face right down south to that convent school. She had been expecting to get there in two months' time. Her mother disappeared from her life at that time. A fortnight later, Lenora came to the convent and told her that her mother was dead. Perhaps she was. At any rate, I never heard until the very end what became of Mrs. Rufford. Lenora never spoke of her. And then Major Rufford went to India, from which he returned very seldom and only for very short visits. And Nancy lived herself gradually into the life at Brancha, Tellera. I think that, from that time onwards, she led a very happy life, till the end. There were dogs and horses and old servants in the forest. And there were Edward and Lenora, who loved her. I had known her all the time. I mean, that she always came to the ashrams at Nowheim for the last fortnight of their stay. And I watched her gradually growing. She was very cheerful with me. She always even kissed me, night and morning, until she was about 18. And she would skip about and fetch me things and laugh at my tales of life in Philly to Elvia. But beneath her gaity, I fancy that there lurked some terrors. I remember one day, when she was just 18, during one of her father's rare visits to Europe, we were sitting in the gardens near the Iron Stained Fountain. Lenora had one of her headaches and we were waiting for Florence and Edward to come from their baths. You have no idea how beautiful Nancy looked that morning. We were talking about the desirability of taking tickets and lotteries of the moral side of it, I mean. She was all in white and so tall and fragile. And she had only just put her hair up, so the carriage of her neck had that charming touch of youth and of unfamiliarity. Over her throat there played the reflection from a little pool of water left by a thunderstorm of the night before. And all the rest of her features were in the diffused and luminous shade of her white parasol. Her dark hair just showed beneath her broad white hat of pierced chip straw. Her throat was very long and leaned forward and her eyebrows, arching a little as she laughed at some old-fashionedness in my phrasology, had abandoned their tense line. And there was a little color in her cheeks and light in her deep blue eyes. And to think that that vivid white thing, that saintly and swan-like being, to think that why she was like the sail of a ship so white and so definite in her movements, and to think that she will never, why she will never do anything again. I can't believe it. Anyhow, we were chattering away about the morality of lotteries. And then suddenly there came from the arcades behind us the overtone of her father's unmistakable voice. It was as if a modified foghorn had boomed with a reed inside it. I looked round to catch sight of him. A tall, fair, stiffly upright man of fifty who was walking away with an Indian baron who had had much to do with the Belgian Congo. They must have been talking about the proper treatment of natives before I heard him say, Oh, hang humanity! When I looked again at Nancy, her eyes were closed and her face was more pallid than her dress, which had at least some pinkish reflections from the gravel. It was dreadful to see her with her eyes closed like that. Oh, she exclaimed, and her hand that had appeared to be groping settled for a moment on my arm never speak of it. I promised never to tell my father of it. It brings back those dreadful dreams. When she opened her eyes she looked straight into mine. The Blessed Saint, she said, you would think they would spare you such things. I don't believe all the sinning in the world can make one to serve them. They say the poor thing was always allowed a light at night, even in her bedroom, and yet no young girl could more archly and lovingly have played with an adored father. She was always holding him by both coat lapels, cross-questioning him as to how he spent his time kissing the top of his head. Ah, she was well bred if ever anyone was. The poor, wretched man cringed before her, but she could not have done more to put him at ease. Perhaps she had had lessons in it at her convent. It was only that peculiar note of his voice used when he was overbearing or dogmatic that could unmanned her. And that was only visible when it came unexpectedly. That was because the bad dreams that the Blessed Saint allowed her to have for his sins always seemed to her to herald themselves by the booming sound of her father's voice. It was that sound that had always preceded this entrance for the terrible lunches of her childhood. I have reported earlier in this chapter that Lenora said, During that remainder of her stay at Nauheim, after I had left, it seemed to her that she was fighting a long duel with unseen weapons against silent adversaries. Nancy, as I have also said, was always trying to go off with Edward alone. That had been her habit for years. And Lenora found it to be her duty to stop that. It was very difficult. Nancy was used to having her own way, and for years she had been used to going off with Edward. Rating, rabbiting, catching salmon down at Fordingbridge, district visiting of the sort that Edward indulged in or calling on tenants. And at Nauheim, she and Edward had always gone up to the casino alone in the evenings. At any rate, whenever Florence did not call for his attendance. It shows the obviously innocent nature of the guard of those two that even Florence had never had any idea of jealousy. Lenora had cultivated the habit of going to bed at ten o'clock. I don't know how she managed it. But for all the time they were at Nauheim, she contrived never to let those two be alone together, except in broad daylight in very crowded places. If a Protestant had done that, it would no doubt have awakened a self-consciousness in the girl. But the Catholics, who've always reservations and queer spots of secrecy, can manage these things better. And I daresay that two things made this easier. The death of Florence, and the fact that Edward was obviously sickening. He appeared indeed to be very ill. His shoulders began to be bowed. There are pockets under his eyes. He had extraordinary moments of inattention. And Lenora describes herself as watching him as a fierce cat watches an unconscious pigeon in a roadway. In that silent watching again, I think she was a Catholic. Of a people that think thoughts alien to ours and keep them to themselves. And the thoughts passed through her mind. Some of them even got through to Edward with never her words spoken. At first she thought that it might be remorse or grief for the death of Florence that was oppressing him. But she watched and watched and uttered apparently random sentences about Florence before the girl, and she perceived that he had no grief and no remorse. He had not any idea that Florence could have committed suicide without writing at least a tirade to him. The absence of that made him certain that it had been heart disease, for Florence had never unceived him on that point. She thought it made her seem more romantic. No, Edward had no remorse. He was able to say to herself that he had treated Florence with gallant attentiveness of the kind that she desired until two hours before her death. Lenora gathered that from the look in his eyes and from the way he straightened his shoulders over her as she lay in her coffin. From that and a thousand other little things. She would speak suddenly about Florence to the girl and he would not start in the least. He would not even pay attention but would sit with bloodshot eyes gazing at the tablecloth. He drank a good deal at that time, a steady soaking of drink every evening to long after they had gone to bed. For Lenora made the girl go to bed at ten, unreasonable though that seemed to Nancy. She would understand that whilst they were in a sort of half morning for Florence, she ought not to be seen at public places like the casino. But she could not see why she should not accompany her uncle upon his evening strolls to the park. I don't know what Lenora put up as an excuse. Something, I fancy, in the nature of a nightly horizon that she made the girl and herself perform for the soul of Florence. And then, one evening, about a fortnight later, when the girl, growing restive and even devotional exercises, clamored once more to be allowed to go for a walk with Edward. And when Lenora was really at her wit's end, Edward gave himself into her hands. He was just standing up from dinner and had his face averted. But he turned his heavy head and his bloodshot eyes upon his wife and looked full at her. Dr. Von Humptman, he said, has ordered me to go to bed immediately after dinner. My heart's much worse. He continued to look at Lenora for a long minute with a sort of heavy contempt, and Lenora understood that, with his speech, he was giving her the excuse she needed for separating him from the girl, and with his eyes he reproached her for thinking that he would try to corrupt Nancy. He went silently to his room and sat there for a long time, until the girl was well in bed, reading in the Anglican Prayer Book. And about half past ten she heard his footsteps pass her door going outwards. Two and a half hours later they came back, stumbling heavily. She remained, reflecting upon this position, until the last night of their stay at Nalheim. Then she suddenly acted. Four, just in the same way, suddenly after dinner she looked at him and said, Teddy, don't you think you could take a night off from your doctor's orders and go with Nancy to the casino? The poor child has had her visit so spoiled. He looked at her in turn for a long, balancing minute. Why, yes, he said at last. Nancy jumped out of her chair and kissed him. Those two words, Lenora said, gave her the greatest relief of any two syllables she had ever heard in her life. For she realized that Edward was breaking up, not under the desire of possession, but from the dogged determination to hold his hand. She could relax some of her vigilance. Nevertheless, she sat in the darkness behind her half-clothesed jealousies, looking over the street and the night in the trees until, very late, she could hear Nancy's clear voice coming closer and saying, You did look an old guy with that false nose. There had been some sort of celebration of a local holiday up in the Kursal. And Edward replied with this sort of sulky good nature. As for you, you looked like old mother's side-acre. The girl came swinging along, a silhouette behind a gas lamp. Edward and others louched at her side. They were talking just as they had talked any time since the girl had been 17, with the same tones, the same jokes about an old beggar woman who always amused them at Brenshaw. The girl, a little later, opened Lenora's door, whilst she was still kissing Edward on the forehead as she had done every night. We've had a most glorious time, she said. He's ever so much better. He raced me for twenty yards home. Why are you all in the dark? Lenora could hear Edward going about in his room, but, owing to the girl's chatter, she could not tell whether he went out again or not. And then, very much later, because she thought if you were drinking again, something must have begun to stop it, she opened for the first time, and very softly, the never-opened door between their rooms. I wanted to see if he had gone out again. Edward was kneeling beside his bed with his head hidden in the counterpane. His arms outstretched, piled out before him a little image of the busted virgin, a tawdry scarlet and prussian blue affair that the girl had given him on her first return from the convent. His shoulders heaved convulsively three times, and heavy sops came from him before she could close the door. He was not a Catholic, but that was the way it took him. Lenora slept for the first time that night with the sleep from which she never once started. End of Part 3, Chapter 2 Section 12 of The Good Soldier, A Tale of Passion This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martina Hutchins The Good Soldier, A Tale of Passion by Ford Maddox Ford Part 3, Chapter 3 And then Lenora completely broke down. On the day that they returned to Branshaw Tellera, it is the infliction of our miserable minds. It is the scourge of atrocious, but probably just destiny, that no grief comes by itself. No, any great grief, though the grief itself may have gone, leaves in its place a train of horrors, of misery and despair. For Lenora was, in herself, relieved. She felt that she could trust Edward with the girl, and she knew that Nancy could be absolutely trusted. And then, with the slackening of her vigilance, came the slackening of her entire mind. This is perhaps the most miserable part of the entire story. For it is miserable to see a clean intelligence waiver. And Lenora wavered. You are to understand that Lenora loved Edward with a passion that was yet like an agony of hatred. And she had lived with him for years and years without addressing to him one word of tenderness. I don't know how she could do it. At the beginning of that relationship she had been just married off to him. She had been one of seven daughters in a bare, untidy Irish manor house to which she had returned from the convent I have so often spoken of. She had left it just a year and she was just nineteen. It is impossible to imagine such inexperience as was hers. You might almost say that she had never spoken to a man except a priest. Coming straight from the convent she had gone in behind the high walls of the manor house that was almost more cloisteral than any convent could have been. There were the seven girls, there was the strained mother, there was the worried father at whom three times in the course of that year the tenants took pot shots from behind a hedge. The women folk, upon the whole, the tenants respected. Once a week each of the girls, since there were seven of them, took a drive with the mother in the old basket work chase drawn by a very fat, very lumbering pony. They paid occasionally a call but even these were so rare that Lenora has assured me only three times in the year that succeeded her coming home from the convent did she enter another person's house. For the rest of the time the seven sisters ran about in the neglected gardens between the unpruned espilers or they played lawn tennis or fives in an angle of a great wall that surrounded the garden an angle from which the fruit trees long died away. They painted in watercolor, they embroidered they copied verses into albums once a week they went to mass once a week to the confessional accompanied by an old nurse they were happy since they had known no other life. It appeared to them a singular extravagance when one day a photographer was brought over from the country town and photographed them standing all seven in the shadow of an old apple tree with the gray lichen on the rattled trunk but it wasn't an extravagance. Three weeks before Colonel Poes had returned to Colonel Ashburnham I say Harry couldn't your Edward marry one of my girls it would be a godsend to me for I'm at the end of my tether and once one girl begins to go off the rest of them will follow he went on to say that all his daughters were tall upstanding clean-limbed and absolutely pure and he reminded Colonel Ashburnham that they having been married on the same day though in different churches since the one was Catholic and the other an Anglican they had said to each other the night before that when the time came one of their son should marry one of their daughters Mrs. Ashburnham had been a Poess and remained Mrs. Poes' dearest friend they had drifted about the world as English soldiers do seldom meeting but their women always in correspondence one with another they wrote about minute things such as the teething of Edward and of the earlier daughters or the best way to repair Jacob's ladder in a stocking and if they met seldom yet it was often enough to keep each other's personalities fresh in their minds gradually growing a little stiff in the joints but always with enough to talk about and with a store of reminiscences then as his girls began to come of age when they must leave the convent in which they were regularly interned during his years of active service Colonel Poes retired from the army with the necessity of taking a home for them it happened that the Ashburnhams had never seen any of the Poes' girls though whenever the four parents met in London Edward Ashburnham was always of the party he was of that time twenty-two and I believe almost as pure in mind as Lenora herself it is odd how a boy can have his virgin intelligence untouched in this world that was partly due to the careful handling of his mother partly to the fact that the house to which he went at Winchester had a particularly pure tone and partly to Edward's own peculiar aversion from anything like course language or gross stories at Sandhurst he had just kept out of the way of that sort of thing he was keen on soldiering keen on mathematics on land surveying, on politics and by a queer warp of his mind on literature even when he was twenty-two he would pass hours reading one of Scott's novels or the Chronicles of Fosso Mrs. Ashburnham considered that she was to be congratulated and almost every week she wrote to Mrs. Poes dilating upon her satisfaction then one day taking a walk down Bond Street with her son after having been at Lord's she noticed Edward suddenly turn his head round to take a second look at a well-dressed girl who had passed them she wrote about that too to Mrs. Poes and expressed some alarm it had been on Edward's part the Marist Reflex action he was so very abstracted at the time owing to the pressure his crammer was putting upon him that he certainly hadn't known what he was doing it was this letter of Mrs. Ashburnham's to Mrs. Poes that had caused the letter from Colonel Poes to Colonel Ashburnham a letter that was half humorous, half longing Mrs. Ashburnham caused her husband to reply with a letter a little more jocular something to the effect that Colonel Poes ought to give them some idea of the goods that he was marketing that was the cause of the photograph I have seen it the seven girls all in white dresses all very much alike in feature all except Lenora a little heavy about the chins and a little stupid about the eyes I would say it would have made Lenora too look a little heavy and a little stupid for it was not a good photograph but the black shadow from one of the branches of the apple tree cut right across her face which is all but invisible there followed an extremely harassing time for Colonel and Mrs. Poes Mrs. Ashburnham had written to say that quite sincerely nothing would give greater ease to her maternal anxieties than to have her son marry one of Mrs. Poes' daughters if only he showed some inclination to do so for, she added, nothing but a love match was to be thought of in Edward's case but the poor Poes couple had to run things so very fine that even the bringing together of the young couple was a desperate hazard the mere expenditure upon sending one of the girls over from Ireland to Bransha was terrifying to them in whichever girl they selected might not be the one to ring Edward's bell on the other hand the expenditure upon mere food and extra sheets for a visit from the Ashburnhams to them was terrifying too it would mean mathematically going short in so many meals themselves afterwards nevertheless they chanced it and all the three Ashburnhams came to visit to the lonely manor house they could give Edward some rough shooting some rough fishing and a whirl of femininity but I should say the girls made really more impression upon Mrs. Ashburnham than upon Edward himself they appeared to her to be so clean run and so safe they were indeed so clean run that in a faint sort of way Edward seems to have regarded them rather as boys than as girls and then one evening Mrs. Ashburnham had with her boy one of those conversations that English mothers have with English sons it seems to have been a criminal sort of proceeding though I don't know what took place at it anyhow next morning Colonel Ashburnham asked on behalf of his son for the hand of Leonora this caused some consternation to the Poest couple since Leonora was the third daughter and Edward ought to be married to the eldest Mrs. Poest with her rigid sense of propriety almost wished to reject the proposal but the Colonel her husband pointed out that the visit would cost them 60 pounds what with the hire of an extra servant of a horse and car and of the purchase of beds and bedding and extra tablecloths there is nothing else for it but the marriage in that way Edward and Leonora became man and wife I don't know that a very minute study of their progress towards complete disunion is necessary perhaps it is but there are many things that I cannot well make out about which I cannot well question Leonora or about which Edward did not tell me I do not know that there was ever any question of love from Edward to her he regarded her certainly as desirable among her sisters he was obstinate to the extent of saying that if he could not have her he would not have any of them and no doubt before the marriage he had made her pretty speeches out of books that he had read but as far as he could describe his feelings at all later it seems that calmly and without quickening of the pulse he just carried the girl off there being no opposition it had however been all so long ago that it seemed to him at the end of his poor life a dim and misty affair he had the greatest admiration for Leonora he had the very greatest admiration he admired her for her truthfulness for her cleanliness of mind and the clean run-ness of her limbs for her efficiency for the fairness of her skin for the gold of her hair for her religion, for her sense of duty it was a satisfaction to take her about with him but she had not for him a touch of magnetism I suppose really he did not love her because she was never mournful what really made him feel good in life was to comfort somebody who would be darkly and mysteriously mournful that he had never had to do for Leonora perhaps also she was at first too obedient I do not mean to say that she was submissive that she deferred in her judgments to his she did not but she had been handed over to him like some patient medieval virgin she had been taught all her life that the first duty of a woman is to obey and there she was in her at least admiration for his qualities very soon became love of the deepest description if his pulses never quickened she, so I have been told became what is called an altered being when he approached her from the other side of the dance floor her eyes followed him about full of trustfulness of admiration, of gratitude and of love he was also, in a great sense her pastor and guide he guided her into what the girl straight out of the convent was almost heaven I have not the least idea of what an English officer's wife's existence may be like at any rate there were feasts and chatterings and nice men who gave her the right sort of admiration and nice women who treated her as if she had been a baby and her confessor approved of her life and Edward let her give little treats to the girls of the convent she had left and the reverend mother approved of him there could not have been a happier girl for five or six years for it was only at the end of that time that the clouds began as the saying is to her rise she was then about 23 and her purposeful efficiency made her perhaps have a desire for mastery she began to perceive that Edward was extravagant in his larguses his parents died just about that time and Edward though they had both decided that he should continue his soldiering gave a great deal of attention to the management of Branshaw through a steward Aldershot was not very far away and they spent all his leaves there and suddenly she seemed to begin to perceive that his generosity's were almost fantastic he subscribed much too much to things connected with his mess he penchant off his father's servants and he started to do much too generously they had a large income but every now and then they would find themselves hard up he began to talk of mortgaging a farm or two though it never actually came to that she made tentative efforts at remonstrating with him her father whom she saw now and then said that Edward was much too generous to his tenants the wives of his brother officers remonstrated with her in private his large subscriptions made it difficult for their husbands to keep up with them ironically enough the first real trouble between them came from his desire to build a Roman Catholic chapel in Branshaw he wanted to do it in honor of Lenora and he proposed to do it very expensively Lenora did not want it she could perfectly well drive from Branshaw to the nearest Catholic Church as often as she liked there were no Roman Catholic tenants and no Roman Catholic servants except her old nurse who could always drive with her she had as many priests to stay with her as she could need and even the priests did not want a gorgeous chapel in that place where it would have been merely seeing as an invidious instance of ostentation they were perfectly ready to celebrate Mass for Lenora and her nurse when they stayed at Branshaw in a cleaned up outhouse but Edward was as obstinate as a hog about it he was truly grieved at his wife's want of sentiment at her refusal to receive that amount of public homage from him she appeared to him to be wanting in imagination to be cold and hard I don't exactly know what part her priests played in the tragedy that it all became I dare say they behaved quite credibly but mistakenly but then who would not have been mistaken with Edward I believe he was even hurt that Lenora's confessor did not make strenuous efforts to convert him there was a period when he was quite ready to become an emotional Catholic I don't know why they did not take him out on the hop but they have queer sorts of wisdoms those people and queer sorts of tact perhaps they thought that Edward's too early conversion would frighten off other Protestant desirables from marrying Catholic girls perhaps they saw deeper into Edward than he saw himself and thought that he would make not a very creditable convert at any rate they had Lenora left him very much alone it mortified him very considerably he has told me that if Lenora had taken his aspirations seriously everything would have been different but I dare say that was nonsense at any rate it was over the question of the chapel that they had their first and really disastrous quarrel Edward at that time was not well he supposed himself to be overworked with his regimental affairs he was managing the mess at the time and Lenora was not well she was beginning to fear that their union might be sterile and then her father came over from glassmoyle to stay with them those were troublesome times in Ireland I understand at any rate Colonel Poeus had tenants on the brain his own tenants having shot at him with shotguns and in conversation with Edward's land steward he got it into his head that Edward managed his estates with a mad generosity towards his tenants I understand also that those years the 90s were very bad for farming Edward was fetching only a few shillings the hundred the price of meat was so low that cattle hardly paid for raising whole English counties were ruined and Edward allowed his tenants very high rebates to do both justice Lenora has since acknowledged that she was in the wrong at that time and that Edward was following out a more far-seeing policy in nursing his really very good tenants over a bad period it was not as if the whole of his money came from the land a good deal of it was in rails but old Colonel Poeus had that B in his bonnet and if he never directly approached Edward himself on the subject he preached unceasingly whenever he had the opportunity to Lenore his pet idea was that Edward ought to sack all his own tenants and import a set of farmers from Scotland that was what they were doing in Essex he was of the opinion that Edward was riding hot foot to ruin that worried Lenora very much it worried her dreadfully she lay awake nights she had an anxious line round her mouth and that again worried Edward I do not mean to say that Lenora actually spoke to Edward about his tenants but he got to know that someone, probably her father had been talking to her about the matter he got to know it because it was the habit of his steward to look in on them every morning about breakfast time to report any little happenings and there was a farmer called Mumford who had only paid half his rent for the last three years one morning the land steward reported that Mumford would be unable to pay his rent all that year Edward reflected for a moment and then he said something like oh well he's an old fellow and his family have been our tenants for over 200 years let him all fall together and then Lenora you must remember that she had reason for being very nervous and unhappy at that time let out a sound that was very like a groan it startled Edward who more than suspected what was passing in her mind it startled him into a state of anger he said sharply you wouldn't have me turn out people who've been earning money for us for centuries people to whom we have responsibilities and let in a pack of scotch farmers he looked at her Lenora said with what was practically a glance of hatred and then precipitately left the breakfast table Lenora knew that it probably made it all the worse that he had been betrayed into a manifestation of anger before a third party it was the first and last time that he ever was betrayed into such a manifestation of anger the land steward, a moderate and well-balanced man whose family also had been with the Ashburnums for over a century took it upon himself to explain that he considered Edward was pursuing a perfectly proper course with his tenants he aired perhaps a little on the side of generosity but hard times were hard times and everyone had to feel the pinched landlord as well as tenants the great thing was not to let the land go into a poor state of cultivation scotch farmers just skinned your fields and let them go down and down but Edward had a very good set of tenants who did their best for him and for themselves these arguments at the time carried very little conviction to Lenora she was nevertheless much concerned by Edward's outburst of anger the fact is that Lenora had been practicing economies in her department two of the under housemaids had gone and she had not replaced them she had spent much less that year upon dress the fare she had provided at dinners they gave had been much less bountiful and not nearly so costly as had been the case in preceding years and Edward began to perceive a hardness and determination in his wife's character he seemed to see a net closing round him but in which they would be forced to live like one of the comparatively poor country families of the neighborhood and in the mysterious way in which two people living together get to know each other's thoughts without a word spoken he had known even before the outbreak that Lenora was worried about his managing of the estates this appeared to him to be intolerable he had too a great feeling of self contempt he had been betrayed into speaking harshly to Lenora before the land steward she imagined that his nerve must be deserting him and there could have been few men more miserable than Edward was at that period you see he was really a very simple soul very simple he imagined that no man can satisfactorily accomplish his life's work without loyal and wholehearted cooperation of the woman he lives with and he was beginning to perceive dimly that whereas his own traditions were entirely collective his wife was a sheer individualist his own theory, the feudal theory of an overlord doing his best by his dependents and the dependents meanwhile doing their best by the overlord this theory was entirely foreign to Leonora's nature she came of a family of small Irish landlords that hostile garrison in a plundered country and she was thinking unceasingly of the children she wished to have I don't know why they never had any children not that I really believe that children would have made any difference the dissimilarity of Edward and Leonora was too profound it will give you some idea of the extraordinary naivete of Edward Ashburnham that at the time of his marriage and for perhaps a couple of years after he did not really know how children are produced neither did Leonora I don't mean to say that this state of things continued but there it was I daresay it had a good deal of influence on their mentalities at any rate they never had a child it was a will of God it certainly presented itself to Leonora as being the will of God as being a mysterious and awful chastisement of the Almighty for she had discovered shortly before this period that her parents had not had not exacted from Edward's family the promise that any children she should bear should be brought up as Catholics she herself had never talked of the matter with either her father, her mother, or her husband when at last her father had let drop some words leading her to believe that that was the fact she tried desperately to exhort the promise from Edward she encountered an unexpected obstinacy Edward was perfectly willing that the girls should be Catholic the boys must be Anglican I don't understand the bearing of these things in English society indeed Englishmen seem to be a little mad in matters of politics or of religion in Edward it was particularly queer because he himself was perfectly ready to become a Romanist he seemed however to contemplate going over to Rome himself and yet letting his boys be educated in the religion of their immediate ancestors this may appear illogical but I dare say it was not so illogical as it looks Edward, that is to say, regarded himself as having his own body and soul at his disposal but his loyalty to the traditions of his family would not permit him to bind any future inheritors of his name or beneficiaries by the death of his ancestors about the girls it did not much matter they would know other homes and other circumstances besides it was the usual thing but the boys must be given the opportunity of choosing they must have first all the Anglican teaching he was perfectly unshakable about this Leonora was an agony during all this time you will have to remember that she seriously believed that children who might be born to her went in danger if not absolutely of damnation at any rate of receiving false doctrine it was an agony more terrible than she could describe she didn't indeed attempt to describe it but I could tell from her voice when she said almost negligently I used to lie awake whole nights it was no good my spiritual advisors trying to console me I knew from her voice how terrible and how long those knights must have seemed and how little avail were the consolations of their spiritual advisors her spiritual advisors seemed to have taken the matter a little more calmly they certainly told her that she must not consider herself in any way to have sinned nay they seemed even to have exhorted to have threatened her with a view to getting her out of what they considered to be a morbid frame of mind she would just have to make the best of things to influence the children when they came not by propaganda but by personality and they warned her that she would be committing a sin if she continued to think that she had sinned nevertheless she continued to think that she had sinned Leonora could not be aware that the man whom she loved passionately and whom nevertheless she was beginning to try to rule with a rod of iron that this man was becoming more and more estranged from her he seemed to regard her as being not only physically and mentally cold but even as being actually wicked and mean they were times when he would almost shudder if she spoke to him and she could not understand how he could consider her wicked or mean it only seemed to her a sort of madness in him that he should try to take upon his shoulders the burden of his troop of his regiment of his estate and of half of his country she could not see that in trying to curb what she regarded as megalomania she was doing anything wicked she was just trying to keep things together for the sake of the children who did not come and little by little the hold of their intercourse became simply one of agonized discussion as to whether Edward should subscribe to this or to that institution or should try to reclaim this or that drunkard she simply could not see it into this really terrible position of strain from which there appeared to be no issue the kill site case came almost as a relief it is part of the peculiar irony of things that Edward would certainly never have kissed that nursemaid if he had not been trying to please Leonora nursemaids do not travel first class and that day Edward traveled in a third class carriage in order to prove to Leonora that he was capable of economies I have said that the kill site case came almost as a relief to the strained situation that then existed between them it gave Leonora an opportunity of backing him up in a wholehearted and absolutely loyal manner it gave her the opportunity of behaving to him as he considered a wife should behave to her husband you see Edward found himself in a railway carriage with a quite pretty girl of about 19 and the quite pretty girl of about 19 with dark red hair and red cheeks and blue eyes was quietly weeping Edward had been sitting in his corner thinking about nothing at all he had chance to look at the nursemaid two large pretty tears came out of her eyes and dropped into her lap he immediately felt that he had got to do something to comfort her that was his job in life he was desperately unhappy himself and it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world that they should pool their sorrows he was quite democratic the idea of the difference in their station never seemed to have occurred to him he began to talk to her he discovered that her young man had been seen walking out with Annie of number 54 he moved over to her side of the carriage he told her that the report probably wasn't true that after all a young man might take a walk with Annie from number 54 without its denoting anything very serious and he assured me that he felt at least quite half fatherly when he put his arm around her waist and kissed her the girl, however, had not forgotten the difference of her station all her life by her mother, by other girls, by school teachers by the whole tradition of her class she had been warned against gentlemen she was being kissed by a gentleman she screamed, tore herself away, sprang up and pulled the communication cord Edward came fairly well out of the affair in the public estimation but it did him mentally a good deal of harm End of Part 3, Chapter 3 It is very difficult to give an all-around impression of a man I wonder how far I have succeeded with Edward Ashburn Ham I dare say I haven't succeeded at all it is ever very difficult to see how such things matter was it the important part about poor Edward that he was very well built, carried himself well was moderate at the table and led a regular life that he had in fact all the virtues that are usually accounted to English or have I in the least succeeded in conveying that he was all those things and had all those virtues he certainly was them and had them up to the last months of his life they were the things that one would set upon his tombstone they will indeed be set upon his tombstone by his widow and have I, I wonder, given the due impression of how his life was portioned and his time laid out because until the very last the amount of time taken up by his various passions was relatively small I have been forced to write very much about his passions but you have to consider I should like to be able to make you consider that he rose every morning at seven took a cold bath, breakfasted at eight was occupied with his regiment from nine until one played polo or cricket with the men when it was the season for cricket till tea time afterwards he would occupy himself with the letters from his land steward or with the affairs of his mess till dinner time he would dine and pass the evening playing cards or playing billiards with Leonora or at social functions of one kind or another and a greater part of his life was taken up by that by far the greater part of his life his love affairs until the very end where sandwiched in at hot moments where took place during the social evening the dances and dinners but I guess I have made it hard for you oh silent listener to get that impression anyhow, I hope I have not given you the idea that Edward Ashburnham was a pathological case he wasn't he was just a normal man and very much of a sentimentalist I dare say the quality of his youth the nature of his mother's influence his ignorance the crammings that he received at the hands of army coaches I dare say that all these excellent influences upon his adolescence were very bad for him but we all have to put up with that sort of a thing and no doubt it is very bad for all of us nevertheless the outline of Edward's life was an outline perfectly normal the life of a hard-working, sentimental, and efficient professional man that question of first impressions has always bothered me a good deal but quite academically, I mean that from time to time I've wondered whether it were best or not best to trust to one's first impressions and dealing with people but I never had anybody to deal with except waiters and chambermaids and the Ashburnhams with whom I didn't know that I was having any dealings and as far as waiters and chambermaids were concerned I have generally found that my first impressions were correct enough if my first idea of a man was that he was civil, bludgeoning and attentive he generally seemed to go on being all those things once however at our parents flat we had a maid who appeared to be charming and transparently honest she stole nevertheless one of Florence's diamond rings she did it however to save her young man from going to prison so here as somebody says somewhere was a special case and even in my short incursion into American business life an incursion that lasted during part of August and nearly the whole of September I found that to rely on my first impressions was the best thing I could do I found myself automatically docketing and labeling each man as he was introduced to me by the run of his features and by the first words that he spoke I can't however be regarded as really doing business during that time that I spent in the United States I was just winding things up if it hadn't been for my idea of marrying a girl I might possibly have looked for something to do in my own country for my experiences there were vivid and amusing it was exactly as if I had come out of the museum into a riotous fancy dress ball during my life with Florence I had almost come to forget that there were such things as fashions or occupations with a greed of gain I had in fact forgotten that there was such a thing as a dollar and that a dollar can be extremely desirable if you don't happen to possess one and I had forgotten too that there was such a thing as gossip that mattered in that particular Philadelphia was the most amazing place I had ever been in my life I was not in that city for more than a week or ten days and I didn't there transact anything much in the way of business nevertheless the number of times that I was warned by everybody against everybody else was simply amazing a man I didn't know would come up behind my lounge chair in the hotel whispering cautiously beside my ear he would warn me against some other man that I equally didn't know but who would be standing by the bar I don't know what they thought I was there to do perhaps to buy out the city's debt or get a controlling hold of some real way interest or perhaps they imagined that I wanted to buy a newspaper for they were either politicians or reporters which of course comes to the same thing as a matter of fact my property in Philadelphia was mostly real estate in the old-fashioned part of the city and all I wanted to do there was just to satisfy myself that the houses were in good repair and the doors were kept properly painted I wanted also to see my relations of whom I had a few these were mostly professional people and they were mostly rather hard up because of the big bank failure in 1907 or their bouts still they were very nice they would have been nicer still if they hadn't all of them had what appeared to me to be the mania that what they called influences were working hard against them at any rate the impression of that city was one of old-fashioned rooms rather English than American in type in which handsome but care-worn ladies, cousin of my own talked principally about mysterious movements that were going on against them I never got to know what it was all about perhaps they thought I knew or perhaps there weren't any movements at all it was all very secret and subtle and subterranean but there was a nice young fellow called Carter who was a sort of second nephew of mine twice removed he was handsome and dark and genteel and modest understand also that he was a good cricketer he was employed by the real estate agents who collected my rents it was he therefore who took me over my own property and I saw a good deal of him and a nice girl called Mary to whom he was engaged at that time I did what I certainly shouldn't do now I made some careful inquiries as to his character discovered from his employers that he was just all that he appeared honest, industrious, high-spirited, friendly and ready to do any one a good turn his relatives however, as they were mine too there was something darkly mysterious against him I imagined that he must have been mixed up in some case of graft or that he had at least betrayed several innocent and trusting maidens I pushed however that particular mystery home and discovered it was only that he was a Democrat own people were mostly Republican seemed to make it worse and more darkly mysterious to them that young Carter was what they called a sort of a Vermont Democrat which was the whole ticket and no mistake but I don't know what it means anyhow I suppose that my money will go to him when I die I like the recollection of his friendly image and of the nice girl he was engaged to may fate deal very kindly with them I have said just now that in my present frame of mind nothing would ever make me make inquiries as to the character of any man that I liked at first sight the little digression as to my Philadelphia experiences was really meant to lead around to this for who in this world can give anyone a character who in this world knows anything of any other heart or of his own I don't mean to say that one cannot form an average estimate of the way a person will behave but one cannot be certain of the way any man will behave in every case and until one can do that a character is of no use to anyone that for instance was the way with Florence's maid in Paris we used to trust that girl with blank checks for the payment of the tradesmen for quite a time she was so trusted by us then suddenly she stole her ring we should not have believed her capable of it she would not have believed herself capable of it it was nothing in her character so perhaps it was with Edward Ashperham or perhaps it wasn't no I rather think it wasn't it is difficult to figure out I have said that the kill style case eased the immediate tension for him and Leonora it let him see that she was capable of loyalty to him it gave her a chance to show that she believed in him she accepted without question his statement that in kissing the girl he wasn't trying to do more than administer fatherly comfort to a weeping child and indeed his own world including the magistrates took that view of the case whatever people say one's word can be perfectly charitable at times but again as I have said it did Edward a great deal of harm that at least was his view of it he assured me that before the case came on and was wrangled over by counsel with all sorts of dirty mindedness but counsel in that sort of case can impune he had not had the least idea that he was capable of being unfaithful to Leonora but in the midst of that tumult he says that it came suddenly into his head whilst he was in the witness box in the midst of those August ceremonies of the law there came suddenly into his mind the recollection of the softness of the girl's body as he had pressed her to him and from that moment that girl appeared desirable to him and Leonora completely unattractive he began to indulge in daydreams in which he approached the nurse made more tactfully and carried the matter much further occasionally he thought of other women in terms of weary courtship or perhaps it would be more exact to say that he thought of them in terms of tactful comforting ending in absorption that was his own view of the case he saw himself as the victim of the law I don't mean to say that he saw himself as a kind of drifus the law particularly was quite kind to him it stated that in its view Captain Ashbram had been misled by an ill-placed desire to comfort a member of the opposite sex and it find him five shilling for his want of tact or of knowledge of the world but Edward maintained that it had put ideas into his head I don't believe it though he certainly did he was 27 then and his wife was out of sympathy with him some crash was immeasurable there was between them a momentary rapprochement but it could not last it made it probably all the worse in that particular matter Leonora had come so very well up to the scratch for her Edward respected her more and was grateful to her it made her seem by so much the more cold in other matters that were near his heart his responsibilities, his career, his tradition it brought his despair of her up to a point of exasperation and it riveted on him the idea that he might find some other woman who would give him the moral support that he needed he wanted to be looked upon as a sort of lawn grin at that time he says he would about deliberately looking for some woman who could help him he found several where there were quite a number of ladies in his set who were capable of agreeing with this handsome and fine fellow that the duties of a feudal gentleman were feudal he would have liked to pass his days talking to one or other of these ladies but there was always an optical if the lady were married there would be a husband who claimed the greater part of her time and intention if on the other hand it was an unmarried girl he could not see very much of her for fear of compromising her at that date you understand he had not the least idea of seducing any one of these ladies he wanted only moral support at the hands of some female because he found men difficult to talk to about ideals indeed I do not believe that he had at any time any idea of making anyone his mistress that sounds queer but I believe it is quite true as a statement of character it was I believe one of Leonora's priests the man of the world who suggested that she should take him to Monte Carlo he had the idea that what Edward needed in order to fit him for the society of Leonora was a touch of irresponsibility for Edward at that date had much the aspect of a prig I mean that if he played polo and was an excellent dancer he did the one for the sake of keeping himself fit and the other because it was a social duty to show himself at dances and when there to dance well he did nothing for fun except what he considered to be his work in life as the priest thought this must forever estrange him from Leonora not because Leonora set much store by the joy of life but because she was out of sympathy with Edward's work on the other hand Leonora did like to have a good time now and then and as the priest thought if Edward could be got to like having a good time now and then to there would be a bond of sympathy between them it was a good idea but it worked out wrongly it worked out in fact in the mistress of the Grand Duke in anyone less sentimental than Edward that would not have mattered with Edward it was fatal for such was his honorable nature that for him to enjoy a woman's favors made him feel that she had a bond on him for life that was the way it worked out in practice psychologically it meant that he could not have a mistress without falling violently in love with her he was a serious person and in this particular case it was very expensive the mistress of the Grand Duke a Spanish dancer of passionate appearance singled out Edward for her glances at a ball that was held in their common hotel Edward was tall, handsome, blonde and very wealthy as she understood and Leonora went up to bed early she did not care for public dances but she was relieved to see that Edward appeared to be having a good time with several amiable girls and that was the end of Edward for the Spanish dancer of passionate appearance wanted one night of him for his bozier he took her into the dark gardens and remembering suddenly the girl of the killstide gaze he kissed her he kissed her passionately, violently and with a sudden explosion of a passion that had been bridled all his life for Leonora was cold or at any rate well behaved la dolce quinta liked this reservation and he passed the night in her bed when the palpitating creature was at last asleep in his arms he discovered that he was madly and passionately and overwhelmingly in love with her it was a passion that had risen like fire and dry corn he could think of nothing else he could live for nothing else but la dolce quinta was a reasonable creature without an ounce of passion in her she wanted a certain satisfaction of her appetites and Edward had appealed to her the night before now that was done with and quite coldly she said that she wanted money if he was to have any more of her it was a perfectly reasonable commercial transaction she did not care two buttons for Edward or for any man and he was asking her to risk a very good situation with the grand duke if Edward could put up sufficient money to serve as a kind of insurance against accident she was ready to like Edward for a time that would be covered because it were by the policy she was getting $50,000 a year from her grand duke Edward would have to pay a premium of two years higher for a month of her society there would not be much risk of the grand dukes finding out and it was not certain that he would give her the keys of the street if he indeed did find out but there was the risk the 20% risk as she figured it out she talked to Edward as if she had been a solicitor with an estate to sell perfectly quietly and perfectly coldly without any inflections in her voice she did not want to be unkind to him but she could see no reason for being kind to him she was a virtuous businesswoman with a mother and two sisters and her own old age to be provided comfortably for she did not expect more than a five years for a run she was 24 and as she said we Spanish women are horrors at 30 Edward swore that he would provide for her for life if she would come to him and leave off talking so horribly but she only shrugged one shoulder slowly and contemptuously he tried to convince this woman who as he sought had surrendered to him her virtue that he regarded it as in any case his duty to provide for her and to cherish her and even to love her for life in return for her sacrifice he would do that in return again for his honorable love she would listen forever to the accounts of his estate that was how he figured it out she shrugged the same shoulder with the same gesture and held out her left hand with the elbow at her side in fin me she said put in this hand the price of that tiara at warlory's ore and she turned her back on him Edward went mad his world stood on its head the palms in front of the blue sea dance grotesque dances you see he believed in the virtue tenderness and moral support of women he wanted more than anything to argue with La Dulce Quinta to retire with her to an island she pointed out to her the damnation of her point of view and how salvation can only be found in true love and the feudal system she had once been his mistress he reflected and by all the moral laws she ought to have gone on being his mistress or at the very least his sympathetic confidant but her rooms were closed to him she did not appear in the hotel nothing like silence to break that down he had to have twenty thousand pounds you have heard what happened he spent a week of madness he hungered his eyes sank in he shuddered at Leonora's touch I daresay that nine tenths of what he took to be his passion for La Dulce Quinta was really discomfort at the thought that he had been unfaithful to Leonora he felt uncommonly bad that is to say unreasonably bad and he took it all to be love he was incredibly naive he drank like a fish after Leonora was in bed and he spread himself over the table and this went on for about a fortnight heaven knows what would have happened he would have thrown away every penny that he possessed on the night after he had lost about forty thousand pounds and whilst the whole hotel was whispering about it La Dulce Quinta walked composededly into his bedroom he was too drunk to recognize her and she sat in his armchair knitting and holding spelling salts to her nose for he was pretty far gone with alcoholic poisoning and as soon as he was able to understand her she said look here monomy do not go to the tables again take a good sleep now and come and see me this afternoon you slept till the lunch hour by that time Leonora had heard the news a Mrs. Colonel Whelan had told her Mrs. Colonel Whelan seems to have been the only sensible person who was ever connected with the Ashburn Hams she had argued out that there must be a woman of the harpy variety connected with Edward's incredible behavior in Maine and she advised Leonora to go straight off to town which might have the effect of bringing Edward to his senses and to consult her solicitor and her spiritual advisor she had better go that very morning it was no good arguing with a man in Edward's condition Edward indeed did not know that she had gone as soon as he awoke he went straight to La Dulce Coenta's room and she stood him his lunch in her own apartments he fell on her neck and wept and she put up with it for a time she was quite a good natured woman and when she had calmed him down with you de malice she said look here my friend how much money have you left five thousand dollars ten for the rumor went that Edward had lost two kings ransoms the night for fourteen nights and she imagined that he must be near the end of his resources the oy de malice had calmed Edward to such an extent that for the moment he really had a head on his shoulders he did nothing more than grunt and then why she entered I may just as well have the ten thousand dollars as the table I will go with you to Antibes for a week for that sum Edward grunted five she tried to get seven thousand five hundred but he stuck to his five thousand in the hotel expenses at Antibes the senator carried him just as far as that and then he collapsed again he had to leave for Antibes at three he could not do without it he left a note for Leonora saying that he had gone off for a week with the Clinton Morleys he did not enjoy himself very much at Antibes La Dulce Coenta he spoke of nothing with any enthusiasm except money and she tried him unceasingly during every waking hour for presence of the most expensive description and at the end of a week she just quietly kicked him out he hung him about in Antibes for three days he was cured of the idea that he had any duties towards La Dulce Coenta feudal or otherwise but his sentimentalism required of him an attitude of ironic gloom as if his court had gone into a half-morning then his appetite suddenly returned and he remembered Leonora he founded his hotel at Monte Carlo a telegram for Leonora dispatched from precipitate Lee when she only thought that he had gone yawning with the Clinton Morleys then he discovered that she had left the hotel before he had written the note he had a pretty rocky journey back to town he was frightened out of his life and Leonora had never seemed so desirable to him just because it is so sad just because there was no current to draw things along to a swift and inevitable end there is about it none of the elevation that accompanies tragedy there is about it no nemesis no destiny here were two noble people for I am convinced that both Edward and Leonora had noble natures here then were two noble natures drifting down life-like fire ships afloat on a lagoon and causing miseries heartaches, agony of the mind and death and they themselves steadily deteriorated and why? for what purpose? to point what lesson? it is all a darkness there is not even any villain in the story for even Major Basil the husband of the lady who next and really comforted the unfortunate Edward even Major Basil was not a villain in this piece he was a slack, loose, shipless sort of fellow but he did not do anything to Edward whilst they were in the same station in Burma he borrowed a good deal of money, though really, since Major Basil had no particular vices it was difficult to know why he wanted to he collected different types of horse's bits from the earliest times to the present day but since he did not prosecute even this occupation with any vigor he could not have needed much money for the acquirement say as a bit of Genghis Khan's charger if Genghis Khan had a charger and when I say that he borrowed a good deal of money from Edward I do not mean to say that he had borne a thousand pounds from him during the five years that the connection lasted Edward of course did not have a great deal of money Leonora was seeing to that still he may have had five hundred pounds a year English for his menu's pleasures for his regimental subscriptions and for keeping his men smart Leonora hated that she would have preferred to buy dresses for herself or to have devoted the money to paying off a mortgage still with her sense of justice she saw that since she was managing a property bringing in three thousand a year with a view to re-establishing it as a property of five thousand a year and since the property really if not legally belonged to Edward it was reasonable and just that Edward should get a slice of his own of course she had the devil of a job I don't know that I have got the financial details exactly right I'm a pretty good head of figures but my mind still sometimes mixes up pounds with dollars and I get a figure wrong anyhow the proposition was something like this properly worked and without rebates to the tenants and keeping up schools and things the band child estate should have brought in about five thousand a year when Edward had it it brought in actually about four I'm talking in pounds not dollars Edward's excesses with the Spanish lady had reduced this value to about three as the maximum figure without reductions Leonora wanted to get it back to five she was of course very young to be faced with such a proposition 24 is not a very advanced age so she did things with a youthful figure that she would very likely have made more merciful if she had known more about life she got Edward remarkably on the hop he had to face her in a London hotel when he crept back from Monte Carlo with his poor tail between his poor legs as far as I can make out she cut short his first mumblings and his first attempt at affectionate speech with words something like we're on the verge of ruin do you intend to let me pull things together? if not I shall retire to Hendon on my jointure Hendon represented a convent to which he occasionally went for what is called a retreat in Catholic circles and for dear Edward knew nothing absolutely nothing he did not know how much money he had Edward blew to the table it might have been a quarter of a million for all he remembered he did not know whether she knew about La Dolce Quinta or whether she imagined that he had gone off yachting or had stayed at Monte Carlo he was just dumb and he just wanted to get into a hole and not have to talk Leonora did not make him talk and she said nothing herself I do not know much about English legal procedure and give technical details of how they tied him up but I know that two days later without her having said more than I have reported you Leonora and her attorney had become the trustees as I believe it is called of all Edward's property and there was an end of Edward as the good landlord and father of his people he went out Leonora then had three thousand a year at her disposal she occupied Edward with getting himself transferred to a part of his regiment at Burma if that was the right way to put it she herself had an interview lasting a week or so with Edward's lance toward she made him understand that the estate would have to yield up to its last penny before they left for India she had let branch off for seven years at a thousand a year she sold two van dykes and a little silver for eleven thousand pounds and she raised on mortgage twenty nine thousand that went to Edward's money-lending friends in Monte Carlo so she had to get twenty nine thousand back for she did not regard the van dykes and the silver as things she would have to replace they were just frills to the Ashburnham vanity Edward cried for two days over the disappearance of his ancestors and then she wished she had not done it but it did not teach her anything and it lessened such a steam as she had for him she did not also understand that to let branch affected him with a feeling of physical soiling that it was almost as bad for him as if a woman belonging to him had become a prostitute that was how it did affect him but I daresay she felt just as bad about the Spanish dancer so she went at it they were eight years in India and during the whole of that time she insisted that they must be self-supporting they had to live on his captain's pay plus the extra allowance for being at the front she gave him the five hundred a year for Ashburnham frills as she called it to herself and she considered she was doing him very well indeed in a way she did him very well but it was not his way she was always buying him expensive things which as it were she took off her own back I have for instance spoken of Edward's leather cases well they were not Edwards at all they were Leonora's manifestations he liked to be clean but he preferred, as it were, to be threadbare she never understood that and all that pigskin was her idea of a reward to him for putting her up to a little speculation by which she made eleven hundred pounds she did herself the threadbare business when they went up to a place called Simla where as I understand it is cool in the summer and very social when they went up to Simla for their health it was she who had him prancing around as we should say in the United States on a thousand dollar horse with the gladdest of glad rags all over him she herself used to go into retreat I believe that it was very good for her health and it was also very inexpensive it was probably also very good for Edward's health because he pranced about mostly with Mrs. Basil who was a nice woman and very very kind to him I suppose she was his mistress but I never heard it from Edward, of course I seem to gather that they carried it on in a high romantic fashion very proper for both of them or at any rate for Edward she seems to have been a tender and gentle soul who did what he wanted I do not mean to say that she was without character that was her job to do what Edward wanted so I figured it out that for those five years Edward wanted long passages of deep affection kept up in long, long talks and that every now and then they fell which would give Edward an opportunity for remorse and an excuse to lend the major another fifty I don't think that Mrs. Basil considered it to be falling she just pitted him and loved him you see, Leonora and Edward had to talk about something during those years you cannot be absolutely dumb when you live with a person unless you are an inhabitant of the north of England or the state of Maine so Leonora imagined the cheerful device of letting him see the accounts of his estate and discussing them with him he did not discuss them much he was trying to behave proudly but it was old Mr. Mumford, the farmer who did not pay his rent that threw Edward into Mrs. Basil's arms Mrs. Basil came upon Edward in the dusk in the Burmese garden with all sorts of flowers and things and he was cutting up the crop with his sword, not a walking stick he was carrying on and cursing in a way that he would not believe she ascertained that an old gentleman called Mumford had been ejected from his farm and had been given a little cottage rent-free where he lived on ten shillings a week from a farmer's benevolent society supplemented by seven that was being allowed to him by the Ashburnham trustees Edward had just discovered that fact from the estate accounts Leonora had left him in his dressing room and he had begun to read them before taking off his marching kit that was how he came to have a sword Leonora considered that she had been unusually generous to old Mr. Mumford in allowing him to inhabit a cottage rent-free and in giving him seven shillings a week anyhow Mrs. Basil had never seen a man in such a state as Edward was she had been passionately in love with him for quite a time and he had been longing for his sympathy and admiration with a passion as deep that was how they came to speak about it in the Burmese garden under the pale sky with sheaves of severed vegetation misty and odorous in the night around their feet I think they behaved themselves with decorum for quite a time after that though Mrs. Basil spent so many hours over the accounts of the Ashburnham estate that she got the name of every field by heart Edward had a huge map of his land in the harness room and Major Basil did not seem to mind I believe that people do not mind much in lonely stations might have lasted forever if the Major had not been made what is called a bravet colonel during the shuffling of troops that went on just before the South African War he was set off somewhere else and of course Mrs. Basil could not stay with Edward Edward odd I suppose to have gone to the Transvaal it would have done him a good deal of good to get killed but Leonora would not let him she had heard awful stories of the extravagance of the Husser Regiment in wartime and they left hundred bottle cases of champagne at five guineas of bottle on the belt and so on besides she preferred to see how Edward was spending his 500 year I don't mean to say that Edward had any grievance in that he was never a man of the deeds of heroism sort and it was just as good for him to be sniped at up in the hills of the northwestern frontier as to be shot at by an old gentleman in a top at at the bottom of some spruet those are more or less his words about it I believe he quite distinguished himself over there at any rate he had his DSO and was made a bravet major Leonora however was not in the least keen on his soldiering she hated also his deeds of heroism one of their bitterest quarrels came after he had for the second time in the Red Sea jumped overboard from the troopship and rescued a private soldier she stood at the first time and even complimented him but the Red Sea was awful that trip and the private soldiers seemed to develop a suicidal craze he got on Leonora's nerves she figured Edward for the rest of that trip jumping overboard every ten minutes and the mere cry of man overboard is a disagreeable, alarming and disturbing thing the ship gets stopped and there are all sorts of shouts and Edward would not promise not to do it again though fortunately they struck a streak of cooler weather when they were in the Persian Gulf Leonora had got it into her head that Edward was trying to commit suicide so I guess it was pretty awful for her when he would not give the promise Leonora ought never to have been on that troopship but she got there somehow as an economy Major Basil discovered his wife's relation with Edward just before he was sent to his other station I don't know whether that was a blackmailer's adroitness or just a trick of destiny he may have known of it all the time or he may not at any rate he got hold of just about then some letters and things it cost Edward three hundred pounds immediately I do not know how it was arranged I cannot imagine how even a blackmailer can make his demands I suppose there is some sort of way of saving your face I figure the Major is disclosing the letters to Edward with furious oaths then accepting his explanations that the letters were perfectly innocent if the wrong construction were not put upon them then the Major would say I shall I old chap I'm dosed hard up couldn't you lend me three hundred or so I fancy that was how it was and year by year after that there would come a letter from the Major saying that he was dosed hard up and couldn't Edward lend him three hundred or so Edward was pretty hard hit when Mrs. Basil had to go away he really had been very fond of her and he remained faithful to her memory for quite a long time and Mrs. Basil had loved him very much and continued to cherish a hope of reunion with him three days ago there came like quite proper but very lamentable letter from her to Leonora asking to be given particulars as to Edward's death she had read the advertisement of it in an Indian paper I think she must have been a very nice woman and then the Akron hams were moved somewhere up towards a place or a district called Chittaral I am no good at geography of the Indian Empire by that time they had settled down into a model couple and they never spoke in private to each other Leonora had given up even showing the accounts of the Ashburham estate to Edward he thought that that was because she had piled up such a lot of money that she did not want him to know how she was getting on anymore but as a matter of fact after five or six years it had penetrated to her mind that it was painful to Edward to have to look on at accounts of his estate and have no hand in the management of it she was trying to do him a kindness and up in Chittaral poor dear little Maisie Maiden came along that was the most unsettling to Edward of Ollie's affairs it made him suspect that he was inconstant if fair with Adolfoqueta he had sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia his relations with Mrs. Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral of a gross kind the husband had been complacent they had really loved each other his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife to him he thought that Mrs. Basil had been his soulmate separated from him by an unkind fate something sentimental of that sort but he discovered that whilst he was still writing long weekly letters to Mrs. Basil he was beginning to be furiously impatient if he missed reading Maisie Maiden during the course of the day he discovered himself watching the doorways with impatient he discovered that he disliked her boy-husband very much for hours at a time he discovered that he was getting up at unearthly hours in order to have time later in the morning to go for a walk with Maisie Maiden he discovered himself using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value to those words that were discoveries that came so late that he could do nothing but drift he was losing weight his eyes were beginning to fall in he had touches of bad fever he was, as he described it pipped and one ghastly hot day he suddenly heard himself say to Leonora Hushay couldn't we take Mrs. Maiden with us to Europe and drop her at Naulheim he hadn't had the least idea of saying that to Leonora he had merely been standing looking and illustrated paper waiting for dinner dinner was twenty minutes late or the Ashburn Hams would not have been alone together no, he hadn't had the least idea of framing that speech he had been standing in a silent agony of fear a belonging of heat of fever he was thinking that they were going back to Branch Hall in a month and that Maisie Maiden was going to remain behind and then that had come out the punka swished in the darkened room Leonora lay exhausted and motionless in her cane lounge neither of them stirred they were both at the same time very ill in indefinite ways and then Leonora said yes I promised it to Charlie Maiden this afternoon I have offered to pay her expenses myself Edward just saved himself from saying good god you see he had not the least idea of what Leonora knew about Maisie about Mrs. Basil even about Lato Ziquita it was a pretty agnomatic situation for him it struck him that Leonora must be intending to manage his love as she managed his money affairs and it made her more hateful to him and more worthy of respect Leonora at any rate had managed his money to some purpose she had spoken to him a week before for the first time in several years about money she had made twenty-two thousand pounds out of the Branshaw land and seven by the letting of Branshaw furnished by fortunate investments in which Edward had helped her she had made another six or seven thousand that might well become more the mortgages were all paid off so that except for the departure of the two van dykes and the silver they were as well off as they had been before the Dose Ziquita had acted the locust it was Leonora's great achievement she laid the figures before Edward who maintained unbroken silence I propose, she said that you should resign from the army and that we should go back to Branshaw we are both too ill to stay here any longer Edward said nothing at all this Leonora continued passionately is the great day of my life Edward said you have managed the job amazingly you are a wonderful woman he was thinking that if they went back to Branshaw they would leave Maisie Maiden behind that thought occupied him exclusively they must undoubtedly return to Branshaw there could be no doubt that Leonora was too ill to stay in that place she said you understand that the management whole of the expenditure of the income will be in your hands there will be five thousand a year she thought that he cared very much about the expenditure of an income of five thousand a year and that the fact that she had done so much for him would rouse in him some affection for her but he was thinking exclusively of Maisie Maiden of Maisie thousands of miles away from him he was seeing the mountains between them blue mountains in the sea and sunlit plains he said that is very generous of you and she did not know whether that were praise or a sneer that had been a week before and all that week he had passed in an increasing agony at the thought of those mountains that see those sunlit plains would be between him and Maisie Maiden that thought shook him in the burning nights the sweat poured from him and he trembled with cold in the burning noons at that thought he had no minutes rest his bowels turned round and round within him his tongue was perpetually dry and it seemed to him that the breath between his teeth was like the air from a pest house he gave no thought to Leonor at all he had sent in his papers they were to leave in a month it seemed to him to be his duty to leave that place and go away to support Leonor he did his duty it was horrible in their relationship at that time that whatever she did caused him to hate her he hated her when he found that she proposed to set him up as the lord of ranch hog in as a sort of dummy lord in swaddling clothes he imagined that she had done this in order to separate him from Maisie Maiden he hung in all the heavy nights filled the shadowy corners of the room so when he heard that she had offered to the Maiden boy to take his wife to Europe with him automatically he hated her since he hated all that she did seemed to him at that time that she could never be other than cruel even if by accident an act of hers were kind yes it was a horrible situation but the cool breezes of the ocean seemed to clear up that hatred as if it had been a curtain they seemed to give him back admiration for her and respect the agreeableness of having money lavishly at command the fact that it had brought for him the companionship of Maisie Maiden these things began to make him see that his wife might have been right in the starving and scraping upon which he had insisted he was at ease he was even radiantly happy because of bullying for Maisie Maiden along the deck one night when he was leaning beside Leonora over the ship side he said suddenly bye Joe, you're the finest woman in the world I wish we could be better friends she just turned away without a word and went to her cabin still she was very much better in health and now I suppose I must give you Leonora's side of the case that is very difficult for Leonora she preserved an unchanged front changed very frequently her point of view she had been drilled in her tradition in her upbringing to keep her mouth shut but there were times she said when she was so near yielding to the temptation of speaking then afterwards she shuttered to think of those times he must postulate that what she desired above all things was to keep a shut mouth to the world to Edward and to the women that he loved if she spoke she would despise herself from the moment of his unfaithfulness with law Dothikwita she never acted the part of wife to Edward it was not that she intended to keep herself from him as a principal forever her spiritual advisers I believe forbade that but she stipulated that he must in some way perhaps symbolical come back to her she was not very clear as to what she meant probably she did not know herself or perhaps she did there were moments when he seemed to be coming back to her there were moments when she was within a hair yielding to her physical passion for him in just the same way at moments she almost yielded to the temptation to denounce Mrs. Basil to her husband or mazy maiden to hers she desired then to cause the horrors and pains of public scandals watching Edward more intently and with more straining of ears than that which a cat bestows upon a bird overhead she was aware of the progress of his passion for each of these ladies she was aware of it from the way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways she knew from his tranquillities when he had received satisfactions at times she imagined herself to see more than was warranted she imagined that Edward was carrying on intrigues with other women with two at once with three for whole periods she imagined him to be a monster of libertinage and she could not see that he could have anything against her she left him his liberty she was starving herself to build up his fortunes she allowed herself none of the joys of femininity no dresses no jewels hardly even friendships or fear they should cost money and yet oddly she could not be but aware that both Mrs. Basil and Maisie Maiden were nice women the curious discounting eye which one woman can turn on another did not prevent her seeing that Mrs. Basil was very good to Edward and Mrs. Maiden very good for him that seemed to her to be a monstrous and incomprehensible working of fate incomprehensible why she asked herself again and again did none of the good deeds she did for her husband ever come through to him or appear to him as good deeds by what trick of mania could not he let her be as good to him as Mrs. Basil was Mrs. Basil was not so extraordinarily dissimilar to herself she was it was true tall dark with soft mournful voice and a great kindness of manner for every created thing from punkamen to flowers on the trees but she was not so well read as Leonora at any rate in learned books Leonora could not stand novels but even with all her differences Mrs. Basil did not appear to Leonora to differ so very much from herself she was truthful honest and for the rest just a woman and Leonora had a big sort of idea that to a man all women are the same after three weeks of close intercourse she thought that the kindness should no longer appeal the soft mournful voice no longer thrill the tall darkness no longer give a man the illusion that he was going into the depth of an unexplored wood she could not understand how Edward could go on and on wandering over Mrs. Basil she could not see why he should continue to write her long letters after their separation after that indeed she had a very bad time she had at that period what I will call the monstrous theory of Edward she was always imagining him ogling at every woman that he came across she did not that year go into her deed at Simla because she was afraid that he would corrupt her maid in her absence she imagined him carrying on intrigues with native women or Eurasians dances she was in a fever of watchfulness she persuaded herself that this was because she had a dread of scandals Edward might get himself mixed up with a mergeable daughter of some man who would make a row or some husband who would matter but really she acknowledged afterwards to herself that she was hoping that Mrs. Basil being out of the way the time might have come when Edward should return to her all that period she passed in an agony of jealousy and fear the fear that Edward might really become promiscuous in his habits so that in a hot way she was glad when Maisie Maiden came along and she realized that she had not before been afraid of husbands and of scandals since then she did her best to keep Maisie's husband unsuspicious she wished to appear so trustful of Edward that Maiden could not possibly have any suspicion it was an evil position for her but Edward was very ill and she wanted to see him smile again she thought that if he could smile again through her agency he might return through gratitude and satisfied love to her at that time she thought that Edward was a person of light and fleeting passions and she could understand Edward's passion for Maisie since Maisie was one of those women to whom other women will allow magnetism she was very pretty she was very young in spite of her heart and Leonora was really very fond of Maisie who was fond enough of Leonora Leonora indeed imagined that she could manage this affair all right she had no thought of Maisie's being led into adultery she imagined that if she could take Maisie and Edward to Nuhime Edward would see enough of her to get tired of her pretty little chatterings and of the pretty little motions of her hands and feet that she could trust Edward for there was not any doubt of Maisie's passion for Edward she raved about him to Leonora as Leonora had heard girls rave about drawing masters in schools she was perpetually asking her boy-husband why he could not dress right, shoot, play polo or even recite sentimental poems like their major and young maiden had the greatest admiration for Edward and he adored was bewildered by and entirely trusted his wife it appeared to him that Edward was devoted to Leonora and Leonora imagined that when poor Maisie was cured of her hair and Edward had seen enough of her he would return to her she had the vague passionate idea that when Edward had exhausted a number of other types of women he must turn to her why should not her type have its turn in his heart she imagined that by now she understood him better that she understood better his vanities and that by making him happier she could arouse his love Lawrence knocked all that in the head end of part 3 chapter 5