The Good Soldier (10 page)

She had not told me so, but there was no doubt about the aunts,
for, on that afternoon, Miss Florence Hurlbird, Senior, stopped me
on my way to Florence's sitting-room and took me, agitatedly, into
the parlour. It was a singular interview, in that old-fashioned
colonial room, with the spindle-legged furniture, the silhouettes,
the miniatures, the portrait of General Braddock, and the smell of
lavender. You see, the two poor maiden ladies were in agonies—and
they could not say one single thing direct. They would almost wring
their hands and ask if I had considered such a thing as different
temperaments. I assure you they were almost affectionate, concerned
for me even, as if Florence were too bright for my solid and
serious virtues.

For they had discovered in me solid and serious virtues. That
might have been because I had once dropped the remark that I
preferred General Braddock to General Washington. For the Hurlbirds
had backed the losing side in the War of Independence, and had been
seriously impoverished and quite efficiently oppressed for that
reason. The Misses Hurlbird could never forget it.

Nevertheless they shuddered at the thought of a European career
for myself and Florence. Each of them really wailed when they heard
that that was what I hoped to give their niece. That may have been
partly because they regarded Europe as a sink of iniquity, where
strange laxities prevailed. They thought the Mother Country as
Erastian as any other. And they carried their protests to
extraordinary lengths, for them....

They even, almost, said that marriage was a sacrament; but
neither Miss Florence nor Miss Emily could quite bring herself to
utter the word. And they almost brought themselves to say that
Florence's early life had been characterized by
flirtations—something of that sort.

I know I ended the interview by saying:

"I don't care. If Florence has robbed a bank I am going to marry
her and take her to Europe." And at that Miss Emily wailed and
fainted. But Miss Florence, in spite of the state of her sister,
threw herself on my neck and cried out: "Don't do it, John. Don't
do it. You're a good young man," and she added, whilst I was
getting out of the room to send Florence to her aunt's rescue:

"We ought to tell you more. But she's our dear sister's
child."

Florence, I remember, received me with a chalk-pale face and the
exclamation:

"Have those old cats been saying anything against me?" But I
assured her that they had not and hurried her into the room of her
strangely afflicted relatives. I had really forgotten all about
that exclamation of Florence's until this moment. She treated me so
very well—with such tact—that, if I ever thought of it afterwards I
put it down to her deep affection for me.

And that evening, when I went to fetch her for a buggy-ride, she
had disappeared. I did not lose any time. I went into New York and
engaged berths on the "Pocahontas", that was to sail on the evening
of the fourth of the month, and then, returning to Stamford, I
tracked out, in the course of the day, that Florence had been
driven to Rye Station. And there I found that she had taken the
cars to Waterbury. She had, of course, gone to her uncle's. The old
man received me with a stony, husky face. I was not to see
Florence; she was ill; she was keeping her room. And, from
something that he let drop—an odd Biblical phrase that I have
forgotten—I gathered that all that family simply did not intend her
to marry ever in her life.

I procured at once the name of the nearest minister and a rope
ladder—you have no idea how primitively these matters were arranged
in those days in the United States. I daresay that may be so still.
And at one o'clock in the morning of the 4th of August I was
standing in Florence's bedroom. I was so one-minded in my purpose
that it never struck me there was anything improper in being, at
one o'clock in the morning, in Florence's bedroom. I just wanted to
wake her up. She was not, however, asleep. She expected me, and her
relatives had only just left her. She received me with an embrace
of a warmth.... Well, it was the first time I had ever been
embraced by a woman—and it was the last when a woman's embrace has
had in it any warmth for me.... I suppose it was my own fault, what
followed. At any rate, I was in such a hurry to get the wedding
over, and was so afraid of her relatives finding me there, that I
must have received her advances with a certain amount of absence of
mind. I was out of that room and down the ladder in under half a
minute. She kept me waiting at the foot an unconscionable time—it
was certainly three in the morning before we knocked up that
minister. And I think that that wait was the only sign Florence
ever showed of having a conscience as far as I was concerned,
unless her lying for some moments in my arms was also a sign of
conscience. I fancy that, if I had shown warmth then, she would
have acted the proper wife to me, or would have put me back again.
But, because I acted like a Philadelphia gentleman, she made me, I
suppose, go through with the part of a male nurse. Perhaps she
thought that I should not mind.

After that, as I gather, she had not any more remorse. She was
only anxious to carry out her plans. For, just before she came down
the ladder, she called me to the top of that grotesque implement
that I went up and down like a tranquil jumping-jack. I was
perfectly collected. She said to me with a certain fierceness:

"It is determined that we sail at four this afternoon? You are
not lying about having taken berths?"

I understood that she would naturally be anxious to get away
from the neighbourhood of her apparently insane relatives, so that
I readily excused her for thinking that I should be capable of
lying about such a thing. I made it, therefore, plain to her that
it was my fixed determination to sail by the "Pocahontas". She said
then—it was a moonlit morning, and she was whispering in my ear
whilst I stood on the ladder. The hills that surround Waterbury
showed, extraordinarily tranquil, around the villa. She said,
almost coldly:

"I wanted to know, so as to pack my trunks." And she added: "I
may be ill, you know. I guess my heart is a little like Uncle
Hurlbird's. It runs in families."

I whispered that the "Pocahontas" was an extraordinarily steady
boat....

Now I wonder what had passed through Florence's mind during the
two hours that she had kept me waiting at the foot of the ladder. I
would give not a little to know. Till then, I fancy she had had no
settled plan in her mind. She certainly never mentioned her heart
till that time. Perhaps the renewed sight of her Uncle Hurlbird had
given her the idea. Certainly her Aunt Emily, who had come over
with her to Waterbury, would have rubbed into her, for hours and
hours, the idea that any accentuated discussions would kill the old
gentleman. That would recall to her mind all the safeguards against
excitement with which the poor silly old gentleman had been hedged
in during their trip round the world. That, perhaps, put it into
her head. Still, I believe there was some remorse on my account,
too. Leonora told me that Florence said there was—for Leonora knew
all about it, and once went so far as to ask her how she could do a
thing so infamous. She excused herself on the score of an
overmastering passion. Well, I always say that an overmastering
passion is a good excuse for feelings. You cannot help them. And it
is a good excuse for straight actions—she might have bolted with
the fellow, before or after she married me. And, if they had not
enough money to get along with, they might have cut their throats,
or sponged on her family, though, of course, Florence wanted such a
lot that it would have suited her very badly to have for a husband
a clerk in a dry-goods store, which was what old Hurlbird would
have made of that fellow. He hated him. No, I do not think that
there is much excuse for Florence.

God knows. She was a frightened fool, and she was fantastic, and
I suppose that, at that time, she really cared for that imbecile.
He certainly didn't care for her. Poor thing.... At any rate, after
I had assured her that the "Pocahontas" was a steady ship, she just
said: "You'll have to look after me in certain ways—like Uncle
Hurlbird is looked after. I will tell you how to do it." And then
she stepped over the sill, as if she were stepping on board a boat.
I suppose she had burnt hers!

I had, no doubt, eye-openers enough. When we re-entered the
Hurlbird mansion at eight o'clock the Hurlbirds were just
exhausted. Florence had a hard, triumphant air. We had got married
about four in the morning and had sat about in the woods above the
town till then, listening to a mocking-bird imitate an old tom-cat.
So I guess Florence had not found getting married to me a very
stimulating process. I had not found anything much more inspiring
to say than how glad I was, with variations. I think I was too
dazed. Well, the Hurlbirds were too dazed to say much. We had
breakfast together, and then Florence went to pack her grips and
things. Old Hurlbird took the opportunity to read me a full-blooded
lecture, in the style of an American oration, as to the perils for
young American girlhood lurking in the European jungle. He said
that Paris was full of snakes in the grass, of which he had had
bitter experience. He concluded, as they always do, poor, dear old
things, with the aspiration that all American women should one day
be sexless—though that is not the way they put it.. ..

Well, we made the ship all right by one-thirty—an there was a
tempest blowing. That helped Florence a good deal. For we were not
ten minutes out from Sandy Hook before Florence went down into her
cabin and her heart took her. An agitated stewardess came running
up to me, and I went running down. I got my directions how to
behave to my wife. Most of them came from her, though it was the
ship doctor who discreetly suggested to me that I had better
refrain from manifestations of affection. I was ready enough. I
was, of course, full of remorse. It occurred to me that her heart
was the reason for the Hurlbirds' mysterious desire to keep their
youngest and dearest unmarried. Of course, they would be too
refined to put the motive into words. They were old stock New
Englanders. They would not want to have to suggest that a husband
must not kiss the back of his wife's neck. They would not like to
suggest that he might, for the matter of that. I wonder, though,
how Florence got the doctor to enter the conspiracy—the several
doctors.

Of course her heart squeaked a bit—she had the same
configuration of the lungs as her Uncle Hurlbird. And, in his
company, she must have heard a great deal of heart talk from
specialists. Anyhow, she and they tied me pretty well down—and
Jimmy, of course, that dreary boy—what in the world did she see in
him? He was lugubrious, silent, morose. He had no talent as a
painter. He was very sallow and dark, and he never shaved
sufficiently. He met us at Havre, and he proceeded to make himself
useful for the next two years, during which he lived in our flat in
Paris, whether we were there or not. He studied painting at
Julien's, or some such place....

That fellow had his hands always in the pockets of his odious,
square-shouldered, broad-hipped, American coats, and his dark eyes
were always full of ominous appearances. He was, besides, too fat.
Why, I was much the better man....

And I daresay Florence would have given me the better. She
showed signs of it. I think, perhaps, the enigmatic smile with
which she used to look back at me over her shoulder when she went
into the bathing place was a sort of invitation. I have mentioned
that. It was as if she were saying: "I am going in here. I am going
to stand so stripped and white and straight—and you are a man...."
Perhaps it was that....

No, she cannot have liked that fellow long. He looked like
sallow putty. I understand that he had been slim and dark and very
graceful at the time of her first disgrace. But, loafing about in
Paris, on her pocket-money and on the allowance that old Hurlbird
made him to keep out of the United States, had given him a stomach
like a man of forty, and dyspeptic irritation on top of it. God,
how they worked me! It was those two between them who really
elaborated the rules. I have told you something about them—how I
had to head conversations, for all those eleven years, off such
topics as love, poverty, crime, and so on. But, looking over what I
have written, I see that I have unintentionally misled you when I
said that Florence was never out of my sight. Yet that was the
impression that I really had until just now. When I come to think
of it she was out of my sight most of the time.

You see, that fellow impressed upon me that what Florence needed
most of all were sleep and privacy. I must never enter her room
without knocking, or her poor little heart might flutter away to
its doom. He said these things with his lugubrious croak, and his
black eyes like a crow's, so that I seemed to see poor Florence die
ten times a day—a little, pale, frail corpse. Why, I would as soon
have thought of entering her room without her permission as of
burgling a church. I would sooner have committed that crime. I
would certainly have done it if I had thought the state of her
heart demanded the sacrilege. So at ten o'clock at night the door
closed upon Florence, who had gently, and, as if reluctantly,
backed up that fellow's recommendations; and she would wish me good
night as if she were a cinquecento Italian lady saying good-bye to
her lover. And at ten o'clock of the next morning there she would
come out the door of her room as fresh as Venus rising from any of
the couches that are mentioned in Greek legends.

Her room door was locked because she was nervous about thieves;
but an electric contrivance on a cord was understood to be attached
to her little wrist. She had only to press a bulb to raise the
house. And I was provided with an axe—an axe!—great gods, with
which to break down her door in case she ever failed to answer my
knock, after I knocked really loud several times. It was pretty
well thought out, you see.