The Good Soldier (12 page)

I find, on looking at my diaries, that on the 4th of September,
1904, Edward accompanied Florence and myself to Paris, where we put
him up till the twenty-first of that month. He made another short
visit to us in December of that year—the first year of our
acquaintance. It must have been during this visit that he knocked
Mr Jimmy's teeth down his throat. I daresay Florence had asked him
to come over for that purpose. In 1905 he was in Paris three
times—once with Leonora, who wanted some frocks. In 1906 we spent
the best part of six weeks together at Mentone, and Edward stayed
with us in Paris on his way back to London. That was how it
went.

The fact was that in Florence the poor wretch had got hold of a
Tartar, compared with whom Leonora was a sucking kid. He must have
had a hell of a time. Leonora wanted to keep him for—what shall I
say—for the good of her church, as it were, to show that Catholic
women do not lose their men. Let it go at that, for the moment. I
will write more about her motives later, perhaps. But Florence was
sticking on to the proprietor of the home of her ancestors. No
doubt he was also a very passionate lover. But I am convinced that
he was sick of Florence within three years of even interrupted
companionship and the life that she led him....

If ever Leonora so much as mentioned in a letter that they had
had a woman staying with them—or, if she so much as mentioned a
woman's name in a letter to me—off would go a desperate cable in
cipher to that poor wretch at Branshaw, commanding him on pain of
an instant and horrible disclosure to come over and assure her of
his fidelity. I daresay he would have faced it out; I daresay he
would have thrown over Florence and taken the risk of exposure. But
there he had Leonora to deal with. And Leonora assured him that, if
the minutest fragment of the real situation ever got through to my
senses, she would wreak upon him the most terrible vengeance that
she could think of. And he did not have a very easy job. Florence
called for more and more attentions from him as the time went on.
She would make him kiss her at any moment of the day; and it was
only by his making it plain that a divorced lady could never assume
a position in the county of Hampshire that he could prevent her
from making a bolt of it with him in her train. Oh, yes, it was a
difficult job for him.

For Florence, if you please, gaining in time a more composed
view of nature, and overcome by her habits of garrulity, arrived at
a frame of mind in which she found it almost necessary to tell me
all about it—nothing less than that. She said that her situation
was too unbearable with regard to me.

She proposed to tell me all, secure a divorce from me, and go
with Edward and settle in California.... I do not suppose that she
was really serious in this. It would have meant the extinction of
all hopes of Branshaw Manor for her. Besides she had got it into
her head that Leonora, who was as sound as a roach, was
consumptive. She was always begging Leonora, before me, to go and
see a doctor. But, none the less, poor Edward seems to have
believed in her determination to carry him off. He would not have
gone; he cared for his wife too much. But, if Florence had put him
at it, that would have meant my getting to know of it, and his
incurring Leonora's vengeance. And she could have made it pretty
hot for him in ten or a dozen different ways. And she assured me
that she would have used every one of them. She was determined to
spare my feelings. And she was quite aware that, at that date, the
hottest she could have made it for him would have been to refuse,
herself, ever to see him again....

Well, I think I have made it pretty clear. Let me come to the
4th of August, 1913, the last day of my absolute ignorance—and, I
assure you, of my perfect happiness. For the coming of that dear
girl only added to it all.

On that 4th of August I was sitting in the lounge with a rather
odious Englishman called Bagshawe, who had arrived that night, too
late for dinner. Leonora had just gone to bed and I was waiting for
Florence and Edward and the girl to come back from a concert at the
Casino. They had not gone there all together. Florence, I remember,
had said at first that she would remain with Leonora, and me, and
Edward and the girl had gone off alone. And then Leonora had said
to Florence with perfect calmness:

"I wish you would go with those two. I think the girl ought to
have the appearance of being chaperoned with Edward in these
places. I think the time has come." So Florence, with her light
step, had slipped out after them. She was all in black for some
cousin or other. Americans are particular in those matters.

We had gone on sitting in the lounge till towards ten, when
Leonora had gone up to bed. It had been a very hot day, but there
it was cool. The man called Bagshawe had been reading The Times on
the other side of the room, but then he moved over to me with some
trifling question as a prelude to suggesting an acquaintance. I
fancy he asked me something About the poll-tax on Kur-guests, and
whether it could not be sneaked out of. He was that sort of
person.

Well, he was an unmistakable man, with a military figure, rather
exaggerated, with bulbous eyes that avoided your own, and a pallid
complexion that suggested vices practised in secret along with an
uneasy desire for making acquaintance at whatever cost.... The
filthy toad... .

He began by telling me that he came from Ludlow Manor, near
Ledbury. The name had a slightly familiar sound, though I could not
fix it in my mind. Then he began to talk about a duty on hops,
about Californian hops, about Los Angeles, where he had been. He
fencing for a topic with which he might gain my affection.

And then, quite suddenly, in the bright light of the street, I
saw Florence running. It was like that—I saw Florence running with
a face whiter than paper and her hand on the black stuff over her
heart. I tell you, my own heart stood still; I tell you I could not
move. She rushed in at the swing doors. She looked round that place
of rush chairs, cane tables and newspapers. She saw me and opened
her lips. She saw the man who was talking to me. She stuck her
hands over her face as if she wished to push her eyes out. And she
was not there any more.

I could not move; I could not stir a finger. And then that man
said:

"By Jove: Florry Hurlbird." He turned upon me with an oily and
uneasy sound meant for a laugh. He was really going to ingratiate
himself with me. "Do you know who that is?" he asked. "The last
time I saw that girl she was coming out of the bedroom of a young
man called Jimmy at five o'clock in the morning. In my house at
Ledbury. You saw her recognize me." He was standing on his feet,
looking down at me. I don't know what I looked like. At any rate,
he gave a sort of gurgle and then stuttered:

"Oh, I say...." Those were the last words I ever heard of Mr
Bagshawe's. A long time afterwards I pulled myself out of the
lounge and went up to Florence's room. She had not locked the
door—for the first time of our married life. She was lying, quite
respectably arranged, unlike Mrs Maidan, on her bed. She had a
little phial that rightly should have contained nitrate of amyl, in
her right hand. That was on the 4th of August, 1913.

THE odd thing is that what sticks out in my recollection of the
rest of that evening was Leonora's saying:

"Of course you might marry her," and, when I asked whom, she
answered:

"The girl."

Now that is to me a very amazing thing—amazing for the light of
possibilities that it casts into the human heart. For I had never
had the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; I never had
the slightest idea even of caring for her. I must have talked in an
odd way, as people do who are recovering from an anaesthetic. It is
as if one had a dual personality, the one I being entirely
unconscious of the other. I had thought nothing; I had said such an
extraordinary thing. I don't know that analysis of my own
psychology matters at all to this story. I should say that it
didn't or, at any rate, that I had given enough of it. But that odd
remark of mine had a strong influence upon what came after. I mean,
that Leonora would probably never have spoken to me at all about
Florence's relations with Edward if I hadn't said, two hours after
my wife's death:

"Now I can marry the girl."

She had, then, taken it for granted that I had been suffering
all that she had been suffering, or, at least, that I had permitted
all that she had permitted. So that, a month ago, about a week
after the funeral of poor Edward, she could say to me in the most
natural way in the world—I had been talking about the duration of
my stay at Branshaw—she said with her clear, reflective
intonation:

"Oh, stop here for ever and ever if you can." And then she
added, "You couldn't be more of a brother to me, or more of a
counsellor, or more of a support. You are all the consolation I
have in the world. And isn't it odd to think that if your wife
hadn't been my husband's mistress, you would probably never have
been here at all?"

That was how I got the news—full in the face, like that. I
didn't say anything and I don't suppose I felt anything, unless
maybe it was with that mysterious and unconscious self that
underlies most people. Perhaps one day when I am unconscious or
walking in my sleep I may go and spit upon poor Edward's grave. It
seems about the most unlikely thing I could do; but there it is.
No, I remember no emotion of any sort, but just the clear feeling
that one has from time to time when one hears that some Mrs
So-and-So is au mieux with a certain gentleman. It made things
plainer, suddenly, to my curiosity. It was as if I thought, at that
moment, of a windy November evening, that, when I came to think it
over afterwards, a dozen unexplained things would fit themselves
into place. But I wasn't thinking things over then. I remember that
distinctly. I was just sitting back, rather stiffly, in a deep
arm-chair. That is what I remember. It was twilight.

Branshaw Manor lies in a little hollow with lawns across it and
pine-woods on the fringe of the dip. The immense wind, coming from
across the forest, roared overhead. But the view from the window
was perfectly quiet and grey. Not a thing stirred, except a couple
of rabbits on the extreme edge of the lawn. It was Leonora's own
little study that we were in and we were waiting for the tea to be
brought. I, as I said, was sitting in the deep chair, Leonora was
standing in the window twirling the wooden acorn at the end of the
window-blind cord desultorily round and round. She looked across
the lawn and said, as far as I can remember:

"Edward has been dead only ten days and yet there are rabbits on
the lawn."

I understand that rabbits do a great deal of harm to the short
grass in England. And then she turned round to me and said without
any adornment at all, for I remember her exact words:

"I think it was stupid of Florence to commit suicide."

I cannot tell you the extraordinary sense of leisure that we two
seemed to have at that moment. It wasn't as if we were waiting for
a train, it wasn't as if we were waiting for a meal—it was just
that there was nothing to wait for. Nothing. There was an extreme
stillness with the remote and intermittent sound of the wind. There
was the grey light in that brown, small room. And there appeared to
be nothing else in the world. I knew then that Leonora was about to
let me into her full confidence. It was as if—or no, it was the
actual fact that—Leonora with an odd English sense of decency had
determined to wait until Edward had been in his grave for a full
week before she spoke. And with some vague motive of giving her an
idea of the extent to which she must permit herself to make
confidences, I said slowly—and these words too I remember with
exactitude—"Did Florence commit suicide? I didn't know."

I was just, you understand, trying to let her know that, if she
were going to speak she would have to talk about a much wider range
of things than she had before thought necessary.

So that that was the first knowledge I had that Florence had
committed suicide. It had never entered my head. You may think that
I had been singularly lacking in suspiciousness; you may consider
me even to have been an imbecile. But consider the position.

In such circumstances of clamour, of outcry, of the crash of
many people running together, of the professional reticence of such
people as hotel-keepers, the traditional reticence of such "good
people" as the Ashburnhams—in such circumstances it is some little
material object, always, that catches the eye and that appeals to
the imagination. I had no possible guide to the idea of suicide and
the sight of the little flask of nitrate of amyl in Florence's hand
suggested instantly to my mind the idea of the failure of her
heart. Nitrate of amyl, you understand, is the drug that is given
to relieve sufferers from angina pectoris.

Seeing Florence, as I had seen her, running with a white face
and with one hand held over her heart, and seeing her, as I
immediately afterwards saw her, lying upon her bed with the so
familiar little brown flask clenched in her fingers, it was natural
enough for my mind to frame the idea. As happened now and again, I
thought, she had gone out without her remedy and, having felt an
attack coming on whilst she was in the gardens, she had run in to
get the nitrate in order, as quickly as possible, to obtain relief.
And it was equally inevitable my mind should frame the thought that
her heart, unable to stand the strain of the running, should have
broken in her side. How could I have known that, during all the
years of our married life, that little brown flask had contained,
not nitrate of amyl, but prussic acid? It was inconceivable.