The Good Soldier (25 page)

The girl was sitting perfectly still in an armchair, very
upright, as she had been taught to sit at the convent. She appeared
to be as calm as a church; her hair fell, black and like a pall,
down over both her shoulders. The fire beside her was burning
brightly; she must have just put coals on. She was in a white silk
kimono that covered her to the feet. The clothes that she had taken
off were exactly folded upon the proper seats. Her long hands were
one upon each arm of the chair that had a pink and white chintz
back.

Leonora told me these things. She seemed to think it
extraordinary that the girl could have done such orderly things as
fold up the clothes she had taken off upon such a night—when Edward
had announced that he was going to send her to her father, and
when, from her mother, she had received that letter. The letter, in
its envelope, was in her right hand.

Leonora did not at first perceive it. She said:

"What are you doing so late?"

The girl answered: "Just thinking."

They seemed to think in whispers and to speak below their
breaths. Then Leonora's eyes fell on the envelope, and she
recognized Mrs Rufford's handwriting.

It was one of those moments when thinking was impossible,
Leonora said. It was as if stones were being thrown at her from
every direction and she could only run. She heard herself exclaim:
"Edward's dying—because of you. He's dying. He's worth more than
either of us...."

The girl looked past her at the panels of the half-closed
door.

"My poor father," she said, "my poor father." "You must stay
here," Leonora answered fiercely. "You must stay here. I tell you
you must stay here."

"I am going to Glasgow," Nancy answered. "I shall go to Glasgow
tomorrow morning. My mother is in Glasgow."

It appears that it was in Glasgow that Mrs Rufford pursued her
disorderly life. She had selected that city, not because it was
more profitable but because it was the natal home of her husband to
whom she desired to cause as much pain as possible.

"You must stay here," Leonora began, "to save Edward. He's dying
for love of you."

The girl turned her calm eyes upon Leonora. "I know it," she
said. "And I am dying for love of him."

Leonora uttered an "Ah," that, in spite of herself, was an "Ah"
of horror and of grief.

"That is why," the girl continued, "I am going to Glasgow—to
take my mother away from there." She added, "To the ends of the
earth," for, if the last months had made her nature that of a
woman, her phrases were still romantically those of a schoolgirl.
It was as if she had grown up so quickly that there had not been
time to put her hair up. But she added: "We're no good—my mother
and I."

Leonora said, with her fierce calmness:

"No. No. You're not no good. It's I that am no good. You can't
let that man go on to ruin for want of you. You must belong to
him."

The girl, she said, smiled at her with a queer, far-away
smile—as if she were a thousand years old, as if Leonora were a
tiny child.

"I knew you would come to that," she said, very slowly. "But we
are not worth it—Edward and I."

NANCY had, in fact, been thinking ever since Leonora had made
that comment over the giving of the horse to young Selmes. She had
been thinking and thinking, because she had had to sit for many
days silent beside her aunt's bed. (She had always thought of
Leonora as her aunt.) And she had had to sit thinking during many
silent meals with Edward. And then, at times, with his bloodshot
eyes and creased, heavy mouth, he would smile at her. And gradually
the knowledge had come to her that Edward did not love Leonora and
that Leonora hated Edward. Several things contributed to form and
to harden this conviction. She was allowed to read the papers in
those days—or, rather, since Leonora was always on her bed and
Edward breakfasted alone and went out early, over the estate, she
was left alone with the papers. One day, in the papers, she saw the
portrait of a woman she knew very well. Beneath it she read the
words: "The Hon. Mrs Brand, plaintiff in the remarkable divorce
case reported on p. 8." Nancy hardly knew what a divorce case was.
She had been so remarkably well brought up, and Roman Catholics do
not practise divorce. I don't know how Leonora had done it exactly.
I suppose she had always impressed it on Nancy's mind that nice
women did not read these things, and that would have been enough to
make Nancy skip those pages.

She read, at any rate, the account of the Brand divorce
case—principally because she wanted to tell Leonora about it. She
imagined that Leonora, when her headache left her, would like to
know what was happening to Mrs Brand, who lived at Christchurch,
and whom they both liked very well. The case occupied three days,
and the report that Nancy first came upon was that of the third
day. Edward, however, kept the papers of the week, after his
methodical fashion, in a rack in his gun-room, and when she had
finished her breakfast Nancy went to that quiet apartment and had
what she would have called a good read. It seemed to her to be a
queer affair. She could not understand why one counsel should be so
anxious to know all about the movements of Mr Brand upon a certain
day; she could not understand why a chart of the bedroom
accommodation at Christchurch Old Hall should be produced in court.
She did not even see why they should want to know that, upon a
certain occasion, the drawing-room door was locked. It made her
laugh; it appeared to be all so senseless that grown people should
occupy themselves with such matters. It struck her, nevertheless,
as odd that one of the counsel should cross-question Mr Brand so
insistently and so impertinently as to his feelings for Miss
Lupton. Nancy knew Miss Lupton of Ringwood very well—a jolly girl,
who rode a horse with two white fetlocks. Mr Brand persisted that
he did not love Miss Lupton.... Well, of course he did not love
Miss Lupton; he was a married man. You might as well think of Uncle
Edward loving... loving anybody but Leonora. When people were
married there was an end of loving. There were, no doubt, people
who misbehaved—but they were poor people—or people not like those
she knew. So these matters presented themselves to Nancy's mind.
But later on in the case she found that Mr Brand had to confess to
a "guilty intimacy" with some one or other. Nancy imagined that he
must have been telling some one his wife's secrets; she could not
understand why that was a serious offence. Of course it was not
very gentlemanly—it lessened her opinion of Mrs Brand. But since
she found that Mrs Brand had condoned that offence, she imagined
that they could not have been very serious secrets that Mr Brand
had told. And then, suddenly, it was forced on her conviction that
Mr Brand—the mild Mr Brand that she had seen a month or two before
their departure to Nauheim, playing "Blind Man's Buff" with his
children and kissing his wife when he caught her—Mr Brand and Mrs
Brand had been on the worst possible terms. That was
incredible.

Yet there it was—in black and white. Mr Brand drank; Mr Brand
had struck Mrs Brand to the ground when he was drunk. Mr Brand was
adjudged, in two or three abrupt words, at the end of columns and
columns of paper, to have been guilty of cruelty to his wife and to
have committed adultery with Miss Lupton. The last words conveyed
nothing to Nancy—nothing real, that is to say. She knew that one
was commanded not to commit adultery—but why, she thought, should
one? It was probably something like catching salmon out of season—a
thing one did not do. She gathered it had something to do with
kissing, or holding some one in your arms.. ..

And yet the whole effect of that reading upon Nancy was
mysterious, terrifying and evil. She felt a sickness—a sickness
that grew as she read. Her heart beat painfully; she began to cry.
She asked God how He could permit such things to be. And she was
more certain that Edward did not love Leonora and that Leonora
hated Edward. Perhaps, then, Edward loved some one else. It was
unthinkable.

If he could love some one else than Leonora, her fierce unknown
heart suddenly spoke in her side, why could it not be herself? And
he did not love her.... This had occurred about a month before she
got the letter from her mother. She let the matter rest until the
sick feeling went off; it did that in a day or two. Then, finding
that Leonora's headaches had gone, she suddenly told Leonora that
Mrs Brand had divorced her husband. She asked what, exactly, it all
meant.

Leonora was lying on the sofa in the hall; she was feeling so
weak that she could hardly find the words. She answered just:

"It means that Mr Brand will be able to marry again."

Nancy said:

"But... but..." and then: "He will be able to marry Miss
Lupton." Leonora just moved a hand in assent. Her eyes were
shut.

"Then..." Nancy began. Her blue eyes were full of horror: her
brows were tight above them; the lines of pain about her mouth were
very distinct. In her eyes the whole of that familiar, great hall
had a changed aspect. The andirons with the brass flowers at the
ends appeared unreal; the burning logs were just logs that were
burning and not the comfortable symbols of an indestructible mode
of life. The flame fluttered before the high fireback; the St
Bernard sighed in his sleep. Outside the winter rain fell and fell.
And suddenly she thought that Edward might marry some one else; and
she nearly screamed.

Leonora opened her eyes, lying sideways, with her face upon the
black and gold pillow of the sofa that was drawn half across the
great fireplace.

"I thought," Nancy said, "I never imagined.... Aren't marriages
sacraments? Aren't they indissoluble? I thought you were married.
.. and..." She was sobbing. "I thought you were married or not
married as you are alive or dead." "That," Leonora said, "is the
law of the church. It is not the law of the land...."

"Oh yes," Nancy said, "the Brands are Protestants." She felt a
sudden safeness descend upon her, and for an hour or so her mind
was at rest. It seemed to her idiotic not to have remembered Henry
VIII and the basis upon which Protestantism rests. She almost
laughed at herself.

The long afternoon wore on; the flames still fluttered when the
maid made up the fire; the St Bernard awoke and lolloped away
towards the kitchen. And then Leonora opened her eyes and said
almost coldly:

"And you? Don't you think you will get married?"

It was so unlike Leonora that, for the moment, the girl was
frightened in the dusk. But then, again, it seemed a perfectly
reasonable question. "I don't know," she answered. "I don't know
that anyone wants to marry me."

"Several people want to marry you," Leonora said.

"But I don't want to marry," Nancy answered. "I should like to
go on living with you and Edward. I don't think I am in the way or
that I am really an expense. If I went you would have to have a
companion. Or, perhaps, I ought to earn my living...."

"I wasn't thinking of that," Leonora answered in the same dull
tone. "You will have money enough from your father. But most people
want to be married."

I believe that she then asked the girl if she would not like to
marry me, and that Nancy answered that she would marry me if she
were told to; but that she wanted to go on living there. She
added:

"If I married anyone I should want him to be like Edward."

She was frightened out of her life. Leonora writhed on her couch
and called out: "Oh, God!..."

Nancy ran for the maid; for tablets of aspirin; for wet
handkerchiefs. It never occurred to her that Leonora's expression
of agony was for anything else than physical pain.

You are to remember that all this happened a month before
Leonora went into the girl's room at night. I have been casting
back again; but I cannot help it. It is so difficult to keep all
these people going. I tell you about Leonora and bring her up to
date; then about Edward, who has fallen behind. And then the girl
gets hopelessly left behind. I wish I could put it down in diary
form. Thus: On the 1st of September they returned from Nauheim.
Leonora at once took to her bed. By the 1st of October they were
all going to meets together. Nancy had already observed very fully
that Edward was strange in his manner. About the 6th of that month
Edward gave the horse to young Selmes, and Nancy had cause to
believe that her aunt did not love her uncle. On the 20th she read
the account of the divorce case, which is reported in the papers of
the 18th and the two following days. On the 23rd she had the
conversation with her aunt in the hall—about marriage in general
and about her own possible marriage, her aunt's coming to her
bedroom did not occur until the 12th of November....

Thus she had three weeks for introspection—for introspection
beneath gloomy skies, in that old house, rendered darker by the
fact that it lay in a hollow crowned by fir trees with their black
shadows. It was not a good situation for a girl. She began thinking
about love, she who had never before considered it as anything
other than a rather humorous, rather nonsensical matter. She
remembered chance passages in chance books—things that had not
really affected her at all at the time. She remembered someone's
love for the Princess Badrulbadour; she remembered to have heard
that love was a flame, a thirst, a withering up of the
vitals—though she did not know what the vitals were. She had a
vague recollection that love was said to render a hopeless lover's
eyes hopeless; she remembered a character in a book who was said to
have taken to drink through love; she remembered that lovers'
existences were said to be punctuated with heavy sighs. Once she
went to the little cottage piano that was in the corner of the hall
and began to play. It was a tinkly, reedy instrument, for none of
that household had any turn for music. Nancy herself could play a
few simple songs, and she found herself playing. She had been
sitting on the window seat, looking out on the fading day. Leonora
had gone to pay some calls; Edward was looking after some planting
up in the new spinney. Thus she found herself playing on the old
piano. She did not know how she came to be doing it. A silly
lilting wavering tune came from before her in the dusk—a tune in
which major notes with their cheerful insistence wavered and melted
into minor sounds, as, beneath a bridge, the high lights on dark
waters melt and waver and disappear into black depths. Well, it was
a silly old tune....