The Good Soldier (5 page)

I think the modern civilized habit—the modern English habit of
taking every one for granted—is a good deal to blame for this. I
have observed this matter long enough to know the queer, subtle
thing that it is; to know how the faculty, for what it is worth,
never lets you down.

Mind, I am not saying that this is not the most desirable type
of life in the world; that it is not an almost unreasonably high
standard. For it is really nauseating, when you detest it, to have
to eat every day several slices of thin, tepid, pink india rubber,
and it is disagreeable to have to drink brandy when you would
prefer to be cheered up by warm, sweet Kümmel. And it is nasty to
have to take a cold bath in the morning when what you want is
really a hot one at night. And it stirs a little of the faith of
your fathers that is deep down within you to have to have it taken
for granted that you are an Episcopalian when really you are an
old-fashioned Philadelphia Quaker.

But these things have to be done; it is the cock that the whole
of this society owes to Æsculapius.

And the odd, queer thing is that the whole collection of rules
applies to anybody—to the anybodies that you meet in hotels, in
railway trains, to a less degree, perhaps, in steamers, but even,
in the end, upon steamers. You meet a man or a woman and, from tiny
and intimate sounds, from the slightest of movements, you know at
once whether you are concerned with good people or with those who
won't do. You know, this is to say, whether they will go rigidly
through with the whole programme from the underdone beef to the
Anglicanism. It won't matter whether they be short or tall; whether
the voice squeak like a marionette or rumble like a town bull's; it
won't matter whether they are Germans, Austrians, French, Spanish,
or even Brazilians—they will be the Germans or Brazilians who take
a cold bath every morning and who move, roughly speaking, in
diplomatic circles.

But the inconvenient—well, hang it all, I will say it—the
damnable nuisance of the whole thing is, that with all the taking
for granted, you never really get an inch deeper than the things I
have catalogued.

I can give you a rather extraordinary instance of this. I can't
remember whether it was in our first year—the first year of us four
at Nauheim, because, of course, it would have been the fourth year
of Florence and myself—but it must have been in the first or second
year. And that gives the measure at once of the extraordinariness
of our discussion and of the swiftness with which intimacy had
grown up between us. On the one hand we seemed to start out on the
expedition so naturally and with so little preparation, that it was
as if we must have made many such excursions before; and our
intimacy seemed so deep....

Yet the place to which we went was obviously one to which
Florence at least would have wanted to take us quite early, so that
you would almost think we should have gone there together at the
beginning of our intimacy. Florence was singularly expert as a
guide to archaeological expeditions and there was nothing she liked
so much as taking people round ruins and showing you the window
from which some one looked down upon the murder of some one else.
She only did it once; but she did it quite magnificently. She could
find her way, with the sole help of Baedeker, as easily about any
old monument as she could about any American city where the blocks
are all square and the streets all numbered, so that you can go
perfectly easily from Twenty-fourth to Thirtieth.

Now it happens that fifty minutes away from Nauheim, by a good
train, is the ancient city of M——, upon a great pinnacle of basalt,
girt with a triple road running sideways up its shoulder like a
scarf. And at the top there is a castle—not a square castle like
Windsor, but a castle all slate gables and high peaks with gilt
weathercocks flashing bravely—the castle of St Elizabeth of
Hungary. It has the disadvantage of being in Prussia; and it is
always disagreeable to go into that country; but it is very old and
there are many double-spired churches and it stands up like a
pyramid out of the green valley of the Lahn. I don't suppose the
Ashburnhams wanted especially to go there and I didn't especially
want to go there myself. But, you understand, there was no
objection. It was part of the cure to make an excursion three or
four times a week. So that we were all quite unanimous in being
grateful to Florence for providing the motive power. Florence, of
course, had a motive of her own. She was at that time engaged in
educating Captain Ashburnham—oh, of course, quite pour le bon
motif! She used to say to Leonora: "I simply can't understand how
you can let him live by your side and be so ignorant!" Leonora
herself always struck me as being remarkably well educated. At any
rate, she knew beforehand all that Florence had to tell her.
Perhaps she got it up out of Baedeker before Florence was up in the
morning. I don't mean to say that you would ever have known that
Leonora knew anything, but if Florence started to tell us how
Ludwig the Courageous wanted to have three wives at once—in which
he differed from Henry VIII, who wanted them one after the other,
and this caused a good deal of trouble—if Florence started to tell
us this, Leonora would just nod her head in a way that quite
pleasantly rattled my poor wife.

She used to exclaim: "Well, if you knew it, why haven't you told
it all already to Captain Ashburnham? I'm sure he finds it
interesting!" And Leonora would look reflectively at her husband
and say: "I have an idea that it might injure his hand—the hand,
you know, used in connection with horses' mouths...." And poor
Ashburnham would blush and mutter and would say: "That's all right.
Don't you bother about me."

I fancy his wife's irony did quite alarm poor Teddy; because one
evening he asked me seriously in the smoking-room if I thought that
having too much in one's head would really interfere with one's
quickness in polo. It struck him, he said, that brainy Johnnies
generally were rather muffs when they got on to four legs. I
reassured him as best I could. I told him that he wasn't likely to
take in enough to upset his balance. At that time the Captain was
quite evidently enjoying being educated by Florence. She used to do
it about three or four times a week under the approving eyes of
Leonora and myself. It wasn't, you understand, systematic. It came
in bursts. It was Florence clearing up one of the dark places of
the earth, leaving the world a little lighter than she had found
it. She would tell him the story of Hamlet; explain the form of a
symphony, humming the first and second subjects to him, and so on;
she would explain to him the difference between Arminians and
Erastians; or she would give him a short lecture on the early
history of the United States. And it was done in a way well
calculated to arrest a young attention. Did you ever read Mrs
Markham? Well, it was like that... .

But our excursion to M—— was a much larger, a much more full
dress affair. You see, in the archives of the Schloss in that city
there was a document which Florence thought would finally give her
the chance to educate the whole lot of us together. It really
worried poor Florence that she couldn't, in matters of culture,
ever get the better of Leonora. I don't know what Leonora knew or
what she didn't know, but certainly she was always there whenever
Florence brought out any information. And she gave, somehow, the
impression of really knowing what poor Florence gave the impression
of having only picked up. I can't exactly define it. It was almost
something physical. Have you ever seen a retriever dashing in play
after a greyhound? You see the two running over a green field,
almost side by side, and suddenly the retriever makes a friendly
snap at the other. And the greyhound simply isn't there. You
haven't observed it quicken its speed or strain a limb; but there
it is, just two yards in front of the retriever's outstretched
muzzle. So it was with Florence and Leonora in matters of
culture.

But on this occasion I knew that something was up. I found
Florence some days before, reading books like Ranke's History of
the Popes, Symonds' Renaissance, Motley's Rise of the Dutch
Republic and Luther's Table Talk.

I must say that, until the astonishment came, I got nothing but
pleasure out of the little expedition. I like catching the
two-forty; I like the slow, smooth roll of the great big trains—and
they are the best trains in the world! I like being drawn through
the green country and looking at it through the clear glass of the
great windows. Though, of course, the country isn't really green.
The sun shines, the earth is blood red and purple and red and green
and red. And the oxen in the ploughlands are bright varnished brown
and black and blackish purple; and the peasants are dressed in the
black and white of magpies; and there are great Rocks of magpies
too. Or the peasants' dresses in another field where there are
little mounds of hay that will be grey-green on the sunny side and
purple in the shadows—the peasants' dresses are vermilion with
emerald green ribbons and purple skirts and white shirts and black
velvet stomachers. Still, the impression is that you are drawn
through brilliant green meadows that run away on each side to the
dark purple fir-woods; the basalt pinnacles; the immense forests.
And there is meadowsweet at the edge of the streams, and cattle.
Why, I remember on that afternoon I saw a brown cow hitch its horns
under the stomach of a black and white animal and the black and
white one was thrown right into the middle of a narrow stream. I
burst out laughing. But Florence was imparting information so hard
and Leonora was listening so intently that no one noticed me. As
for me, I was pleased to be off duty; I was pleased to think that
Florence for the moment was indubitably out of mischief—because she
was talking about Ludwig the Courageous (I think it was Ludwig the
Courageous but I am not an historian) about Ludwig the Courageous
of Hessen who wanted to have three wives at once and patronized
Luther—something like that!—I was so relieved to be off duty,
because she couldn't possibly be doing anything to excite herself
or set her poor heart a-fluttering—that the incident of the cow was
a real joy to me. I chuckled over it from time to time for the
whole rest of the day. Because it does look very funny, you know,
to see a black and white cow land on its back in the middle of a
stream. It is so just exactly what one doesn't expect of a cow.

I suppose I ought to have pitied the poor animal; but I just
didn't. I was out for enjoyment. And I just enjoyed myself. It is
so pleasant to be drawn along in front of the spectacular towns
with the peaked castles and the many double spires. In the sunlight
gleams come from the city—gleams from the glass of windows; from
the gilt signs of apothecaries; from the ensigns of the student
corps high up in the mountains; from the helmets of the funny
little soldiers moving their stiff little legs in white linen
trousers. And it was pleasant to get out in the great big
spectacular Prussian station with the hammered bronze ornaments and
the paintings of peasants and flowers and cows; and to hear
Florence bargain energetically with the driver of an ancient
droschka drawn by two lean horses. Of course, I spoke German much
more correctly than Florence, though I never could rid myself quite
of the accent of the Pennsylvania Duitsch of my childhood. Anyhow,
we were drawn in a sort of triumph, for five marks without any
trinkgeld, right up to the castle. And we were taken through the
museum and saw the fire-backs, the old glass, the old swords and
the antique contraptions. And we went up winding corkscrew
staircases and through the Rittersaal, the great painted hall where
the Reformer and his friends met for the first time under the
protection of the gentleman that had three wives at once and formed
an alliance with the gentleman that had six wives, one after the
other (I'm not really interested in these facts but they have a
bearing on my story). And we went through chapels, and music rooms,
right up immensely high in the air to a large old chamber, full of
presses, with heavily-shuttered windows all round. And Florence
became positively electric. She told the tired, bored custodian
what shutters to open; so that the bright sunlight streamed in
palpable shafts into the dim old chamber. She explained that this
was Luther's bedroom and that just where the sunlight fell had
stood his bed. As a matter of fact, I believe that she was wrong
and that Luther only stopped, as it were, for lunch, in order to
evade pursuit. But, no doubt, it would have been his bedroom if he
could have been persuaded to stop the night. And then, in spite of
the protest of the custodian, she threw open another shutter and
came tripping back to a large glass case.

"And there," she exclaimed with an accent of gaiety, of triumph,
and of audacity. She was pointing at a piece of paper, like the
half-sheet of a letter with some faint pencil scrawls that might
have been a jotting of the amounts we were spending during the day.
And I was extremely happy at her gaiety, in her triumph, in her
audacity. Captain Ashburnham had his hands upon the glass case.
"There it is—the Protest." And then, as we all properly
stage-managed our bewilderment, she continued: "Don't you know that
is why we were all called Protestants? That is the pencil draft of
the Protest they drew up. You can see the signatures of Martin
Luther, and Martin Bucer, and Zwingli, and Ludwig the
Courageous...."

I may have got some of the names wrong, but I know that Luther
and Bucer were there. And her animation continued and I was glad.
She was better and she was out of mischief. She continued, looking
up into Captain Ashburnham's eyes: "It's because of that piece of
paper that you're honest, sober, industrious, provident, and
clean-lived. If it weren't for that piece of paper you'd be like
the Irish or the Italians or the Poles, but particularly the
Irish...."