The Good Soldier (13 page)

Why, not even Edward Ashburnham, who was, after all more
intimate with her than I was, had an inkling of the truth. He just
thought that she had dropped dead of heart disease. Indeed, I fancy
that the only people who ever knew that Florence had committed
suicide were Leonora, the Grand Duke, the head of the police and
the hotel-keeper. I mention these last three because my
recollection of that night is only the sort of pinkish effulgence
from the electric-lamps in the hotel lounge. There seemed to bob
into my consciousness, like floating globes, the faces of those
three. Now it would be the bearded, monarchical, benevolent head of
the Grand Duke; then the sharp-featured, brown, cavalry-moustached
feature of the chief of police; then the globular, polished and
high-collared vacuousness that represented Monsieur Schontz, the
proprietor of the hotel. At times one head would be there alone, at
another the spiked helmet of the official would be close to the
healthy baldness of the prince; then M. Schontz's oiled locks would
push in between the two. The sovereign's soft, exquisitely trained
voice would say, "Ja, ja, ja!" each word dropping out like so many
soft pellets of suet; the subdued rasp of the official would come:
"Zum Befehl Durchlaucht," like five revolver-shots; the voice of M.
Schontz would go on and on under its breath like that of an unclean
priest reciting from his breviary in the corner of a
railway-carriage. That was how it presented itself to me.

They seemed to take no notice of me; I don't suppose that I was
even addressed by one of them. But, as long as one or the other, or
all three of them were there, they stood between me as if, I being
the titular possessor of the corpse, had a right to be present at
their conferences. Then they all went away and I was left alone for
a long time.

And I thought nothing; absolutely nothing. I had no ideas; I had
no strength. I felt no sorrow, no desire for action, no inclination
to go upstairs and fall upon the body of my wife. I just saw the
pink effulgence, the cane tables, the palms, the globular
match-holders, the indented ash-trays. And then Leonora came to me
and it appears that I addressed to her that singular remark:

"Now I can marry the girl."

But I have given you absolutely the whole of my recollection of
that evening, as it is the whole of my recollection of the
succeeding three or four days. I was in a state just simply
cataleptic. They put me to bed and I stayed there; they brought me
my clothes and I dressed; they led me to an open grave and I stood
beside it. If they had taken me to the edge of a river, or if they
had flung me beneath a railway train, I should have been drowned or
mangled in the same spirit. I was the walking dead.

Well, those are my impressions.

What had actually happened had been this. I pieced it together
afterwards. You will remember I said that Edward Ashburnham and the
girl had gone off, that night, to a concert at the Casino and that
Leonora had asked Florence, almost immediately after their
departure, to follow them and to perform the office of chaperone.
Florence, you may also remember, was all in black, being the
mourning that she wore for a deceased cousin, Jean Hurlbird. It was
a very black night and the girl was dressed in cream-coloured
muslin, that must have glimmered under the tall trees of the dark
park like a phosphorescent fish in a cupboard. You couldn't have
had a better beacon.

And it appears that Edward Ashburnham led the girl not up the
straight allée that leads to the Casino, but in under the dark
trees of the park. Edward Ashburnham told me all this in his final
outburst. I have told you that, upon that occasion, he became
deucedly vocal. I didn't pump him. I hadn't any motive. At that
time I didn't in the least connect him with my wife. But the fellow
talked like a cheap novelist.—Or like a very good novelist for the
matter of that, if it's the business of a novelist to make you see
things clearly. And I tell you I see that thing as clearly as if it
were a dream that never left me. It appears that, not very far from
the Casino, he and the girl sat down in the darkness upon a public
bench. The lights from that place of entertainment must have
reached them through the tree-trunks, since, Edward said, he could
quite plainly see the girl's face—that beloved face with the high
forehead, the queer mouth, the tortured eyebrows, and the direct
eyes. And to Florence, creeping up behind them, they must have
presented the appearance of silhouettes. For I take it that
Florence came creeping up behind them over the short grass to a
tree that, I quite well remember, was immediately behind that
public seat. It was not a very difficult feat for a woman instinct
with jealousy. The Casino orchestra was, as Edward remembered to
tell me, playing the Rakocsy march, and although it was not loud
enough, at that distance, to drown the voice of Edward Ashburnham
it was certainly sufficiently audible to efface, amongst the noises
of the night, the slight brushings and rustlings that might have
been made by the feet of Florence or by her gown in coming over the
short grass. And that miserable woman must have got it in the face,
good and strong. It must have been horrible for her. Horrible!
Well, I suppose she deserved all that she got.

Anyhow, there you have the picture, the immensely tall trees,
elms most of them, towering and feathering away up into the black
mistiness that trees seem to gather about them at night; the
silhouettes of those two upon the seat; the beams of light coming
from the Casino, the woman all in black peeping with fear behind
the tree-trunk. It is melodrama; but I can't help it.

And then, it appears, something happened to Edward Ashburnham.
He assured me—and I see no reason for disbelieving him—that until
that moment he had had no idea whatever of caring for the girl. He
said that he had regarded her exactly as he would have regarded a
daughter. He certainly loved her, but with a very deep, very tender
and very tranquil love. He had missed her when she went away to her
convent-school; he had been glad when she had returned. But of more
than that he had been totally unconscious. Had he been conscious of
it, he assured me, he would have fled from it as from a thing
accursed. He realized that it was the last outrage upon Leonora.
But the real point was his entire unconsciousness. He had gone with
her into that dark park with no quickening of the pulse, with no
desire for the intimacy of solitude. He had gone, intending to talk
about polo-ponies, and tennis-racquets; about the temperament of
the reverend Mother at the convent she had left and about whether
her frock for a party when they got home should be white or blue.
It hadn't come into his head that they would talk about a single
thing that they hadn't always talked about; it had not even come
into his head that the tabu which extended around her was not
inviolable. And then, suddenly, that—He was very careful to assure
me that at that time there was no physical motive about his
declaration. It did not appear to him to be a matter of a dark
night and a propinquity and so on. No, it was simply of her effect
on the moral side of his life that he appears to have talked. He
said that he never had the slightest notion to enfold her in his
arms or so much as to touch her hand. He swore that he did not
touch her hand. He said that they sat, she at one end of the bench,
he at the other; he leaning slightly towards her and she looking
straight towards the light of the Casino, her face illuminated by
the lamps. The expression upon her face he could only describe as
"queer". At another time, indeed, he made it appear that he thought
she was glad. It is easy to imagine that she was glad, since at
that time she could have had no idea of what was really happening.
Frankly, she adored Edward Ashburnham. He was for her, in
everything that she said at that time, the model of humanity, the
hero, the athlete, the father of his country, the law-giver. So
that for her, to be suddenly, intimately and overwhelmingly praised
must have been a matter for mere gladness, however overwhelming it
were. It must have been as if a god had approved her handiwork or a
king her loyalty. She just sat still and listened, smiling. And it
seemed to her that all the bitterness of her childhood, the terrors
of her tempestuous father, the bewailings of her cruel-tongued
mother were suddenly atoned for. She had her recompense at last.
Because, of course, if you come to figure it out, a sudden pouring
forth of passion by a man whom you regard as a cross between a
pastor and a father might, to a woman, have the aspect of mere
praise for good conduct. It wouldn't, I mean, appear at all in the
light of an attempt to gain possession. The girl, at least,
regarded him as firmly anchored to his Leonora. She had not the
slightest inkling of any infidelities. He had always spoken to her
of his wife in terms of reverence and deep affection. He had given
her the idea that he regarded Leonora as absolutely impeccable and
as absolutely satisfying. Their union had appeared to her to be one
of those blessed things that are spoken of and contemplated with
reverence by her church.

So that, when he spoke of her as being the person he cared most
for in the world, she naturally thought that he meant to except
Leonora and she was just glad. It was like a father saying that he
approved of a marriageable daughter... And Edward, when he realized
what he was doing, curbed his tongue at once. She was just glad and
she went on being just glad.

I suppose that that was the most monstrously wicked thing that
Edward Ashburnham ever did in his life. And yet I am so near to all
these people that I cannot think any of them wicked. It is
impossible of me to think of Edward Ashburnham as anything but
straight, upright and honourable. That, I mean, is, in spite of
everything, my permanent view of him. I try at times by dwelling on
some of the things that he did to push that image of him away, as
you might try to push aside a large pendulum. But it always comes
back—the memory of his innumerable acts of kindness, of his
efficiency, of his unspiteful tongue. He was such a fine
fellow.

So I feel myself forced to attempt to excuse him in this as in
so many other things. It is, I have no doubt, a most monstrous
thing to attempt to corrupt a young girl just out of a convent. But
I think Edward had no idea at all of corrupting her. I believe that
he simply loved her. He said that that was the way of it and I, at
least, believe him and I believe too that she was the only woman he
ever really loved. He said that that was so; and he did enough to
prove it. And Leonora said that it was so and Leonora knew him to
the bottom of his heart.

I have come to be very much of a cynic in these matters; I mean
that it is impossible to believe in the permanence of man's or
woman's love. Or, at any rate, it is impossible to believe in the
permanence of any early passion. As I see it, at least, with regard
to man, a love affair, a love for any definite woman—is something
in the nature of a widening of the experience. With each new woman
that a man is attracted to there appears to come a broadening of
the outlook, or, if you like, an acquiring of new territory. A turn
of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic
gesture—all these things, and it is these things that cause to
arise the passion of love—all these things are like so many objects
on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk beyond the
horizon, to explore. He wants to get, as it were, behind those
eyebrows with the peculiar turn, as if he desired to see the world
with the eyes that they overshadow. He wants to hear that voice
applying itself to every possible proposition, to every possible
topic; he wants to see those characteristic gestures against every
possible background. Of the question of the sex-instinct I know
very little and I do not think that it counts for very much in a
really great passion. It can be aroused by such nothings—by an
untied shoelace, by a glance of the eye in passing—that I think it
might be left out of the calculation. I don't mean to say that any
great passion can exist without a desire for consummation. That
seems to me to be a commonplace and to be therefore a matter
needing no comment at all. It is a thing, with all its accidents,
that must be taken for granted, as, in a novel, or a biography, you
take it for granted that the characters have their meals with some
regularity. But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a
passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the
craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to
see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to
hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to
be supported. For, whatever may be said of the relation of the
sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to
come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder
of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire
for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need
from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. So,
for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get
what he wants. He will get the moral support, the encouragement,
the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own
worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the
shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages of
the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road
will have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest
story. And yet I do believe that for every man there comes at last
a woman—or no, that is the wrong way of formulating it. For every
man there comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets
her seal upon his imagination has set her seal for good. He will
travel over no more horizons; he will never again set the knapsack
over his shoulders; he will retire from those scenes. He will have
gone out of the business. That at any rate was the case with Edward
and the poor girl. It was quite literally the case. It was quite
literally the case that his passions—for the mistress of the Grand
Duke, for Mrs Basil, for little Mrs Maidan, for Florence, for whom
you will—these passions were merely preliminary canters compared to
his final race with death for her. I am certain of that. I am not
going to be so American as to say that all true love demands some
sacrifice. It doesn't. But I think that love will be truer and more
permanent in which self-sacrifice has been exacted. And, in the
case of the other women, Edward just cut in and cut them out as he
did with the polo-ball from under the nose of Count Baron von
Lelöffel. I don't mean to say that he didn't wear himself as thin
as a lath in the endeavour to capture the other women; but over her
he wore himself to rags and tatters and death—in the effort to
leave her alone.