The Good Soldier (26 page)

It goes with the words—they are about a willow tree, I think:
Thou art to all lost loves the best The only true plant found.

—That sort of thing. It is Herrick, I believe, and the music
with the reedy, irregular, lilting sound that goes with Herrick,
And it was dusk; the heavy, hewn, dark pillars that supported the
gallery were like mourning presences; the fire had sunk to
nothing—a mere glow amongst white ashes.... It was a sentimental
sort of place and light and hour....

And suddenly Nancy found that she was crying. She was crying
quietly; she went on to cry with long convulsive sobs. It seemed to
her that everything gay, everything charming, all light, all
sweetness, had gone out of life. Unhappiness; unhappiness;
unhappiness was all around her. She seemed to know no happy being
and she herself was agonizing....

She remembered that Edward's eyes were hopeless; she was certain
that he was drinking too much; at times he sighed deeply. He
appeared as a man who was burning with inward flame; drying up in
the soul with thirst; withering up in the vitals. Then, the
torturing conviction came to her—the conviction that had visited
her again and again—that Edward must love some one other than
Leonora. With her little, pedagogic sectarianism she remembered
that Catholics do not do this thing. But Edward was a Protestant.
Then Edward loved somebody....

And, after that thought, her eyes grew hopeless; she sighed as
the old St Bernard beside her did. At meals she would feel an
intolerable desire to drink a glass of wine, and then another and
then a third. Then she would find herself grow gay.... But in half
an hour the gaiety went; she felt like a person who is burning up
with an inward flame; desiccating at the soul with thirst;
withering up in the vitals. One evening she went into Edward's
gun-room—he had gone to a meeting of the National Reserve
Committee. On the table beside his chair was a decanter of whisky.
She poured out a wineglassful and drank it off. Flame then really
seemed to fill her body; her legs swelled; her face grew feverish.
She dragged her tall height up to her room and lay in the dark. The
bed reeled beneath her; she gave way to the thought that she was in
Edward's arms; that he was kissing her on her face that burned; on
her shoulders that burned, and on her neck that was on fire.

She never touched alcohol again. Not once after that did she
have such thoughts. They died out of her mind; they left only a
feeling of shame so insupportable that her brain could not take it
in and they vanished. She imagined that her anguish at the thought
of Edward's love for another person was solely sympathy for
Leonora; she determined that the rest of her life must be spent in
acting as Leonora's handmaiden—sweeping, tending, embroidering,
like some Deborah, some medieval saint—I am not, unfortunately, up
in the Catholic hagiology. But I know that she pictured herself as
some personage with a depressed, earnest face and tightly closed
lips, in a clear white room, watering flowers or tending an
embroidery frame. Or, she desired to go with Edward to Africa and
to throw herself in the path of a charging lion so that Edward
might be saved for Leonora at the cost of her life. Well, along
with her sad thoughts she had her childish ones. She knew
nothing—nothing of life, except that one must live sadly. That she
now knew. What happened to her on the night when she received at
once the blow that Edward wished her to go to her father in India
and the blow of the letter from her mother was this. She called
first upon her sweet Saviour—and she thought of Our Lord as her
sweet Saviour!—that He might make it impossible that she should go
to India. Then she realized from Edward's demeanour that he was
determined that she should go to India. It must then be right that
she should go. Edward was always right in his determinations. He
was the Cid; he was Lohengrin; he was the Chevalier Bayard.

Nevertheless her mind mutinied and revolted. She could not leave
that house. She imagined that he wished her gone that she might not
witness his amours with another girl. Well, she was prepared to
tell him that she was ready to witness his amours with another
young girl. She would stay there—to comfort Leonora.

Then came the desperate shock of the letter from her mother. Her
mother said, I believe, something like: "You have no right to go on
living your life of prosperity and respect. You ought to be on the
streets with me. How do you know that you are even Colonel
Rufford's daughter?" She did not know what these words meant. She
thought of her mother as sleeping beneath the arches whilst the
snow fell. That was the impression conveyed to her mind by the
words "on the streets". A Platonic sense of duty gave her the idea
that she ought to go to comfort her mother—the mother that bore
her, though she hardly knew what the words meant. At the same time
she knew that her mother had left her father with another
man—therefore she pitied her father, and thought it terrible in
herself that she trembled at the sound of her father's voice. If
her mother was that sort of woman it was natural that her father
should have had accesses of madness in which he had struck herself
to the ground. And the voice of her conscience said to her that her
first duty was to her parents. It was in accord with this awakened
sense of duty that she undressed with great care and meticulously
folded the clothes that she took off. Sometimes, but not very
often, she threw them helter-skelter about the room.

And that sense of duty was her prevailing mood when Leonora,
tall, clean-run, golden-haired, all in black, appeared in her
doorway, and told her that Edward was dying of love for her. She
knew then with her conscious mind what she had known within herself
for months—that Edward was dying—actually and physically dying—of
love for her. It seemed to her that for one short moment her spirit
could say: "Domine, nunc dimittis,... Lord, now, lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace." She imagined that she could cheerfully go
away to Glasgow and rescue her fallen mother.

AND it seemed to her to be in tune with the mood, with the hour,
and with the woman in front of her to say that she knew Edward was
dying of love for her and that she was dying of love for Edward.
For that fact had suddenly slipped into place and become real for
her as the niched marker on a whist tablet slips round with the
pressure of your thumb. That rubber at least was made.

And suddenly Leonora seemed to have become different and she
seemed to have become different in her attitude towards Leonora. It
was as if she, in her frail, white, silken kimono, sat beside her
fire, but upon a throne. It was as if Leonora, in her close dress
of black lace, with the gleaming white shoulders and the coiled
yellow hair that the girl had always considered the most beautiful
thing in the world—it was as if Leonora had become pinched,
shrivelled, blue with cold, shivering, suppliant. Yet Leonora was
commanding her. It was no good commanding her. She was going on the
morrow to her mother who was in Glasgow.

Leonora went on saying that she must stay there to save Edward,
who was dying of love for her. And, proud and happy in the thought
that Edward loved her, and that she loved him, she did not even
listen to what Leonora said. It appeared to her that it was
Leonora's business to save her husband's body; she, Nancy,
possessed his soul—a precious thing that she would shield and bear
away up in her arms—as if Leonora were a hungry dog, trying to
spring up at a lamb that she was carrying. Yes, she felt as if
Edward's love were a precious lamb that she were bearing away from
a cruel and predatory beast. For, at that time, Leonora appeared to
her as a cruel and predatory beast. Leonora, Leonora with her
hunger, with her cruelty had driven Edward to madness. He must be
sheltered by his love for her and by her love—her love from a great
distance and unspoken, enveloping him, surrounding him, upholding
him; by her voice speaking from Glasgow, saying that she loved,
that she adored, that she passed no moment without longing, loving,
quivering at the thought of him.

Leonora said loudly, insistently, with a bitterly imperative
tone:

"You must stay here; you must belong to Edward. I will divorce
him."

The girl answered:

"The Church does not allow of divorce. I cannot belong to your
husband. I am going to Glasgow to rescue my mother."

The half-opened door opened noiselessly to the full. Edward was
there. His devouring, doomed eyes were fixed on the girl's face;
his shoulders slouched forward; he was undoubtedly half drunk and
he had the whisky decanter in one hand, a slanting candlestick in
the other. He said, with a heavy ferocity, to Nancy:

"I forbid you to talk about these things. You are to stay here
until I hear from your father. Then you will go to your
father."

The two women, looking at each other, like beasts about to
spring, hardly gave a glance to him. He leaned against the
door-post. He said again:

"Nancy, I forbid you to talk about these things. I am the master
of this house." And, at the sound of his voice, heavy, male, coming
from a deep chest, in the night with the blackness behind him,
Nancy felt as if her spirit bowed before him, with folded hands.
She felt that she would go to India, and that she desired never
again to talk of these things.

Leonora said:

"You see that it is your duty to belong to him. He must not be
allowed to go on drinking."

Nancy did not answer. Edward was gone; they heard him slipping
and shambling on the polished oak of the stairs. Nancy screamed
when there came the sound of a heavy fall. Leonora said again: "You
see!"

The sounds went on from the hall below; the light of the candle
Edward held flickered up between the hand rails of the gallery.
Then they heard his voice:

"Give me Glasgow... Glasgow, in Scotland.. I want the number of
a man called White, of Simrock Park, Glasgow... Edward White,
Simrock Park, Glasgow... ten minutes... at this time of night..."
His voice was quite level, normal, and patient. Alcohol took him in
the legs, not the speech. "I can wait," his voice came again. "Yes,
I know they have a number. I have been in communication with them
before."

"He is going to telephone to your mother," Leonora said. "He
will make it all right for her." She got up and closed the door.
She came back to the fire, and added bitterly: "He can always make
it all right for everybody, except me—excepting me!"

The girl said nothing. She sat there in a blissful dream. She
seemed to see her lover sitting as he always sat, in a round-backed
chair, in the dark hall—sitting low, with the receiver at his ear,
talking in a gentle, slow voice, that he reserved for the
telephone—and saving the world and her, in the black darkness. She
moved her hand over the bareness of the base of her throat, to have
the warmth of flesh upon it and upon her bosom.

She said nothing; Leonora went on talking....

God knows what Leonora said. She repeated that the girl must
belong to her husband. She said that she used that phrase because,
though she might have a divorce, or even a dissolution of the
marriage by the Church, it would still be adultery that the girl
and Edward would be committing. But she said that that was
necessary; it was the price that the girl must pay for the sin of
having made Edward love her, for the sin of loving her husband. She
talked on and on, beside the fire. The girl must become an
adulteress; she had wronged Edward by being so beautiful, so
gracious, so good. It was sinful to be so good. She must pay the
price so as to save the man she had wronged.

In between her pauses the girl could hear the voice of Edward,
droning on, indistinguishably, with jerky pauses for replies. It
made her glow with pride; the man she loved was working for her. He
at least was resolved; was malely determined; knew the right thing.
Leonora talked on with her eyes boring into Nancy's. The girl
hardly looked at her and hardly heard her. After a long time Nancy
said—after hours and hours:

"I shall go to India as soon as Edward hears from my father. I
cannot talk about these things, because Edward does not wish
it."

At that Leonora screamed out and wavered swiftly towards the
closed door. And Nancy found that she was springing out of her
chair with her white arms stretched wide. She was clasping the
other woman to her breast; she was saying:

"Oh, my poor dear; oh, my poor dear." And they sat, crouching
together in each other's arms, and crying and crying; and they lay
down in the same bed, talking and talking, all through the night.
And all through the night Edward could hear their voices through
the wall. That was how it went.... Next morning they were all three
as if nothing had happened. Towards eleven Edward came to Nancy,
who was arranging some Christmas roses in a silver bowl. He put a
telegram beside her on the table. "You can uncode it for yourself,"
he said. Then, as he went out of the door, he said: "You can tell
your aunt I have cabled to Mr Dowell to come over. He will make
things easier till you leave." The telegram when it was uncoded,
read, as far as I can remember: "Will take Mrs Rufford to Italy.
Undertake to do this for certain. Am devotedly attached to Mrs
Rufford. Have no need of financial assistance. Did not know there
was a daughter, and am much obliged to you for pointing out my
duty.—White." It was something like that. Then the household
resumed its wonted course of days until my arrival.

V IT is this part of the story that makes me saddest of all. For
I ask myself unceasingly, my mind going round and round in a weary,
baffled space of pain—what should these people have done? What, in
the name of God, should they have done?

The end was perfectly plain to each of them—it was perfectly
manifest at this stage that, if the girl did not, in Leonora's
phrase, "belong to Edward," Edward must die, the girl must lose her
reason because Edward died—and, that after a time, Leonora, who was
the coldest and the strongest of the three, would console herself
by marrying Rodney Bayham and have a quiet, comfortable, good time.
That end, on that night, whilst Leonora sat in the girl's bedroom
and Edward telephoned down below—that end was plainly manifest. The
girl, plainly, was half-mad already; Edward was half dead; only
Leonora, active, persistent, instinct with her cold passion of
energy, was "doing things". What then, should they have done?
worked out in the extinction of two very splendid personalities—for
Edward and the girl were splendid personalities, in order that a
third personality, more normal, should have, after a long period of
trouble, a quiet, comfortable, good time.