The Good Soldier | Page 5

days, isn't it true
to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple? So it may well be
with Edward Ashburnham, with Leonora his wife and with poor dear
Florence. And, if you come to think of it, isn't it a little odd that the
physical rottenness of at least two pillars of our four-square house
never presented itself to my mind as a menace to its security? It doesn't
so present itself now though the two of them are actually dead. I don't
know. . . .
I know nothing--nothing in the world--of the hearts of men. I only
know that I am alone--horribly alone. No hearthstone will ever again
witness, for me, friendly intercourse. No smoking-room will ever be
other than peopled with incalculable simulacra amidst smoke wreaths.
Yet, in the name of God, what should I know if I don't know the life of
the hearth and of the smoking-room, since my whole life has been
passed in those places? The warm hearthside! --Well, there was
Florence: I believe that for the twelve years her life lasted, after the
storm that seemed irretrievably to have weakened her heart--I don't
believe that for one minute she was out of my sight, except when she
was safely tucked up in bed and I should be downstairs, talking to some
good fellow or other in some lounge or smoking-room or taking my
final turn with a cigar before going to bed. I don't, you understand,
blame Florence. But how can she have known what she knew? How
could she have got to know it? To know it so fully. Heavens! There
doesn't seem to have been the actual time. It must have been when I
was taking my baths, and my Swedish exercises, being manicured.

Leading the life I did, of the sedulous, strained nurse, I had to do
something to keep myself fit. It must have been then! Yet even that
can't have been enough time to get the tremendously long conversations
full of worldly wisdom that Leonora has reported to me since their
deaths. And is it possible to imagine that during our prescribed walks in
Nauheim and the neighbourhood she found time to carry on the
protracted negotiations which she did carry on between Edward
Ashburnham and his wife? And isn't it incredible that during all that
time Edward and Leonora never spoke a word to each other in private?
What is one to think of humanity?
For I swear to you that they were the model couple. He was as devoted
as it was possible to be without appearing fatuous. So well set up, with
such honest blue eyes, such a touch of stupidity, such a warm
goodheartedness! And she--so tall, so splendid in the saddle, so fair!
Yes, Leonora was extraordinarily fair and so extraordinarily the real
thing that she seemed too good to be true. You don't, I mean, as a rule,
get it all so superlatively together. To be the county family, to look the
county family, to be so appropriately and perfectly wealthy; to be so
perfect in manner--even just to the saving touch of insolence that seems
to be necessary. To have all that and to be all that! No, it was too good
to be true. And yet, only this afternoon, talking over the whole matter
she said to me: "Once I tried to have a lover but I was so sick at the
heart, so utterly worn out that I had to send him away." That struck me
as the most amazing thing I had ever heard. She said "I was actually in
a man's arms. Such a nice chap! Such a dear fellow! And I was saying
to myself, fiercely, hissing it between my teeth, as they say in
novels--and really clenching them together: I was saying to myself:
'Now, I'm in for it and I'll really have a good time for once in my
life--for once in my life!' It was in the dark, in a carriage, coming back
from a hunt ball. Eleven miles we had to drive! And then suddenly the
bitterness of the endless poverty, of the endless acting--it fell on me
like a blight, it spoilt everything. Yes, I had to realize that I had been
spoilt even for the good time when it came. And I burst out crying and I
cried and I cried for the whole eleven miles. Just imagine me crying!
And just imagine me making a fool of the poor dear chap like that. It
certainly wasn't playing the game, was it now?"

I don't know; I don't know; was that last remark of hers the remark of a
harlot, or is it what every decent woman, county family or not county
family, thinks at the bottom of