The Good Soldier | Page 9

coachmen's liveries. Then it would take a turn
at embossed tin lids for candy boxes. The fact is that the poor old
gentleman, with his weak and fluttering heart, didn't want his factory to
manufacture anything at all. He wanted to retire. And he did retire
when he was seventy. But he was so worried at having all the street
boys in the town point after him and exclaim: "There goes the laziest
man in Waterbury!" that he tried taking a tour round the world. And
Florence and a young man called Jimmy went with him. It appears
from what Florence told me that Jimmy's function with Mr Hurlbird

was to avoid exciting topics for him. He had to keep him, for instance,
out of political discussions. For the poor old man was a violent
Democrat in days when you might travel the world over without
finding anything but a Republican. Anyhow, they went round the
world.
I think an anecdote is about the best way to give you an idea of what
the old gentleman was like. For it is perhaps important that you should
know what the old gentleman was; he had a great deal of influence in
forming the character of my poor dear wife.
Just before they set out from San Francisco for the South Seas old Mr
Hurlbird said he must take something with him to make little presents
to people he met on the voyage. And it struck him that the things to
take for that purpose were oranges--because California is the orange
country--and comfortable folding chairs. So he bought I don't know
how many cases of oranges--the great cool California oranges, and
half-a-dozen folding chairs in a special case that he always kept in his
cabin. There must have been half a cargo of fruit.
For, to every person on board the several steamers that they
employed--to every person with whom he had so much as a nodding
acquaintance, he gave an orange every morning. And they lasted him
right round the girdle of this mighty globe of ours. When they were at
North Cape, even, he saw on the horizon, poor dear thin man that he
was, a lighthouse. "Hello," says he to himself, "these fellows must be
very lonely. Let's take them some oranges." So he had a boatload of his
fruit out and had himself rowed to the lighthouse on the horizon. The
folding chairs he lent to any lady that he came across and liked or who
seemed tired and invalidish on the ship. And so, guarded against his
heart and, having his niece with him, he went round the world. . . .

He wasn't obtrusive about his heart. You wouldn't have known he had
one. He only left it to the physical laboratory at Waterbury for the
benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an extraordinary
kind of heart. And the joke of the matter was that, when, at the age of

eighty-four, just five days before poor Florence, he died of bronchitis
there was found to be absolutely nothing the matter with that organ. It
had certainly jumped or squeaked or something just sufficiently to take
in the doctors, hut it appears that that was because of an odd formation
of the lungs. I don't much understand about these matters.
I inherited his money because Florence died five days after him. I wish
I hadn't. It was a great worry. I had to go out to Waterbury just after
Florence's death because the poor dear old fellow had left a good many
charitable bequests and I had to appoint trustees. I didn't like the idea of
their not being properly handled.
Yes, it was a great worry. And just as I had got things roughly settled I
received the extraordinary cable from Ashburnham begging me to
come back and have a talk with him. And immediately afterwards came
one from Leonora saying, "Yes, please do come. You could be so
helpful." It was as if he had sent the cable without consulting her and
had afterwards told her. Indeed, that was pretty much what had
happened, except that he had told the girl and the girl told the wife. I
arrived, however, too late to be of any good if I could have been of any
good. And then I had my first taste of English life. It was amazing. It
was overwhelming. I never shall forget the polished cob that Edward,
beside me, drove; the animal's action, its high-stepping, its skin that
was like satin. And the peace! And the red cheeks! And the beautiful,
beautiful old house.
Just near Branshaw Teleragh it was and we descended on it from the
high, clear, windswept waste of the New Forest. I tell you it