THE death of Mrs Maidan occurred on the 4th of August, 1904. And then
nothing happened until the 4th of August, 1913. There is the curious
coincidence of dates, but I do not know whether that is one of those
sinister, as if half jocular and altogether merciless proceedings on the
part of a cruel Providence that we call a coincidence. Because it may
just as well have been the superstitious mind of Florence that forced
her to certain acts, as if she had been hypnotized. It is, however,
certain that the 4th of August always proved a significant date for her.
To begin with, she was born on the 4th of August. Then, on that date, in
the year 1899, she set out with her uncle for the tour round the world
in company with a young man called Jimmy. But that was not merely a
coincidence. Her kindly old uncle, with the supposedly damaged heart,
was in his delicate way, offering her, in this trip, a birthday present
to celebrate her coming of age. Then, on the 4th of August, 1900, she
yielded to an action that certainly coloured her whole life—as well as
mine. She had no luck. She was probably offering herself a birthday
present that morning....
On the 4th of August, 1901, she married me, and set sail for Europe in a
great gale of wind—the gale that affected her heart. And no doubt there,
again, she was offering herself a birthday gift—the birthday gift of my
miserable life. It occurs to me that I have never told you anything
about my marriage. That was like this: I have told you, as I think, that
I first met Florence at the Stuyvesants', in Fourteenth Street. And,
from that moment, I determined with all the obstinacy of a possibly weak
nature, if not to make her mine, at least to marry her. I had no
occupation—I had no business affairs. I simply camped down there in
Stamford, in a vile hotel, and just passed my days in the house, or on
the verandah of the Misses Hurlbird. The Misses Hurlbird, in an odd,
obstinate way, did not like my presence. But they were hampered by the
national manners of these occasions. Florence had her own sitting-room.
She could ask to it whom she liked, and I simply walked into that
apartment. I was as timid as you will, but in that matter I was like a
chicken that is determined to get across the road in front of an
automobile. I would walk into Florence's pretty, little, old-fashioned
room, take off my hat, and sit down.
Florence had, of course, several other fellows, too—strapping young New
Englanders, who worked during the day in New York and spent only the
evenings in the village of their birth. And, in the evenings, they would
march in on Florence with almost as much determination as I myself
showed. And I am bound to say that they were received with as much
disfavour as was my portion—from the Misses Hurlbird....
They were curious old creatures, those two. It was almost as if they
were members of an ancient family under some curse—they were so
gentlewomanly, so proper, and they sighed so. Sometimes I would see
tears in their eyes. I do not know that my courtship of Florence made
much progress at first. Perhaps that was because it took place almost
entirely during the daytime, on hot afternoons, when the clouds of dust
hung like fog, right up as high as the tops of the thin-leaved elms. The
night, I believe, is the proper season for the gentle feats of love, not
a Connecticut July afternoon, when any sort of proximity is an almost
appalling thought. But, if I never so much as kissed Florence, she let
me discover very easily, in the course of a fortnight, her simple wants.
And I could supply those wants....
She wanted to marry a gentleman of leisure; she wanted a European
establishment. She wanted her husband to have an English accent, an
income of fifty thousand dollars a year from real estate and no
ambitions to increase that income. And—she faintly hinted—she did not
want much physical passion in the affair. Americans, you know, can
envisage such unions without blinking.
She gave out this information in floods of bright talk—she would pop a
little bit of it into comments over a view of the Rialto, Venice, and,
whilst she was brightly describing Balmoral Castle, she would say that
her ideal husband would be one who could get her received at the British
Court. She had spent, it seemed, two months in Great Britain—seven weeks
in touring from Stratford to Strathpeffer, and one as paying guest in an
old English family near Ledbury, an impoverished, but still stately
family, called Bagshawe. They were to have spent two months more in that
tranquil bosom, but inopportune events, apparently in her uncle's
business, had caused their rather hurried return to Stamford. The young
man called Jimmy had remained in Europe to perfect his knowledge of that
continent. He certainly did: he was most useful to us afterwards.
But the point that came out—that there was no mistaking—was that
Florence was coldly and calmly determined to take no look at any man who
could not give her a European settlement. Her glimpse of English home
life had effected this. She meant, on her marriage, to have a year in
Paris, and then to have her husband buy some real estate in the
neighbourhood of Fordingbridge, from which place the Hurlbirds had come
in the year 1688. On the strength of that she was going to take her
place in the ranks of English county society. That was fixed.
I used to feel mightily elevated when I considered these details, for I
could not figure out that amongst her acquaintances in Stamford there
was any fellow that would fill the bill. The most of them were not as
wealthy as I, and those that were were not the type to give up the
fascinations of Wall Street even for the protracted companionship of
Florence. But nothing really happened during the month of July. On the
1st of August Florence apparently told her aunts that she intended to
marry me.
She had not told me so, but there was no doubt about the aunts, for, on
that afternoon, Miss Florence Hurlbird, Senior, stopped me on my way to
Florence's sitting-room and took me, agitatedly, into the parlour. It
was a singular interview, in that old-fashioned colonial room, with the
spindle-legged furniture, the silhouettes, the miniatures, the portrait
of General Braddock, and the smell of lavender. You see, the two poor
maiden ladies were in agonies—and they could not say one single thing
direct. They would almost wring their hands and ask if I had considered
such a thing as different temperaments. I assure you they were almost
affectionate, concerned for me even, as if Florence were too bright for
my solid and serious virtues.
For they had discovered in me solid and serious virtues. That might have
been because I had once dropped the remark that I preferred General
Braddock to General Washington. For the Hurlbirds had backed the losing
side in the War of Independence, and had been seriously impoverished and
quite efficiently oppressed for that reason. The Misses Hurlbird could
never forget it.
Nevertheless they shuddered at the thought of a European career for
myself and Florence. Each of them really wailed when they heard that
that was what I hoped to give their niece. That may have been partly
because they regarded Europe as a sink of iniquity, where strange
laxities prevailed. They thought the Mother Country as Erastian as any
other. And they carried their protests to extraordinary lengths, for
them....
They even, almost, said that marriage was a sacrament; but neither Miss
Florence nor Miss Emily could quite bring herself to utter the word. And
they almost brought themselves to say that Florence's early life had
been characterized by flirtations—something of that sort.
I know I ended the interview by saying:
"I don't care. If Florence has robbed a bank I am going to marry her and
take her to Europe."
And at that Miss Emily wailed and fainted. But Miss Florence, in spite
of the state of her sister, threw herself on my neck and cried out:
"Don't do it, John. Don't do it. You're a good young man," and she
added, whilst I was getting out of the room to send Florence to her
aunt's rescue:
"We ought to tell you more. But she's our dear sister's child."
Florence, I remember, received me with a chalk-pale face and the
exclamation:
"Have those old cats been saying anything against me?" But I assured her
that they had not and hurried her into the room of her strangely
afflicted relatives. I had really forgotten all about that exclamation
of Florence's until this moment. She treated me so very well—with such
tact—that, if I ever thought of it afterwards I put it down to her deep
affection for me.
And that evening, when I went to fetch her for a buggy-ride, she had
disappeared. I did not lose any time. I went into New York and engaged
berths on the "Pocahontas", that was to sail on the evening of the
fourth of the month, and then, returning to Stamford, I tracked out, in
the course of the day, that Florence had been driven to Rye Station. And
there I found that she had taken the cars to Waterbury. She had, of
course, gone to her uncle's. The old man received me with a stony, husky
face. I was not to see Florence; she was ill; she was keeping her room.
And, from something that he let drop—an odd Biblical phrase that I have
forgotten—I gathered that all that family simply did not intend her to
marry ever in her life.
I procured at once the name of the nearest minister and a rope
ladder—you have no idea how primitively these matters were arranged in
those days in the United States. I daresay that may be so still. And at
one o'clock in the morning of the 4th of August I was standing in
Florence's bedroom. I was so one-minded in my purpose that it never
struck me there was anything improper in being, at one o'clock in the
morning, in Florence's bedroom. I just wanted to wake her up. She was
not, however, asleep. She expected me, and her relatives had only just
left her. She received me with an embrace of a warmth.... Well, it was
the first time I had ever been embraced by a woman—and it was the last
when a woman's embrace has had in it any warmth for me....
I suppose it was my own fault, what followed. At any rate, I was in such
a hurry to get the wedding over, and was so afraid of her relatives
finding me there, that I must have received her advances with a certain
amount of absence of mind. I was out of that room and down the ladder in
under half a minute. She kept me waiting at the foot an unconscionable
time—it was certainly three in the morning before we knocked up that
minister. And I think that that wait was the only sign Florence ever
showed of having a conscience as far as I was concerned, unless her
lying for some moments in my arms was also a sign of conscience. I fancy
that, if I had shown warmth then, she would have acted the proper wife
to me, or would have put me back again. But, because I acted like a
Philadelphia gentleman, she made me, I suppose, go through with the part
of a male nurse. Perhaps she thought that I should not mind.
After that, as I gather, she had not any more remorse. She was only
anxious to carry out her plans. For, just before she came down the
ladder, she called me to the top of that grotesque implement that I went
up and down like a tranquil jumping-jack. I was perfectly collected. She
said to me with a certain fierceness:
"It is determined that we sail at four this afternoon? You are not lying
about having taken berths?"
I understood that she would naturally be anxious to get away from the
neighbourhood of her apparently insane relatives, so that I readily
excused her for thinking that I should be capable of lying about such a
thing. I made it, therefore, plain to her that it was my fixed
determination to sail by the "Pocahontas". She said then—it was a
moonlit morning, and she was whispering in my ear whilst I stood on the
ladder. The hills that surround Waterbury showed, extraordinarily
tranquil, around the villa. She said, almost coldly:
"I wanted to know, so as to pack my trunks." And she added: "I may be
ill, you know. I guess my heart is a little like Uncle Hurlbird's. It
runs in families."
I whispered that the "Pocahontas" was an extraordinarily steady boat....
Now I wonder what had passed through Florence's mind during the two
hours that she had kept me waiting at the foot of the ladder. I would
give not a little to know. Till then, I fancy she had had no settled
plan in her mind. She certainly never mentioned her heart till that
time. Perhaps the renewed sight of her Uncle Hurlbird had given her the
idea. Certainly her Aunt Emily, who had come over with her to Waterbury,
would have rubbed into her, for hours and hours, the idea that any
accentuated discussions would kill the old gentleman. That would recall
to her mind all the safeguards against excitement with which the poor
silly old gentleman had been hedged in during their trip round the
world. That, perhaps, put it into her head. Still, I believe there was
some remorse on my account, too. Leonora told me that Florence said
there was—for Leonora knew all about it, and once went so far as to ask
her how she could do a thing so infamous. She excused herself on the
score of an overmastering passion. Well, I always say that an
overmastering passion is a good excuse for feelings. You cannot help
them. And it is a good excuse for straight actions—she might have bolted
with the fellow, before or after she married me. And, if they had not
enough money to get along with, they might have cut their throats, or
sponged on her family, though, of course, Florence wanted such a lot
that it would have suited her very badly to have for a husband a clerk
in a dry-goods store, which was what old Hurlbird would have made of
that fellow. He hated him. No, I do not think that there is much excuse
for Florence.
God knows. She was a frightened fool, and she was fantastic, and I
suppose that, at that time, she really cared for that imbecile. He
certainly didn't care for her. Poor thing.... At any rate, after I had
assured her that the "Pocahontas" was a steady ship, she just said:
"You'll have to look after me in certain ways—like Uncle Hurlbird is
looked after. I will tell you how to do it." And then she stepped over
the sill, as if she were stepping on board a boat. I suppose she had
burnt hers!
I had, no doubt, eye-openers enough. When we re-entered the Hurlbird
mansion at eight o'clock the Hurlbirds were just exhausted. Florence had
a hard, triumphant air. We had got married about four in the morning and
had sat about in the woods above the town till then, listening to a
mocking-bird imitate an old tom-cat. So I guess Florence had not found
getting married to me a very stimulating process. I had not found
anything much more inspiring to say than how glad I was, with
variations. I think I was too dazed. Well, the Hurlbirds were too dazed
to say much. We had breakfast together, and then Florence went to pack
her grips and things. Old Hurlbird took the opportunity to read me a
full-blooded lecture, in the style of an American oration, as to the
perils for young American girlhood lurking in the European jungle. He
said that Paris was full of snakes in the grass, of which he had had
bitter experience. He concluded, as they always do, poor, dear old
things, with the aspiration that all American women should one day be
sexless—though that is not the way they put it.. ..
Well, we made the ship all right by one-thirty—and there was a tempest
blowing. That helped Florence a good deal. For we were not ten minutes
out from Sandy Hook before Florence went down into her cabin and her
heart took her. An agitated stewardess came running up to me, and I went
running down. I got my directions how to behave to my wife. Most of them
came from her, though it was the ship doctor who discreetly suggested to
me that I had better refrain from manifestations of affection. I was
ready enough.
I was, of course, full of remorse. It occurred to me that her heart was
the reason for the Hurlbirds' mysterious desire to keep their youngest
and dearest unmarried. Of course, they would be too refined to put the
motive into words. They were old stock New Englanders. They would not
want to have to suggest that a husband must not kiss the back of his
wife's neck. They would not like to suggest that he might, for the
matter of that. I wonder, though, how Florence got the doctor to enter
the conspiracy—the several doctors.
Of course her heart squeaked a bit—she had the same configuration of the
lungs as her Uncle Hurlbird. And, in his company, she must have heard a
great deal of heart talk from specialists. Anyhow, she and they tied me
pretty well down—and Jimmy, of course, that dreary boy—what in the world
did she see in him? He was lugubrious, silent, morose. He had no talent
as a painter. He was very sallow and dark, and he never shaved
sufficiently. He met us at Havre, and he proceeded to make himself
useful for the next two years, during which he lived in our flat in
Paris, whether we were there or not. He studied painting at Julien's, or
some such place....
That fellow had his hands always in the pockets of his odious, square-
shouldered, broad-hipped, American coats, and his dark eyes were always
full of ominous appearances. He was, besides, too fat. Why, I was much
the better man....
And I daresay Florence would have given me the better. She showed signs
of it. I think, perhaps, the enigmatic smile with which she used to look
back at me over her shoulder when she went into the bathing place was a
sort of invitation. I have mentioned that. It was as if she were saying:
"I am going in here. I am going to stand so stripped and white and
straight—and you are a man...." Perhaps it was that....
No, she cannot have liked that fellow long. He looked like sallow putty.
I understand that he had been slim and dark and very graceful at the
time of her first disgrace. But, loafing about in Paris, on her pocket-
money and on the allowance that old Hurlbird made him to keep out of the
United States, had given him a stomach like a man of forty, and
dyspeptic irritation on top of it.
God, how they worked me! It was those two between them who really
elaborated the rules. I have told you something about them—how I had to
head conversations, for all those eleven years, off such topics as love,
poverty, crime, and so on. But, looking over what I have written, I see
that I have unintentionally misled you when I said that Florence was
never out of my sight. Yet that was the impression that I really had
until just now. When I come to think of it she was out of my sight most
of the time.
You see, that fellow impressed upon me that what Florence needed most of
all were sleep and privacy. I must never enter her room without
knocking, or her poor little heart might flutter away to its doom. He
said these things with his lugubrious croak, and his black eyes like a
crow's, so that I seemed to see poor Florence die ten times a day—a
little, pale, frail corpse. Why, I would as soon have thought of
entering her room without her permission as of burgling a church. I
would sooner have committed that crime. I would certainly have done it
if I had thought the state of her heart demanded the sacrilege. So at
ten o'clock at night the door closed upon Florence, who had gently, and,
as if reluctantly, backed up that fellow's recommendations; and she
would wish me good night as if she were a cinquecento Italian lady
saying good-bye to her lover. And at ten o'clock of the next morning
there she would come out the door of her room as fresh as Venus rising
from any of the couches that are mentioned in Greek legends.
Her room door was locked because she was nervous about thieves; but an
electric contrivance on a cord was understood to be attached to her
little wrist. She had only to press a bulb to raise the house. And I was
provided with an axe—an axe!—great gods, with which to break down her
door in case she ever failed to answer my knock, after I knocked really
loud several times. It was pretty well thought out, you see.
What wasn't so well thought out were the ultimate consequences—our being
tied to Europe. For that young man rubbed it so well into me that
Florence would die if she crossed the Channel—he impressed it so fully
on my mind that, when later Florence wanted to go to Fordingbridge, I
cut the proposal short—absolutely short, with a curt no. It fixed her
and it frightened her. I was even backed up by all the doctors. I seemed
to have had endless interviews with doctor after doctor, cool, quiet
men, who would ask, in reasonable tones, whether there was any reason
for our going to England—any special reason. And since I could not see
any special reason, they would give the verdict: "Better not, then." I
daresay they were honest enough, as things go. They probably imagined
that the mere associations of the steamer might have effects on
Florence's nerves. That would be enough, that and a conscientious desire
to keep our money on the Continent.
It must have rattled poor Florence pretty considerably, for you see, the
main idea—the only main idea of her heart, that was otherwise cold—was
to get to Fordingbridge and be a county lady in the home of her
ancestors. But Jimmy got her, there: he shut on her the door of the
Channel; even on the fairest day of blue sky, with the cliffs of England
shining like mother of pearl in full view of Calais, I would not have
let her cross the steamer gangway to save her life. I tell you it fixed
her.
It fixed her beautifully, because she could not announce herself as
cured, since that would have put an end to the locked bedroom
arrangements. And, by the time she was sick of Jimmy—which happened in
the year 1903—she had taken on Edward Ashburnham. Yes, it was a bad fix
for her, because Edward could have taken her to Fordingbridge, and,
though he could not give her Branshaw Manor, that home of her ancestors
being settled on his wife, she could at least have pretty considerably
queened it there or thereabouts, what with our money and the support of
the Ashburnhams. Her uncle, as soon as he considered that she had really
settled down with me—and I sent him only the most glowing accounts of
her virtue and constancy—made over to her a very considerable part of
his fortune for which he had no use. I suppose that we had, between us,
fifteen thousand a year in English money, though I never quite knew how
much of hers went to Jimmy. At any rate, we could have shone in
Fordingbridge.
I never quite knew, either, how she and Edward got rid of Jimmy. I fancy
that fat and disreputable raven must have had his six golden front teeth
knocked down his throat by Edward one morning whilst I had gone out to
buy some flowers in the Rue de la Paix, leaving Florence and the flat in
charge of those two. And serve him very right, is all that I can say. He
was a bad sort of blackmailer; I hope Florence does not have his company
in the next world.
As God is my Judge, I do not believe that I would have separated those
two if I had known that they really and passionately loved each other. I
do not know where the public morality of the case comes in, and, of
course, no man really knows what he would have done in any given case.
But I truly believe that I would have united them, observing ways and
means as decent as I could. I believe that I should have given them
money to live upon and that I should have consoled myself somehow. At
that date I might have found some young thing, like Maisie Maidan, or
the poor girl, and I might have had some peace. For peace I never had
with Florence, and hardly believe that I cared for her in the way of
love after a year or two of it. She became for me a rare and fragile
object, something burdensome, but very frail. Why it was as if I had
been given a thin-shelled pullet's egg to carry on my palm from
Equatorial Africa to Hoboken. Yes, she became for me, as it were, the
subject of a bet—the trophy of an athlete's achievement, a parsley crown
that is the symbol of his chastity, his soberness, his abstentions, and
of his inflexible will. Of intrinsic value as a wife, I think she had
none at all for me. I fancy I was not even proud of the way she dressed.
But her passion for Jimmy was not even a passion, and, mad as the
suggestion may appear, she was frightened for her life. Yes, she was
afraid of me. I will tell you how that happened.
I had, in the old days, a darky servant, called Julius, who valeted me,
and waited on me, and loved me, like the crown of his head. Now, when we
left Waterbury to go to the "Pocahontas", Florence entrusted to me one
very special and very precious leather grip. She told me that her life
might depend on that grip, which contained her drugs against heart
attacks. And, since I was never much of a hand at carrying things, I
entrusted this, in turn, to Julius, who was a grey-haired chap of sixty
or so, and very picturesque at that. He made so much impression on
Florence that she regarded him as a sort of father, and absolutely
refused to let me take him to Paris. He would have inconvenienced her.
Well, Julius was so overcome with grief at being left behind that he
must needs go and drop the precious grip. I saw red, I saw purple. I
flew at Julius. On the ferry, it was, I filled up one of his eyes; I
threatened to strangle him. And, since an unresisting negro can make a
deplorable noise and a deplorable spectacle, and, since that was
Florence's first adventure in the married state, she got a pretty idea
of my character. It affirmed in her the desperate resolve to conceal
from me the fact that she was not what she would have called "a pure
woman". For that was really the mainspring of her fantastic actions. She
was afraid that I should murder her....
So she got up the heart attack, at the earliest possible opportunity, on
board the liner. Perhaps she was not so very much to be blamed. You must
remember that she was a New Englander, and that New England had not yet
come to loathe darkies as it does now. Whereas, if she had come from
even so little south as Philadelphia, and had been an oldish family, she
would have seen that for me to kick Julius was not so outrageous an act
as for her cousin, Reggie Hurlbird, to say—as I have heard him say to
his English butler—that for two cents he would bat him on the pants.
Besides, the medicine-grip did not bulk as largely in her eyes as it did
in mine, where it was the symbol of the existence of an adored wife of a
day. To her it was just a useful lie....
Well, there you have the position, as clear as I can make it—the husband
an ignorant fool, the wife a cold sensualist with imbecile fears—for I
was such a fool that I should never have known what she was or was
not—and the blackmailing lover. And then the other lover came along....
Well, Edward Ashburnham was worth having. Have I conveyed to you the
splendid fellow that he was—the fine soldier, the excellent landlord,
the extraordinarily kind, careful and industrious magistrate, the
upright, honest, fair-dealing, fair-thinking, public character? I
suppose I have not conveyed it to you. The truth is, that I never knew
it until the poor girl came along—the poor girl who was just as
straight, as splendid and as upright as he. I swear she was. I suppose I
ought to have known. I suppose that was, really, why I liked him so
much—so infinitely much. Come to think of it, I can remember a thousand
little acts of kindliness, of thoughtfulness for his inferiors, even on
the Continent. Look here, I know of two families of dirty,
unpicturesque, Hessian paupers that that fellow, with an infinite
patience, rooted up, got their police reports, set on their feet, or
exported to my patient land. And he would do it quite inarticulately,
set in motion by seeing a child crying in the street. He would wrestle
with dictionaries, in that unfamiliar tongue.... Well, he could not bear
to see a child cry. Perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not
give her the comfort of his physical attractions.
But, although I liked him so intensely, I was rather apt to take these
things for granted. They made me feel comfortable with him, good towards
him; they made me trust him. But I guess I thought it was part of the
character of any English gentleman. Why, one day he got it into his head
that the head waiter at the Excelsior had been crying—the fellow with
the grey face and grey whiskers. And then he spent the best part of a
week, in correspondence and up at the British consul's, in getting the
fellow's wife to come back from London and bring back his girl baby. She
had bolted with a Swiss scullion. If she had not come inside the week he
would have gone to London himself to fetch her. He was like that.
Edward Ashburnham was like that, and I thought it was only the duty of
his rank and station. Perhaps that was all that it was—but I pray God to
make me discharge mine as well. And, but for the poor girl, I daresay
that I should never have seen it, however much the feeling might have
been over me. She had for him such enthusiasm that, although even now I
do not understand the technicalities of English life, I can gather
enough. She was with them during the whole of our last stay at Nauheim.
Nancy Rufford was her name; she was Leonora's only friend's only child,
and Leonora was her guardian, if that is the correct term. She had lived
with the Ashburnhams ever since she had been of the age of thirteen,
when her mother was said to have committed suicide owing to the
brutalities of her father. Yes, it is a cheerful story....
Edward always called her "the girl", and it was very pretty, the evident
affection he had for her and she for him. And Leonora's feet she would
have kissed—those two were for her the best man and the best woman on
earth—and in heaven. I think that she had not a thought of evil in her
head—the poor girl....
Well, anyhow, she chanted Edward's praises to me for the hour together,
but, as I have said, I could not make much of it. It appeared that he
had the D.S.O., and that his troop loved him beyond the love of men. You
never saw such a troop as his. And he had the Royal Humane Society's
medal with a clasp. That meant, apparently, that he had twice jumped off
the deck of a troopship to rescue what the girl called "Tommies", who
had fallen overboard in the Red Sea and such places. He had been twice
recommended for the V.C., whatever that might mean, and, although owing
to some technicalities he had never received that apparently coveted
order, he had some special place about his sovereign at the coronation.
Or perhaps it was some post in the Beefeaters'. She made him out like a
cross between Lohengrin and the Chevalier Bayard. Perhaps he was.... But
he was too silent a fellow to make that side of him really decorative. I
remember going to him at about that time and asking him what the D.S.O.
was, and he grunted out:
"It's a sort of a thing they give grocers who've honourably supplied the
troops with adulterated coffee in war-time"—something of that sort. He
did not quite carry conviction to me, so, in the end, I put it directly
to Leonora. I asked her fully and squarely—prefacing the question with
some remarks, such as those that I have already given you, as to the
difficulty one has in really getting to know people when one's intimacy
is conducted as an English acquaintanceship—I asked her whether her
husband was not really a splendid fellow—along at least the lines of his
public functions. She looked at me with a slightly awakened air—with an
air that would have been almost startled if Leonora could ever have been
startled.
"Didn't you know?" she asked. "If I come to think of it there is not a
more splendid fellow in any three counties, pick them where you
will—along those lines." And she added, after she had looked at me
reflectively for what seemed a long time:
"To do my husband justice there could not be a better man on the earth.
There would not be room for it—along those lines."
"Well," I said, "then he must really be Lohengrin and the Cid in one
body. For there are not any other lines that count."
Again she looked at me for a long time.
"It's your opinion that there are no other lines that count?" she asked
slowly.
"Well," I answered gaily, "you're not going to accuse him of not being a
good husband, or of not being a good guardian to your ward?"
She spoke then, slowly, like a person who is listening to the sounds in
a sea-shell held to her ear—and, would you believe it?—she told me
afterwards that, at that speech of mine, for the first time she had a
vague inkling of the tragedy that was to follow so soon—although the
girl had lived with them for eight years or so:
"Oh, I'm not thinking of saying that he is not the best of husbands, or
that he is not very fond of the girl."
And then I said something like:
"Well, Leonora, a man sees more of these things than even a wife. And,
let me tell you, that in all the years I've known Edward he has never,
in your absence, paid a moment's attention to any other woman—not by the
quivering of an eyelash. I should have noticed. And he talks of you as
if you were one of the angels of God."
"Oh," she came up to the scratch, as you could be sure Leonora would
always come up to the scratch, "I am perfectly sure that he always
speaks nicely of me."
I daresay she had practice in that sort of scene—people must have been
always complimenting her on her husband's fidelity and adoration. For
half the world—the whole of the world that knew Edward and Leonora
believed that his conviction in the Kilsyte affair had been a
miscarriage of justice—a conspiracy of false evidence, got together by
Nonconformist adversaries. But think of the fool that I was....
II
LET me think where we were. Oh, yes... that conversation took place on
the 4th of August, 1913. I remember saying to her that, on that day,
exactly nine years before, I had made their acquaintance, so that it had
seemed quite appropriate and like a birthday speech to utter my little
testimonial to my friend Edward. I could quite confidently say that,
though we four had been about together in all sorts of places, for all
that length of time, I had not, for my part, one single complaint to
make of either of them. And I added, that that was an unusual record for
people who had been so much together. You are not to imagine that it was
only at Nauheim that we met. That would not have suited Florence.
I find, on looking at my diaries, that on the 4th of September, 1904,
Edward accompanied Florence and myself to Paris, where we put him up
till the twenty-first of that month. He made another short visit to us
in December of that year—the first year of our acquaintance. It must
have been during this visit that he knocked Mr Jimmy's teeth down his
throat. I daresay Florence had asked him to come over for that purpose.
In 1905 he was in Paris three times—once with Leonora, who wanted some
frocks. In 1906 we spent the best part of six weeks together at Mentone,
and Edward stayed with us in Paris on his way back to London. That was
how it went.
The fact was that in Florence the poor wretch had got hold of a Tartar,
compared with whom Leonora was a sucking kid. He must have had a hell of
a time. Leonora wanted to keep him for—what shall I say—for the good of
her church, as it were, to show that Catholic women do not lose their
men. Let it go at that, for the moment. I will write more about her
motives later, perhaps. But Florence was sticking on to the proprietor
of the home of her ancestors. No doubt he was also a very passionate
lover. But I am convinced that he was sick of Florence within three
years of even interrupted companionship and the life that she led
him....
If ever Leonora so much as mentioned in a letter that they had had a
woman staying with them—or, if she so much as mentioned a woman's name
in a letter to me—off would go a desperate cable in cipher to that poor
wretch at Branshaw, commanding him on pain of an instant and horrible
disclosure to come over and assure her of his fidelity. I daresay he
would have faced it out; I daresay he would have thrown over Florence
and taken the risk of exposure. But there he had Leonora to deal with.
And Leonora assured him that, if the minutest fragment of the real
situation ever got through to my senses, she would wreak upon him the
most terrible vengeance that she could think of. And he did not have a
very easy job. Florence called for more and more attentions from him as
the time went on. She would make him kiss her at any moment of the day;
and it was only by his making it plain that a divorced lady could never
assume a position in the county of Hampshire that he could prevent her
from making a bolt of it with him in her train. Oh, yes, it was a
difficult job for him.
For Florence, if you please, gaining in time a more composed view of
nature, and overcome by her habits of garrulity, arrived at a frame of
mind in which she found it almost necessary to tell me all about
it—nothing less than that. She said that her situation was too
unbearable with regard to me.
She proposed to tell me all, secure a divorce from me, and go with
Edward and settle in California.... I do not suppose that she was really
serious in this. It would have meant the extinction of all hopes of
Branshaw Manor for her. Besides she had got it into her head that
Leonora, who was as sound as a roach, was consumptive. She was always
begging Leonora, before me, to go and see a doctor. But, none the less,
poor Edward seems to have believed in her determination to carry him
off. He would not have gone; he cared for his wife too much. But, if
Florence had put him at it, that would have meant my getting to know of
it, and his incurring Leonora's vengeance. And she could have made it
pretty hot for him in ten or a dozen different ways. And she assured me
that she would have used every one of them. She was determined to spare
my feelings. And she was quite aware that, at that date, the hottest she
could have made it for him would have been to refuse, herself, ever to
see him again....
Well, I think I have made it pretty clear. Let me come to the 4th of
August, 1913, the last day of my absolute ignorance—and, I assure you,
of my perfect happiness. For the coming of that dear girl only added to
it all.
On that 4th of August I was sitting in the lounge with a rather odious
Englishman called Bagshawe, who had arrived that night, too late for
dinner. Leonora had just gone to bed and I was waiting for Florence and
Edward and the girl to come back from a concert at the Casino. They had
not gone there all together. Florence, I remember, had said at first
that she would remain with Leonora, and me, and Edward and the girl had
gone off alone. And then Leonora had said to Florence with perfect
calmness:
"I wish you would go with those two. I think the girl ought to have the
appearance of being chaperoned with Edward in these places. I think the
time has come." So Florence, with her light step, had slipped out after
them. She was all in black for some cousin or other. Americans are
particular in those matters.
We had gone on sitting in the lounge till towards ten, when Leonora had
gone up to bed. It had been a very hot day, but there it was cool. The
man called Bagshawe had been reading The Times on the other side of the
room, but then he moved over to me with some trifling question as a
prelude to suggesting an acquaintance. I fancy he asked me something
about the poll-tax on Kur-guests, and whether it could not be sneaked
out of. He was that sort of person.
Well, he was an unmistakable man, with a military figure, rather
exaggerated, with bulbous eyes that avoided your own, and a pallid
complexion that suggested vices practised in secret along with an uneasy
desire for making acquaintance at whatever cost.... The filthy toad... .
He began by telling me that he came from Ludlow Manor, near Ledbury. The
name had a slightly familiar sound, though I could not fix it in my
mind. Then he began to talk about a duty on hops, about Californian
hops, about Los Angeles, where he had been. He fencing for a topic with
which he might gain my affection.
And then, quite suddenly, in the bright light of the street, I saw
Florence running. It was like that—I saw Florence running with a face
whiter than paper and her hand on the black stuff over her heart. I tell
you, my own heart stood still; I tell you I could not move. She rushed
in at the swing doors. She looked round that place of rush chairs, cane
tables and newspapers. She saw me and opened her lips. She saw the man
who was talking to me. She stuck her hands over her face as if she
wished to push her eyes out. And she was not there any more.
I could not move; I could not stir a finger. And then that man said:
"By Jove: Florry Hurlbird." He turned upon me with an oily and uneasy
sound meant for a laugh. He was really going to ingratiate himself with
me.
"Do you know who that is?" he asked. "The last time I saw that girl she
was coming out of the bedroom of a young man called Jimmy at five
o'clock in the morning. In my house at Ledbury. You saw her recognize
me." He was standing on his feet, looking down at me. I don't know what
I looked like. At any rate, he gave a sort of gurgle and then stuttered:
"Oh, I say...." Those were the last words I ever heard of Mr Bagshawe's.
A long time afterwards I pulled myself out of the lounge and went up to
Florence's room. She had not locked the door—for the first time of our
married life. She was lying, quite respectably arranged, unlike Mrs
Maidan, on her bed. She had a little phial that rightly should have
contained nitrate of amyl, in her right hand. That was on the 4th of
August, 1913.