she saw now and then, said that Edward was much too generous to his
tenants; the wives of his brother officers remonstrated with her in
private; his large subscriptions made it difficult for their husbands to
keep up with them. Ironically enough, the first real trouble between
them came from his desire to build a Roman Catholic chapel at Branshaw.
He wanted to do it to honour Leonora, and he proposed to do it very
expensively. Leonora did not want it; she could perfectly well drive
from Branshaw to the nearest Catholic Church as often as she liked.
There were no Roman Catholic tenants and no Roman Catholic servants
except her old nurse who could always drive with her. She had as many
priests to stay with her as could be needed—and even the priests did not
want a gorgeous chapel in that place where it would have merely seemed
an invidious instance of ostentation. They were perfectly ready to
celebrate Mass for Leonora and her nurse, when they stayed at Branshaw,
in a cleaned-up outhouse. But Edward was as obstinate as a hog about it.
He was truly grieved at his wife's want of sentiment—at her refusal to
receive that amount of public homage from him. She appeared to him to be
wanting in imagination—to be cold and hard. I don't exactly know what
part her priests played in the tragedy that it all became; I dare say
they behaved quite creditably but mistakenly. But then, who would not
have been mistaken with Edward? I believe he was even hurt that
Leonora's confessor did not make strenuous efforts to convert him. There
was a period when he was quite ready to become an emotional Catholic.
I don't know why they did not take him on the hop; but they have queer
sorts of wisdoms, those people, and queer sorts of tact. Perhaps they
thought that Edward's too early conversion would frighten off other
Protestant desirables from marrying Catholic girls. Perhaps they saw
deeper into Edward than he saw himself and thought that he would make a
not very creditable convert. At any rate they—and Leonora—left him very
much alone. It mortified him very considerably. He has told me that if
Leonora had then taken his aspirations seriously everything would have
been different. But I dare say that was nonsense.
At any rate, it was over the question of the chapel that they had their
first and really disastrous quarrel. Edward at that time was not well;
he supposed himself to be overworked with his regimental affairs—he was
managing the mess at the time. And Leonora was not well—she was
beginning to fear that their union might be sterile. And then her father
came over from Glasmoyle to stay with them.
Those were troublesome times in Ireland, I understand. At any rate,
Colonel Powys had tenants on the brain—his own tenants having shot at
him with shot-guns. And, in conversation with Edward's land-steward, he
got it into his head that Edward managed his estates with a mad
generosity towards his tenants. I understand, also, that those years—the
'nineties—were very bad for farming. Wheat was fetching only a few
shillings the hundred; the price of meat was so low that cattle hardly
paid for raising; whole English counties were ruined. And Edward allowed
his tenants very high rebates.
To do both justice Leonora has since acknowledged that she was in the
wrong at that time and that Edward was following out a more far-seeing
policy in nursing his really very good tenants over a bad period. It was
not as if the whole of his money came from the land; a good deal of it
was in rails. But old Colonel Powys had that bee in his bonnet and, if
he never directly approached Edward himself on the subject, he preached
unceasingly, whenever he had the opportunity, to Leonora. His pet idea
was that Edward ought to sack all his own tenants and import a set of
farmers from Scotland. That was what they were doing in Essex. He was of
opinion that Edward was riding hotfoot to ruin.
That worried Leonora very much—it worried her dreadfully; she lay awake
nights; she had an anxious line round her mouth. And that, again,
worried Edward. I do not mean to say that Leonora actually spoke to
Edward about his tenants—but he got to know that some one, probably her
father, had been talking to her about the matter. He got to know it
because it was the habit of his steward to look in on them every morning
about breakfast-time to report any little happenings. And there was a
farmer called Mumford who had only paid half his rent for the last three
years. One morning the land-steward reported that Mumford would be
unable to pay his rent at all that year. Edward reflected for a moment
and then he said something like:
"Oh well, he's an old fellow and his family have been our tenants for
over two hundred years. Let him off altogether."
And then Leonora—you must remember that she had reason for being very
nervous and unhappy at that time—let out a sound that was very like a
groan. It startled Edward, who more than suspected what was passing in
her mind—it startled him into a state of anger. He said sharply:
"You wouldn't have me turn out people who've been earning money for us
for centuries—people to whom we have responsibilities—and let in a pack
of Scotch farmers?"
He looked at her, Leonora said, with what was practically a glance of
hatred and then, precipitately, he left the breakfast-table. Leonora
knew that it probably made it all the worse that he had been betrayed
into a manifestation of anger before a third party. It was the first and
last time that he ever was betrayed into such a manifestation of anger.
The land-steward, a moderate and well-balanced man whose family also had
been with the Ashburnhams for over a century, took it upon himself to
explain that he considered Edward was pursuing a perfectly proper course
with his tenants. He erred perhaps a little on the side of generosity,
but hard times were hard times, and every one had to feel the pinch,
landlord as well as tenants. The great thing was not to let the land get
into a poor state of cultivation. Scotch farmers just skinned your
fields and let them go down and down. But Edward had a very good set of
tenants who did their best for him and for themselves. These arguments
at that time carried very little conviction to Leonora. She was,
nevertheless, much concerned by Edward's outburst of anger. The fact is
that Leonora had been practising economies in her department. Two of the
under-housemaids had gone and she had not replaced them; she had spent
much less that year upon dress. The fare she had provided at the dinners
they gave had been much less bountiful and not nearly so costly as had
been the case in preceding years, and Edward began to perceive a
hardness and determination in his wife's character. He seemed to see a
net closing round him—a net in which they would be forced to live like
one of the comparatively poor county families of the neighbourhood. And,
in the mysterious way in which two people, living together, get to know
each other's thoughts without a word spoken, he had known, even before
his outbreak, that Leonora was worrying about his managing of the
estates. This appeared to him to be intolerable. He had, too, a great
feeling of self-contempt because he had been betrayed into speaking
harshly to Leonora before that land-steward. She imagined that his nerve
must be deserting him, and there can have been few men more miserable
than Edward was at that period.
You see, he was really a very simple soul—very simple. He imagined that
no man can satisfactorily accomplish his life's work without loyal and
whole-hearted cooperation of the woman he lives with. And he was
beginning to perceive dimly that, whereas his own traditions were
entirely collective, his wife was a sheer individualist. His own
theory—the feudal theory of an over-lord doing his best by his
dependents, the dependents meanwhile doing their best for the over-
lord—this theory was entirely foreign to Leonora's nature. She came of a
family of small Irish landlords—that hostile garrison in a plundered
country. And she was thinking unceasingly of the children she wished to
have.
I don't know why they never had any children—not that I really believe
that children would have made any difference. The dissimilarity of
Edward and Leonora was too profound. It will give you some idea of the
extraordinary naïveté of Edward Ashburnham that, at the time of his
marriage and for perhaps a couple of years after, he did not really know
how children are produced. Neither did Leonora. I don't mean to say that
this state of things continued, but there it was. I dare say it had a
good deal of influence on their mentalities. At any rate, they never had
a child. It was the Will of God.
It certainly presented itself to Leonora as being the Will of God—as
being a mysterious and awful chastisement of the Almighty. For she had
discovered shortly before this period that her parents had not exacted
from Edward's family the promise that any children she should bear
should be brought up as Catholics. She herself had never talked of the
matter with either her father, her mother, or her husband. When at last
her father had let drop some words leading her to believe that that was
the fact, she tried desperately to extort the promise from Edward. She
encountered an unexpected obstinacy. Edward was perfectly willing that
the girls should be Catholic; the boys must be Anglican. I don't
understand the bearing of these things in English society. Indeed,
Englishmen seem to me to be a little mad in matters of politics or of
religion. In Edward it was particularly queer because he himself was
perfectly ready to become a Romanist. He seemed, however, to contemplate
going over to Rome himself and yet letting his boys be educated in the
religion of their immediate ancestors. This may appear illogical, but I
dare say it is not so illogical as it looks. Edward, that is to say,
regarded himself as having his own body and soul at his own disposal.
But his loyalty to the traditions of his family would not permit him to
bind any future inheritors of his name or beneficiaries by the death of
his ancestors. About the girls it did not so much matter. They would
know other homes and other circumstances. Besides, it was the usual
thing. But the boys must be given the opportunity of choosing—and they
must have first of all the Anglican teaching. He was perfectly
unshakable about this.
Leonora was in an agony during all this time. You will have to remember
she seriously believed that children who might be born to her went in
danger, if not absolutely of damnation, at any rate of receiving false
doctrine. It was an agony more terrible than she could describe. She
didn't indeed attempt to describe it, but I could tell from her voice
when she said, almost negligently, "I used to lie awake whole nights. It
was no good my spiritual advisers trying to console me." I knew from her
voice how terrible and how long those nights must have seemed and of how
little avail were the consolations of her spiritual advisers. Her
spiritual advisers seemed to have taken the matter a little more calmly.
They certainly told her that she must not consider herself in any way to
have sinned. Nay, they seem even to have extorted, to have threatened
her, with a view to getting her out of what they considered to be a
morbid frame of mind. She would just have to make the best of things, to
influence the children when they came, not by propaganda, but by
personality. And they warned her that she would be committing a sin if
she continued to think that she had sinned. Nevertheless, she continued
to think that she had sinned.
Leonora could not be aware that the man whom she loved passionately and
whom, nevertheless, she was beginning to try to rule with a rod of
iron—that this man was becoming more and more estranged from her. He
seemed to regard her as being not only physically and mentally cold, but
even as being actually wicked and mean. There were times when he would
almost shudder if she spoke to him. And she could not understand how he
could consider her wicked or mean. It only seemed to her a sort of
madness in him that he should try to take upon his own shoulders the
burden of his troop, of his regiment, of his estate and of half of his
country. She could not see that in trying to curb what she regarded as
megalomania she was doing anything wicked. She was just trying to keep
things together for the sake of the children who did not come. And,
little by little, the whole of their intercourse became simply one of
agonized discussion as to whether Edward should subscribe to this or
that institution or should try to reclaim this or that drunkard. She
simply could not see it.
Into this really terrible position of strain, from which there appeared
to be no issue, the Kilsyte case came almost as a relief. It is part of
the peculiar irony of things that Edward would certainly never have
kissed that nurse-maid if he had not been trying to please Leonora.
Nurse-maids do not travel first-class, and, that day, Edward travelled
in a third-class carriage in order to prove to Leonora that he was
capable of economies. I have said that the Kilsyte case came almost as a
relief to the strained situation that then existed between them. It gave
Leonora an opportunity of backing him up in a whole-hearted and
absolutely loyal manner. It gave her the opportunity of behaving to him
as he considered a wife should behave to her husband.
You see, Edward found himself in a railway carriage with a quite pretty
girl of about nineteen. And the quite pretty girl of about nineteen,
with dark hair and red cheeks and blue eyes, was quietly weeping. Edward
had been sitting in his corner thinking about nothing at all. He had
chanced to look at the nurse-maid; two large, pretty tears came out of
her eyes and dropped into her lap. He immediately felt that he had got
to do something to comfort her. That was his job in life. He was
desperately unhappy himself and it seemed to him the most natural thing
in the world that they should pool their sorrows. He was quite
democratic; the idea of the difference in their station never seems to
have occurred to him. He began to talk to her. He discovered that her
young man had been seen walking out with Annie of Number 54. He moved
over to her side of the carriage. He told her that the report probably
wasn't true; that, after all, a young man might take a walk with Annie
from Number 54 without its denoting anything very serious. And he
assured me that he felt at least quite half-fatherly when he put his arm
around her waist and kissed her. The girl, however, had not forgotten
the difference of her station.
All her life, by her mother, by other girls, by schoolteachers, by the
whole tradition of her class she had been warned against gentlemen. She
was being kissed by a gentleman. She screamed, tore herself away; sprang
up and pulled a communication cord.
Edward came fairly well out of the affair in the public estimation; but
it did him, mentally, a good deal of harm.
IV
IT is very difficult to give an all-round impression of a man. I wonder
how far I have succeeded with Edward Ashburnham. I dare say I haven't
succeeded at all. It is ever very difficult to see how such things
matter. Was it the important point about poor Edward that he was very
well built, carried himself well, was moderate at the table and led a
regular life—that he had, in fact, all the virtues that are usually
accounted English? Or have I in the least succeeded in conveying that he
was all those things and had all those virtues? He certainly was them
and had them up to the last months of his life. They were the things
that one would set upon his tombstone. They will, indeed, be set upon
his tombstone by his widow.
And have I, I wonder, given the due impression of how his life was
portioned and his time laid out? Because, until the very last, the
amount of time taken up by his various passions was relatively small. I
have been forced to write very much about his passions, but you have to
consider—I should like to be able to make you consider—that he rose
every morning at seven, took a cold bath, breakfasted at eight, was
occupied with his regiment from nine until one; played polo or cricket
with the men when it was the season for cricket, till tea-time.
Afterwards he would occupy himself with the letters from his land-
steward or with the affairs of his mess, till dinner-time. He would dine
and pass the evening playing cards, or playing billiards with Leonora or
at social functions of one kind or another. And the greater part of his
life was taken up by that—by far the greater part of his life. His love-
affairs, until the very end, were sandwiched in at odd moments or took
place during the social evenings, the dances and dinners. But I guess I
have made it hard for you, O silent listener, to get that impression.
Anyhow, I hope I have not given you the idea that Edward Ashburnham was
a pathological case. He wasn't. He was just a normal man and very much
of a sentimentalist. I dare say the quality of his youth, the nature of
his mother's influence, his ignorances, the crammings that he received
at the hands of army coaches—I dare say that all these excellent
influences upon his adolescence were very bad for him. But we all have
to put up with that sort of thing and no doubt it is very bad for all of
us. Nevertheless, the outline of Edward's life was an outline perfectly
normal of the life of a hard-working, sentimental and efficient
professional man.
That question of first impressions has always bothered me a good
deal—but quite academically. I mean that, from time to time I have
wondered whether it were or were not best to trust to one's first
impressions in dealing with people. But I never had anybody to deal with
except waiters and chambermaids and the Ashburnhams, with whom I didn't
know that I was having any dealings. And, as far as waiters and
chambermaids were concerned, I have generally found that my first
impressions were correct enough. If my first idea of a man was that he
was civil, obliging, and attentive, he generally seemed to go on being
all those things. Once, however, at our Paris flat we had a maid who
appeared to be charming and transparently honest. She stole,
nevertheless, one of Florence's diamond rings. She did it, however, to
save her young man from going to prison. So here, as somebody says
somewhere, was a special case.
And, even in my short incursion into American business life—an incursion
that lasted during part of August and nearly the whole of September—I
found that to rely upon first impressions was the best thing I could do.
I found myself automatically docketing and labelling each man as he was
introduced to me, by the run of his features and by the first words that
he spoke. I can't, however, be regarded as really doing business during
the time that I spent in the United States. I was just winding things
up. If it hadn't been for my idea of marrying the girl I might possibly
have looked for something to do in my own country. For my experiences
there were vivid and amusing. It was exactly as if I had come out of a
museum into a riotous fancy-dress ball. During my life with Florence I
had almost come to forget that there were such things as fashions or
occupations or the greed of gain. I had, in fact, forgotten that there
was such a thing as a dollar and that a dollar can be extremely
desirable if you don't happen to possess one. And I had forgotten, too,
that there was such a thing as gossip that mattered. In that particular,
Philadelphia was the most amazing place I have ever been in in my life.
I was not in that city for more than a week or ten days and I didn't
there transact anything much in the way of business; nevertheless, the
number of times that I was warned by everybody against everybody else
was simply amazing. A man I didn't know would come up behind my lounge
chair in the hotel, and, whispering cautiously beside my ear, would warn
me against some other man that I equally didn't know but who would be
standing by the bar. I don't know what they thought I was there to
do—perhaps to buy out the city's debt or get a controlling hold of some
railway interest. Or, perhaps, they imagined that I wanted to buy a
newspaper, for they were either politicians or reporters, which, of
course, comes to the same thing. As a matter of fact, my property in
Philadelphia was mostly real estate in the old-fashioned part of the
city and all I wanted to do there was just to satisfy myself that the
houses were in good repair and the doors kept properly painted. I wanted
also to see my relations, of whom I had a few. These were mostly
professional people and they were mostly rather hard up because of the
big bank failure in 1907 or thereabouts. Still, they were very nice.
They would have been nicer still if they hadn't, all of them, had what
appeared to me to be the mania that what they called influences were
working against them. At any rate, the impression of that city was one
of old-fashioned rooms, rather English than American in type, in which
handsome but careworn ladies, cousins of my own, talked principally
about mysterious movements that were going on against them. I never got
to know what it was all about; perhaps they thought I knew or perhaps
there weren't any movements at all. It was all very secret and subtle
and subterranean. But there was a nice young fellow called Carter who
was a sort of second-nephew of mine, twice removed. He was handsome and
dark and gentle and tall and modest. I understand also that he was a
good cricketer. He was employed by the real-estate agents who collected
my rents. It was he, therefore, who took me over my own property and I
saw a good deal of him and of a nice girl called Mary, to whom he was
engaged. At that time I did, what I certainly shouldn't do now—I made
some careful inquiries as to his character. I discovered from his
employers that he was just all that he appeared, honest, industrious,
high-spirited, friendly and ready to do anyone a good turn. His
relatives, however, as they were mine, too—seemed to have something
darkly mysterious against him. I imagined that he must have been mixed
up in some case of graft or that he had at least betrayed several
innocent and trusting maidens. I pushed, however, that particular
mystery home and discovered it was only that he was a Democrat. My own
people were mostly Republicans. It seemed to make it worse and more
darkly mysterious to them that young Carter was what they called a sort
of a Vermont Democrat which was the whole ticket and no mistake. But I
don't know what it means. Anyhow, I suppose that my money will go to him
when I die—I like the recollection of his friendly image and of the nice
girl he was engaged to. May Fate deal very kindly with them.
I have said just now that, in my present frame of mind, nothing would
ever make me make inquiries as to the character of any man that I liked
at first sight. (The little digression as to my Philadelphia experiences
was really meant to lead around to this.) For who in this world can give
anyone a character? Who in this world knows anything of any other
heart—or of his own? I don't mean to say that one cannot form an average
estimate of the way a person will behave. But one cannot be certain of
the way any man will behave in every case—and until one can do that a
"character" is of no use to anyone. That, for instance, was the way with
Florence's maid in Paris. We used to trust that girl with blank cheques
for the payment of the tradesmen. For quite a time she was so trusted by
us. Then, suddenly, she stole a ring. We should not have believed her
capable of it; she would not have believed herself capable of it. It was
nothing in her character. So, perhaps, it was with Edward Ashburnham.
Or, perhaps, it wasn't. No, I rather think it wasn't. It is difficult to
figure out. I have said that the Kilsyte case eased the immediate
tension for him and Leonora. It let him see that she was capable of
loyalty to him; it gave her her chance to show that she believed in him.
She accepted without question his statement that, in kissing the girl,
he wasn't trying to do more than administer fatherly comfort to a
weeping child. And, indeed, his own world—including the magistrates—took
that view of the case. Whatever people say, one's world can be perfectly
charitable at times... But, again, as I have said, it did Edward a great
deal of harm.
That, at least, was his view of it. He assured me that, before that case
came on and was wrangled about by counsel with all sorts of dirty-
mindedness that counsel in that sort of case can impute, he had not had
the least idea that he was capable of being unfaithful to Leonora. But,
in the midst of that tumult—he says that it came suddenly into his head
whilst he was in the witness-box—in the midst of those august ceremonies
of the law there came suddenly into his mind the recollection of the
softness of the girl's body as he had pressed her to him. And, from that
moment, that girl appeared desirable to him—and Leonora completely
unattractive.
He began to indulge in day-dreams in which he approached the nurse-maid
more tactfully and carried the matter much further. Occasionally he
thought of other women in terms of wary courtship—or, perhaps, it would
be more exact to say that he thought of them in terms of tactful
comforting, ending in absorption. That was his own view of the case. He
saw himself as the victim of the law. I don't mean to say that he saw
himself as a kind of Dreyfus. The law, practically, was quite kind to
him. It stated that in its view Captain Ashburnham had been misled by an
ill-placed desire to comfort a member of the opposite sex, and it fined
him five shilling for his want of tact, or of knowledge of the world.
But Edward maintained that it had put ideas into his head.
I don't believe it, though he certainly did. He was twenty-seven then,
and his wife was out of sympathy with him—some crash was inevitable.
There was between them a momentary rapprochement; but it could not last.
It made it, probably, all the worse that, in that particular matter,
Leonora had come so very well up to the scratch. For, whilst Edward
respected her more and was grateful to her, it made her seem by so much
the more cold in other matters that were near his heart—his
responsibilities, his career, his tradition. It brought his despair of
her up to a point of exasperation—and it riveted on him the idea that he
might find some other woman who would give him the moral support that he
needed. He wanted to be looked upon as a sort of Lohengrin.
At that time, he says, he went about deliberately looking for some woman
who could help him. He found several—for there were quite a number of
ladies in his set who were capable of agreeing with this handsome and
fine fellow that the duties of a feudal gentleman were feudal. He would
have liked to pass his days talking to one or other of these ladies. But
there was always an obstacle—if the lady were married there would be a
husband who claimed the greater part of her time and attention. If, on
the other hand, it were an unmarried girl, he could not see very much of
her for fear of compromising her. At that date, you understand, he had
not the least idea of seducing any one of these ladies. He wanted only
moral support at the hands of some female, because he found men
difficult to talk to about ideals. Indeed, I do not believe that he had,
at any time, any idea of making any one his mistress. That sounds queer;
but I believe it is quite true as a statement of character.
It was, I believe, one of Leonora's priests—a man of the world—who
suggested that she should take him to Monte Carlo. He had the idea that
what Edward needed, in order to fit him for the society of Leonora, was
a touch of irresponsibility. For Edward, at that date, had much the
aspect of a prig. I mean that, if he played polo and was an excellent
dancer he did the one for the sake of keeping himself fit and the other
because it was a social duty to show himself at dances, and, when there,
to dance well. He did nothing for fun except what he considered to be
his work in life. As the priest saw it, this must for ever estrange him
from Leonora—not because Leonora set much store by the joy of life, but
because she was out of sympathy with Edward's work. On the other hand,
Leonora did like to have a good time, now and then, and, as the priest
saw it, if Edward could be got to like having a good time now and then,
too, there would be a bond of sympathy between them. It was a good idea,
but it worked out wrongly.
It worked out, in fact, in the mistress of the Grand Duke. In anyone
less sentimental than Edward that would not have mattered. With Edward
it was fatal. For, such was his honourable nature, that for him to enjoy
a woman's favours made him feel that she had a bond on him for life.
That was the way it worked out in practice. Psychologically it meant
that he could not have a mistress without falling violently in love with
her. He was a serious person—and in this particular case it was very
expensive. The mistress of the Grand Duke—a Spanish dancer of passionate
appearance—singled out Edward for her glances at a ball that was held in
their common hotel. Edward was tall, handsome, blond and very wealthy as
she understood—and Leonora went up to bed early. She did not care for
public dances, but she was relieved to see that Edward appeared to be
having a good time with several amiable girls. And that was the end of
Edward—for the Spanish dancer of passionate appearance wanted one night
of him for his beaux yeux. He took her into the dark gardens and,
remembering suddenly the girl of the Kilsyte case, he kissed her. He
kissed her passionately, violently, with a sudden explosion of the
passion that had been bridled all his life—for Leonora was cold, or at
any rate, well behaved. La Dolciquita liked this reversion, and he
passed the night in her bed.
When the palpitating creature was at last asleep in his arms he
discovered that he was madly, was passionately, was overwhelmingly in
love with her. It was a passion that had arisen like fire in dry corn.
He could think of nothing else; he could live for nothing else. But La
Dolciquita was a reasonable creature without an ounce of passion in her.
She wanted a certain satisfaction of her appetites and Edward had
appealed to her the night before. Now that was done with, and, quite
coldly, she said that she wanted money if he was to have any more of
her. It was a perfectly reasonable commercial transaction. She did not
care two buttons for Edward or for any man and he was asking her to risk
a very good situation with the Grand Duke. If Edward could put up
sufficient money to serve as a kind of insurance against accident she
was ready to like Edward for a time that would be covered, as it were,
by the policy. She was getting fifty thousand dollars a year from her
Grand Duke; Edward would have to pay a premium of two years' hire for a
month of her society. There would not be much risk of the Grand Duke's
finding it out and it was not certain that he would give her the keys of
the street if he did find out. But there was the risk—a twenty per cent
risk, as she figured it out. She talked to Edward as if she had been a
solicitor with an estate to sell—perfectly quietly and perfectly coldly
without any inflections in her voice. She did not want to be unkind to
him; but she could see no reason for being kind to him. She was a
virtuous business woman with a mother and two sisters and her own old
age to be provided comfortably for. She did not expect more than a five
years' further run. She was twenty-four and, as she said: "We Spanish
women are horrors at thirty." Edward swore that he would provide for her
for life if she would come to him and leave off talking so horribly; but
she only shrugged one shoulder slowly and contemptuously. He tried to
convince this woman, who, as he saw it, had surrendered to him her
virtue, that he regarded it as in any case his duty to provide for her,
and to cherish her and even to love her—for life. In return for her
sacrifice he would do that. In return, again, for his honourable love
she would listen for ever to the accounts of his estate. That was how he
figured it out.
She shrugged the same shoulder with the same gesture and held out her
left hand with the elbow at her side:
"Enfin, mon ami," she said, "put in this hand the price of that tiara at
Forli's or..." And she turned her back on him.
Edward went mad; his world stood on its head; the palms in front of the
blue sea danced grotesque dances. You see, he believed in the virtue,
tenderness and moral support of women. He wanted more than anything to
argue with La Dolciquita; to retire with her to an island and point out
to her the damnation of her point of view and how salvation can only be
found in true love and the feudal system. She had once been his
mistress, he reflected, and by all the moral laws she ought to have gone
on being his mistress or at the very least his sympathetic confidante.
But her rooms were closed to him; she did not appear in the hotel.
Nothing: blank silence. To break that down he had to have twenty
thousand pounds. You have heard what happened.
He spent a week of madness; he hungered; his eyes sank in; he shuddered
at Leonora's touch. I dare say that nine-tenths of what he took to be
his passion for La Dolciquita was really discomfort at the thought that
he had been unfaithful to Leonora. He felt uncommonly bad, that is to
say—oh, unbearably bad, and he took it all to be love. Poor devil, he
was incredibly naïve. He drank like a fish after Leonora was in bed and
he spread himself over the tables, and this went on for about a
fortnight. Heaven knows what would have happened; he would have thrown
away every penny that he possessed.
On the night after he had lost about forty thousand pounds and whilst
the whole hotel was whispering about it, La Dolciquita walked composedly
into his bedroom. He was too drunk to recognize her, and she sat in his
arm-chair, knitting and holding smelling salts to her nose—for he was
pretty far gone with alcoholic poisoning—and, as soon as he was able to
understand her, she said:
"Look here, mon ami, do not go to the tables again. Take a good sleep
now and come and see me this afternoon."
He slept till the lunch-hour. By that time Leonora had heard the news. A
Mrs Colonel Whelan had told her. Mrs Colonel Whelan seems to have been
the only sensible person who was ever connected with the Ashburnhams.
She had argued it out that there must be a woman of the harpy variety
connected with Edward's incredible behaviour and mien; and she advised
Leonora to go straight off to Town—which might have the effect of
bringing Edward to his senses—and to consult her solicitor and her
spiritual adviser. She had better go that very morning; it was no good
arguing with a man in Edward's condition.
Edward, indeed, did not know that she had gone. As soon as he awoke he
went straight to La Dolciquita's room and she stood him his lunch in her
own apartments. He fell on her neck and wept, and she put up with it for
a time. She was quite a good-natured woman. And, when she had calmed him
down with Eau de Mélisse, she said:
"Look here, my friend, how much money have you left? Five thousand
dollars? Ten?" For the rumour went that Edward had lost two kings'
ransoms a night for fourteen nights and she imagined that he must be
near the end of his resources.
The Eau de Mélisse had calmed Edward to such an extent that, for the
moment, he really had a head on his shoulders. He did nothing more than
grunt:
"And then?"
"Why," she answered, "I may just as well have the ten thousand dollars
as the tables. I will go with you to Antibes for a week for that sum."
Edward grunted: "Five." She tried to get seven thousand five hundred;
but he stuck to his five thousand and the hotel expenses at Antibes. The
sedative carried him just as far as that and then he collapsed again. He
had to leave for Antibes at three; he could not do without it. He left a
note for Leonora saying that he had gone off for a week with the Clinton
Morleys, yachting.
He did not enjoy himself very much at Antibes. La Dolciquita could talk
of nothing with any enthusiasm except money, and she tired him
unceasingly, during every waking hour, for presents of the most
expensive description. And, at the end of a week, she just quietly
kicked him out. He hung about in Antibes for three days. He was cured of
the idea that he had any duties towards La Dolciquita—feudal or
otherwise. But his sentimentalism required of him an attitude of Byronic
gloom—as if his court had gone into half-mourning. Then his appetite
suddenly returned, and he remembered Leonora. He found at his hotel at
Monte Carlo a telegram from Leonora, dispatched from London, saying;
"Please return as soon as convenient." He could not understand why
Leonora should have abandoned him so precipitately when she only thought
that he had gone yachting with the Clinton Morleys. Then he discovered
that she had left the hotel before he had written the note. He had a
pretty rocky journey back to town; he was frightened out of his life—and
Leonora had never seemed so desirable to him.
V
I CALL this the Saddest Story, rather than "The Ashburnham Tragedy",
just because it is so sad, just because there was no current to draw
things along to a swift and inevitable end. There is about it none of
the elevation that accompanies tragedy; there is about it no nemesis, no
destiny. Here were two noble people—for I am convinced that both Edward
and Leonora had noble natures—here, then, were two noble natures,
drifting down life, like fireships afloat on a lagoon and causing
miseries, heart-aches, agony of the mind and death. And they themselves
steadily deteriorated. And why? For what purpose? To point what lesson?
It is all a darkness.
There is not even any villain in the story—for even Major Basil, the
husband of the lady who next, and really, comforted the unfortunate
Edward—even Major Basil was not a villain in this piece. He was a slack,
loose, shiftless sort of fellow—but he did not do anything to Edward.
Whilst they were in the same station in Burma he borrowed a good deal of
money—though, really, since Major Basil had no particular vices, it was
difficult to know why he wanted it. He collected—different types of
horses' bits from the earliest times to the present day—but, since he
did not prosecute even this occupation with any vigour, he cannot have
needed much money for the acquirement, say, of the bit of Genghis Khan's
charger—if Genghis Khan had a charger. And when I say that he borrowed a
good deal of money from Edward I do not mean to say that he had more
than a thousand pounds from him during the five years that the
connection lasted. Edward, of course, did not have a great deal of
money; Leonora was seeing to that. Still, he may have had five hundred
pounds a year English, for his menus plaisirs—for his regimental
subscriptions and for keeping his men smart. Leonora hated that; she
would have preferred to buy dresses for herself or to have devoted the
money to paying off a mortgage. Still, with her sense of justice, she
saw that, since she was managing a property bringing in three thousand a
year with a view to re-establishing it as a property of five thousand a
year and since the property really, if not legally, belonged to Edward,
it was reasonable and just that Edward should get a slice of his own. Of
course she had the devil of a job.
I don't know that I have got the financial details exactly right. I am a
pretty good head at figures, but my mind, still, sometimes mixes up
pounds with dollars and I get a figure wrong. Anyhow, the proposition
was something like this: Properly worked and without rebates to the
tenants and keeping up schools and things, the Branshaw estate should
have brought in about five thousand a year when Edward had it. It
brought in actually about four. (I am talking in pounds, not dollars.)
Edward's excesses with the Spanish Lady had reduced its value to about
three—as the maximum figure, without reductions. Leonora wanted to get
it back to five.
She was, of course, very young to be faced with such a
proposition—twenty-four is not a very advanced age. So she did things
with a youthful vigour that she would, very likely, have made more
merciful, if she had known more about life. She got Edward remarkably on
the hop. He had to face her in a London hotel, when he crept back from
Monte Carlo with his poor tail between his poor legs. As far as I can
make out she cut short his first mumblings and his first attempts at
affectionate speech with words something like:
"We're on the verge of ruin. Do you intend to let me pull things
together? If not I shall retire to Hendon on my jointure." (Hendon
represented a convent to which she occasionally went for what is called
a "retreat" in Catholic circles.)
And poor dear Edward knew nothing—absolutely nothing. He did not know
how much money he had, as he put it, "blued" at the tables. It might
have been a quarter of a million for all he remembered. He did not know
whether she knew about La Dolciquita or whether she imagined that he had
gone off yachting or had stayed at Monte Carlo. He was just dumb and he
just wanted to get into a hole and not have to talk. Leonora did not
make him talk and she said nothing herself.
I do not know much about English legal procedure—I cannot, I mean, give
technical details of how they tied him up. But I know that, two days
later, without her having said more than I have reported to you, Leonora
and her attorney had become the trustees, as I believe it is called, of
all Edward's property, and there was an end of Edward as the good
landlord and father of his people. He went out.
Leonora then had three thousand a year at her disposal. She occupied
Edward with getting himself transferred to a part of his regiment that
was in Burma—if that is the right way to put it. She herself had an
interview, lasting a week or so—with Edward's land-steward. She made him
understand that the estate would have to yield up to its last penny.
Before they left for India she had let Branshaw for seven years at a
thousand a year. She sold two Vandykes and a little silver for eleven
thousand pounds and she raised, on mortgage, twenty-nine thousand. That
went to Edward's money-lending friends in Monte Carlo. So she had to get
the twenty-nine thousand back, for she did not regard the Vandykes and
the silver as things she would have to replace. They were just frills to
the Ashburnham vanity. Edward cried for two days over the disappearance
of his ancestors and then she wished she had not done it; but it did not
teach her anything and it lessened such esteem as she had for him. She
did not also understand that to let Branshaw affected him with a feeling
of physical soiling—that it was almost as bad for him as if a woman
belonging to him had become a prostitute. That was how it did affect
him; but I dare say she felt just as bad about the Spanish dancer.
So she went at it. They were eight years in India, and during the whole
of that time she insisted that they must be self-supporting—they had to
live on his Captain's pay, plus the extra allowance for being at the
front. She gave him the five hundred a year for Ashburnham frills, as
she called it to herself—and she considered she was doing him very well.
Indeed, in a way, she did him very well—but it was not his way. She was
always buying him expensive things which, as it were, she took off her
own back. I have, for instance, spoken of Edward's leather cases. Well,
they were not Edward's at all; they were Leonora's manifestations. He
liked to be clean, but he preferred, as it were, to be threadbare. She
never understood that, and all that pigskin was her idea of a reward to
him for putting her up to a little speculation by which she made eleven
hundred pounds. She did, herself, the threadbare business. When they
went up to a place called Simla, where, as I understand, it is cool in
the summer and very social—when they went up to Simla for their healths
it was she who had him prancing around, as we should say in the United
States, on a thousand-dollar horse with the gladdest of glad rags all
over him. She herself used to go into "retreat". I believe that was very
good for her health and it was also very inexpensive.
It was probably also very good for Edward's health, because he pranced
about mostly with Mrs Basil, who was a nice woman and very, very kind to
him. I suppose she was his mistress, but I never heard it from Edward,
of course. I seem to gather that they carried it on in a high romantic
fashion, very proper to both of them—or, at any rate, for Edward; she
seems to have been a tender and gentle soul who did what he wanted. I do
not mean to say that she was without character; that was her job, to do
what Edward wanted. So I figured it out, that for those five years,
Edward wanted long passages of deep affection kept up in long, long
talks and that every now and then they "fell," which would give Edward
an opportunity for remorse and an excuse to lend the Major another
fifty. I don't think that Mrs Basil considered it to be "falling"; she
just pitied him and loved him.
You see, Leonora and Edward had to talk about something during all these
years. You cannot be absolutely dumb when you live with a person unless
you are an inhabitant of the North of England or the State of Maine. So
Leonora imagined the cheerful device of letting him see the accounts of
his estate and discussing them with him. He did not discuss them much;
he was trying to behave prettily. But it was old Mr Mumford—the farmer
who did not pay his rent—that threw Edward into Mrs Basil's arms. Mrs
Basil came upon Edward in the dusk, in the Burmese garden, with all
sorts of flowers and things. And he was cutting up that crop—with his
sword, not a walking-stick. He was also carrying on and cursing in a way
you would not believe.
She ascertained that an old gentleman called Mumford had been ejected
from his farm and had been given a little cottage rent-free, where he
lived on ten shillings a week from a farmers' benevolent society,
supplemented by seven that was being allowed him by the Ashburnham
trustees. Edward had just discovered that fact from the estate accounts.
Leonora had left them in his dressing-room and he had begun to read them
before taking off his marching-kit. That was how he came to have a
sword. Leonora considered that she had been unusually generous to old Mr
Mumford in allowing him to inhabit a cottage, rent-free, and in giving
him seven shillings a week. Anyhow, Mrs Basil had never seen a man in
such a state as Edward was. She had been passionately in love with him
for quite a time, and he had been longing for her sympathy and
admiration with a passion as deep. That was how they came to speak about
it, in the Burmese garden, under the pale sky, with sheaves of severed
vegetation, misty and odorous, in the night around their feet. I think
they behaved themselves with decorum for quite a time after that, though
Mrs Basil spent so many hours over the accounts of the Ashburnham estate
that she got the name of every field by heart. Edward had a huge map of
his lands in his harness-room and Major Basil did not seem to mind. I
believe that people do not mind much in lonely stations.
It might have lasted for ever if the Major had not been made what is
called a brevet-colonel during the shuffling of troops that went on just
before the South African War. He was sent off somewhere else and, of
course, Mrs Basil could not stay with Edward. Edward ought, I suppose,
to have gone to the Transvaal. It would have done him a great deal of
good to get killed. But Leonora would not let him; she had heard awful
stories of the extravagance of the hussar regiment in war-time—how they
left hundred-bottle cases of champagne, at five guineas a bottle, on the
veldt and so on. Besides, she preferred to see how Edward was spending
his five hundred a year. I don't mean to say that Edward had any
grievance in that. He was never a man of the deeds of heroism sort and
it was just as good for him to be sniped at up in the hills of the North
Western frontier, as to be shot at by an old gentleman in a tophat at
the bottom of some spruit. Those are more or less his words about it. I
believe he quite distinguished himself over there. At any rate, he had
had his D.S.O. and was made a brevet-major.
Leonora, however, was not in the least keen on his soldiering. She hated
also his deeds of heroism. One of their bitterest quarrels came after he
had, for the second time, in the Red Sea, jumped overboard from the
troopship and rescued a private soldier. She stood it the first time and
even complimented him. But the Red Sea was awful, that trip, and the
private soldiers seemed to develop a suicidal craze. It got on Leonora's
nerves; she figured Edward, for the rest of that trip, jumping overboard
every ten minutes. And the mere cry of "Man overboard" is a
disagreeable, alarming and disturbing thing. The ship gets stopped and
there are all sorts of shouts. And Edward would not promise not to do it
again, though, fortunately, they struck a streak of cooler weather when
they were in the Persian Gulf. Leonora had got it into her head that
Edward was trying to commit suicide, so I guess it was pretty awful for
her when he would not give the promise. Leonora ought never to have been
on that troopship; but she got there somehow, as an economy.
Major Basil discovered his wife's relation with Edward just before he
was sent to his other station. I don't know whether that was a
blackmailer's adroitness or just a trick of destiny. He may have known
of it all the time or he may not. At any rate, he got hold of, just
about then, some letters and things. It cost Edward three hundred pounds
immediately. I do not know how it was arranged; I cannot imagine how
even a blackmailer can make his demands. I suppose there is some sort of
way of saving your face. I figure the Major as disclosing the letters to
Edward with furious oaths, then accepting his explanations that the
letters were perfectly innocent if the wrong construction were not put
upon them. Then the Major would say: "I say, old chap, I'm deuced hard
up. Couldn't you lend me three hundred or so?" I fancy that was how it
was. And, year by year, after that there would come a letter from the
Major, saying that he was deuced hard up and couldn't Edward lend him
three hundred or so?
Edward was pretty hard hit when Mrs Basil had to go away. He really had
been very fond of her, and he remained faithful to her memory for quite
a long time. And Mrs Basil had loved him very much and continued to
cherish a hope of reunion with him. Three days ago there came a quite
proper but very lamentable letter from her to Leonora, asking to be
given particulars as to Edward's death. She had read the advertisement
of it in an Indian paper. I think she must have been a very nice
woman....
And then the Ashburnhams were moved somewhere up towards a place or a
district called Chitral. I am no good at geography of the Indian Empire.
By that time they had settled down into a model couple and they never
spoke in private to each other. Leonora had given up even showing the
accounts of the Ashburnham estate to Edward. He thought that that was
because she had piled up such a lot of money that she did not want him
to know how she was getting on any more. But, as a matter of fact, after
five or six years it had penetrated to her mind that it was painful to
Edward to have to look on at the accounts of his estate and have no hand
in the management of it. She was trying to do him a kindness. And, up in
Chitral, poor dear little Maisie Maidan came along....
That was the most unsettling to Edward of all his affairs. It made him
suspect that he was inconstant. The affair with the Dolciquita he had
sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. His relations
with Mrs Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a gross
kind. The husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each
other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife
to him. He thought that Mrs Basil had been his soul-mate, separated from
him by an unkind fate—something sentimental of that sort.
But he discovered that, whilst he was still writing long weekly letters
to Mrs Basil, he was beginning to be furiously impatient if he missed
seeing Maisie Maidan during the course of the day. He discovered himself
watching the doorways with impatience; he discovered that he disliked
her boy husband very much for hours at a time. He discovered that he was
getting up at unearthly hours in order to have time, later in the
morning, to go for a walk with Maisie Maidan. He discovered himself
using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value
to those words. These, you understand, were discoveries that came so
late that he could do nothing but drift. He was losing weight; his eyes
were beginning to fall in; he had touches of bad fever. He was, as he
described it, pipped.
And, one ghastly hot day, he suddenly heard himself say to Leonora:
"I say, couldn't we take Mrs Maidan with us to Europe and drop her at
Nauheim?"
He hadn't had the least idea of saying that to Leonora. He had merely
been standing, looking at an illustrated paper, waiting for dinner.
Dinner was twenty minutes late or the Ashburnhams would not have been
alone together. No, he hadn't had the least idea of framing that speech.
He had just been standing in a silent agony of fear, of longing, of
heat, of fever. He was thinking that they were going back to Branshaw in
a month and that Maisie Maidan was going to remain behind and die. And
then, that had come out.
The punkah swished in the darkened room; Leonora lay exhausted and
motionless in her cane lounge; neither of them stirred. They were both
at that time very ill in indefinite ways.
And then Leonora said:
"Yes. I promised it to Charlie Maidan this afternoon. I have offered to
pay her ex's myself."
Edward just saved himself from saying: "Good God!" You see, he had not
the least idea of what Leonora knew—about Maisie, about Mrs Basil, even
about La Dolciquita. It was a pretty enigmatic situation for him. It
struck him that Leonora must be intending to manage his loves as she
managed his money affairs and it made her more hateful to him—and more
worthy of respect.
Leonora, at any rate, had managed his money to some purpose. She had
spoken to him, a week before, for the first time in several years—about
money. She had made twenty-two thousand pounds out of the Branshaw land
and seven by the letting of Branshaw furnished. By fortunate
investments—in which Edward had helped her—she had made another six or
seven thousand that might well become more. The mortgages were all paid
off, so that, except for the departure of the two Vandykes and the
silver, they were as well off as they had been before the Dolciquita had
acted the locust. It was Leonora's great achievement. She laid the
figures before Edward, who maintained an unbroken silence.
"I propose," she said, "that you should resign from the Army and that we
should go back to Branshaw. We are both too ill to stay here any
longer."
Edward said nothing at all.
"This," Leonora continued passionlessly, "is the great day of my life."
Edward said:
"You have managed the job amazingly. You are a wonderful woman." He was
thinking that if they went back to Branshaw they would leave Maisie
Maidan behind. That thought occupied him exclusively. They must,
undoubtedly, return to Branshaw; there could be no doubt that Leonora
was too ill to stay in that place. She said:
"You understand that the management of the whole of the expenditure of
the income will be in your hands. There will be five thousand a year."
She thought that he cared very much about the expenditure of an income
of five thousand a year and that the fact that she had done so much for
him would rouse in him some affection for her. But he was thinking
exclusively of Maisie Maidan—of Maisie, thousands of miles away from
him. He was seeing the mountains between them—blue mountains and the sea
and sunlit plains. He said:
"That is very generous of you." And she did not know whether that were
praise or a sneer. That had been a week before. And all that week he had
passed in an increasing agony at the thought that those mountains, that
sea, and those sunlit plains would be between him and Maisie Maidan.
That thought shook him in the burning nights: the sweat poured from him
and he trembled with cold, in the burning noons—at that thought. He had
no minute's rest; his bowels turned round and round within him: his
tongue was perpetually dry and it seemed to him that the breath between
his teeth was like air from a pest-house.
He gave no thought to Leonora at all; he had sent in his papers. They
were to leave in a month. It seemed to him to be his duty to leave that
place and to go away, to support Leonora. He did his duty.
It was horrible, in their relationship at that time, that whatever she
did caused him to hate her. He hated her when he found that she proposed
to set him up as the Lord of Branshaw again—as a sort of dummy lord, in
swaddling clothes. He imagined that she had done this in order to
separate him from Maisie Maidan. Hatred hung in all the heavy nights and
filled the shadowy corners of the room. So when he heard that she had
offered to the Maidan boy to take his wife to Europe with him,
automatically he hated her since he hated all that she did. It seemed to
him, at that time, that she could never be other than cruel even if, by
accident, an act of hers were kind.... Yes, it was a horrible situation.
But the cool breezes of the ocean seemed to clear up that hatred as if
it had been a curtain. They seemed to give him back admiration for her,
and respect. The agreeableness of having money lavishly at command, the
fact that it had bought for him the companionship of Maisie Maidan—these
things began to make him see that his wife might have been right in the
starving and scraping upon which she had insisted. He was at ease; he
was even radiantly happy when he carried cups of bouillon for Maisie
Maidan along the deck. One night, when he was leaning beside Leonora,
over the ship's side, he said suddenly:
"By Jove, you're the finest woman in the world. I wish we could be
better friends."
She just turned away without a word and went to her cabin. Still, she
was very much better in health.
And now, I suppose, I must give you Leonora's side of the case....
That is very difficult. For Leonora, if she preserved an unchanged
front, changed very frequently her point of view. She had been
drilled—in her tradition, in her upbringing—to keep her mouth shut. But
there were times, she said, when she was so near yielding to the
temptation of speaking that afterwards she shuddered to think of those
times. You must postulate that what she desired above all things was to
keep a shut mouth to the world; to Edward and to the women that he
loved. If she spoke she would despise herself.
From the moment of his unfaithfulness with La Dolciquita she never acted
the part of wife to Edward. It was not that she intended to keep herself
from him as a principle, for ever. Her spiritual advisers, I believe,
forbade that. But she stipulated that he must, in some way, perhaps
symbolical, come back to her. She was not very clear as to what she
meant; probably she did not know herself. Or perhaps she did.
There were moments when he seemed to be coming back to her; there were
moments when she was within a hair of yielding to her physical passion
for him. In just the same way, at moments, she almost yielded to the
temptation to denounce Mrs Basil to her husband or Maisie Maidan to
hers. She desired then to cause the horrors and pains of public
scandals. For, watching Edward more intently and with more straining of
ears than that which a cat bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware
of the progress of his passion for each of these ladies. She was aware
of it from the way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways; she
knew from his tranquillities when he had received satisfactions.
At times she imagined herself to see more than was warranted. She
imagined that Edward was carrying on intrigues with other women—with two
at once; with three. For whole periods she imagined him to be a monster
of libertinage and she could not see that he could have anything against
her. She left him his liberty; she was starving herself to build up his
fortunes; she allowed herself none of the joys of femininity—no dresses,
no jewels—hardly even friendships, for fear they should cost money.
And yet, oddly, she could not but be aware that both Mrs Basil and
Maisie Maidan were nice women. The curious, discounting eye which one
woman can turn on another did not prevent her seeing that Mrs Basil was
very good to Edward and Mrs Maidan very good for him. That seemed her to
be a monstrous and incomprehensible working of Fate's. Incomprehensible!
Why, she asked herself again and again, did none of the good deeds that
she did for her husband ever come through to him, or appear to him as
good deeds? By what trick of mania could not he let her be as good to
him as Mrs Basil was? Mrs Basil was not so extraordinarily dissimilar to
herself. She was, it was true, tall, dark, with soft mournful voice and
a great kindness of manner for every created thing, from punkah men to
flowers on the trees. But she was not so well read as Leonora, at any
rate in learned books. Leonora could not stand novels. But, even with
all her differences, Mrs Basil did not appear to Leonora to differ so
very much from herself. She was truthful, honest and, for the rest, just
a woman. And Leonora had a vague sort of idea that, to a man, all women
are the same after three weeks of close intercourse. She thought that
the kindness should no longer appeal, the soft and mournful voice no
longer thrill, the tall darkness no longer give a man the illusion that
he was going into the depths of an unexplored wood. She could not
understand how Edward could go on and on maundering over Mrs Basil. She
could not see why he should continue to write her long letters after
their separation. After that, indeed, she had a very bad time.
She had at that period what I will call the "monstrous" theory of
Edward. She was always imagining him ogling at every woman that he came
across. She did not, that year, go into "retreat" at Simla because she
was afraid that he would corrupt her maid in her absence. She imagined
him carrying on intrigues with native women or Eurasians. At dances she
was in a fever of watchfulness.
She persuaded herself that this was because she had a dread of scandals.
Edward might get himself mixed up with a marriageable daughter of some
man who would make a row or some husband who would matter. But, really,
she acknowledged afterwards to herself, she was hoping that, Mrs Basil
being out of the way, the time might have come when Edward should return
to her. All that period she passed in an agony of jealousy and fear—the
fear that Edward might really become promiscuous in his habits.
So that, in an odd way, she was glad when Maisie Maidan came along—and
she realized that she had not, before, been afraid of husbands and of
scandals, since, then, she did her best to keep Maisie's husband
unsuspicious. She wished to appear so trustful of Edward that Maidan
could not possibly have any suspicions. It was an evil position for her.
But Edward was very ill and she wanted to see him smile again. She
thought that if he could smile again through her agency he might return,
through gratitude and satisfied love—to her. At that time she thought
that Edward was a person of light and fleeting passions. And she could
understand Edward's passion for Maisie, since Maisie was one of those
women to whom other women will allow magnetism.
She was very pretty; she was very young; in spite of her heart she was
very gay and light on her feet. And Leonora was really very fond of
Maisie, who was fond enough of Leonora. Leonora, indeed, imagined that
she could manage this affair all right. She had no thought of Maisie's
being led into adultery; she imagined that if she could take Maisie and
Edward to Nauheim, Edward would see enough of her to get tired of her
pretty little chatterings, and of the pretty little motions of her hands
and feet. And she thought she could trust Edward. For there was not any
doubt of Maisie's passion for Edward. She raved about him to Leonora as
Leonora had heard girls rave about drawing masters in schools. She was
perpetually asking her boy husband why he could not dress, ride, shoot,
play polo, or even recite sentimental poems, like their major. And young
Maidan had the greatest admiration for Edward, and he adored, was
bewildered by and entirely trusted his wife. It appeared to him that
Edward was devoted to Leonora. And Leonora imagined that when poor
Maisie was cured of her heart and Edward had seen enough of her, he
would return to her. She had the vague, passionate idea that, when
Edward had exhausted a number of other types of women he must turn to
her. Why should not her type have its turn in his heart? She imagined
that, by now, she understood him better, that she understood better his
vanities and that, by making him happier, she could arouse his love.
Florence knocked all that on the head....