The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford [best time to read books txt] 📗

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 percent 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 forever 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 naive. 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 armchair, 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