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

ten minutes⁠ ⁠… at this time of night⁠ ⁠…” His voice was quite level, normal, and patient. Alcohol took him in the legs, not the speech. “I can wait,” his voice came again. “Yes, I know they have a number. I have been in communication with them before.”

“He is going to telephone to your mother,” Leonora said. “He will make it all right for her.” She got up and closed the door. She came back to the fire, and added bitterly: “He can always make it all right for everybody, except me⁠—excepting me!”

The girl said nothing. She sat there in a blissful dream. She seemed to see her lover sitting as he always sat, in a round-backed chair, in the dark hall⁠—sitting low, with the receiver at his ear, talking in a gentle, slow voice, that he reserved for the telephone⁠—and saving the world and her, in the black darkness. She moved her hand over the bareness of the base of her throat, to have the warmth of flesh upon it and upon her bosom.

She said nothing; Leonora went on talking.⁠ ⁠…

God knows what Leonora said. She repeated that the girl must belong to her husband. She said that she used that phrase because, though she might have a divorce, or even a dissolution of the marriage by the Church, it would still be adultery that the girl and Edward would be committing. But she said that that was necessary; it was the price that the girl must pay for the sin of having made Edward love her, for the sin of loving her husband. She talked on and on, beside the fire. The girl must become an adulteress; she had wronged Edward by being so beautiful, so gracious, so good. It was sinful to be so good. She must pay the price so as to save the man she had wronged.

In between her pauses the girl could hear the voice of Edward, droning on, indistinguishably, with jerky pauses for replies. It made her glow with pride; the man she loved was working for her. He at least was resolved; was malely determined; knew the right thing. Leonora talked on with her eyes boring into Nancy’s. The girl hardly looked at her and hardly heard her. After a long time Nancy said⁠—after hours and hours:

“I shall go to India as soon as Edward hears from my father. I cannot talk about these things, because Edward does not wish it.”

At that Leonora screamed out and wavered swiftly towards the closed door. And Nancy found that she was springing out of her chair with her white arms stretched wide. She was clasping the other woman to her breast; she was saying:

“Oh, my poor dear; oh, my poor dear.” And they sat, crouching together in each other’s arms, and crying and crying; and they lay down in the same bed, talking and talking, all through the night. And all through the night Edward could hear their voices through the wall. That was how it went.⁠ ⁠…

Next morning they were all three as if nothing had happened. Towards eleven Edward came to Nancy, who was arranging some Christmas roses in a silver bowl. He put a telegram beside her on the table. “You can uncode it for yourself,” he said. Then, as he went out of the door, he said:

“You can tell your aunt I have cabled to Mr. Dowell to come over. He will make things easier till you leave.”

The telegram when it was uncoded, read, as far as I can remember:

“Will take Mrs. Rufford to Italy. Undertake to do this for certain. Am devotedly attached to Mrs. Rufford. Have no need of financial assistance. Did not know there was a daughter, and am much obliged to you for pointing out my duty.⁠—White.” It was something like that.

Then that household resumed its wonted course of days until my arrival.

V

It is this part of the story that makes me saddest of all. For I ask myself unceasingly, my mind going round and round in a weary, baffled space of pain⁠—what should these people have done? What, in the name of God, should they have done?

The end was perfectly plain to each of them⁠—it was perfectly manifest at this stage that, if the girl did not, in Leonora’s phrase, “belong to Edward,” Edward must die, the girl must lose her reason because Edward died⁠—and, that after a time, Leonora, who was the coldest and the strongest of the three, would console herself by marrying Rodney Bayham and have a quiet, comfortable, good time. That end, on that night, whilst Leonora sat in the girl’s bedroom and Edward telephoned down below⁠—that end was plainly manifest. The girl, plainly, was half-mad already; Edward was half dead; only Leonora, active, persistent, instinct with her cold passion of energy, was “doing things.” What then, should they have done? worked out in the extinction of two very splendid personalities⁠—for Edward and the girl were splendid personalities, in order that a third personality, more normal, should have, after a long period of trouble, a quiet, comfortable, good time.

I am writing this, now, I should say, a full eighteen months after the words that end my last chapter. Since writing the words “until my arrival,” which I see end that paragraph, I have seen again for a glimpse, from a swift train, Beaucaire with the beautiful white tower, Tarascon with the square castle, the great Rhone, the immense stretches of the Crau. I have rushed through all Provence⁠—and all Provence no longer matters. It is no longer in the olive hills that I shall find my Heaven; because there is only Hell.⁠ ⁠…

Edward is dead; the girl is gone⁠—oh, utterly gone; Leonora is having a good time with Rodney Bayham, and I sit alone in Branshaw Teleragh. I have been through Provence; I have seen Africa; I have visited Asia to see, in Ceylon, in a darkened room, my poor girl, sitting motionless, with her wonderful hair about her, looking at me with eyes that did