Chapter: 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
not see me, and saying distinctly: "Credo in unum Deum omnipotentem....
Credo in unum Deum omnipotentem." Those are the only reasonable words
she uttered; those are the only words, it appears, that she ever
will utter. I suppose that they are reasonable words; it must be
extraordinarily reasonable for her, if she can say that she believes in
an Omnipotent Deity. Well, there it is. I am very tired of it all....

For, I daresay, all this may sound romantic, but it is tiring, tiring,
tiring to have been in the midst of it; to have taken the tickets; to
have caught the trains; to have chosen the cabins; to have consulted
the purser and the stewards as to diet for the quiescent patient who did
nothing but announce her belief in an Omnipotent Deity. That may sound
romantic--but it is just a record of fatigue.

I don't know why I should always be selected to be serviceable. I don't
resent it--but I have never been the least good. Florence selected me
for her own purposes, and I was no good to her; Edward called me to come
and have a chat with him, and I couldn't stop him cutting his throat.

And then, one day eighteen months ago, I was quietly writing in my
room at Branshaw when Leonora came to me with a letter. It was a very
pathetic letter from Colonel Rufford about Nancy. Colonel Rufford had
left the army and had taken up an appointment at a tea-planting
estate in Ceylon. His letter was pathetic because it was so brief, so
inarticulate, and so business-like. He had gone down to the boat to meet
his daughter, and had found his daughter quite mad. It appears that at
Aden Nancy had seen in a local paper the news of Edward's suicide. In
the Red Sea she had gone mad. She had remarked to Mrs Colonel Luton,
who was chaperoning her, that she believed in an Omnipotent Deity. She
hadn't made any fuss; her eyes were quite dry and glassy. Even when she
was mad Nancy could behave herself.

Colonel Rufford said the doctor did not anticipate that there was any
chance of his child's recovery. It was, nevertheless, possible that if
she could see someone from Branshaw it might soothe her and it might
have a good effect. And he just simply wrote to Leonora: "Please come
and see if you can do it."

I seem to have lost all sense of the pathetic; but still, that simple,
enormous request of the old colonel strikes me as pathetic. He was
cursed by his atrocious temper; he had been cursed by a half-mad wife,
who drank and went on the streets. His daughter was totally mad--and yet
he believed in the goodness of human nature. He believed that Leonora
would take the trouble to go all the way to Ceylon in order to soothe
his daughter. Leonora wouldn't. Leonora didn't ever want to see Nancy
again. I daresay that that, in the circumstances, was natural enough.
At the same time she agreed, as it were, on public grounds, that someone
soothing ought to go from Branshaw to Ceylon. She sent me and her old
nurse, who had looked after Nancy from the time when the girl, a child
of thirteen, had first come to Branshaw. So off I go, rushing through
Provence, to catch the steamer at Marseilles. And I wasn't the least
good when I got to Ceylon; and the nurse wasn't the least good. Nothing
has been the least good. The doctors said, at Kandy, that if Nancy could
be brought to England, the sea air, the change of climate, the voyage,
and all the usual sort of things, might restore her reason. Of course,
they haven't restored her reason. She is, I am aware, sitting in the
hall, forty paces from where I am now writing. I don't want to be in the
least romantic about it. She is very well dressed; she is quite quiet;
she is very beautiful. The old nurse looks after her very efficiently.

Of course you have the makings of a situation here, but it is all very
humdrum, as far as I am concerned. I should marry Nancy if her reason
were ever sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the
Anglican marriage service. But it is probable that her reason will
never be sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the
Anglican marriage service. Therefore I cannot marry her, according to
the law of the land.

So here I am very much where I started thirteen years ago. I am the
attendant, not the husband, of a beautiful girl, who pays no attention
to me. I am estranged from Leonora, who married Rodney Bayham in my
absence and went to live at Bayham. Leonora rather dislikes me, because
she has got it into her head that I disapprove of her marriage with
Rodney Bayham. Well, I disapprove of her marriage. Possibly I am
jealous. Yes, no doubt I am jealous. In my fainter sort of way I seem to
perceive myself following the lines of Edward Ashburnham. I suppose that
I should really like to be a polygamist; with Nancy, and with Leonora,
and with Maisie Maidan and possibly even with Florence. I am no doubt
like every other man; only, probably because of my American origin I am
fainter. At the same time I am able to assure you that I am a strictly
respectable person. I have never done anything that the most anxious
mother of a daughter or the most careful dean of a cathedral would
object to. I have only followed, faintly, and in my unconscious desires,
Edward Ashburnham. Well, it is all over. Not one of us has got what he
really wanted. Leonora wanted Edward, and she has got Rodney Bayham, a
pleasant enough sort of sheep. Florence wanted Branshaw, and it is I
who have bought it from Leonora. I didn't really want it; what I
wanted mostly was to cease being a nurse-attendant. Well, I am a
nurse-attendant. Edward wanted Nancy Rufford, and I have got her. Only
she is mad. It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have
what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet
everybody has the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it;
it is beyond me.

Is there any terrestial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the
olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like
and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men's lives
like the lives of us good people--like the lives of the Ashburnhams,
of the Dowells, of the Ruffords--broken, tumultuous, agonized, and
unromantic, lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by
deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?

For there was a great deal of imbecility about the closing scenes of the
Ashburnham tragedy. Neither of those two women knew what they wanted. It
was only Edward who took a perfectly clear line, and he was drunk most
of the time. But, drunk or sober, he stuck to what was demanded by
convention and by the traditions of his house. Nancy Rufford had to be
exported to India, and Nancy Rufford hadn't to hear a word of love from
him. She was exported to India and she never heard a word from Edward
Ashburnham.

It was the conventional line; it was in tune with the tradition of
Edward's house. I daresay it worked out for the greatest good of the
body politic. Conventions and traditions, I suppose, work blindly but
surely for the preservation of the normal type; for the extinction of
proud, resolute and unusual individuals.

Edward was the normal man, but there was too much of the sentimentalist
about him; and society does not need too many sentimentalists. Nancy was
a splendid creature, but she had about her a touch of madness. Society
does not need individuals with touches of madness about them. So Edward
and Nancy found themselves steamrolled out and Leonora survives, the
perfectly normal type, married to a man who is rather like a rabbit.
For Rodney Bayham is rather like a rabbit, and I hear that Leonora is
expected to have a baby in three months' time.

So those splendid and tumultuous creatures with their magnetism and
their passions--those two that I really loved--have gone from this
earth. It is no doubt best for them. What would Nancy have made of
Edward if she had succeeded in living with him; what would Edward have
made of her? For there was about Nancy a touch of cruelty--a touch of
definite actual cruelty that made her desire to see people suffer. Yes,
she desired to see Edward suffer. And, by God, she gave him hell.

She gave him an unimaginable hell. Those two women pursued that poor
devil and flayed the skin off him as if they had done it with whips. I
tell you his mind bled almost visibly. I seem to see him stand, naked to
the waist, his forearms shielding his eyes, and flesh hanging from him
in rags. I tell you that is no exaggeration of what I feel. It was as
if Leonora and Nancy banded themselves together to do execution, for the
sake of humanity, upon the body of a man who was at their disposal. They
were like a couple of Sioux who had got hold of an Apache and had him
well tied to a stake. I tell you there was no end to the tortures they
inflicted upon him.

Night after night he would hear them talking; talking; maddened,
sweating, seeking oblivion in drink, he would lie there and hear the
voices going on and on. And day after day Leonora would come to him and
would announce the results of their deliberations.

They were like judges debating over the sentence upon a criminal; they
were like ghouls with an immobile corpse in a tomb beside them. I don't
think that Leonora was any more to blame than the girl--though Leonora
was the more active of the two. Leonora, as I have said, was the
perfectly normal woman. I mean to say that in normal circumstances her
desires were those of the woman who is needed by society. She desired
children, decorum, an establishment; she desired to avoid waste, she
desired to keep up appearances. She was utterly and entirely normal even
in her utterly undeniable beauty. But I don't mean to say that she acted
perfectly normally in this perfectly abnormal situation. All the world
was mad around her and she herself, agonized, took on the complexion of
a mad woman; of a woman very wicked; of the villain of the piece. What
would you have? Steel is a normal, hard, polished substance. But, if you
put it in a hot fire it will become red, soft, and not to be handled. If
you put it in a fire still more hot it will drip away. It was like
that with Leonora. She was made for normal circumstances--for Mr Rodney
Bayham, who will keep a separate establishment, secretly, in Portsmouth,
and make occasional trips to Paris and to Budapest.

In the case of Edward and the girl, Leonora broke and simply went all
over the place. She adopted unfamiliar and therefore extraordinary and
ungraceful attitudes of mind. At one moment she was all for revenge.
After haranguing the girl for hours through the night she harangued for
hours of the day the silent Edward. And Edward just once tripped up, and
that was his undoing. Perhaps he had had too much whisky that afternoon.
She asked him perpetually what he wanted. What did he want? What did he
want? And all he ever answered was: "I have told you". He meant that
he wanted the girl to go to her father in India as soon as her father
should cable that he was ready to receive her. But just once he tripped
up. To Leonora's eternal question he answered that all he desired in
life was that--that he could pick himself together again and go on with
his daily occupations if--the girl, being five thousand miles away,
would continue to love him. He wanted nothing more, He prayed his God
for nothing more. Well, he was a sentimentalist.

And the moment that she heard that, Leonora determined that the girl
should not go five thousand miles away and that she should not continue
to love Edward. The way she worked it was this:

She continued to tell the girl that she must belong to Edward; she was
going to get a divorce; she was going to get a dissolution of marriage
from Rome. But she considered it to be her duty to warn the girl of the
sort of monster that Edward was. She told the girl of La Dolciquita, of
Mrs Basil, of Maisie Maidan, of Florence. She spoke of the agonies
that she had endured during her life with the man, who was violent,
overbearing, vain, drunken, arrogant, and monstrously a prey to his
sexual necessities. And, at hearing of the miseries her aunt had
suffered--for Leonora once more had the aspect of an aunt to the
girl--with the swift cruelty of youth and, with the swift solidarity
that attaches woman to woman, the girl made her resolves. Her aunt said
incessantly: "You must save Edward's life; you must save his life. All
that he needs is a little period of satisfaction from you. Then he will
tire of you as he has of the others. But you must save his life."

And, all the while, that wretched fellow knew--by a curious instinct
that runs between human beings living together--exactly what was going
on. And he remained dumb; he stretched out no finger to help himself.
All that he required to keep himself a decent member of society was,
that the girl, five thousand miles away, should continue to love him.
They were putting a stopper upon that.

I have told you that the girl came one night to his room. And that
was the real hell for him. That was the picture that never left his
imagination--the girl, in the dim light, rising up at the foot of his
bed. He said that it seemed to have a greenish sort of effect as if
there were a greenish tinge in the shadows of the tall bedposts that
framed her body. And she looked at him with her straight eyes of an
unflinching cruelty and she said: "I am ready to belong to you--to save
your life."

He answered: "I don't want it; I don't want it; I don't want it."

And he says that he didn't want it; that he would have hated himself;
that it was unthinkable. And all the while he had the immense temptation
to do the unthinkable thing, not from the physical desire but because of
a mental certitude. He was certain that if she had once submitted to him
she would remain his for ever. He knew that.

She was thinking that her aunt had said he had desired her to love him
from a distance of five thousand miles. She said: "I can never love you
now I know the kind of man you are. I will belong to you to save your
life. But I can never love you."

It was a fantastic display of cruelty. She didn't in the least know
what it meant--to belong to a man. But, at that Edward pulled himself
together. He spoke in his normal tones; gruff, husky, overbearing, as he
would have done to a servant or to a horse.

"Go back to your room," he said. "Go back to your room and go to sleep.
This is all nonsense."

They were baffled, those two women.

And then I came on the scene.


MY coming on the scene certainly calmed things down--for the whole
fortnight that intervened between my arrival and the girl's departure.
I don't mean to say that the endless talking did not go on at night or
that Leonora did not send me out with the girl and, in the interval,
give Edward a hell of a time. Having discovered what he wanted--that
the girl should go five thousand miles away and love him steadfastly
as people do in sentimental novels, she was determined to smash that
aspiration. And she repeated to Edward in every possible tone that the
girl did not love him; that the girl detested him for his brutality, his
overbearingness, his drinking habits. She pointed out that Edward in the
girl's eyes, was already pledged three or four deep. He was pledged to
Leonora herself, to Mrs Basil, and to the memories of Maisie Maidan and
to Florence. Edward never said anything.

Did the girl love Edward, or didn't she? I don't know. At that time I
daresay she didn't though she certainly had done so before Leonora had
got to work upon his reputation. She certainly had loved him for what
I call the public side of his record--for his good soldiering, for his
saving lives at sea, for the excellent landlord that he was and the good
sportsman. But it is quite possible that all those things came to
appear as nothing in her eyes when she discovered that he wasn't a good
husband. For, though women, as I see them, have little or no feeling of
responsibility towards a county or a country or a career--although they
may be entirely lacking in any kind of communal solidarity--they have
an immense and automatically working instinct that attaches them to the
interest of womanhood. It is, of course, possible for any woman to cut
out and to carry off any other woman's husband or lover. But I rather
think that a woman will only do this if she has reason to believe that
the other woman has given her husband a bad time. I am certain that
if she thinks the man has been a brute to his wife she will, with her
instinctive feeling for suffering femininity, "put him back", as
the saying is. I don't attach any particular importance to these
generalizations of mine. They may be right, they may be wrong; I am only
an ageing American with very little knowledge of life. You may take my
generalizations or leave them. But I am pretty certain that I am right
in the case of Nancy Rufford--that she had loved Edward Ashburnham very
deeply and tenderly.

It is nothing to the point that she let him have it good and strong as
soon as she discovered that he had been unfaithful to Leonora and that
his public services had cost more than Leonora thought they ought to
have cost. Nancy would be bound to let him have it good and strong then.
She would owe that to feminine public opinion; she would be driven to it
by the instinct for self-preservation, since she might well imagine
that if Edward had been unfaithful to Leonora, to Mrs Basil and to the
memories of the other two, he might be unfaithful to herself. And,
no doubt, she had her share of the sex instinct that makes women be
intolerably cruel to the beloved person. Anyhow, I don't know whether,
at this point, Nancy Rufford loved Edward Ashburnham. I don't know
whether she even loved him when, on getting, at Aden, the news of his
suicide she went mad. Because that may just as well have been for the
sake of Leonora as for the sake of Edward. Or it may have been for the
sake of both of them. I don't know. I know nothing. I am very tired.
Leonora held passionately the doctrine that the girl didn't love Edward.
She wanted desperately to believe that. It was a doctrine as necessary
to her existence as a belief in the personal immortality of the soul.
She said that it was impossible that Nancy could have loved Edward
after she had given the girl her view of Edward's career and character.
Edward, on the other hand, believed maunderingly that some essential
attractiveness in himself must have made the girl continue to go on
loving him--to go on loving him, as it were, in underneath her official
aspect of hatred. He thought she only pretended to hate him in order
to save her face and he thought that her quite atrocious telegram from
Brindisi was only another attempt to do that--to prove that she had
feelings creditable to a member of the feminine commonweal. I don't
know. I leave it to you. There is another point that worries me a good
deal in the aspects of this sad affair. Leonora says that, in desiring
that the girl should go five thousand miles away and yet continue to
love him, Edward was a monster of selfishness. He was desiring the ruin
of a young life. Edward on the other hand put it to me that, supposing
that the girl's love was a necessity to his existence, and, if he did
nothing by word or by action to keep Nancy's love alive, he couldn't be
called selfish. Leonora replied that showed he had an abominably selfish
nature even though his actions might be perfectly correct. I can't make
out which of them was right. I leave it to you.

It is, at any rate, certain that Edward's actions were perfectly--were
monstrously, were cruelly--correct. He sat still and let Leonora take
away his character, and let Leonora damn him to deepest hell, without
stirring a finger. I daresay he was a fool; I don't see what object
there was in letting the girl think worse of him than was necessary.
Still there it is. And there it is also that all those three presented
to the world the spectacle of being the best of good people. I assure
you that during my stay for that fortnight in that fine old house, I
never so much as noticed a single thing that could have affected that
good opinion. And even when I look back, knowing the circumstances, I
can't remember a single thing any of them said that could have betrayed
them. I can't remember, right up to the dinner, when Leonora read out
that telegram--not the tremor of an eyelash, not the shaking of a hand.
It was just a pleasant country house-party.

And Leonora kept it up jolly well, for even longer than that--she kept
it up as far as I was concerned until eight days after Edward's funeral.
Immediately after that particular dinner--the dinner at which I
received the announcement that Nancy was going to leave for India on the
following day--I asked Leonora to let me have a word with her. She took
me into her little sitting-room and I then said--I spare you the record
of my emotions--that she was aware that I wished to marry Nancy; that
she had seemed to favour my suit and that it appeared to be rather a
waste of money upon tickets and rather a waste of time upon travel to
let the girl go to India if Leonora thought that there was any chance of
her marrying me.

And Leonora, I assure you, was the absolutely perfect British matron.
She said that she quite favoured my suit; that she could not desire for
the girl a better husband; but that she considered that the girl ought
to see a little more of life before taking such an important step. Yes,
Leonora used the words "taking such an important step". She was perfect.
Actually, I think she would have liked the girl to marry me enough but
my programme included the buying of the Kershaw's house about a mile
away upon the Fordingbridge road, and settling down there with the girl.
That didn't at all suit Leonora. She didn't want to have the girl within
a mile and a half of Edward for the rest of their lives. Still, I think
she might have managed to let me know, in some periphrasis or other,
that I might have the girl if I would take her to Philadelphia or
Timbuctoo. I loved Nancy very much--and Leonora knew it. However, I left
it at that. I left it with the understanding that Nancy was going
away to India on probation. It seemed to me a perfectly reasonable
arrangement and I am a reasonable sort of man. I simply said that I
should follow Nancy out to India after six months' time or so. Or,
perhaps, after a year. Well, you see, I did follow Nancy out to India
after a year.... I must confess to having felt a little angry with
Leonora for not having warned me earlier that the girl would be going.
I took it as one of the queer, not very straight methods that Roman
Catholics seem to adopt in dealing with matters of this world. I took
it that Leonora had been afraid I should propose to the girl or, at any
rate, have made considerably greater advances to her than I did, if I
had known earlier that she was going away so soon. Perhaps Leonora
was right; perhaps Roman Catholics, with their queer, shifty ways, are
always right. They are dealing with the queer, shifty thing that is
human nature. For it is quite possible that, if I had known Nancy was
going away so soon, I should have tried making love to her. And that
would have produced another complication. It may have been just as well.

It is queer the fantastic things that quite good people will do in order
to keep up their appearance of calm pococurantism. For Edward Ashburnham
and his wife called me half the world over in order to sit on the back
seat of a dog-cart whilst Edward drove the girl to the railway station
from which she was to take her departure to India. They wanted, I
suppose, to have a witness of the calmness of that function. The girl's
luggage had been already packed and sent off before. Her berth on the
steamer had been taken. They had timed it all so exactly that it went
like clockwork. They had known the date upon which Colonel Rufford would
get Edward's letter and they had known almost exactly the hour at which
they would receive his telegram asking his daughter to come to him. It
had all been quite beautifully and quite mercilessly arranged, by Edward
himself. They gave Colonel Rufford, as a reason for telegraphing, the
fact that Mrs Colonel Somebody or other would be travelling by that ship
and that she would serve as an efficient chaperon for the girl. It was a
most amazing business, and I think that it would have been better in
the eyes of God if they had all attempted to gouge out each other's eyes
with carving knives. But they were "good people". After my interview
with Leonora I went desultorily into Edward's gun-room. I didn't know
where the girl was and I thought I might find her there. I suppose I had
a vague idea of proposing to her in spite of Leonora. So, I presume,
I don't come of quite such good people as the Ashburnhams. Edward was
lounging in his chair smoking a cigar and he said nothing for quite five
minutes. The candles glowed in the green shades; the reflections were
green in the glasses of the book-cases that held guns and fishing-rods.
Over the mantelpiece was the brownish picture of the white horse. Those
were the quietest moments that I have ever known. Then, suddenly, Edward
looked me straight in the eyes and said:

"Look here, old man, I wish you would drive with Nancy and me to the
station tomorrow."

I said that of course I would drive with him and Nancy to the station on
the morrow. He lay there for a long time, looking along the line of his
knees at the fluttering fire, and then suddenly, in a perfectly calm
voice, and without lifting his eyes, he said:

"I am so desperately in love with Nancy Rufford that I am dying of it."

Poor devil--he hadn't meant to speak of it. But I guess he just had to
speak to somebody and I appeared to be like a woman or a solicitor. He
talked all night.

Well, he carried out the programme to the last breath.

It was a very clear winter morning, with a good deal of frost in it.
The sun was quite bright, the winding road between the heather and the
bracken was very hard. I sat on the back-seat of the dog-cart; Nancy was
beside Edward. They talked about the way the cob went; Edward pointed
out with the whip a cluster of deer upon a coombe three-quarters of a
mile away. We passed the hounds in the level bit of road beside the high
trees going into Fordingbridge and Edward pulled up the dog-cart so that
Nancy might say good-bye to the huntsman and cap him a last sovereign.
She had ridden with those hounds ever since she had been thirteen.

The train was five minutes late and they imagined that that was because
it was market-day at Swindon or wherever the train came from. That was
the sort of thing they talked about. The train came in; Edward found her
a first-class carriage with an elderly woman in it. The girl entered the
carriage, Edward closed the door and then she put out her hand to shake
mine. There was upon those people's faces no expression of any kind
whatever. The signal for the train's departure was a very bright red;
that is about as passionate a statement as I can get into that scene.
She was not looking her best; she had on a cap of brown fur that did not
very well match her hair. She said:

"So long," to Edward.

Edward answered: "So long."

He swung round on his heel and, large, slouching, and walking with a
heavy deliberate pace, he went out of the station. I followed him
and got up beside him in the high dog-cart. It was the most horrible
performance I have ever seen.

And, after that, a holy peace, like the peace of God which passes all
understanding, descended upon Branshaw Teleragh. Leonora went about her
daily duties with a sort of triumphant smile--a very faint smile, but
quite triumphant. I guess she had so long since given up any idea of
getting her man back that it was enough for her to have got the girl out
of the house and well cured of her infatuation. Once, in the hall,
when Leonora was going out, Edward said, beneath his breath--but I just
caught the words:

"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean." It was like his sentimentality
to quote Swinburne. But he was perfectly quiet and he had given up
drinking. The only thing that he ever said to me after that drive to the
station was:

"It's very odd. I think I ought to tell you, Dowell, that I haven't any
feelings at all about the girl now it's all over. Don't you worry about
me. I'm all right." A long time afterwards he said: "I guess it was only
a flash in the pan." He began to look after the estates again; he
took all that trouble over getting off the gardener's daughter who had
murdered her baby. He shook hands smilingly with every farmer in the
market-place. He addressed two political meetings; he hunted twice.
Leonora made him a frightful scene about spending the two hundred pounds
on getting the gardener's daughter acquitted. Everything went on as if
the girl had never existed. It was very still weather.

Well, that is the end of the story. And, when I come to look at it I see
that it is a happy ending with wedding bells and all. The villains--for
obviously Edward and the girl were villains--have been punished by
suicide and madness. The heroine--the perfectly normal, virtuous and
slightly deceitful heroine--has become the happy wife of a perfectly
normal, virtuous and slightly deceitful husband. She will shortly become
a mother of a perfectly normal, virtuous slightly deceitful son or
daughter. A happy ending, that is what it works out at.

I cannot conceal from myself the fact that I now dislike Leonora.
Without doubt I am jealous of Rodney Bayham. But I don't know whether
it is merely a jealousy arising from the fact that I desired myself to
possess Leonora or whether it is because to her were sacrificed the only
two persons that I have ever really loved--Edward Ashburnham and Nancy
Rufford. In order to set her up in a modern mansion, replete with
every convenience and dominated by a quite respectable and eminently
economical master of the house, it was necessary that Edward and Nancy
Rufford should become, for me at least, no more than tragic shades.

I seem to see poor Edward, naked and reclining amidst darkness, upon
cold rocks, like one of the ancient Greek damned, in Tartarus or
wherever it was.

And as for Nancy... Well, yesterday at lunch she said suddenly:

"Shuttlecocks!"

And she repeated the word "shuttlecocks" three times. I know what was
passing in her mind, if she can be said to have a mind, for Leonora has
told me that, once, the poor girl said she felt like a shuttlecock
being tossed backwards and forwards between the violent personalities of
Edward and his wife. Leonora, she said, was always trying to deliver her
over to Edward, and Edward tacitly and silently forced her back again.
And the odd thing was that Edward himself considered that those two
women used him like a shuttlecock. Or, rather, he said that they sent
him backwards and forwards like a blooming parcel that someone didn't
want to pay the postage on. And Leonora also imagined that Edward and
Nancy picked her up and threw her down as suited their purely vagrant
moods. So there you have the pretty picture. Mind, I am not preaching
anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in
this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can
only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful
flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful
are condemned to suicide and to madness. But I guess that I myself,
in my fainter way, come into the category of the passionate, of the
headstrong, and the too-truthful. For I can't conceal from myself the
fact that I loved Edward Ashburnham--and that I love him because he was
just myself. If I had had the courage and virility and possibly also the
physique of Edward Ashburnham I should, I fancy, have done much what
he did. He seems to me like a large elder brother who took me out on
several excursions and did many dashing things whilst I just watched him
robbing the orchards, from a distance. And, you see, I am just as much
of a sentimentalist as he was.. ..

Yes, society must go on; it must breed, like rabbits. That is what we
are here for. But then, I don't like society--much. I am that absurd
figure, an American millionaire, who has bought one of the ancient
haunts of English peace. I sit here, in Edward's gun-room, all day and
all day in a house that is absolutely quiet. No one visits me, for I
visit no one. No one is interested in me, for I have no interests. In
twenty minutes or so I shall walk down to the village, beneath my own
oaks, alongside my own clumps of gorse, to get the American mail. My
tenants, the village boys and the tradesmen will touch their hats to me.
So life peters out. I shall return to dine and Nancy will sit opposite
me with the old nurse standing behind her. Enigmatic, silent, utterly
well-behaved as far as her knife and fork go, Nancy will stare in front
of her with the blue eyes that have over them strained, stretched brows.
Once, or perhaps twice, during the meal her knife and fork will be
suspended in mid-air as if she were trying to think of something that
she had forgotten. Then she will say that she believes in an Omnipotent
Deity or she will utter the one word "shuttle-cocks", perhaps. It is
very extraordinary to see the perfect flush of health on her cheeks, to
see the lustre of her coiled black hair, the poise of the head upon
the neck, the grace of the white hands--and to think that it all means
nothing--that it is a picture without a meaning. Yes, it is queer.

But, at any rate, there is always Leonora to cheer you up; I don't want
to sadden you. Her husband is quite an economical person of so normal
a figure that he can get quite a large proportion of his clothes
ready-made. That is the great desideratum of life, and that is the end
of my story. The child is to be brought up as a Romanist.

It suddenly occurs to me that I have forgotten to say how Edward met
his death. You remember that peace had descended upon the house; that
Leonora was quietly triumphant and that Edward said his love for the
girl had been merely a passing phase. Well, one afternoon we were in
the stables together, looking at a new kind of flooring that Edward was
trying in a loose-box. Edward was talking with a good deal of animation
about the necessity of getting the numbers of the Hampshire territorials
up to the proper standard. He was quite sober, quite quiet, his skin
was clear-coloured; his hair was golden and perfectly brushed; the
level brick-dust red of his complexion went clean up to the rims of his
eyelids; his eyes were porcelain blue and they regarded me frankly and
directly. His face was perfectly expressionless; his voice was deep and
rough. He stood well back upon his legs and said:

"We ought to get them up to two thousand three hundred and fifty."
A stable-boy brought him a telegram and went away. He opened it
negligently, regarded it without emotion, and, in complete silence,
handed it to me. On the pinkish paper in a sprawled handwriting I read:
"Safe Brindisi. Having rattling good time. Nancy."

Well, Edward was the English gentleman; but he was also, to the last,
a sentimentalist, whose mind was compounded of indifferent poems and
novels. He just looked up to the roof of the stable, as if he were
looking to Heaven, and whispered something that I did not catch.

Then he put two fingers into the waistcoat pocket of his grey, frieze
suit; they came out with a little neat pen-knife--quite a small
pen-knife. He said to me:

"You might just take that wire to Leonora." And he looked at me with a
direct, challenging, brow-beating glare. I guess he could see in my eyes
that I didn't intend to hinder him. Why should I hinder him?

I didn't think he was wanted in the world, let his confounded tenants,
his rifle-associations, his drunkards, reclaimed and unreclaimed, get on
as they liked. Not all the hundreds and hundreds of them deserved that
that poor devil should go on suffering for their sakes.

When he saw that I did not intend to interfere with him his eyes became
soft and almost affectionate. He remarked:

"So long, old man, I must have a bit of a rest, you know."

I didn't know what to say. I wanted to say, "God bless you", for I also
am a sentimentalist. But I thought that perhaps that would not be quite
English good form, so I trotted off with the telegram to Leonora. She
was quite pleased with it.

 Part IV, Section V Dowell claims that this is the saddest part of the story. He sees the terrible position that all three people are in. If Nancy does not belong to Edward, he will literally die. Dowell writes this section eighteen months after he has returned to Branshaw to care for Nancy. He records the events that have passed in this time. After Nancy heard of Edward's suicide, she went mad. Her father picked her up from the ship in Ceylon, and found her unable to speak. The only thing she would say was that she believed in an "Omnipotent Deity." Leonora would not go to Ceylon to retrieve her, so she sent Dowell to do it. Nancy now sits in the hall, forty steps from Dowell as he writes. She is beautiful, well looked after, but utterly without reason. Dowell finds himself once again the attendant, the nurse-maid of a beautiful girl who pays no attention to him. Dowell reflects that this is such a sad story because no one has gotten what he wanted. Leonora wanted Edward but ended up with Rodney Bayham. Edward and Florence are dead, the girl is mad, and Dowell remains right where he started: a pathetic caretaker. Dowell reasons that Edward was too caught up in traditions, too willing to lead the "normal" life, although he was too much of a sentimentalist for that. Dowell describes how he believes Nancy and Leonora worked together to emotionally destroy Edward: "Those two women pursued the poor devil and flayed the skin off him as if they had done it with whips," Dowell writes. The women would talk all night and then emerge during the day to tell Edward the results of their deliberations. Once Edward accidentally told Leonora that all he wanted was for the girl who was five-thousand miles away to continue to love him. Leonora, vengeful, decided that this should never be so. She spoke to Nancy continually, telling her what a horrible husband Edward was, and yet imploring the girl to "belong to him" to save his life. Leonora's method drained all love for Edward out of Nancy. One night, Nancy gave in to Leonora's demands. She went to Edward's room and offered herself to him. Nancy told him that, knowing the kind of man he is, she could belong to him to save his life, but she could never love him. This was torture for Edward, but he refused to touch her, and sent her back to her room. It also sent him into a deeper depression because he knew that Leonora had coerced Nancy to despise him forever. Part IV, Section VI Dowell reflects on the events which have transpired and on the heroes and villains of his "saddest story." He cannot decide whether Edward acted selfishly in sending the girl to India. Leonora thinks that it was selfish of him to ruin a young life, but Edward contends that the act could not be selfish because it caused him such tremendous emotional pain. Dowell refrains from judgment on this matter and leaves it to the reader. When Dowell arrived at Branshaw after being summoned by Edward and Leonora, he notes that everything appeared to be perfectly fine; they never dropped the appearance of a perfectly normal, happy family. Dowell took Leonora aside one day to ask her for permission to marry Nancy. She answered that she could not possibly think of a better husband for the girl, but that perhaps it was best if Nancy saw more of the world before taking such an important step into marriage. In reality, Leonora did not want Nancy to be settled within a mile and a half of Branshaw, where Dowell proposed to settle. Dowell accepted this reason. He thought that he should allow Nancy to go to India, and then follow her there and propose in six months time. One day, before Nancy was to be put on the train, Dowell wandered into Edward's gun room. Edward confessed to Dowell that he was dying of love for Nancy Rufford. He told Dowell his side of the story. A few days later, Edward and Dowell took Nancy to the station to leave for India. Edward was distraught, but Leonora walked around with a triumphant smile on her face. She had long ago lost all thought of winning her husband back to herself. Under his breath, Edward admits, "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean." Days later, while Edward and Dowell are in the stable, Edward receives a telegram from Nancy reading: "safe Brindisi. Having a rattling good time. Nancy." He pulls out a small pen-knife, asks Dowell to take the telegram to Leonora, and says good-bye, that it is time for him to have some rest. He cuts his throat with the knife. Dowell reflects that "the normal, the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful must flourish" while the "passionate, headstrong, and too truthful are condemned to madness and suicide." He reasons sarcastically that Nancy and Edward must be the villains of this story. Dowell now cares for Nancy, who repeats the word "shuttlecocks" every so often. He thinks it must refer to the way she had been tossed back and forth between Edward and Leonora for those few months. Dowell concludes that he sympathizes with Edward the most, that he loves him "because he was just myself." He reasons that if he had the courage and virility of Edward Ashburnham, he would have done much the same thing. He believes that he, like Edward, is a sentimentalist.

