Chapter: THE odd thing is that what sticks out in my recollection of the rest of
that evening was Leonora's saying:

"Of course you might marry her," and, when I asked whom, she answered:

"The girl."

Now that is to me a very amazing thing--amazing for the light of
possibilities that it casts into the human heart. For I had never had
the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; I never had the
slightest idea even of caring for her. I must have talked in an odd way,
as people do who are recovering from an anaesthetic. It is as if one had
a dual personality, the one I being entirely unconscious of the other.
I had thought nothing; I had said such an extraordinary thing. I don't
know that analysis of my own psychology matters at all to this story.
I should say that it didn't or, at any rate, that I had given enough of
it. But that odd remark of mine had a strong influence upon what came
after. I mean, that Leonora would probably never have spoken to me at
all about Florence's relations with Edward if I hadn't said, two hours
after my wife's death:

"Now I can marry the girl."

She had, then, taken it for granted that I had been suffering all that
she had been suffering, or, at least, that I had permitted all that she
had permitted. So that, a month ago, about a week after the funeral of
poor Edward, she could say to me in the most natural way in the world--I
had been talking about the duration of my stay at Branshaw--she said
with her clear, reflective intonation:

"Oh, stop here for ever and ever if you can." And then she added, "You
couldn't be more of a brother to me, or more of a counsellor, or more of
a support. You are all the consolation I have in the world. And isn't
it odd to think that if your wife hadn't been my husband's mistress, you
would probably never have been here at all?"

That was how I got the news--full in the face, like that. I didn't say
anything and I don't suppose I felt anything, unless maybe it was with
that mysterious and unconscious self that underlies most people. Perhaps
one day when I am unconscious or walking in my sleep I may go and spit
upon poor Edward's grave. It seems about the most unlikely thing I could
do; but there it is. No, I remember no emotion of any sort, but just the
clear feeling that one has from time to time when one hears that some
Mrs So-and-So is au mieux with a certain gentleman. It made things
plainer, suddenly, to my curiosity. It was as if I thought, at that
moment, of a windy November evening, that, when I came to think it over
afterwards, a dozen unexplained things would fit themselves into place.
But I wasn't thinking things over then. I remember that distinctly. I
was just sitting back, rather stiffly, in a deep arm-chair. That is what
I remember. It was twilight.

Branshaw Manor lies in a little hollow with lawns across it and
pine-woods on the fringe of the dip. The immense wind, coming from
across the forest, roared overhead. But the view from the window was
perfectly quiet and grey. Not a thing stirred, except a couple of
rabbits on the extreme edge of the lawn. It was Leonora's own little
study that we were in and we were waiting for the tea to be brought. I,
as I said, was sitting in the deep chair, Leonora was standing in the
window twirling the wooden acorn at the end of the window-blind cord
desultorily round and round. She looked across the lawn and said, as far
as I can remember:

"Edward has been dead only ten days and yet there are rabbits on the
lawn."

I understand that rabbits do a great deal of harm to the short grass in
England. And then she turned round to me and said without any adornment
at all, for I remember her exact words:

"I think it was stupid of Florence to commit suicide."

I cannot tell you the extraordinary sense of leisure that we two seemed
to have at that moment. It wasn't as if we were waiting for a train,
it wasn't as if we were waiting for a meal--it was just that there was
nothing to wait for. Nothing. There was an extreme stillness with the
remote and intermittent sound of the wind. There was the grey light in
that brown, small room. And there appeared to be nothing else in the
world. I knew then that Leonora was about to let me into her full
confidence. It was as if--or no, it was the actual fact that--Leonora
with an odd English sense of decency had determined to wait until Edward
had been in his grave for a full week before she spoke. And with some
vague motive of giving her an idea of the extent to which she must
permit herself to make confidences, I said slowly--and these words too I
remember with exactitude--"Did Florence commit suicide? I didn't know."

I was just, you understand, trying to let her know that, if she were
going to speak she would have to talk about a much wider range of things
than she had before thought necessary.

So that that was the first knowledge I had that Florence had committed
suicide. It had never entered my head. You may think that I had been
singularly lacking in suspiciousness; you may consider me even to have
been an imbecile. But consider the position.

In such circumstances of clamour, of outcry, of the crash of many
people running together, of the professional reticence of such people
as hotel-keepers, the traditional reticence of such "good people" as the
Ashburnhams--in such circumstances it is some little material object,
always, that catches the eye and that appeals to the imagination. I had
no possible guide to the idea of suicide and the sight of the little
flask of nitrate of amyl in Florence's hand suggested instantly to
my mind the idea of the failure of her heart. Nitrate of amyl, you
understand, is the drug that is given to relieve sufferers from angina
pectoris.

Seeing Florence, as I had seen her, running with a white face and
with one hand held over her heart, and seeing her, as I immediately
afterwards saw her, lying upon her bed with the so familiar little brown
flask clenched in her fingers, it was natural enough for my mind to
frame the idea. As happened now and again, I thought, she had gone out
without her remedy and, having felt an attack coming on whilst she was
in the gardens, she had run in to get the nitrate in order, as quickly
as possible, to obtain relief. And it was equally inevitable my mind
should frame the thought that her heart, unable to stand the strain
of the running, should have broken in her side. How could I have known
that, during all the years of our married life, that little brown
flask had contained, not nitrate of amyl, but prussic acid? It was
inconceivable.

Why, not even Edward Ashburnham, who was, after all more intimate with
her than I was, had an inkling of the truth. He just thought that she
had dropped dead of heart disease. Indeed, I fancy that the only people
who ever knew that Florence had committed suicide were Leonora, the
Grand Duke, the head of the police and the hotel-keeper. I mention these
last three because my recollection of that night is only the sort of
pinkish effulgence from the electric-lamps in the hotel lounge. There
seemed to bob into my consciousness, like floating globes, the faces of
those three. Now it would be the bearded, monarchical, benevolent head
of the Grand Duke; then the sharp-featured, brown, cavalry-moustached
feature of the chief of police; then the globular, polished and
high-collared vacuousness that represented Monsieur Schontz, the
proprietor of the hotel. At times one head would be there alone, at
another the spiked helmet of the official would be close to the healthy
baldness of the prince; then M. Schontz's oiled locks would push in
between the two. The sovereign's soft, exquisitely trained voice would
say, "Ja, ja, ja!" each word dropping out like so many soft pellets
of suet; the subdued rasp of the official would come: "Zum Befehl
Durchlaucht," like five revolver-shots; the voice of M. Schontz would go
on and on under its breath like that of an unclean priest reciting
from his breviary in the corner of a railway-carriage. That was how it
presented itself to me.

They seemed to take no notice of me; I don't suppose that I was even
addressed by one of them. But, as long as one or the other, or all three
of them were there, they stood between me as if, I being the titular
possessor of the corpse, had a right to be present at their conferences.
Then they all went away and I was left alone for a long time.

And I thought nothing; absolutely nothing. I had no ideas; I had no
strength. I felt no sorrow, no desire for action, no inclination to
go upstairs and fall upon the body of my wife. I just saw the pink
effulgence, the cane tables, the palms, the globular match-holders, the
indented ash-trays. And then Leonora came to me and it appears that I
addressed to her that singular remark:

"Now I can marry the girl."

But I have given you absolutely the whole of my recollection of that
evening, as it is the whole of my recollection of the succeeding three
or four days. I was in a state just simply cataleptic. They put me to
bed and I stayed there; they brought me my clothes and I dressed; they
led me to an open grave and I stood beside it. If they had taken me to
the edge of a river, or if they had flung me beneath a railway train,
I should have been drowned or mangled in the same spirit. I was the
walking dead.

Well, those are my impressions.

What had actually happened had been this. I pieced it together
afterwards. You will remember I said that Edward Ashburnham and the girl
had gone off, that night, to a concert at the Casino and that Leonora
had asked Florence, almost immediately after their departure, to follow
them and to perform the office of chaperone. Florence, you may also
remember, was all in black, being the mourning that she wore for a
deceased cousin, Jean Hurlbird. It was a very black night and the girl
was dressed in cream-coloured muslin, that must have glimmered under the
tall trees of the dark park like a phosphorescent fish in a cupboard.
You couldn't have had a better beacon.

And it appears that Edward Ashburnham led the girl not up the straight
allee that leads to the Casino, but in under the dark trees of the park.
Edward Ashburnham told me all this in his final outburst. I have told
you that, upon that occasion, he became deucedly vocal. I didn't pump
him. I hadn't any motive. At that time I didn't in the least connect him
with my wife. But the fellow talked like a cheap novelist.--Or like a
very good novelist for the matter of that, if it's the business of a
novelist to make you see things clearly. And I tell you I see that thing
as clearly as if it were a dream that never left me. It appears that,
not very far from the Casino, he and the girl sat down in the darkness
upon a public bench. The lights from that place of entertainment must
have reached them through the tree-trunks, since, Edward said, he could
quite plainly see the girl's face--that beloved face with the high
forehead, the queer mouth, the tortured eyebrows, and the direct eyes.
And to Florence, creeping up behind them, they must have presented the
appearance of silhouettes. For I take it that Florence came creeping up
behind them over the short grass to a tree that, I quite well remember,
was immediately behind that public seat. It was not a very difficult
feat for a woman instinct with jealousy. The Casino orchestra was, as
Edward remembered to tell me, playing the Rakocsy march, and although
it was not loud enough, at that distance, to drown the voice of Edward
Ashburnham it was certainly sufficiently audible to efface, amongst the
noises of the night, the slight brushings and rustlings that might have
been made by the feet of Florence or by her gown in coming over the
short grass. And that miserable woman must have got it in the face,
good and strong. It must have been horrible for her. Horrible! Well, I
suppose she deserved all that she got.

Anyhow, there you have the picture, the immensely tall trees, elms most
of them, towering and feathering away up into the black mistiness that
trees seem to gather about them at night; the silhouettes of those two
upon the seat; the beams of light coming from the Casino, the woman all
in black peeping with fear behind the tree-trunk. It is melodrama; but I
can't help it.

And then, it appears, something happened to Edward Ashburnham. He
assured me--and I see no reason for disbelieving him--that until that
moment he had had no idea whatever of caring for the girl. He said that
he had regarded her exactly as he would have regarded a daughter. He
certainly loved her, but with a very deep, very tender and very tranquil
love. He had missed her when she went away to her convent-school; he
had been glad when she had returned. But of more than that he had been
totally unconscious. Had he been conscious of it, he assured me, he
would have fled from it as from a thing accursed. He realized that it
was the last outrage upon Leonora. But the real point was his entire
unconsciousness. He had gone with her into that dark park with no
quickening of the pulse, with no desire for the intimacy of solitude.
He had gone, intending to talk about polo-ponies, and tennis-racquets;
about the temperament of the reverend Mother at the convent she had left
and about whether her frock for a party when they got home should be
white or blue. It hadn't come into his head that they would talk about a
single thing that they hadn't always talked about; it had not even
come into his head that the tabu which extended around her was not
inviolable. And then, suddenly, that--He was very careful to assure me
that at that time there was no physical motive about his declaration. It
did not appear to him to be a matter of a dark night and a propinquity
and so on. No, it was simply of her effect on the moral side of his life
that he appears to have talked. He said that he never had the slightest
notion to enfold her in his arms or so much as to touch her hand. He
swore that he did not touch her hand. He said that they sat, she at one
end of the bench, he at the other; he leaning slightly towards her
and she looking straight towards the light of the Casino, her face
illuminated by the lamps. The expression upon her face he could only
describe as "queer". At another time, indeed, he made it appear that he
thought she was glad. It is easy to imagine that she was glad, since
at that time she could have had no idea of what was really happening.
Frankly, she adored Edward Ashburnham. He was for her, in everything
that she said at that time, the model of humanity, the hero, the
athlete, the father of his country, the law-giver. So that for her,
to be suddenly, intimately and overwhelmingly praised must have been
a matter for mere gladness, however overwhelming it were. It must have
been as if a god had approved her handiwork or a king her loyalty. She
just sat still and listened, smiling. And it seemed to her that all the
bitterness of her childhood, the terrors of her tempestuous father, the
bewailings of her cruel-tongued mother were suddenly atoned for. She
had her recompense at last. Because, of course, if you come to figure
it out, a sudden pouring forth of passion by a man whom you regard as a
cross between a pastor and a father might, to a woman, have the aspect
of mere praise for good conduct. It wouldn't, I mean, appear at all in
the light of an attempt to gain possession. The girl, at least, regarded
him as firmly anchored to his Leonora. She had not the slightest inkling
of any infidelities. He had always spoken to her of his wife in terms of
reverence and deep affection. He had given her the idea that he regarded
Leonora as absolutely impeccable and as absolutely satisfying. Their
union had appeared to her to be one of those blessed things that are
spoken of and contemplated with reverence by her church.

So that, when he spoke of her as being the person he cared most for in
the world, she naturally thought that he meant to except Leonora and
she was just glad. It was like a father saying that he approved of a
marriageable daughter... And Edward, when he realized what he was doing,
curbed his tongue at once. She was just glad and she went on being just
glad.

I suppose that that was the most monstrously wicked thing that Edward
Ashburnham ever did in his life. And yet I am so near to all these
people that I cannot think any of them wicked. It is impossible of me
to think of Edward Ashburnham as anything but straight, upright and
honourable. That, I mean, is, in spite of everything, my permanent view
of him. I try at times by dwelling on some of the things that he did
to push that image of him away, as you might try to push aside a large
pendulum. But it always comes back--the memory of his innumerable acts
of kindness, of his efficiency, of his unspiteful tongue. He was such a
fine fellow.

So I feel myself forced to attempt to excuse him in this as in so many
other things. It is, I have no doubt, a most monstrous thing to attempt
to corrupt a young girl just out of a convent. But I think Edward had
no idea at all of corrupting her. I believe that he simply loved her.
He said that that was the way of it and I, at least, believe him and I
believe too that she was the only woman he ever really loved. He said
that that was so; and he did enough to prove it. And Leonora said that
it was so and Leonora knew him to the bottom of his heart.

I have come to be very much of a cynic in these matters; I mean that it
is impossible to believe in the permanence of man's or woman's love. Or,
at any rate, it is impossible to believe in the permanence of any early
passion. As I see it, at least, with regard to man, a love affair, a
love for any definite woman--is something in the nature of a widening
of the experience. With each new woman that a man is attracted to
there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like, an
acquiring of new territory. A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice,
a queer characteristic gesture--all these things, and it is these things
that cause to arise the passion of love--all these things are like so
many objects on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk
beyond the horizon, to explore. He wants to get, as it were, behind
those eyebrows with the peculiar turn, as if he desired to see the world
with the eyes that they overshadow. He wants to hear that voice applying
itself to every possible proposition, to every possible topic; he wants
to see those characteristic gestures against every possible background.
Of the question of the sex-instinct I know very little and I do not
think that it counts for very much in a really great passion. It can be
aroused by such nothings--by an untied shoelace, by a glance of the
eye in passing--that I think it might be left out of the calculation. I
don't mean to say that any great passion can exist without a desire for
consummation. That seems to me to be a commonplace and to be therefore a
matter needing no comment at all. It is a thing, with all its accidents,
that must be taken for granted, as, in a novel, or a biography, you
take it for granted that the characters have their meals with some
regularity. But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a
passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the craving
for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the
same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the
same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For,
whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who
loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his
courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be
the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are
all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own
worthiness to exist. So, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition,
the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the
encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of
his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as
the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages
of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will
have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest story. And
yet I do believe that for every man there comes at last a woman--or no,
that is the wrong way of formulating it. For every man there comes
at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her seal upon his
imagination has set her seal for good. He will travel over no more
horizons; he will never again set the knapsack over his shoulders; he
will retire from those scenes. He will have gone out of the business.
That at any rate was the case with Edward and the poor girl. It was
quite literally the case. It was quite literally the case that his
passions--for the mistress of the Grand Duke, for Mrs Basil, for little
Mrs Maidan, for Florence, for whom you will--these passions were merely
preliminary canters compared to his final race with death for her. I
am certain of that. I am not going to be so American as to say that all
true love demands some sacrifice. It doesn't. But I think that love will
be truer and more permanent in which self-sacrifice has been exacted.
And, in the case of the other women, Edward just cut in and cut them
out as he did with the polo-ball from under the nose of Count Baron von
Leloeffel. I don't mean to say that he didn't wear himself as thin as a
lath in the endeavour to capture the other women; but over her he wore
himself to rags and tatters and death--in the effort to leave her alone.

And, in speaking to her on that night, he wasn't, I am convinced,
committing a baseness. It was as if his passion for her hadn't existed;
as if the very words that he spoke, without knowing that he spoke them,
created the passion as they went along. Before he spoke, there was
nothing; afterwards, it was the integral fact of his life. Well, I must
get back to my story.

And my story was concerning itself with Florence--with Florence,
who heard those words from behind the tree. That of course is only
conjecture, but I think the conjecture is pretty well justified. You
have the fact that those two went out, that she followed them almost
immediately afterwards through the darkness and, a little later, she
came running back to the hotel with that pallid face and the hand
clutching her dress over her heart. It can't have been only Bagshawe.
Her face was contorted with agony before ever her eyes fell upon me
or upon him beside me. But I dare say Bagshawe may have been the
determining influence in her suicide. Leonora says that she had that
flask, apparently of nitrate of amyl, but actually of prussic acid, for
many years and that she was determined to use it if ever I discovered
the nature of her relationship with that fellow Jimmy. You see, the
mainspring of her nature must have been vanity. There is no reason why
it shouldn't have been; I guess it is vanity that makes most of us keep
straight, if we do keep straight, in this world.

If it had been merely a matter of Edward's relations with the girl I
dare say Florence would have faced it out. She would no doubt have made
him scenes, have threatened him, have appealed to his sense of humour,
to his promises. But Mr Bagshawe and the fact that the date was the 4th
of August must have been too much for her superstitious mind. You see,
she had two things that she wanted. She wanted to be a great lady,
installed in Branshaw Teleragh. She wanted also to retain my respect.

She wanted, that is to say, to retain my respect for as long as she
lived with me. I suppose, if she had persuaded Edward Ashburnham to bolt
with her she would have let the whole thing go with a run. Or perhaps
she would have tried to exact from me a new respect for the greatness of
her passion on the lines of all for love and the world well lost. That
would be just like Florence.

In all matrimonial associations there is, I believe, one constant
factor--a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some
weak spot in one's character or in one's career. For it is intolerable
to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small
meannesses. It is really death to do so--that is why so many marriages
turn out unhappily.

I, for instance, am a rather greedy man; I have a taste for good
cookery and a watering tooth at the mere sound of the names of certain
comestibles. If Florence had discovered this secret of mine I should
have found her knowledge of it so unbearable that I never could have
supported all the other privations of the regime that she extracted from
me. I am bound to say that Florence never discovered this secret.

Certainly she never alluded to it; I dare say she never took sufficient
interest in me.

And the secret weakness of Florence--the weakness that she could not
bear to have me discover, was just that early escapade with the fellow
called Jimmy. Let me, as this is in all probability the last time I
shall mention Florence's name, dwell a little upon the change that had
taken place in her psychology. She would not, I mean, have minded if I
had discovered that she was the mistress of Edward Ashburnham. She would
rather have liked it. Indeed, the chief trouble of poor Leonora in those
days was to keep Florence from making, before me, theatrical displays,
on one line or another, of that very fact. She wanted, in one mood,
to come rushing to me, to cast herself on her knees at my feet and to
declaim a carefully arranged, frightfully emotional, outpouring as to
her passion. That was to show that she was like one of the great erotic
women of whom history tells us. In another mood she would desire to come
to me disdainfully and to tell me that I was considerably less than a
man and that what had happened was what must happen when a real male
came along. She wanted to say that in cool, balanced and sarcastic
sentences. That was when she wished to appear like the heroine of a
French comedy. Because of course she was always play acting.

But what she didn't want me to know was the fact of her first escapade
with the fellow called Jimmy. She had arrived at figuring out the sort
of low-down Bowery tough that that fellow was. Do you know what it is to
shudder, in later life, for some small, stupid action--usually for some
small, quite genuine piece of emotionalism--of your early life? Well, it
was that sort of shuddering that came over Florence at the thought that
she had surrendered to such a low fellow. I don't know that she need
have shuddered. It was her footling old uncle's work; he ought never to
have taken those two round the world together and shut himself up in his
cabin for the greater part of the time. Anyhow, I am convinced that the
sight of Mr Bagshawe and the thought that Mr Bagshawe--for she knew that
unpleasant and toadlike personality--the thought that Mr Bagshawe would
almost certainly reveal to me that he had caught her coming out of
Jimmy's bedroom at five o'clock in the morning on the 4th of August,
1900--that was the determining influence in her suicide. And no doubt
the effect of the date was too much for her superstitious personality.
She had been born on the 4th of August; she had started to go round the
world on the 4th of August; she had become a low fellow's mistress on
the 4th of August. On the same day of the year she had married me; on
that 4th she had lost Edward's love, and Bagshawe had appeared like a
sinister omen--like a grin on the face of Fate. It was the last straw.
She ran upstairs, arranged herself decoratively upon her bed--she was a
sweetly pretty woman with smooth pink and white cheeks, long hair,
the eyelashes falling like a tiny curtain on her cheeks. She drank the
little phial of prussic acid and there she lay.--Oh, extremely charming
and clear-cut--looking with a puzzled expression at the electric-light
bulb that hung from the ceiling, or perhaps through it, to the stars
above. Who knows? Anyhow, there was an end of Florence.

You have no idea how quite extraordinarily for me that was the end of
Florence. From that day to this I have never given her another thought;
I have not bestowed upon her so much as a sigh. Of course, when it has
been necessary to talk about her to Leonora, or when for the purpose of
these writings I have tried to figure her out, I have thought about her
as I might do about a problem in algebra. But it has always been as a
matter for study, not for remembrance. She just went completely out of
existence, like yesterday's paper.

I was so deadly tired. And I dare say that my week or ten days of
affaissement--of what was practically catalepsy--was just the repose
that my exhausted nature claimed after twelve years of the repression of
my instincts, after twelve years of playing the trained poodle. For
that was all that I had been. I suppose that it was the shock that did
it--the several shocks. But I am unwilling to attribute my feelings
at that time to anything so concrete as a shock. It was a feeling so
tranquil. It was as if an immensely heavy--an unbearably heavy knapsack,
supported upon my shoulders by straps, had fallen off and left my
shoulders themselves that the straps had cut into, numb and without
sensation of life. I tell you, I had no regret. What had I to regret?
I suppose that my inner soul--my dual personality--had realized long
before that Florence was a personality of paper--that she represented a
real human being with a heart, with feelings, with sympathies and with
emotions only as a bank-note represents a certain quantity of gold. I
know that sort of feeling came to the surface in me the moment the
man Bagshawe told me that he had seen her coming out of that fellow's
bedroom. I thought suddenly that she wasn't real; she was just a mass
of talk out of guidebooks, of drawings out of fashion-plates. It is even
possible that, if that feeling had not possessed me, I should have run
up sooner to her room and might have prevented her drinking the prussic
acid. But I just couldn't do it; it would have been like chasing a scrap
of paper--an occupation ignoble for a grown man.

And, as it began, so that matter has remained. I didn't care whether
she had come out of that bedroom or whether she hadn't. It simply didn't
interest me. Florence didn't matter.

I suppose you will retort that I was in love with Nancy Rufford and that
my indifference was therefore discreditable. Well, I am not seeking to
avoid discredit. I was in love with Nancy Rufford as I am in love with
the poor child's memory, quietly and quite tenderly in my American sort
of way. I had never thought about it until I heard Leonora state that I
might now marry her. But, from that moment until her worse than death, I
do not suppose that I much thought about anything else. I don't mean to
say that I sighed about her or groaned; I just wanted to marry her as
some people want to go to Carcassonne.

Do you understand the feeling--the sort of feeling that you must get
certain matters out of the way, smooth out certain fairly negligible
complications before you can go to a place that has, during all your
life, been a sort of dream city? I didn't attach much importance to my
superior years. I was forty-five, and she, poor thing, was only just
rising twenty-two. But she was older than her years and quieter. She
seemed to have an odd quality of sainthood, as if she must inevitably
end in a convent with a white coif framing her face. But she had
frequently told me that she had no vocation; it just simply wasn't
there--the desire to become a nun. Well, I guess that I was a sort of
convent myself; it seemed fairly proper that she should make her vows to
me. No, I didn't see any impediment on the score of age. I dare say no
man does and I was pretty confident that with a little preparation, I
could make a young girl happy. I could spoil her as few young girls have
ever been spoiled; and I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive.
No man can, or if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him. But,
as soon as I came out of my catalepsy, I seemed to perceive that my
problem--that what I had to do to prepare myself for getting into
contact with her, was just to get back into contact with life. I had
been kept for twelve years in a rarefied atmosphere; what I then had
to do was a little fighting with real life, some wrestling with men
of business, some travelling amongst larger cities, something harsh,
something masculine. I didn't want to present myself to Nancy Rufford as
a sort of an old maid. That was why, just a fortnight after Florence's
suicide, I set off for the United States.

IMMEDIATELY after Florence's death Leonora began to put the leash upon
Nancy Rufford and Edward. She had guessed what had happened under the
trees near the Casino. They stayed at Nauheim some weeks after I went,
and Leonora has told me that that was the most deadly time of her
existence. It seemed like a long, silent duel with invisible weapons,
so she said. And it was rendered all the more difficult by the girl's
entire innocence. For Nancy was always trying to go off alone with
Edward--as she had been doing all her life, whenever she was home for
holidays. She just wanted him to say nice things to her again.

You see, the position was extremely complicated. It was as complicated
as it well could be, along delicate lines. There was the complication
caused by the fact that Edward and Leonora never spoke to each other
except when other people were present. Then, as I have said, their
demeanours were quite perfect. There was the complication caused by the
girl's entire innocence; there was the further complication that both
Edward and Leonora really regarded the girl as their daughter. Or it
might be more precise to say that they regarded her as being Leonora's
daughter. And Nancy was a queer girl; it is very difficult to describe
her to you.

She was tall and strikingly thin; she had a tortured mouth, agonized
eyes, and a quite extraordinary sense of fun. You, might put it that
at times she was exceedingly grotesque and at times extraordinarily
beautiful. Why, she had the heaviest head of black hair that I have ever
come across; I used to wonder how she could bear the weight of it. She
was just over twenty-one and at times she seemed as old as the hills, at
times not much more than sixteen. At one moment she would be talking of
the lives of the saints and at the next she would be tumbling all over
the lawn with the St Bernard puppy. She could ride to hounds like
a Maenad and she could sit for hours perfectly still, steeping
handkerchief after handkerchief in vinegar when Leonora had one of her
headaches. She was, in short, a miracle of patience who could be almost
miraculously impatient. It was, no doubt, the convent training that
effected that. I remember that one of her letters to me, when she was
about sixteen, ran something like:

"On Corpus Christi"--or it may have been some other saint's day, I
cannot keep these things in my head--"our school played Roehampton at
Hockey. And, seeing that our side was losing, being three goals to
one against us at halftime, we retired into the chapel and prayed for
victory. We won by five goals to three." And I remember that she seemed
to describe afterwards a sort of saturnalia. Apparently, when the
victorious fifteen or eleven came into the refectory for supper, the
whole school jumped upon the tables and cheered and broke the chairs on
the floor and smashed the crockery--for a given time, until the
Reverend Mother rang a hand-bell. That is of course the Catholic
tradition--saturnalia that can end in a moment, like the crack of a
whip. I don't, of course, like the tradition, but I am bound to say that
it gave Nancy--or at any rate Nancy had--a sense of rectitude that I
have never seen surpassed. It was a thing like a knife that looked
out of her eyes and that spoke with her voice, just now and then. It
positively frightened me. I suppose that I was almost afraid to be in a
world where there could be so fine a standard. I remember when she was
about fifteen or sixteen on going back to the convent I once gave her
a couple of English sovereigns as a tip. She thanked me in a peculiarly
heartfelt way, saying that it would come in extremely handy. I asked her
why and she explained. There was a rule at the school that the pupils
were not to speak when they walked through the garden from the chapel
to the refectory. And, since this rule appeared to be idiotic and
arbitrary, she broke it on purpose day after day. In the evening the
children were all asked if they had committed any faults during the day,
and every evening Nancy confessed that she had broken this particular
rule. It cost her sixpence a time, that being the fine attached to the
offence. Just for the information I asked her why she always confessed,
and she answered in these exact words:

"Oh, well, the girls of the Holy Child have always been noted for their
truthfulness. It's a beastly bore, but I've got to do it."

I dare say that the miserable nature of her childhood, coming before the
mixture of saturnalia and discipline that was her convent life, added
something to her queernesses. Her father was a violent madman of
a fellow, a major of one of what I believe are called the Highland
regiments. He didn't drink, but he had an ungovernable temper, and the
first thing that Nancy could remember was seeing her father strike her
mother with his clenched fist so that her mother fell over sideways
from the breakfast-table and lay motionless. The mother was no doubt an
irritating woman and the privates of that regiment appeared to have been
irritating, too, so that the house was a place of outcries and perpetual
disturbances. Mrs Rufford was Leonora's dearest friend and Leonora
could be cutting enough at times. But I fancy she was as nothing to Mrs
Rufford. The Major would come in to lunch harassed and already spitting
out oaths after an unsatisfactory morning's drilling of his stubborn men
beneath a hot sun. And then Mrs Rufford would make some cutting remark
and pandemonium would break loose. Once, when she had been about twelve,
Nancy had tried to intervene between the pair of them. Her father had
struck her full upon the forehead a blow so terrible that she had lain
unconscious for three days. Nevertheless, Nancy seemed to prefer her
father to her mother. She remembered rough kindnesses from him. Once
or twice when she had been quite small he had dressed her in a clumsy,
impatient, but very tender way. It was nearly always impossible to get
a servant to stay in the family and, for days at a time, apparently, Mrs
Rufford would be incapable. I fancy she drank. At any rate, she had so
cutting a tongue that even Nancy was afraid of her--she so made fun of
any tenderness, she so sneered at all emotional displays. Nancy must
have been a very emotional child.

Then one day, quite suddenly, on her return from a ride at Fort William,
Nancy had been sent, with her governess, who had a white face, right
down South to that convent school. She had been expecting to go there in
two months' time. Her mother disappeared from her life at that time. A
fortnight later Leonora came to the convent and told her that her mother
was dead. Perhaps she was. At any rate, I never heard until the very end
what became of Mrs Rufford. Leonora never spoke of her.

And then Major Rufford went to India, from which he returned very seldom
and only for very short visits; and Nancy lived herself gradually into
the life at Branshaw Teleragh. I think that, from that time onwards, she
led a very happy life, till the end. There were dogs and horses and old
servants and the Forest. And there were Edward and Leonora, who loved
her.

I had known her all the time--I mean, that she always came to the
Ashburnhams' at Nauheim for the last fortnight of their stay--and I
watched her gradually growing. She was very cheerful with me. She always
even kissed me, night and morning, until she was about eighteen. And she
would skip about and fetch me things and laugh at my tales of life in
Philadelphia. But, beneath her gaiety, I fancy that there lurked some
terrors. I remember one day, when she was just eighteen, during one of
her father's rare visits to Europe, we were sitting in the gardens, near
the iron-stained fountain. Leonora had one of her headaches and we were
waiting for Florence and Edward to come from their baths. You have no
idea how beautiful Nancy looked that morning.

We were talking about the desirability of taking tickets in
lotteries--of the moral side of it, I mean. She was all in white, and
so tall and fragile; and she had only just put her hair up, so that
the carriage of her neck had that charming touch of youth and of
unfamiliarity. Over her throat there played the reflection from a little
pool of water, left by a thunderstorm of the night before, and all the
rest of her features were in the diffused and luminous shade of her
white parasol. Her dark hair just showed beneath her broad, white hat
of pierced, chip straw; her throat was very long and leaned forward, and
her eyebrows, arching a little as she laughed at some old-fashionedness
in my phraseology, had abandoned their tense line. And there was a
little colour in her cheeks and light in her deep blue eyes. And to
think that that vivid white thing, that saintly and swanlike being--to
think that... Why, she was like the sail of a ship, so white and so
definite in her movements. And to think that she will never... Why, she
will never do anything again. I can't believe it...

Anyhow, we were chattering away about the morality of lotteries. And
then, suddenly, there came from the arcades behind us the overtones of
her father's unmistakable voice; it was as if a modified foghorn had
boomed with a reed inside it. I looked round to catch sight of him. A
tall, fair, stiffly upright man of fifty, he was walking away with an
Italian baron who had had much to do with the Belgian Congo. They must
have been talking about the proper treatment of natives, for I heard him
say:

"Oh, hang humanity!"

When I looked again at Nancy her eyes were closed and her face was more
pallid than her dress, which had at least some pinkish reflections from
the gravel. It was dreadful to see her with her eyes closed like that.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, and her hand that had appeared to be groping,
settled for a moment on my arm. "Never speak of it. Promise never to
tell my father of it. It brings back those dreadful dreams..." And, when
she opened her eyes she looked straight into mine. "The blessed saints,"
she said, "you would think they would spare you such things. I don't
believe all the sinning in the world could make one deserve them."

They say the poor thing was always allowed a light at night, even in her
bedroom.... And yet, no young girl could more archly and lovingly have
played with an adored father. She was always holding him by both coat
lapels; cross-questioning him as to how he spent his time; kissing the
top of his head. Ah, she was well-bred, if ever anyone was.

The poor, wretched man cringed before her--but she could not have done
more to put him at his ease. Perhaps she had had lessons in it at her
convent. It was only that peculiar note of his voice, used when he was
overbearing or dogmatic, that could unman her--and that was only visible
when it came unexpectedly. That was because the bad dreams that the
blessed saints allowed her to have for her sins always seemed to her
to herald themselves by the booming sound of her father's voice. It
was that sound that had always preceded his entrance for the terrible
lunches of her childhood... .

I have reported, earlier in this chapter, that Leonora said, during that
remainder of their stay at Nauheim, after I had left, it had seemed to
her that she was fighting a long duel with unseen weapons against silent
adversaries. Nancy, as I have also said, was always trying to go off
with Edward alone. That had been her habit for years. And Leonora found
it to be her duty to stop that. It was very difficult. Nancy was used
to having her own way, and for years she had been used to going off
with Edward, ratting, rabbiting, catching salmon down at Fordingbridge,
district-visiting of the sort that Edward indulged in, or calling on the
tenants. And at Nauheim she and Edward had always gone up to the Casino
alone in the evenings--at any rate, whenever Florence did not call for
his attendance. It shows the obviously innocent nature of the regard of
those two that even Florence had never had any idea of jealousy. Leonora
had cultivated the habit of going to bed at ten o'clock.

I don't know how she managed it, but, for all the time they were at
Nauheim, she contrived never to let those two be alone together, except
in broad daylight, in very crowded places. If a Protestant had done that
it would no doubt have awakened a self-consciousness in the girl. But
Catholics, who have always reservations and queer spots of secrecy, can
manage these things better. And I dare say that two things made this
easier--the death of Florence and the fact that Edward was obviously
sickening. He appeared, indeed, to be very ill; his shoulders began
to be bowed; there were pockets under his eyes; he had extraordinary
moments of inattention.

And Leonora describes herself as watching him as a fierce cat watches an
unconscious pigeon in a roadway. In that silent watching, again, I think
she was a Catholic--of a people that can think thoughts alien to ours
and keep them to themselves. And the thoughts passed through her mind;
some of them even got through to Edward with never a word spoken. At
first she thought that it might be remorse, or grief, for the death
of Florence that was oppressing him. But she watched and watched, and
uttered apparently random sentences about Florence before the girl, and
she perceived that he had no grief and no remorse. He had not any idea
that Florence could have committed suicide without writing at least a
tirade to him. The absence of that made him certain that it had been
heart disease. For Florence had never undeceived him on that point. She
thought it made her seem more romantic.

No, Edward had no remorse. He was able to say to himself that he had
treated Florence with gallant attentiveness of the kind that she desired
until two hours before her death. Leonora gathered that from the look in
his eyes, and from the way he straightened his shoulders over her as
she lay in her coffin--from that and a thousand other little things. She
would speak suddenly about Florence to the girl and he would not start
in the least; he would not even pay attention, but would sit with
bloodshot eyes gazing at the tablecloth. He drank a good deal, at that
time--a steady soaking of drink every evening till long after they had
gone to bed.

For Leonora made the girl go to bed at ten, unreasonable though that
seemed to Nancy. She would understand that, whilst they were in a
sort of half mourning for Florence, she ought not to be seen at public
places, like the Casino; but she could not see why she should not
accompany her uncle upon his evening strolls though the park. I don't
know what Leonora put up as an excuse--something, I fancy, in the nature
of a nightly orison that she made the girl and herself perform for the
soul of Florence. And then, one evening, about a fortnight later, when
the girl, growing restive at even devotional exercises, clamoured once
more to be allowed to go for a walk with Edward, and when Leonora was
really at her wits' end, Edward gave himself into her hands. He was just
standing up from dinner and had his face averted.

But he turned his heavy head and his bloodshot eyes upon his wife and
looked full at her.

"Doctor von Hauptmann," he said, "has ordered me to go to bed
immediately after dinner. My heart's much worse."

He continued to look at Leonora for a long minute--with a sort of heavy
contempt. And Leonora understood that, with his speech, he was giving
her the excuse that she needed for separating him from the girl, and
with his eyes he was reproaching her for thinking that he would try to
corrupt Nancy.

He went silently up to his room and sat there for a long time--until
the girl was well in bed--reading in the Anglican prayer-book. And about
half-past ten she heard his footsteps pass her door, going outwards. Two
and a half hours later they came back, stumbling heavily.

She remained, reflecting upon this position until the last night of
their stay at Nauheim. Then she suddenly acted. For, just in the same
way, suddenly after dinner, she looked at him and said:

"Teddy, don't you think you could take a night off from your doctor's
orders and go with Nancy to the Casino. The poor child has had her visit
so spoiled."

He looked at her in turn for a long, balancing minute.

"Why, yes," he said at last.

Nancy jumped out of her chair and kissed him. Those two words, Leonora
said, gave her the greatest relief of any two syllables she had ever
heard in her life. For she realized that Edward was breaking up, not
under the desire for possession, but from the dogged determination to
hold his hand. She could relax some of her vigilance.

Nevertheless, she sat in the darkness behind her half-closed jalousies,
looking over the street and the night and the trees until, very late,
she could hear Nancy's clear voice coming closer and saying:

"You did look an old guy with that false nose." There had been some sort
of celebration of a local holiday up in the Kursaal. And Edward replied
with his sort of sulky good nature:

"As for you, you looked like old Mother Sideacher."

The girl came swinging along, a silhouette beneath a gas-lamp; Edward,
another, slouched at her side. They were talking just as they had talked
any time since the girl had been seventeen; with the same tones, the
same joke about an old beggar woman who always amused them at Branshaw.
The girl, a little later, opened Leonora's door whilst she was still
kissing Edward on the forehead as she had done every night.

"We've had a most glorious time," she said. "He's ever so much better.
He raced me for twenty yards home. Why are you all in the dark?"

Leonora could hear Edward going about in his room, but, owing to the
girl's chatter, she could not tell whether he went out again or not.
And then, very much later, because she thought that if he were drinking
again something must be done to stop it, she opened for the first time,
and very softly, the never-opened door between their rooms. She wanted
to see if he had gone out again. Edward was kneeling beside his bed with
his head hidden in the counterpane. His arms, outstretched, held out
before him a little image of the Blessed Virgin--a tawdry, scarlet and
Prussian blue affair that the girl had given him on her first return
from the convent. His shoulders heaved convulsively three times, and
heavy sobs came from him before she could close the door. He was not a
Catholic; but that was the way it took him.

Leonora slept for the first time that night with a sleep from which she
never once started.

 Part III, Section I Dowell considers marrying Nancy, "the Girl." Until Florence was dead, he never before thought about it, but on the night Florence dies, Leonora allows him the privilege of considering it. Months later, after Edward's death, Leonora tells Dowell all she knows. She reveals the deception that his wife has practiced on him for the entire duration of their marriage. At the time of Florence's death, Dowell is not even aware that she has committed suicide. He claims that when he saw Florence dead, he "thought nothing," "felt no sorrow," "no desire for action," nothing whatsoever. All he thought was that now he could marry the girl. Dowell pieces together the stories he has received from Leonora and Edward to determine the truth of what happened on the night that Florence died. Instead of going to the casino, Nancy and Edward went to sit on a bench in a dimly-lit park. Florence followed them into the park and quietly watched the events that unfolded. Edward swears he had never thought of Nancy in a romantic way until he saw her that evening sitting in the moonlight. Overwhelmed with love, he tells her that she is the woman he cares for more than anyone else in the world. Nancy, who thought Edward was entirely faithful to Leonora, merely thought this was a type of praise aimed at a good child. But Florence, hidden in the bushes, was deeply hurt and ran back into the hotel. Dowell surmises that the sight of Bagshawe and the fact that the date was August 4 overwhelmed her superstitious mind. If Florence was fueled by vanity, as Dowell believes, then she had been dealt two hard blows in one evening; she could not bear that Edward did not love her and that her husband should know about her degrading relationship with Jimmy. Dowell claims that after Florence's death and before writing this tale, he did not think of her at all. It was a relief for him not to be a nurse-maid any longer, and he did not give her so much as a sigh. She didn't matter to him. All that he thought about was the possibility of marrying Nancy Rufford. That is why, as soon as Florence was gone, Dowell set off for the United States, to regain some of his masculinity and make himself more appealing to the girl. Part III, Section II Leonora guesses what has taken place that night in the park, and she endeavors to separate Edward from Nancy as much as possible. But Nancy is entirely innocent. Dowell describes her as quite an interesting girl, at times beautiful and other times grotesque. She has an incredible sense of fun and of complete honesty at once. Nancy's story is unique. Her father, Major Rufford, was a violent man who often beat his wife after she would provoke him with her outbursts or her drunkenness. Nancy was sent to convent school at a young age, and her father went off to serve in India. Leonora, who had been Mrs. Rufford's best friend, agreed to care for Nancy, and she and Edward have been Nancy's guardians ever since. After Florence's death, Leonora becomes vigilant to ensure that Nancy and Edward are never alone together. Edward, who is doggedly determined never to act on his passion for the girl, grows weaker and weaker with each day. His health fails and he drinks increasingly more. Leonora recognizes that Edward can be trusted. She allows them to go out together one night, like they have always done in the past. Later that night, she finds Edward on his knees at the foot of the bed sobbing uncontrollably, an image of the Blessed Virgin in his hands. Leonora feels she can finally relax. Part III, Section III Dowell describes Leonora's breakdown. Because she knew that she could trust Edward and that Nancy was absolutely trustworthy, Leonora finally felt that she could relax her vigilance, and it was then, when her defenses began to weaken, that she fell apart. Dowell explains the history of Leonora's marriage to Edward. She was one of seven daughters born to Colonel and Mrs. Powys, the owners of an Irish manor house. She was extremely sheltered, going first to convent school, and then remaining cloistered in her parents' home. Her marriage to Edward was arranged by her parents who asked the Ashburnhams for a favor. They wanted to have their son marry one of the Powys daughters. From the start, Edward admired Leonora, her "cleanness of mind," her truth, her efficiency, but she never held any true spark for him. Leonora's admiration for Edward, however, soon grew into love. She loved him intensely and desired love in return. Problems arose in their marriage when Leonora's desire for economic efficiency clashed with Edward's tendencies toward generosity and extravagance. Edward, always a sentimentalist, desired to build an expensive and elaborate Catholic church on the property as a homage to his wife. But Leonora argued that such a suggestion was ostentatious and unnecessary; he was hurt by her lack of sentiment. He began to fear that where his traditions were entirely collective, his wife was a "sheer individualist." Edward and Leonora drifted further and further apart. Edward, an Anglican, refused to allow any future sons to be raised Catholic. Leonora agonized over this; she believed that any child of hers raised Anglican would have mortal sin on his soul. They fought about religion and they argued about money; they grew increasingly estranged. Edward's brief encounter with a young girl in the back of a railway carriage  actually came as a relief to Leonora. It allowed her to stand faithfully and publicly behind her husband. But mentally, Edward was scarred by the drama and publicity.

