Chapter: IT was a very hot summer, in August, 1904; and Florence had already been
taking the baths for a month. I don't know how it feels to be a patient
at one of those places. I never was a patient anywhere. I daresay the
patients get a home feeling and some sort of anchorage in the spot. They
seem to like the bath attendants, with their cheerful faces, their air
of authority, their white linen. But, for myself, to be at Nauheim
gave me a sense--what shall I say?--a sense almost of nakedness--the
nakedness that one feels on the sea-shore or in any great open space.
I had no attachments, no accumulations. In one's own home it is as if
little, innate sympathies draw one to particular chairs that seem to
enfold one in an embrace, or take one along particular streets that seem
friendly when others may be hostile. And, believe me, that feeling is a
very important part of life. I know it well, that have been for so long
a wanderer upon the face of public resorts. And one is too polished up.
Heaven knows I was never an untidy man. But the feeling that I had
when, whilst poor Florence was taking her morning bath, I stood upon the
carefully swept steps of the Englischer Hof, looking at the carefully
arranged trees in tubs upon the carefully arranged gravel whilst
carefully arranged people walked past in carefully calculated gaiety,
at the carefully calculated hour, the tall trees of the public gardens,
going up to the right; the reddish stone of the baths--or were they
white half-timber chalets? Upon my word I have forgotten, I who was
there so often. That will give you the measure of how much I was in
the landscape. I could find my way blindfolded to the hot rooms, to the
douche rooms, to the fountain in the centre of the quadrangle where the
rusty water gushes out. Yes, I could find my way blindfolded. I know
the exact distances. From the Hotel Regina you took one hundred and
eighty-seven paces, then, turning sharp, left-handed, four hundred and
twenty took you straight down to the fountain. From the Englischer Hof,
starting on the sidewalk, it was ninety-seven paces and the same four
hundred and twenty, but turning lefthanded this time.

And now you understand that, having nothing in the world to do--but
nothing whatever! I fell into the habit of counting my footsteps. I
would walk with Florence to the baths. And, of course, she entertained
me with her conversation. It was, as I have said, wonderful what she
could make conversation out of. She walked very lightly, and her hair
was very nicely done, and she dressed beautifully and very expensively.
Of course she had money of her own, but I shouldn't have minded. And yet
you know I can't remember a single one of her dresses. Or I can
remember just one, a very simple one of blue figured silk--a Chinese
pattern--very full in the skirts and broadening out over the shoulders.
And her hair was copper-coloured, and the heels of her shoes were
exceedingly high, so that she tripped upon the points of her toes. And
when she came to the door of the bathing place, and when it opened to
receive her, she would look back at me with a little coquettish smile,
so that her cheek appeared to be caressing her shoulder.

I seem to remember that, with that dress, she wore an immensely broad
Leghorn hat--like the Chapeau de Paille of Rubens, only very white. The
hat would be tied with a lightly knotted scarf of the same stuff as her
dress. She knew how to give value to her blue eyes. And round her neck
would be some simple pink, coral beads. And her complexion had a perfect
clearness, a perfect smoothness...

Yes, that is how I most exactly remember her, in that dress, in that
hat, looking over her shoulder at me so that the eyes flashed very
blue--dark pebble blue...

And, what the devil! For whose benefit did she do it? For that of the
bath attendant? of the passers-by? I don't know. Anyhow, it can't have
been for me, for never, in all the years of her life, never on any
possible occasion, or in any other place did she so smile to me,
mockingly, invitingly. Ah, she was a riddle; but then, all other women
are riddles. And it occurs to me that some way back I began a sentence
that I have never finished... It was about the feeling that I had when
I stood on the steps of my hotel every morning before starting out
to fetch Florence back from the bath. Natty, precise, well-brushed,
conscious of being rather small amongst the long English, the lank
Americans, the rotund Germans, and the obese Russian Jewesses, I should
stand there, tapping a cigarette on the outside of my case, surveying
for a moment the world in the sunlight. But a day was to come when I was
never to do it again alone. You can imagine, therefore, what the coming
of the Ashburnhams meant to me. I have forgotten the aspect of many
things, but I shall never forget the aspect of the dining-room of the
Hotel Excelsior on that evening--and on so many other evenings. Whole
castles have vanished from my memory, whole cities that I have never
visited again, but that white room, festooned with papier-mache fruits
and flowers; the tall windows; the many tables; the black screen round
the door with three golden cranes flying upward on each panel; the
palm-tree in the centre of the room; the swish of the waiter's feet; the
cold expensive elegance; the mien of the diners as they came in every
evening--their air of earnestness as if they must go through a meal
prescribed by the Kur authorities and their air of sobriety as if they
must seek not by any means to enjoy their meals--those things I shall
not easily forget. And then, one evening, in the twilight, I saw Edward
Ashburnham lounge round the screen into the room. The head waiter, a man
with a face all grey--in what subterranean nooks or corners do people
cultivate those absolutely grey complexions?--went with the timorous
patronage of these creatures towards him and held out a grey ear to be
whispered into. It was generally a disagreeable ordeal for newcomers but
Edward Ashburnham bore it like an Englishman and a gentleman. I could
see his lips form a word of three syllables--remember I had nothing in
the world to do but to notice these niceties--and immediately I knew
that he must be Edward Ashburnham, Captain, Fourteenth Hussars, of
Branshaw House, Branshaw Teleragh. I knew it because every evening just
before dinner, whilst I waited in the hall, I used, by the courtesy of
Monsieur Schontz, the proprietor, to inspect the little police reports
that each guest was expected to sign upon taking a room.

The head waiter piloted him immediately to a vacant table, three away
from my own--the table that the Grenfalls of Falls River, N.J., had
just vacated. It struck me that that was not a very nice table for the
newcomers, since the sunlight, low though it was, shone straight down
upon it, and the same idea seemed to come at the same moment into
Captain Ashburnham's head. His face hitherto had, in the wonderful
English fashion, expressed nothing whatever. Nothing. There was in it
neither joy nor despair; neither hope nor fear; neither boredom nor
satisfaction. He seemed to perceive no soul in that crowded room; he
might have been walking in a jungle. I never came across such a perfect
expression before and I never shall again. It was insolence and
not insolence; it was modesty and not modesty. His hair was fair,
extraordinarily ordered in a wave, running from the left temple to the
right; his face was a light brick-red, perfectly uniform in tint up to
the roots of the hair itself; his yellow moustache was as stiff as a
toothbrush and I verily believe that he had his black smoking jacket
thickened a little over the shoulder-blades so as to give himself the
air of the slightest possible stoop. It would be like him to do that;
that was the sort of thing he thought about. Martingales, Chiffney bits,
boots; where you got the best soap, the best brandy, the name of the
chap who rode a plater down the Khyber cliffs; the spreading power of
number three shot before a charge of number four powder... by heavens, I
hardly ever heard him talk of anything else. Not in all the years that
I knew him did I hear him talk of anything but these subjects. Oh, yes,
once he told me that I could buy my special shade of blue ties cheaper
from a firm in Burlington Arcade than from my own people in New York.
And I have bought my ties from that firm ever since. Otherwise I should
not remember the name of the Burlington Arcade. I wonder what it looks
like. I have never seen it. I imagine it to be two immense rows of
pillars, like those of the Forum at Rome, with Edward Ashburnham
striding down between them. But it probably isn't--the least like that.
Once also he advised me to buy Caledonian Deferred, since they were due
to rise. And I did buy them and they did rise. But of how he got the
knowledge I haven't the faintest idea. It seemed to drop out of the blue
sky.

And that was absolutely all that I knew of him until a month ago--that
and the profusion of his cases, all of pigskin and stamped with his
initials, E. F. A. There were gun cases, and collar cases, and shirt
cases, and letter cases and cases each containing four bottles of
medicine; and hat cases and helmet cases. It must have needed a whole
herd of the Gadarene swine to make up his outfit. And, if I ever
penetrated into his private room it would be to see him standing, with
his coat and waistcoat off and the immensely long line of his perfectly
elegant trousers from waist to boot heel. And he would have a slightly
reflective air and he would be just opening one kind of case and just
closing another.

Good God, what did they all see in him? for I swear there was all there
was of him, inside and out; though they said he was a good soldier. Yet,
Leonora adored him with a passion that was like an agony, and hated
him with an agony that was as bitter as the sea. How could he arouse
anything like a sentiment, in anybody?

What did he even talk to them about--when they were under four
eyes?--Ah, well, suddenly, as if by a flash of inspiration, I know. For
all good soldiers are sentimentalists--all good soldiers of that type.
Their profession, for one thing, is full of the big words, courage,
loyalty, honour, constancy. And I have given a wrong impression of
Edward Ashburnham if I have made you think that literally never in the
course of our nine years of intimacy did he discuss what he would have
called "the graver things." Even before his final outburst to me, at
times, very late at night, say, he has blurted out something that gave
an insight into the sentimental view of the cosmos that was his.
He would say how much the society of a good woman could do towards
redeeming you, and he would say that constancy was the finest of
the virtues. He said it very stiffly, of course, but still as if the
statement admitted of no doubt.

Constancy! Isn't that the queer thought? And yet, I must add that poor
dear Edward was a great reader--he would pass hours lost in novels of a
sentimental type--novels in which typewriter girls married Marquises and
governesses Earls. And in his books, as a rule, the course of true love
ran as smooth as buttered honey. And he was fond of poetry, of a certain
type--and he could even read a perfectly sad love story. I have seen his
eyes filled with tears at reading of a hopeless parting. And he loved,
with a sentimental yearning, all children, puppies, and the feeble
generally... .

So, you see, he would have plenty to gurgle about to a woman--with
that and his sound common sense about martingales and his--still
sentimental--experiences as a county magistrate; and with his intense,
optimistic belief that the woman he was making love to at the moment was
the one he was destined, at last, to be eternally constant to.... Well,
I fancy he could put up a pretty good deal of talk when there was no
man around to make him feel shy. And I was quite astonished, during his
final burst out to me--at the very end of things, when the poor girl was
on her way to that fatal Brindisi and he was trying to persuade himself
and me that he had never really cared for her--I was quite astonished to
observe how literary and how just his expressions were. He talked like
quite a good book--a book not in the least cheaply sentimental. You see,
I suppose he regarded me not so much as a man. I had to be regarded as
a woman or a solicitor. Anyhow, it burst out of him on that horrible
night. And then, next morning, he took me over to the Assizes and I saw
how, in a perfectly calm and business-like way, he set to work to secure
a verdict of not guilty for a poor girl, the daughter of one of his
tenants, who had been accused of murdering her baby. He spent two
hundred pounds on her defence... Well, that was Edward Ashburnham.

I had forgotten about his eyes. They were as blue as the sides of a
certain type of box of matches. When you looked at them carefully
you saw that they were perfectly honest, perfectly straightforward,
perfectly, perfectly stupid. But the brick pink of his complexion,
running perfectly level to the brick pink of his inner eyelids, gave
them a curious, sinister expression--like a mosaic of blue porcelain set
in pink china. And that chap, coming into a room, snapped up the gaze of
every woman in it, as dexterously as a conjurer pockets billiard balls.
It was most amazing. You know the man on the stage who throws up sixteen
balls at once and they all drop into pockets all over his person, on his
shoulders, on his heels, on the inner side of his sleeves; and he stands
perfectly still and does nothing. Well, it was like that. He had rather
a rough, hoarse voice.

And, there he was, standing by the table. I was looking at him, with my
back to the screen. And suddenly, I saw two distinct expressions
flicker across his immobile eyes. How the deuce did they do it, those
unflinching blue eyes with the direct gaze? For the eyes themselves
never moved, gazing over my shoulder towards the screen. And the gaze
was perfectly level and perfectly direct and perfectly unchanging. I
suppose that the lids really must have rounded themselves a little and
perhaps the lips moved a little too, as if he should be saying: "There
you are, my dear." At any rate, the expression was that of pride, of
satisfaction, of the possessor. I saw him once afterwards, for a moment,
gaze upon the sunny fields of Branshaw and say: "All this is my land!"

And then again, the gaze was perhaps more direct, harder if
possible--hardy too. It was a measuring look; a challenging look. Once
when we were at Wiesbaden watching him play in a polo match against the
Bonner Hussaren I saw the same look come into his eyes, balancing the
possibilities, looking over the ground. The German Captain, Count Baron
Idigon von Leloeffel, was right up by their goal posts, coming with the
ball in an easy canter in that tricky German fashion. The rest of
the field were just anywhere. It was only a scratch sort of affair.
Ashburnham was quite close to the rails not five yards from us and
I heard him saying to himself: "Might just be done!" And he did it.
Goodness! he swung that pony round with all its four legs spread out,
like a cat dropping off a roof....

Well, it was just that look that I noticed in his eyes: "It might," I
seem even now to hear him muttering to himself, "just be done."

I looked round over my shoulder and saw, tall, smiling brilliantly and
buoyant--Leonora. And, little and fair, and as radiant as the track of
sunlight along the sea--my wife.

That poor wretch! to think that he was at that moment in a perfect devil
of a fix, and there he was, saying at the back of his mind: "It might
just be done." It was like a chap in the middle of the eruption of a
volcano, saying that he might just manage to bolt into the tumult and
set fire to a haystack. Madness? Predestination? Who the devil knows?

Mrs Ashburnham exhibited at that moment more gaiety than I have
ever since known her to show. There are certain classes of English
people--the nicer ones when they have been to many spas, who seem to
make a point of becoming much more than usually animated when they are
introduced to my compatriots. I have noticed this often. Of course, they
must first have accepted the Americans. But that once done, they seem to
say to themselves: "Hallo, these women are so bright. We aren't going to
be outdone in brightness." And for the time being they certainly aren't.
But it wears off. So it was with Leonora--at least until she noticed me.
She began, Leonora did--and perhaps it was that that gave me the idea of
a touch of insolence in her character, for she never afterwards did any
one single thing like it--she began by saying in quite a loud voice and
from quite a distance:

"Don't stop over by that stuffy old table, Teddy. Come and sit by these
nice people!"

And that was an extraordinary thing to say. Quite extraordinary. I
couldn't for the life of me refer to total strangers as nice people.
But, of course, she was taking a line of her own in which I at any
rate--and no one else in the room, for she too had taken the trouble to
read through the list of guests--counted any more than so many clean,
bull terriers. And she sat down rather brilliantly at a vacant table,
beside ours--one that was reserved for the Guggenheimers. And she just
sat absolutely deaf to the remonstrances of the head waiter with his
face like a grey ram's. That poor chap was doing his steadfast duty too.
He knew that the Guggenheimers of Chicago, after they had stayed there
a month and had worried the poor life out of him, would give him two
dollars fifty and grumble at the tipping system. And he knew that Teddy
Ashburnham and his wife would give him no trouble whatever except what
the smiles of Leonora might cause in his apparently unimpressionable
bosom--though you never can tell what may go on behind even a not quite
spotless plastron!--And every week Edward Ashburnham would give him a
solid, sound, golden English sovereign. Yet this stout fellow was intent
on saving that table for the Guggenheimers of Chicago. It ended in
Florence saying:

"Why shouldn't we all eat out of the same trough?--that's a nasty New
York saying. But I'm sure we're all nice quiet people and there can be
four seats at our table. It's round."

Then came, as it were, an appreciative gurgle from the Captain and I
was perfectly aware of a slight hesitation--a quick sharp motion in Mrs
Ashburnham, as if her horse had checked. But she put it at the fence all
right, rising from the seat she had taken and sitting down opposite me,
as it were, all in one motion. I never thought that Leonora looked her
best in evening dress. She seemed to get it too clearly cut, there
was no ruffling. She always affected black and her shoulders were too
classical. She seemed to stand out of her corsage as a white marble bust
might out of a black Wedgwood vase. I don't know.

I loved Leonora always and, today, I would very cheerfully lay down my
life, what is left of it, in her service. But I am sure I never had the
beginnings of a trace of what is called the sex instinct towards her.
And I suppose--no I am certain that she never had it towards me. As far
as I am concerned I think it was those white shoulders that did it. I
seemed to feel when I looked at them that, if ever I should press my
lips upon them that they would be slightly cold--not icily, not without
a touch of human heat, but, as they say of baths, with the chill off. I
seemed to feel chilled at the end of my lips when I looked at her...

No, Leonora always appeared to me at her best in a blue tailor-made.
Then her glorious hair wasn't deadened by her white shoulders. Certain
women's lines guide your eyes to their necks, their eyelashes, their
lips, their breasts. But Leonora's seemed to conduct your gaze always to
her wrist. And the wrist was at its best in a black or a dog-skin glove
and there was always a gold circlet with a little chain supporting a
very small golden key to a dispatch box. Perhaps it was that in which
she locked up her heart and her feelings.

Anyhow, she sat down opposite me and then, for the first time, she paid
any attention to my existence. She gave me, suddenly, yet deliberately,
one long stare. Her eyes too were blue and dark and the eyelids were so
arched that they gave you the whole round of the irises. And it was a
most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse
had looked at me. I seemed to perceive the swift questions chasing each
other through the brain that was behind them. I seemed to hear the brain
ask and the eyes answer with all the simpleness of a woman who was a
good hand at taking in qualities of a horse--as indeed she was. "Stands
well; has plenty of room for his oats behind the girth. Not so much in
the way of shoulders," and so on. And so her eyes asked: "Is this man
trustworthy in money matters; is he likely to try to play the lover; is
he likely to let his women be troublesome? Is he, above all, likely to
babble about my affairs?"

And, suddenly, into those cold, slightly defiant, almost defensive china
blue orbs, there came a warmth, a tenderness, a friendly recognition...
oh, it was very charming and very touching--and quite mortifying. It was
the look of a mother to her son, of a sister to her brother. It implied
trust; it implied the want of any necessity for barriers. By God, she
looked at me as if I were an invalid--as any kind woman may look at a
poor chap in a bath chair. And, yes, from that day forward she always
treated me and not Florence as if I were the invalid. Why, she would
run after me with a rug upon chilly days. I suppose, therefore, that her
eyes had made a favourable answer. Or, perhaps, it wasn't a favourable
answer. And then Florence said: "And so the whole round table is begun."
Again Edward Ashburnham gurgled slightly in his throat; but Leonora
shivered a little, as if a goose had walked over her grave. And I was
passing her the nickel-silver basket of rolls. Avanti!...

So began those nine years of uninterrupted tranquillity. They were
characterized by an extraordinary want of any communicativeness on the
part of the Ashburnhams to which we, on our part, replied by leaving out
quite as extraordinarily, and nearly as completely, the personal note.
Indeed, you may take it that what characterized our relationship was an
atmosphere of taking everything for granted. The given proposition was,
that we were all "good people." We took for granted that we all liked
beef underdone but not too underdone; that both men preferred a good
liqueur brandy after lunch; that both women drank a very light Rhine
wine qualified with Fachingen water--that sort of thing. It was also
taken for granted that we were both sufficiently well off to afford
anything that we could reasonably want in the way of amusements fitting
to our station--that we could take motor cars and carriages by the day;
that we could give each other dinners and dine our friends and we could
indulge if we liked in economy. Thus, Florence was in the habit of
having the Daily Telegraph sent to her every day from London. She was
always an Anglo-maniac, was Florence; the Paris edition of the New York
Herald was always good enough for me. But when we discovered that
the Ashburnhams' copy of the London paper followed them from England,
Leonora and Florence decided between them to suppress one subscription
one year and the other the next. Similarly it was the habit of the Grand
Duke of Nassau Schwerin, who came yearly to the baths, to dine once with
about eighteen families of regular Kur guests. In return he would give a
dinner of all the eighteen at once. And, since these dinners were rather
expensive (you had to take the Grand Duke and a good many of his suite
and any members of the diplomatic bodies that might be there)--Florence
and Leonora, putting their heads together, didn't see why we shouldn't
give the Grand Duke his dinner together. And so we did. I don't suppose
the Serenity minded that economy, or even noticed it. At any rate, our
joint dinner to the Royal Personage gradually assumed the aspect of a
yearly function. Indeed, it grew larger and larger, until it became a
sort of closing function for the season, at any rate as far as we were
concerned. I don't in the least mean to say that we were the sort of
persons who aspired to mix "with royalty." We didn't; we hadn't any
claims; we were just "good people." But the Grand Duke was a pleasant,
affable sort of royalty, like the late King Edward VII, and it was
pleasant to hear him talk about the races and, very occasionally, as a
bonne bouche, about his nephew, the Emperor; or to have him pause for
a moment in his walk to ask after the progress of our cures or to be
benignantly interested in the amount of money we had put on Leloeffel's
hunter for the Frankfurt Welter Stakes.

But upon my word, I don't know how we put in our time. How does one put
in one's time? How is it possible to have achieved nine years and to
have nothing whatever to show for it? Nothing whatever, you understand.
Not so much as a bone penholder, carved to resemble a chessman and with
a hole in the top through which you could see four views of Nauheim.
And, as for experience, as for knowledge of one's fellow beings--nothing
either. Upon my word, I couldn't tell you offhand whether the lady who
sold the so expensive violets at the bottom of the road that leads to
the station, was cheating me or no; I can't say whether the porter who
carried our traps across the station at Leghorn was a thief or no when
he said that the regular tariff was a lira a parcel. The instances of
honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the
instances of dishonesty. After forty-five years of mixing with one's
kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know
something about one's fellow beings. But one doesn't.

I think the modern civilized habit--the modern English habit of taking
every one for granted--is a good deal to blame for this. I have observed
this matter long enough to know the queer, subtle thing that it is; to
know how the faculty, for what it is worth, never lets you down.

Mind, I am not saying that this is not the most desirable type of life
in the world; that it is not an almost unreasonably high standard. For
it is really nauseating, when you detest it, to have to eat every day
several slices of thin, tepid, pink india rubber, and it is disagreeable
to have to drink brandy when you would prefer to be cheered up by warm,
sweet Kuemmel. And it is nasty to have to take a cold bath in the morning
when what you want is really a hot one at night. And it stirs a little
of the faith of your fathers that is deep down within you to have to
have it taken for granted that you are an Episcopalian when really you
are an old-fashioned Philadelphia Quaker.

But these things have to be done; it is the cock that the whole of this
society owes to AEsculapius.

And the odd, queer thing is that the whole collection of rules applies
to anybody--to the anybodies that you meet in hotels, in railway trains,
to a less degree, perhaps, in steamers, but even, in the end, upon
steamers. You meet a man or a woman and, from tiny and intimate sounds,
from the slightest of movements, you know at once whether you are
concerned with good people or with those who won't do. You know, this
is to say, whether they will go rigidly through with the whole programme
from the underdone beef to the Anglicanism. It won't matter whether they
be short or tall; whether the voice squeak like a marionette or rumble
like a town bull's; it won't matter whether they are Germans, Austrians,
French, Spanish, or even Brazilians--they will be the Germans or
Brazilians who take a cold bath every morning and who move, roughly
speaking, in diplomatic circles.

But the inconvenient--well, hang it all, I will say it--the damnable
nuisance of the whole thing is, that with all the taking for granted,
you never really get an inch deeper than the things I have catalogued.

I can give you a rather extraordinary instance of this. I can't remember
whether it was in our first year--the first year of us four at Nauheim,
because, of course, it would have been the fourth year of Florence and
myself--but it must have been in the first or second year. And that
gives the measure at once of the extraordinariness of our discussion and
of the swiftness with which intimacy had grown up between us. On the one
hand we seemed to start out on the expedition so naturally and with
so little preparation, that it was as if we must have made many such
excursions before; and our intimacy seemed so deep....

Yet the place to which we went was obviously one to which Florence at
least would have wanted to take us quite early, so that you would
almost think we should have gone there together at the beginning of our
intimacy. Florence was singularly expert as a guide to archaeological
expeditions and there was nothing she liked so much as taking people
round ruins and showing you the window from which some one looked down
upon the murder of some one else. She only did it once; but she did
it quite magnificently. She could find her way, with the sole help
of Baedeker, as easily about any old monument as she could about any
American city where the blocks are all square and the streets all
numbered, so that you can go perfectly easily from Twenty-fourth to
Thirtieth.

Now it happens that fifty minutes away from Nauheim, by a good train, is
the ancient city of M----, upon a great pinnacle of basalt, girt with
a triple road running sideways up its shoulder like a scarf. And at the
top there is a castle--not a square castle like Windsor, but a castle
all slate gables and high peaks with gilt weathercocks flashing
bravely--the castle of St Elizabeth of Hungary. It has the disadvantage
of being in Prussia; and it is always disagreeable to go into that
country; but it is very old and there are many double-spired churches
and it stands up like a pyramid out of the green valley of the Lahn. I
don't suppose the Ashburnhams wanted especially to go there and I didn't
especially want to go there myself. But, you understand, there was no
objection. It was part of the cure to make an excursion three or four
times a week. So that we were all quite unanimous in being grateful
to Florence for providing the motive power. Florence, of course, had
a motive of her own. She was at that time engaged in educating Captain
Ashburnham--oh, of course, quite pour le bon motif! She used to say to
Leonora: "I simply can't understand how you can let him live by your
side and be so ignorant!" Leonora herself always struck me as being
remarkably well educated. At any rate, she knew beforehand all that
Florence had to tell her. Perhaps she got it up out of Baedeker before
Florence was up in the morning. I don't mean to say that you would ever
have known that Leonora knew anything, but if Florence started to tell
us how Ludwig the Courageous wanted to have three wives at once--in
which he differed from Henry VIII, who wanted them one after the other,
and this caused a good deal of trouble--if Florence started to tell us
this, Leonora would just nod her head in a way that quite pleasantly
rattled my poor wife.

She used to exclaim: "Well, if you knew it, why haven't you told it all
already to Captain Ashburnham? I'm sure he finds it interesting!" And
Leonora would look reflectively at her husband and say: "I have an idea
that it might injure his hand--the hand, you know, used in connection
with horses' mouths...." And poor Ashburnham would blush and mutter and
would say: "That's all right. Don't you bother about me."

I fancy his wife's irony did quite alarm poor Teddy; because one evening
he asked me seriously in the smoking-room if I thought that having too
much in one's head would really interfere with one's quickness in polo.
It struck him, he said, that brainy Johnnies generally were rather muffs
when they got on to four legs. I reassured him as best I could. I told
him that he wasn't likely to take in enough to upset his balance. At
that time the Captain was quite evidently enjoying being educated by
Florence. She used to do it about three or four times a week under
the approving eyes of Leonora and myself. It wasn't, you understand,
systematic. It came in bursts. It was Florence clearing up one of the
dark places of the earth, leaving the world a little lighter than she
had found it. She would tell him the story of Hamlet; explain the form
of a symphony, humming the first and second subjects to him, and so on;
she would explain to him the difference between Arminians and Erastians;
or she would give him a short lecture on the early history of the United
States. And it was done in a way well calculated to arrest a young
attention. Did you ever read Mrs Markham? Well, it was like that... .

But our excursion to M---- was a much larger, a much more full dress
affair. You see, in the archives of the Schloss in that city there was
a document which Florence thought would finally give her the chance to
educate the whole lot of us together. It really worried poor Florence
that she couldn't, in matters of culture, ever get the better of
Leonora. I don't know what Leonora knew or what she didn't know,
but certainly she was always there whenever Florence brought out any
information. And she gave, somehow, the impression of really knowing
what poor Florence gave the impression of having only picked up. I can't
exactly define it. It was almost something physical. Have you ever seen
a retriever dashing in play after a greyhound? You see the two running
over a green field, almost side by side, and suddenly the retriever
makes a friendly snap at the other. And the greyhound simply isn't
there. You haven't observed it quicken its speed or strain a limb; but
there it is, just two yards in front of the retriever's outstretched
muzzle. So it was with Florence and Leonora in matters of culture.

But on this occasion I knew that something was up. I found Florence some
days before, reading books like Ranke's History of the Popes, Symonds'
Renaissance, Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic and Luther's Table
Talk.

I must say that, until the astonishment came, I got nothing but pleasure
out of the little expedition. I like catching the two-forty; I like the
slow, smooth roll of the great big trains--and they are the best trains
in the world! I like being drawn through the green country and looking
at it through the clear glass of the great windows. Though, of course,
the country isn't really green. The sun shines, the earth is blood red
and purple and red and green and red. And the oxen in the ploughlands
are bright varnished brown and black and blackish purple; and the
peasants are dressed in the black and white of magpies; and there are
great Rocks of magpies too. Or the peasants' dresses in another field
where there are little mounds of hay that will be grey-green on
the sunny side and purple in the shadows--the peasants' dresses are
vermilion with emerald green ribbons and purple skirts and white shirts
and black velvet stomachers. Still, the impression is that you are drawn
through brilliant green meadows that run away on each side to the dark
purple fir-woods; the basalt pinnacles; the immense forests. And there
is meadowsweet at the edge of the streams, and cattle. Why, I remember
on that afternoon I saw a brown cow hitch its horns under the stomach
of a black and white animal and the black and white one was thrown right
into the middle of a narrow stream. I burst out laughing. But Florence
was imparting information so hard and Leonora was listening so intently
that no one noticed me. As for me, I was pleased to be off duty; I was
pleased to think that Florence for the moment was indubitably out of
mischief--because she was talking about Ludwig the Courageous (I think
it was Ludwig the Courageous but I am not an historian) about Ludwig
the Courageous of Hessen who wanted to have three wives at once and
patronized Luther--something like that!--I was so relieved to be off
duty, because she couldn't possibly be doing anything to excite herself
or set her poor heart a-fluttering--that the incident of the cow was a
real joy to me. I chuckled over it from time to time for the whole rest
of the day. Because it does look very funny, you know, to see a black
and white cow land on its back in the middle of a stream. It is so just
exactly what one doesn't expect of a cow.

I suppose I ought to have pitied the poor animal; but I just didn't. I
was out for enjoyment. And I just enjoyed myself. It is so pleasant to
be drawn along in front of the spectacular towns with the peaked
castles and the many double spires. In the sunlight gleams come from
the city--gleams from the glass of windows; from the gilt signs of
apothecaries; from the ensigns of the student corps high up in the
mountains; from the helmets of the funny little soldiers moving their
stiff little legs in white linen trousers. And it was pleasant to get
out in the great big spectacular Prussian station with the hammered
bronze ornaments and the paintings of peasants and flowers and cows;
and to hear Florence bargain energetically with the driver of an ancient
droschka drawn by two lean horses. Of course, I spoke German much more
correctly than Florence, though I never could rid myself quite of the
accent of the Pennsylvania Duitsch of my childhood. Anyhow, we were
drawn in a sort of triumph, for five marks without any trinkgeld, right
up to the castle. And we were taken through the museum and saw the
fire-backs, the old glass, the old swords and the antique contraptions.
And we went up winding corkscrew staircases and through the Rittersaal,
the great painted hall where the Reformer and his friends met for the
first time under the protection of the gentleman that had three wives at
once and formed an alliance with the gentleman that had six wives, one
after the other (I'm not really interested in these facts but they have
a bearing on my story). And we went through chapels, and music rooms,
right up immensely high in the air to a large old chamber, full of
presses, with heavily-shuttered windows all round. And Florence became
positively electric. She told the tired, bored custodian what shutters
to open; so that the bright sunlight streamed in palpable shafts into
the dim old chamber. She explained that this was Luther's bedroom and
that just where the sunlight fell had stood his bed. As a matter of
fact, I believe that she was wrong and that Luther only stopped, as it
were, for lunch, in order to evade pursuit. But, no doubt, it would have
been his bedroom if he could have been persuaded to stop the night. And
then, in spite of the protest of the custodian, she threw open another
shutter and came tripping back to a large glass case.

"And there," she exclaimed with an accent of gaiety, of triumph, and of
audacity. She was pointing at a piece of paper, like the half-sheet of a
letter with some faint pencil scrawls that might have been a jotting of
the amounts we were spending during the day. And I was extremely happy
at her gaiety, in her triumph, in her audacity. Captain Ashburnham had
his hands upon the glass case. "There it is--the Protest." And then, as
we all properly stage-managed our bewilderment, she continued: "Don't
you know that is why we were all called Protestants? That is the pencil
draft of the Protest they drew up. You can see the signatures of Martin
Luther, and Martin Bucer, and Zwingli, and Ludwig the Courageous...."

I may have got some of the names wrong, but I know that Luther and Bucer
were there. And her animation continued and I was glad. She was better
and she was out of mischief. She continued, looking up into Captain
Ashburnham's eyes: "It's because of that piece of paper that you're
honest, sober, industrious, provident, and clean-lived. If it weren't
for that piece of paper you'd be like the Irish or the Italians or the
Poles, but particularly the Irish...."

And she laid one finger upon Captain Ashburnham's wrist.

I was aware of something treacherous, something frightful, something
evil in the day. I can't define it and can't find a simile for it. It
wasn't as if a snake had looked out of a hole. No, it was as if my heart
had missed a beat. It was as if we were going to run and cry out; all
four of us in separate directions, averting our heads. In Ashburnham's
face I know that there was absolute panic. I was horribly frightened and
then I discovered that the pain in my left wrist was caused by Leonora's
clutching it:

"I can't stand this," she said with a most extraordinary passion; "I
must get out of this." I was horribly frightened. It came to me for
a moment, though I hadn't time to think it, that she must be a madly
jealous woman--jealous of Florence and Captain Ashburnham, of all people
in the world! And it was a panic in which we fled! We went right down
the winding stairs, across the immense Rittersaal to a little terrace
that overlooks the Lahn, the broad valley and the immense plain into
which it opens out.

"Don't you see?" she said, "don't you see what's going on?" The panic
again stopped my heart. I muttered, I stuttered--I don't know how I got
the words out:

"No! What's the matter? Whatever's the matter?"

She looked me straight in the eyes; and for a moment I had the feeling
that those two blue discs were immense, were overwhelming, were like
a wall of blue that shut me off from the rest of the world. I know it
sounds absurd; but that is what it did feel like.

"Don't you see," she said, with a really horrible bitterness, with a
really horrible lamentation in her voice, "Don't you see that that's the
cause of the whole miserable affair; of the whole sorrow of the world?
And of the eternal damnation of you and me and them... ."

I don't remember how she went on; I was too frightened; I was too
amazed. I think I was thinking of running to fetch assistance--a doctor,
perhaps, or Captain Ashburnham. Or possibly she needed Florence's tender
care, though, of course, it would have been very bad for Florence's
heart. But I know that when I came out of it she was saying: "Oh,
where are all the bright, happy, innocent beings in the world? Where's
happiness? One reads of it in books!"

She ran her hand with a singular clawing motion upwards over her
forehead. Her eyes were enormously distended; her face was exactly that
of a person looking into the pit of hell and seeing horrors there. And
then suddenly she stopped. She was, most amazingly, just Mrs Ashburnham
again. Her face was perfectly clear, sharp and defined; her hair was
glorious in its golden coils. Her nostrils twitched with a sort of
contempt. She appeared to look with interest at a gypsy caravan that was
coming over a little bridge far below us.

"Don't you know," she said, in her clear hard voice, "don't you know
that I'm an Irish Catholic?"

 Part I, Section III Dowell describes the circumstances at Nauheim under which he and Florence met the Ashburnhams. It was August, 1904, and Florence had been taking spa baths for a month. At Nauheim, Dowell feels bored and useless; there is nothing whatever to entertain him so he falls into the habit of counting his steps. In the mornings, he would walk Florence to the bath. One morning, he remembers that she stood at the door and turned back, looking beautiful and giving him a little coquettish smile. Dowell gets angry at the memory of this moment. He wonders why, for whose benefit, she should ever have done such a thing. He says again that his life was so boring, and that his boredom explains why he remembers all the details of their time at the hotel. He first meets the Ashburnhams at dinner one night in the dining room. Captain Ashburnham is seated at a table that is not very desirable. When Leonora breezes in from another room with Florence, she insists that they all sit at one table together. The rest of this section involves Dowell's first impressions of Edward and Leonora. Dowell thinks Edward to be extraordinarily good-looking, with fair hair and a perfect uniform. Edward's conversation revolves around where to get the best soap, the best brandy, the best of everything. For a moment Dowell wonders what all the women see in him. Then he surmises that, like all good soldiers, Edward must be a sentimentalist, someone who, when in the company of women, discusses such things as constancy, courage, bravery, and honor. Such sentimental yearning, Dowell concludes, must be attractive to women. Dowell is first surprised by Leonora's gaiety. She can call total strangers "nice people." He comments that she does not look her best in evening wear, rather like a "white marble bust" emerging from a "black Wedgwood vase." Leonora seems slightly cold toward Dowell, as if one's lips would chill if he kissed her. Though he claims that even these nine years later he loves Leonora and would lay down his life for her, Dowell remembers being slightly offended at the way she first looked at him that night--as if he and not Florence is the invalid. Part I, Section IV Dowell describes the tranquility of their life together. Because it was assumed that they were all "good people" and that they could all afford anything they wanted, their time was spent drinking wine, throwing yearly parties, and going on small excursions as a group. Reflecting on that period, Dowell comments about how those years were an utter waste of time, when he neither accomplished anything nor learned anything about the Ashburnhams. He concedes that he took everything for granted. Florence is a great guide to "archaeological expeditions" and she likes nothing more than showing people the window "from which someone looked down upon the murder of someone else." Though she knows a lot of history, Florence is always angered because she can never get the better of Leonora, who seems to already know whatever Florence says. One day, very early in the aquaintance of the two couples, Florence takes them all on an expedition to the city of M-- in Prussia. This is the site that holds Martin Luther's original Protest, declaring his followers to be separate from the Catholic Church. On the train ride to M--, Dowell remembers finding it very funny when a brown cow hitched its horns under the stomach of a black and white animal and threw it into the middle of a narrow stream. He reflects that he probably should have pitied the animal but he didn't; he merely enjoyed the sight. Dowell adds that no one paid attention to him laughing. Once they get to M--, they visit Martin Luther's bedroom and examine his Protest. With animation, Florence explains that this piece of paper is the reason that they are Protestants, hardworking, sober, industrious, and very different from the Irish and the Italians. As she says this, she touches Edward's wrist. Dowell is aware of something treacherous and evil in the day. Leonora rushes out of the room, pulling Dowell with her. She is enormously upset, claiming that "that" is the cause of sorrow in the world. Dowell does not understand what she means. When Leonora sees that Dowell does not comprehend her meaning, she re-establishes her composure and says that she is offended by Florence's comments because she is an Irish Catholic.

