Chapter: IT is very difficult to give an all-round impression of a man. I wonder
how far I have succeeded with Edward Ashburnham. I dare say I haven't
succeeded at all. It is ever very difficult to see how such things
matter. Was it the important point about poor Edward that he was very
well built, carried himself well, was moderate at the table and led a
regular life--that he had, in fact, all the virtues that are usually
accounted English? Or have I in the least succeeded in conveying that
he was all those things and had all those virtues? He certainly was them
and had them up to the last months of his life. They were the things
that one would set upon his tombstone. They will, indeed, be set upon
his tombstone by his widow.

And have I, I wonder, given the due impression of how his life was
portioned and his time laid out? Because, until the very last, the
amount of time taken up by his various passions was relatively small. I
have been forced to write very much about his passions, but you have to
consider--I should like to be able to make you consider--that he rose
every morning at seven, took a cold bath, breakfasted at eight, was
occupied with his regiment from nine until one; played polo or cricket
with the men when it was the season for cricket, till tea-time.
Afterwards he would occupy himself with the letters from his
land-steward or with the affairs of his mess, till dinner-time. He
would dine and pass the evening playing cards, or playing billiards with
Leonora or at social functions of one kind or another. And the greater
part of his life was taken up by that--by far the greater part of his
life. His love-affairs, until the very end, were sandwiched in at
odd moments or took place during the social evenings, the dances and
dinners. But I guess I have made it hard for you, O silent listener, to
get that impression. Anyhow, I hope I have not given you the idea that
Edward Ashburnham was a pathological case. He wasn't. He was just a
normal man and very much of a sentimentalist. I dare say the quality
of his youth, the nature of his mother's influence, his ignorances, the
crammings that he received at the hands of army coaches--I dare say that
all these excellent influences upon his adolescence were very bad for
him. But we all have to put up with that sort of thing and no doubt it
is very bad for all of us. Nevertheless, the outline of Edward's
life was an outline perfectly normal of the life of a hard-working,
sentimental and efficient professional man.

That question of first impressions has always bothered me a good
deal--but quite academically. I mean that, from time to time I have
wondered whether it were or were not best to trust to one's first
impressions in dealing with people. But I never had anybody to deal with
except waiters and chambermaids and the Ashburnhams, with whom I
didn't know that I was having any dealings. And, as far as waiters
and chambermaids were concerned, I have generally found that my first
impressions were correct enough. If my first idea of a man was that he
was civil, obliging, and attentive, he generally seemed to go on being
all those things. Once, however, at our Paris flat we had a maid
who appeared to be charming and transparently honest. She stole,
nevertheless, one of Florence's diamond rings. She did it, however,
to save her young man from going to prison. So here, as somebody says
somewhere, was a special case.

And, even in my short incursion into American business life--an
incursion that lasted during part of August and nearly the whole of
September--I found that to rely upon first impressions was the best
thing I could do. I found myself automatically docketing and labelling
each man as he was introduced to me, by the run of his features and by
the first words that he spoke. I can't, however, be regarded as really
doing business during the time that I spent in the United States. I was
just winding things up. If it hadn't been for my idea of marrying the
girl I might possibly have looked for something to do in my own country.
For my experiences there were vivid and amusing. It was exactly as if I
had come out of a museum into a riotous fancy-dress ball. During my life
with Florence I had almost come to forget that there were such things as
fashions or occupations or the greed of gain. I had, in fact, forgotten
that there was such a thing as a dollar and that a dollar can be
extremely desirable if you don't happen to possess one. And I had
forgotten, too, that there was such a thing as gossip that mattered.
In that particular, Philadelphia was the most amazing place I have ever
been in in my life. I was not in that city for more than a week or ten
days and I didn't there transact anything much in the way of business;
nevertheless, the number of times that I was warned by everybody against
everybody else was simply amazing. A man I didn't know would come up
behind my lounge chair in the hotel, and, whispering cautiously beside
my ear, would warn me against some other man that I equally didn't know
but who would be standing by the bar. I don't know what they thought I
was there to do--perhaps to buy out the city's debt or get a controlling
hold of some railway interest. Or, perhaps, they imagined that I wanted
to buy a newspaper, for they were either politicians or reporters,
which, of course, comes to the same thing. As a matter of fact, my
property in Philadelphia was mostly real estate in the old-fashioned
part of the city and all I wanted to do there was just to satisfy myself
that the houses were in good repair and the doors kept properly painted.
I wanted also to see my relations, of whom I had a few. These were
mostly professional people and they were mostly rather hard up because
of the big bank failure in 1907 or thereabouts. Still, they were very
nice. They would have been nicer still if they hadn't, all of them, had
what appeared to me to be the mania that what they called influences
were working against them. At any rate, the impression of that city was
one of old-fashioned rooms, rather English than American in type,
in which handsome but careworn ladies, cousins of my own, talked
principally about mysterious movements that were going on against them.
I never got to know what it was all about; perhaps they thought I knew
or perhaps there weren't any movements at all. It was all very secret
and subtle and subterranean. But there was a nice young fellow called
Carter who was a sort of second-nephew of mine, twice removed. He was
handsome and dark and gentle and tall and modest. I understand also that
he was a good cricketer. He was employed by the real-estate agents
who collected my rents. It was he, therefore, who took me over my own
property and I saw a good deal of him and of a nice girl called Mary, to
whom he was engaged. At that time I did, what I certainly shouldn't do
now--I made some careful inquiries as to his character. I discovered
from his employers that he was just all that he appeared, honest,
industrious, high-spirited, friendly and ready to do anyone a good turn.
His relatives, however, as they were mine, too--seemed to have something
darkly mysterious against him. I imagined that he must have been mixed
up in some case of graft or that he had at least betrayed several
innocent and trusting maidens. I pushed, however, that particular
mystery home and discovered it was only that he was a Democrat. My own
people were mostly Republicans. It seemed to make it worse and more
darkly mysterious to them that young Carter was what they called a sort
of a Vermont Democrat which was the whole ticket and no mistake. But I
don't know what it means. Anyhow, I suppose that my money will go to
him when I die--I like the recollection of his friendly image and of the
nice girl he was engaged to. May Fate deal very kindly with them.

I have said just now that, in my present frame of mind, nothing would
ever make me make inquiries as to the character of any man that I liked
at first sight. (The little digression as to my Philadelphia experiences
was really meant to lead around to this.) For who in this world can
give anyone a character? Who in this world knows anything of any other
heart--or of his own? I don't mean to say that one cannot form an
average estimate of the way a person will behave. But one cannot be
certain of the way any man will behave in every case--and until one can
do that a "character" is of no use to anyone. That, for instance, was
the way with Florence's maid in Paris. We used to trust that girl with
blank cheques for the payment of the tradesmen. For quite a time she was
so trusted by us. Then, suddenly, she stole a ring. We should not have
believed her capable of it; she would not have believed herself capable
of it. It was nothing in her character. So, perhaps, it was with Edward
Ashburnham.

Or, perhaps, it wasn't. No, I rather think it wasn't. It is difficult
to figure out. I have said that the Kilsyte case eased the immediate
tension for him and Leonora. It let him see that she was capable of
loyalty to him; it gave her her chance to show that she believed in him.
She accepted without question his statement that, in kissing the girl,
he wasn't trying to do more than administer fatherly comfort to
a weeping child. And, indeed, his own world--including the
magistrates--took that view of the case. Whatever people say, one's
world can be perfectly charitable at times... But, again, as I have
said, it did Edward a great deal of harm.

That, at least, was his view of it. He assured me that, before that
case came on and was wrangled about by counsel with all sorts of
dirty-mindedness that counsel in that sort of case can impute, he
had not had the least idea that he was capable of being unfaithful to
Leonora. But, in the midst of that tumult--he says that it came suddenly
into his head whilst he was in the witness-box--in the midst of those
august ceremonies of the law there came suddenly into his mind the
recollection of the softness of the girl's body as he had pressed her
to him. And, from that moment, that girl appeared desirable to him--and
Leonora completely unattractive.

He began to indulge in day-dreams in which he approached the nurse-maid
more tactfully and carried the matter much further. Occasionally he
thought of other women in terms of wary courtship--or, perhaps, it
would be more exact to say that he thought of them in terms of tactful
comforting, ending in absorption. That was his own view of the case. He
saw himself as the victim of the law. I don't mean to say that he saw
himself as a kind of Dreyfus. The law, practically, was quite kind to
him. It stated that in its view Captain Ashburnham had been misled by an
ill-placed desire to comfort a member of the opposite sex, and it fined
him five shilling for his want of tact, or of knowledge of the world.
But Edward maintained that it had put ideas into his head.

I don't believe it, though he certainly did. He was twenty-seven then,
and his wife was out of sympathy with him--some crash was inevitable.
There was between them a momentary rapprochement; but it could not last.
It made it, probably, all the worse that, in that particular matter,
Leonara had come so very well up to the scratch. For, whilst Edward
respected her more and was grateful to her, it made her seem by so
much the more cold in other matters that were near his heart--his
responsibilities, his career, his tradition. It brought his despair of
her up to a point of exasperation--and it riveted on him the idea that
he might find some other woman who would give him the moral support that
he needed. He wanted to be looked upon as a sort of Lohengrin.

At that time, he says, he went about deliberately looking for some woman
who could help him. He found several--for there were quite a number of
ladies in his set who were capable of agreeing with this handsome and
fine fellow that the duties of a feudal gentleman were feudal. He would
have liked to pass his days talking to one or other of these ladies. But
there was always an obstacle--if the lady were married there would be a
husband who claimed the greater part of her time and attention. If, on
the other hand, it were an unmarried girl, he could not see very much of
her for fear of compromising her. At that date, you understand, he had
not the least idea of seducing any one of these ladies. He wanted
only moral support at the hands of some female, because he found men
difficult to talk to about ideals. Indeed, I do not believe that he had,
at any time, any idea of making any one his mistress. That sounds queer;
but I believe it is quite true as a statement of character.

It was, I believe, one of Leonora's priests--a man of the world--who
suggested that she should take him to Monte Carlo. He had the idea that
what Edward needed, in order to fit him for the society of Leonora,
was a touch of irresponsibility. For Edward, at that date, had much the
aspect of a prig. I mean that, if he played polo and was an excellent
dancer he did the one for the sake of keeping himself fit and the other
because it was a social duty to show himself at dances, and, when there,
to dance well. He did nothing for fun except what he considered to be
his work in life. As the priest saw it, this must for ever estrange him
from Leonora--not because Leonora set much store by the joy of life, but
because she was out of sympathy with Edward's work. On the other hand,
Leonora did like to have a good time, now and then, and, as the priest
saw it, if Edward could be got to like having a good time now and then,
too, there would be a bond of sympathy between them. It was a good idea,
but it worked out wrongly.

It worked out, in fact, in the mistress of the Grand Duke. In anyone
less sentimental than Edward that would not have mattered. With Edward
it was fatal. For, such was his honourable nature, that for him to enjoy
a woman's favours made him feel that she had a bond on him for life.
That was the way it worked out in practice. Psychologically it meant
that he could not have a mistress without falling violently in love with
her. He was a serious person--and in this particular case it was
very expensive. The mistress of the Grand Duke--a Spanish dancer of
passionate appearance--singled out Edward for her glances at a ball that
was held in their common hotel. Edward was tall, handsome, blond and
very wealthy as she understood--and Leonora went up to bed early. She
did not care for public dances, but she was relieved to see that Edward
appeared to be having a good time with several amiable girls. And that
was the end of Edward--for the Spanish dancer of passionate appearance
wanted one night of him for his beaux yeux. He took her into the dark
gardens and, remembering suddenly the girl of the Kilsyte case, he
kissed her. He kissed her passionately, violently, with a sudden
explosion of the passion that had been bridled all his life--for
Leonora was cold, or at any rate, well behaved. La Dolciquita liked this
reversion, and he passed the night in her bed.

When the palpitating creature was at last asleep in his arms he
discovered that he was madly, was passionately, was overwhelmingly in
love with her. It was a passion that had arisen like fire in dry corn.
He could think of nothing else; he could live for nothing else. But La
Dolciquita was a reasonable creature without an ounce of passion in
her. She wanted a certain satisfaction of her appetites and Edward had
appealed to her the night before. Now that was done with, and, quite
coldly, she said that she wanted money if he was to have any more of
her. It was a perfectly reasonable commercial transaction. She did not
care two buttons for Edward or for any man and he was asking her to
risk a very good situation with the Grand Duke. If Edward could put up
sufficient money to serve as a kind of insurance against accident she
was ready to like Edward for a time that would be covered, as it were,
by the policy. She was getting fifty thousand dollars a year from her
Grand Duke; Edward would have to pay a premium of two years' hire for a
month of her society. There would not be much risk of the Grand Duke's
finding it out and it was not certain that he would give her the keys of
the street if he did find out. But there was the risk--a twenty per cent
risk, as she figured it out. She talked to Edward as if she had been a
solicitor with an estate to sell--perfectly quietly and perfectly coldly
without any inflections in her voice. She did not want to be unkind
to him; but she could see no reason for being kind to him. She was a
virtuous business woman with a mother and two sisters and her own old
age to be provided comfortably for. She did not expect more than a five
years' further run. She was twenty-four and, as she said: "We Spanish
women are horrors at thirty." Edward swore that he would provide for her
for life if she would come to him and leave off talking so horribly; but
she only shrugged one shoulder slowly and contemptuously. He tried
to convince this woman, who, as he saw it, had surrendered to him her
virtue, that he regarded it as in any case his duty to provide for her,
and to cherish her and even to love her--for life. In return for her
sacrifice he would do that. In return, again, for his honourable love
she would listen for ever to the accounts of his estate. That was how he
figured it out.

She shrugged the same shoulder with the same gesture and held out her
left hand with the elbow at her side:

"Enfin, mon ami," she said, "put in this hand the price of that tiara at
Forli's or..." And she turned her back on him.

Edward went mad; his world stood on its head; the palms in front of the
blue sea danced grotesque dances. You see, he believed in the virtue,
tenderness and moral support of women. He wanted more than anything to
argue with La Dolciquita; to retire with her to an island and point out
to her the damnation of her point of view and how salvation can only
be found in true love and the feudal system. She had once been his
mistress, he reflected, and by all the moral laws she ought to have gone
on being his mistress or at the very least his sympathetic confidante.
But her rooms were closed to him; she did not appear in the hotel.
Nothing: blank silence. To break that down he had to have twenty
thousand pounds. You have heard what happened. He spent a week of
madness; he hungered; his eyes sank in; he shuddered at Leonora's touch.
I dare say that nine-tenths of what he took to be his passion for
La Dolciquita was really discomfort at the thought that he had been
unfaithful to Leonora. He felt uncommonly bad, that is to say--oh,
unbearably bad, and he took it all to be love. Poor devil, he was
incredibly naive. He drank like a fish after Leonora was in bed and he
spread himself over the tables, and this went on for about a fortnight.
Heaven knows what would have happened; he would have thrown away every
penny that he possessed.

On the night after he had lost about forty thousand pounds and whilst
the whole hotel was whispering about it, La Dolciquita walked composedly
into his bedroom. He was too drunk to recognize her, and she sat in his
arm-chair, knitting and holding smelling salts to her nose--for he was
pretty far gone with alcoholic poisoning--and, as soon as he was able to
understand her, she said:

"Look here, mon ami, do not go to the tables again. Take a good sleep
now and come and see me this afternoon."

He slept till the lunch-hour. By that time Leonora had heard the news.
A Mrs Colonel Whelan had told her. Mrs Colonel Whelan seems to have been
the only sensible person who was ever connected with the Ashburnhams.
She had argued it out that there must be a woman of the harpy variety
connected with Edward's incredible behaviour and mien; and she advised
Leonora to go straight off to Town--which might have the effect of
bringing Edward to his senses--and to consult her solicitor and her
spiritual adviser. She had better go that very morning; it was no good
arguing with a man in Edward's condition.

Edward, indeed, did not know that she had gone. As soon as he awoke he
went straight to La Dolciquita's room and she stood him his lunch in her
own apartments. He fell on her neck and wept, and she put up with it for
a time. She was quite a good-natured woman. And, when she had calmed
him down with Eau de Melisse, she said: "Look here, my friend, how much
money have you left? Five thousand dollars? Ten?" For the rumour went
that Edward had lost two kings' ransoms a night for fourteen nights and
she imagined that he must be near the end of his resources.

The Eau de Melisse had calmed Edward to such an extent that, for the
moment, he really had a head on his shoulders. He did nothing more than
grunt:

"And then?"

"Why," she answered, "I may just as well have the ten thousand dollars
as the tables. I will go with you to Antibes for a week for that sum."

Edward grunted: "Five." She tried to get seven thousand five hundred;
but he stuck to his five thousand and the hotel expenses at Antibes. The
sedative carried him just as far as that and then he collapsed again. He
had to leave for Antibes at three; he could not do without it. He left a
note for Leonora saying that he had gone off for a week with the Clinton
Morleys, yachting.

He did not enjoy himself very much at Antibes. La Dolciquita could
talk of nothing with any enthusiasm except money, and she tired
him unceasingly, during every waking hour, for presents of the most
expensive description. And, at the end of a week, she just quietly
kicked him out. He hung about in Antibes for three days. He was cured
of the idea that he had any duties towards La Dolciquita--feudal or
otherwise. But his sentimentalism required of him an attitude of Byronic
gloom--as if his court had gone into half-mourning. Then his appetite
suddenly returned, and he remembered Leonora. He found at his hotel at
Monte Carlo a telegram from Leonora, dispatched from London, saying;
"Please return as soon as convenient." He could not understand why
Leonora should have abandoned him so precipitately when she only thought
that he had gone yachting with the Clinton Morleys. Then he discovered
that she had left the hotel before he had written the note. He had
a pretty rocky journey back to town; he was frightened out of his
life--and Leonora had never seemed so desirable to him.


I CALL this the Saddest Story, rather than "The Ashburnham Tragedy",
just because it is so sad, just because there was no current to draw
things along to a swift and inevitable end. There is about it none of
the elevation that accompanies tragedy; there is about it no nemesis, no
destiny. Here were two noble people--for I am convinced that both Edward
and Leonora had noble natures--here, then, were two noble natures,
drifting down life, like fireships afloat on a lagoon and causing
miseries, heart-aches, agony of the mind and death. And they themselves
steadily deteriorated. And why? For what purpose? To point what lesson?
It is all a darkness.

There is not even any villain in the story--for even Major Basil, the
husband of the lady who next, and really, comforted the unfortunate
Edward--even Major Basil was not a villain in this piece. He was a
slack, loose, shiftless sort of fellow--but he did not do anything to
Edward. Whilst they were in the same station in Burma he borrowed a
good deal of money--though, really, since Major Basil had no
particular vices, it was difficult to know why he wanted it. He
collected--different types of horses' bits from the earliest times to
the present day--but, since he did not prosecute even this occupation
with any vigour, he cannot have needed much money for the acquirement,
say, of the bit of Genghis Khan's charger--if Genghis Khan had a
charger. And when I say that he borrowed a good deal of money from
Edward I do not mean to say that he had more than a thousand pounds from
him during the five years that the connection lasted. Edward, of course,
did not have a great deal of money; Leonora was seeing to that. Still,
he may have had five hundred pounds a year English, for his menus
plaisirs--for his regimental subscriptions and for keeping his men
smart. Leonora hated that; she would have preferred to buy dresses for
herself or to have devoted the money to paying off a mortgage. Still,
with her sense of justice, she saw that, since she was managing
a property bringing in three thousand a year with a view to
re-establishing it as a property of five thousand a year and since the
property really, if not legally, belonged to Edward, it was reasonable
and just that Edward should get a slice of his own. Of course she had
the devil of a job.

I don't know that I have got the financial details exactly right. I am
a pretty good head at figures, but my mind, still, sometimes mixes up
pounds with dollars and I get a figure wrong. Anyhow, the proposition
was something like this: Properly worked and without rebates to the
tenants and keeping up schools and things, the Branshaw estate should
have brought in about five thousand a year when Edward had it. It
brought in actually about four. (I am talking in pounds, not dollars.)
Edward's excesses with the Spanish Lady had reduced its value to about
three--as the maximum figure, without reductions. Leonora wanted to get
it back to five.

She was, of course, very young to be faced with such a
proposition--twenty-four is not a very advanced age. So she did things
with a youthful vigour that she would, very likely, have made more
merciful, if she had known more about life. She got Edward remarkably on
the hop. He had to face her in a London hotel, when he crept back from
Monte Carlo with his poor tail between his poor legs. As far as I can
make out she cut short his first mumblings and his first attempts at
affectionate speech with words something like: "We're on the verge
of ruin. Do you intend to let me pull things together? If not I shall
retire to Hendon on my jointure." (Hendon represented a convent to
which she occasionally went for what is called a "retreat" in Catholic
circles.) And poor dear Edward knew nothing--absolutely nothing. He did
not know how much money he had, as he put it, "blued" at the tables. It
might have been a quarter of a million for all he remembered. He did not
know whether she knew about La Dolciquita or whether she imagined that
he had gone off yachting or had stayed at Monte Carlo. He was just dumb
and he just wanted to get into a hole and not have to talk. Leonora did
not make him talk and she said nothing herself.

I do not know much about English legal procedure--I cannot, I mean, give
technical details of how they tied him up. But I know that, two days
later, without her having said more than I have reported to you, Leonora
and her attorney had become the trustees, as I believe it is called,
of all Edward's property, and there was an end of Edward as the good
landlord and father of his people. He went out. Leonora then had three
thousand a year at her disposal. She occupied Edward with getting
himself transferred to a part of his regiment that was in Burma--if that
is the right way to put it. She herself had an interview, lasting a
week or so--with Edward's land-steward. She made him understand that the
estate would have to yield up to its last penny. Before they left for
India she had let Branshaw for seven years at a thousand a year. She
sold two Vandykes and a little silver for eleven thousand pounds and
she raised, on mortgage, twenty-nine thousand. That went to Edward's
money-lending friends in Monte Carlo. So she had to get the twenty-nine
thousand back, for she did not regard the Vandykes and the silver
as things she would have to replace. They were just frills to the
Ashburnham vanity. Edward cried for two days over the disappearance of
his ancestors and then she wished she had not done it; but it did not
teach her anything and it lessened such esteem as she had for him. She
did not also understand that to let Branshaw affected him with a feeling
of physical soiling--that it was almost as bad for him as if a woman
belonging to him had become a prostitute. That was how it did affect
him; but I dare say she felt just as bad about the Spanish dancer.

So she went at it. They were eight years in India, and during the whole
of that time she insisted that they must be self-supporting--they had
to live on his Captain's pay, plus the extra allowance for being at the
front. She gave him the five hundred a year for Ashburnham frills, as
she called it to herself--and she considered she was doing him very
well.

Indeed, in a way, she did him very well--but it was not his way. She was
always buying him expensive things which, as it were, she took off her
own back. I have, for instance, spoken of Edward's leather cases. Well,
they were not Edward's at all; they were Leonora's manifestations. He
liked to be clean, but he preferred, as it were, to be threadbare. She
never understood that, and all that pigskin was her idea of a reward to
him for putting her up to a little speculation by which she made eleven
hundred pounds. She did, herself, the threadbare business. When they
went up to a place called Simla, where, as I understand, it is cool in
the summer and very social--when they went up to Simla for their healths
it was she who had him prancing around, as we should say in the United
States, on a thousand-dollar horse with the gladdest of glad rags all
over him. She herself used to go into "retreat". I believe that was very
good for her health and it was also very inexpensive.

It was probably also very good for Edward's health, because he pranced
about mostly with Mrs Basil, who was a nice woman and very, very kind to
him. I suppose she was his mistress, but I never heard it from Edward,
of course. I seem to gather that they carried it on in a high romantic
fashion, very proper to both of them--or, at any rate, for Edward; she
seems to have been a tender and gentle soul who did what he wanted. I do
not mean to say that she was without character; that was her job, to
do what Edward wanted. So I figured it out, that for those five years,
Edward wanted long passages of deep affection kept up in long, long
talks and that every now and then they "fell," which would give Edward
an opportunity for remorse and an excuse to lend the Major another
fifty. I don't think that Mrs Basil considered it to be "falling"; she
just pitied him and loved him.

You see, Leonora and Edward had to talk about something during all these
years. You cannot be absolutely dumb when you live with a person unless
you are an inhabitant of the North of England or the State of Maine. So
Leonora imagined the cheerful device of letting him see the accounts of
his estate and discussing them with him. He did not discuss them much;
he was trying to behave prettily. But it was old Mr Mumford--the farmer
who did not pay his rent--that threw Edward into Mrs Basil's arms. Mrs
Basil came upon Edward in the dusk, in the Burmese garden, with all
sorts of flowers and things. And he was cutting up that crop--with his
sword, not a walking-stick. He was also carrying on and cursing in a way
you would not believe.

She ascertained that an old gentleman called Mumford had been ejected
from his farm and had been given a little cottage rent-free, where
he lived on ten shillings a week from a farmers' benevolent society,
supplemented by seven that was being allowed him by the Ashburnham
trustees. Edward had just discovered that fact from the estate accounts.
Leonora had left them in his dressing-room and he had begun to read
them before taking off his marching-kit. That was how he came to have a
sword. Leonora considered that she had been unusually generous to old Mr
Mumford in allowing him to inhabit a cottage, rent-free, and in giving
him seven shillings a week. Anyhow, Mrs Basil had never seen a man in
such a state as Edward was. She had been passionately in love with
him for quite a time, and he had been longing for her sympathy and
admiration with a passion as deep. That was how they came to speak about
it, in the Burmese garden, under the pale sky, with sheaves of severed
vegetation, misty and odorous, in the night around their feet. I think
they behaved themselves with decorum for quite a time after that, though
Mrs Basil spent so many hours over the accounts of the Ashburnham estate
that she got the name of every field by heart. Edward had a huge map of
his lands in his harness-room and Major Basil did not seem to mind. I
believe that people do not mind much in lonely stations. It might
have lasted for ever if the Major had not been made what is called a
brevet-colonel during the shuffling of troops that went on just before
the South African War. He was sent off somewhere else and, of course,
Mrs Basil could not stay with Edward. Edward ought, I suppose, to have
gone to the Transvaal. It would have done him a great deal of good to
get killed. But Leonora would not let him; she had heard awful stories
of the extravagance of the hussar regiment in war-time--how they left
hundred-bottle cases of champagne, at five guineas a bottle, on the
veldt and so on. Besides, she preferred to see how Edward was spending
his five hundred a year. I don't mean to say that Edward had any
grievance in that. He was never a man of the deeds of heroism sort and
it was just as good for him to be sniped at up in the hills of the North
Western frontier, as to be shot at by an old gentleman in a tophat at
the bottom of some spruit. Those are more or less his words about it. I
believe he quite distinguished himself over there. At any rate, he had
had his D.S.O. and was made a brevet-major. Leonora, however, was not in
the least keen on his soldiering. She hated also his deeds of heroism.
One of their bitterest quarrels came after he had, for the second
time, in the Red Sea, jumped overboard from the troopship and rescued a
private soldier. She stood it the first time and even complimented him.
But the Red Sea was awful, that trip, and the private soldiers seemed
to develop a suicidal craze. It got on Leonora's nerves; she figured
Edward, for the rest of that trip, jumping overboard every ten minutes.
And the mere cry of "Man overboard" is a disagreeable, alarming and
disturbing thing. The ship gets stopped and there are all sorts of
shouts. And Edward would not promise not to do it again, though,
fortunately, they struck a streak of cooler weather when they were
in the Persian Gulf. Leonora had got it into her head that Edward was
trying to commit suicide, so I guess it was pretty awful for her when
he would not give the promise. Leonora ought never to have been on that
troopship; but she got there somehow, as an economy.

Major Basil discovered his wife's relation with Edward just before
he was sent to his other station. I don't know whether that was a
blackmailer's adroitness or just a trick of destiny. He may have known
of it all the time or he may not. At any rate, he got hold of, just
about then, some letters and things. It cost Edward three hundred pounds
immediately. I do not know how it was arranged; I cannot imagine how
even a blackmailer can make his demands. I suppose there is some sort of
way of saving your face. I figure the Major as disclosing the letters
to Edward with furious oaths, then accepting his explanations that the
letters were perfectly innocent if the wrong construction were not put
upon them. Then the Major would say: "I say, old chap, I'm deuced hard
up. Couldn't you lend me three hundred or so?" I fancy that was how it
was. And, year by year, after that there would come a letter from the
Major, saying that he was deuced hard up and couldn't Edward lend him
three hundred or so? Edward was pretty hard hit when Mrs Basil had to go
away. He really had been very fond of her, and he remained faithful to
her memory for quite a long time. And Mrs Basil had loved him very much
and continued to cherish a hope of reunion with him. Three days ago
there came a quite proper but very lamentable letter from her to
Leonora, asking to be given particulars as to Edward's death. She had
read the advertisement of it in an Indian paper. I think she must have
been a very nice woman....

And then the Ashburnhams were moved somewhere up towards a place or a
district called Chitral. I am no good at geography of the Indian Empire.
By that time they had settled down into a model couple and they never
spoke in private to each other. Leonora had given up even showing the
accounts of the Ashburnham estate to Edward. He thought that that was
because she had piled up such a lot of money that she did not want him
to know how she was getting on any more. But, as a matter of fact, after
five or six years it had penetrated to her mind that it was painful to
Edward to have to look on at the accounts of his estate and have no hand
in the management of it. She was trying to do him a kindness. And, up in
Chitral, poor dear little Maisie Maidan came along....

That was the most unsettling to Edward of all his affairs. It made him
suspect that he was inconstant. The affair with the Dolciquita he had
sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. His relations
with Mrs Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a
gross kind. The husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each
other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife
to him. He thought that Mrs Basil had been his soul-mate, separated from
him by an unkind fate--something sentimental of that sort.

But he discovered that, whilst he was still writing long weekly letters
to Mrs Basil, he was beginning to be furiously impatient if he missed
seeing Maisie Maidan during the course of the day. He discovered himself
watching the doorways with impatience; he discovered that he disliked
her boy husband very much for hours at a time. He discovered that he
was getting up at unearthly hours in order to have time, later in the
morning, to go for a walk with Maisie Maidan. He discovered himself
using little slang words that she used and attaching a sentimental value
to those words. These, you understand, were discoveries that came so
late that he could do nothing but drift. He was losing weight; his eyes
were beginning to fall in; he had touches of bad fever. He was, as he
described it, pipped.

And, one ghastly hot day, he suddenly heard himself say to Leonora:

"I say, couldn't we take Mrs Maidan with us to Europe and drop her at
Nauheim?"

He hadn't had the least idea of saying that to Leonora. He had merely
been standing, looking at an illustrated paper, waiting for dinner.
Dinner was twenty minutes late or the Ashburnhams would not have been
alone together. No, he hadn't had the least idea of framing that speech.
He had just been standing in a silent agony of fear, of longing, of
heat, of fever. He was thinking that they were going back to Branshaw in
a month and that Maisie Maidan was going to remain behind and die. And
then, that had come out.

The punkah swished in the darkened room; Leonora lay exhausted and
motionless in her cane lounge; neither of them stirred. They were both
at that time very ill in indefinite ways.

And then Leonora said:

"Yes. I promised it to Charlie Maidan this afternoon. I have offered to
pay her ex's myself."

Edward just saved himself from saying: "Good God!" You see, he had not
the least idea of what Leonora knew--about Maisie, about Mrs Basil, even
about La Dolciquita. It was a pretty enigmatic situation for him. It
struck him that Leonora must be intending to manage his loves as she
managed his money affairs and it made her more hateful to him--and more
worthy of respect.

Leonora, at any rate, had managed his money to some purpose. She had
spoken to him, a week before, for the first time in several years--about
money. She had made twenty-two thousand pounds out of the Branshaw
land and seven by the letting of Branshaw furnished. By fortunate
investments--in which Edward had helped her--she had made another six or
seven thousand that might well become more. The mortgages were all
paid off, so that, except for the departure of the two Vandykes and the
silver, they were as well off as they had been before the Dolciquita
had acted the locust. It was Leonora's great achievement. She laid the
figures before Edward, who maintained an unbroken silence.

"I propose," she said, "that you should resign from the Army and that
we should go back to Branshaw. We are both too ill to stay here any
longer."

Edward said nothing at all.

"This," Leonora continued passionlessly, "is the great day of my life."

Edward said:

"You have managed the job amazingly. You are a wonderful woman." He
was thinking that if they went back to Branshaw they would leave
Maisie Maidan behind. That thought occupied him exclusively. They must,
undoubtedly, return to Branshaw; there could be no doubt that Leonora
was too ill to stay in that place. She said:

"You understand that the management of the whole of the expenditure of
the income will be in your hands. There will be five thousand a year."
She thought that he cared very much about the expenditure of an income
of five thousand a year and that the fact that she had done so much
for him would rouse in him some affection for her. But he was thinking
exclusively of Maisie Maidan--of Maisie, thousands of miles away from
him. He was seeing the mountains between them--blue mountains and the
sea and sunlit plains. He said:

"That is very generous of you." And she did not know whether that were
praise or a sneer. That had been a week before. And all that week he had
passed in an increasing agony at the thought that those mountains, that
sea, and those sunlit plains would be between him and Maisie Maidan.
That thought shook him in the burning nights: the sweat poured from him
and he trembled with cold, in the burning noons--at that thought. He
had no minute's rest; his bowels turned round and round within him: his
tongue was perpetually dry and it seemed to him that the breath between
his teeth was like air from a pest-house.

He gave no thought to Leonora at all; he had sent in his papers. They
were to leave in a month. It seemed to him to be his duty to leave that
place and to go away, to support Leonora. He did his duty.

It was horrible, in their relationship at that time, that whatever she
did caused him to hate her. He hated her when he found that she proposed
to set him up as the Lord of Branshaw again--as a sort of dummy lord,
in swaddling clothes. He imagined that she had done this in order to
separate him from Maisie Maidan. Hatred hung in all the heavy nights and
filled the shadowy corners of the room. So when he heard that she
had offered to the Maidan boy to take his wife to Europe with him,
automatically he hated her since he hated all that she did. It seemed to
him, at that time, that she could never be other than cruel even if, by
accident, an act of hers were kind.... Yes, it was a horrible situation.

But the cool breezes of the ocean seemed to clear up that hatred as if
it had been a curtain. They seemed to give him back admiration for her,
and respect. The agreeableness of having money lavishly at command,
the fact that it had bought for him the companionship of Maisie
Maidan--these things began to make him see that his wife might have been
right in the starving and scraping upon which she had insisted. He was
at ease; he was even radiantly happy when he carried cups of bouillon
for Maisie Maidan along the deck. One night, when he was leaning beside
Leonora, over the ship's side, he said suddenly:

"By jove, you're the finest woman in the world. I wish we could be
better friends."

She just turned away without a word and went to her cabin. Still, she
was very much better in health.

And now, I suppose, I must give you Leonora's side of the case....

That is very difficult. For Leonora, if she preserved an unchanged
front, changed very frequently her point of view. She had been
drilled--in her tradition, in her upbringing--to keep her mouth shut.
But there were times, she said, when she was so near yielding to the
temptation of speaking that afterwards she shuddered to think of those
times. You must postulate that what she desired above all things was
to keep a shut mouth to the world; to Edward and to the women that he
loved. If she spoke she would despise herself.

From the moment of his unfaithfulness with La Dolciquita she never acted
the part of wife to Edward. It was not that she intended to keep herself
from him as a principle, for ever. Her spiritual advisers, I believe,
forbade that. But she stipulated that he must, in some way, perhaps
symbolical, come back to her. She was not very clear as to what she
meant; probably she did not know herself. Or perhaps she did.

There were moments when he seemed to be coming back to her; there were
moments when she was within a hair of yielding to her physical passion
for him. In just the same way, at moments, she almost yielded to the
temptation to denounce Mrs Basil to her husband or Maisie Maidan
to hers. She desired then to cause the horrors and pains of public
scandals. For, watching Edward more intently and with more straining of
ears than that which a cat bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware
of the progress of his passion for each of these ladies. She was aware
of it from the way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways; she
knew from his tranquillities when he had received satisfactions.

At times she imagined herself to see more than was warranted. She
imagined that Edward was carrying on intrigues with other women--with
two at once; with three. For whole periods she imagined him to be a
monster of libertinage and she could not see that he could have anything
against her. She left him his liberty; she was starving herself to build
up his fortunes; she allowed herself none of the joys of femininity--no
dresses, no jewels--hardly even friendships, for fear they should cost
money.

And yet, oddly, she could not but be aware that both Mrs Basil and
Maisie Maidan were nice women. The curious, discounting eye which one
woman can turn on another did not prevent her seeing that Mrs Basil was
very good to Edward and Mrs Maidan very good for him. That seemed her to
be a monstrous and incomprehensible working of Fate's. Incomprehensible!
Why, she asked herself again and again, did none of the good deeds that
she did for her husband ever come through to him, or appear to him as
good deeds? By what trick of mania could not he let her be as good to
him as Mrs Basil was? Mrs Basil was not so extraordinarily dissimilar to
herself. She was, it was true, tall, dark, with soft mournful voice and
a great kindness of manner for every created thing, from punkah men to
flowers on the trees. But she was not so well read as Leonora, at any
rate in learned books. Leonora could not stand novels. But, even with
all her differences, Mrs Basil did not appear to Leonora to differ so
very much from herself. She was truthful, honest and, for the rest, just
a woman. And Leonora had a vague sort of idea that, to a man, all women
are the same after three weeks of close intercourse. She thought that
the kindness should no longer appeal, the soft and mournful voice no
longer thrill, the tall darkness no longer give a man the illusion
that he was going into the depths of an unexplored wood. She could not
understand how Edward could go on and on maundering over Mrs Basil. She
could not see why he should continue to write her long letters after
their separation. After that, indeed, she had a very bad time.

She had at that period what I will call the "monstrous" theory of
Edward. She was always imagining him ogling at every woman that he came
across. She did not, that year, go into "retreat" at Simla because she
was afraid that he would corrupt her maid in her absence. She imagined
him carrying on intrigues with native women or Eurasians. At dances she
was in a fever of watchfulness.

She persuaded herself that this was because she had a dread of scandals.
Edward might get himself mixed up with a marriageable daughter of some
man who would make a row or some husband who would matter. But, really,
she acknowledged afterwards to herself, she was hoping that, Mrs Basil
being out of the way, the time might have come when Edward should return
to her. All that period she passed in an agony of jealousy and fear--the
fear that Edward might really become promiscuous in his habits.

So that, in an odd way, she was glad when Maisie Maidan came along--and
she realized that she had not, before, been afraid of husbands and
of scandals, since, then, she did her best to keep Maisie's husband
unsuspicious. She wished to appear so trustful of Edward that Maidan
could not possibly have any suspicions. It was an evil position for
her. But Edward was very ill and she wanted to see him smile again. She
thought that if he could smile again through her agency he might return,
through gratitude and satisfied love--to her. At that time she thought
that Edward was a person of light and fleeting passions. And she could
understand Edward's passion for Maisie, since Maisie was one of those
women to whom other women will allow magnetism. She was very pretty; she
was very young; in spite of her heart she was very gay and light on her
feet. And Leonora was really very fond of Maisie, who was fond enough of
Leonora. Leonora, indeed, imagined that she could manage this affair
all right. She had no thought of Maisie's being led into adultery; she
imagined that if she could take Maisie and Edward to Nauheim, Edward
would see enough of her to get tired of her pretty little chatterings,
and of the pretty little motions of her hands and feet. And she thought
she could trust Edward. For there was not any doubt of Maisie's passion
for Edward. She raved about him to Leonora as Leonora had heard girls
rave about drawing masters in schools. She was perpetually asking her
boy husband why he could not dress, ride, shoot, play polo, or even
recite sentimental poems, like their major. And young Maidan had the
greatest admiration for Edward, and he adored, was bewildered by and
entirely trusted his wife. It appeared to him that Edward was devoted
to Leonora. And Leonora imagined that when poor Maisie was cured of her
heart and Edward had seen enough of her, he would return to her. She had
the vague, passionate idea that, when Edward had exhausted a number of
other types of women he must turn to her. Why should not her type have
its turn in his heart? She imagined that, by now, she understood him
better, that she understood better his vanities and that, by making him
happier, she could arouse his love.

Florence knocked all that on the head....




PART IV

 Part III, Section IV Dowell explains Edward's background, desires, and regrets. Edward had all the virtues and the manners that are associated with the best kind of English people. His life had the outline of a "hard-working, sentimental and efficient professional man." His passions, Dowell explains, took up only a very small amount of his time. Before the Kilsyte case, Edward claimed he had no thought whatsoever of being unfaithful to Leonora, but afterwards he could not stop thinking of the nurse-maid in the railway carriage. Though the law was fairly tolerant of his indiscretion, Edward vowed that he would not get into trouble with a lower-class woman again. Nevertheless, as he grew more estranged from Leonora, he went deliberately looking for a woman who would provide comfort to him. It was one of Leonora's priests who first suggested that she bring Edward to Monte Carlo. He had the idea that this vacation would help to improve their marriage. Unfortunately, the trip turned out for the worst. La Dolciquita, the Spanish mistress of the Russian Grand Duke, set her sights on Edward. Believing he was passionately in love with her, Edward spent a night in her bed, and was ready the next morning to pledge his undying devotion to her. He was horrified when she asked for money, and he tried, unsuccessfully to talk to her about passion, devotion, constancy, and the honor that he owed to her. However La Dolciquita was a practical businesswoman, and she took Edward for more than twenty thousand pounds. He excused his behavior by convincing himself that he was in love with her, but after spending an excruciating week with her in Antibes, Edward realized that he owed to her no duties of love or honor. He returned to Leonora scared and repentant. Part III, Section V When Edward returned from Monte Carlo, he found a wife ready to clean up his messes and pull him out of financial ruin. He was humiliated over his actions at the gambling tables and with La Dolciquita, so he agreed to grant Leonora control over the finances. Within two days all the deeds were in her name, and Edward Ashburnham was removed from his position as the generous magistrate. Her motivation was partially to fix their finances and partially to punish her husband. Leonora took control of the estate with quick efficiency. She rented out Branshaw Manor, mortgaged some properties, and sold a few of the old family paintings. The loss of these family heirlooms touched Edward deeply. He resented his wife for failing to understand him, and for being of such a different temperament entirely. He longed for female sympathy. Edward found sympathy in Mrs. Basil, the wife of a fellow officer, whom he met while stationed in Burma. She was a kind soul and she carried on the high romance that Edward desired. Leonora, ever the practical woman, was not in the least impressed by Edward's army position or his deeds of heroism. She thought it foolish that he would dive into the Red Sea to save a fellow officer. Edward did not know how to ever win the admiration of his wife. After Edward was stationed away from Mrs. Basil, he met his next love interest, Maisie Maidan. His affection for Maisie bothered him intensely because he began to suspect that he was "inconstant." He had what he considered to be a valid excuse for all his other affairs, but it seemed dishonorable of him to have affection for Mrs. Maidan when he is still not over Mrs. Basil. He arranges with Leonora that they should bring Mrs. Maidan with them to Nauheim, and she agrees. Edward worries because he fears that Leonora plans to manage his loves in the same way she has managed his money. Leonora managed the money extraordinarily well. In only a few years, she brought the Ashburnhams back to an excellent financial position. Unfortunately, this skill does not endear her to her husband, whose only focus is on the young Mrs. Maidan. Their marriage is in a horrible state; everything Leonora tries to do causes Edward to hate her more. Leonora is pained. She tries to do good deeds for Edward so that he will come back to her. She wonders why he needs to turn to women like Mrs. Basil and Mrs. Maidan, and why he cannot find solace with her. But Leonora thinks it fortunate that they have found someone like Maisie Maidan. She does not think that Mrs. Maidan and Edward will ever have a physical relationship, and she hopes that when Edward tires of Maisie, he will be grateful for the joy that his wife has allowed him. She longs for him to return to her. But when Florence enters the picture, Leonora loses all hope of winning back her husband.

