The Good Soldier (3 page)

He wasn't obtrusive about his heart. You wouldn't have known he
had one. He only left it to the physical laboratory at Waterbury
for the benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an
extraordinary kind of heart. And the joke of the matter was that,
when, at the age of eighty-four, just five days before poor
Florence, he died of bronchitis there was found to be absolutely
nothing the matter with that organ. It had certainly jumped or
squeaked or something just sufficiently to take in the doctors, but
it appears that that was because of an odd formation of the lungs.
I don't much understand about these matters.

I inherited his money because Florence died five days after him.
I wish I hadn't. It was a great worry. I had to go out to Waterbury
just after Florence's death because the poor dear old fellow had
left a good many charitable bequests and I had to appoint trustees.
I didn't like the idea of their not being properly handled.

Yes, it was a great worry. And just as I had got things roughly
settled I received the extraordinary cable from Ashburnham begging
me to come back and have a talk with him. And immediately
afterwards came one from Leonora saying, "Yes, please do come. You
could be so helpful." It was as if he had sent the cable without
consulting her and had afterwards told her. Indeed, that was pretty
much what had happened, except that he had told the girl and the
girl told the wife. I arrived, however, too late to be of any good
if I could have been of any good. And then I had my first taste of
English life. It was amazing. It was overwhelming. I never shall
forget the polished cob that Edward, beside me, drove; the animal's
action, its high-stepping, its skin that was like satin. And the
peace! And the red cheeks! And the beautiful, beautiful old
house.

Just near Branshaw Teleragh it was and we descended on it from
the high, clear, windswept waste of the New Forest. I tell you it
was amazing to arrive there from Waterbury. And it came into my
head—for Teddy Ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to "come
and have a talk" with him—that it was unbelievable that anything
essentially calamitous could happen to that place and those people.
I tell you it was the very spirit of peace. And Leonora, beautiful
and smiling, with her coils of yellow hair, stood on the top
doorstep, with a butler and footman and a maid or so behind her.
And she just said: "So glad you've come," as if I'd run down to
lunch from a town ten miles away, instead of having come half the
world over at the call of two urgent telegrams.

The girl was out with the hounds, I think. And that poor devil
beside me was in an agony. Absolute, hopeless, dumb agony such as
passes the mind of man to imagine.

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 châlets? 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-maché 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... .