Free The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

position in the county. Thus Leonora had accepted Maisie Maidan
almost with resignation—almost with a sigh of relief. She really
liked the poor child—she had to like somebody. And, at any rate,
she felt she could trust Maisie—she could trust her not to rook
Edward for several thousands a week, for Maisie had refused to
accept so much as a trinket ring from him. It is true that Edward
gurgled and raved about the girl in a way that she had never yet
experienced. But that, too, was almost a relief. I think she would
really have welcomed it if he could have come across the love of
his life. It would have given her a rest.
    And there could not have been anyone better than poor little Mrs
Maidan; she was so ill she could not want to be taken on expensive
jaunts.... It was Leonora herself who paid Maisie's expenses to
Nauheim. She handed over the money to the boy husband, for Maisie
would never have allowed it; but the husband was in agonies of
fear. Poor devil!
    I fancy that, on the voyage from India, Leonora was as happy as
ever she had been in her life. Edward was wrapped up, completely,
in his girl—he was almost like a father with a child, trotting
about with rugs and physic and things, from deck to deck. He
behaved, however, with great circumspection, so that nothing leaked
through to the other passengers. And Leonora had almost attained to
the attitude of a mother towards Mrs Maidan. So it had looked very
well—the benevolent, wealthy couple of good people, acting as
saviours to the poor, dark-eyed, dying young thing. And that
attitude of Leonora's towards Mrs Maidan no doubt partly accounted
for the smack in the face. She was hitting a naughty child who had
been stealing chocolates at an inopportune moment. It was certainly
an inopportune moment. For, with the opening of that blackmailing
letter from that injured brother officer, all the old terrors had
redescended upon Leonora. Her road had again seemed to stretch out
endless; she imagined that there might be hundreds and hundreds of
such things that Edward was concealing from her—that they might
necessitate more mortgagings, more pawnings of bracelets, more and
always more horrors. She had spent an excruciating afternoon. The
matter was one of a divorce case, of course, and she wanted to
avoid publicity as much as Edward did, so that she saw the
necessity of continuing the payments. And she did not so much mind
that. They could find three hundred a year. But it was the horror
of there being more such obligations.
    She had had no conversation with Edward for many years—none that
went beyond the mere arrangements for taking trains or engaging
servants. But that afternoon she had to let him have it. And he had
been just the same as ever. It was like opening a book after a
decade to find the words the same. He had the same motives. He had
not wished to tell her about the case because he had not wished her
to sully her mind with the idea that there was such a thing as a
brother officer who could be a blackmailer—and he had wanted to
protect the credit of his old light of love. That lady was
certainly not concerned with her husband. And he swore, and swore,
and swore, that there was nothing else in the world against him.
She did not believe him.
    He had done it once too often—and she was wrong for the first
time, so that he acted a rather creditable part in the matter. For
he went right straight out to the post-office and spent several
hours in coding a telegram to his solicitor, bidding that
hard-headed man to threaten to take out at once a warrant against
the fellow who was on his track. He said afterwards that it was a
bit too thick on poor old Leonora to be ballyragged any more. That
was really the last of his outstanding accounts, and he was ready
to take his personal chance of the Divorce Court if the blackmailer
turned nasty. He would face it out—the publicity, the papers, the
whole bally show. Those were his simple words....
    He had made, however, the