Free The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford Page A

mistake of not telling Leonora where
he was going, so that, having seen him go to his room to fetch the
code for the telegram, and seeing, two hours later, Maisie Maidan
come out of his room, Leonora imagined that the two hours she had
spent in silent agony Edward had spent with Maisie Maidan in his
arms. That seemed to her to be too much. As a matter of fact,
Maisie's being in Edward's room had been the result, partly of
poverty, partly of pride, partly of sheer innocence. She could not,
in the first place, afford a maid; she refrained as much as
possible from sending the hotel servants on errands, since every
penny was of importance to her, and she feared to have to pay high
tips at the end of her stay. Edward had lent her one of his
fascinating cases containing fifteen different sizes of scissors,
and, having seen from her window, his departure for the
post-office, she had taken the opportunity of returning the case.
She could not see why she should not, though she felt a certain
remorse at the thought that she had kissed the pillows of his bed.
That was the way it took her.
    But Leonora could see that, without the shadow of a doubt, the
incident gave Florence a hold over her. It let Florence into things
and Florence was the only created being who had any idea that the
Ashburnhams were not just good people with nothing to their tails.
She determined at once, not so much to give Florence the privilege
of her intimacy—which would have been the payment of a kind of
blackmail—as to keep Florence under observation until she could
have demonstrated to Florence that she was not in the least jealous
of poor Maisie. So that was why she had entered the dining-room arm
in arm with my wife, and why she had so markedly planted herself at
our table. She never left us, indeed, for a minute that night,
except just to run up to Mrs Maidan's room to beg her pardon and to
beg her also to let Edward take her very markedly out into the
gardens that night. She said herself, when Mrs Maidan came rather
wistfully down into the lounge where we were all sitting: "Now,
Edward, get up and take Maisie to the Casino. I want Mrs Dowell to
tell me all about the families in Connecticut who came from
Fordingbridge." For it had been discovered that Florence came of a
line that had actually owned Branshaw Teleragh for two centuries
before the Ashburnhams came there. And there she sat with me in
that hall, long after Florence had gone to bed, so that I might
witness her gay reception of that pair. She could play up.
    And that enables me to fix exactly the day of our going to the
town of M——. For it was the very day poor Mrs Maidan died. We found
her dead when we got back—pretty awful, that, when you come to
figure out what it all means....
    At any rate the measure of my relief when Leonora said that she
was an Irish Catholic gives you the measure of my affection for
that couple. It was an affection so intense that even to this day I
cannot think of Edward without sighing. I do not believe that I
could have gone on any more with them. I was getting too tired. And
I verily believe, too, if my suspicion that Leonora was jealous of
Florence had been the reason she gave for her outburst I should
have turned upon Florence with the maddest kind of rage. Jealousy
would have been incurable. But Florence's mere silly jibes at the
Irish and at the Catholics could be apologized out of existence.
And that I appeared to fix up in two minutes or so.
    She looked at me for a long time rather fixedly and queerly
while I was doing it. And at last I worked myself up to saying:
    "Do accept the situation. I confess that I do not like your
religion. But I like you so intensely. I don't mind saying that I
have never had anyone to be really fond of, and I do not believe
that anyone has ever been fond of me, as I believe you really to
be."
    "Oh, I'm fond enough of you," she said. "Fond enough to say that
I wish every man was like you. But there are others to be
considered."