Free The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford Page B

She was thinking, as a matter of fact, of poor Maisie.
She picked a little piece of pellitory out of the breast-high wall
in front of us. She chafed it for a long minute between her finger
and thumb, then she threw it over the coping.
    "Oh, I accept the situation," she said at last, "if you
can."
    VI I REMEMBER laughing at the phrase, "accept the situation",
which she seemed to repeat with a gravity too intense. I said to
her something like:
    "It's hardly as much as that. I mean, that I must claim the
liberty of a free American citizen to think what I please about
your co-religionists. And I suppose that Florence must have liberty
to think what she pleases and to say what politeness allows her to
say."
    "She had better," Leonora answered, "not say one single word
against my people or my faith." It struck me at the time, that
there was an unusual, an almost threatening, hardness in her voice.
It was almost as if she were trying to convey to Florence, through
me, that she would seriously harm my wife if Florence went to
something that was an extreme. Yes, I remember thinking at the time
that it was almost as if Leonora were saying, through me to
Florence:
    "You may outrage me as you will; you may take all that I
personally possess, but do not you care to say one single thing in
view of the situation that that will set up—against the faith that
makes me become the doormat for your feet."
    But obviously, as I saw it, that could not be her meaning. Good
people, be they ever so diverse in creed, do not threaten each
other. So that I read Leonora's words to mean just no more than:
"It would be better if Florence said nothing at all against my
co-religionists, because it is a point that I am touchy about."
    That was the hint that, accordingly, I conveyed to Florence
when, shortly afterwards, she and Edward came down from the tower.
And I want you to understand that, from that moment until after
Edward and the girl and Florence were all dead together, I had
never the remotest glimpse, not the shadow of a suspicion, that
there was anything wrong, as the saying is. For five minutes, then,
I entertained the possibility that Leonora might be jealous; but
there was never another flicker in that flame-like personality. How
in the world should I get it?
    For, all that time, I was just a male sick nurse. And what
chance had I against those three hardened gamblers, who were all in
league to conceal their hands from me? What earthly chance? They
were three to one—and they made me happy. Oh God, they made me so
happy that I doubt if even paradise, that shall smooth out all
temporal wrongs, shall ever give me the like. And what could they
have done better, or what could they have done that could have been
worse? I don't know....
    I suppose that, during all that time I was a deceived husband
and that Leonora was pimping for Edward. That was the cross that
she had to take up during her long Calvary of a life....
    You ask how it feels to be a deceived husband. Just Heavens, I
do not know. It feels just nothing at all. It is not Hell,
certainly it is not necessarily Heaven. So I suppose it is the
intermediate stage. What do they call it? Limbo. No, I feel nothing
at all about that. They are dead; they have gone before their Judge
who, I hope, will open to them the springs of His compassion. It is
not my business to think about it. It is simply my business to say,
as Leonora's people say: "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Do mine, et
lux perpetua luceat eis. In memoria aeterna erit...." But what were
they? The just? The unjust? God knows! I think that the pair of
them were only poor wretches, creeping over this earth in the
shadow of an eternal wrath. It is very terrible....
    It is almost too terrible, the picture of that judgement, as it
appears to me sometimes, at nights. It is probably the suggestion
of some picture that I have seen somewhere. But upon an immense
plain, suspended in mid-air, I seem to see three figures, two of
them clasped close in an