The Good Soldier (17 page)

I don't know why they did not take him on the hop; but they have
queer sorts of wisdoms, those people, and queer sorts of tact.
Perhaps they thought that Edward's too early conversion would
frighten off other Protestant desirables from marrying Catholic
girls. Perhaps they saw deeper into Edward than he saw himself and
thought that he would make a not very creditable convert. At any
rate they—and Leonora—left him very much alone. It mortified him
very considerably. He has told me that if Leonora had then taken
his aspirations seriously everything would have been different. But
I dare say that was nonsense. At any rate, it was over the question
of the chapel that they had their first and really disastrous
quarrel. Edward at that time was not well; he supposed himself to
be overworked with his regimental affairs—he was managing the mess
at the time. And Leonora was not well—she was beginning to fear
that their union might be sterile. And then her father came over
from Glasmoyle to stay with them.

Those were troublesome times in Ireland, I understand. At any
rate, Colonel Powys had tenants on the brain—his own tenants having
shot at him with shot-guns. And, in conversation with Edward's
land-steward, he got it into his head that Edward managed his
estates with a mad generosity towards his tenants. I understand,
also, that those years—the 'nineties—were very bad for farming.
Wheat was fetching only a few shillings the hundred; the price of
meat was so low that cattle hardly paid for raising; whole English
counties were ruined. And Edward allowed his tenants very high
rebates.

To do both justice Leonora has since acknowledged that she was
in the wrong at that time and that Edward was following out a more
far-seeing policy in nursing his really very good tenants over a
bad period. It was not as if the whole of his money came from the
land; a good deal of it was in rails. But old Colonel Powys had
that bee in his bonnet and, if he never directly approached Edward
himself on the subject, he preached unceasingly, whenever he had
the opportunity, to Leonora. His pet idea was that Edward ought to
sack all his own tenants and import a set of farmers from Scotland.
That was what they were doing in Essex. He was of opinion that
Edward was riding hotfoot to ruin.

That worried Leonora very much—it worried her dreadfully; she
lay awake nights; she had an anxious line round her mouth. And
that, again, worried Edward. I do not mean to say that Leonora
actually spoke to Edward about his tenants—but he got to know that
some one, probably her father, had been talking to her about the
matter. He got to know it because it was the habit of his steward
to look in on them every morning about breakfast-time to report any
little happenings. And there was a farmer called Mumford who had
only paid half his rent for the last three years. One morning the
land-steward reported that Mumford would be unable to pay his rent
at all that year. Edward reflected for a moment and then he said
something like:

"Oh well, he's an old fellow and his family have been our
tenants for over two hundred years. Let him off altogether."

And then Leonora—you must remember that she had reason for being
very nervous and unhappy at that time—let out a sound that was very
like a groan. It startled Edward, who more than suspected what was
passing in her mind—it startled him into a state of anger. He said
sharply:

"You wouldn't have me turn out people who've been earning money
for us for centuries—people to whom we have responsibilities—and
let in a pack of Scotch farmers?"

He looked at her, Leonora said, with what was practically a
glance of hatred and then, precipitately, he left the
breakfast-table. Leonora knew that it probably made it all the
worse that he had been betrayed into a manifestation of anger
before a third party. It was the first and last time that he ever
was betrayed into such a manifestation of anger. The land-steward,
a moderate and well-balanced man whose family also had been with
the Ashburnhams for over a century, took it upon himself to explain
that he considered Edward was pursuing a perfectly proper course
with his tenants. He erred perhaps a little on the side of
generosity, but hard times were hard times, and every one had to
feel the pinch, landlord as well as tenants. The great thing was
not to let the land get into a poor state of cultivation. Scotch
farmers just skinned your fields and let them go down and down. But
Edward had a very good set of tenants who did their best for him
and for themselves. These arguments at that time carried very
little conviction to Leonora. She was, nevertheless, much concerned
by Edward's outburst of anger. The fact is that Leonora had been
practising economies in her department. Two of the under-housemaids
had gone and she had not replaced them; she had spent much less
that year upon dress. The fare she had provided at the dinners they
gave had been much less bountiful and not nearly so costly as had
been the case in preceding years, and Edward began to perceive a
hardness and determination in his wife's character. He seemed to
see a net closing round him—a net in which they would be forced to
live like one of the comparatively poor county families of the
neighbourhood. And, in the mysterious way in which two people,
living together, get to know each other's thoughts without a word
spoken, he had known, even before his outbreak, that Leonora was
worrying about his managing of the estates. This appeared to him to
be intolerable. He had, too, a great feeling of self-contempt
because he had been betrayed into speaking harshly to Leonora
before that land-steward. She imagined that his nerve must be
deserting him, and there can have been few men more miserable than
Edward was at that period. You see, he was really a very simple
soul—very simple. He imagined that no man can satisfactorily
accomplish his life's work without loyal and whole-hearted
cooperation of the woman he lives with. And he was beginning to
perceive dimly that, whereas his own traditions were entirely
collective, his wife was a sheer individualist. His own theory—the
feudal theory of an over-lord doing his best by his dependents, the
dependents meanwhile doing their best for the over-lord—this theory
was entirely foreign to Leonora's nature. She came of a family of
small Irish landlords—that hostile garrison in a plundered country.
And she was thinking unceasingly of the children she wished to
have. I don't know why they never had any children—not that I
really believe that children would have made any difference. The
dissimilarity of Edward and Leonora was too profound. It will give
you some idea of the extraordinary naïveté of Edward Ashburnham
that, at the time of his marriage and for perhaps a couple of years
after, he did not really know how children are produced. Neither
did Leonora. I don't mean to say that this state of things
continued, but there it was. I dare say it had a good deal of
influence on their mentalities. At any rate, they never had a
child. It was the Will of God.

It certainly presented itself to Leonora as being the Will of
God—as being a mysterious and awful chastisement of the Almighty.
For she had discovered shortly before this period that her parents
had not exacted from Edward's family the promise that any children
she should bear should be brought up as Catholics. She herself had
never talked of the matter with either her father, her mother, or
her husband. When at last her father had let drop some words
leading her to believe that that was the fact, she tried
desperately to extort the promise from Edward. She encountered an
unexpected obstinacy. Edward was perfectly willing that the girls
should be Catholic; the boys must be Anglican. I don't understand
the bearing of these things in English society. Indeed, Englishmen
seem to me to be a little mad in matters of politics or of
religion. In Edward it was particularly queer because he himself
was perfectly ready to become a Romanist. He seemed, however, to
contemplate going over to Rome himself and yet letting his boys be
educated in the religion of their immediate ancestors. This may
appear illogical, but I dare say it is not so illogical as it
looks. Edward, that is to say, regarded himself as having his own
body and soul at his own disposal. But his loyalty to the
traditions of his family would not permit him to bind any future
inheritors of his name or beneficiaries by the death of his
ancestors. About the girls it did not so much matter. They would
know other homes and other circumstances. Besides, it was the usual
thing. But the boys must be given the opportunity of choosing—and
they must have first of all the Anglican teaching. He was perfectly
unshakable about this.

Leonora was in an agony during all this time. You will have to
remember she seriously believed that children who might be born to
her went in danger, if not absolutely of damnation, at any rate of
receiving false doctrine. It was an agony more terrible than she
could describe. She didn't indeed attempt to describe it, but I
could tell from her voice when she said, almost negligently, "I
used to lie awake whole nights. It was no good my spiritual
advisers trying to console me." I knew from her voice how terrible
and how long those nights must have seemed and of how little avail
were the consolations of her spiritual advisers. Her spiritual
advisers seemed to have taken the matter a little more calmly. They
certainly told her that she must not consider herself in any way to
have sinned. Nay, they seem even to have extorted, to have
threatened her, with a view to getting her out of what they
considered to be a morbid frame of mind. She would just have to
make the best of things, to influence the children when they came,
not by propaganda, but by personality. And they warned her that she
would be committing a sin if she continued to think that she had
sinned. Nevertheless, she continued to think that she had
sinned.

Leonora could not be aware that the man whom she loved
passionately and whom, nevertheless, she was beginning to try to
rule with a rod of iron—that this man was becoming more and more
estranged from her. He seemed to regard her as being not only
physically and mentally cold, but even as being actually wicked and
mean. There were times when he would almost shudder if she spoke to
him. And she could not understand how he could consider her wicked
or mean. It only seemed to her a sort of madness in him that he
should try to take upon his own shoulders the burden of his troop,
of his regiment, of his estate and of half of his country. She
could not see that in trying to curb what she regarded as
megalomania she was doing anything wicked. She was just trying to
keep things together for the sake of the children who did not come.
And, little by little, the whole of their intercourse became simply
one of agonized discussion as to whether Edward should subscribe to
this or that institution or should try to reclaim this or that
drunkard. She simply could not see it.

Into this really terrible position of strain, from which there
appeared to be no issue, the Kilsyte case came almost as a relief.
It is part of the peculiar irony of things that Edward would
certainly never have kissed that nurse-maid if he had not been
trying to please Leonora. Nurse-maids do not travel first-class,
and, that day, Edward travelled in a third-class carriage in order
to prove to Leonora that he was capable of economies. I have said
that the Kilsyte case came almost as a relief to the strained
situation that then existed between them. It gave Leonora an
opportunity of backing him up in a whole-hearted and absolutely
loyal manner. It gave her the opportunity of behaving to him as he
considered a wife should behave to her husband.

You see, Edward found himself in a railway carriage with a quite
pretty girl of about nineteen. And the quite pretty girl of about
nineteen, with dark hair and red cheeks and blue eyes, was quietly
weeping. Edward had been sitting in his corner thinking about
nothing at all. He had chanced to look at the nurse-maid; two
large, pretty tears came out of her eyes and dropped into her lap.
He immediately felt that he had got to do something to comfort her.
That was his job in life. He was desperately unhappy himself and it
seemed to him the most natural thing in the world that they should
pool their sorrows. He was quite democratic; the idea of the
difference in their station never seems to have occurred to him. He
began to talk to her. He discovered that her young man had been
seen walking out with Annie of Number 54. He moved over to her side
of the carriage. He told her that the report probably wasn't true;
that, after all, a young man might take a walk with Annie from
Number 54 without its denoting anything very serious. And he
assured me that he felt at least quite half-fatherly when he put
his arm around her waist and kissed her. The girl, however, had not
forgotten the difference of her station.

All her life, by her mother, by other girls, by schoolteachers,
by the whole tradition of her class she had been warned against
gentlemen. She was being kissed by a gentleman. She screamed, tore
herself away; sprang up and pulled a communication cord.

Edward came fairly well out of the affair in the public
estimation; but it did him, mentally, a good deal of harm.

IT is very difficult to give an all-round impression of an 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.