Well, anyhow, she chanted Edward’s praises to me for the hour together, but, as I have said, I could not make much of it. It appeared that he had the D.S.O.,101 and that his troop loved him beyond the love of men. You never saw such a troop as his. And he had the Royal Humane Society’s102 medal with a clasp. That meant, apparently, that he had twice jumped off the deck of a troopship to rescue what the girl called ‘Tommies’, who had fallen overboard in the Red Sea and such places. He had been twice recommended for the V.C.,103 whatever that might mean, and, although owing to some technicalities he had never received that apparently coveted order, he had some special place about his sovereign at the coronation. Or perhaps it was some post in the Beefeaters.104 She made him out like a cross between Lohengrin and the Chevalier Bayard.105 Perhaps he was… But he was too silent a fellow to make that side of him really decorative. I remember going to him at about that time and asking him what the D.S.O. was, and he grunted out:
‘It’s a sort of a thing they give grocers who’ve honourably supplied the troops with adulterated coffee in war-time’ – something of that sort. He did not quite carry conviction to me, so, in the end, I put it directly to Leonora. I asked her fully and squarely – prefacing the question with some remarks, such as those that I have already given you, as to the difficulty one has in really getting to know people when one’s intimacy is conducted as an English acquaintanceship – I asked her whether her husband was not really a splendid fellow – along at least the lines of his public functions. She looked at me with a slightly awakened air – with an air that would have been almost startled if Leonora could ever have been startled.
‘Didn’t you know?’ she asked. ‘If I come to think of it there is not a more splendid fellow in any three counties, pick them where you will – along those lines.’ And she added, after she had looked at me reflectively for what seemed a long time:
‘To do my husband justice there could not be a better man on the earth. There would not be room for it – along those lines.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘then he must really be Lohengrin and the Cid106 in one body. For there are not any other lines that count.’
Again she looked at me for a long time.
‘It’s your opinion that there are no other lines that count?’ she asked slowly.
‘Well,’ I answered gaily, ‘you’re not going to accuse him of not being a good husband, or of not being a good guardian to your ward?’
She spoke then, slowly, like a person who is listening to the sounds in a sea-shell held to her ear – and, would you believe it? – she told me afterwards that, at that speech of mine, for the first time she had a vague inkling of the tragedy that was to follow so soon – although the girl had lived with them for eight years or so:
‘Oh, I’m not thinking of saying that he is not the best of husbands, or that he is not very fond of the girl.’
And then I said something like:
‘Well, Leonora, a man sees more of these things than even a wife. And, let me tell you, that in all the years I’ve known Edward he has never, in your absence, paid a moment’s attention to any other woman – not by the quivering of an eyelash. I should have noticed. And he talks of you as if you were one of the angels of God.’
‘Oh,’ she came up to the scratch, as you could be sure Leonora would always come up to the scratch, ‘I am perfectly sure that he always speaks nicely of me.’
I daresay she had practice in that sort of scene – people must have been always complimenting her on her husband’s fidelity and adoration. For half the world – the whole of the world that knew Edward and Leonora believed that his conviction in the Kilsyte affair had been a miscarriage of justice – a conspiracy of false evidence, got together by Nonconformist adversaries. But think of the fool that I was…
II
Let me think where we were. Oh, yes… that conversation took place on the 4th of August, 1913. I remember saying to her that, on that day, exactly nine years before, I had made their acquaintance, so that it had seemed quite appropriate and like a birthday speech to utter my little testimonial to my friend Edward. I could quite confidently say that, though we four had been about together in all sorts of places, for all that length of time, I had not, for my part, one single complaint to make of either of them. And I added, that that was an unusual record for people who had been so much together. You are not to imagine that it was only at Nauheim that we met. That would not have suited Florence.
I find, on looking at my diaries, that on the 4th of September, 1904, Edward accompanied Florence and myself to Paris, where we put him up till the twenty-first of that month. He made another short visit to us in December of that year – the first year of our acquaintance. It must have been during this visit that he knocked Mr Jimmy’s teeth down his throat. I daresay Florence had asked him to come over for that purpose. In 1905 he was in Paris three times – once with Leonora, who wanted some frocks. In 1906 we spent the best part of six weeks together at Mentone, and Edward stayed with us in Paris on his way back to London. That was how it went.
The fact was that in Florence the poor wretch had got hold of a Tartar, compared with whom Leonora was a sucking kid. He must have had a hell of a time. Leonora wanted to keep him for – what shall I say – for the good of her church, as it were, to show that Catholic women do not lose their men. Let it go at that, for the moment. I will write more about her motives later, perhaps. But Florence was sticking on to the proprietor of the home of her ancestors. No doubt he was also a very passionate lover. But I am convinced that he was sick of Florence within three years of even interrupted companionship and the life that she led him…
If ever Leonora so much as mentioned in a letter that they had had a woman staying with them – or, if she so much as mentioned a woman’s name in a letter to me – off would go a desperate cable in cipher to that poor wretch at Bramshaw, commanding him on pain of an instant and horrible disclosure to come over and assure her of his fidelity. I daresay he would have faced it out; I daresay he would have thrown over Florence and taken the risk of exposure. But there he had Leonora to deal with. And Leonora assured him that, if the minutest fragment of the real situation ever got through to my senses, she would wreak upon him the most terrible vengeance that she could think of. And he did not have a very easy job. Florence called for more and more attentions from him as the time went on. She would make him kiss her at any moment of the day; and it was only by his making it plain that a divorced lady could never assume a position in the county of Hampshire that he could prevent her from making a bolt of it with him in her train. Oh, yes, it was a difficult job for him.
For Florence, if you please, gaining in time a more composed view of nature, and overcome by her habits of garrulity, arrived at a frame of mind in which she found it almost necessary to tell me all about it – nothing less than that. She said that her situation was too unbearable with regard to me.
She proposed to tell me all, secure a divorce from me, and go with Edward and settle in California… I do not suppose that she was really serious in this. It would have meant the extinction of all hopes of Bramshaw Manor for her. Besides she had got it into her head that Leonora, who was as sound as a roach, was consumptive. She was always begging Leonora, before me, to go and see a doctor. But, none the less, poor Edward seems to have believed in her determination to carry him off. He would not have gone; he cared for his wife too much. But, if Florence had put him at it,107 that would have meant my getting to know of it, and his incurring Leonora’s vengeance. And she could have made it pretty hot for him in ten or a dozen different ways. And she assured me that she would have used every one of them. She was determined to spare my feelings. And she was quite aware that, at that date, the hottest she could have made it for him would have been to refuse, herself, ever to see him again…
Well, I think I have made it pretty clear. Let me come to the 4th of August, 1913, the last day of my absolute ignorance – and, I assure you, of my perfect happiness. For the coming of that dear
girl only added to it all.
On that 4th of August I was sitting in the lounge with a rather odious Englishman called Bagshawe, who had arrived that night, too late for dinner. Leonora had just gone to bed and I was waiting for Florence and Edward and the girl to come back from a concert at the Casino. They had not gone there all together. Florence, I remember, had said at first that she would remain with Leonora, and me, and Edward and the girl had gone off alone. And then Leonora had said to Florence with perfect calmness:
‘I wish you would go with those two. I think the girl ought to have the appearance of being chaperoned with Edward in these places. I think the time has come.’ So Florence, with her light step, had slipped out after them. She was all in black for some cousin or other. Americans are particular in those matters.
We had gone on sitting in the lounge till towards ten, when Leonora had gone up to bed. It had been a very hot day, but there it was cool. The man called Bagshawe had been reading The Times on the other side of the room, but then he moved over to me with some trifling question as a prelude to suggesting an acquaintance. I fancy he asked me something about the poll-tax on Kur-guests, and whether it could not be sneaked out of. He was that sort of person.
Well, he was an unmistakable man, with a military figure, rather exaggerated, with bulbous eyes that avoided your own, and a pallid complexion that suggested vices practised in secret along with an uneasy desire for making acquaintance at whatever cost… The filthy toad…
He began by telling me that he came from Ludlow Manor, near Ledbury. The name had a slightly familiar sound, though I could not fix it in my mind. Then he began to talk about a duty on hops, about Californian hops, about Los Angeles, where he had been. He was fencing for a topic with which he might gain my affection.
And then, quite suddenly, in the bright light of the street, I saw Florence running. It was like that – Florence running with a face whiter than paper and her hand on the black stuff over her heart. I tell you, my own heart stood still; I tell you I could not move. She rushed in at the swing doors. She looked round that place of rush chairs, cane tables and newspapers. She saw me and opened her lips. She saw the man who was talking to me. She stuck her hands over her face as if she wished to push her eyes out. And she was not there any more.
I could not move; I could not stir a finger. And then that man said:
‘By Jove: Florry Hurlbird.’ He turned upon me with an oily and uneasy sound meant for a laugh. He was really going to ingratiate himself with me.
‘Do you know who that is?’ he asked. ‘The last time I saw that girl she was coming out of the bedroom of a young man called Jimmy at five o’clock in the morning. In my house at Ledbury. You saw her recognize me.’ He was standing on his feet, looking down at me. I don’t know what I looked like. At any rate, he gave a sort of gurgle and then stuttered:
‘Oh, I say…’ Those were the last words I ever heard of Mr Bagshawe’s. A long time afterwards I pulled myself out of the lounge and went up to Florence’s room. She had not locked the door – for the first time of our married life. She was lying, quite respectably arranged, unlike Mrs Maidan, on her bed. She had a little phial that rightly should have contained nitrate of amyl,108 in her right hand. That was on the 4th of August, 1913.
Part Three
I
The odd thing is that what sticks out in my recollection of the rest of that evening was Leonora’s saying:
‘Of course you might marry her,’ and, when I asked whom, she answered:
‘The girl.’
Now that is to me a very amazing thing – amazing for the light of possibilities that it casts into the human heart. For I had never had the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; I never had the slightest idea even of caring for her. I must have talked in an odd way, as people do who are recovering from an anaesthetic. It is as if one had a dual personality, the one I being entirely unconscious of the other. I had thought nothing; I had said such an extraordinary thing.
I don’t know that analysis of my own psychology matters at all to this story. I should say that it didn’t or, at any rate, that I had given enough of it. But that odd remark of mine had a strong influence upon what came after. I mean, that Leonora would probably never have spoken to me at all about Florence’s relations with Edward if I hadn’t said, two hours after my wife’s death:
‘Now I can many the girl.’
She had, then, taken it for granted that I had been suffering all that she had been suffering, or, at least, that I had permitted all that she had permitted. So that, a month ago, about a week after the funeral of poor Edward, she could say to me in the most natural way in the world – I had been talking about the duration of my stay at Bramshaw – she said with her clear, reflective intonation:
‘Oh, stop here for ever and ever if you can.’ And then she added, ‘You couldn’t be more of a brother to me, or more of a counsellor, or more of a support. You are all the consolation I have in the world. And isn’t it odd to think that if your wife hadn’t been my husband’s mistress, you would probably never have been here at all?’
That was how I got the news – full in the face, like that. I didn’t say anything and I don’t suppose I felt anything, unless maybe it was with that mysterious and unconscious self that underlies most people. Perhaps one day when I am unconscious or walking in my sleep I may go and spit upon poor Edward’s grave. It seems about the most unlikely thing I could do; but there it is.
No, I remember no emotion of any sort, but just the clear feeling that one has from time to time when one hears that some Mrs So-and-So is au mieux109 with a certain gentleman. It made things plainer, suddenly, to my curiosity. It was as if I thought, at that moment, of a windy November evening, that, when I came to think it over afterwards, a dozen unexplained things would fit themselves into place. But I wasn’t thinking things over then. I remember that distinctly. I was just sitting back, rather stiffly, in a deep arm-chair. That is what I remember. It was twilight.
Bramshaw Manor lies in a little hollow with lawns across it and pine-woods on the fringe of the dip. The immense wind, coming from across the forest, roared overhead. But the view from the window was perfectly quiet and grey. Not a thing stirred, except a couple of rabbits on the extreme edge of the lawn. It was Leonora’s own little study that we were in and we were waiting for the tea to be brought. I, as I said, was sitting in the deep chair, Leonora was standing in the window twirling the wooden acorn at the end of the window-blind cord desultorily round and round. She looked across the lawn and said, as far as I can remember:
‘Edward has been dead only ten days and yet there are rabbits on the lawn.’
I understand that rabbits do a great deal of harm to the short grass in England. And then she turned round to me and said without any adornment at all, for I remember her exact words:
‘I think it was stupid of Florence to commit suicide.’
I cannot tell you the extraordinary sense of leisure that we two seemed to have at that moment. It wasn’t as if we were waiting for a train, it wasn’t as if we were waiting for a meal – it was just that there was nothing to wait for. Nothing.
There was an extreme stillness with the remote and intermittent sound of the wind. There was the grey light in that brown, small room. And there appeared to be nothing else in the world.
I knew then that Leonora was about to let me into her full confidence. It was as if – or no, it was the actual fact that – Leonora with an odd English sense of decency had determined to wait until Edward had been in his grave for a full week before she spoke. And with some vague motive of giving her an idea of the extent to which she must permit herself to make confidences, I said slowly – and these words too I remember with exactitude –
‘Did Florence commit suicide? I didn’t know.’
I was just, you understand, trying to let her know that, if she were going to speak she would have to talk about a much wider range of things than she had before thought necessary.
/> So that that was the first knowledge I had that Florence had committed suicide. It had never entered my head. You may think that I had been singularly lacking in suspiciousness; you may consider me even to have been an imbecile. But consider exactly the position.
In such circumstances of clamour, of outcry, of the crash of many people running together, of the professional reticence of such people as hotel-keepers, the traditional reticence of such ‘good people’ as the Ashburnhams – in such circumstances it is some little material object, always, that catches the eye and that appeals to the imagination. I had no possible guide to the idea of suicide and the sight of the little flask of nitrate of amyl in Florence’s hand suggested instantly to my mind the idea of the failure of her heart. Nitrate of amyl, you understand, is the drug that is given to relieve sufferers from angina pectoris.110
Seeing Florence, as I had seen her, running with a white face and with one hand held over her heart, and seeing her, as I immediately afterwards saw her, lying upon her bed with the so familiar little brown flask clenched in her fingers, it was natural enough for my mind to frame the idea. As happened now and again, I thought, she had gone out without her remedy and, having felt an attack coming on whilst she was in the gardens, she had run in to get the nitrate in order, as quickly as possible, to obtain relief. And it was equally inevitable my mind should frame the thought that her heart, unable to stand the strain of the running, should have broken in her side. How could I have known that, during all the years of our married life, that little brown flask had contained, not nitrate of amyl, but prussic acid? It was inconceivable.
Why, not even Edward Ashburnham, who was, after all more intimate with her than I was, had an inkling of the truth. He just thought that she had dropped dead of heart disease. Indeed, I fancy that the only people who ever knew that Florence had committed suicide were Leonora, the Grand Duke, the head of the police and the hotel-keeper. I mention these last three because my recollection of that night is only the sort of pinkish effulgence from the electric lamps in the hotel lounge. There seemed to bob into my consciousness, like floating globes, the faces of those three. Now it would be the bearded, monarchical, benevolent head of the Grand Duke; then the sharp-featured, brown, cavalry-moustached features of the chief of police; then the globular, polished and high-collared vacuousness that represented Monsieur Schontz, the proprietor of the hotel. At times one head would be there alone, at another the spiked helmet of the official would be close to the healthy baldness of the prince; then M. Schontz’s oiled locks would push in between the two. The sovereign’s soft, exquisitely trained voice would say, ‘Ja, ja, ja!’ each word dropping out like so many soft pellets of suet; the subdued rasp of the official would come: ‘Zum Befehl, Durchlaucht,’111 like five revolver-shots; the voice of M. Schontz would go on and on under its breath like that of an unclean priest reciting from his breviary in the corner of a railway-carriage. That was how it presented itself to me.