Read Online The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford - Free Book Online

no doubt, have done from the first. I
daresay ten thousand dollars covered the bill. Anyhow, there was a
pretty solid hole in a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds or so.
And Leonora had to fix things up; he would have run from
money-lender to money-lender. And that was quite in the early days
of her discovery of his infidelities—if you like to call them
infidelities. And she discovered that one from public sources. God
knows what would have happened if she had not discovered it from
public sources. I suppose he would have concealed it from her until
they were penniless. But she was able, by the grace of God, to get
hold of the actual lenders of the money, to learn the exact sums
that were needed. And she went off to England.
    Yes, she went right off to England to her attorney and his while
he was still in the arms of his Circe—at Antibes, to which place
they had retired. He got sick of the lady quite quickly, but not
before Leonora had had such lessons in the art of business from her
attorney that she had her plan as clearly drawn up as was ever that
of General Trochu for keeping the Prussians out of Paris in 1870.
It was about as effectual at first, or it seemed so.
    That would have been, you know, in 1895, about nine years before
the date of which I am talking—the date of Florence's getting her
hold over Leonora; for that was what it amounted to.... Well, Mrs
Ashburnham had simply forced Edward to settle all his property upon
her. She could force him to do anything; in his clumsy,
good-natured, inarticulate way he was as frightened of her as of
the devil. And he admired her enormously, and he was as fond of her
as any man could be of any woman. She took advantage of it to treat
him as if he had been a person whose estates are being managed by
the Court of Bankruptcy. I suppose it was the best thing for
him.
    Anyhow, she had no end of a job for the first three years or so.
Unexpected liabilities kept on cropping up—and that afflicted fool
did not make it any easier. You see, along with the passion of the
chase went a frame of mind that made him be extraordinarily ashamed
of himself. You may not believe it, but he really had such a sort
of respect for the chastity of Leonora's imagination that he
hated—he was positively revolted at the thought that she should
know that the sort of thing that he did existed in the world. So he
would stick out in an agitated way against the accusation of ever
having done anything. He wanted to preserve the virginity of his
wife's thoughts. He told me that himself during the long walks we
had at the last—while the girl was on the way to Brindisi.
    So, of course, for those three years or so, Leonora had many
agitations. And it was then that they really quarrelled.
    Yes, they quarrelled bitterly. That seems rather extravagant.
You might have thought that Leonora would be just calmly loathing
and he lachrymosely contrite. But that was not it a bit... Along
with Edward's passions and his shame for them went the violent
conviction of the duties of his station—a conviction that was quite
unreasonably expensive. I trust I have not, in talking of his
liabilities, given the impression that poor Edward was a
promiscuous libertine. He was not; he was a sentimentalist. The
servant girl in the Kilsyte case had been pretty, but mournful of
appearance. I think that, when he had kissed her, he had desired
rather to comfort her. And, if she had succumbed to his
blandishments I daresay he would have set her up in a little house
in Portsmouth or Winchester and would have been faithful to her for
four or five years. He was quite capable of that.
    No, the only two of his affairs of the heart that cost him money
were that of the Grand Duke's mistress and that which was the
subject of the blackmailing letter that Leonora opened. That had
been a quite passionate affair with quite a nice woman. It had
succeeded the one with the Grand Ducal lady. The lady was the wife
of a brother officer and Leonora had