Essential Novelists - Ford Madox Ford. Ford Madox Ford

he could not bear to see a child cry. Perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not give her the comfort of his physical attractions. But, although I liked him so intensely, I was rather apt to take these things for granted. They made me feel comfortable with him, good towards him; they made me trust him. But I guess I thought it was part of the character of any English gentleman. Why, one day he got it into his head that the head waiter at the Excelsior had been crying — the fellow with the grey face and grey whiskers. And then he spent the best part of a week, in correspondence and up at the British consul’s, in getting the fellow’s wife to come back from London and bring back his girl baby. She had bolted with a Swiss scullion. If she had not come inside the week he would have gone to London himself to fetch her. He was like that. Edward Ashburnham was like that, and I thought it was only the duty of his rank and station. Perhaps that was all that it was — but I pray God to make me discharge mine as well. And, but for the poor girl, I daresay that I should never have seen it, however much the feeling might have been over me. She had for him such enthusiasm that, although even now I do not understand the technicalities of English life, I can gather enough. She was with them during the whole of our last stay at Nauheim.

      Nancy Rufford was her name; she was Leonora’s only friend’s only child, and Leonora was her guardian, if that is the correct term. She had lived with the Ashburnhams ever since she had been of the age of thirteen, when her mother was said to have committed suicide owing to the brutalities of her father. Yes, it is a cheerful story. . . . Edward always called her “the girl”, and it was very pretty, the evident affection he had for her and she for him. And Leonora’s feet she would have kissed — those two were for her the best man and the best woman on earth — and in heaven. I think that she had not a thought of evil in her head — the poor girl. . . .

      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., 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’s 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., 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’. She made him out like a cross between Lohengrin and the Chevalier Bayard. 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 Cid 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

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      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 Branshaw, 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