Essential Novelists - Ford Madox Ford. Ford Madox Ford
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 Branshaw 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, 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 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 — I saw 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, in her right hand. That was on the 4th of August, 1913.
PART III
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I
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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 marry 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 Branshaw — 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 mieux 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.