The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford (good books to read for adults .txt) đ
- Author: Ford Madox Ford
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I donât know; I donât know; was that last remark of hers the remark of a harlot, or is it what every decent woman, county family or not county family, thinks at the bottom of her heart? Or thinks all the time for the matter of that? Who knows?
Yet, if one doesnât know that at this hour and day, at this pitch of civilization to which we have attained, after all the preachings of all the moralists, and all the teachings of all the mothers to all the daughters in saecula saeculorumâ ââ ⊠but perhaps that is what all mothers teach all daughters, not with lips but with the eyes, or with heart whispering to heart. And, if one doesnât know as much as that about the first thing in the world, what does one know and why is one here?
I asked Mrs. Ashburnham whether she had told Florence that and what Florence had said and she answered:â ââFlorence didnât offer any comment at all. What could she say? There wasnât anything to be said. With the grinding poverty we had to put up with to keep up appearances, and the way the poverty came aboutâ âyou know what I meanâ âany woman would have been justified in taking a lover and presents too. Florence once said about a very similar positionâ âshe was a little too well-bred, too American, to talk about mineâ âthat it was a case of perfectly open riding and the woman could just act on the spur of the moment. She said it in American of course, but that was the sense of it. I think her actual words were: âThat it was up to her to take it or leave it.â ââ âŠâââ
I donât want you to think that I am writing Teddy Ashburnham down a brute. I donât believe he was. God knows, perhaps all men are like that. For as Iâve said what do I know even of the smoking-room? Fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily gross storiesâ âso gross that they will positively give you a pain. And yet theyâd be offended if you suggested that they werenât the sort of person you could trust your wife alone with. And very likely theyâd be quite properly offendedâ âthat is if you can trust anybody alone with anybody. But that sort of fellow obviously takes more delight in listening to or in telling gross storiesâ âmore delight than in anything else in the world. Theyâll hunt languidly and dress languidly and dine languidly and work without enthusiasm and find it a bore to carry on three minutesâ conversation about anything whatever and yet, when the other sort of conversation begins, theyâll laugh and wake up and throw themselves about in their chairs. Then, if they so delight in the narration, how is it possible that they can be offendedâ âand properly offendedâ âat the suggestion that they might make attempts upon your wifeâs honour? Or again: Edward Ashburnham was the cleanest looking sort of chap;â âan excellent magistrate, a first rate soldier, one of the best landlords, so they said, in Hampshire, England. To the poor and to hopeless drunkards, as I myself have witnessed, he was like a painstaking guardian. And he never told a story that couldnât have gone into the columns of the Field more than once or twice in all the nine years of my knowing him. He didnât even like hearing them; he would fidget and get up and go out to buy a cigar or something of that sort. You would have said that he was just exactly the sort of chap that you could have trusted your wife with. And I trusted mine and it was madness.
And yet again you have me. If poor Edward was dangerous because of the chastity of his expressionsâ âand they say that is always the hallmark of a libertineâ âwhat about myself? For I solemnly avow that not only have I never so much as hinted at an impropriety in my conversation in the whole of my days; and more than that, I will vouch for the cleanness of my thoughts and the absolute chastity of my life. At what, then, does it all work out? Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper manâ âthe man with the right to existenceâ âa raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbourâs womankind?
I donât know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? Or are we meant to act on impulse alone? It is all a darkness.
III donât know how it is best to put this thing downâ âwhether it would
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