The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford (good books to read for adults .txt) đ
- Author: Ford Madox Ford
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It is nothing to the point that she let him have it good and strong as soon as she discovered that he had been unfaithful to Leonora and that his public services had cost more than Leonora thought they ought to have cost. Nancy would be bound to let him have it good and strong then. She would owe that to feminine public opinion; she would be driven to it by the instinct for self-preservation, since she might well imagine that if Edward had been unfaithful to Leonora, to Mrs. Basil and to the memories of the other two, he might be unfaithful to herself. And, no doubt, she had her share of the sex instinct that makes women be intolerably cruel to the beloved person. Anyhow, I donât know whether, at this point, Nancy Rufford loved Edward Ashburnham. I donât know whether she even loved him when, on getting, at Aden, the news of his suicide she went mad. Because that may just as well have been for the sake of Leonora as for the sake of Edward. Or it may have been for the sake of both of them. I donât know. I know nothing. I am very tired.
Leonora held passionately the doctrine that the girl didnât love Edward. She wanted desperately to believe that. It was a doctrine as necessary to her existence as a belief in the personal immortality of the soul. She said that it was impossible that Nancy could have loved Edward after she had given the girl her view of Edwardâs career and character. Edward, on the other hand, believed maunderingly that some essential attractiveness in himself must have made the girl continue to go on loving himâ âto go on loving him, as it were, in underneath her official aspect of hatred. He thought she only pretended to hate him in order to save her face and he thought that her quite atrocious telegram from Brindisi was only another attempt to do thatâ âto prove that she had feelings creditable to a member of the feminine commonweal. I donât know. I leave it to you.
There is another point that worries me a good deal in the aspects of this sad affair. Leonora says that, in desiring that the girl should go five thousand miles away and yet continue to love him, Edward was a monster of selfishness. He was desiring the ruin of a young life. Edward on the other hand put it to me that, supposing that the girlâs love was a necessity to his existence, and, if he did nothing by word or by action to keep Nancyâs love alive, he couldnât be called selfish. Leonora replied that showed he had an abominably selfish nature even though his actions might be perfectly correct. I canât make out which of them was right. I leave it to you.
It is, at any rate, certain that Edwardâs actions were perfectlyâ âwere monstrously, were cruellyâ âcorrect. He sat still and let Leonora take away his character, and let Leonora damn him to deepest hell, without stirring a finger. I daresay he was a fool; I donât see what object there was in letting the girl think worse of him than was necessary. Still there it is. And there it is also that all those three presented to the world the spectacle of being the best of good people. I assure you that during my stay for that fortnight in that fine old house, I never so much as noticed a single thing that could have affected that good opinion. And even when I look back, knowing the circumstances, I canât remember a single thing any of them said that could have betrayed them. I canât remember, right up to the dinner, when Leonora read out that telegramâ ânot the tremor of an eyelash, not the shaking of a hand. It was just a pleasant country house-party.
And Leonora kept it up jolly well, for even longer than thatâ âshe kept it up as far as I was concerned until eight days after Edwardâs funeral. Immediately after that particular dinnerâ âthe dinner at which I received the announcement that Nancy was going to leave for India on the following dayâ âI asked Leonora to let me have a word with her. She took me into her little sitting-room and I then saidâ âI spare you the record of my emotionsâ âthat she was aware that I wished to marry Nancy; that she had seemed to favour my suit and that it appeared to be rather a waste of money upon tickets and rather a waste of time upon travel to let the girl go to India if Leonora thought that there was any chance of her marrying me.
And Leonora, I assure you, was the absolutely perfect British matron. She said that she quite favoured my suit; that she could not desire for the girl a better husband; but that she considered that the girl ought to see a little more of life before taking such an important step. Yes, Leonora used the words âtaking such an important step.â She was perfect. Actually, I think she would have liked the girl to marry me enough but my programme included the buying of the Kershawâs house about a mile away upon the Fordingbridge road, and settling down there with the girl. That didnât at all suit Leonora. She didnât want to have the girl within a mile and a half of Edward for the rest of their lives. Still, I think she might have managed to let me know, in some periphrasis
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