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AND then Leonora completely broke down--on the day that they
returned to Branshaw Teleragh. It is the infliction of our
miserable minds--it is the scourge of atrocious but probably just
destiny that no grief comes by itself. No, any great grief, though
the grief itself may have gone, leaves in its place a train of
horrors, of misery, and despair. For Leonora was, in herself,
relieved. She felt that she could trust Edward with the girl and she
knew that Nancy could be absolutely trusted. And then, with the
slackening of her vigilance, came the slackening of her entire
mind. This is perhaps the most miserable part of the entire story.
For it is miserable to see a clean intelligence waver; and Leonora
wavered.
You are to understand that Leonora loved Edward with a passion
that was yet like an agony of hatred. And she had lived with him
for years and years without addressing to him one word of
tenderness. I don't know how she could do it. At the beginning of
that relationship she had been just married off to him. She had
been one of seven daughters in a bare, untidy Irish manor-house to
which she had returned from the convent I have so often spoken
of. She had left it just a year and she was just nineteen. It is
impossible to imagine such inexperience as was hers. You might
almost say that she had never spoken to a man except a priest.
Coming straight from the convent, she had gone in behind the
high walls of the manor-house that was almost more cloistral than
any convent could have been. There were the seven girls, there
was the strained mother, there was the worried father at whom,
three times in the course of that year, the tenants took pot-shots
from behind a hedge. The women-folk, upon the whole, the
tenants respected. Once a week each of the girls, since there were
seven of them, took a drive with the mother in the old basketwork
chaise drawn by a very fat, very lumbering pony. They paid
occasionally a call, but even these were so rare that, Leonora has
assured me, only three times in the year that succeeded her
coming home from the convent did she enter another person's
house. For the rest of the time the seven sisters ran about in the
neglected gardens between the unpruned espaliers. Or they played
lawn-tennis or fives in an angle of a great wall that surrounded the
garden--an angle from which the fruit trees had long died away.
They painted in water-colour; they embroidered; they copied
verses into albums. Once a week they went to Mass; once a week
to the confessional, accompanied by an old nurse. They were
happy since they had known no other life.
It appeared to them a singular extravagance when, one day, a
photographer was brought over from the county town and
photographed them standing, all seven, in the shadow of an old
apple tree with the grey lichen on the raddled trunk. But it wasn't
an extravagance.
Three weeks before Colonel Powys had written to Colonel
Ashburnham:
"I say, Harry, couldn't your Edward marry one of my girls? It
would be a god-send to me, for I'm at the end of my tether and,
once one girl begins to go off, the rest of them will follow." He
went on to say that all his daughters were tall, upstanding,
clean-limbed and absolutely pure, and he reminded Colonel
Ashburnham that, they having been married on the same day,
though in different churches, since the one was a Catholic and the
other an Anglican--they had said to each other, the night before,
that, when the time came, one of their sons should marry one of
their daughters. Mrs Ashburnham had been a Powys and remained
Mrs Powys' dearest friend. They had drifted about the world as
English soldiers do, seldom meeting, but their women always in
correspondence one with another. They wrote about minute things
such as the teething of Edward and of the earlier daughters or the
best way to repair a Jacob's ladder in a stocking. And, if they met
seldom, yet it was often enough to keep each other's personalities
fresh in their minds, gradually growing a little stiff in the joints,
but always with enough to talk about and with a store of
reminiscences. Then, as his girls began to come of age when they
must leave the convent in which they were regularly interned
during his years of active service, Colonel Powys retired from the
army with the necessity of making a home for them. It happened
that the Ashburnhams had never seen any of the Powys girls,
though, whenever the four parents met in London, Edward
Ashburnham was always of the party. He was at that time
twenty-two and, I believe, almost as pure in mind as Leonora
herself. It is odd how a boy can have his virgin intelligence
untouched in this world.
That was partly due to the careful handling of his mother, partly to
the fact that the house to which he went at Winchester had a
particularly pure tone and partly to Edward's own peculiar
aversion from anything like coarse language or gross stories. At
Sandhurst he had just kept out of the way of that sort of thing. He
was keen on soldiering, keen on mathematics, on land-surveying,
on politics and, by a queer warp of his mind, on literature. Even
when he was twenty-two he would pass hours reading one of
Scott's novels or the Chronicles of Froissart. Mrs Ashburnham
considered that she was to be congratulated, and almost every
week she wrote to Mrs Powys, dilating upon her satisfaction.
Then, one day, taking a walk down Bond Street with her son, after
having been at Lord's, she noticed Edward suddenly turn his head
round to take a second look at a well-dressed girl who had passed
them. She wrote about that, too, to Mrs Powys, and expressed
some alarm. It had been, on Edward's part, the merest reflex
action. He was so very abstracted at that time owing to the
pressure his crammer was putting upon him that he certainly hadn't
known what he was doing.
It was this letter of Mrs Ashburnham's to Mrs Powys that had
caused the letter from Colonel Powys to Colonel Ashburnham--a
letter that was half-humorous, half longing. Mrs Ashburnham
caused her husband to reply, with a letter a little more
jocular--something to the effect that Colonel Powys ought to give
them some idea of the goods that he was marketing. That was the
cause of the photograph. I have seen it, the seven girls, all in white
dresses, all very much alike in feature--all, except Leonora, a little
heavy about the chins and a little stupid about the eyes. I dare say
it would have made Leonora, too, look a little heavy and a little
stupid, for it was not a good photograph. But the black shadow
from one of the branches of the apple tree cut right across her
face, which is all but invisible. There followed an extremely
harassing time for Colonel and Mrs Powys. Mrs Ashburnham had
written to say that, quite sincerely, nothing would give greater
ease to her maternal anxieties than to have her son marry one of
Mrs Powys' daughters if only he showed some inclination to do so.
For, she added, nothing but a love-match was to be thought of in
her Edward's case. But the poor Powys couple had to run things so
very fine that even the bringing together of the young people was
a desperate hazard.
The mere expenditure upon sending one of the girls over from
Ireland to Branshaw was terrifying to them; and whichever girl
they selected might not be the one to ring Edward's bell. On the
other hand, the expenditure upon mere food and extra sheets for a
visit from the Ashburnhams to them was terrifying, too. It would
mean, mathematically, going short in so many meals themselves,
afterwards. Nevertheless, they chanced it, and all the three
Ashburnhams came on a visit to the lonely manor-house. They
could give Edward some rough shooting, some rough fishing and
a whirl of femininity; but I should say the girls made really more
impression upon Mrs Ashburnham than upon Edward himself.
They appeared to her to be so clean run and so safe. They were
indeed so clean run that, in a faint sort of way, Edward seems to
have regarded them rather as boys than as girls. And then, one
evening, Mrs Ashburnham had with her boy one of those
conversations that English mothers have with English sons. It
seems to have been a criminal sort of proceeding, though I don't
know what took place at it. Anyhow, next morning Colonel
Ashburnham asked on behalf of his son for the hand of Leonora.
This caused some consternation to the Powys couple, since
Leonora was the third daughter and Edward ought to have married
the eldest. Mrs Powys, with her rigid sense of the proprieties,
almost wished to reject the proposal. But the Colonel, her
husband, pointed out that the visit would have cost them sixty
pounds, what with the hire of an extra servant, of a horse and car,
and with the purchase of beds and bedding and extra tablecloths.
There was nothing else for it but the marriage. In that way Edward
and Leonora became man and wife.
I don't know that a very minute study of their progress towards
complete disunion is necessary. Perhaps it is. But there are many
things that I cannot well make out, about which I cannot well
question Leonora, or about which Edward did not tell me. I do not
know that there was ever any question of love from Edward to
her. He regarded her, certainly, as desirable amongst her sisters.
He was obstinate to the extent of saying that if he could not have
her he would not have any of them. And, no doubt, before the
marriage, he made her pretty speeches out of books that he had
read. But, as far as he could describe his feelings at all, later, it
seems that, calmly and without any quickening of the pulse, he
just carried the girl off, there being no opposition . It had,
however, been all so long ago that it seemed to him, at the end of
his poor life, a dim and misty affair. He had the greatest
admiration for Leonora.
He had the very greatest admiration. He admired her for her
truthfulness, for her cleanness of mind, and the clean-run-ness of
her limbs, for her efficiency, for the fairness of her skin, for the
gold of her hair, for her religion, for her sense of duty. It was a
satisfaction to take her about with him.
But she had not for him a touch of magnetism. I suppose, really, he
did not love her because she was never mournful; what really
made him feel good in life was to comfort somebody who would
be darkly and mysteriously mournful. That he had never had to do
for Leonora. Perhaps, also, she was at first too obedient. I do not
mean to say that she was submissive-- that she deferred, in her j
udgements, to his. She did not. But she had been handed over to
him, like some patient medieval virgin; she had been taught all her
life that the first duty of a woman is to obey. And there she was.
In her, at least, admiration for his qualities very soon became love
of the deepest description. If his pulses never quickened she, so I
have been told, became what is called an altered being when he
approached her from the other side of a dancing-floor. Her eyes
followed him about full of trustfulness, of admiration, of
gratitude, and of love. He was also, in a great sense, her pastor and
guide--and he guided her into what, for a girl straight out of a
convent, was almost heaven. I have not the least idea of what an
English officer's wife's existence may be like. At any rate, there
were feasts, and chatterings, and nice men who gave her the right
sort of admiration, and nice women who treated her as if she had
been a baby. And her confessor approved of her life, and Edward
let her give little treats to the girls of the convent she had left, and
the Reverend Mother approved of him. There could not have been
a happier girl for five or six years. For it was only at the end of
that time that clouds began, as the saying is, to arise. She was then
about twenty-three, and her purposeful efficiency made her
perhaps have a desire for mastery. She began to perceive that
Edward was extravagant in his largesses. His parents died just
about that time, and Edward, though they both decided that he
should continue his soldiering, gave a great deal of attention to the
management of Branshaw through a steward. Aldershot was not
very far away, and they spent all his leaves there.
And, suddenly, she seemed to begin to perceive that his
generosities were almost fantastic. He subscribed much too much
to things connected with his mess, he pensioned off his father's
servants, old or new, much too generously. They had a large
income, but every now and then they would find themselves hard
up. He began to talk of mortgaging a farm or two, though it never
actually came to that.
She made tentative efforts at remonstrating with him. Her father,
whom she saw now and then, said that Edward was much too
generous to his tenants; the wives of his brother officers
remonstrated with her in private; his large subscriptions made it
difficult for their husbands to keep up with them. Ironically
enough, the first real trouble between them came from his desire
to build a Roman Catholic chapel at Branshaw. He wanted to do it
to honour Leonora, and he proposed to do it very expensively.
Leonora did not want it; she could perfectly well drive from
Branshaw to the nearest Catholic Church as often as she liked.
There were no Roman Catholic tenants and no Roman Catholic
servants except her old nurse who could always drive with her. She
had as many priests to stay with her as could be needed--and even
the priests did not want a gorgeous chapel in that place where it
would have merely seemed an invidious instance of ostentation.
They were perfectly ready to celebrate Mass for Leonora and her
nurse, when they stayed at Branshaw, in a cleaned-up outhouse.
But Edward was as obstinate as a hog about it. He was truly
grieved at his wife's want of sentiment--at her refusal to receive
that amount of public homage from him. She appeared to him to
be wanting in imagination--to be cold and hard. I don't exactly
know what part her priests played in the tragedy that it all
became; I dare say they behaved quite creditably but mistakenly.
But then, who would not have been mistaken with Edward? I
believe he was even hurt that Leonora's confessor did not make
strenuous efforts to convert him. There was a period when he was
quite ready to become an emotional Catholic.
I don't know why they did not take him on the hop; but they have
queer sorts of wisdoms, those people, and queer sorts of tact.
Perhaps they thought that Edward's too early conversion would
frighten off other Protestant desirables from marrying Catholic
girls. Perhaps they saw deeper into Edward than he saw himself
and thought that he would make a not very creditable convert. At
any rate they--and Leonora--left him very much alone. It mortified
him very considerably. He has told me that if Leonora had then
taken his aspirations seriously everything would have been
different. But I dare say that was nonsense. At any rate, it was
over the question of the chapel that they had their first and really
disastrous quarrel. Edward at that time was not well; he supposed
himself to be overworked with his regimental affairs--he was
managing the mess at the time. And Leonora was not well--she
was beginning to fear that their union might be sterile. And then
her father came over from Glasmoyle to stay with them.
Those were troublesome times in Ireland, I understand. At any
rate, Colonel Powys had tenants on the brain--his own tenants
having shot at him with shot-guns. And, in conversation with
Edward's land-steward, he got it into his head that Edward
managed his estates with a mad generosity towards his tenants. I
understand, also, that those years--the 'nineties--were very bad for
farming. Wheat was fetching only a few shillings the hundred; the
price of meat was so low that cattle hardly paid for raising; whole
English counties were ruined. And Edward allowed his tenants
very high rebates.
To do both justice Leonora has since acknowledged that she was in
the wrong at that time and that Edward was following out a more
far-seeing policy in nursing his really very good tenants over a bad
period. It was not as if the whole of his money came from the
land; a good deal of it was in rails. But old Colonel Powys had
that bee in his bonnet and, if he never directly approached Edward
himself on the subject, he preached unceasingly, whenever he had
the opportunity, to Leonora. His pet idea was that Edward ought to
sack all his own tenants and import a set of farmers from Scotland.
That was what they were doing in Essex. He was of opinion that
Edward was riding hotfoot to ruin.
That worried Leonora very much--it worried her dreadfully; she
lay awake nights; she had an anxious line round her mouth. And
that, again, worried Edward. I do not mean to say that Leonora
actually spoke to Edward about his tenants--but he got to know
that some one, probably her father, had been talking to her about
the matter. He got to know it because it was the habit of his
steward to look in on them every morning about breakfast-time to
report any little happenings. And there was a farmer called
Mumford who had only paid half his rent for the last three years.
One morning the land-steward reported that Mumford would be
unable to pay his rent at all that year. Edward reflected for a
moment and then he said something like:
"Oh well, he's an old fellow and his family have been our tenants
for over two hundred years. Let him off altogether."
And then Leonora--you must remember that she had reason for
being very nervous and unhappy at that time--let out a sound that
was very like a groan. It startled Edward, who more than
suspected what was passing in her mind--it startled him into a
state of anger. He said sharply:
"You wouldn't have me turn out people who've been earning
money for us for centuries--people to whom we have
responsibilities--and let in a pack of Scotch farmers?"
He looked at her, Leonora said, with what was practically a glance
of hatred and then, precipitately, he left the breakfast-table.
Leonora knew that it probably made it all the worse that he had
been betrayed into a manifestation of anger before a third party. It
was the first and last time that he ever was betrayed into such a
manifestation of anger. The land-steward, a moderate and
well-balanced man whose family also had been with the
Ashburnhams for over a century, took it upon himself to explain
that he considered Edward was pursuing a perfectly proper course
with his tenants. He erred perhaps a little on the side of
generosity, but hard times were hard times, and every one had to
feel the pinch, landlord as well as tenants. The great thing was not
to let the land get into a poor state of cultivation. Scotch farmers
just skinned your fields and let them go down and down. But
Edward had a very good set of tenants who did their best for him
and for themselves. These arguments at that time carried very little
conviction to Leonora. She was, nevertheless, much concerned by
Edward's outburst of anger. The fact is that Leonora had been
practising economies in her department. Two of the
under-housemaids had gone and she had not replaced them; she
had spent much less that year upon dress. The fare she had
provided at the dinners they gave had been much less bountiful
and not nearly so costly as had been the case in preceding years,
and Edward began to perceive a hardness and determination in his
wife's character. He seemed to see a net closing round him--a net
in which they would be forced to live like one of the
comparatively poor county families of the neighbourhood. And, in
the mysterious way in which two people, living together, get to
know each other's thoughts without a word spoken, he had known,
even before his outbreak, that Leonora was worrying about his
managing of the estates. This appeared to him to be intolerable.
He had, too, a great feeling of self-contempt because he had been
betrayed into speaking harshly to Leonora before that
land-steward. She imagined that his nerve must be deserting him,
and there can have been few men more miserable than Edward
was at that period. You see, he was really a very simple
soul--very simple. He imagined that no man can satisfactorily
accomplish his life's work without loyal and whole-hearted
cooperation of the woman he lives with. And he was beginning to
perceive dimly that, whereas his own traditions were entirely
collective, his wife was a sheer individualist. His own theory--the
feudal theory of an over-lord doing his best by his dependents, the
dependents meanwhile doing their best for the over-lord--this
theory was entirely foreign to Leonora's nature. She came of a
family of small Irish landlords--that hostile garrison in a
plundered country. And she was thinking unceasingly of the
children she wished to have. I don't know why they never had any
children--not that I really believe that children would have made
any difference. The dissimilarity of Edward and Leonora was too
profound. It will give you some idea of the extraordinary naïveté
of Edward Ashburnham that, at the time of his marriage and for
perhaps a couple of years after, he did not really know how
children are produced. Neither did Leonora. I don't mean to say
that this state of things continued, but there it was. I dare say it
had a good deal of influence on their mentalities. At any rate, they
never had a child. It was the Will of God.
It certainly presented itself to Leonora as being the Will of God--as
being a mysterious and awful chastisement of the Almighty. For
she had discovered shortly before this period that her parents had
not exacted from Edward's family the promise that any children
she should bear should be brought up as Catholics. She herself
had never talked of the matter with either her father, her mother,
or her husband. When at last her father had let drop some words
leading her to believe that that was the fact, she tried desperately
to extort the promise from Edward. She encountered an
unexpected obstinacy. Edward was perfectly willing that the girls
should be Catholic; the boys must be Anglican. I don't understand
the bearing of these things in English society. Indeed, Englishmen
seem to me to be a little mad in matters of politics or of religion.
In Edward it was particularly queer because he himself was
perfectly ready to become a Romanist. He seemed, however, to
contemplate going over to Rome himself and yet letting his boys
be educated in the religion of their immediate ancestors. This may
appear illogical, but I dare say it is not so illogical as it looks.
Edward, that is to say, regarded himself as having his own body
and soul at his own disposal. But his loyalty to the traditions of his
family would not permit him to bind any future inheritors of his
name or beneficiaries by the death of his ancestors. About the
girls it did not so much matter. They would know other homes
and other circumstances. Besides, it was the usual thing. But the
boys must be given the opportunity of choosing--and they must
have first of all the Anglican teaching. He was perfectly
unshakable about this.
Leonora was in an agony during all this time. You will have to
remember she seriously believed that children who might be born
to her went in danger, if not absolutely of damnation, at any rate
of receiving false doctrine. It was an agony more terrible than she
could describe. She didn't indeed attempt to describe it, but I
could tell from her voice when she said, almost negligently, "I
used to lie awake whole nights. It was no good my spiritual
advisers trying to console me." I knew from her voice how terrible
and how long those nights must have seemed and of how little
avail were the consolations of her spiritual advisers. Her spiritual
advisers seemed to have taken the matter a little more calmly.
They certainly told her that she must not consider herself in any
way to have sinned. Nay, they seem even to have extorted, to have
threatened her, with a view to getting her out of what they
considered to be a morbid frame of mind. She would just have to
make the best of things, to influence the children when they came,
not by propaganda, but by personality. And they warned her that
she would be committing a sin if she continued to think that she
had sinned. Nevertheless, she continued to think that she had
sinned.
Leonora could not be aware that the man whom she loved
passionately and whom, nevertheless, she was beginning to try to
rule with a rod of iron--that this man was becoming more and
more estranged from her. He seemed to regard her as being not
only physically and mentally cold, but even as being actually
wicked and mean. There were times when he would almost
shudder if she spoke to him. And she could not understand how he
could consider her wicked or mean. It only seemed to her a sort of
madness in him that he should try to take upon his own shoulders
the burden of his troop, of his regiment, of his estate and of half of
his country. She could not see that in trying to curb what she
regarded as megalomania she was doing anything wicked. She
was just trying to keep things together for the sake of the children
who did not come. And, little by little, the whole of their
intercourse became simply one of agonized discussion as to
whether Edward should subscribe to this or that institution or
should try to reclaim this or that drunkard. She simply could not
see it.
Into this really terrible position of strain, from which there
appeared to be no issue, the Kilsyte case came almost as a relief.
It is part of the peculiar irony of things that Edward would
certainly never have kissed that nurse-maid if he had not been
trying to please Leonora. Nurse-maids do not travel first-class,
and, that day, Edward travelled in a third-class carriage in order to
prove to Leonora that he was capable of economies. I have said
that the Kilsyte case came almost as a relief to the strained
situation that then existed between them. It gave Leonora an
opportunity of backing him up in a whole-hearted and absolutely
loyal manner. It gave her the opportunity of behaving to him as he
considered a wife should behave to her husband.
You see, Edward found himself in a railway carriage with a quite
pretty girl of about nineteen. And the quite pretty girl of about
nineteen, with dark hair and red cheeks and blue eyes, was quietly
weeping. Edward had been sitting in his corner thinking about
nothing at all. He had chanced to look at the nurse-maid; two
large, pretty tears came out of her eyes and dropped into her lap.
He immediately felt that he had got to do something to comfort
her. That was his job in life. He was desperately unhappy himself
and it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world that they
should pool their sorrows. He was quite democratic; the idea of
the difference in their station never seems to have occurred to
him. He began to talk to her. He discovered that her young man
had been seen walking out with Annie of Number 54. He moved
over to her side of the carriage. He told her that the report
probably wasn't true; that, after all, a young man might take a walk
with Annie from Number 54 without its denoting anything very
serious. And he assured me that he felt at least quite half-fatherly
when he put his arm around her waist and kissed her. The girl,
however, had not forgotten the difference of her station.
All her life, by her mother, by other girls, by schoolteachers, by the
whole tradition of her class she had been warned against
gentlemen. She was being kissed by a gentleman. She screamed,
tore herself away; sprang up and pulled a communication cord.
Edward came fairly well out of the affair in the public estimation;
but it did him, mentally, a good deal of harm.
Read next: PART III: CHAPTER IV
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