I CALL this the Saddest Story, rather than "The Ashburnham
Tragedy", just because it is so sad, just because there was no
current to draw things along to a swift and inevitable end. There is
about it none of the elevation that accompanies tragedy; there is
about it no nemesis, no destiny. Here were two noble people--for I
am convinced that both Edward and Leonora had noble
natures--here, then, were two noble natures, drifting down life, like
fireships afloat on a lagoon and causing miseries, heart-aches,
agony of the mind and death. And they themselves steadily
deteriorated. And why? For what purpose? To point what lesson?
It is all a darkness.
There is not even any villain in the story--for even Major Basil, the
husband of the lady who next, and really, comforted the
unfortunate Edward --even Major Basil was not a villain in this
piece. He was a slack, loose, shiftless sort of fellow--but he did
not do anything to Edward. Whilst they were in the same station
in Burma he borrowed a good deal of money--though, really, since
Major Basil had no particular vices, it was difficult to know why
he wanted it. He collected--different types of horses' bits from the
earliest times to the present day--but, since he did not prosecute
even this occupation with any vigour, he cannot have needed
much money for the acquirement, say, of the bit of Genghis
Khan's charger--if Genghis Khan had a charger. And when I say
that he borrowed a good deal of money from Edward I do not
mean to say that he had more than a thousand pounds from him
during the five years that the connection lasted. Edward, of
course, did not have a great deal of money; Leonora was seeing to
that. Still, he may have had five hundred pounds a year English,
for his menus plaisirs--for his regimental subscriptions and for
keeping his men smart. Leonora hated that; she would have
preferred to buy dresses for herself or to have devoted the money
to paying off a mortgage. Still, with her sense of justice, she saw
that, since she was managing a property bringing in three
thousand a year with a view to re-establishing it as a property of
five thousand a year and since the property really, if not legally,
belonged to Edward, it was reasonable and just that Edward
should get a slice of his own. Of course she had the devil of a job.
I don't know that I have got the financial details exactly right. I am
a pretty good head at figures, but my mind, still, sometimes mixes
up pounds with dollars and I get a figure wrong. Anyhow, the
proposition was something like this: Properly worked and without
rebates to the tenants and keeping up schools and things, the
Branshaw estate should have brought in about five thousand a
year when Edward had it. It brought in actually about four. (I am
talking in pounds, not dollars.) Edward's excesses with the Spanish
Lady had reduced its value to about three--as the maximum figure,
without reductions. Leonora wanted to get it back to five.
She was, of course, very young to be faced with such a
proposition--twenty-four is not a very advanced age. So she did
things with a youthful vigour that she would, very likely, have
made more merciful, if she had known more about life. She got
Edward remarkably on the hop. He had to face her in a London
hotel, when he crept back from Monte Carlo with his poor tail
between his poor legs. As far as I can make out she cut short his
first mumblings and his first attempts at affectionate speech with
words something like: "We're on the verge of ruin. Do you intend
to let me pull things together? If not I shall retire to Hendon on
my jointure." (Hendon represented a convent to which she
occasionally went for what is called a "retreat" in Catholic
circles.) And poor dear Edward knew nothing--absolutely nothing.
He did not know how much money he had, as he put it, "blued" at
the tables. It might have been a quarter of a million for all he
remembered. He did not know whether she knew about La
Dolciquita or whether she imagined that he had gone off yachting
or had stayed at Monte Carlo. He was just dumb and he just
wanted to get into a hole and not have to talk. Leonora did not
make him talk and she said nothing herself.
I do not know much about English legal procedure--I cannot, I
mean, give technical details of how they tied him up. But I know
that, two days later, without her having said more than I have
reported to you, Leonora and her attorney had become the
trustees, as I believe it is called, of all Edward's property, and
there was an end of Edward as the good landlord and father of his
people. He went out. Leonora then had three thousand a year at her
disposal. She occupied Edward with getting himself transferred to
a part of his regiment that was in Burma--if that is the right way to
put it. She herself had an interview, lasting a week or so--with
Edward's land-steward. She made him understand that the estate
would have to yield up to its last penny. Before they left for India
she had let Branshaw for seven years at a thousand a year. She
sold two Vandykes and a little silver for eleven thousand pounds
and she raised, on mortgage, twenty-nine thousand. That went to
Edward's money-lending friends in Monte Carlo. So she had to get
the twenty-nine thousand back, for she did not regard the
Vandykes and the silver as things she would have to replace. They
were just frills to the Ashburnham vanity. Edward cried for two
days over the disappearance of his ancestors and then she wished
she had not done it; but it did not teach her anything and it
lessened such esteem as she had for him. She did not also
understand that to let Branshaw affected him with a feeling of
physical soiling--that it was almost as bad for him as if a woman
belonging to him had become a prostitute. That was how it did
affect him; but I dare say she felt just as bad about the Spanish
dancer.
So she went at it. They were eight years in India, and during the
whole of that time she insisted that they must be
self-supporting--they had to live on his Captain's pay, plus the
extra allowance for being at the front. She gave him the five
hundred a year for Ashburnham frills, as she called it to
herself--and she considered she was doing him very well.
Indeed, in a way, she did him very well--but it was not his way.
She was always buying him expensive things which, as it were,
she took off her own back. I have, for instance, spoken of
Edward's leather cases. Well, they were not Edward's at all; they
were Leonora's manifestations. He liked to be clean, but he
preferred, as it were, to be threadbare. She never understood that,
and all that pigskin was her idea of a reward to him for putting her
up to a little speculation by which she made eleven hundred
pounds. She did, herself, the threadbare business. When they went
up to a place called Simla, where, as I understand, it is cool in the
summer and very social--when they went up to Simla for their
healths it was she who had him prancing around, as we should say
in the United States, on a thousand-dollar horse with the gladdest
of glad rags all over him. She herself used to go into "retreat". I
believe that was very good for her health and it was also very
inexpensive.
It was probably also very good for Edward's health, because he
pranced about mostly with Mrs Basil, who was a nice woman and
very, very kind to him. I suppose she was his mistress, but I never
heard it from Edward, of course. I seem to gather that they carried
it on in a high romantic fashion, very proper to both of them--or,
at any rate, for Edward; she seems to have been a tender and
gentle soul who did what he wanted. I do not mean to say that she
was without character; that was her job, to do what Edward
wanted. So I figured it out, that for those five years, Edward
wanted long passages of deep affection kept up in long, long talks
and that every now and then they "fell," which would give Edward
an opportunity for remorse and an excuse to lend the Major
another fifty. I don't think that Mrs Basil considered it to be
"falling"; she just pitied him and loved him.
You see, Leonora and Edward had to talk about something during
all these years. You cannot be absolutely dumb when you live
with a person unless you are an inhabitant of the North of England
or the State of Maine. So Leonora imagined the cheerful device of
letting him see the accounts of his estate and discussing them with
him. He did not discuss them much; he was trying to behave
prettily. But it was old Mr Mumford--the farmer who did not pay
his rent--that threw Edward into Mrs Basil's arms. Mrs Basil came
upon Edward in the dusk, in the Burmese garden, with all sorts of
flowers and things. And he was cutting up that crop--with his
sword, not a walking-stick. He was also carrying on and cursing in
a way you would not believe.
She ascertained that an old gentleman called Mumford had been
ejected from his farm and had been given a little cottage rent-free,
where he lived on ten shillings a week from a farmers' benevolent
society, supplemented by seven that was being allowed him by the
Ashburnham trustees. Edward had just discovered that fact from
the estate accounts. Leonora had left them in his dressing-room
and he had begun to read them before taking off his marching-kit.
That was how he came to have a sword. Leonora considered that
she had been unusually generous to old Mr Mumford in allowing
him to inhabit a cottage, rent-free, and in giving him seven
shillings a week. Anyhow, Mrs Basil had never seen a man in
such a state as Edward was. She had been passionately in love
with him for quite a time, and he had been longing for her
sympathy and admiration with a passion as deep. That was how
they came to speak about it, in the Burmese garden, under the pale
sky, with sheaves of severed vegetation, misty and odorous, in the
night around their feet. I think they behaved themselves with
decorum for quite a time after that, though Mrs Basil spent so
many hours over the accounts of the Ashburnham estate that she
got the name of every field by heart. Edward had a huge map of
his lands in his harness-room and Major Basil did not seem to
mind. I believe that people do not mind much in lonely stations.
It might have lasted for ever if the Major had not been made what
is called a brevet-colonel during the shuffling of troops that went
on just before the South African War. He was sent off somewhere
else and, of course, Mrs Basil could not stay with Edward.
Edward ought, I suppose, to have gone to the Transvaal. It would
have done him a great deal of good to get killed. But Leonora
would not let him; she had heard awful stories of the extravagance
of the hussar regiment in war-time--how they left hundred-bottle
cases of champagne, at five guineas a bottle, on the veldt and so
on. Besides, she preferred to see how Edward was spending his
five hundred a year. I don't mean to say that Edward had any
grievance in that. He was never a man of the deeds of heroism sort
and it was just as good for him to be sniped at up in the hills of
the North Western frontier, as to be shot at by an old gentleman in
a tophat at the bottom of some spruit. Those are more or less his
words about it. I believe he quite distinguished himself over there.
At any rate, he had had his D.S.O. and was made a brevet-major.
Leonora, however, was not in the least keen on his soldiering. She
hated also his deeds of heroism. One of their bitterest quarrels
came after he had, for the second time, in the Red Sea, jumped
overboard from the troopship and rescued a private soldier. She
stood it the first time and even complimented him. But the Red
Sea was awful, that trip, and the private soldiers seemed to
develop a suicidal craze. It got on Leonora's nerves; she figured
Edward, for the rest of that trip, jumping overboard every ten
minutes. And the mere cry of "Man overboard" is a disagreeable,
alarming and disturbing thing. The ship gets stopped and there are
all sorts of shouts. And Edward would not promise not to do it
again, though, fortunately, they struck a streak of cooler weather
when they were in the Persian Gulf. Leonora had got it into her
head that Edward was trying to commit suicide, so I guess it was
pretty awful for her when he would not give the promise. Leonora
ought never to have been on that troopship; but she got there
somehow, as an economy.
Major Basil discovered his wife's relation with Edward just before
he was sent to his other station. I don't know whether that was a
blackmailer's adroitness or just a trick of destiny. He may have
known of it all the time or he may not. At any rate, he got hold of,
just about then, some letters and things. It cost Edward three
hundred pounds immediately. I do not know how it was arranged;
I cannot imagine how even a blackmailer can make his demands. I
suppose there is some sort of way of saving your face. I figure the
Major as disclosing the letters to Edward with furious oaths, then
accepting his explanations that the letters were perfectly innocent
if the wrong construction were not put upon them. Then the Major
would say: "I say, old chap, I'm deuced hard up. Couldn't you lend
me three hundred or so?" I fancy that was how it was. And, year
by year, after that there would come a letter from the Major,
saying that he was deuced hard up and couldn't Edward lend him
three hundred or so? Edward was pretty hard hit when Mrs Basil
had to go away. He really had been very fond of her, and he
remained faithful to her memory for quite a long time. And Mrs
Basi had loved him very much and continued to cherish a hope of
reunion with him. Three days ago there came a quite proper but
very lamentable letter from her to Leonora, asking to be given
particulars as to Edward's death. She had read the advertisement
of it in an Indian paper. I think she must have been a very nice
woman. . . .
And then the Ashburnhams were moved somewhere up towards a
place or a district called Chitral. I am no good at geography of the
Indian Empire. By that time they had settled down into a model
couple and they never spoke in private to each other. Leonora had
given up even showing the accounts of the Ashburnham estate to
Edward. He thought that that was because she had piled up such a
lot of money that she did not want him to know how she was
getting on any more. But, as a matter of fact, after five or six years
it had penetrated to her mind that it was painful to Edward to have
to look on at the accounts of his estate and have no hand in the
management of it. She was trying to do him a kindness. And, up in
Chitral, poor dear little Maisie Maidan came along. . . .
That was the most unsettling to Edward of all his affairs. It made
him suspect that he was inconstant. The affair with the Dolciquita
he had sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. His
relations with Mrs Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral
turpitude of a gross kind. The husband had been complaisant; they
had really loved each other; his wife was very cruel to him and
had long ceased to be a wife to him. He thought that Mrs Basil
had been his soul-mate, separated from him by an unkind
fate--something sentimental of that sort.
But he discovered that, whilst he was still writing long weekly
letters to Mrs Basil, he was beginning to be furiously impatient if
he missed seeing Maisie Maidan during the course of the day. He
discovered himself watching the doorways with impatience; he
discovered that he disliked her boy husband very much for hours
at a time. He discovered that he was getting up at unearthly hours
in order to have time, later in the morning, to go for a walk with
Maisie Maidan. He discovered himself using little slang words that
she used and attaching a sentimental value to those words. These,
you understand, were discoveries that came so late that he could
do nothing but drift. He was losing weight; his eyes were
beginning to fall in; he had touches of bad fever. He was, as he
described it, pipped.
And, one ghastly hot day, he suddenly heard himself say to
Leonora:
"I say, couldn't we take Mrs Maidan with us to Europe and drop
her at Nauheim?"
He hadn't had the least idea of saying that to Leonora. He had
merely been standing, looking at an illustrated paper, waiting for
dinner. Dinner was twenty minutes late or the Ashburnhams
would not have been alone together. No, he hadn't had the least
idea of framing that speech. He had just been standing in a silent
agony of fear, of longing, of heat, of fever. He was thinking that
they were going back to Branshaw in a month and that Maisie
Maidan was going to remain behind and die. And then, that had
come out.
The punkah swished in the darkened room; Leonora lay exhausted
and motionless in her cane lounge; neither of them stirred. They
were both at that time very ill in indefinite ways.
And then Leonora said:
"Yes. I promised it to Charlie Maidan this afternoon. I have
offered to pay her ex's myself."
Edward just saved himself from saying: "Good God!" You see, he
had not the least idea of what Leonora knew--about Maisie, about
Mrs Basil, even about La Dolciquita. It was a pretty enigmatic
situation for him. It struck him that Leonora must be intending to
manage his loves as she managed his money affairs and it made
her more hateful to him--and more worthy of respect.
Leonora, at any rate, had managed his money to some purpose. She
had spoken to him, a week before, for the first time in several
years--about money. She had made twenty-two thousand pounds
out of the Branshaw land and seven by the letting of Branshaw
furnished. By fortunate investments--in which Edward had helped
her--she had made another six or seven thousand that might well
become more. The mortgages were all paid off, so that, except for
the departure of the two Vandykes and the silver, they were as
well off as they had been before the Dolciquita had acted the
locust. It was Leonora's great achievement. She laid the figures
before Edward, who maintained an unbroken silence.
"I propose," she said, "that you should resign from the Army and
that we should go back to Branshaw. We are both too ill to stay
here any longer."
Edward said nothing at all.
"This," Leonora continued passionlessly, "is the great day of my
life."
Edward said:
"You have managed the job amazingly. You are a wonderful
woman." He was thinking that if they went back to Branshaw they
would leave Maisie Maidan behind. That thought occupied him
exclusively. They must, undoubtedly, return to Branshaw; there
could be no doubt that Leonora was too ill to stay in that place.
She said:
"You understand that the management of the whole of the
expenditure of the income will be in your hands. There will be
five thousand a year." She thought that he cared very much about
the expenditure of an income of five thousand a year and that the
fact that she had done so much for him would rouse in him some
affection for her. But he was thinking exclusively of Maisie
Maidan--of Maisie, thousands of miles away from him. He was
seeing the mountains between them--blue mountains and the sea
and sunlit plains. He said:
"That is very generous of you." And she did not know whether that
were praise or a sneer. That had been a week before. And all that
week he had passed in an increasing agony at the thought that
those mountains, that sea, and those sunlit plains would be
between him and Maisie Maidan. That thought shook him in the
burning nights: the sweat poured from him and he trembled with
cold, in the burning noons--at that thought. He had no minute's
rest; his bowels turned round and round within him: his tongue
was perpetually dry and it seemed to him that the breath between
his teeth was like air from a pest-house.
He gave no thought to Leonora at all; he had sent in his papers.
They were to leave in a month. It seemed to him to be his duty to
leave that place and to go away, to support Leonora. He did his
duty.
It was horrible, in their relationship at that time, that whatever she
did caused him to hate her. He hated her when he found that she
proposed to set him up as the Lord of Branshaw again--as a sort of
dummy lord, in swaddling clothes. He imagined that she had done
this in order to separate him from Maisie Maidan. Hatred hung in
all the heavy nights and filled the shadowy corners of the room.
So when he heard that she had offered to the Maidan boy to take
his wife to Europe with him, automatically he hated her since he
hated all that she did. It seemed to him, at that time, that she could
never be other than cruel even if, by accident, an act of hers were
kind. . . . Yes, it was a horrible situation.
But the cool breezes of the ocean seemed to clear up that hatred as
if it had been a curtain. They seemed to give him back admiration
for her, and respect. The agreeableness of having money lavishly
at command, the fact that it had bought for him the
companionship of Maisie Maidan--these things began to make
him see that his wife might have been right in the starving and
scraping upon which she had insisted. He was at ease; he was even
radiantly happy when he carried cups of bouillon for Maisie
Maidan along the deck. One night, when he was leaning beside
Leonora, over the ship's side, he said suddenly:
"By jove, you're the finest woman in the world. I wish we could be
better friends."
She just turned away without a word and went to her cabin. Still,
she was very much better in health.
And now, I suppose, I must give you Leonora's side of the case. . .
.
That is very difficult. For Leonora, if she preserved an unchanged
front, changed very frequently her point of view. She had been
drilled-- in her tradition, in her upbringing--to keep her mouth
shut. But there were times, she said, when she was so near
yielding to the temptation of speaking that afterwards she
shuddered to think of those times. You must postulate that what
she desired above all things was to keep a shut mouth to the world;
to Edward and to the women that he loved. If she spoke she would
despise herself.
From the moment of his unfaithfulness with La Dolciquita she
never acted the part of wife to Edward. It was not that she
intended to keep herself from him as a principle, for ever. Her
spiritual advisers, I believe, forbade that. But she stipulated that
he must, in some way, perhaps symbolical, come back to her. She
was not very clear as to what she meant; probably she did not
know herself. Or perhaps she did.
There were moments when he seemed to be coming back to her;
there were moments when she was within a hair of yielding to her
physical passion for him. In just the same way, at moments, she
almost yielded to the temptation to denounce Mrs Basil to her
husband or Maisie Maidan to hers. She desired then to cause the
horrors and pains of public scandals. For, watching Edward more
intently and with more straining of ears than that which a cat
bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware of the progress of
his passion for each of these ladies. She was aware of it from the
way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways; she knew
from his tranquillities when he had received satisfactions.
At times she imagined herself to see more than was warranted. She
imagined that Edward was carrying on intrigues with other
women--with two at once; with three. For whole periods she
imagined him to be a monster of libertinage and she could not see
that he could have anything against her. She left him his liberty;
she was starving herself to build up his fortunes; she allowed
herself none of the joys of femininity--no dresses, no
jewels--hardly even friendships, for fear they should cost money.
And yet, oddly, she could not but be aware that both Mrs Basil and
Maisie Maidan were nice women. The curious, discounting eye
which one woman can turn on another did not prevent her seeing
that Mrs Basil was very good to Edward and Mrs Maidan very
good for him. That seemed her to be a monstrous and
incomprehensible working of Fate's. Incomprehensible! Why, she
asked herself again and again, did none of the good deeds that she
did for her husband ever come through to him, or appear to hime
as good deeds? By what trick of mania could not he let her be as
good to him as Mrs Basil was? Mrs Basil was not so
extraordinarily dissimilar to herself. She was, it was true, tall,
dark, with soft mournful voice and a great kindness of manner for
every created thing, from punkah men to flowers on the trees. But
she was not so well read as Lenora, at any rate in learned books.
Leonora could not stand novels. But, even with all her differences,
Mrs Basil did not appear to Leonora to differ so very much from
herself. She was truthful, honest and, for the rest, just a woman.
And Leonora had a vague sort of idea that, to a man, all women
are the same after three weeks of close intercourse. She thought
that the kindness should no longer appeal, the soft and mournful
voice no longer thrill, the tall darkness no longer give a man the
illusion that he was going into the depths of an unexplored wood.
She could not understand how Edward could go on and on
maundering over Mrs Basil. She could not see why he should
continue to write her long letters after their separation. After that,
indeed, she had a very bad time.
She had at that period what I will call the "monstrous" theory of
Edward. She was always imagining him ogling at every woman
that he came across. She did not, that year, go into "retreat" at
Simla because she was afraid that he would corrupt her maid in
her absence. She imagined him carrying on intrigues with native
women or Eurasians. At dances she was in a fever of
watchfulness.
She persuaded herself that this was because she had a dread of
scandals. Edward might get himself mixed up with a marriageable
daughter of some man who would make a row or some husband
who would matter. But, really, she acknowledged afterwards to
herself, she was hoping that, Mrs Basil being out of the way, the
time might have come when Edward should return to her. All that
period she passed in an agony of jealousy and fear--the fear that
Edward might really become promiscuous in his habits.
So that, in an odd way, she was glad when Maisie Maidan came
along--and she realized that she had not, before, been afraid of
husbands and of scandals, since, then, she did her best to keep
Maisie's husband unsuspicious. She wished to appear so trustful of
Edward that Maidan could not possibly have any suspicions. It
was an evil position for her. But Edward was very ill and she
wanted to see him smile again. She thought that if he could smile
again through her agency he might return, through gratitude and
satisfied love--to her. At that time she thought that Edward was a
person of light and fleeting passions. And she could understand
Edward's passion for Maisie, since Maisie was one of those
women to whom other women will allow magnetism. She was
very pretty; she was very young; in spite of her heart she was very
gay and light on her feet. And Leonora was really very fond of
Maisie, who was fond enough of Leonora. Leonora, indeed,
imagined that she could manage this affair all right. She had no
thought of Maisie's being led into adultery; she imagined that if
she could take Maisie and Edward to Nauheim, Edward would see
enough of her to get tired of her pretty little chatterings, and of the
pretty little motions of her hands and feet. And she thought she
could trust Edward. For there was not any doubt of Maisie's
passion for Edward. She raved about him to Leonora as Leonora
had heard girls rave about drawing masters in schools. She was
perpetually asking her boy husband why he could not dress, ride,
shoot, play polo, or even recite sentimental poems, like their
major. And young Maidan had the greatest admiration for
Edward, and he adored, was bewildered by and entirely trusted his
wife. It appeared to him that Edward was devoted to Leonora. And
Leonora imagined that when poor Maisie was cured of her hear
and Edward had seen enough of her, he would return to her. She
had the vague, passionate idea that, when Edward had exhausted a
number of other types of women he must turn to her. Why should
not her type have its turn in his heart? She imagined that, by now,
she understood him better, that she understood better his vanities
and that, by making him happier, she could arouse his love.
Florence knocked all that on the head. . . .
Read next: PART IV#CHAPTER I
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