The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

intense embrace, and one intolerably
solitary. It is in black and white, my picture of that judgement,
an etching, perhaps; only I cannot tell an etching from a
photographic reproduction. And the immense plain is the hand of
God, stretching out for miles and miles, with great spaces above it
and below it. And they are in the sight of God, and it is Florence
that is alone.... And, do you know, at the thought of that intense
solitude I feel an overwhelming desire to rush forward and comfort
her. You cannot, you see, have acted as nurse to a person for
twelve years without wishing to go on nursing them, even though you
hate them with the hatred of the adder, and even in the palm of
God. But, in the nights, with that vision of judgement before me, I
know that I hold myself back. For I hate Florence. I hate Florence
with such a hatred that I would not spare her an eternity of
loneliness. She need not have done what she did. She was an
American, a New Englander. She had not the hot passions of these
Europeans. She cut out that poor imbecile of an Edward—and I pray
God that he is really at peace, clasped close in the arms of that
poor, poor girl! And, no doubt, Maisie Maidan will find her young
husband again, and Leonora will burn, clear and serene, a northern
light and one of the archangels of God. And me.... Well, perhaps,
they will find me an elevator to run.... But Florence... .
    She should not have done it. She should not have done it. It was
playing it too low down. She cut out poor dear Edward from sheer
vanity; she meddled between him and Leonora from a sheer, imbecile
spirit of district visiting. Do you understand that, whilst she was
Edward's mistress, she was perpetually trying to reunite him to his
wife? She would gabble on to Leonora about forgiveness—treating the
subject from the bright, American point of view. And Leonora would
treat her like the whore she was. Once she said to Florence in the
early morning:
    "You come to me straight out of his bed to tell me that that is
my proper place. I know it, thank you."
    But even that could not stop Florence. She went on saying that
it was her ambition to leave this world a little brighter by the
passage of her brief life, and how thankfully she would leave
Edward, whom she thought she had brought to a right frame of mind,
if Leonora would only give him a chance. He needed, she said,
tenderness beyond anything.
    And Leonora would answer—for she put up with this outrage for
years—Leonora, as I understand, would answer something like:
    "Yes, you would give him up. And you would go on writing to each
other in secret, and committing adultery in hired rooms. I know the
pair of you, you know. No. I prefer the situation as it is." Half
the time Florence would ignore Leonora's remarks. She would think
they were not quite ladylike. The other half of the time she would
try to persuade Leonora that her love for Edward was quite
spiritual—on account of her heart. Once she said:
    "If you can believe that of Maisie Maidan, as you say you do,
why cannot you believe it of me?" Leonora was, I understand, doing
her hair at that time in front of the mirror in her bedroom. And
she looked round at Florence, to whom she did not usually vouchsafe
a glance,—she looked round coolly and calmly, and said:
    "Never do you dare to mention Mrs Maidan's name again. You
murdered her. You and I murdered her between us. I am as much a
scoundrel as you. I don't like to be reminded of it."
    Florence went off at once into a babble of how could she have
hurt a person whom she hardly knew, a person whom with the best
intentions, in pursuance of her efforts to leave the world a little
brighter, she had tried to save from Edward. That was how she
figured it out to herself. She really thought that.... So Leonora
said patiently:
    "Very well, just put it that I killed her and that it's a
painful subject. One does not like to think that one had killed
someone. Naturally not. I ought never to have brought her