The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford Page B

it out to amount to that. She would leave Edward to
Florence and to me—and she would devote all her time to providing
that child with an atmosphere of love until she could be returned
to her poor young husband. It was naturally too late.
    She had not cared to look round Maisie's rooms at first. Now, as
soon as she came in, she perceived, sticking out beyond the bed, a
small pair of feet in high-heeled shoes. Maisie had died in the
effort to strap up a great portmanteau. She had died so grotesquely
that her little body had fallen forward into the trunk, and it had
closed upon her, like the jaws of a gigantic alligator. The key was
in her hand. Her dark hair, like the hair of a Japanese, had come
down and covered her body and her face.
    Leonora lifted her up—she was the merest featherweight—and laid
her on the bed with her hair about her. She was smiling, as if she
had just scored a goal in a hockey match. You understand she had
not committed suicide. Her heart had just stopped. I saw her, with
the long lashes on the cheeks, with the smile about the lips, with
the flowers all about her. The stem of a white lily rested in her
hand so that the spike of flowers was upon her shoulder. She looked
like a bride in the sunlight of the mortuary candles that were all
about her, and the white coifs of the two nuns that knelt at her
feet with their faces hidden might have been two swans that were to
bear her away to kissing-kindness land, or wherever it is. Leonora
showed her to me. She would not let either of the others see her.
She wanted, you know, to spare poor dear Edward's feelings. He
never could bear the sight of a corpse. And, since she never gave
him an idea that Maisie had written to her, he imagined that the
death had been the most natural thing in the world. He soon got
over it. Indeed, it was the one affair of his about which he never
felt much remorse.

PART II
I
    THE death of Mrs Maidan occurred on the 4th of August, 1904. And
then nothing happened until the 4th of August, 1913. There is the
curious coincidence of dates, but I do not know whether that is one
of those sinister, as if half jocular and altogether merciless
proceedings on the part of a cruel Providence that we call a
coincidence. Because it may just as well have been the
superstitious mind of Florence that forced her to certain acts, as
if she had been hypnotized. It is, however, certain that the 4th of
August always proved a significant date for her. To begin with, she
was born on the 4th of August. Then, on that date, in the year
1899, she set out with her uncle for the tour round the world in
company with a young man called Jimmy. But that was not merely a
coincidence. Her kindly old uncle, with the supposedly damaged
heart, was in his delicate way, offering her, in this trip, a
birthday present to celebrate her coming of age. Then, on the 4th
of August, 1900, she yielded to an action that certainly coloured
her whole life—as well as mine. She had no luck. She was probably
offering herself a birthday present that morning.... On the 4th of
August, 1901, she married me, and set sail for Europe in a great
gale of wind—the gale that affected her heart. And no doubt there,
again, she was offering herself a birthday gift—the birthday gift
of my miserable life. It occurs to me that I have never told you
anything about my marriage. That was like this: I have told you, as
I think, that I first met Florence at the Stuyvesants', in
Fourteenth Street. And, from that moment, I determined with all the
obstinacy of a possibly weak nature, if not to make her mine, at
least to marry her. I had no occupation—I had no business affairs.
I simply camped down there in Stamford, in a vile hotel, and just
passed my days in the house, or on the verandah of the Misses
Hurlbird. The Misses Hurlbird, in an odd, obstinate way, did not
like my presence. But they were hampered by the national manners of
these occasions. Florence had her own sitting-room. She could ask
to it