The Good Soldier Read Online Free PDF Page A

redeeming you, and he would say
that constancy was the finest of the virtues. He said it very
stiffly, of course, but still as if the statement admitted of no
doubt.
    Constancy! Isn't that the queer thought? And yet, I must add
that poor dear Edward was a great reader—he would pass hours lost
in novels of a sentimental type—novels in which typewriter girls
married Marquises and governesses Earls. And in his books, as a
rule, the course of true love ran as smooth as buttered honey. And
he was fond of poetry, of a certain type—and he could even read a
perfectly sad love story. I have seen his eyes filled with tears at
reading of a hopeless parting. And he loved, with a sentimental
yearning, all children, puppies, and the feeble generally... .
    So, you see, he would have plenty to gurgle about to a
woman—with that and his sound common sense about martingales and
his—still sentimental—experiences as a county magistrate; and with
his intense, optimistic belief that the woman he was making love to
at the moment was the one he was destined, at last, to be eternally
constant to.... Well, I fancy he could put up a pretty good deal of
talk when there was no man around to make him feel shy. And I was
quite astonished, during his final burst out to me—at the very end
of things, when the poor girl was on her way to that fatal Brindisi
and he was trying to persuade himself and me that he had never
really cared for her—I was quite astonished to observe how literary
and how just his expressions were. He talked like quite a good
book—a book not in the least cheaply sentimental. You see, I
suppose he regarded me not so much as a man. I had to be regarded
as a woman or a solicitor. Anyhow, it burst out of him on that
horrible night. And then, next morning, he took me over to the
Assizes and I saw how, in a perfectly calm and business-like way,
he set to work to secure a verdict of not guilty for a poor girl,
the daughter of one of his tenants, who had been accused of
murdering her baby. He spent two hundred pounds on her defence...
Well, that was Edward Ashburnham.
    I had forgotten about his eyes. They were as blue as the sides
of a certain type of box of matches. When you looked at them
carefully you saw that they were perfectly honest, perfectly
straightforward, perfectly, perfectly stupid. But the brick pink of
his complexion, running perfectly level to the brick pink of his
inner eyelids, gave them a curious, sinister expression—like a
mosaic of blue porcelain set in pink china. And that chap, coming
into a room, snapped up the gaze of every woman in it, as
dexterously as a conjurer pockets billiard balls. It was most
amazing. You know the man on the stage who throws up sixteen balls
at once and they all drop into pockets all over his person, on his
shoulders, on his heels, on the inner side of his sleeves; and he
stands perfectly still and does nothing. Well, it was like that. He
had rather a rough, hoarse voice.
    And, there he was, standing by the table. I was looking at him,
with my back to the screen. And suddenly, I saw two distinct
expressions flicker across his immobile eyes. How the deuce did
they do it, those unflinching blue eyes with the direct gaze? For
the eyes themselves never moved, gazing over my shoulder towards
the screen. And the gaze was perfectly level and perfectly direct
and perfectly unchanging. I suppose that the lids really must have
rounded themselves a little and perhaps the lips moved a little
too, as if he should be saying: "There you are, my dear." At any
rate, the expression was that of pride, of satisfaction, of the
possessor. I saw him once afterwards, for a moment, gaze upon the
sunny fields of Branshaw and say: "All this is my land!"
    And then again, the gaze was perhaps more direct, harder if
possible—hardy too. It was a measuring look; a challenging look.
Once when we were at Wiesbaden watching him play in a polo match
against the Bonner Hussaren I saw the same look come into his