The Good Soldier Read Online Free PDF

eyes,
balancing the possibilities, looking over the ground. The German
Captain, Count Baron Idigon von Lelöffel, was right up by their
goal posts, coming with the ball in an easy canter in that tricky
German fashion. The rest of the field were just anywhere. It was
only a scratch sort of affair. Ashburnham was quite close to the
rails not five yards from us and I heard him saying to himself:
"Might just be done!" And he did it. Goodness! he swung that pony
round with all its four legs spread out, like a cat dropping off a
roof....
    Well, it was just that look that I noticed in his eyes: "It
might," I seem even now to hear him muttering to himself, "just be
done."
    I looked round over my shoulder and saw, tall, smiling
brilliantly and buoyant—Leonora. And, little and fair, and as
radiant as the track of sunlight along the sea—my wife.
    That poor wretch! to think that he was at that moment in a
perfect devil of a fix, and there he was, saying at the back of his
mind: "It might just be done." It was like a chap in the middle of
the eruption of a volcano, saying that he might just manage to bolt
into the tumult and set fire to a haystack. Madness?
Predestination? Who the devil knows?
    Mrs Ashburnham exhibited at that moment more gaiety than I have
ever since known her to show. There are certain classes of English
people—the nicer ones when they have been to many spas, who seem to
make a point of becoming much more than usually animated when they
are introduced to my compatriots. I have noticed this often. Of
course, they must first have accepted the Americans. But that once
done, they seem to say to themselves: "Hallo, these women are so
bright. We aren't going to be outdone in brightness." And for the
time being they certainly aren't. But it wears off. So it was with
Leonora—at least until she noticed me. She began, Leonora did—and
perhaps it was that that gave me the idea of a touch of insolence
in her character, for she never afterwards did any one single thing
like it—she began by saying in quite a loud voice and from quite a
distance:
    "Don't stop over by that stuffy old table, Teddy. Come and sit
by these nice people!"
    And that was an extraordinary thing to say. Quite extraordinary.
I couldn't for the life of me refer to total strangers as nice
people. But, of course, she was taking a line of her own in which I
at any rate—and no one else in the room, for she too had taken the
trouble to read through the list of guests—counted any more than so
many clean, bull terriers. And she sat down rather brilliantly at a
vacant table, beside ours—one that was reserved for the
Guggenheimers. And she just sat absolutely deaf to the
remonstrances of the head waiter with his face like a grey ram's.
That poor chap was doing his steadfast duty too. He knew that the
Guggenheimers of Chicago, after they had stayed there a month and
had worried the poor life out of him, would give him two dollars
fifty and grumble at the tipping system. And he knew that Teddy
Ashburnham and his wife would give him no trouble whatever except
what the smiles of Leonora might cause in his apparently
unimpressionable bosom—though you never can tell what may go on
behind even a not quite spotless plastron!—And every week Edward
Ashburnham would give him a solid, sound, golden English sovereign.
Yet this stout fellow was intent on saving that table for the
Guggenheimers of Chicago. It ended in Florence saying:
    "Why shouldn't we all eat out of the same trough?—that's a nasty
New York saying. But I'm sure we're all nice quiet people and there
can be four seats at our table. It's round."
    Then came, as it were, an appreciative gurgle from the Captain
and I was perfectly aware of a slight hesitation—a quick sharp
motion in Mrs Ashburnham, as if her horse had checked. But she put
it at the fence all right, rising from the seat she had taken and
sitting down opposite me, as it were, all in one motion. I never
thought that Leonora looked her