The Good Soldier Read Online Free PDF Page B

best in evening dress. She seemed
to get it too clearly cut, there was no ruffling. She always
affected black and her shoulders were too classical. She seemed to
stand out of her corsage as a white marble bust might out of a
black Wedgwood vase. I don't know.
    I loved Leonora always and, today, I would very cheerfully lay
down my life, what is left of it, in her service. But I am sure I
never had the beginnings of a trace of what is called the sex
instinct towards her. And I suppose—no I am certain that she never
had it towards me. As far as I am concerned I think it was those
white shoulders that did it. I seemed to feel when I looked at them
that, if ever I should press my lips upon them that they would be
slightly cold—not icily, not without a touch of human heat, but, as
they say of baths, with the chill off. I seemed to feel chilled at
the end of my lips when I looked at her...
    No, Leonora always appeared to me at her best in a blue
tailor-made. Then her glorious hair wasn't deadened by her white
shoulders. Certain women's lines guide your eyes to their necks,
their eyelashes, their lips, their breasts. But Leonora's seemed to
conduct your gaze always to her wrist. And the wrist was at its
best in a black or a dog-skin glove and there was always a gold
circlet with a little chain supporting a very small golden key to a
dispatch box. Perhaps it was that in which she locked up her heart
and her feelings.
    Anyhow, she sat down opposite me and then, for the first time,
she paid any attention to my existence. She gave me, suddenly, yet
deliberately, one long stare. Her eyes too were blue and dark and
the eyelids were so arched that they gave you the whole round of
the irises. And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as
if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me. I seemed to perceive
the swift questions chasing each other through the brain that was
behind them. I seemed to hear the brain ask and the eyes answer
with all the simpleness of a woman who was a good hand at taking in
qualities of a horse—as indeed she was. "Stands well; has plenty of
room for his oats behind the girth. Not so much in the way of
shoulders," and so on. And so her eyes asked: "Is this man
trustworthy in money matters; is he likely to try to play the
lover; is he likely to let his women be troublesome? Is he, above
all, likely to babble about my affairs?"
    And, suddenly, into those cold, slightly defiant, almost
defensive china blue orbs, there came a warmth, a tenderness, a
friendly recognition... oh, it was very charming and very
touching—and quite mortifying. It was the look of a mother to her
son, of a sister to her brother. It implied trust; it implied the
want of any necessity for barriers. By God, she looked at me as if
I were an invalid—as any kind woman may look at a poor chap in a
bath chair. And, yes, from that day forward she always treated me
and not Florence as if I were the invalid. Why, she would run after
me with a rug upon chilly days. I suppose, therefore, that her eyes
had made a favourable answer. Or, perhaps, it wasn't a favourable
answer. And then Florence said: "And so the whole round table is
begun." Again Edward Ashburnham gurgled slightly in his throat; but
Leonora shivered a little, as if a goose had walked over her grave.
And I was passing her the nickel-silver basket of rolls.
Avanti!...
    IV
    So began those nine years of uninterrupted tranquillity. They
were characterized by an extraordinary want of any
communicativeness on the part of the Ashburnhams to which we, on
our part, replied by leaving out quite as extraordinarily, and
nearly as completely, the personal note. Indeed, you may take it
that what characterized our relationship was an atmosphere of
taking everything for granted. The given proposition was, that we
were all "good people." We took for granted that we all liked beef
underdone but not too underdone; that both men preferred a good
liqueur brandy after lunch; that both women drank a