THIS is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an
extreme intimacy-or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was
possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe, a
state of things only
possible with English people of whom,
till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad
affair, I knew nothing whatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and,
certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English
heart. I had known the shallows.
I don't
mean to say that we were not acquainted with many English people. Living, as we perforce lived, in Europe, and being, as we perforce were, leisured Americans, which is as much as to say that we were un-American, we were thrown very much into the
society of the nicer English. Paris, you see, was our home. Somewhere between Nice and Bordighera provided yearly winter quarters for us, and Nauheim always received us from July to September. You will
gather from this statement that one of us had, as the saying is, a "
heart", and, from the statement that my wife is dead, that she was the sufferer.
Captain Ashburnham also had a
heart. But, whereas a yearly month or so at Nauheim tuned him up to exactly the
right pitch for the rest of the twelvemonth, the two months or so were only just enough to keep poor Florence alive from year to year. The
reason for his
heart was,
approximately, polo, or too much hard
sportsmanship in his youth. The
reason for poor Florence's broken years was a storm at sea upon our first crossing to Europe, and the
immediate reasons for our imprisonment in that
continent were doctor's orders. They said that even the short Channel crossing
might well kill the poor thing
When we all first met, Captain Ashburnham, home on sick leave from an India to which he was never to return, was thirty-three; Mrs Ashburnham Leonora-was thirty-one. I was thirty-six and poor Florence thirty. Thus today Florence would have been thirty-nine and Captain Ashburnham forty-two; whereas I am forty-five and Leonora forty. You will
perceive, therefore, that our
friendship has been a young-middle-aged
affair, since we were all of us of quite quiet dispositions, the Ashburnhams being more
particularly what in England it is the
custom to call "quite good people".
They were descended, as you will
probably expect, from the Ashburnham who accompanied Charles I to the
scaffold, and, as you must also expect with this class of English people, you would never have noticed it. Mrs Ashburnham was a Powys; Florence was a Hurlbird of Stamford, Connecticut, where, as you know, they are more
old-fashioned than even the inhabitants of Cranford, England, could have been. I myself am a Dowell of Philadelphia, Pa., where, it is historically true, there are more old English families than you would find in any six English counties taken together. I
carry about with me, indeed-as if it were the only thing that invisibly anchored me to any spot upon the globe-the
title deeds of my farm, which once covered
several blocks between Chestnut and Walnut Streets. These
title deeds are of wampum, the
grant of an Indian chief to the first Dowell, who left Farnham in Surrey in company with William Penn. Florence's people, as is so often the case with the inhabitants of Connecticut, came from the neighbourhood of Fordingbridge, where the Ashburnhams' place is. From there, at this
moment, I am
actually writing.
You may well ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many. For it is not unusual in
human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to
desire to set down what they have witnessed for the
benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely
remote; or, if you please, just to get the
sight out of their heads.
Some one has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the whole sack of Rome by the Goths, and I
swear to you that the breaking up of our little four-square
coterie was such another unthinkable
event. Supposing that you should come upon us sitting together at one of the little tables in front of the club house, let us say, at Homburg, taking tea of an afternoon and watching the
miniature golf, you would have said that, as
human affairs go, we were an extraordinarily safe castle. We were, if you will, one of those tall ships with the white sails upon a blue sea, one of those things that seem the proudest and the safest of all the beautiful and safe things that God has permitted the
mind of men to frame. Where better could one take
refuge? Where better?
Permanence? Stability? I can't believe it's gone. I can't believe that that long,
tranquil life, which was just stepping a
minuet, vanished in four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks. Upon my word, yes, our
intimacy was like a
minuet, simply because on every
possible occasion and in every
possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which
table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a
signal from any one of us, always to the music of the Kur
orchestra, always in the
temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in
discreet shelters. No, indeed, it can't be gone. You can't kill a
minuet de la cour. You may shut up the music-book, close the harpsichord; in the cupboard and presses the rats may
destroy the white
satin favours. The
mob may sack Versailles; the Trianon may fall, but surely the
minuet-the
minuet itself is dancing itself away into the furthest stars, even as our
minuet of the Hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still. Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies
prolong themselves? Isn't there any Nirvana pervaded by the
faint thrilling of instruments that have
fallen into the dust of
wormwood but that yet had
frail,
tremulous, and everlasting souls?
No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a
minuet that we stepped; it was a prison-a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they
might not outsound the rolling of our
carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.
And yet I
swear by the
sacred name of my
creator that it was true. It was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from the mouth of stone dolphins. For, if for me we were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires, acting-or, no, not acting-sitting here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? If for nine years I have possessed a
goodly apple that is
rotten at the
core and
discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a
goodly apple? So it may well be with Edward Ashburnham, with Leonora his wife and with poor dear Florence. And, if you come to think of it, isn't it a little odd that the
physical rottenness of at least two pillars of our four-square house never presented itself to my
mind as a
menace to its
security? It doesn't so present itself now though the two of them are
actually dead. I don't know....
I know nothing-nothing in the world-of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone-horribly alone. No hearthstone will ever again
witness, for me, friendly intercourse. No smoking-room will ever be other than peopled with
incalculable simulacra amidst smoke wreaths. Yet, in the name of God, what should I know if I don't know the life of the
hearth and of the smoking-room, since my whole life has been passed in those places? The warm hearthside!-Well, there was Florence: I believe that for the twelve years her life lasted, after the storm that seemed irretrievably to have weakened her
heart-I don't believe that for one
minute she was out of my
sight, except when she was
safely tucked up in bed and I should be downstairs, talking to some good fellow or other in some
lounge or smoking-room or taking my
final turn with a cigar before going to bed. I don't, you
understand,
blame Florence. But how can she have known what she knew? How could she have got to know it? To know it so fully. Heavens! There doesn't seem to have been the actual time. It must have been when I was taking my baths, and my Swedish exercises, being manicured. Leading the life I did, of the
sedulous, strained nurse, I had to do something to keep myself
fit. It must have been then! Yet even that can't have been enough time to get the tremendously long conversations full of
worldly wisdom that Leonora has reported to me since their deaths. And is it
possible to
imagine that during our prescribed walks in Nauheim and the neighbourhood she found time to
carry on the
protracted negotiations which she did
carry on between Edward Ashburnham and his wife? And isn't it
incredible that during all that time Edward and Leonora never
spoke a word to each other in
private? What is one to think of
humanity?
For I
swear to you that they were the
model couple. He was as
devoted as it was
possible to be without appearing
fatuous. So well set up, with such
honest blue eyes, such a touch of
stupidity, such a warm goodheartedness! And she-so tall, so
splendid in the
saddle, so
fair! Yes, Leonora was extraordinarily
fair and so extraordinarily the real thing that she seemed too good to be true. You don't, I
mean, as a rule, get it all so superlatively together. To be the county family, to look the county family, to be so appropriately and perfectly
wealthy; to be so
perfect in manner-even just to the saving touch of
insolence that seems to be
necessary. To have all that and to be all that! No, it was too good to be true. And yet, only this afternoon, talking over the whole
matter she said to me: "Once I tried to have a lover but I was so sick at the
heart, so
utterly worn out that I had to send him away." That struck me as the most
amazing thing I had ever heard. She said "I was
actually in a man's arms. Such a nice
chap! Such a dear fellow! And I was saying to myself, fiercely, hissing it between my teeth, as they say in novels-and really clenching them together: I was saying to myself: 'Now, I'm in for it and I'll really have a good time for once in my life-for once in my life!' It was in the dark, in a
carriage, coming back from a hunt
ball. Eleven miles we had to
drive! And then
suddenly the bitterness of the endless
poverty, of the endless acting-it fell on me like a
blight, it spoilt everything. Yes, I had to
realize that I had been spoilt even for the good time when it came. And I
burst out crying and I cried and I cried for the whole eleven miles. Just
imagine me crying! And just
imagine me making a fool of the poor dear
chap like that. It
certainly wasn't playing the game, was it now?"
I don't know; I don't know; was that last of hers the of a harlot, or is it what every
decent woman, county family or not county family, thinks at the bottom of her
heart? Or thinks all the time for the
matter of that? Who knows?
Yet, if one doesn't know that at this hour and day, at this
pitch of
civilization to which we have attained, after all the preachings of all the moralists, and all the teachings of all the mothers to all the daughters in saecula saeculorum... but perhaps that is what all mothers teach all daughters, not with lips but with the eyes, or with
heart whispering to
heart. And, if one doesn't know as much as that about the first thing in the world, what does one know and why is one here?
I asked Mrs Ashburnham whether she had told Florence that and what Florence had said and she answered:-"Florence didn't offer any at all. What could she say? There wasn't anything to be said. With the grinding
poverty we had to put up with to keep up appearances, and the way the
poverty came about-you know what I
mean-any woman would have been justified in taking a lover and presents too. Florence once said about a very
similar position-she was a little too well-bred, too American, to talk about
mine-that it was a case of perfectly open riding and the woman could just act on the
spur of the
moment. She said it in American of course, but that was the sense of it. I think her actual words were: 'That it was up to her to take it or leave it....'"
I don't want you to think that I am writing Teddy Ashburnham down a
brute. I don't believe he was. God knows, perhaps all men are like that. For as I've said what do I know even of the smoking-room? Fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily
gross stories-so
gross that they will
positively give you a pain. And yet they'd be offended if you suggested that they weren't the sort of person you could
trust your wife alone with. And very
likely they'd be quite properly offended-that is if you can
trust anybody alone with anybody. But that sort of fellow
obviously takes more
delight in listening to or in telling
gross stories-more
delight than in anything else in the world. They'll hunt
languidly and dress
languidly and dine
languidly and work without
enthusiasm and find it a
bore to
carry on three minutes'
conversation about anything whatever and yet, when the other sort of
conversation begins, they'll laugh and
wake up and
throw themselves about in their chairs. Then, if they so
delight in the
narration, how is it
possible that they can be offended-and properly offended-at the
suggestion that they
might make attempts upon your wife's honour? Or again: Edward Ashburnham was the cleanest looking sort of
chap;-an
excellent magistrate, a first rate
soldier, one of the best landlords, so they said, in Hampshire, England. To the poor and to hopeless drunkards, as I myself have witnessed, he was like a
painstaking guardian. And he never told a story that couldn't have gone into the columns of the Field more than once or twice in all the nine years of my knowing him. He didn't even like hearing them; he would
fidget and get up and go out to buy a cigar or something of that sort. You would have said that he was just exactly the sort of
chap that you could have trusted your wife with. And I trusted
mine and it was madness. And yet again you have me. If poor Edward was
dangerous because of the
chastity of his expressions-and they say that is always the hall-mark of a libertine-what about myself? For I
solemnly avow that not only have I never so much as hinted at an
impropriety in my
conversation in the whole of my days; and more than that, I will
vouch for the cleanness of my thoughts and the
absolute chastity of my life. At what, then, does it all work out? Is the whole thing a
folly and a
mockery? Am I no better than a
eunuch or is the
proper man-the man with the
right to existence-a raging
stallion forever neighing after his neighbour's womankind?