The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

she was wrong
and that Luther only stopped, as it were, for lunch, in order to
evade pursuit. But, no doubt, it would have been his bedroom if he
could have been persuaded to stop the night. And then, in spite of
the protest of the custodian, she threw open another shutter and
came tripping back to a large glass case.
    "And there," she exclaimed with an accent of gaiety, of triumph,
and of audacity. She was pointing at a piece of paper, like the
half-sheet of a letter with some faint pencil scrawls that might
have been a jotting of the amounts we were spending during the day.
And I was extremely happy at her gaiety, in her triumph, in her
audacity. Captain Ashburnham had his hands upon the glass case.
"There it is—the Protest." And then, as we all properly
stage-managed our bewilderment, she continued: "Don't you know that
is why we were all called Protestants? That is the pencil draft of
the Protest they drew up. You can see the signatures of Martin
Luther, and Martin Bucer, and Zwingli, and Ludwig the
Courageous...."
    I may have got some of the names wrong, but I know that Luther
and Bucer were there. And her animation continued and I was glad.
She was better and she was out of mischief. She continued, looking
up into Captain Ashburnham's eyes: "It's because of that piece of
paper that you're honest, sober, industrious, provident, and
clean-lived. If it weren't for that piece of paper you'd be like
the Irish or the Italians or the Poles, but particularly the
Irish...."
    And she laid one finger upon Captain Ashburnham's wrist.
    I was aware of something treacherous, something frightful,
something evil in the day. I can't define it and can't find a
simile for it. It wasn't as if a snake had looked out of a hole.
No, it was as if my heart had missed a beat. It was as if we were
going to run and cry out; all four of us in separate directions,
averting our heads. In Ashburnham's face I know that there was
absolute panic. I was horribly frightened and then I discovered
that the pain in my left wrist was caused by Leonora's clutching
it:
    "I can't stand this," she said with a most extraordinary
passion; "I must get out of this." I was horribly frightened. It
came to me for a moment, though I hadn't time to think it, that she
must be a madly jealous woman—jealous of Florence and Captain
Ashburnham, of all people in the world! And it was a panic in which
we fled! We went right down the winding stairs, across the immense
Rittersaal to a little terrace that overlooks the Lahn, the broad
valley and the immense plain into which it opens out.
    "Don't you see?" she said, "don't you see what's going on?" The
panic again stopped my heart. I muttered, I stuttered—I don't know
how I got the words out:
    "No! What's the matter? Whatever's the matter?"
    She looked me straight in the eyes; and for a moment I had the
feeling that those two blue discs were immense, were overwhelming,
were like a wall of blue that shut me off from the rest of the
world. I know it sounds absurd; but that is what it did feel
like.
    "Don't you see," she said, with a really horrible bitterness,
with a really horrible lamentation in her voice, "Don't you see
that that's the cause of the whole miserable affair; of the whole
sorrow of the world? And of the eternal damnation of you and me and
them... ."
    I don't remember how she went on; I was too frightened; I was
too amazed. I think I was thinking of running to fetch assistance—a
doctor, perhaps, or Captain Ashburnham. Or possibly she needed
Florence's tender care, though, of course, it would have been very
bad for Florence's heart. But I know that when I came out of it she
was saying: "Oh, where are all the bright, happy, innocent beings
in the world? Where's happiness? One reads of it in books!"
    She ran her hand with a singular clawing motion upwards over her
forehead. Her eyes were enormously distended; her face was exactly
that of a person looking into the pit of hell and seeing horrors
there. And then suddenly