Leonora held passionately the doctrine that the girl didn't love Edward.
She wanted desperately to believe that.
It was a doctrine as necessary to her existence as a belief in the personal immortality of the soul.
She said that it was impossible that Nancy could have loved Edward after she had given the girl her view of Edward's career and character.
Edward, on the other hand, believed maunderingly that some essential attractiveness in himself must have made the girl continue to go on loving him—to go on loving him, as it were, in underneath her official aspect of hatred.
He thought she only pretended to hate him in order to save her face and he thought that her quite atrocious telegram from Brindisi was only another attempt to do that—to prove that she had feelings creditable to a member of the feminine commonweal.
I don't know.
I leave it to you.
There is another point that worries me a good deal in the aspects of this sad affair.
Leonora says that, in desiring that the girl should go five thousand miles away and yet continue to love him, Edward was a monster of selfishness.
He was desiring the ruin of a young life.
Edward on the other hand put it to me that, supposing that the girl's love was a necessity to his existence, and, if he did nothing by word or by action to keep Nancy's love alive, he couldn't be called selfish.
Leonora replied that showed he had an abominably selfish nature even though his actions might be perfectly correct.
I can't make out which of them was right.
I leave it to you.
It is, at any rate, certain that Edward's actions were perfectly—were monstrously, were cruelly—correct.
He sat still and let Leonora take away his character, and let Leonora damn him to deepest hell, without stirring a finger.
I daresay he was a fool; I don't see what object there was in letting the girl think worse of him than was necessary.
Still there it is.
And there it is also that all those three presented to the world the spectacle of being the best of good people.
I assure you that during my stay for that fortnight in that fine old house, I never so much as noticed a single thing that could have affected that good opinion.
And even when I look back, knowing the circumstances, I can't remember a single thing any of them said that could have betrayed them.
I can't remember, right up to the dinner, when Leonora read out that telegram—not the tremor of an eyelash, not the shaking of a hand.
It was just a pleasant country house-party.
And Leonora kept it up jolly well, for even longer than that—she kept it up as far as I was concerned until eight days after Edward's funeral.
Immediately after that particular dinner—the dinner at which I received the announcement that Nancy was going to leave for India on the following day—I asked Leonora to let me have a word with her.
She took me into her little sitting-room and I then said—I spare you the record of my emotions—that she was aware that I wished to marry Nancy; that she had seemed to favour my suit and that it appeared to be rather a waste of money upon tickets and rather a waste of time upon travel to let the girl go to India if Leonora thought that there was any chance of her marrying me.
And Leonora, I assure you, was the absolutely perfect British matron.
She said that she quite favoured my suit; that she could not desire for the girl a better husband; but that she considered that the girl ought to see a little more of life before taking such an important step.
Yes, Leonora used the words "taking such an important step".
She was perfect.
Actually, I think she would have liked the girl to marry me enough but my programme included the buying of the Kershaw's house about a mile away upon the Fordingbridge road, and settling down there with the girl.
That didn't at all suit Leonora.
She didn't want to have the girl within a mile and a half of Edward for the rest of their lives.
Still, I think she might have managed to let me know, in some periphrasis or other, that I might have the girl if I would take her to Philadelphia or Timbuctoo.
I loved Nancy very much—and Leonora knew it.
However, I left it at that.
I left it with the understanding that Nancy was going away to India on probation.
It seemed to me a perfectly reasonable arrangement and I am a reasonable sort of man.
I simply said that I should follow Nancy out to India after six months' time or so.
Or, perhaps, after a year. Well, you see, I did follow Nancy out to India after a year....
I must confess to having felt a little angry with Leonora for not having warned me earlier that the girl would be going.
I took it as one of the queer, not very straight methods that Roman Catholics seem to adopt in dealing with matters of this world.
I took it that Leonora had been afraid I should propose to the girl or, at any rate, have made considerably greater advances to her than I did, if I had known earlier that she was going away so soon.
Perhaps Leonora was right; perhaps Roman Catholics, with their queer, shifty ways, are always right.
They are dealing with the queer, shifty thing that is human nature.
For it is quite possible that, if I had known Nancy was going away so soon, I should have tried making love to her.
And that would have produced another complication.
It may have been just as well.
It is queer the fantastic things that quite good people will do in order to keep up their appearance of calm pococurantism.