The Good Soldier_ A Tale of Passion - Ford Madox Ford [79]
And, suddenly, she seemed to begin to perceive that his generosities were almost fantastic. He subscribed much too much to things connected with his mess, he pensioned off his father’s servants, old or new, much too generously. They had a large income, but every now and then they would find themselves hard up. He began to talk of mortgaging a farm or two, though it never actually came to that.
She made tentative efforts at remonstrating with him. Her father, whom she saw now and then, said that Edward was much too generous to his tenants; the wives of his brother officers remonstrated with her in private; his large subscriptions made it difficult for their husbands to keep up with them. Ironically enough, the first real trouble between them came from his desire to build a Roman Catholic chapel at Bramshaw. He wanted to do it to honour Leonora, and he proposed to do it very expensively. Leonora did not want it; she could perfectly well drive from Bramshaw to the nearest Catholic Church as often as she liked. There were no Roman Catholic tenants and no Roman Catholic servants except her old nurse who could always drive with her. She had as many priests to stay with her as could be needed – and even the priests did not want a gorgeous chapel in that place where it would have merely seemed an invidious instance of ostentation. They were perfectly ready to celebrate Mass for Leonora and her nurse, when they stayed at Bramshaw, in a cleaned-up outhouse. But Edward was as obstinate as a hog about it.
He was truly grieved at his wife’s want of sentiment – at her refusal to receive that amount of public homage from him. She appeared to him to be wanting in imagination – to be cold and hard. I don’t exactly know what part her priests played in the tragedy that it all became; I dare say they behaved quite creditably but mistakenly. But then, who would not have been mistaken with Edward? I believe he was even hurt that Leonora’s confessor did not make strenuous efforts to convert him. There was a period when he was quite ready to become an emotional Catholic.
I don’t know why they did not take him on the hop; but they have queer sorts of wisdoms, those people, and queer sorts of tact. Perhaps they thought that Edward’s too early conversion would frighten off other Protestant desirables from marrying Catholic girls. Perhaps they saw deeper into Edward than he saw himself and thought that he would make a not very creditable convert. At any rate they – and Leonora – left him very much alone. It mortified him very considerably. He has told me that if Leonora had then taken his aspirations seriously everything would have been different. But I dare say that was nonsense.
At any rate, it was over the question of the chapel that they had their first and really disastrous quarrel. Edward at that time was not well; he supposed himself to be overworked with his regimental affairs – he was managing the mess at the time. And Leonora was not well – she was beginning to fear that their union might be sterile. And then her father came over from Glasmoyle127 to stay with them.
Those were troublesome times in Ireland, I understand. At any rate, Colonel Powys had tenants on the brain – his own tenants having shot at him with shot-guns. And, in conversation with Edward’s land-steward, he got it into his head that Edward managed his estates with a mad generosity towards his tenants. I understand, also, that those years – the ‘nineties – were very bad for farming.128 Wheat was fetching only a few shillings the hundred; the price of meat was so low that cattle hardly paid for raising; whole English counties were ruined. And Edward allowed his tenants very high rebates.
To do both justice Leonora has since acknowledged that she was in the wrong at that time and that Edward was following out a more far-seeing policy in nursing his really very good tenants over a bad period. It was not as if the whole of his money