The Good Soldier Read Free Page B

months or so it would manufacture buttons out of bone.
Then it would suddenly produce brass buttons for coachmen's
liveries. Then it would take a turn at embossed tin lids for candy
boxes. The fact is that the poor old gentleman, with his weak and
fluttering heart, didn't want his factory to manufacture anything
at all. He wanted to retire. And he did retire when he was seventy.
But he was so worried at having all the street boys in the town
point after him and exclaim: "There goes the laziest man in
Waterbury!" that he tried taking a tour round the world. And
Florence and a young man called Jimmy went with him. It appears
from what Florence told me that Jimmy's function with Mr Hurlbird
was to avoid exciting topics for him. He had to keep him, for
instance, out of political discussions. For the poor old man was a
violent Democrat in days when you might travel the world over
without finding anything but a Republican. Anyhow, they went round
the world.
    I think an anecdote is about the best way to give you an idea of
what the old gentleman was like. For it is perhaps important that
you should know what the old gentleman was; he had a great deal of
influence in forming the character of my poor dear wife.
    Just before they set out from San Francisco for the South Seas
old Mr Hurlbird said he must take something with him to make little
presents to people he met on the voyage. And it struck him that the
things to take for that purpose were oranges—because California is
the orange country—and comfortable folding chairs. So he bought I
don't know how many cases of oranges—the great cool California
oranges, and half-a-dozen folding chairs in a special case that he
always kept in his cabin. There must have been half a cargo of
fruit.
    For, to every person on board the several steamers that they
employed—to every person with whom he had so much as a nodding
acquaintance, he gave an orange every morning. And they lasted him
right round the girdle of this mighty globe of ours. When they were
at North Cape, even, he saw on the horizon, poor dear thin man that
he was, a lighthouse. "Hello," says he to himself, "these fellows
must be very lonely. Let's take them some oranges." So he had a
boatload of his fruit out and had himself rowed to the lighthouse
on the horizon. The folding chairs he lent to any lady that he came
across and liked or who seemed tired and invalidish on the ship.
And so, guarded against his heart and, having his niece with him,
he went round the world....
    He wasn't obtrusive about his heart. You wouldn't have known he
had one. He only left it to the physical laboratory at Waterbury
for the benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an
extraordinary kind of heart. And the joke of the matter was that,
when, at the age of eighty-four, just five days before poor
Florence, he died of bronchitis there was found to be absolutely
nothing the matter with that organ. It had certainly jumped or
squeaked or something just sufficiently to take in the doctors, but
it appears that that was because of an odd formation of the lungs.
I don't much understand about these matters.
    I inherited his money because Florence died five days after him.
I wish I hadn't. It was a great worry. I had to go out to Waterbury
just after Florence's death because the poor dear old fellow had
left a good many charitable bequests and I had to appoint trustees.
I didn't like the idea of their not being properly handled.
    Yes, it was a great worry. And just as I had got things roughly
settled I received the extraordinary cable from Ashburnham begging
me to come back and have a talk with him. And immediately
afterwards came one from Leonora saying, "Yes, please do come. You
could be so helpful." It was as if he had sent the cable without
consulting her and had afterwards told her. Indeed, that was pretty
much what had happened, except that he had told the girl and the
girl told the wife. I arrived, however, too late to be of any good
if I