In order to set
her up in a modern mansion, replete with every convenience and
dominated by a quite respectable and eminently economical
master of the house, it was necessary that Edward and Nancy
Rufford should become, for me at least, no more than tragic
shades.
I seem to see poor Edward, naked and reclining amidst darkness,
upon cold rocks, like one of the ancient Greek damned, in
Tartarus or wherever it was.
And as for Nancy . . . Well, yesterday at lunch she said suddenly:
"Shuttlecocks!"
And she repeated the word "shuttlecocks" three times. I know what
was passing in her mind, if she can be said to have a mind, for
Leonora has told me that, once, the poor girl said she felt like a
shuttlecock being tossed backwards and forwards between the
violent personalities of Edward and his wife. Leonora, she said,
was always trying to deliver her over to Edward, and Edward
tacitly and silently forced her back again. And the odd thing was
that Edward himself considered that those two women used him
like a shuttlecock. Or, rather, he said that they sent him backwards
and forwards like a blooming parcel that someone didn't want to
pay the postage on. And Leonora also imagined that Edward and
Nancy picked her up and threw her down as suited their purely
vagrant moods.
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