AND so the Craddocks began their journey along the great road nowhither which is called the Road of Holy Matrimony. The spring came, and with it a hundred new delights; Bertha watched the lengthening days, the coloured crocus spring from the ground, the snowbells; the warm damp days of February brought the primroses and then the violets. February is a month of languors; the world’s heart is heavy, listless of the unrest of April and the vigorous life of May. Throughout nature the seed is germinating and the pulse of all things throbs. The sea mists arose from the North Sea, and covered the Kentish land with a veil of moisture, white and almost transparent, so that through it the leafless trees were seen strangely distorted, their branches like long arms writhing to free themselves from the shackles of winter; the grass was very green in the marshes, and the young lambs frisked and gambolled, bleating to their mothers. Already the thrushes and the blackbirds were singing in the hedge-rows. March roared in boisterously, and the clouds, high above, swept across the sky before the tearing winds, sometimes heaped up in heavy masses and then blown asunder, flying westwards, tripping over one another’s heels in their hurry. Nature was resting; holding her breath, as it were, before the great effort of birth.
Gradually Bertha came to know her husband better. At her marriage she had really known nothing but that she loved him; the senses only had spoken, she and he were merely puppets whom nature had thrown together and made attractive in one another’s eyes, that the race might be continued. Bertha, desire burning within her like a fire, had flung herself into her husband’s arms, loving as the beasts love—and as the gods. He was the man and she was the woman, and the world was a Garden of Eden, conjured up by the power of passion. But greater knowledge brought only greater love. Little by little, reading in Edward’s mind, Bertha discovered to her delight an unexpected purity; it was with a feeling of curious happiness that she recognised his innocence. She saw that he had never loved before, that woman to him was a strange thing, a thing he had scarcely known. She was proud that her husband had come to her unsoiled by foreign embraces, the lips that kissed hers were clean; no speech on the subject had passed between them, and yet she felt certain of his extreme chastity. His soul was truly virginal.
And this being so, how could she fail to adore him! Bertha was only happy in her husband’s company, and it was an exquisite pleasure for her to think that their bonds could not be sundered, that so long as they lived they would be always together, always inseparable. She followed him like a dog, with a subjection that was really touching; her pride had utterly vanished, and she desired to exist only in Edward, to fuse her character with his and be entirely one with him. She wanted him to be her only individuality, likening herself to ivy climbing to the oak tree; for he was an oak tree, a pillar of strength, and she was very weak. In the morning after breakfast she accompanied him on his walk around the farms, and only when her presence was impossible did she stay at home to look after her house. The attempt to read was hopeless, and she had thrown aside her books. Why should she read? Not for entertainment, since her husband was a perpetual occupation; and if she knew how to love, what other knowledge was useful? Often, left alone for a while, she would take up some volume, but her mind quickly wandered and she thought of Edward again, wishing to be with him.
Bertha’s life was an exquisite dream, a dream which need never end; for her happiness was not of that boisterous sort which needs excursions and alarums, but equable and smooth; she dwelt in a paradise of rosy tints, in which were neither violent shadows nor glaring lights. She was in heaven, and the only link attaching her to earth was the weekly service at Leanham. There was a delightful humanity about the bare church with its pitch-pine, highly varnished pews, and the odours of hair-pomade and Reckitt’s Blue. Edward was in his Sabbath garments, the organist made horrid sounds, and the village choir sang out of tune; Mr. Glover’s mechanical delivery of the prayers cleverly extracted all beauty from them, and his sermon was intensely prosaic. Those two hours of church gave Bertha just the touch of earthliness which was necessary to make her realize that life was not entirely spiritual.
Now came April. The elms before Court Leys were beginning to burst into leaf; the green buds covered the branches like a delicate rain, a verdant haze that was visible from a little distance and vanished when one came near. The brown fields also clothed themselves with a summer garment; the clover sprang up green and luxurious, and the crops showed good promise for the future. There were days when the air was almost balmy, when the sun was warm and the heart leapt, certain at last that the spring was at hand. The warm and comfortable rain soaked into the ground; and from the branches continually hung the countless drops, glistening in the succeeding sun. The self-conscious tulip unfolded her petals and carpeted the ground with gaudy colour. The clouds above Leanham were lifted up and the world was stretched out in a greater circle. The birds now sang with no uncertain notes as in March, but from a full throat, filling the air; and in the hawthorn behind Court Leys the first nightingale poured out his richness. And the full scents of the earth rose up, the fragrance of the mould and of the rain, the perfumes of the sun and of the soft breezes.
But sometimes, without ceasing, it rained from morning till night, and then Edward rubbed his hands.
“I wish this would keep on for a week; it’s just what the country wants.”
One such day Bertha was lying on a sofa while Edward stood at the window, looking at the pattering rain. She thought of the November afternoon when she had stood at the same window considering the dreariness of the winter, but her heart full of hope and love.
“Come and sit down beside me, Eddie dear,” she said. “I’ve hardly seen you all day.”
“I’ve got to go out,” he said, without turning round.
“Oh no, you haven’t. Come here and sit down.”
“I’ll come for two minutes, while they’re putting the trap in.”
“Kiss me.”
He kissed her and she laughed. “You funny boy, I don’t believe you care about kissing me a bit.”
He could not answer this, for at that moment the trap came to the door and he sprang up.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m driving over to see old Potts at Herne about some sheep.”
“Is that all? Don’t you think you might stay in for an afternoon when I ask you?”
“Why?” he replied. “There’s nothing to do in here. Nobody is coming, I suppose.”
“I want to be with you, Eddie,” she said, plaintively.
He laughed. “I’m afraid I can’t break an appointment just for that.”
“Shall I come with you then?”
“What on earth for?” he asked, with surprise.
“I want to be with you; I hate being always separated from you.”
“But we’re not always separated. Hang it all, it seems to me that we’re always together.”
“You don’t notice my absence as I notice yours,” said Bertha in a low voice, looking down.
“But it’s raining cats and dogs, and you’ll get wet through, if you come.”
“What do I care about that if I’m with you!”
“Then come by all means if you like.”
“You don’t care if I come or not; it’s nothing to you.”
“Well, I think it would be very silly of you to come in the rain. You bet, I shouldn’t go if I could help it.”
“Then go,” she said. She kept back with difficulty the bitter words which were on the tip of her tongue.
“You’re much better at home,” said her husband, cheerfully. “I shall be in to tea at five. Ta-ta!”
He might have said a thousand things. He might have said that nothing would please him more than that she should accompany him, that the appointment could go to the devil and he would stay with her. But he went off, cheerfully whistling. He didn’t care. Bertha’s cheeks grew red with the humiliation of his refusal.
“He doesn’t love me,” she said, and suddenly burst into tears—the first tears of her married life, the first she had wept since her father’s death; and they made her ashamed. She tried to control them, but could not and wept ungovernably. Edward’s words seemed terribly cruel; she wondered how he could have said them.
“I might have expected it,” she said; “he doesn’t love me.”
She grew angry with him, remembering the little coldnesses which had often pained her. Often he almost pushed her away when she came to caress him—because he had at the moment something else to occupy him; often he had left unanswered her protestations of undying affection. Did he not know that he cut her to the quick? When she said she loved him with all her heart, he wondered if the clock was wound up! Bertha brooded for two hours over her unhappiness, and, ignorant of the time, was surprised to hear the trap again at the door; her first impulse was to run and let Edward in, but she restrained herself. She was very angry. He entered, and shouting to her that he was wet and must change, pounded upstairs. Of course he had not noticed that for the first time since their marriage his wife had not met him in the hall when he came in—he never noticed anything.
Edward entered the room, his face glowing with the fresh air.
“By Jove, I’m glad you didn’t come. The rain simply poured down. How about tea? I’m starving.”
He thought of his tea when Bertha wanted apologies, humble excuses, a plea for pardon. He was as cheerful as usual and quite unconscious that his wife had been crying herself into a towering passion.
“Did you buy your sheep?” she said, in an indignant tone. She was anxious for Edward to notice her discomposure, so that she might reproach him for his sins; but he noticed nothing.
“Not much,” he cried. “I wouldn’t have given a fiver for the lot.”
“You might as well have stayed with me, as I asked you.”
“As far as business goes, I really might. But I dare say the drive across country did me good.” He was a man who always made the best of things.
Bertha took up a book and began reading.
“Where’s the paper?” asked Edward. “I haven’t read the leading articles yet.”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
They sat till dinner, Edward methodically going through the Standard, column after column; Bertha turning over the pages of her book, trying to understand, but occupied the whole time only with her injuries. They ate the meal almost in silence, for Edward was not talkative. He merely remarked that soon they would be having new potatoes and that he had met Dr. Ramsay. Bertha answered in mono-syllables.
“You’re very quiet, Bertha,” he remarked, later in the evening. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing!”
“Got a headache?”
“No!”
He made no more inquiries, satisfied that her silence was due to natural causes. He did not seem to notice that she was in any way different from usual. She held herself in as long as she could, but finally burst out, referring to his remark of an hour before.
“Do you care if I have a headache or not?” It was hardly a question so much as a taunt.
He looked up with surprise. “What’s the matter?”
She looked at him and then, with a gesture of impatience, turned away. But coming to her, he put his arm round her waist.
“Aren’t you well, dear?” he asked, with concern.
She looked at him again, but now her eyes were full of tears and she could not repress a sob.
“Oh, Eddie, be nice to me,” she said, suddenly weakening.
“Do tell me what’s wrong.”
He put his arms round her and kissed her lips. The contact revived the passion which for an hour had lain a-dying, and she burst into tears.
“Don’t be angry with me, Eddie,” she sobbed; it was she who apologised and made excuses. “I’ve been horrid to you; I couldn’t help it. You’re not angry, are you?”
“What on earth for?” he asked, completely mystified.
“I was so hurt this afternoon because you didn’t seem to care about me two straws. You must love me, Eddie; I can’t live without it.”
“You are silly,” he said, laughing.
She dried her tears, smiling. His forgiveness comforted her and she felt now trebly happy.
BUT Edward was certainly not an ardent lover. Bertha could not tell when first she had noticed his irresponsiveness; at the beginning she had known only that she loved her husband with all her heart, and her ardour had lit up his somewhat pallid attachment till it seemed to glow as fiercely as her own. Yet gradually she began to think that he made very little return for the wealth of affection which she lavished upon him. The causes of her dissatisfaction were scarcely explicable: a slight motion of withdrawal, an indifference to her feelings—little nothings which had seemed almost comic. Bertha at first likened Edward to the Hippolitus of Phædra, he was untamed and wild; the kisses of woman frightened him; his phlegm pleased her disguised as rustic savagery, and she said her passion should thaw the icicles in his heart. But soon she ceased to consider his passiveness amusing, sometimes she upbraided him, and often, when alone, she wept.
“I wonder if you realise what pain you cause me at times,” said Bertha.
“Oh, I don’t think I do anything of the kind.”
“You don’t see it.... When I kiss you, it is the most natural thing in the world for you to push me away, as if—almost as if you couldn’t bear me.”
“Nonsense!”
To himself Edward was the same now as when they were first married.
“Of course after four months of married life you can’t expect a man to be the same as on his honeymoon. One can’t always be making love and canoodling. Everything in its proper time and season,” he added, with the unoriginal man’s fondness for proverbial philosophy.
After the day’s work he liked to read his Standard in peace, so when Bertha came up to him he put her gently aside.
“Leave me alone for a bit, there’s a good girl.”
“Oh, you don’t love me,” she cried then, feeling as if her heart would break.
He did not look up from his paper nor make reply; he was in the middle of a leading article.
“Why don’t you answer?” she cried.
“Because you’re talking nonsense.”
He was the best-humoured of men, and Bertha’s temper never disturbed his equilibrium. He knew that women felt a little irritable at times, but if a man gave ’em plenty of rope, they’d calm down after a bit.
“Women are like chickens,” he told a friend. “Give ’em a good run, properly closed in with stout wire netting, so that they can’t get into mischief, and when they cluck and cackle just sit tight and take no notice.”
Marriage had made no great difference in Edward’s life. He had always been a man of regular habits, and these he continued to cultivate. Of course he was more comfortable.
“There’s no denying it: a fellow wants a woman to look after him,” he told Dr. Ramsay, whom he sometimes met on the latter’s rounds. “Before I was married I used to find my shirts wore out in no time, but now when I see a cuff getting a bit groggy I just give it to the Missis and she makes it as good as new.”
“There’s a good deal of extra work, isn’t there, now you’ve taken on the Home Farm?”
“Oh, bless you, I enjoy it. Fact is, I can’t get enough work to do. And it seems to me that if you want to make farming pay nowadays you must do it on a big scale.”
All day Edward was occupied, if not on the farms, then with business at Blackstable, Tercanbury, and Faversley.
“I don’t approve of idleness,” he said. “They always say the devil finds work for idle hands to do, and upon my word I think there’s a lot of truth in it.”
Miss Glover, to whom this sentiment was addressed, naturally approved, and when Edward immediately afterwards went out, leaving her with Bertha, she said—
“What a good fellow your husband is! You don’t mind my saying so, do you?”
“Not if it pleases you,” said Bertha, drily.
“I hear praise of him from every side. Of course Charles has the highest opinion of him.”
Bertha did not answer, and Miss Glover added, “You can’t think how glad I am that you’re so happy.”
Bertha smiled. “You’ve got such a kind heart, Fanny.”
The conversation dragged, and after five minutes of heavy silence Miss Glover rose to go. When the door was closed upon her, Bertha sank back in her chair, thinking. This was one of her unhappy days—Eddie had walked into Blackstable, and she had wished to accompany him.
“I don’t think you’d better come with me,” he said. “I’m in rather a hurry and I shall walk fast.”
“I can walk fast too,” she said, her face clouding over.
“No, you can’t—I know what you call walking fast. If you like you can come and meet me on the way back.”
“Oh, you do everything you can to hurt me. It looks as if you welcomed an opportunity of being cruel.”
“How unreasonable you are, Bertha. Can’t you see that I’m in a hurry, and I haven’t got time to saunter along and chatter about the buttercups.”
“Well, let’s drive in.”
“That’s impossible. The mare isn’t well, and the pony had a hard day yesterday; he must rest to-day.”
“It’s simply because you don’t want me to come. It’s always the same, day after day. You invent anything to get rid of me.”
She burst into tears, knowing that what she said was unjust, but feeling notwithstanding extremely ill-used. Edward smiled with irritating good temper.
“You’ll be sorry for what you’ve said when you’ve calmed down, and then you’ll want me to forgive you.”
She looked up, flushing. “You think I’m a child and a fool.”
“No, I just think you’re out of sorts to-day.”
Then he went out, whistling, and she heard him give an order to the gardener in his usual manner, as cheerful as if nothing had happened. Bertha knew that he had already forgotten the little scene. Nothing affected his good humour. She might weep, she might tear her heart out (metaphorically), and bang it on the floor, Edward would not be perturbed; he would still be placid, good-tempered, forbearing. Hard words, he said, broke nobody’s bones—“Women are like chickens, when they cluck and cackle sit tight and take no notice!”
On his return Edward appeared not to see that his wife was out of temper. His spirits were always equable, and he was an unobservant person. She answered him in mono-syllables, but he chattered away, delighted at having driven a good bargain with a man in Blackstable. Bertha longed for him to remark upon her condition so that she might burst out with reproaches, but Edward was hopelessly dense—or else he saw and was unwilling to give her an opportunity to speak. Bertha, almost for the first time, was seriously angry with her husband and it frightened her—suddenly Edward seemed an enemy, and she wished to inflict some hurt upon him. She did not understand herself—what was going to happen next? Why wouldn’t he say something so that she might pour forth her woes and then be reconciled! The day wore on and she preserved a sullen silence; her heart was beginning to ache terribly—the night came, and still Edward made no sign; she looked about for a chance of beginning the quarrel, but nothing offered. Bertha pretended to go to sleep and she did not give him the kiss, the never-ending kiss of lovers which they always exchanged. Surely he would notice it, surely he would ask what troubled her, and then she could at last bring him to his knees. But he said nothing; he was dog-tired after a hard day’s work, and without a word went to sleep—in five minutes Bertha heard his heavy, regular breathing.
Then she broke down; she could never sleep without saying good-night to him, without the kiss of his lips.
“He’s stronger than I,” she said, “because he doesn’t love me.”
Bertha wept silently; she could not bear to be angry with her husband. She would submit to anything rather than pass the night in wrath, and the next day as unhappily as this. She was entirely humbled. At last, unable any longer to bear the agony, she woke him.
“Eddie, you’ve not said good-night to me.”
“By Jove, I forgot all about it,” he answered, sleepily. Bertha stifled a sob.
“Hulloa, what’s the matter?” he said. “You’re not crying just because I forgot to kiss you—I was awfully fagged, you know.”
He really had noticed nothing whatever; while she was passing through utter distress he had been as happily self-satisfied as usual. But the momentary recurrence of Bertha’s anger was quickly stilled. She could not afford now to be proud.
“You’re not angry with me?” she said. “I can’t sleep unless you kiss me.”
“Silly girl!” he whispered.
“You do love me, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
He kissed her as she loved to be kissed, and in the delight of it her anger was quite forgotten.
“I can’t live unless you love me. Oh, I wish I could make you understand how I love you.... We’re friends again now, aren’t we?”
“We haven’t ever been otherwise.”
Bertha gave a sigh of relief, and lay in his arms completely happy. A minute more and Edward’s breathing told her that he had already fallen asleep; she dared not move for fear of waking him.
The summer brought Bertha new pleasures, and she set herself to enjoy the pastoral life which she had imagined. The elms of Court Leys now were dark with leaves; and the heavy, close-fitting verdure gave quite a stately look to the house. The elm is the most respectable of trees, over-pompous if anything, but perfectly well-bred; and the shade it casts is no ordinary shade, but solid and self-assured as befits the estate of a county family. The fallen trunk had been removed, and in the autumn young trees were to be planted in the vacant spaces. Edward had set himself with a will to put the place properly to rights. The spring had seen a new coat of paint on Court Leys, so that it looked spick and span as the suburban villa of a stockbroker. The beds which for years had been neglected, now were trim with the abominations of carpet bedding; squares of red geraniums contrasted with circles of yellow calcellarias; the overgrown boxwood was cut down to a just height; the hawthorn hedge was doomed, and Edward had arranged to enclose the grounds with a wooden pallisade and laurel bushes. The drive was decorated with several loads of gravel, so that it became a thing of pride to the successor of an ancient and lackadaisical race. Craddock had not reigned in their stead a fortnight before the grimy sheep were expelled from the lawns on either side of the avenue, and since then the grass had been industriously mown and rolled. Now a tennis-court had been marked out, which, as Edward said, made things look homely. Finally the iron gates were gorgeous in black and gold as suited the entrance to a gentleman’s mansion, and the renovated lodge proved to all and sundry that Court Leys was in the hands of a man who knew what was what, and delighted in the proprieties.
Though Bertha abhorred all innovations, she had meekly accepted Edward’s improvements: they formed an inexhaustible topic of conversation, and his enthusiasm always pleased her.
“By Jove,” he said, rubbing his hands, “the changes will make your aunt simply jump, won’t they?”
“They will indeed,” said Bertha, smiling.
She shuddered a little at the prospect of Miss Ley’s sarcastic praise.
“She’ll hardly recognise the place; the house looks as good as new, and the grounds might have been laid out only half-a-dozen years ago.... Give me five years more and even you won’t know your old home.”
Miss Ley had at last accepted one of the invitations which Edward insisted should be showered upon her, and wrote to say she was coming down for a week. Edward was of course much pleased; as he said, he wanted to be friends with everybody, and it didn’t seem natural that Bertha’s only relative should make a point of avoiding them.
“It looks as if she didn’t approve of our marriage, and it makes the people talk.”
He met the good lady at the station, and somewhat to her disgust greeted her with effusion.
“Ah, here you are at last!” he bellowed, in his jovial way. “We thought you were never coming. Here, porter!” He raised his voice so that the platform shook and rumbled.
He seized both Miss Ley’s hands, and the terrifying thought flashed through her head that he would kiss her before the assembled multitude.
“He’s cultivating the airs of the country squire,” she thought. “I wish he wouldn’t.”
He took the innumerable bags with which she travelled and scattered them among the attendants. He even tried to induce her to take his arm to the dog-cart, but this honour she stoutly refused.
“Now, will you come round to this side and I’ll help you up. Your luggage will come on afterwards with the pony.”
He was managing everything in a self-confident and masterful fashion; Miss Ley noticed that marriage had dispelled the shyness which had been in him rather an attractive feature. He was becoming bluff and hearty. Also he was filling out. Prosperity and a knowledge of greater importance had broadened his back and straightened his shoulders; he was quite three inches more round the chest than when she had first known him, and his waist had proportionately increased.
“If he goes on developing in this way,” she thought, “the good man will be colossal by the time he’s forty.”
“Of course, Aunt Polly,” he said, boldly dropping the respectful Miss Ley, which hitherto he had invariably used, though his new relative was not a woman whom most men would have ventured to treat familiarly. “Of course it’s all rot about your leaving us in a week; you must stay a couple of months at least.”
“It’s very good of you, dear Edward,” replied Miss Ley drily, “but I have other engagements.”
“Then you must break them; I can’t have people leave my house immediately they come.”
Miss Ley raised her eyebrows and smiled; was it his house already? Dear me!
“My dear Edward,” she answered, “I never stay anywhere longer than two days—the first day I talk to people, the second I let them talk to me, and the third I go.... I stay a week at hotels so as to go en pension, and get my washing properly aired.”
“You’re treating us like a hotel,” said Edward, laughing.
“It’s a great compliment: in private houses one gets so abominably waited on.”
“Ah well, we’ll say no more about it. But I shall have your trunk taken to the box-room and I keep the key of it.”
Miss Ley gave the short, dry laugh which denoted that her interlocutor’s remark had not amused her, but something in her own mind. Presently they arrived at Court Leys.
“D’you see all the differences since you were last here?” asked Edward, jovially.
Miss Ley looked round and pursed her lips.
“It’s charming,” she said.
“I knew it would make you sit up,” he cried, laughing.
Bertha received her aunt in the hall and embraced her with the grave decorum which had always characterised their relations.
“How clever you are, Bertha,” said Miss Ley; “you manage to preserve your beautiful figure.”
Then she set herself solemnly to investigate the connubial bliss of the young couple.
THE passion to analyse the casual fellow-creature was the most absorbing vice that Miss Ley possessed; and no ties of relationship or affection (the two go not invariably together) prevented her from exercising her talents in that direction. She observed Bertha and Edward during luncheon: Bertha was talkative, chattering with a vivacity that seemed suspicious, about the neighbours—Mrs. Branderton’s new bonnets and new hair, Miss Glover’s good works and Mr. Glover’s visits to London; Edward was silent, except when he pressed Miss Ley to take a second helping. He ate largely, and the maiden lady noticed the enormous mouthfuls he took and the heartiness with which he drank his beer. Of course she drew conclusions; and she drew further conclusions, when, having devoured half a pound of cheese and taken a last drink of ale, he pushed back his chair and with a sort of low roar, reminding one of a beast of prey gorged with food, said—
“Ah, well, I suppose I must set about my work. There’s no rest for the weary.”
He pulled a new briar-wood pipe from his pocket, filled and lit it.
“I feel better now.... Well, so-long; I shall be in to tea.”
Conclusions buzzed about Miss Ley, like midges on a summer’s day. She drew them all the afternoon; she drew them all through dinner. Bertha was effusive too, unusually so; and Miss Ley asked herself a dozen times if this stream of chatter, these peals of laughter, proceeded from a light heart or from a base desire to deceive a middle-aged and inquiring aunt. After dinner, Edward, telling her that of course she was one of the family so he hoped she did not wish him to stand on ceremony, began to read the paper. When Bertha, at Miss Ley’s request, played the piano, good manners made him put it aside, and he yawned a dozen times in a quarter of an hour.
“I mustn’t play any more,” said Bertha, “or Eddie will go to sleep—won’t you, darling?”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” he replied, laughing. “The fact is that the things Bertha plays when we’ve got company give me the fair hump!”
“Edward only consents to listen when I play The Blue Bells of Scotland or Yankee Doodle.”
Bertha made the remark, smiling good-naturedly at her husband, but Miss Ley drew conclusions.
“I don’t mind confessing that I can’t stand all this foreign music. What I say to Bertha is—why can’t you play English stuff?”
“If you must play at all,” interposed his wife.
“After all’s said and done The Blue Bells of Scotland has got a tune about it that a fellow can get his teeth into.”
“You see, there’s the difference,” said Bertha, strumming a few bars of Rule Britannia, “it sets mine on edge.”
“Well, I’m patriotic,” retorted Edward. “I like the good, honest, homely English airs. I like ’em because they’re English. I’m not ashamed to say that for me the best piece of music that’s ever been written is God Save the Queen.”
“Which was written by a German, dear Edward,” said Miss Ley, smiling.
“That’s as it may be,” said Edward, unabashed, “but the sentiment’s English and that’s all I care about.”
“Hear! hear!” cried Bertha. “I believe Edward has aspirations towards a political career. I know I shall finish up as the wife of the local M.P.”
“I’m patriotic,” said Edward, “and I’m not ashamed to confess it.”
“Rule Britannia,” sang Bertha, “Britannia rules the waves, Britons never, never shall be slaves. Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!”
“It’s the same everywhere now,” proceeded the orator. “We’re choke full of foreigners and their goods. I think it’s scandalous. English music isn’t good enough for you—you get it from France and Germany. Where do you get your butter from? Brittany! Where d’you get your meat from? New Zealand!” This he said with great scorn, and Bertha punctuated the observation with a resounding chord. “And as far as the butter goes, it isn’t butter—it’s margarine. Where does your bread come from? America. Your vegetables from Jersey.”
“Your fish from the sea,” interposed Bertha.
“And so it is all along the line—the British farmer hasn’t got a chance!”
To this speech Bertha played a burlesque accompaniment, which would have irritated a more sensitive man than Craddock; but he merely laughed good-naturedly.
“Bertha won’t take these things seriously,” he said, passing his hand affectionately over her hair.
She suddenly stopped playing, and his good-humour, joined with the loving gesture, filled her with remorse. Her eyes filled with tears.
“You are a dear, good thing,” she faltered, “and I’m utterly horrid.”
“Now don’t talk stuff before Aunt Polly. You know she’ll laugh at us.”
“Oh, I don’t care,” said Bertha, smiling happily. She stood up and linked her arm with his. “Eddie’s the best tempered person in the world—he’s perfectly wonderful.”
“He must be, indeed,” said Miss Ley, “if you have preserved your faith in him after six months of marriage.”
But the maiden lady had stored so many observations that she felt an urgent need to retire to the privacy of her bed-chamber, and sort them. She kissed Bertha and held out her hand to Edward.
“Oh, if you kiss Bertha, you must kiss me too,” said he, bending forward with a laugh.
“Upon my word!” said Miss Ley, somewhat taken aback; then as he was evidently insisting she embraced him on the cheek. She positively blushed.
The upshot of Miss Ley’s investigations was that once again the hymeneal path had been found strewn with roses; and the idea crossed her head as she laid it on the pillow, that Dr. Ramsay would certainly come and crow over her: it was not in masculine human nature, she thought, to miss an opportunity of exulting over a vanquished foe.
“He’ll vow that I was the direct cause of the marriage. The dear man, he’ll be so pleased with my discomfiture that I shall never hear the last of it. He’s sure to call to-morrow.”
Indeed the news of Miss Ley’s arrival had been by Edward industriously spread abroad, and promptly Mrs. Ramsay put on her blue velvet calling-dress, and in the doctor’s brougham drove with him to Court Leys. The Ramsays found Miss Glover and the Vicar of Leanham already in possession of the field. Mr. Glover looked thinner and older than when Miss Ley had last seen him; he was more weary, meek and brow-beaten; Miss Glover never altered.
“The parish?” said the parson, in answer to Miss Ley’s polite inquiry, “I’m afraid it’s in a bad way. The dissenters have got a new chapel, you know—and they say the Salvation Army is going to set up ‘barracks’ as they call them. It’s a great pity the government doesn’t step in: after all we are established by law and the law ought to protect us from encroachment.”
“You don’t believe in liberty of conscience?” asked Miss Ley.
“My dear Miss Ley,” said the Vicar, in his tired voice, “everything has its limits. I should have thought there was in the Established Church enough liberty of conscience for any one.”
“Things are becoming dreadful in Leanham,” said Miss Glover. “Practically all the tradesmen go to chapel now, and it makes it so difficult for us.”
“Yes,” replied the Vicar, with a weary sigh; “and as if we hadn’t enough to put up with, I hear that Walker has ceased coming to church.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” said Miss Glover.
“Walker, the baker?” asked Edward.
“Yes; and now the only baker in Leanham who goes to church is Andrews.”
“Well, we can’t possibly deal with him, Charles,” said Miss Glover, “his bread is too bad.”
“My dear, we must,” groaned her brother. “It would be against all my principles to deal with a tradesman who goes to chapel. You must tell Walker to send his book in, unless he will give an assurance that he’ll come to church regularly.”
“But Andrews’s bread always gives you indigestion, Charles,” cried Miss Glover.
“I must put up with it. If none of our martyrdoms were more serious than that, we should have no cause to complain.”
“Well, it’s quite easy to get your bread from Tercanbury,” said Mrs. Ramsay, who was severely practical.
Mr. Glover and his sister threw up their hands in dismay.
“Then Andrews would go to chapel too. The only thing that keeps them at church, I’m sorry to say, is the Vicarage custom, or the hope of getting it.”
Presently Miss Ley found herself alone with the parson’s sister.
“You must be very glad to see Bertha again, Miss Ley.”
“Now she’s going to crow,” thought the good lady. “Of course I am.”
“And it must be such a relief to you to see how well it’s all turned out.”
Miss Ley looked sharply at Miss Glover, but saw no trace of irony.
“Oh, I think it’s beautiful to see a married couple so thoroughly happy. It really makes me feel a better woman when I come here and see how those two worship one another.”
“Of course the poor thing’s a perfect idiot,” thought Miss Ley. “Yes, it’s very satisfactory,” she said, drily.
She glanced round for Dr. Ramsay, looking forward, notwithstanding that she was on the losing side, to the tussle she foresaw. She had the instincts of a good fighter, and, even though defeat was inevitable, never avoided an encounter. The doctor approached.
“Well, Miss Ley. So you have come back to us. We’re all delighted to see you.”
“How cordial these people are,” thought Miss Ley, somewhat crossly, thinking Dr. Ramsay’s remark preliminary to coarse banter or to reproach. “Shall we take a turn in the garden; I’m sure you wish to quarrel with me.”
“There’s nothing I should like better—to walk in the garden, I mean: of course, no one could quarrel with so charming a person as yourself.”
“He would never be so polite if he did not mean afterwards to be very rude,” thought Miss Ley. “I’m glad you like the garden.”
“Craddock has improved it so wonderfully. It’s a perfect pleasure to look at all he’s done.”
This Miss Ley considered a gibe, and searched for a repartee, but finding none was silent: Miss Ley was a wise woman! They walked a few steps without a word, and then Dr. Ramsay suddenly burst out—
“Well, Miss Ley, you were right after all.”
She stopped and looked at the speaker—he seemed quite serious.
“Yes,” he said, “I don’t mind acknowledging it. I was wrong. It’s a great triumph for you, isn’t it?”
He looked at her, and shook with good-tempered laughter.
“Is he making fun of me?” Miss Ley asked herself, with something not very distantly removed from agony. This was the first occasion upon which she had failed to understand not only the good doctor, but his inmost thoughts as well. “So you think the estate has been improved?” she said hurriedly.
“I can’t make out how the man’s done so much in so short a time. Why, just look at it!”
Miss Ley pursed her lips. “Even in its most dilapidated days Court Leys looked gentlemanly: now all this,” she glanced round with upturned nose, “might be the country mansion of a pork-butcher.”
“My dear Miss Ley, you must pardon my saying so, but the place wasn’t even respectable.”
“But it is now; that is my complaint. My dear doctor, in the old days, the passer-by could see that the owners of Court Leys were decent people; that they could not make both ends meet was a detail—it was possibly because they burnt one end too rapidly, which is the sign of a rather delicate mind.” Miss Ley was mixing her metaphors. “And the passer-by moralised accordingly. For a gentleman there are only two decorous states, absolute poverty or overpowering wealth; the middle condition is vulgar. Now the passer-by sees thrift and careful management, the ends meet, but they do it aggressively, as if it were something to be proud about. Pennies are looked at before they are spent; and, good heavens! the Leys serve to point a moral and adorn a tale. The Leys, who gambled and squandered their substance, who bought diamonds when they hadn’t bread, and pawned the diamonds to give the King a garden-party, now form the heading of a copybook and the ideal of a market-gardener.”
Miss Ley had the characteristics of the true phrase-maker, for so long as her period was well rounded, she did not mind how much nonsense it contained. Coming to the end of her tirade, she looked at the doctor for the signs of disapproval which she thought her right, but he merely laughed.
“I see you want to rub it in,” he said.
“What on earth does the creature mean?” Miss Ley asked herself.
“I confess I did believe things would turn out badly,” the doctor proceeded. “And I couldn’t help thinking he’d be tempted to play ducks and drakes with the whole property. Well, I don’t mind frankly acknowledging that Bertha couldn’t have chosen a better husband; he’s a thoroughly good fellow; no one realised what he had in him, and there’s no knowing how far he’ll go.”
A man would have expressed Miss Ley’s feeling with a little whistle, but that lady merely raised her thin eyebrows. Then Dr. Ramsay shared the opinion of Miss Glover?
“And what precisely is the opinion of the county?” she asked. “Of that odious Mrs. Branderton, of Mrs. Ryle (she has no right to the Mayston at all), of the Hancocks, and the rest?”
“Edward Craddock has won golden opinions all round. Every one likes him, and thinks well of him. No, I assure you, although I’m not so fond as all that of confessing I was wrong, he’s the right man in the right place. It’s extraordinary how people took up to him and respect him already.... I give you my word for it, Bertha has reason to congratulate herself—a girl doesn’t pick up a husband like that every day of the week.”
Miss Ley smiled; it was a great relief to find that she really was no more foolish than most people (so she modestly put it), for a doubt on the subject had given her some uneasiness.
“So every one thinks they’re as happy as turtle-doves?”
“Why, so they are,” cried the doctor; “surely you don’t think otherwise?”
Miss Ley never considered it a duty to dispel the error of her fellow-creatures, and whenever she had a little piece of knowledge, vastly preferred keeping it to herself.
“I?” she answered to the doctor’s question. “I make a point of thinking with the majority—it’s the only way to get a reputation for wisdom!” But Miss Ley, after all, was only human. “Which do you think is the predominant partner?” she asked, smiling drily.
“The man, as he should be,” gruffly replied the doctor.
“Do you think he has more brains?”
“Ah, you’re a feminist,” said Dr. Ramsay, with great scorn.
“My dear doctor, my gloves are sixes, and perceive my shoes.” She put out for the old gentleman’s inspection a very pointed, high-heeled shoe, displaying at the same time the elaborate open-work of a silk stocking.
“Do you intend me to take that as an acknowledgment of the superiority of man?”
“Heavens, how argumentative you are!” Miss Ley laughed, for she was getting into her own particular element. “I knew you wished to quarrel with me. Do you really want my opinion?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it seems to me that if you take the very clever woman and set her beside an ordinary man, you prove nothing. That is how women mostly argue. We place George Eliot (who, by the way, had nothing of the woman but petticoats—and those not always) beside plain John Smith, and ask tragically if such a woman can be considered inferior to such a man. But that’s silly! The question I’ve been asking myself for the last five-and-twenty years is, whether the average fool of a woman is a greater fool than the average fool of a man.”
“And the answer?”
“Well, upon my word, I don’t think there’s much to choose between them.”
“Then you haven’t really an opinion on the subject at all?” cried the doctor.
“That is why I give it you.”
“Hm!” grunted Dr. Ramsay. “And how does that apply to the Craddocks?”
“It doesn’t apply to them.... I don’t think Bertha is a fool.”
“She couldn’t be, having had the discretion to be born your niece, eh?”
“Why, doctor, you’re growing quite pert.”
They had finished the tour of the garden and Mrs. Ramsay was seen in the drawing-room, bidding Bertha good-by.
“Now, seriously, Miss Ley,” said the doctor, “they’re quite happy, aren’t they? Every one thinks so.”
“Every one is always right,” said Miss Ley.
“And what is your opinion?”
“Good heavens, what an insistent man it is! Well, Dr. Ramsay, all I would suggest is that—for Bertha, you know, the book of life is written throughout in italics; for Edward it is all in the big round hand of the copybook headings.... Don’t you think it will make the reading of the book somewhat difficult?”
WITH the summer Edward began to teach Bertha lawn-tennis; and in the long evenings, when he had finished his work and changed into the flannels which suited him so well, they played innumerable sets. He prided himself upon his skill in this pursuit and naturally found it dull to play with a beginner; but he was very patient, hoping that eventually Bertha would acquire sufficient skill to give him a good game. To be doing something with her husband sufficiently amused Bertha. She liked him to correct her mistakes, to show her this stroke and that; she admired his good nature and his inexhaustible spirits. But her greatest delight was to lie on the long chair by the lawn when they had finished, and enjoy the feeling of exhaustion, gossiping of the little nothings which love made absorbingly interesting.
Miss Ley had been persuaded to prolong her stay. She had vowed to go at the end of her week; but Edward, in his high-handed fashion, had ordered the key of the box-room to be given him, and refused to surrender it.
“Oh no,” he said, “I can’t make people come here, but I can prevent them from going away. In this house every one has to do as I tell them; isn’t that so, Bertha?”
“If you say it, Edward,” replied his wife.
Miss Ley gracefully acceded to her nephew’s desire, which was the more easy, since the house was comfortable, she had really no pressing engagements, and her mind was set upon making further examination into the married life of her relations. It would have been a weakness, unworthy of her, to maintain her intention for consistence’ sake.
Why for days together were Edward and Bertha the happiest lovers, and then suddenly why did Bertha behave almost brutally towards her husband, while he remained invariably good-tempered and amiable? The obvious reason was that some little quarrel had arisen, such as, since Adam and Eve, has troubled every married couple in the world; but the obvious reason was that which Miss Ley was least likely to credit. She never saw anything in the way of a disagreement, Bertha assented to all her husband’s proposals; and with such docility on the one hand, such good-humour on the other, what on earth could form a bone of contention?
Miss Ley had discovered that when the green leaves of life are turning red and golden with approaching autumn, most pleasure can be obtained by a judicious mingling in simplicity of the gifts of nature and the resources of civilisation. She was satisfied to come in the evenings to the tennis-lawn and sit on a comfortable chair shaded by trees, and protected by a red parasol from the rays of the setting sun. She was not a woman to find distraction in needlework, and brought with her, therefore, a volume of Montaigne, her favourite writer. She read a page and then lifted her sharp eyes to the players. Edward was certainly very handsome—he looked so clean, and it was obvious to the most casual observer that he bathed himself daily: he was one of those men who carry the morning tub stamped on every line of their faces. You felt that Pear’s Soap was as essential to him as his belief in the Conservative Party, Derby Day, and the Depression of Agriculture. As Bertha often said, his energy was superabundant. Notwithstanding his increasing size he was most agile, and perpetually did unnecessary feats of strength, such as jumping and hopping over the net, holding chairs with outstretched arm.
“If health and a good digestion are all that is necessary in a husband, Bertha certainly ought to be the most contented woman alive.”
Miss Ley never believed so implicitly in her own theories that she was prevented from laughing at them. She had an impartial mind and saw the two sides of a question clearly enough to find little to choose between them; consequently she was able and willing to argue with equal force from either point of view.
The set was finished, and Bertha threw herself on a chair, panting.
“Find the balls, there’s a dear,” she cried.
Edward went off on the search, and Bertha looked at him with a delightful smile.
“He is such a good-tempered person,” she said to Miss Ley. “Sometimes he makes me feel positively ashamed.”
“He has all the virtues. Dr. Ramsay, the Glovers, even Mrs. Branderton, have been dinning his praise into my ears.”
“Yes, they all like him. Arthur Branderton is always here, asking his advice about something or other. He’s a dear, good thing.”
“Who? Arthur Branderton?”
“No, of course not—Eddie.”
Bertha took off her hat and stretched herself more comfortably on the long chair. Her hair was somewhat disarranged, and the rich locks wandered about her forehead and on the nape of her neck in a way that would have distracted any minor poet under seventy. Miss Ley looked at her niece’s fine profile, and wondered again at the complexion, made up of the softest colours in the setting sun. Her eyes now were liquid with love, languorous with the shade of long lashes; and her full, sensual mouth was half open with a smile.
“Is my hair very untidy?” asked Bertha, catching Miss Ley’s look and its meaning.
“No, I think it suits you when it is not done too severely.”
“Edward hates it; he likes me to be prim.... And of course I don’t care how I look so long as he’s pleased. Don’t you think he’s very good-looking?” Then without waiting for an answer, she asked a second question.
“Do you think me a great fool for being so much in love, Aunt Polly?”
“My dear, it’s surely the proper behaviour with one’s lawful spouse.”
Bertha’s smile became a little sad as she replied—
“Edward seems to think it unusual.” She followed him with her eyes, picking up the balls one by one, hunting among bushes: she was in the mood for confidences that afternoon. “You don’t know how different everything has been since I fell in love. The world is fuller.... It’s the only state worth living in.” Edward advanced with the eight balls on his racket. “Come here and be kissed, Eddie,” she cried.
“Not if I know it,” he replied, laughing. “Bertha’s a perfect terror. She wants me to spend my whole life in kissing her.... Don’t you think it’s unreasonable, Aunt Polly? My motto is: everything in its place and season.”
“One kiss in the morning,” said Bertha, “one kiss at night, will do to keep your wife quiet; and the rest of the time you can attend to your work and read your paper.”
Again Bertha smiled charmingly, but Miss Ley saw no amusement in her eyes.
“Well, one can have too much of a good thing,” said Edward, balancing his racket on the tip of his nose.
“Even of proverbial philosophy,” remarked Bertha.
A few days later, his guest having definitely announced that she must go, Edward proposed a tennis-party as a parting honour. Miss Ley would gladly have escaped an afternoon of small-talk with the notabilities of Leanham, but Edward was determined to pay his aunt every attention, and his inner consciousness assured him that at least a small party was necessary to the occasion. They came, Mr. and Miss Glover, the Brandertons, the Hancocks, Mr. Atthill Bacot, the great politician (of the district). But Mr. Atthill Bacot was more than political, he was gallant, and he devoted himself to the entertainment of Miss Ley. He discussed with her the sins of the government and the incapacity of the army.
“More men, more guns!” he said. “An elementary education in common sense for the officers, and the rudiments of grammar if there’s time!”
“Good heavens, Mr. Bacot, you mustn’t say such things. I thought you were a Conservative.”
“Madam, I stood for the constituency in ’85. I may say that if a Conservative member could have got in, I should have been elected. But there are limits. Even the staunch Conservative will turn. Now look at General Hancock.”
“Please don’t talk so loud,” said Miss Ley, with alarm, for Mr. Bacot had instinctively adopted his platform manner, and his voice could be heard through the whole garden.
“Look at General Hancock, I say,” he repeated, taking no notice of the interruption. “Is that the sort of man whom you would wish to have the handling of ten thousand of your sons?”
“Oh, but be fair,” cried Miss Ley, laughing. “They’re not all such fools as poor General Hancock.”
“I give you my word, madam, I think they are.... As far as I can make out, when a man has shown himself incapable of doing anything else they make him a general, just to encourage the others. I understand the reason. It’s a great thing, of course, for parents sending their sons into the army to be able to say, ‘Well, he may be a fool, but there’s no reason why he shouldn’t become a general.’”
“You wouldn’t rob us of our generals,” said Miss Ley; “they’re so useful at tea-parties. In my young days the fool of the family was sent into the Church, but now, I suppose, he’s sent into the army.”
Mr. Bacot was about to make a very heated retort when Edward called to him—
“We want you to make up a set at tennis. Will you play with Miss Hancock against my wife and the General? Come on, Bertha.”
“Oh no, I mean to sit out, Eddie,” said Bertha, quickly. She saw that Edward was putting all the bad players into one set, so that they might be got rid of. “I’m not going to play.”
“You must, or you’ll disarrange the next lot. It’s all settled; Miss Glover and I are going to take on Miss Jane Hancock and Arthur Branderton.”
Bertha looked at him with eyes flashing angrily. Of course he did not notice her vexation. He preferred to play with Miss Glover, she told herself; the parson’s sister played well, and for a good game he would never hesitate to sacrifice his wife’s feelings. Besides Bertha, only Miss Glover and young Branderton were within earshot, and in his jovial, pleasant manner, Edward laughingly said—
“Bertha’s such a duffer. Of course she’s only just beginning. You don’t mind playing with the General, do you, dear?”
Arthur Branderton laughed and Bertha smiled at the sally, but she reddened.
“I’m not going to play at all. I must see to the tea; and I dare say more people will be coming in presently.”
“Oh, I forgot that,” said Edward. “No; perhaps you oughtn’t to play.” And then putting his wife out of his thoughts, and linking his arm with young Branderton’s, he sauntered off. “Come along, old chap; we must find some crock to make up the pat-ball set.” Edward had such a charming, frank manner, one could not help liking him.
Bertha watched the two men go and turned very white.
“I must just go into the house a moment,” she said to Miss Glover. “Go and entertain Mrs. Branderton, there’s a dear.” And precipitately she fled.
She ran to her room, and flinging herself on the bed, burst into a flood of tears. The humiliation seemed dreadful. She wondered how Eddie, whom she loved above all else in the world, could treat her so cruelly. What had she done? He knew—ah, yes, he knew well enough the happiness he could cause her—and he went out of his way to be brutal. She wept bitterly, and jealousy of Miss Glover (Miss Glover, of all people!) stabbed her to the heart.
“He doesn’t love me,” she moaned, her tears redoubling.
Presently there was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” she cried.
The handle was turned and Miss Glover came in, red with nervousness.
“Forgive me for coming in, Bertha. But I thought you seemed unwell. Can’t I do something for you?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said Bertha, drying her tears, “Only the heat upset me and I’ve got a headache.”
“Shall I send Edward to you?”
“What do I want with Edward?” replied Bertha, petulantly. “I shall be all right in five minutes. I often have attacks like this.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to say anything unkind. He’s kindness itself, I know.”
Bertha flushed. “What on earth do you mean, Fanny? Who didn’t say anything unkind?”
“I thought you were hurt by Edward’s saying you were a duffer and a beginner.”
“Oh, my dear, you must think me a fool.” Bertha laughed hysterically. “It’s quite true that I’m a duffer. I tell you it’s only the weather. Why, if my feelings were hurt each time Eddie said a thing like that I should lead a miserable life.”
“I wish you’d let me send him up to you,” said Miss Glover, unconvinced.
“Good heavens! Why? See, I’m all right now.” She washed her eyes and passed the powder-puff over her face. “My dear, it was only the sun.”
With an effort she braced herself, and burst into a laugh joyful enough almost to deceive the Vicar’s sister.
“Now, we must go down, or Mrs. Branderton will complain more than ever of my bad manners.”
She put her arm round Miss Glover’s waist and ran her down the stairs to the mingled terror and amazement of that good creature. For the rest of the afternoon, though her eyes never rested on Edward, she was perfectly charming—in the highest spirits, chattering incessantly, laughing; every one noticed her good humour and commented upon her obvious felicity.
“It does one good to see a couple like that,” said General Hancock, “just as happy as the day is long.”
But the little scene had not escaped Miss Ley’s sharp eyes, and she noticed with agony that Miss Glover had gone to Bertha. She could not stop her, being at the moment in the toils of Mrs. Branderton.
“Oh, these good people are too officious! Why can’t she leave the girl alone to have it out with herself!”
But the explanation of everything now flashed across Miss Ley.
“What a fool I am!” she thought, and she was able to cogitate quite clearly while exchanging honeyed impertinences with Mrs. Branderton. “I noticed it the first day I saw them together. How could I ever forget it!” She shrugged her shoulders and murmured the maxim of La Rochefoucauld—
“Entre deux amants il-y-a toujours un qui aime, et un qui se laisse aimer.”
And to this she added another, in the same language, which, knowing no original, she ventured to claim as her own; it seemed to summarise the situation.
“Celui qui aime a toujours tort.”
BERTHA and Miss Ley passed a troubled night, while Edward, of course, after much exercise and a hearty dinner, slept the sleep of the just and of the pure at heart. Bertha was nursing her wrath; she had with difficulty brought herself to kiss her husband before, according to his habit, he turned his back upon her and began to snore. Miss Ley, with her knowledge of the difficulties in store for the couple, asked herself if she could do anything. But what could she do? They were reading the book of life in their separate ways, one in italics, the other in the big round letters of the copy-book; and how could she help them to find a common character? Of course the first year of married life is difficult, and the weariness of the flesh adds to the inevitable disillusionment. Every marriage has its moments of utter despair. The great danger is in the onlooker, who may pay to them too much attention and, by stepping in, render the difficulty permanent—cutting the knot instead of letting time undo it. Miss Ley’s cogitations brought her not unnaturally to the course which most suited her temperament; she concluded that far and away the best plan was to attempt nothing, and let things right themselves as best they could. She did not postpone her departure, but, according to arrangement, went on the following day.
“Well, you see,” said Edward, bidding her good-bye, “I told you that I should make you stay longer than a week.”
“You’re a wonderful person, Edward,” said Miss Ley, drily. “I have never doubted it for an instant.”
He was pleased seeing no irony in the compliment. Miss Ley took leave of Bertha with a suspicion of awkward tenderness that was quite unusual; she hated to show her feelings, and found it difficult, yet wanted to tell Bertha that if she was ever in difficulties she would always find in her an old friend and a true one. All she said was—
“If you want to do any shopping in London, I can always put you up, you know. And for the matter of that, I don’t see why you shouldn’t come and stay a month or so with me—if Edward can spare you. It will be a change.”
When Miss Ley drove with Edward to the station, Bertha felt suddenly an extreme loneliness. Her aunt had been a barrier between herself and her husband, coming opportunely when, after the first months of mad passion, she was beginning to see herself linked to a man she did not know. A third person in the house had been a restraint. She looked forward already to the future with something like terror; her love for Edward was a bitter heartache. Oh yes, she loved him well, she loved him passionately; but he—he was fond of her, in his placid, calm way; it made her furious to think of it.
The weather was rainy, and for two days there was no question of tennis. On the third, however, the sun came out again, and the lawn was soon dry. Edward had driven over to Tercanbury, but returned towards evening.
“Hulloa!” he said, “you haven’t got your tennis things on. You’d better hurry up.”
This was the opportunity for which Bertha had been looking. She was tired of always giving way, of humbling herself; she wanted an explanation.
“You’re very good,” she said, “but I don’t want to play tennis with you any more.”
“Why on earth not?”
She burst out furiously—“Because I’m sick and tired of being made a convenience by you. I’m too proud to be treated like that. Oh, don’t look as if you didn’t understand. You play with me because you’ve got no one else to play with. Isn’t that so? That is how you are always with me. You prefer the company of the veriest fool in the world to mine. You seem to do everything you can to show your contempt for me.”
“Why, what have I done now?”
“Oh, of course, you forget. You never dream that you are making me frightfully unhappy. Do you think I like to be treated before people as a sort of poor idiot that you can laugh and sneer at?”
Edward had never seen his wife so angry, and this time he was forced to pay her attention. She stood before him, at the end of her speech, with teeth clenched, her cheeks flaming.
“It’s about the other day, I suppose. I saw at the time you were in a passion.”
“And didn’t care two straws.”
“You’re too silly,” he said, with a laugh. “We couldn’t play together when we had people here. They laugh at us as it is for being so devoted to one another.”
“If they only knew how little you cared for me!”
“I might have managed a set with you later on, if you hadn’t sulked and refused to play at all.”
“It would never have occurred to you, I know you better than that. You’re absolutely selfish.”
“Come, come, Bertha,” he cried good-humouredly, “that’s a thing I’ve not been accused of before. No one has ever called me selfish.”
“Oh no, they think you charming. They think because you’re cheerful and even-tempered, because you’re hail-fellow-well-met with every one you know, that you’ve got such a nice character. If they knew you as well as I do, they’d understand it was merely because you’re perfectly indifferent to them. You treat people as if they were your bosom friends, and then, five minutes after they’ve gone, you’ve forgotten all about them.... And the worst of it is, that I’m no more to you than anybody else.”
“Oh, come, I don’t think you can really find such awful things wrong with me.”
“I’ve never known you sacrifice your slightest whim to gratify my most earnest desire.”
“You can’t expect me to do things which I think unreasonable.”
“If you loved me, you’d not always be asking if the things I want are reasonable. I didn’t think of reason when I married you.”
Edward made no answer, which naturally added to Bertha’s irritation. She was arranging flowers for the table, and broke off the stalks savagely. Edward, after a pause, went to the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Since you won’t play, I’m just going to do a few serves for practice.”
“Why don’t you send for Miss Glover to come and play with you?”
A new idea suddenly came to him (they came at sufficiently rare intervals not to spoil his equanimity), but the absurdity of it made him laugh.
“Surely you’re not jealous of her, Bertha?”
“I?” began Bertha, with tremendous scorn, and then changing her mind: “You prefer to play with her than to play with me.”
He wisely ignored part of the charge. “Look at her and look at yourself. Do you think I could prefer her to you?”
“I think you’re fool enough.”
The words slipped out of Bertha’s mouth almost before she knew she had said them, and the bitter, scornful tone added to their violence. They frightened her, and turning very white, she glanced at her husband.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to say that, Eddie.”
Fearing now that she had really wounded him, Bertha was entirely sorry; she would have given anything for the words to be unsaid. Edward was turning over the pages of a book, looking at it listlessly. She went up to him.
“I haven’t offended you, have I, Eddie? I didn’t mean to say that.”
She put her arm in his; he did not answer.
“Don’t be angry with me,” she faltered again, and then breaking down, buried her face in his bosom. “I didn’t mean what I said—I lost command over myself. You don’t know how you humiliated me the other day. I haven’t been able to sleep at night, thinking of it.... Kiss me.”
He turned his face away, but she would not let him go; at last she found his lips.
“Say you’re not angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with you.”
“Oh, I want your love so much, Eddie,” she murmured. “Now more than ever.... I’m going to have a child.”
Then in reply to his astonished exclamation—
“I wasn’t certain till to-day.... Oh, Eddie, I’m so glad. I think it’s what I wanted to make me happy.”
“I’m glad too,” he said.
“But you will be kind to me, Eddie—and not mind if I’m fretful and bad tempered. You know I can’t help it, and I’m always sorry afterwards.”
He kissed her as passionately as his cold nature allowed, and peace returned to Bertha’s tormented heart.
Bertha had intended as long as possible to make a secret of her news; it was a comfort in her distress, and a bulwark against her increasing disillusionment. She was unable to reconcile herself to the discovery, seen as yet dimly, that Edward’s cold temperament could not satisfy her ardent passions: love to her was a burning fire, a flame that absorbed the rest of life; love to him was a convenient and necessary institution of Providence, a matter about which there was as little need for excitement as about the ordering of a suit of clothes. Bertha’s intense devotion for a while had obscured her husband’s coolness, and she would not see that his temperament was to blame. She accused him of not loving her, and asked herself distractedly how to gain his affection; her pride was humiliated because her love was so much greater than his. For six months she had loved him blindly; and now, opening her eyes, she refused to look upon the naked fact, but insisted on seeing only what she wished.
Yet, the truth, elbowing itself through the crowd of her illusions, tormented her. She was afraid that Edward neither loved her nor had ever loved her; and she wavered uncertainly between the old passionate devotion and a new, equally passionate hatred. She told herself that she could not do things by halves; she must love or detest, but in either case, fiercely. And now the child made up for everything. Now it did not matter if Edward loved or not, it no longer pained her to realise how foolish had been her hopes, how quickly her ideal had been shattered. She felt that the infantine hands of her son were already breaking, one by one, the links that bound her to her husband. When she divined her pregnancy, she gave a cry not only of joy and pride, but also of exultation in her approaching freedom.
But when the suspicion was changed into a certainty, her feelings veered round; for her emotions were always unstable as the light winds of April. An extreme weakness made her long for the support and sympathy of her husband; she could not help telling him. In the hateful dispute of that very day, she had forced herself to say bitter things, but all the time she wished him to take her in his arms, saying he loved her. It needed so little to rekindle her dying affection; she wanted his help and she could not live without his love.
The weeks went on and Bertha was touched to see a change in Edward’s behaviour, more noticeable after his past indifference. He looked upon her now as an invalid, and as such entitled to some consideration; he was really very kind-hearted, and during this time did everything for his wife that did not involve a sacrifice of his own convenience. When the doctor suggested some dainty to tempt her appetite, Edward was delighted to ride over to Tercanbury to fetch it; and in her presence he trod more softly and spoke in a gentler voice. After a while he used to insist on carrying Bertha up and down stairs, and though Dr. Ramsay assured them it was a quite unnecessary proceeding, Bertha would not allow Edward to give it up. It amused her to feel a little child in his strong arms, and she loved to nestle against his breast. Then, with winter, when it was too cold to drive out, Bertha would lie for long hours on a sofa by the window, looking at the line of elm-trees, now leafless again and melancholy, watching the heavy clouds that drove over from the sea: her heart was full of peace.
One day of the new year she was sitting as usual at her window when Edward came prancing up the drive on horseback. He stopped in front of her and waved his whip.
“What d’you think of my new horse?” he cried.
At that moment the animal began to cavort, and backed into a flower-bed. “Quiet, old fellow,” cried Edward. “Now then, don’t make a fuss; quiet!” The horse stood on its hind legs and laid its ears back viciously. Presently Edward dismounted and led him towards Bertha. “Isn’t he a stunner? Just look at him.”
He passed his hand down the beast’s forelegs and stroked its sleek coat.
“I only gave thirty-five quid for it,” he remarked. “I must just take him round to the stable and then I’ll come in.”
In a few minutes Edward joined his wife. The riding costume suited him well, and in his top-boots he had more than ever the appearance of the fox-hunting country squire, which had always been his ideal. He was in high spirits over the new purchase.
“It’s the beast that threw Arthur Branderton when we were out last week.... Arthur’s limping about now with a sprained ankle and a broken finger. He says the horse is the greatest devil he’s ever ridden; he’s frightened to use him again.” Edward laughed scornfully.
“But you haven’t bought him?” asked Bertha, with alarm.
“Of course I have,” said Edward. “I couldn’t miss a chance like that. Why, he’s a perfect beauty—only he’s got a temper, like we all have.”
“But is he dangerous?”
“A bit—that’s why I got him cheap. Arthur gave a hundred guineas for him, and he told me I could have him for seventy. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you thirty-five—and take the risk of breaking my neck.’ Well, he just had to accept my offer! the horse has got a bad name in the county, and he wouldn’t get any one to buy it in a hurry. A man has got to get up early if he wants to do me over a gee!”
By this time Bertha was frightened out of her wits.
“But, Eddie, you’re not going to ride it—supposing something should happen. Oh, I wish you hadn’t bought him.”
“He’s all right,” said Craddock. “If any one can ride him, I can—and, by Jove, I’m going to risk it. Why, if I bought him and then didn’t use him, I’d never hear the last of it.”
“To please me, Eddie, don’t! What does it matter what people say? I’m so frightened. And now of all times you might do something to please me. It’s not often I ask you to do me a favour.”
“Well, when you ask for something reasonable, I always try my best to do it—but really, after I’ve paid thirty-five pounds for a horse, I can’t cut him up for cat’s meat.”
“That means you’ll always do anything for me so long as it doesn’t interfere with your own likes and dislikes.”
“Ah, well, we’re all like that, aren’t we?... Come, come, don’t be nasty about it, Bertha.”
He pinched her cheek good-naturedly—women, we all know, would like the moon if they could get it; and the fact that they can’t doesn’t prevent them from persistently asking for it. Edward sat down beside his wife, holding her hand.
“Now, tell us what you’ve been up to to-day. Has any one been?”
Bertha sighed deeply. She had absolutely no influence over her husband. No prayers, no tears would stop him from doing a thing he had set his mind on—however much she argued he always managed to make her seem in the wrong, and then went his way rejoicing. But she had her child now.
“Thank God for that!” she murmured.
CRADDOCK went out on his new horse and returned triumphantly.
“He was as quiet as a lamb,” he said. “I could ride him with my arms tied behind my back; and as to jumping—he takes a five-barred gate in his stride.”
Bertha was a little angry with him for having caused her such terror, angry with herself also for troubling.
“And it was rather lucky I had him to-day. Old Lord Philip Dirk was there, and he asked Branderton who I was. ‘You tell him,’ says he, ‘that it isn’t often I’ve seen a man ride as well as he does.’ You should see Branderton, he isn’t half glad at having let me take the beast for thirty-five quid. And Mr. Molson came up to me and said, ‘I knew that horse would get into your hands before long, you’re the only man in this part who can ride it—but if it don’t break your neck, you’ll be lucky.’”
He recounted with great satisfaction the compliments paid to him.
“We had a jolly good run to-day.... And how are you, dear, feeling comfy? Oh, I forgot to tell you—you know Rodgers, the huntsman, well, he said to me, ‘That’s a mighty fine hack you’ve got there, sir, but he takes some riding.’—‘I know he does,’ I said; ‘but I flatter myself I know a thing or two more than most horses.’ They all thought I should get rolled over before the day was out, but I just went slick at everything to show I wasn’t frightened.”
Then he gave details of the affair; and he had as great a passion for the meticulous as a German historian. He was one of those men who take infinite pains over trifles, flattering themselves that they never do things by halves. Bertha had a headache, and her husband bored her; she thought herself a great fool to be so concerned about his safety.
As the months wore on Miss Glover became very solicitous. The parson’s sister looked upon birth as a mysteriously heart-fluttering business, which, however, modesty required decent people to ignore. She treated her friend in an absurdly self-conscious manner, and blushed like a peony when Bertha frankly referred to the coming event. The greatest torment of Miss Glover’s life was that, as lady of the Vicarage, she had to manage the Maternity Bag, an institution to provide the infants of the needy with articles of raiment and their mothers with flannel petticoats. She could never, without much confusion, ask the necessary information of the beneficiaries in her charity; feeling that the whole thing ought not to be discussed at all, she kept her eyes averted, and acted generally so as to cause great indignation.
“Well,” said one good lady, “I’d rather not ’ave her bag at all than be treated like that. Why, she treats you as if—well, as if you wasn’t married.”
“Yes,” said another, “that’s just what I complain of—I promise you I ’ad ’alf a mind to take my marriage lines out of my pocket an’ show ’er. It ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed about—nice thing it would be after ’avin’ sixteen, if I was bashful.”
But of course the more unpleasant a duty was, the more zealously did Miss Glover perform it; she felt it right to visit Bertha with frequency, and manfully bore the young wife’s persistence in referring to an unpleasant subject. She carried her heroism to the pitch of knitting socks for the forthcoming baby, although to do so made her heart palpitate uncomfortably; and when she was surprised at the work by her brother, her cheeks burned like two fires.
“Now, Bertha dear,” she said one day, pulling herself together and straightening her back as she always did when she was mortifying the flesh. “Now, Bertha dear, I want to talk to you seriously.”
Bertha smiled. “Oh don’t, Fanny; you know how uncomfortable it makes you.”
“I must,” answered the good creature, gravely. “I know you’ll think me ridiculous, but it’s my duty.”
“I shan’t think anything of the kind,” said Bertha, touched with her friend’s humility.
“Well, you talk a great deal of—of what’s going to happen”—Miss Glover blushed—“but I’m not sure if you are really prepared for it.”
“Oh, is that all?” cried Bertha. “The nurse will be here in a fortnight, and Dr. Ramsay says she’s a most reliable woman.”
“I wasn’t thinking of earthly preparations,” said Miss Glover. “I was thinking of the other. Are you quite sure you’re approaching the—the thing, in the right spirit?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“It isn’t what I want you to do. It’s what you ought to do. I’m nobody. But have you thought at all of the spiritual side of it?”
Bertha gave a sigh that was chiefly voluptuous. “I’ve thought that I’m going to have a son, that’s mine and Eddie’s; and I’m awfully thankful.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to read the Bible to you sometimes?”
“Good heavens, you talk as if I were going to die.”
“One can never tell, dear Bertha,” replied Miss Glover, sombrely; “I think you ought to be prepared.... ‘In the midst of life we are in death’—one can never tell what may happen.”
Bertha looked at her somewhat anxiously. She had been forcing herself of late to be cheerful, and had found it necessary to stifle a recurring presentiment of evil fortune. The Vicar’s sister never realised that she was doing everything possible to make Bertha thoroughly unhappy.
“I brought my own Bible with me,” she said. “Do you mind if I read you a chapter?”
“I should like it,” said Bertha, and a cold shiver went through her.
“Have you got any preference for some particular part?” asked Miss Glover, extracting the book from a little black bag which she always carried.
On Bertha’s answer that she had no preference, Miss Glover suggested opening the Bible at random, and reading on from the first line that crossed her eyes.
“Charles doesn’t quite approve of it,” she said; “he thinks it smacks of superstition. But I can’t help doing it, and the early Protestants constantly did the same.”
Miss Glover, having opened the book with closed eyes, began to read: “The sons of Pharez! Hezron, and Hamul. And the sons of Zerah; Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara; five of them in all.” Miss Glover cleared her throat. “And the sons of Ethan; Azariah. The sons also of Hezron, that were born unto him; Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Chelubai. And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah.” She had fallen upon the genealogical table at the beginning of the Book of Chronicles. The chapter was very long, and consisted entirely of names, uncouth and difficult to pronounce; but Miss Glover shirked not one of them. With grave and somewhat high-pitched delivery, modelled on her brother’s, she read out the bewildering list. Bertha looked at her in amazement.
“That’s the end of the chapter,” she said at last; “would you like me to read you another one?”
“Yes, I should like it very much; but I don’t think the part you’ve hit on is quite to the point.”
“My dear, I don’t want to reprove you—that’s not my duty—but all the Bible is to the point.”
And as the time passed, Bertha quite lost her courage and was often seized by a panic fear. Suddenly, without obvious cause, her heart sank and she asked herself frantically how she could possibly get through it. She thought she was going to die, and wondered what would happen if she did. What would Edward do without her? Thinking of his bitter grief the tears came to her eyes, but her lips trembled with self-pity when the suspicion came that he would not be heartbroken: he was not a man to feel either grief or joy very poignantly. He would not weep; at the most his gaiety for a couple of days would be obscured, and then he would go about as before. She imagined him relishing the sympathy of his friends. In six months he would almost have forgotten her, and such memory as remained would not be extraordinarily pleasing. He would marry again; Edward loathed solitude, and next time doubtless he would choose a different sort of woman—one less remote from his ideal. Edward cared nothing for appearance, and Bertha imagined her successor plain as Miss Hancock or dowdy as Miss Glover; and the irony of it lay in the knowledge that either of those two would make a wife more suitable than she to his character, answering better to his conception of a helpmate.
Bertha fancied that Edward would willingly have given her beauty for some solid advantage, such as a knowledge of dressmaking; her taste, her arts and accomplishments, were nothing to him, and her impulsive passion was a positive defect. “Handsome is as handsome does,” said he; he was a plain, simple man and he wanted a simple, plain wife.
She wondered if her death would really cause him much sorrow; Bertha’s will gave him everything of which she was possessed, and he would spend it with a second wife. She was seized with insane jealousy.
“No, I won’t die,” she cried between her teeth, “I won’t!”
But one day, while Edward was hunting, her morbid fancies took another turn. Supposing he should die? The thought was unendurable, but the very horror of it fascinated her; she could not drive away the scenes which, with strange distinctness, her imagination set before her. She was seated at the piano and heard suddenly a horse stop at the front door—Edward was back early: but the bell rang; why should Edward ring? There was a murmur of voices without and Arthur Branderton came in. In her mind’s eye she saw every detail most clearly. He was in his hunting clothes! Something had happened, and knowing what it was, Bertha was yet able to realise her terrified wonder, as one possibility and another rushed through her brain. He was uneasy, he had something to tell, but dared not say it; she looked at him, horror-stricken, and a faintness came over her so that she could hardly stand.
Bertha’s heart beat quickly. She told herself it was absurd to let her imagination run away with her; but, notwithstanding, the pictures vividly proceeded: she seemed to assist at a ghastly play in which she was chief actor.
And what would she do when the fact was finally told her—that Edward was dead? She would faint or cry out.
“There’s been an accident,” said Branderton—“your husband is rather hurt.”
Bertha put her hands to her eyes, the agony was dreadful.
“You mustn’t upset yourself,” he went on, trying to break it to her.
Then, rapidly passing over the intermediate details she found herself with her husband. He was dead, lying on the floor—and she pictured him to herself, she knew exactly how he would look; sometimes he slept so soundly, so quietly, that she was nervous and put her ear to his heart to know if it was beating. Now he was dead. Despair suddenly swept down upon her overpoweringly. Bertha tried again to shake off her fancies, she even went to the piano and played a few notes; but the morbid attraction was too strong for her and the scene went on. Now that he was dead, he could not check her passion, now he was helpless and she kissed him with all her love; she passed her hands through his hair, and stroked his face (he had hated this in life), she kissed his lips and his closed eyes.
The imagined grief was so poignant that Bertha burst into tears. She remained with the body, refusing to be separated from it—Bertha buried her face in the cushions so that nothing might disturb her illusion, she had ceased trying to drive it away. Ah, she loved him passionately, she had always loved him and could not live without him. She knew that she would shortly die—and she had been afraid of death. Ah, now it was welcome! She kissed his hands—he could not prevent her now—and with a little shudder opened his eyes; they were glassy, expressionless, immobile. Clinging to him, she sobbed in love and anguish. She would let none touch him but herself; it was a relief to perform the last offices for him who had been her whole life. She did not know that her love was so great.
She undressed the body and washed it; she washed the limbs one by one and sponged them, then very gently dried them with a towel. The touch of the cold flesh made her shudder voluptuously—she thought of him taking her in his strong arms, kissing her on the mouth. She wrapped him in the white shroud and surrounded him with flowers. They placed him in the coffin, and her heart stood still: she could not leave him. She passed with him all day and all night, looking ever at the quiet, restful face. Dr. Ramsay came and Miss Glover came, urging her to go away, but she refused. What was the care of her own health now, she had only wanted to live for him?
The coffin was closed, and she saw the gestures of the undertakers—she had seen her husband’s face for the last time, her beloved: her heart was like a stone, and she beat her breast in pain.
Hurriedly now the pictures thronged upon her—the drive to the churchyard, the service, the coffin strewn with flowers, and finally the grave-side. They tried to keep her at home. What cared she for the silly, the abominable convention, which sought to prevent her from going to the funeral? Was it not her husband, the only light of her life, whom they were burying? They could not realise the horror of it, the utter despair. And distinctly, by the dimness of the winter day in her drawing-room at Court Leys, Bertha saw the lowering of the coffin, heard the rattle of earth thrown upon it.
What would her life be afterwards? She would try to live, she would surround herself with Edward’s things, so that his memory might be always with her; the loneliness was appalling. Court Leys was empty and bare. She saw the endless succession of grey days; the seasons brought no change, and continually the clouds hung heavily above her; the trees were always leafless, and it was desolate. She could not imagine that travel would bring solace—the whole of life was blank, and what to her now were the pictures and churches, the blue skies of Italy? Her only happiness was to weep.
Then distractedly Bertha thought that she would kill herself, for life was impossible to endure. No life at all, the blankness of the grave, was preferable to the pangs gnawing continually at her heart. It would be easy to finish, with a little morphia to close the book of trouble; despair would give her courage, and the prick of the needle was the only pain. But her vision became dim, and she had to make an effort to retain it: her thoughts grew less coherent, travelling back to previous incidents, to the scene at the grave, to the voluptuous pleasure of washing the body.
It was all so vivid that the entrance of Edward came upon her as a surprise. But the relief was too great for words, it was the awakening from a horrible nightmare. When he came forward to kiss her, she flung her arms round his neck, her eyes moist with past tears, and pressed him passionately to her heart.
“Oh, thank God!” she cried.
“Hulloa, what’s up now?”
“I don’t know what’s been the matter with me.... I’ve been so miserable, Eddie—I thought you were dead!”
“You’ve been crying!”
“It was so awful, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.... Oh, I should die also.”
Bertha could scarcely realise that her husband was by her side in the flesh, alive and well.
“Would you be sorry if I died?” she asked him.
“But you’re not going to do anything of the sort,” he said, cheerily.
“Sometimes I’m so frightened, I don’t believe I’ll get over it.”
He laughed at her, and his joyous tones were peculiarly comforting. She made him sit by her side and held his strong hands, the hands which to her were the visible signs of his powerful manhood. She stroked them and kissed the palms. She was quite broken with the past emotions; her limbs trembled and her eyes glistened with tears.
THE nurse arrived, bringing new apprehension. She was an old woman who, for twenty years, had helped the neighbouring gentry into the world; and she had a copious store of ghastly anecdote. In her mouth the terrors of birth were innumerable, and she told her stories with a cumulative art that was appalling. Of course, in her mind, she acted for the best; Bertha was nervous, and the nurse could imagine no better way of reassuring her than to give detailed accounts of patients who for days had been at death’s door, given up by all the doctors, and yet had finally recovered.
Bertha’s quick invention magnified the coming anguish till, for thinking of it, she could hardly sleep. The impossibility even to conceive it rendered it more formidable; she saw before her a long, long agony, and then death. She could not bear Edward to be out of her sight.
“Why, of course you’ll get over it,” he said. “I promise you it’s nothing to make a fuss about.”
He had bred animals for years and was quite used to the process which supplied him with veal, mutton, and beef, for the local butchers. It was a ridiculous fuss that human beings made over a natural and ordinary phenomenon.
“Oh, I’m so afraid of the pain. I feel certain that I shan’t get over it—it’s awful. I wish I hadn’t got to go through it.”
“Good heavens,” cried the doctor, “one would think no one had ever had a baby before you.”
“Oh, don’t laugh at me. Can’t you see how frightened I am! I have a presentiment that I shall die.”
“I never knew a woman yet,” said Dr. Ramsay, “who hadn’t a presentiment that she would die, even if she had nothing worse than a finger-ache the matter with her.”
“Oh, you can laugh,” said Bertha. “I’ve got to go through it.”
Another day passed, and the nurse said the doctor must be immediately sent for. Bertha had made Edward promise to remain with her all the time.
“I think I shall have courage if I can hold your hand,” she said.
“Nonsense,” said Dr. Ramsay, when Edward told him this, “I’m not going to have a man meddling about.”
“I thought not,” said Edward, “but I just promised, to keep her quiet.”
“If you’ll keep yourself quiet,” answered the doctor, “that’s all I shall expect.”
“Oh, you needn’t fear about me. I know all about these things—why, my dear doctor, I’ve brought a good sight more living things into the world than you have, I bet.”
Edward, calm, self-possessed, unimaginative, was the ideal person for an emergency.
“There’s no good my knocking about the house all the afternoon,” he said. “I should only mope, and if I’m wanted I can always be sent for.”
He left word that he was going to Bewlie’s Farm to see a sick cow, about which he was very anxious.
“She’s the best milker I’ve ever had. I don’t know what I should do if anything went wrong with her. She gives her so-many pints a day, as regular as possible. She’s brought in over and over again the money I gave for her.”
He walked along with the free and easy step which Bertha so much admired, glancing now and then at the fields which bordered the highway. He stopped to examine the beans of a rival farmer.
“That soil’s no good,” he said, shaking his head. “It don’t pay to grow beans on a patch like that.”
When he arrived at Bewlie’s Farm, Edward called for the labourer in charge of the invalid.
“Well, how’s she going?”
“She ain’t no better, squire.”
“Bad job.... Has Thompson been to see her to-day?” Thompson was the vet.
“‘E can’t make nothin’ of it—’e thinks it’s a habscess she’s got, but I don’t put much faith in Mister Thompson: ’is father was a labourer same as me, only ’e didn’t ’ave to do with farming, bein’ a bricklayer; and wot ’is son can know about cattle is beyond me altogether.”
“Well, let’s go and look at her,” said Edward.
He strode over to the barn, followed by the labourer. The beast was standing in one corner, even more meditative than is usual with cows, hanging her head and humping her back. She seemed profoundly pessimistic.
“I should have thought Thompson could do something,” said Edward.
“‘E says the butcher’s the only thing for ’er,” said the other, with great contempt.
Edward snorted indignantly. “Butcher indeed! I’d like to butcher him if I got the chance.”
He went into the farmhouse, which for years had been his home; but he was a practical, sensible fellow and it brought him no memories, no particular emotion.
“Well, Mrs. Jones,” he said to the tenant’s wife. “How’s yourself?”
“Middlin’, sir. And ’ow are you and Mrs. Craddock?”
“I’m all right—the Missus is having a baby, you know.”
He spoke in the jovial, careless way which necessarily endeared him to the whole world.
“Bless my soul, is she indeed, sir—and I knew you when you was a boy! When d’you expect it?”
“I expect it every minute. Why, for all I know, I may be a happy father when I get back to tea.”
“You take it pretty cool, governor,” said Farmer Jones, who had known Edward in the days of his poverty.
“Me?” cried Edward, laughing. “I know all about this sort of thing, you see. Why, look at all the calves I’ve had—and mind you, I’ve not had an accident with a cow above twice, all the time I’ve gone in for breeding.... But I’d better be going to see how the Missus is getting on. Good afternoon to you, Mrs. Jones.”
“Now what I like about the squire,” said Mrs. Jones, “is that there’s no ‘aughtiness in ’im. ’E ain’t too proud to take a cup of tea with you, although ’e is the squire now.”
“‘E’s the best squire we’ve ’ad for thirty years,” said Farmer Jones, “and, as you say, my dear, there’s not a drop of ’aughtiness in ‘im—which is more than you can say for his missus.”
“Oh well, she’s young-like,” replied his wife. “They do say as ’ow ’e’s the master, and I dare say ’e’ll teach ’er better.”
“Trust ’im for makin’ ’is wife buckle under; ’e’s not a man to stand nonsense from anybody.”
Edward swung along the road, whirling his stick round, whistling, and talking to the dogs that accompanied him. He was of a hopeful disposition, and did not think it would be necessary to slaughter his best cow. He did not believe in the vet. half so much as in himself, and his firm opinion was that she would recover. He walked up the avenue of Court Leys, looking at the young elms he had planted to fill the gaps; they were pretty healthy on the whole, and he was pleased with his work.
He went to Bertha’s room and knocked at the door. Dr. Ramsay opened it, but with his burly frame barred the passage.
“Oh, don’t be afraid,” said Edward, “I don’t want to come in. I know when I’m best out of the way.... How is she getting on?”
“Well, I’m afraid it won’t be such an easy job as I thought,” whispered the doctor; “but there’s no reason to get alarmed.”
“I shall be downstairs if you want me for anything.”
“She was asking for you a good deal just now, but nurse told her it would upset you if you were there; so then she said, ‘Don’t let him come; I’ll bear it alone.’”
“Oh, that’s all right. In a time like this the husband is much better out of the way, I think.”
Dr. Ramsay shut the door upon him.
“Sensible chap that,” he said. “I like him better and better. Why, most men would be fussing about and getting hysterical, and Lord knows what.”
“Was that Eddie?” asked Bertha, her voice trembling with recent agony.
“Yes; he came to see how you were.”
“He isn’t very much upset, is he? Don’t tell him I’m very bad—it’ll make him wretched. I’ll bear it alone.”
Edward, downstairs, told himself it was no use getting into a state, which was quite true, and taking the most comfortable chair in the room, settled down to read his paper. Before dinner he went to make more inquiries. Dr. Ramsay came out saying he had given Bertha opium, and for a while she was quiet.
“It’s lucky you did it just at dinner time,” said Edward, with a laugh. “We’ll be able to have a snack together.”
They sat down and began to eat. They rivalled one another in their appetites; and the doctor, liking Edward more and more, said it did him good to see a man who could eat well. But before they had reached the pudding, a message came from the nurse to say that Bertha was awake, and Dr. Ramsay regretfully left the table. Edward went on eating steadfastly. At last, with the happy sigh of the man conscious of virtue and a satisfied stomach, he lit his pipe and again settling himself in the armchair, shortly began to doze. The evening, however, was long, and he felt bored.
“It ought to be all over by now,” he said. “I wonder if I need stay up?”
Dr. Ramsay seemed a little worried when Edward went to him a third time.
“I’m afraid it’s a difficult case,” he said. “It’s most unfortunate. She’s been suffering a good deal, poor thing.”
“Well, is there anything I can do?” asked Edward.
“No, except to keep calm and not make a fuss.”
“Oh, I shan’t do that; you needn’t fear. I will say that for myself, I have got nerve.”
“You’re splendid,” said Dr. Ramsay. “I tell you I like to see a man keep his head so well through a job like this.”
“Well, what I came to ask you was—is there any good in my sitting up? Of course I’ll do it if anything can be done; but if not I may as well go to bed.”
“Yes, I think you’d much better; I’ll call you if you’re wanted. I think you might come in and say a word or two to Bertha; it will encourage her.”
Edward entered. Bertha was lying with staring, terrified eyes—eyes that seemed to have lately seen entirely new things, they shone glassily. Her face was whiter than ever, the blood had fled from her lips, and her cheeks were sunken: she looked as if she were dying. She greeted Edward with the faintest smile.
“How are you, little woman?” he asked.
His presence seemed to call her back to life, and a faint colour lit up her cheeks.
“I’m all right,” she said, making an effort. “You mustn’t worry yourself, dear.”
“Been having a bad time?”
“No,” she said, bravely. “I’ve not really suffered much—there’s nothing for you to upset yourself about.”
He went out, and she called Dr. Ramsay. “You haven’t told him what I’ve gone through, have you? I don’t want him to know.”
“No, that’s all right. I’ve told him to go to bed.”
“Oh, I’m glad. He can’t bear not to get his proper night’s rest.... How long d’you think it will last—already I feel as if I’d been tortured for ever, and it seems endless.”
“Oh, it’ll soon be over now, I hope.”
“I’m sure I’m going to die,” she whispered; “I feel that life is being gradually drawn out of me—I shouldn’t mind if it weren’t for Eddie. He’ll be so cut up.”
“What nonsense!” said the nurse, “you all say you’re going to die.”
Edward—dear, manly, calm, and pure-minded fellow as he was—went to bed quietly and soon was fast asleep. But his slumbers were somewhat troubled: generally he enjoyed the heavy dreamless sleep of the man who has no nerves and plenty of exercise. To-night, however, he dreamt. He dreamt not only that one cow was sick, but that all his cattle had fallen ill—the cows stood about with gloomy eyes and humpbacks, surly and dangerous, evidently with their livers totally deranged; the oxen were “blown,” and lay on their backs with legs kicking feebly in the air.
“You must send them all to the butcher’s,” said the vet.; “there’s nothing to be done with them.”
“Good Lord deliver us,” said Edward; “I shan’t get four bob a stone for them.”
But his dream was disturbed by a knock at the door, and Edward awoke to find Dr. Ramsay shaking him.
“Wake up, man—get up and dress quickly.”
“What’s the matter?” cried Edward, jumping out of bed and seizing his clothes. “What’s the time?”
“It’s half-past four.... I want you to go into Tercanbury for Dr. Spocref; Bertha is very bad.”
“All right, I’ll bring him back with me.” Edward rapidly dressed himself.
“I’ll go round and wake up the man to put the horse in.”
“No, I’ll do that myself; it’ll take me half the time.” He methodically laced his boots.
“Bertha is in no immediate danger. But I must have a consultation. I still hope we shall bring her through it.”
“By Jove,” said Edward, “I didn’t know it was so bad as that.”
“You need not get alarmed yet—the great thing is for you to keep calm and bring Spocref along as quickly as possible. It’s not hopeless yet.”
Edward, with all his wits about him, was soon ready and with equal rapidity set to harnessing the horse; he carefully lit the lamps, as the proverb, more haste, less speed, passed through his mind. In two minutes he was on the main road, and whipped up the horse. He went with a quick, steady trot through the silent night.
Dr. Ramsay, returning to the sick-room, thought what a splendid object was a man who could be relied upon to do anything, who never lost his head nor got excited. His admiration for Edward was growing by leaps and bounds.
EDWARD CRADDOCK was a strong man, also unimaginative. Driving through the night to Tercanbury he did not give way to distressing thoughts, but easily kept his anxiety within proper bounds, and gave his whole attention to conducting the horse; he kept his eyes on the road in front of him, and the beast stepped out with swift, regular stride, rapidly passing the milestones. Edward rang Dr. Spocref up and gave him the note he carried. The doctor presently came down, an undersized man with a squeaky voice and a gesticulative manner. He looked upon Edward with suspicion.
“I suppose you’re the husband?” he said, as they clattered down the street. “Would you like me to drive? I dare say you’re rather upset.”
“No—and don’t want to be,” answered Edward, with a laugh. He looked down a little upon people who lived in towns, and never trusted a man who was less than six feet high and burly in proportion!
“I’m rather nervous of anxious husbands who drive me at a breakneck pace in the middle of the night,” said the doctor. “The ditches have an almost irresistible attraction for them.”
“Well, I’m not nervous, doctor, so it doesn’t matter twopence if you are.”
When they reached the open country, Edward set the horse going at its fastest; he was somewhat amused at the doctor’s desire to drive—absurd little man!
“Are you holding on tight?” he asked, with good-natured scorn.
“I see you can drive,” said the doctor.
“It is not the first time I’ve had reins in my hands,” replied Edward, modestly. “Here we are!”
He showed the specialist to the bedroom, and asked whether Dr. Ramsay required him further.
“No, I don’t want you just now; but you’d better stay up to be ready, if anything happens.... I’m afraid Bertha is very bad indeed—you must be prepared for everything.”
Edward retired to the next room and sat down. He was genuinely disturbed, but even now could not realise that Bertha was dying—his mind was sluggish, and he was unable to imagine the future. A more emotional man would have been white with fear, his heart beating painfully and his nerves quivering with a hundred anticipated terrors. He would have been quite useless; while Edward was fit for any emergency—he could have been trusted to drive another ten miles in search of some appliance, and, with perfect steadiness, to help in any necessary operation.
“You know,” he said to Dr. Ramsay, “I don’t want to get in your way; but if I should be any use in the room, you can trust me not to get flurried.”
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do; the nurse is very trustworthy and capable.”
“Women,” said Edward, “get so excited; they always make fools of themselves if they possibly can.”
But the night air had made Craddock sleepy, and after half-an-hour in the chair, trying to read a book, he dozed off. Presently, however, he awoke, and the first light of day filled the room with a gray coldness. He looked at his watch.
“By Jove, it’s a long job,” he said.
There was a knock at the door, and the nurse came in.
“Will you please come.”
Dr. Ramsay met him in the passage. “Thank God, it’s over. She’s had a terrible time.”
“Is she all right?”
“I think she’s in no danger now—but I’m sorry to say we couldn’t save the child.”
A pang went through Edward’s heart. “Is it dead?”
“It was still-born. I was afraid it was hopeless. You’d better go to Bertha now—she wants you. She doesn’t know about the child.”
Bertha was lying in an attitude of complete exhaustion: she lay on her back, with arms stretched in utter weakness by her sides. Her face was gray with past anguish, her eyes dull and lifeless, half closed; and her jaw hung almost as hangs the jaw of a corpse. She tried to form a smile as she saw Edward, but in her feebleness the lips scarcely moved.
“Don’t try to speak, dear,” said the nurse, seeing that Bertha was attempting words.
Edward bent down and kissed her, the faintest blush coloured her cheeks, and she began to cry; the tears stealthily glided down her cheeks.
“Come nearer to me, Eddie,” she whispered.
He knelt beside her, suddenly touched. He took her hand, and the contact had a vivifying effect; she drew a long breath, and her lips formed a weary, weary smile.
“Thank God, it’s over,” she groaned, half whispering. “Oh, Eddie, darling, you can’t think what I’ve gone through.”
“Well, it’s all over now.”
“And you’ve been worrying too, Eddie. It encouraged me to think that you shared my trouble. You must go to sleep now. It was good of you to drive to Tercanbury for me.”
“You mustn’t talk,” said Dr. Ramsay, coming back into the room, after seeing the specialist sent off.
“I’m better now,” said Bertha, “since I’ve seen Eddie.”
“Well, you must go to sleep.”
“You’ve not told me yet if it’s a boy or a girl; tell me, Eddie, you know.”
Edward looked uneasily at the doctor.
“It’s a boy,” said Dr. Ramsay.
“I knew it would be,” she murmured. An expression of ecstatic pleasure came into her face, chasing away the grayness of death. “I’m so glad. Have you seen it, Eddie?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s our child, isn’t it? It’s worth going through the pain to have a baby. I’m so happy.”
“You must go to sleep now.”
“I’m not a bit sleepy—and I want to see my boy.”
“No, you can’t see him now,” said Dr. Ramsay, “he’s asleep, and you mustn’t disturb him.”
“Oh, I should like to see him, just for one minute. You needn’t wake him.”
“You shall see him after you’ve been asleep,” said the doctor, soothingly. “It’ll excite you too much.”
“Well, you go in and see him, Eddie, and kiss him, and then I’ll go to sleep.”
She seemed so anxious that at least its father should see his child, that the nurse led Edward into the next room. On a chest of drawers was lying something covered with a towel. This the nurse lifted, and Edward saw his child; it was naked and very small, hardly human, repulsive, yet very pitiful. The eyes were closed, the eyes that had never been opened. Edward looked at it for a minute.
“I promised I’d kiss it,” he whispered.
He bent down and touched with his lips the white forehead; the nurse drew the towel over the body, and they went back to Bertha.
“Is he sleeping?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you kiss him?”
“Yes.”
Bertha smiled. “Fancy your kissing baby before me.”
But Dr. Ramsay’s draught was taking its effect, and almost immediately Bertha fell into a pleasant sleep.
“Let’s take a turn in the garden,” said Dr. Ramsay. “I think I ought to be here when she wakes.”
The air was fresh, scented with the spring flowers and the odour of the earth. Both men inspired it with relief after the close atmosphere of the sick-room. Dr. Ramsay put his arm in Edward’s.
“Cheer up, my boy,” he said. “You’ve borne it all magnificently. I’ve never seen a man go through a night like this better than you; and upon my word, you’re as fresh as paint this morning.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said Edward. “What’s to be done about—about the baby?”
“I think she’ll be able to bear it better after she’s had a sleep. I really didn’t dare say it was still-born. The shock would have been too much for her.”
They went in and washed and ate, then waited for Bertha to wake. At last the nurse called them.
“You poor things,” cried Bertha, as they entered the room. “Have you had no sleep at all?... I feel quite well now, and I want my baby. Nurse says it’s sleeping and I can’t have it—but I will. I want it to sleep with me, I want to look at my son.”
Edward and the nurse looked at Dr. Ramsay, who for once was disconcerted.
“I don’t think you’d better have him to-day, Bertha,” he said. “It would upset you.”
“Oh, but I must have my baby. Nurse, bring him to me at once.”
Edward knelt down again by the bedside and took her hands. “Now, Bertha, you musn’t be alarmed, but the baby’s not well, and——“
“What d’you mean?” Bertha suddenly sprang up in the bed.
“Lie down. Lie down,” cried Dr. Ramsay and the nurse, forcing her back on the pillow.
“What’s the matter with him, doctor,” she cried, in sudden terror.
“It’s as Edward says, he’s not well.”
“Oh, he isn’t going to die—after all I’ve gone through.”
She looked from one to the other. “Oh, tell me; don’t keep me in suspense. I can bear it, whatever it is.”
Dr. Ramsay touched Edward, encouraging him.
“You must prepare yourself for bad news, darling. You know—--“
“He isn’t dead?” she shrieked.
“I’m awfully sorry, dear.... He was still-born.”
“Oh, God!” groaned Bertha, it was a cry of despair. And then she burst into passionate weeping.
Her sobs were terrible, uncontrollable; it was her life that she was weeping away, her hope of happiness, all her desires and dreams. Her heart seemed breaking. She put her hands to her eyes, with a gesture of utter agony.
“Then I went through it all for nothing.... Oh, Eddie, you don’t know the frightful pain of it—all night I thought I should die.... I would have given anything to be put out of my suffering. And it was all useless.”
She sobbed still more irresistibly, quite crushed by the recollection of what she had gone through, and its futility.
“Oh, I wish I could die.”
The tears were in Edward’s eyes, and he kissed her hands.
“Don’t give way, darling,” he said, searching in vain for words to console her. His voice faltered and broke.
“Oh, Eddie,” she said, “you’re suffering just as much as I am. I forgot.... Let me see him now.”
Dr. Ramsay made a sign to the nurse, and she fetched the dead child. She carried it to the bedside and showed it to Bertha.
Bertha said nothing, and at last turned away; the nurse withdrew. Bertha’s tears now had ceased, but her mouth was set into a hopeless woe.
“Oh, I loved him already so much.”
Edward bent over. “Don’t grieve, darling.”
She put her arms round his neck as she had delighted to do. “Oh, Eddie, love me with all your heart. I want your love so badly.”
FOR days Bertha was overwhelmed with grief. She thought always of the dead child that had never lived, and her heart ached. But above all she was tormented by the idea that all her pain had been futile; she had gone through so much, her sleep still was full of the past agony, and it had been utterly, utterly useless. Her body was mutilated so that she wondered it was possible for her to recover; she had lost her old buoyancy, that vitality which had been so enjoyable, and she felt like an old woman. Her sense of weariness was unendurable—she was so tired that it seemed to her impossible to get rest. She lay in bed, day after day, in a posture of hopeless fatigue, on her back, with arms stretched out alongside of her, the pillows supporting her head: all her limbs were singularly powerless.
Recovery was very slow, and Edward suggested sending for Miss Ley, but Bertha refused.
“I don’t want to see anybody,” she said; “I merely want to lie still and be quiet.”
It bored her to speak with people, and even her affections, for the time, were dormant: she looked upon Edward as some one apart from her, his presence and absence gave no particular emotion. She was tired, and desired only to be left alone. All sympathy was unnecessary and useless, she knew that no one could enter into the bitterness of her sorrow, and she preferred to bear it alone.
Little by little, however, Bertha regained strength and consented to see the friends who called, some genuinely sorry, others impelled merely by a sense of duty or by a ghoul-like curiosity. Miss Glover, at this period, was a great trial; the good creature felt for Bertha the sincerest sympathy, but her feelings were one thing, her sense of right and wrong another. She did not think the young wife took her affliction with proper humility. Gradually a rebellious feeling had replaced the extreme prostration of the beginning, and Bertha raged at the injustice of her lot. Miss Glover came every day, bringing flowers and good advice; but Bertha was not docile, and refused to be satisfied with Miss Glover’s pious consolations. When the good creature read the Bible, Bertha listened with a firmer closing of her lips, sullenly.
“Do you like me to read the Bible to you, dear?” asked the parson’s sister once.
And Bertha, driven beyond her patience, could not as usual command her tongue.
“If it amuses you, dear,” she answered, bitterly.
“Oh, Bertha, you’re not taking it in the proper spirit—you’re so rebellious, and it’s wrong, it’s utterly wrong.”
“I can only think of my baby,” said Bertha, hoarsely.
“Why don’t you pray to God, dear—shall I offer a short prayer now, Bertha?”
“No, I don’t want to pray to God—He’s either impotent or cruel.”
“Bertha,” cried Miss Glover. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Oh, pray to God to melt your stubbornness; pray to God to forgive you.”
“I don’t want to be forgiven. I’ve done nothing that needs it. It’s God who needs my forgiveness—not I His.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Bertha,” replied Miss Glover, very gravely and sorrowfully.
Bertha was still so ill that Miss Glover dared not press the subject, but she was grievously troubled. She asked herself whether she should consult her brother, to whom an absurd shyness prevented her from mentioning spiritual matters, unless necessity compelled. But she had immense faith in him, and to her he was a type of all that a Christian clergyman should be. Although her character was so much stronger than his, Mr. Glover always seemed to his sister a pillar of strength; and often in past times, when the flesh was more stubborn, had she found help and consolation in his very mediocre sermons. Finally, however, Miss Glover decided to speak to him, with the result that, for a week she avoided spiritual topics in her daily conversation with the invalid; then, Bertha having grown a little stronger, without previously mentioning the fact, she brought her brother to Court Leys.
Miss Glover went alone to Bertha’s room, in her ardent sense of propriety fearing that Bertha, in bed, might not be costumed decorously enough for the visit of a clerical gentleman.
“Oh,” she said, “Charles is downstairs and would like to see you so much. I thought I’d better come up first to see if you were—er—presentable.”
Bertha was sitting up in bed, with a mass of cushions and pillows behind her—a bright red jacket contrasted with her dark hair and the pallor of her skin. She drew her lips together when she heard that the Vicar was below, and a slight frown darkened her forehead. Miss Glover caught sight of it.
“I don’t think she likes your coming,” said Miss Glover—to encourage him—when she fetched her brother, “but I think it’s your duty.”
“Yes, I think it’s my duty,” replied Mr. Glover, who liked the approaching interview as little as Bertha.
He was an honest man, oppressed by the inroads of dissent; but his ministrations were confined to the services in church, the collecting of subscriptions, and the visiting of the church-going poor. It was something new to be brought before a rebellious gentlewoman, and he did not quite know how to treat her.
Miss Glover opened the bedroom door for her brother and he entered, a cold wind laden with carbolic acid. She solemnly put a chair for him by the bedside and another for herself at a little distance.
“Ring for the tea before you sit down, Fanny,” said Bertha.
“I think, if you don’t mind, Charles would like to speak to you first,” said Miss Glover. “Am I not right, Charles?”
“Yes, dear.”
“I took the liberty of telling him what you said to me the other day, Bertha.”
Mrs. Craddock pursed her lips, but made no reply.
“I hope you’re not angry with me for doing so, but I thought it my duty.... Now, Charles.”
The Vicar of Leanham coughed.
“I can quite understand,” he said, “that you must be most distressed at your affliction. It’s a most unfortunate occurrence. I need not say that Fanny and I sympathise with you from the bottom of our hearts.”
“We do indeed,” said his sister.
Still Bertha did not answer and Miss Glover looked at her uneasily. The Vicar coughed again.
“But I always think that we should be thankful for the cross we have to bear. It is, as it were, a measure of the confidence that God places in us.”
Bertha remained quite silent and Miss Glover saw that no good would come by beating about the bush.
“The fact is, Bertha,” she said, breaking the awkward silence, “that Charles and I are very anxious that you should be churched. You don’t mind our saying so, but we’re both a great deal older than you are, and we think it will do you good. We do hope you’ll consent to it; but, more than that, Charles is here as the clergyman of your parish, to tell you that it is your duty.”
“I hope it won’t be necessary for me to put it in that way, Mrs. Craddock.”
Bertha paused a moment longer, and then asked for a prayer-book. Miss Glover gave a smile which for her was quite radiant.
“I’ve been wanting for a long time to make you a little present, Bertha,” she said, “and it occurred to me that you might like a prayer-book with good large print. I’ve noticed in church that the book you generally use is so small that it must try your eyes, and be a temptation to you not to follow the service. So I’ve brought you one to-day, which it will give me very much pleasure if you will accept.”
She produced a large volume, bound in gloomy black cloth, and redolent of the antiseptic odours which pervaded the Vicarage. The print was indeed large, but, since the society which arranged the publication insisted on the combination of cheapness with utility, the paper was abominable.
“Thank you very much,” said Bertha, holding out her hand for the gift. “It’s awfully kind of you.”
“Shall I find you the Churching of Women?”
Bertha nodded, and presently the Vicar’s sister handed her the book, open. She read a few lines and dropped it.
“I have no wish to ‘give hearty thanks unto God,’” she said, looking almost fiercely at the worthy pair. “I’m very sorry to offend your prejudices, but it seems to me absurd that I should prostrate myself in gratitude to God.”
“Oh, Mrs. Craddock, I trust you don’t mean what you say,” said the Vicar.
“This is what I told you, Charles,” said Miss Glover. “I don’t think Bertha is well, but still this seems to me dreadfully wicked.”
Bertha frowned, finding it difficult to repress the sarcasm which rose to her lips; her forbearance was sorely tried. But Mr. Glover was a little undecided.
“We must be as thankful to God for the afflictions He sends as for the benefits,” he said at last.
“I am not a worm to crawl upon the ground and give thanks to the foot that crushes me.”
“I think that is blasphemous, Bertha,” said Miss Glover.
“Oh, I have no patience with you, Fanny,” said Bertha, raising herself, a flush lighting up her face. “Can you realise what I’ve gone through, the terrible pain of it? Oh, it was too awful. Even now when I think of it I almost scream.”
“It is by suffering that we rise to our higher self,” said Miss Glover. “Suffering is a fire that burns away the grossness of our material natures.”
“What rubbish you talk,” cried Bertha, passionately. “You can say that when you’ve never suffered. People say that suffering ennobles one; it’s a lie, it only makes one brutal.... But I would have borne it—for the sake of my child. It was all useless—utterly useless. Dr. Ramsay told me the child had been dead the whole time. Oh, if God made me suffer like that, it’s infamous. I wonder you’re not ashamed to put it down to God. How can you imagine Him to be so stupid, so cruel! Why, even the vilest beast in the slums wouldn’t cause a woman such frightful and useless agony for the mere pleasure of it.”
Miss Glover sprang to her feet. “Bertha, your illness is no excuse for this. You must either be mad, or utterly depraved and wicked.”
“No, I’m more charitable than you,” cried Bertha. “I know there is no God.”
“Then I, for one, can have nothing more to do with you.” Miss Glover’s cheeks were flaming, and a sudden indignation dispelled her habitual shyness.
“Fanny, Fanny!” cried her brother, “restrain yourself.”
“Oh, this isn’t a time to restrain one’s self, Charles. It’s one’s duty to speak out sometimes. No, Bertha, if you’re an atheist, I can have nothing more to do with you.”
“She spoke in anger,” said the Vicar. “It is not our duty to judge her.”
“It’s our duty to protest when the name of God is taken in vain, Charles. If you think Bertha’s position excuses her blasphemies, Charles, then I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself.... But I’m not afraid to speak out. Yes, Bertha, I’ve known for a long time that you were proud and headstrong, but I thought time would change you. I have always had confidence in you, because I thought at the bottom you were good. But if you deny your Maker, Bertha, there can be no hope for you.”
“Fanny, Fanny,” murmured the Vicar.
“Let me speak, Charles; I think you’re a bad and wicked woman—and I can no longer feel sorry for you, because everything that you have suffered I think you have thoroughly deserved. Your heart is absolutely hard, and I know nothing so thoroughly wicked as a hard-hearted woman.”
“My dear Fanny,” said Bertha, smiling, “we’ve both been absurdly melodramatic.”
“I refuse to laugh at the subject. I see nothing ridiculous in it. Come, Charles, let us go, and leave her to her own thoughts.”
But as Miss Glover bounded to the door the handle was turned from the outside and Mrs. Branderton came in. The position was awkward, and her appearance seemed almost providential to the Vicar, who could not fling out of the room like his sister, but also could not make up his mind to shake hands with Bertha, as if nothing had happened. Mrs. Branderton entered, all airs and graces, smirking and ogling, and the gew-gaws on her brand-new bonnet quivered with every movement.
“I told the servant I could find my way up alone, Bertha,” she said. “I wanted so much to see you.”
“Mr. and Miss Glover were just going. How kind of you to come!”
Miss Glover bounced out of the room with a smile at Mrs. Branderton that was almost ghastly; and Mr. Glover, meek, polite, and as antiseptic as ever, shaking hands with Mrs. Branderton, followed his sister.
“What queer people they are!” said Mrs. Branderton, standing at the window to see them come out of the front door. “I really don’t think they’re quite human.... Why, she’s walking on in front—she might wait for him—taking such long steps; and he’s trying to catch her up. I believe they’re having a race. Ha! ha! What ridiculous people! Isn’t it a pity she will wear short skirts—my dear, her feet and ankles are positively awful. I believe they wear one another’s boots indiscriminately.... And how are you, dear? I think you’re looking much better.”
Mrs. Branderton sat in such a position as to have full view of herself in a mirror.
“What nice looking-glasses you have in your room, my love. No woman can dress properly without them. Now, you’ve only got to look at poor Fanny Glover to know that she’s so modest as never even to look at herself in the glass to put her hat on.”
Mrs. Branderton chattered on, thinking that she was doing Bertha good. “A woman doesn’t want one to be solemn when she’s ill. I know when I have anything the matter, I like some one to talk to me about the fashions. I remember in my young days, when I was ill, I used to get old Mr. Crowhurst, the former vicar, to come and read the ladies’ papers to me. He was such a nice old man, not a bit like a clergyman; and he used to say I was his only parishioner whom he really liked visiting.... I’m not tiring you, am I, dear?”
“Oh, dear, no!” said Bertha.
“Now I suppose the Glovers have been talking all sorts of stuff to you. Of course one has to put up with it, I suppose, because it sets a good example to the lower orders; but I must say I do think the clergy nowadays sometimes forget their place. I consider it most objectionable when they insist on talking religion with you, as if you were a common person.... But they’re not nearly so nice as they used to be. In my young days the clergy were always gentlemen’s sons—but then they weren’t expected to trouble about the poor. I can quite understand that now a gentleman shouldn’t like to become a clergyman; he has to mix with the lower classes, and they’re growing more familiar every day.”
But suddenly Bertha, without warning, burst into tears. Mrs. Branderton was flabbergasted!
“My dear, what is the matter? Where are your salts? Shall I ring the bell?”
Bertha, sobbing violently, begged Mrs. Branderton to take no notice of her. That fashionable creature had a sentimental heart, and would have been delighted to weep with Bertha; but she had several calls to make, and could not risk a disarrangement of her person. She was also curious, and would have given much to find out the cause of Bertha’s outburst. She comforted herself, however, by giving the Hancocks, whose At Home day it was, a detailed account of the affair; and they, shortly afterwards, recounted it with sundry embellishments to Mrs. Mayston Ryle.
Mrs. Mayston Ryle, magnificently imposing as ever, snorted like a charger eager for battle.
“Mrs. Branderton sends me to sleep frequently,” she said; “But I can quite understand that if the poor thing isn’t well, Mrs. Branderton would make her cry. I never see her myself unless I’m in the most robust health, otherwise I know she’d simply make me howl.”
“But I wonder what was the matter with poor Mrs. Craddock,” said Miss Hancock.
“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Mayston Ryle in her majestic manner. “But I’ll find out. I dare say she only wants a little good society. I shall go and see her.”
BUT the apathy with which for weeks Bertha had looked upon all terrestrial concerns was passing away before her increasing strength. It had been due only to an utter physical weakness, of the same order as that merciful indifference to all earthly sympathies which gives ease to the final passage into the Unknown. The prospect of death would be unendurable if one did not know that the enfeebled body brought a like enfeeblement of spirit, dissolving the ties of this world: when the traveller must leave the hostel with the double gate, the wine he loved has lost its savour and the bread turned bitter in his mouth. Like useless gauds, Bertha had let fall the interests of life; her soul lay a-dying. Her soul was a lighted candle in a lantern, flickering in the wind so that its flame was hardly seen and the lantern was useless; but presently the wind of death was stilled, and the light shone out and filled the darkness.
With increasing strength the old passion returned; love came back like a conqueror, and Bertha knew that she had not done with life. In her loneliness she yearned for Edward’s affection; for now he was all she had, and she stretched out her arms to him with a great desire. She blamed herself bitterly for her coldness, she wept at the idea of what he must have suffered. And she was ashamed that the love which she had thought eternal, should have been for a while destroyed. But a change had come over her. She did not now love her husband with the old blind passion, but with a new feeling added to it; for to him was transferred the tenderness which she had lavished on her dead child, and all the mother’s spirit which must now, to her life’s end, go unsatisfied. Her heart was like a house with empty chambers, and the fires of love raged through them triumphantly.
Bertha thought a little painfully of Miss Glover, but dismissed her with a shrug of the shoulders. The good creature had kept her resolve never again to come near Court Leys, and for days nothing had been heard of her.
“What does it matter?” cried Bertha. “So long as Eddie loves me, the rest of the world is nothing.”
But her room gained now the aspect of a prison, so that she felt it impossible much longer to endure its dreadful monotony. Her bed was a bed of torture, and she fancied that so long as she remained stretched upon it, health would not return. She begged Dr. Ramsay to allow her to get up, but was always met with the same refusal, backed up by her husband’s common sense. All she obtained was the dismissal of the nurse to whom she had taken a sudden and violent dislike. From no reasonable cause, Bertha found the mere presence of the poor woman unendurable, and her officious loquacity irritated her beyond measure. If she must remain in bed, Bertha preferred absolute solitude; the turn of her mind was becoming almost misanthropic.
The hours passed endlessly. From her pillow Bertha could see only the sky, now a metallic blue with dazzling clouds swaying heavily across, now gray, darkening the room. The furniture and the wall-paper forced themselves distastefully on her mind. Every detail was impressed on her consciousness as indelibly as the potter’s mark on the clay.
Finally she made up her mind to get up, come what might. It was the Sunday after the quarrel with Miss Glover; Edward would be indoors and doubtless intended to spend most of the afternoon in her room, but she knew he disliked sitting there; the closeness, the odours of medicine, made his head ache. Her appearance in the drawing-room would be a delightful surprise. She would not tell him that she was getting up, but go downstairs and take him unawares. She got out of bed, but as she put her feet to the ground, had to cling to a chair; her legs were so weak that they hardly supported her, and her head reeled. But in a little while she gathered strength and slowly dressed herself, slowly and very difficultly; her weakness was almost pain. She had to sit down, and her hair was so wearisome to do that she was afraid she must give up the attempt and return to bed. But the thought of Edward’s surprise upheld her—he had said how pleased he would be to have her downstairs with him. At last she was ready and went to the door, supporting herself on every object at hand. But what joy it was to be up again, to feel herself once more among the living—away from the grave of her bed!
She came to the top of the stairs and went down, leaning heavily on the banisters; she went one step at a time, as little children do, and laughed at herself. But the laugh changed almost into a groan, as in exhaustion she sank down and felt it impossible to go farther. Then the thought of Edward urged her on. She struggled to her feet, and persevered till she reached the bottom. Now she was outside the drawing-room, she heard Edward whistling within. She crept along, eager to make no sound; noiselessly she turned the handle and flung the door open.
“Eddie!”
He turned round with a cry. “Hulloa, what are you doing here?”
He came towards her, but showed not the great joy which she had expected.
“I wanted to surprise you. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Yes, of course I am. But you oughtn’t to have come without Dr. Ramsay’s leave. And I didn’t expect you to-day.”
He led her to the sofa, and she lay down.
“I thought you’d be so pleased.”
“Of course I am!”
He placed pillows under her, and covered her with a rug—little attentions which were exquisitely touching.
“You don’t know how I struggled,” she said. “I thought I should never get my things on, and then I almost tumbled down the stairs, I was so weak.... But I knew you must be lonely here, and you hate sitting in the bedroom.”
“You oughtn’t to have risked it. It may throw you back,” he replied, gently. He looked at his watch. “You must only stay half-an-hour, and then I shall carry you up to bed.”
Bertha gave a laugh, intending to permit nothing of the sort. It was so comfortable to lie on the sofa, with Edward by her side. She held his hands.
“I simply couldn’t stay in the room any longer. It was so gloomy, with the rain pattering all day on the windows.”
It was one of those days of late summer when the rain seems never ceasing, and the air is filled with the melancholy of nature, already conscious of the near decay.
“I was meaning to come up to you as soon as I’d finished my pipe.”
Bertha was exhausted, and, keeping silence, pressed Edward’s hand in acknowledgment of his kind intention. Presently he looked at his watch again.
“Your half-hour’s nearly up. In five minutes I’m going to carry you to your room.”
“Oh no, you’re not,” she replied playfully, taking his remark as humorous. “I’m going to stay till dinner.”
“No, you can’t possibly. It will be very bad for you.... To please me go back to bed now.”
“Well, we’ll split the difference and I’ll go after tea.”
“No, you must go now.”
“Why, one would think you wanted to get rid of me!”
“I have to go out,” said Edward.
“Oh no, you haven’t—you’re merely saying that to induce me to go upstairs. You fibber!”
“Let me carry you up now, there’s a good girl.”
“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”
“I shall have to leave you alone, Bertha. I didn’t know you meant to get up to-day, and I have an engagement.”
“Oh, but you can’t leave me the first time I get up. What is it? You can write a note and break it.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” he replied. “But I’m afraid I can’t do that. The fact is, I saw the Miss Hancocks after church, and they said they had to walk into Tercanbury this afternoon, and as it was so wet I offered to drive them in. I’ve promised to fetch them at three.”
“You’re joking,” said Bertha; her eyes had suddenly become hard, and she was breathing fast.
Edward looked at her uneasily. “I didn’t know you were going to get up, or I shouldn’t have arranged to go out.”
“Oh well, it doesn’t matter,” said Bertha, throwing off the momentary anger. “You can just write and say you can’t come.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he answered, gravely. “I’ve given my word and I can’t break it.”
“Oh, but it’s infamous.” Her wrath blazed out again. “Even you can’t be so cruel as to leave me at such a time. I deserve some consideration—after all I’ve suffered. For weeks I lay at death’s door, and at last when I’m a little better and come down—thinking to give you pleasure, you’re engaged to drive the Misses Hancock into Tercanbury.”
“Come, Bertha, be reasonable.” Edward condescended to expostulate with his wife, though it was not his habit to humour her extravagances. “You see it’s not my fault. Isn’t it enough for you that I’m very sorry? I shall be back in an hour. Stay here, and then we’ll spend the evening together.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I haven’t lied: I’m not given to that,” said Edward, with natural satisfaction.
“You pretended it was for my health’s sake that I must go upstairs. Isn’t that a lie?”
“It was for your health’s sake.”
“You lie again. You wanted to get me out of the way, so that you might go to the Miss Hancocks without telling me.”
“You ought to know me better than that by now.”
“Why did you say nothing about them till you found it impossible to avoid.”
Edward shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly. “Because I know how touchy you are.”
“And yet you made them the offer.”
“It came out almost unawares. They were grumbling about the weather, and without thinking, I said, ‘I’ll drive you over if you like.’ And they jumped at it.”
“You’re so good-natured if any one but your wife is concerned.”
“Well, dear, I can’t stay arguing. I shall be late already.”
“You’re not really going?” It had been impossible for Bertha to realise that Edward would carry out his intention.
“I must, my dear; it’s my duty.”
“You have more duty to me than to any one else.... Oh, Eddie, don’t go. You can’t realise all it means to me.”
“I must. I’m not going because I want to. I shall be back in an hour.”
He bent down to kiss her, and she flung her arms round his neck, bursting into tears.
“Oh, please don’t go—if you love me at all, if you’ve ever loved me.... Don’t you see that you’re destroying my love for you?”
“Now, don’t be silly, there’s a good girl.”
He loosened her arms and walked away; but rising from the sofa she followed him and took his arm, beseeching him to stay.
“You see how unhappy I am; and you are all I have in the world now. For God’s sake, stay, Eddie. It means more to me than you know.”
She sank to the floor; she was kneeling before him.
“Come, get on to the sofa. All this is very bad for you.”
He carried her to the couch, and then, to finish the scene, hurriedly left the room.
Bertha sprang up to follow him, but sank back as the door slammed, and burying her face in her hands, surrendered herself to a passion of tears. But humiliation and rage almost drove away her grief. She had knelt before her husband for a favour, and he had not granted it. Suddenly she abhorred him. The love, which had been a tower of brass, fell like a house of cards. She would not try now to conceal from herself the faults that stared her in the face. He cared only for himself: with him it was only self, self, self. Bertha found a bitter fascination in stripping her idol of the finery with which her madness had bedizened him; she saw him more accurately now, and he was utterly selfish. But most unbearable of all was her own extreme humiliation.
The rain poured down, unceasing, and the despair of nature ate into her soul. At last she was exhausted; and losing thought of time, lay half-unconscious, feeling at least no pain, her brain vacant and weary. When a servant came to ask if Miss Glover might see her, she hardly understood.
“Miss Glover doesn’t usually stand on such ceremony,” she said ill-temperedly, forgetting the incident of the previous week. “Ask her to come in.”
The parson’s sister came to the door and hesitated, growing red; the expression in her eyes was pained, and even frightened.
“May I come in, Bertha?”
“Yes.”
She walked straight to the sofa, and fell on her knees.
“Oh, Bertha, please forgive me. I was wrong, and I’ve behaved wickedly to you.”
“My dear Fanny,” murmured Bertha, a smile breaking through her misery.
“I withdraw every word I said to you, Bertha; I can’t understand how I said it. I humbly beg your forgiveness.”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
“Oh, yes, there is. Good heavens, I know! My conscience has been reproaching me ever since I was here, but I hardened my heart, and would not listen.”
Poor Miss Glover could not really have hardened her heart, however much she tried.
“I knew I ought to come to you and beg your forgiveness, but I wouldn’t. I’ve not slept a wink at night. I was afraid of dying, and if I’d been cut off in the midst of my wickedness, I should have been lost.”
She spoke very quickly, finding it evidently a relief to express her trouble.
“I thought Charles would upbraid me, but he’s never said a word. Oh, I wish he had, it would have been easier to bear than his sorrowful look. I know he’s been worrying dreadfully, and I’m so sorry for him. I kept on saying I’d only done my duty, but in my heart I knew I had done wrong. Oh Bertha, and this morning I dared not take communion, I thought God would strike me for blasphemy. And I was afraid Charles would refuse me in front of the whole congregation.... It’s the first Sunday since I was confirmed, that I’ve missed taking Holy Communion.”
She buried her face in her hands, crying. Bertha heard her, almost listlessly; for her own trouble was overwhelming and she could not think of any other. Miss Glover raised her face, tear-stained and red; it was positively hideous, but notwithstanding, very pathetic.
“Then I couldn’t bear it any longer,” she said. “I thought if I begged your pardon I might be able to forgive myself. Oh, Bertha, please forget what I said, and forgive me. And I fancied that Edward would be here to-day, and the thought of exposing myself before him too was almost more than I could bear. But I knew the humiliation would be good for me. Oh, I was so thankful when Jane said he was out.... What can I do to earn your forgiveness?”
In her heart of hearts, Miss Glover desired some horrible penance which would thoroughly mortify her flesh.
“I have already forgotten all about it,” said Bertha, smiling wearily. “If my forgiveness is worth anything, I forgive you entirely.”
Miss Glover was a little pained at Bertha’s manifest indifference, yet took it as a just punishment.
“And Bertha, let me say that I love you and admire you more than any one after Charles. If you really think what you said the other day, I still love you and hope God will turn your heart. Charles and I will pray for you night and day, and soon I hope the Almighty will send you another child to take the place of the one you lost. Believe me, God is very good and merciful, and He will grant you what you wish.”
Bertha gave a low cry of pain. “I can never have another child.... Dr. Ramsay told me it was impossible.”
“Oh, Bertha, I didn’t know.”
Miss Glover took Bertha protectingly in her arms, crying, and kissed her like a little child.
But Bertha dried her eyes.
“Leave me now, Fanny, please. I’d rather be alone. But come and see me soon, and forgive me if I’m horrid. I’m very unhappy and I shall never be happy again.”
A few minutes later, Edward returned—cheery, jovial, red-faced, and in the best of humours.
“Here we are again!” he shouted, like a clown in a harlequinade. “You see I’ve not been gone long and you haven’t missed me a rap. Now, we’ll have tea.”
He kissed her and put her cushions right.
“By Jove, it does me good to see you down again. You must pour out the tea for me.... Now, confess; weren’t you unreasonable to make such a fuss about my going away? And I couldn’t help it, could I?”