Mrs Craddock

by W. Somerset Maugham

  “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; I thought the shock would be 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 today, 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 bed.

  “Lie down. Lie down,” cried both 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, unbridled, 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 in 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 uncontrollably. She was 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 uncovering its head showed the face to Bertha. She looked a moment, and then asked:

  “Let me see the whole body.”

  The nurse removed the cloth, and Bertha looked again. She said nothing, but finally turned away, and the nurse withdrew.

  Bertha’s tears now had ceased, but her mouth was set to a hopeless woe.

  “Oh, I loved him already so much,” she murmured.

  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.”

  18

  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 useless, 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 that had been so enjoyable, and she felt like an old woman. Her weariness was unendurable; she felt so tired that it seemed to her impossible to 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; and all her limbs were 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 someone apart from her, his presence and absence gave her no particular emotion. She was tired and desired only to be left alone. 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 a ghoul-like curiosity. Miss Glover was a great trial; she felt the sincerest sympathy for Bertha, but her feelings were one thing and her sense of right and wrong was 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 sometimes.

  But one day, Bertha, driven beyond her patience, could not as usual command her tongue.

  “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,” said 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 the Christian clergyman should be: although her character was much stronger than his, Mr Glover seemed to his sister a pillar of strength, and often in past times, when the flesh was more stubborn, had she found strength and consolation in his very mediocre sermons. Finally, however, Miss Glover decided to speak with him on the subject that distressed her, with the result that for a week she avoided spiritual topics in her daily conversations with the invalid; then, Bertha having grown a little stronger, without previously mentioning her intention she brought her brother to Court Leys.

  Miss Glover went alone to Bertha’s room, 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 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 t
he 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 went to fetch 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 churchgoing 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 had 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 sympathize 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 silent, and the parson inquiringly looked at his sister. 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 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 today, 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 that pervaded the Vicarage. The print was indeed large, but since the society that 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’?” asked Miss Glover.

  Bertha nodded, and presently the vicar’s sister handed her the book open. She read a few lines and dropped the volume.

  “I have no wish to ‘give hearty thanks unto God,’” she said, looking almost fiercely at the worthy couple. “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 sarcasms that 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 that He sends us as for the benefits,” he said at last.

  “I am not a worm to crawl along 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, a flush lighting up her face. “Can you realize 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. Don’t you know what it is? It feels as if your flesh were being torn, it’s like sharp hooks dragged through your entrails, You try to be brave, you clench your teeth to stop crying out, but the pain is so awful that you’re powerless. You shriek in your agony.”

  “Bertha, Bertha,” said Miss Glover, horrified that such details should assail the chaste ears of the Vicar of Leanham.

  “And the endlessness of it—they stand round you like ghouls, and do nothing. They say you must have patience, that it’ll soon be over; and it lasts on. And time after time the awful agony comes, you feel it coming and you think you can’t endure it. Oh, I wanted to die, it was too awful.”

  “It is by suffering that we rise to our higher selves,” said Miss Glover. “Suffering is a fire that burns away the grossness of our material natures.”

  “What rubbish you talk,” cried Bertha passionately. “You say that because 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 your God. How can you imagine Him to be so stupid, so cruel? Why, even the vilest, most brutal man on the earth wouldn’t cause a woman such frightful and useless agony for the mere pleasure of it. Your God is a ruffian at a cock-fight, drinking in the bloodiness, laughing because the wretched birds, in their faintness, stagger ridiculously.”

  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 the time to restrain oneself, 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, 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. Com
e, 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 came in, all airs and graces, smirking and ogling, and the gewgaws 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,” said Bertha. “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 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 go 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. What ridiculous people! Isn’t it a pity she will wear short skirts? My dear, her great ankles are positively pornographic. 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 a full view of herself in a mirror.

  “What nice looking-glasses you have in your room, my dear. 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 to be solemn when she’s ill. I know, when I have anything the matter, I like someone 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?”