Mrs Craddock

by W. Somerset Maugham

  “My dear Edward, I’m so unpractical, I never know my own mind. I’m always doing things on the spur of the moment—to my own inconvenience and other people’s. And I should never have expected you to deny yourself anything for my sake.”

  Bertha had been looking at her husband since he came into the room, unable in astonishment to avert her eyes; she was perplexed, almost dismayed; she scarcely recognized him. In the three years of their common life Bertha had never noticed a change in him, and with her great faculty for idealization had carried in her mind always his image as he appeared when first she saw him, the slender, manly youth of eight-and-twenty. Miss Ley had discovered alterations, and spiteful feminine tongues had said that he was going off dreadfully; but his wife had seen nothing; and the separation had given further opportunity to her fantasy. In absence she had thought of him as the handsomest of men, delighting over his clear features, his fair hair, his inexhaustible youth and strength. The plain facts would have disappointed her even if Edward had retained the looks of his youth, but seeing now as well the other changes the shock was extreme. It was a different man she saw, almost a stranger. He did not wear well; though not thirty-one, he looked older. He had broadened and put on flesh; his features had lost their delicacy and the red of his cheeks was growing blotchy. He wore his clothes in a slovenly way and had fallen into a lumbering walk as if his boots were always heavy with clay; and there was in him besides the heartiness and intolerant joviality of the prosperous farmer. Edward’s good looks had given her the keenest pleasure, and now, rushing, as was her habit, to the other extreme, she found him almost ugly. This was an exaggeration, for though he was no longer the slim youth of her first acquaintance, he was still in a heavy, massive way better looking than the majority of men.

  Edward kissed her with marital calm, and the propinquity wafted to Bertha’s nostrils the strong scents of the farmyard, which, no matter what his clothes, hung perpetually about him. She turned away, hardly concealing a little shiver of disgust; yet they were the same masculine odours as once had made her nearly faint with desire.

  24

  Bertha’s imagination seldom permitted her to see things in any but a false light; sometimes they were pranked out49 in the glamour of the ideal, and at others the process was reversed. It was astonishing that so short a break should have destroyed the habit of years; but the fact was plain that Edward had become a stranger, so that she felt it irksome to share the same room with him. She saw him now with jaundiced eyes, and told herself that at last she had discovered his true colours. Poor Edward was paying heavily because the furtive years had robbed him of his looks and given him in exchange a superabundance of fat, because responsibility, the east wind and good living had taken the edge off his features and turned his cheeks plethoric.

  Bertha’s love, indeed, had finally disappeared as suddenly as it had arisen, and she began to detest her husband. She had acquired a certain part of Miss Ley’s analytic faculty, which now she employed upon Edward’s character with destructive effect. Her absence had increased the danger to Edward’s connubial happiness in another way, for the air of Paris had exhilarated her and sharpened her wits, she had bought many books, had been to the theatres, had read the French papers, whose sparkle offers at first a pleasing contrast to the sobriety of their British contemporaries; with the general result that her alertness to find fault was doubled and her impatience with the dull and the stupid, extreme.

  And Bertha soon found that her husband’s mind was not only commonplace, but common. His ignorance no longer seemed touching, but merely shameful; his prejudices no longer amusing, but contemptible. She was indignant at having humbled herself so abjectly before a man of such narrowness of mind and insignificance of character. She could not conceive how she had ever passionately loved him. He was bound by the stupidest routine; it irritated her beyond measure to see the regularity with which he went through the unvarying process of his toilet; nothing interfered with the order in which he washed his teeth and brushed his hair. She was indignant with his presumption and self-satisfaction and conscious rectitude. Edward’s taste was contemptible in books, in pictures and in music; and his pretensions to judge upon such matters filled her with scorn. At first his deficiencies had not affected her, and later she had consoled herself with the obvious truism that a man may be ignorant of the arts and yet have every virtue under the sun. But now she was less charitable. Bertha wondered that because her husband could read and write as well as most board-scholars50 he should feel himself competent to judge books—even without reading them. Of course it was unreasonable to blame the poor man for a foible common to the vast majority of mankind. Everyone who can hold a pen is confident of his ability to criticize, and to criticize superciliously. It never occurs to the average citizen that, to speak modestly, almost as much art is needed to write a book as to adulterate a pound of tea; nor that the author has busied himself with style and contrast, characterization, light and shade, and many other things to which the practice of haberdashery, greengrocery, company promotion or pork-butchery is no sure key.

  One day, Edward, coming in, caught sight of the yellow cover of a French book that Bertha was reading.

  “What, reading again?” said he. “You read too much, it’s not good for people to be always reading.”

  “Is that your opinion?”

  “My idea is that a woman oughtn’t to stuff her head with books. You’d be much better out in the open air or doing something useful.”

  “Is that your opinion?”

  “Well, I should like to know why you’re always reading.”

  “Sometimes to instruct myself; always to amuse myself.”

  “Much instruction you’ll get out of an indecent French novel.”

  Bertha without answering handed him the book and showed the title; they were the letters of Madame de Sévigné.51

  “Well?” he said.

  “You’re no wiser, dear Edward?” she asked, with a smile; such a question in such a tone revenged her for much. “I’m afraid you’re very ignorant. You see I’m not reading a novel and it is not indecent. They are the letters of a mother to her daughter, models of epistolary style and feminine wisdom.”

  Bertha purposely spoke in a somewhat formal and elaborate manner.

  “Oh,” said Edward, looking mystified, feeling that he had been confounded but certain, none the less, that he was in the right. Bertha smiled provokingly. “Of course, I’ve no objection to your reading if it amuses you.”

  “It’s very good of you to say so.”

  “I don’t pretend to have any book-learning. I’m a practical man and it’s not required. In my business you find that the man who reads books comes a mucker.”

  “You seem to think that ignorance is creditable.”

  “It’s better to have a good and pure heart, Bertha, and a clean mind than any amount of learning.”

  “It’s better to have a grain of wit than a collection of moral saws.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that, but I’m quite content to be as I am, and I don’t want to know a single foreign language. English is quite good enough for me.”

  “So long as you’re a good sportsman and wash yourself regularly you think you’ve performed the whole duty of man.”

  “You can say what you like, but if there’s one man I can’t stick it’s a measly book-worm.”

  “I prefer him to the hybrid of a professional cricketer and a Turkish-bath man.”

  “Does that mean me?”

  “You can take it to yourself if you like,” said Bertha, smiling, “or apply it to a whole class. Do you mind if I go on reading?”

  Bertha took up her book; but Edward was the more argumentatively inclined since he saw he had not so far got the better of the contest.

  “Well, what I must say is,” he rejoined, “if you want to read, why can’t you read English books? Surely there are enough. I think English people ought to stick to their own country. I don’t pretend to ha
ve read any French books, but I’ve never heard anybody deny that at all events the great majority of them are indecent, and not the sort of thing a woman should read.”

  “It’s always incautious to judge from common report,” answered Bertha, without looking up.

  “And now that the French are always behaving so badly to us, I should like to see every French book in the kingdom put into a huge bonfire. I’m sure it would be all the better for we English people. What we want now is purity and reconstitution of the national life. I’m in favour of English morals, English homes, English mothers and English habits.”

  “What always astounds me, dear, is that though you invariably read the Standard you always talk like the Daily Telegraph.”

  Bertha went on with her book and paid no further attention to Edward, who thereupon began to talk with his dogs. Like most frivolous persons, he found silence very onerous. Bertha thought it disconcerted him by rendering evident even to himself the vacuity of his mind. He talked with every animate thing, with the servants, with his pets, with the cat and the birds; he could not read even a newspaper without making a running commentary upon it. It was only a substantial meal that could induce in him even a passing taciturnity. Sometimes his unceasing chatter irritated Bertha so intensely that she was obliged to beg him, for Heaven’s sake, to hold his tongue. Then he would look up with a good-natured laugh.

  “Was I making a row? Sorry, I didn’t know it.”

  He remained quiet for ten minutes, and then began to hum a hackneyed melody, than which there is no more detestable habit.

  Indeed the points of divergence between the couple were innumerable. Edward was a man who had the courage of his opinions; he disliked also whatever was not clear to his somewhat narrow intelligence, and was inclined to think it immoral. Bertha played the piano well and sang with a cultivated voice, but her performances were objectionable to her husband because whether she sang or whether she played there was never a rollicking tune that a fellow could get his teeth into. He had upbraided her for this singular taste, and could not help thinking that there was something wrong with a woman who shrugged her shoulders disdainfully at the music-hall ditties that everyone was singing. It must be confessed that Bertha exaggerated, for when a dull musical afternoon was given in the neighbourhood she took a malicious pleasure in playing a long recitative from a Wagner opera that no one could make head or tail of.

  On such an occasion at the Glovers’, the elder Miss Hancock turned to Edward and remarked upon his wife’s admirable playing. Edward was a little annoyed, because everyone had vigorously applauded and to him the sounds had been meaningless.

  “Well, I’m a plain man,” he said, “and I don’t mind confessing that I never can understand the stuff Bertha plays.”

  “Oh, Mr Craddock, not even Wagner?” said Miss Hancock, who had been as bored as Edward, but, holding the contrary modest opinion that the only really admirable things are those you can’t understand, would not for worlds have confessed it.

  Bertha looked at him, remembering her dream that they should sit at the piano together in the evening and play for hour after hour; as a matter of fact he had always refused to budge from his chair, and gone to sleep regularly.

  “My idea of music is like Dr Johnson’s,” said Edward, looking round for approval.

  “Is Saul also among the prophets?” murmured Bertha.

  “When I hear a difficult piece I wish it was impossible.”

  “You forget, dear,” said Bertha, “that Dr Johnson was a very ill-mannered old man whom dear Fanny would not have allowed in her drawing-room for one minute.”

  “You sing now, Edward,” said Miss Glover. “We’ve not heard you for ever so long.”

  “Oh, bless you,” he retorted, “my singing’s too old-fashioned. My songs have all got a tune in them and some feeling. They’re only fit for the kitchen.”

  “Oh, please give us ‘Ben Bolt,’” said Miss Hancock. “We’re all so fond of it.”

  Edward’s repertory was limited, and everyone knew his songs by heart.

  “Anything to oblige,” he said; he was, as a matter of fact, very fond of singing, and applause was always grateful to his ears.

  “Shall I accompany you, dear?” said Bertha.

  “Oh! don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,

  Sweet Alice with hai-air so brow-own?

  She wept with delight when you gave her a smile,

  And trembled with feaar at your frown.”

  Once upon a time Bertha had found a subtle charm in these pleasing sentiments and in the honest melody that adorned them; but it was not strange that constant repetition had left her a little callous. Edward sang the ditty with a simple, homely style—which is the same as saying with no style at all—and he made use of much pathos. But Bertha’s spirit was not forgiving; she owed him some return for the gratuitous attack on her playing; and the notion came to her to improve upon the accompaniment with little trills and flourishes that amused her immensely, but quite disconcerted her husband. Finally, just when his voice was growing flat with emotion over the grey-haired schoolmaster who had died, she wove in the strains of “The Blue Bells of Scotland” and “God Save the Queen,” so that Edward broke down. For once his even temper was disturbed.

  “I say, I can’t sing if you go playing the fool.”

  “I’m very sorry,” smiled Bertha, “I forgot what I was doing. Let’s begin all over again.”

  “No, I’m not going to sing any more. You spoil the whole thing.”

  “Mrs Craddock has no heart,” said Miss Hancock.

  “I don’t think it’s fair to laugh at an old song like this,” said Edward. “After all, anyone can sneer. My idea of music is something that stirs one’s heart. I’m not a sentimental chap, but ‘Ben Bolt’ almost brings the tears to my eyes every time I sing it.”

  Bertha difficultly abstained from retorting that sometimes she felt inclined to burst into tears over it herself—especially when he sang out of tune. Everyone looked at her as if she had behaved very badly; she smiled at Edward calmly, but she was not amused. On the way home she asked him if he knew why she had spoilt his song.

  “I’m sure I don’t know, unless you were in one of your beastly tempers. I suppose you’re sorry now.”

  “Not at all,” she answered. “I thought you were rude to me just before, and I wanted to punish you a little. Sometimes you’re really too supercilious. And besides that, I object to being rowed in public. You will have the goodness in future to keep your strictures till we are alone.”

  “I should have thought you could stand a bit of good-natured chaff by now,” he replied.

  “Oh, I can, dear Edward. Only, perhaps you may have noticed that I am fairly quick at defending myself.”

  “What d’you mean by that?”

  “Merely that I can be horrid when I like, and you will be wise not to expose yourself to a public snub.”

  Edward had never heard from his wife a threat so calmly administered, and it somewhat impressed him.

  But as a general rule Bertha checked the sarcasms that constantly rose to her tongue. She treasured in her heart the wrath and hatred that her husband excited in her, feeling that it was a satisfaction at last to be free from love of him. Looking back, the fetters that had bound her were intolerably heavy. And it was a sweet revenge, although he knew nothing of it, to strip the idol of his ermine cloak and his crown and the gewgaws of his sovereignty. In his nakedness he was a pitiable figure. Edward was totally unconscious of all this. He was like a lunatic reigning in a madhouse over an imaginary kingdom. He did not see the curl of Bertha’s lips upon some foolish remark of his, or the contempt with which she treated him. And since she was a great deal less exacting, he found himself far happier than before. The ironic philosopher might find some cause for moralizing in the fact that it was not till Bertha began to dislike Edward that he found marriage quite satisfactory. He told himself that his wife’s stay abroad had done her no end of good an
d made her far more amenable to reason. Mr Craddock’s principles, of course, were quite right; he had given her plenty of run and ignored her cackle, and now she had come home to roost. There is nothing like a knowledge of farming and an acquaintance with the habits of domestic animals to teach a man how to manage his wife.

  25

  If the gods, who scatter wit in sundry unexpected places, so that it is sometimes found beneath the bishop’s mitre, and once in a thousand years beneath a king’s crown, had given Edward two-pennyworth of that commodity he would undoubtedly have been a great as well as a good man. Fortune smiled upon him uninterruptedly; he enjoyed the envy of his neighbours, he farmed with profit, and having tamed the rebellious spirit of his wife he rejoiced in domestic happiness. And it must be noticed that he was rewarded only according to his deserts. He walked with upright spirit and contented mind along the path that it had pleased a merciful providence to set before him. He was lighted on the way by a strong sense of duty, by the principles that he had acquired at his mother’s knee, and by a conviction of his own merit. Finally a deputation waited on him to propose that he should stand for the County Council election that was shortly to be held. He had been unofficially informed of the project, and received Mr Atthill Bacot with seven committee men in his frock-coat and a manner full of responsibility. He told them he could do nothing rashly, must consider the matter and would inform them of his decision. Edward had already made up his mind to accept, and having showed the deputation to the door went to Bertha.

  “Things are looking up,” he said, having given her the details. The Blackstable district, for which Edward was invited to stand, being composed chiefly of fishermen, was intensely Radical. “Old Bacot said I was the only moderate candidate who’d have a chance.”

  Bertha was too much astonished to reply. She had so low an opinion of her husband that she could not understand why on earth they should make him such an offer. She turned over in her mind possible reasons.