Mrs Craddock

by W. Somerset Maugham

  The summer brought a certain variety, and Bertha found amusement in things that before had never interested her. She went to sheltered parts to see if favourite wild flowers had begun to blow: her love of liberty made her prefer the hedge-roses to the pompous blooms of the garden, the buttercups and daisies of the field to the prim geraniums, the calceolarias. Time fled, and she was surprised to find the year pass imperceptibly.

  She began to read with greater zest, and in her favourite seat, on the sofa by the window, spent long hours of pleasure. She read as fancy prompted her, without a plan, because she wanted to, and not because she ought. She obtained pleasure by contrasting different writers, getting emotions out of the gravity of one and the frivolity of the next. She went from the latest novel to Orlando Furioso,78 from the Euphues of John Lyly (most entertaining and whimsical of books) to the tender melancholy of Verlaine.79 With a lifetime before her, the length of books was no hindrance, and she started boldly upon the eight volumes of the Decline and Fall,80 upon the many tomes of St Simon;81 and she never hesitated to put them aside after a hundred pages.

  Bertha found reality tolerable when it was merely a background, a foil to the fantastic happenings of old books: she looked at the green trees, and the song of birds mingled agreeably with her thoughts, still occupied with the Dolorous Knight of La Mancha,82 with Manon Lescaut83 or the joyous band that wanders through the Decameron. With greater knowledge came greater curiosity, and she forsook the broad high-roads of literature for the mountain pathways of some obscure poet, for the bridle-track of the Spanish picaroon.84 She found unexpected satisfaction in the half-forgotten masterpieces of the past, in poets not quite divine whom fashion had left on one side, in the playwrights, novelists and essayists whose remembrance lives only with the bookworm. It is a relief sometimes to look away from the bright sun of perfect achievement; and the writers who appealed to their age and not to posterity have by contrast a subtle charm. Undazzled by their splendour, one may discern more easily their individualities and the spirit of their time; they have pleasant qualities not always found among their betters, and there is even a certain pathos in their incomplete success.

  In music also Bertha developed a taste for the half-known, the half-archaic. It suited the Georgian drawing-room, with its old pictures, with its Chippendale and chintz, to play the simple melodies of Couperin and Rameau; the rondos, the gavottes, the sonatinas in powder and patch that delighted the rococo lords and ladies of a past century.

  Living away from the present, in an artificial paradise, Bertha was happy. She found indifference to the whole world a trusty armour: life was easy without love or hate, hope or despair, without ambition, desire of change or tumultuous passion. So bloom the flowers; unconscious, uncaring, the bud bursts from the enclosing leaf, and opens to the sunshine, squanders its perfume to the breeze, and there is none to see its beauty; and then it dies.

  Bertha found it possible to look back upon the past with something like amusement: it seemed now melodramatic to have loved the simple Edward with such violence; she was even able to smile at the contrast between her vivid expectations and the flat reality. Gerald was a pleasantly sentimental memory, she did not want to see him again, but she thought of him often, idealizing him until he became a mere figure in one of her favourite books. Her winter in Italy also formed the motive of some of her most delightful thoughts, and she determined never to spoil the impression by another visit. She had advanced a good deal in the science of life when she realized that pleasure came by surprise, that happiness was a spirit that descended unawares, and seldom when it was sought.

  Edward had fallen into a life of such activity that his time was entirely taken up. He had added largely to the Ley estate, and, with the second-rate man’s belief that you must do everything yourself to have it well done, he kept the farms under his immediate supervision. He was an important member of all the rural bodies: he was on the School Board, on the Board of Guardians, on the County Council; he was Chairman of the Urban District Council, president of the local Cricket Club, and of the Football Club; patron of the Blackstable Regatta, on the committee of the Tercanbury Dog Show, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Mid-Kent Agricultural Exhibition. He was a pillar of the Blackstable Conservative Association, a magistrate, and a churchwarden. Finally, he was an ardent Freemason, and flew over Kent to attend the meetings of the half-dozen lodges of which he was a member. But the work did not disturb him.

  “Lord bless you,” he said, “I love work. You can’t give me too much. If there’s anything to be done, come to me and I’ll do it, and say thank you for giving me the chance.”

  Edward had always been even-tempered, but now his good nature was angelic. It became a by-word. His success was according to his deserts, and to have him concerned in any matter was an excellent insurance. He was always jovial and gay, contented with himself and with the world at large; he was a model squire, landlord, farmer, Conservative, man, Englishman. He did everything thoroughly, and his energy was such that he made a point of putting into every concern twice as much work as it really needed. He was busy from morning to night (as a rule quite unnecessarily), and he gloried in it.

  “It shows I’m an excellent woman,” said Bertha to Miss Glover, “to support his virtues with equanimity.”

  “My dear, I think you ought to be very proud and happy. He’s an example to the whole country. If he were my husband, I should be grateful to God.”

  “I have much to be thankful for,” murmured Bertha.

  Since he let her go her own way and she was only too pleased that he should go his, there was really no possibility of difference, and Edward, wise man, came to the conclusion that he had effectively tamed his wife. He thought, with good-humoured scorn, that he had been quite right when he likened women to chickens, animals which, to be happy, required no more than a good run, well fenced in, where they could scratch about to their heart’s content.

  “Feed ’em regularly, and let ’em cackle; and there you are!”

  It is always satisfactory when experience proves the hypothesis that you formed in your youth.

  One year, remembering by accident their wedding day, Edward gave his wife a bracelet; and feeling benevolent in consequence, and having dined well, he patted her hand and said:

  “Time does fly, doesn’t it?”

  “I have heard people say so,” she replied, smiling.

  “Well, who’d have thought we’d been married so many years; it doesn’t seem above eighteen months to me. And we’ve got on very well, haven’t we?”

  “My dear Edward, you are such a model husband. It quite embarrasses me sometimes.”

  “Ha, that’s a good one! But I can say this for myself, I do try to do my duty. Of course at first we had our little tiffs, people have to get used to one another, and one can’t expect to have all plain sailing just at once. But for years now—well, ever since you went to Italy, I think—we’ve been as happy as the day is long, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “When I look back at the little rumpuses we used to have, upon my word, I wonder what they were all about.”

  “So do I.” And this Bertha said quite truthfully.

  “I suppose it was just the weather.”

  “I daresay.”

  “Ah, well, all’s well that ends well.”

  “My dear Edward, you’re a philosopher.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I think I’m a politician which reminds me that I’ve not read about the new men-of-war in today’s paper. What I’ve been agitating about for years is more ships and more guns. I’m glad to see the Government have taken my advice at last.”

  “It’s very satisfactory, isn’t it? It will encourage you to persevere. And of course it’s well to know that the Cabinet read your speeches in the Blackstable Times.”

  “I think it would be a good sight better for the country if those in power paid more attention to provincial opinions. It’s men like me who really know the
feeling of the nation. You might get me the paper, will you? It’s in the dining-room.”

  It seemed quite natural to Edward that Bertha should wait upon him: it was the duty of a wife. She handed him the Standard, and he began to read; he yawned once or twice.

  “Lord, I am sleepy.”

  Presently he could not keep his eyes open, the paper dropped from his hand and he sank back in his chair with his legs outstretched and his hands resting comfortably on his stomach; his head lolled to one side and his jaw dropped; he began to snore. Bertha read. After a while he woke with a start.

  “Bless me, I do believe I’ve been asleep,” he cried. “Well, I’m dead beat; I think I shall go to bed. I suppose you won’t come up yet?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Well, don’t stay up too late, there’s a good girl; it’s not good for you; and put the lights out properly when you come.”

  She turned her cheek to him, which he kissed, stifling a yawn; then rolled upstairs.

  “There’s one advantage in Edward,” murmured Bertha. “No one could accuse him of being uxorious.”

  Mariage à la Mode.

  * * *

  Bertha’s solitary walk was to the sea. The shore between Blackstable and the mouth of the Thames was very wild. At distant intervals were the long, low buildings of the coastguard stations, and the prim gravel walk, the neat railings came as a surprise, but they made the surrounding desolation more forlorn. One could walk for miles without meeting a soul, and the country spread out from the sea low and flat and marshy. The beach was strewn with countless shells, and they crumbled underfoot, and here and there were great banks of seaweed and bits of wood and rope, the jetsam of a thousand tides. In one spot, a few yards out at sea, high and dry at low water, were the remains of an old hulk, whose wooden ribs stood out weirdly like the skeleton of some huge sea-beast. And then all round was the grey sea, with never a ship nor even a fishing-smack in sight. In winter it was as if a spirit of loneliness, like a mystic shroud, had descended on the shore and the desert waters.

  There in the melancholy, in the dreariness, Bertha found a bitter fascination. The sky was a lowering cloud, the wind tore along shouting and screaming and whistling; there was panic in the turbulent sea, murky and yellow; the waves leaped up, one at the other’s heels, and beat down on the beach with an angry roar. It was desolate, desolate; the sea was so merciless that the very sight appalled one: it was a wrathful power, beating forwards, ever wrathfully beating forwards, roaring with pain when the chains that bound it wrenched it back; and after each desperate effort it shrank with a yell of pain. And the seagulls swayed above the waves in their disconsolate flight, rising and falling with the wind.

  Bertha loved the calm of winter, when the sea-mist and the mist of heaven are one, when the sea is silent and heavy, and the solitary gull flies screeching over the grey waters, screeching mournfully. She loved the calm of summer, when the sky is cloudless and infinite. Then she spent long hours, lying at the water’s edge, delighted with the solitude and the peace of her heart. The sea, placid as a lake, unmoved by the slightest ripple, was a looking-glass reflecting the glory of heaven, and it turned to fire when the sun sank in the west; it was a sea of molten copper, shining, so that the eyes were dazzled. A troop of seagulls slept on the water; there were hundreds of them, motionless, silent; one arose now and then, and flew for a moment with heavy wing, and sank down, and all was still.

  Once the coolness was so tempting that Bertha could not resist it. Timidly, rapidly she slipped off her clothes, and looking round to see that there was really no one in sight, stepped in; the wavelets about her feet made her shiver a little, and then with a splash, stretching out her arms, she ran forward, and half fell, half dived into the water. Now it was delightful; she rejoiced in the freedom of her limbs; it was an unknown pleasure to swim unhampered by a bathing-dress. It gave her a wonderful sense of freedom, and the salt water lapping round her was so exhilarating that she felt a new strength. She wanted to sing aloud in the joy of her heart. Diving below the surface, she came up with a shake of the head and a little cry of delight; her hair was loosened, and with a motion it all came tumbling about her shoulders and trailed out in its ringlets over the water.

  She swam out, a fearless swimmer; and it gave her a sense of power to have the deep waters all about her, the deep calm sea of summer. She turned on her back and floated, trying to look the sun in the face: the sea glimmered with the sunbeams and the sky was dazzling. Then, returning, Bertha floated again, quite near the shore; it amused her to lie on her back, rocked by the tiny waves, and to sink her ears so that she could hear the shingle rub together curiously with the ebb and flow of the tide. She shook her long hair, and it stretched about her like an aureole.

  She exulted in her youth—in her youth? Bertha felt no older than when she was eighteen, and yet she was thirty. The thought made her wince; she had never realized the passage of the years, she had never imagined that her youth was waning. Did people think her already old? The sickening fear came to her that she resembled Miss Hancock attempting by archness and by an assumption of frivolity to persuade her neighbours that she was juvenile. Bertha asked herself whether she was ridiculous when she rolled to the water like a young girl: you cannot play the mermaid with crow’s-feet about your eyes and with wrinkles round your mouth. In a panic she dressed herself, and going home flew to a looking-glass. She scrutinized her features as she had never done before, searching anxiously for the signs she feared to see; she looked at her neck and at her eyes: her skin was as smooth as ever, her teeth as perfect. She gave a sigh of relief.

  “I see no difference.”

  Then, doubly to reassure herself, a fantastic idea seized Bertha to dress as though she were going to a great ball; she wished to see herself to all advantage. She chose the most splendid gown she had, and took out her jewels. The Leys had sold every vestige of their old magnificence, but their diamonds, with characteristic obstinacy, they had invariably refused to part with; and they lay aside, year after year unused, the stones in their old settings dulled with dust and neglect. The moisture still in Bertha’s hair was an excuse to do it capriciously, and she placed in it the tiara that her grandmother had worn in the Regency. On her shoulders she wore two ornaments exquisitely set in gold-work, purloined by a great uncle from the saint of a Spanish church in the Peninsular War. She slipped a string of pearls round her neck, bracelets on her arms, and fastened a gleaming row of stars to her bosom. Knowing she had beautiful hands, Bertha disdained to wear rings, but now she covered her fingers with diamonds.

  Finally she stood before the looking-glass, and gave a laugh of pleasure. She was not old yet.

  But when she sailed into the drawing-room, Edward jumped up in surprise.

  “Good Lord!” he cried. “What on earth’s up? Have we got people coming to dinner?”

  “My dear, if we had I should not have dressed like this.”

  “You’re got up as if the Prince of Wales were coming. And I’m only in knickerbockers. It’s not our wedding-day?”

  “No.”

  “Then I should like to know why you’ve got yourself up like that.”

  “I thought it would please you,” she said, smiling.

  “I wish you’d told me, I’d have dressed too. Are you sure no one’s coming?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Well, I think I ought to dress. It would look so queer if someone turned up.”

  “If anyone does, I promise you I’ll fly.”

  They went in to dinner, Edward feeling very uncomfortable, and keeping his ear on the front-door bell. They ate their soup, and then was set on the table the remainder of a cold leg of mutton and some mashed potatoes. Bertha looked blank, and then, leaning back, burst into peal upon peal of laughter.

  “Good Lord, what is the matter now?” asked Edward.

  Nothing is more annoying than to have people violently hilarious over a joke that you cannot see. Bertha held her sides and trie
d to speak.

  “I’ve just remembered that I told the servants they might go out tonight, there’s a circus at Blackstable; and I said we’d just eat up the odds and ends.”

  “I don’t see any joke in that.”

  And really there was none, but Bertha laughed again immoderately.

  “I suppose there are some pickles,” said Edward.

  Bertha repressed her gaiety and began to eat.

  “That is my whole life,” she murmured under her breath, “to eat cold mutton and mashed potatoes in a ball dress and all my diamonds.”

  35

  But in the winter of that very year Edward, while hunting, had an accident. For years he had made a practice of riding unmanageable horses, and he never heard of a vicious brute without wishing to try it. He knew that he was a fine rider, and since he was never shy of parading his powers nor loth to taunt others with their inferior skill or courage, he preferred difficult animals. It gratified him to see people point to him and say: “There’s a good rider”; and his best joke with some person on a horse that pulled or refused was to cry: “You don’t seem friends with your gee; would you like to try mine?” And then, touching its sides with his spurs, he set it prancing. He was merciless with cautious hunters who looked for low parts of a hedge or tried to get through a gate instead of over it; and when anyone said a jump was dangerous, Edward with a laugh promptly went over it, shouting as he did so:

  “I wouldn’t try it if I were you. You might fall off.”

  He had just bought a roan for a song, because it jumped un-uncertainly and had a trick of swinging a foreleg as it rose. He took it out on the earliest opportunity, and the first two hedges and a ditch the horse cleared easily; Edward thought that once again he had got for almost nothing a hunter that merely wanted riding properly to behave like a lamb. They rode on and came to a post and rail fence.