Mrs. Craddock - W. Somerset Maugham (top books to read txt) 📗

THE Kentish coast is bleak and grey between Leanham and Blackstable; through the long winter months the winds of the North Sea sweep down upon it, bowing the trees before them; and from the murky waters perpetually arise the clouds, and roll up in heavy banks. It is a country that offers those who live there, what they give: sometimes the sombre colours and the silent sea express only restfulness and peace; sometimes the chill breezes send the blood racing through the veins; but also the solitude can answer the deepest melancholy, or the cheerless sky a misery which is more terrible than death. The moment’s mood seems always reproduced in the surrounding scenes, and in them may be found, as it were, a synthesis of the emotions. Bertha stood upon the high road which ran past Court Leys, and from the height looked down upon the lands which were hers. Close at hand the only habitations were a pair of humble cottages, from which time and rough weather had almost effaced the obtrusiveness of human handiwork. They stood away from the road, among fruit trees—a part of nature and not a blot upon it, as Court Leys had never ceased to be. All around were fields, great stretches of ploughed earth and meadows of coarse herbage. The trees were few, and stood out here and there in the distance, bent before the wind. Beyond was Blackstable, straggling grey houses with a border of new villas built for the Londoners who came in summer; and the sea was dotted with the smacks of the fishing town.

Bertha looked at the scene with sensations that she had never known; the heavy clouds hung above her, shutting out the whole world, and she felt an invisible barrier between herself and all other things. This was the land of her birth out of which she, and her fathers before her, had arisen; they had their day, and one by one returned whence they came and became again united with the earth. She had withdrawn from the pomps and vanities of life to live as her ancestors had lived, ploughing the land, sowing and reaping; but her children, the sons of the future, would belong to a new stock, stronger and fairer than the old. The Leys had gone down into the darkness of death, and her children would bear another name. All these things she gathered out of the brown fields and the grey sea mist. She was a little tired and the physical sensation caused a mental fatigue so that she felt in her suddenly the weariness of a family that had lived too long; she knew she was right to choose new blood to mix with the old blood of the Leys. It needed freshness and youth, the massive strength of her husband, to bring life to the decayed race. Her thoughts wandered to her father, the dilettante who wandered through Italy in search of beautiful things and emotions which his native country could not give him; of Miss Ley, whose attitude towards life was a shrug of the shoulders and a well-bred smile of contempt. Was not she, the last of them, wise? Feeling herself too weak to stand alone, she had taken a mate whose will and vitality would be a pillar of strength to her defaillance: her husband had still in his sinews the might of his mother, the Earth, a barbaric power which knew not the subtleties of weakness; he was the conqueror, and she was his handmaiden. But an umbrella was being waved at Mrs. Craddock from the bottom of the hill, and she smiled, recognising the masculine walk of Miss Glover.

Even from a distance the maiden’s determination and strength of mind were apparent; she approached, her face redder even than usual after the climb, encased in the braided jacket that fitted her as severely as sardines are fitted in their tin.

“I was coming to see you, Bertha,” she cried. “I heard you were back.”

“We’ve been home several days, getting to rights.”

Miss Clover shook Bertha’s hand with much vigour, and together they walked back to the house, along the avenue bordered with leafless trees.

“Now, do tell me all about your honeymoon, I’m so anxious to hear everything.”

But Bertha was not very communicative, she had an instinctive dislike to telling her private affairs, and never had any overpowering desire for sympathy.

“Oh, I don’t think there’s much to tell,” she answered, when they were in the drawing-room and she was pouring out tea for her guest. “I suppose all honeymoons are more or less alike.”

“You funny girl,” said Miss Glover. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”

“Yes,” said Bertha, with a smile that was almost ecstatic; then after a little pause: “We had a very good time—we went to all the theatres.”

Miss Glover felt that marriage had caused a difference in Bertha, and it made her nervous to realise the change. She looked uneasily at the married woman and occasionally blushed.

“And are you really happy?” she blurted out suddenly. Bertha smiled, and reddening, looked more charming than ever.

“Yes—I think I’m perfectly happy.”

“Aren’t you sure?” asked Miss Glover, who cultivated precision in every part of life and strongly disapproved of persons who did not know their own minds.

Bertha looked at her for a moment, as if considering the question.

“You know,” she answered, at last, “happiness is never quite what one expected it to be. I hardly hoped for so much; but I didn’t imagine it quite like it is.”

“Ah, well, I think it’s better not to go into these things,” replied Miss Glover, a little severely, thinking the suggestion of analysis scarcely suitable in a young married woman. “We ought to take things as they are, and be thankful.”

“Ought we?” said Bertha lightly, “I never do.... I’m never satisfied with what I have.”

They heard the opening of the front door and Bertha jumped up.

“There’s Edward! I must go and see him. You don’t mind, do you?”

She almost skipped out of the room; marriage, curiously enough, had dissipated the gravity of manner which had made people find so little girlishness about her. She seemed younger, lighter of heart.

“What a funny creature she is!” thought Miss Glover. “When she was a girl she had all the ways of a married woman, and now that she’s really married she might be a schoolgirl.”

The parson’s sister was not certain whether the irresponsibility of Bertha was fit to her responsible position, whether her unusual bursts of laughter were proper to a mystic state demanding gravity.

“I hope she’ll turn out all right,” she sighed.

But Bertha impulsively rushed to her husband and kissed him. She helped him off with his coat.

“I’m so glad to see you again,” she cried, laughing a little at her own eagerness; for it was only after luncheon that he had left her.

“Is any one here?” he asked, noticing Miss Glover’s umbrella. He returned his wife’s embrace somewhat mechanically.

“Come and see,” said Bertha, taking his arm and dragging him along. “You must be dying for tea, you poor thing.”

“Miss Glover!” he said, shaking the lady’s hand as energetically as she shook his. “How good of you to come and see us. I am glad to see you. You see we came home sooner than we expected—there’s no place like the country, is there?”

“You’re right there, Mr. Craddock; I can’t bear London.”

“Oh, you don’t know it,” said Bertha; “for you it’s Aerated Bread shops, Exeter Hall, and Church Congresses.”

“Bertha!” cried Edward, in a tone of surprise; he could not understand frivolity with Miss Glover.

That good creature was far to kind-hearted to take offence at any remark of Bertha’s, and smiled grimly: she could smile in no other way.

“Tell me what you did in London. I can’t get anything out of Bertha.”

Craddock’s mind was communicative, nothing pleased him more than to give people information, and he was always ready to share his knowledge with the world at large. He never picked up a fact without rushing to tell it to somebody else. Some persons when they know a thing immediately lose interest and it bores them to discuss it, but Craddock was not of these. Nor could repetition exhaust his eagerness to enlighten his fellows, he would tell an hundred people the news of the day and be as fresh as ever when it came to the hundred and first. Such a characteristic is undoubtedly a gift, useful in the highest degree to schoolmasters and politicians, but slightly tedious to their hearers. Craddock favoured his guest with a detailed account of all their adventures in London, the plays they had seen, the plots thereof and the actors who played them. He gave the complete list of the museums and churches and public buildings they had visited, while Bertha looked at him, smiling happily at his enthusiasm. She cared little what he spoke of, the mere sound of his voice was music in her ears, and she would have listened delightedly while he read aloud from end to end Whitaker’s Almanack: that was a thing, by the way, which he was quite capable of doing. Edward corresponded far more with Miss Glover’s conception of the newly married man than did Bertha with that of the newly married woman.

“He is a nice fellow,” she said to her brother afterwards, when they were eating their supper of cold mutton, solemnly seated at either end of a long table.

“Yes,” answered the Vicar, in his tired, patient voice, “I think he’ll turn out a good husband.”

Mr. Glover was patience itself, which a little irritated Miss Ley, who liked a man of spirit; and of that Mr. Glover had never a grain. He was resigned to everything; he was resigned to his food being badly cooked, to the perversity of human nature, to the existence of dissenters (almost), to his infinitesimal salary; he was resignation driven to death. Miss Ley said he was like those Spanish donkeys that one sees plodding along in a string, listlessly bearing over-heavy loads—patient, patient, patient. But not so patient as Mr. Glover; the donkey sometimes kicked, the Vicar of Leanham never.

“I do hope it will turn out well, Charles,” said Miss Glover.

“I hope it will,” he answered; then after a pause: “Did you ask them if they were coming to church to-morrow?” He helped himself to mashed potatoes, noticing long-sufferingly that they were burnt again; the potatoes were always burnt, but he made no comment.

“Oh, I quite forgot,” said his sister, answering the question. “But I think they’re sure to. Edward Craddock was always a regular attendant.”

Mr. Glover made no reply, and they kept silence for the rest of the meal. Immediately afterwards the parson went into his study to finish the morrow’s sermon, and Miss Glover took out of her basket her brother’s woollen socks and began to darn them. She worked for more than an hour, thinking meanwhile of the Craddocks; she liked Edward better and better each time she saw him, and she felt he was a man who could be trusted. She upbraided herself a little for her disapproval of the marriage; her action was unchristian, and she asked herself whether it was not her duty to apologise to Bertha or to Craddock; the thought of doing something humiliating to her own self-respect attracted her wonderfully. But Bertha was different from other girls; Miss Glover, thinking of her, grew confused.

But a tick of the clock to announce an hour about to strike made her look up, and she saw it wanted but five minutes to ten.

“I had no idea it was so late.”

She got up and tidily put away her work, then taking from the top of the harmonium the Bible and the big prayer-book which were upon it, placed them at the end of the table. She drew forward a chair for her brother, and sat patiently