“Yes, my boy,” said the vicar, touched by Edward’s confidence. “Everyone knows you’re steady enough.”
“Of course, she could have found men of much better social position than mine, but I’ll try and make her happy. And I’ve got nothing to hide from her as some men have; I go to her almost as straight as she comes to me.”
“That is a very fortunate thing to be able to say,” replied the vicar.
“I have never loved another woman in my life, and as for the rest—well, of course, I’m young and I’ve been up to town sometimes; but I always hated and loathed it. And the country and the hard work keep one pretty clear of anything nasty.”
“I’m very glad to hear you say that,” answered Mr Glover. “I hope you’ll be happy, and I think you will.”
The vicar felt a slight pricking of conscience, for at first his sister and himself had called the match a mésalliance22 (they pronounced the word vilely), and not till they learned it was inevitable did they begin to see that their attitude was a little wanting in charity. The two men shook hands when they parted.
“I hope you don’t mind me spitting out these things to you, vicar. I suppose it’s your business in a sort of way. I wanted to tell Miss Ley something of the kind; but somehow or other I can never get an opportunity.”
7
Exactly one month after the attainment of her majority, as Bertha had announced, the marriage took place and the young couple started off to spend their honeymoon in London. Bertha, knowing she would not read, took with her notwithstanding a book, to wit the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and Edward, thinking that railway journeys were always tedious, bought for the occasion The Mystery of the Six-fingered Woman, the title of which attracted him. He was determined not to be bored, for not content with his novel he purchased at the station a Sporting Times.
“Oh,” said Bertha when the train had started, heaving a great sigh of relief, “I’m so glad to be alone with you at last. Now we shan’t have anybody to worry us and no one can separate us, and we shall be together for the rest of our lives.”
Craddock put down the newspaper which, from force of habit, he had opened after settling himself down in his seat.
“I’m glad to have the ceremony over, too.”
“D’you know,” she said, “I was terrified on the way to church; it occurred to me that you might not be there—that you might have changed your mind and fled.”
He laughed. “Why on earth should I change my mind?”
“Oh, I can’t sit solemnly opposite you as if we’d been married a century. Make room for me, boy.”
She came over to his side and nestled close to him.
“Tell me you love me,” she whispered.
“I love you very much.”
He bent down and kissed her, then putting his arm round her waist drew her closer to him. He was a little nervous, he would not really have been very sorry if some officious person had disregarded the engaged on the carriage and entered. He felt scarcely at home with his wife, and was still a little bewildered by his change of fortune; there was, indeed, a vast difference between Court Leys and Bewlie’s Farm.
“I’m so happy,” said Bertha. “Sometimes I’m afraid. D’you think it can last, d’you think we shall always be as happy? I’ve got everything I want in the world, I’m absolutely and completely content.” She was silent for a minute, caressing his hands. “You will always love me, Eddie, won’t you—even when I’m old and horrible?”
“I’m not the sort of chap to alter,” he said.
“Oh, you don’t know how I adore you,” she cried, passionately. “My love will never alter, it is too strong. To the end of my days I shall always love you with all my heart. I wish I could tell you what I feel.”
Of late the English language had seemed quite incompetent for the expression of her manifold emotions.
* * *
They went to a far more expensive hotel than they could afford; Craddock had prudently suggested something less extravagant, but Bertha would not hear of it; as Miss Ley she had been unused to the second-rate, and she was too proud of her new name to take it to any but the best hotel in London.
The more Bertha saw of her husband’s mind the more it delighted her. She loved the simplicity and the naturalness of the man; she cast off like a tattered silken cloak the sentiments with which for years she had lived, and robed herself in the sturdy homespun that so well suited her lord and master. It was charming to see his naïve enjoyment of everything; to him all was fresh and novel; he would explode with laughter at the comic papers and in the dailies continually find observations that struck him as extremely original. He was the unspoiled child of nature, his mind free from the million perversities of civilization. To know him was, in Bertha’s opinion, an education in all the goodness and purity, the strength and virtue of the Englishman. They went often to the theatre, and it pleased Bertha to watch her husband’s simple enjoyment; the pathetic passages of melodrama that made Bertha’s lips curl with amused contempt moved him to facile tears, and in the darkness he held her hand to comfort her, imagining that she experienced the same emotions as himself. Ah, she wished she could; she hated the education in foreign countries that in the study of pictures and palaces and strange peoples had released her mind from its prison of darkness, yet had destroyed half her illusions; now she would far rather have retained the plain and unadorned illiteracy, the ingenuous ignorance of the typical and creamy English girl. What is the use of knowledge? Blessed are the poor in spirit; all that a woman really wants is purity and goodness and perhaps a certain acquaintance with plain cooking.
“Isn’t it splendid?” he said, turning to his wife.
“You dear thing!” she whispered.
It touched her to see how deeply he felt it all. She loved him ten times more because his emotions were easily aroused; ah, yes, she abhorred the cold cynicism of the worldly-wise who sneer at the burning tears of the simple-minded.
But the lovers, the injured heroine and the wrongly suspected hero, had bidden one another a heart-rending good-bye, and the curtain descended to rapturous applause. Edward cleared his throat and blew his nose. The curtain rose on the next act, and in his eagerness to see what was going to happen Edward immediately ceased to listen to what Bertha was in the middle of saying, and gave himself over to the play. The feelings of the audience having been sufficiently harrowed, the comic relief was turned on; the funny man made jokes about various articles of clothing, tumbled over tables and chairs, and it charmed Bertha again to hear her husband’s peals of unrestrained laughter; he put his head back and with his hands to his sides simply roared.
“He has a charming character,” she thought.
Craddock had the strictest notions of morality, and absolutely refused to take his wife to a music-hall; Bertha had seen abroad many sights the like of which Edward did not dream; but she respected his innocence. It pleased her to see the firmness with which he upheld his principles and it amused her to be treated like a little girl. They went to all the theatres; Edward on his rare visits to London had done his sight-seeing economically, and the purchase of stalls, the getting into evening clothes, were new sensations that caused him great pleasure. Bertha liked to see her husband in evening dress; the black suited his florid style, and the white shirt with a high collar threw up his sunburned, weather-beaten face. He looked strong above all things, and manly; and he was her husband, never to be parted from her except by death. She adored him.
Craddock’s interest in the stage was unflagging, he always wanted to know what was going to happen and he was able to follow with the closest attention, even the incomprehensible plot of a musical comedy. Nothing bored him. Even the most ingenuous find a little cloying the humours and the harmonies of a Gaiety burlesque; they are like toffee and butterscotch, delicacies for which we cannot understand our youthful craving. Bertha had learnt something of music in lands where it is cultivated as a pleasure rather than as a duty, and the popular melodie
s with obvious refrains sent cold shivers down her back. But they stirred Craddock to the depths of his soul; he beat time to the swinging, vulgar tunes, and his face was transfigured when the band played a patriotic march with a great braying of brass and beating of drums. He whistled and hummed it for days afterwards.
“I love music,” he told Bertha in the interval. “Don’t you?”
With a tender smile she confessed she did, and for fear of hurting his feelings did not suggest that the music in question made her almost vomit. What did it matter if his taste in that respect were not beyond reproach? After all there was something to be said for the honest, homely melodies that touched the people’s heart.
“When we get home,” said Craddock, “I want you to play to me, I’m so fond of it.”
“I shall love to,” she murmured.
She thought of the long winter evenings which they would spend at the piano, her husband by her side to turn the leaves, while to his astonished ears she unfolded the manifold riches of the great composers. She was convinced that his taste was really excellent.
“I have lots of music that my mother used to play,” he said. “By Jove, I shall like to hear it again—some of those old tunes I can never hear often enough—‘The Last Rose of Summer’ and ‘Home, Sweet Home’ and a lot more like that.”
* * *
“By Jove, that show was good,” said Craddock when they were having supper. “I should like to see it again before we go back.”
“We’ll do whatever you like, my dear.”
“I think an evening like that does you good. It bucks me up; doesn’t it you?”
“It does me good to see you amused,” replied Bertha diplomatically.
The performance had appeared to her vulgar, but in the face of her husband’s enthusiasm she could only accuse herself of a ridiculous squeamishness. Why should she set herself up as a judge of these things? Was it not rather vulgar of her to find vulgarity in what gave such pleasure to the unsophisticated? She was like the nouveau riche who is distressed at the universal lack of gentility. But she was tired of analysis and subtlety and all the accessories of a decadent civilization.
“For goodness’ sake,” she thought, “let us be simple and easily amused.”
She remembered the four young ladies who had appeared in skin tights and nothing else worth mentioning and danced a singularly ungraceful jig, which the audience in its delight had insisted on having twice repeated.
* * *
There is some difficulty in knowing how to spend one’s time in London when one has no business to do and no friends to visit. Bertha would have been content to sit all day with Edward in their private sitting-room, contemplating him and her felicity. But Craddock had all the fine energy of the Anglo-Saxon race, that desire to be always doing something or other which has made the English athletes and missionaries and members of Parliament. After his first mouthful of breakfast, he invariably asked: “What shall we do today?” And Bertha ransacked her brain and a Baedeker23 to find sights to visit, for to treat London as a foreign town and systematically explore it was their only resource. They went to the Tower of London and gaped at the crowns and sceptres, at the insignia of the various orders; to Westminster Abbey and, joining the party of Americans and country-folk who were being driven hither and thither by a black-robed verger, they visited the tombs of the kings and saw everything that it was their duty to see. Bertha developed a fine enthusiasm for the antiquities of London; she quite enjoyed the sensation of bovine ignorance with which the Cook’s tourist24 surrenders himself into the hands of a custodian, looking as he is told and swallowing with open mouth the most unreliable information. Feeling herself more stupid, Bertha was conscious of a closer connexion with her fellow-men. Edward did not like all things in an equal degree; pictures bored him (they were the only things that really did), and their visit to the National Gallery was not a success. Neither did the British Museum meet with his approval; for one thing, he had great difficulty in directing Bertha’s attention so that her eyes should not wander to various naked statues that are exhibited there with no regard at all for the susceptibilities of modest persons. Once she stopped in front of a group that some shields and swords quite inadequately clothed, and remarked on their beauty. Edward looked about uneasily to see whether anyone noticed them, and agreeing with her briefly that they were fine figures, moved her rapidly away to some less questionable object.
“I can’t stand all this rot,” he said when they stood opposite the three goddesses of the Parthenon. “I wouldn’t give twopence to come to this place again.”
Bertha felt a little ashamed that she had a sneaking admiration for the statues in question.
“Now tell me,” he said, “where is the beauty of those creatures without any heads?”
Bertha could not tell him, and he was triumphant. He was a dear, and she loved him with all her heart.
The Natural History Museum, on the other hand, aroused Craddock to enthusiasm. Here he was quite at home, no improprieties were there from which he must keep his wife, and animals were the sort of things that any man could understand. But they brought back to him strongly the country of East Kent and the life which it pleased him most to lead. London was all very well, but he did not feel at home, and it was beginning to pall upon him. Bertha also began talking of home and Court Leys; she had always lived more in the future than in the present, and even in this, the time of her greatest happiness, looked forward to the days to come at Leanham when complete bliss would indeed be hers.
She was contented enough now; it was only the eighth day of her married life, but she ardently wished to settle down and satisfy all her anticipations. They talked of the alterations they must make in the house. Craddock had already plans for putting the park in order, for taking over the Home Farm and working it himself.
“I wish we were home,” said Bertha. “I’m sick of London.”
“I don’t think I should mind much if we’d got to the end of our fortnight,” he replied.
Craddock had arranged with himself to stay in town fourteen days, and he could not change his mind. It made him uncomfortable to alter his plans and think out something new; he prided himself on always doing the thing he had determined.
But a letter came from Miss Ley announcing that she had packed her trunks and was starting for the Continent.
“Oughtn’t we to ask her to stay on?” said Craddock. “It seems rather rough on her to turn her out so quickly.”
“You don’t want to have her to live with us, do you?” asked Bertha in dismay.
“No, rather not; but I don’t see why you should pack her off like a servant with a month’s notice.”
“Oh, I’ll ask her to stay,” said Bertha anxious to obey her husband’s smallest wish; and obedience was easy, for she knew that Miss Ley would never dream of accepting the offer.
Bertha wished to see no one just now, least of all her aunt, feeling confusedly that her happiness would be diminished by the intrusion of an actor in her old life; her emotions also were too intense for concealment, and she would have been ashamed to display them to Miss Ley’s critical sense. Bertha saw only discomfort in meeting the elder lady, with her calm irony and polite contempt for the things which on her husband’s account Bertha now sincerely cherished.
But Miss Ley’s reply showed perhaps that she guessed her niece’s thoughts better than Bertha had given her credit for.
MY DEAREST BERTHA,
I am much obliged to your husband for his politeness in asking me to stay at Court Leys; but I flatter myself that you have too high an opinion of me to think me capable of accepting. Newly married people offer much matter for ridicule (which they say, is the noblest characteristic of man, being the only one that distinguishes him from the brutes), but since I am a peculiarly self-denying creature, I do not propose to avail myself of the opportunity you offer. Perhaps in a year you will have begun to see one another’s imperfections, and then, though less amusing, you will b
e more interesting. No, I am going to Italy—to hurl myself once more into that sea of pensions and second-rate hotels wherein it is the fate of single women with moderate incomes to spend their lives; and I am taking with me a Baedeker so that if ever I am inclined to think myself less foolish than the average man I may look upon its red cover and remember that I am but human. By the way, I hope you do not show your correspondence to your husband, least of all mine; a man can never understand a woman’s epistolary communications, for he reads them with his own simple alphabet of twenty-six letters, whereas he requires one of at least fifty-two; and even that is little. It is a bad system to allow a husband to read one’s letters, and my observation of married couples has led me to the belief that there is no surer way to the divorce court; in fact it is madness for a happy pair to pretend to have no secrets from one another; it leads them into so much deception. If, however, as I suspect, you think it is your duty to show Edward this note of mine, he will perhaps find it not unuseful for the explanation of my character—on the study of which I myself have spent many entertaining years.
I give you no address, so that you may not be in want of an excuse to leave this missive unanswered.
Your affectionate aunt,
Mary Ley.
Bertha, a trifle impatiently, tossed the letter to Edward.
“What does she mean?” he asked when he had read it.
Bertha shrugged her shoulders: “She believes in nothing but the stupidity of other people. Poor woman, she has never been in love. But we won’t have any secrets from one another, Eddie. I know that you will never hide anything from me, and I—What can I do that is not at your telling?”
“It’s a funny letter,” he replied, looking at it again.
“But we’re free now, darling,” she said. “The house is ready for us. Shall we go at once?”
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