Mrs Craddock

by W. Somerset Maugham

  * * *

  As the months wore on Miss Glover became dreadfully solicitous. The parson’s sister looked upon birth as a mysteriously heart-fluttering business which, however, modesty required decent people to ignore. She treated her friend in an absurdly self-conscious manner, and blushed like a peony when Bertha, with the frankness usual in her, referred to the coming event. The greatest torment of Miss Glover’s life was that, as lady of the vicarage, she had to manage the Maternity Bag, an institution to provide the infants of the needy with articles of raiment and their mothers with flannel petticoats. Miss Glover could never without much blushing ask the necessary questions of the recipients of her charity: and feeling that the whole thing ought not to be discussed at all, when she did so kept her eyes averted. Her manner caused great indignation among the virtuous poor.

  “Well,” said one good lady, “I’d rather not ’ave her bag at all than be treated like that. Why, she treats you as if—well, as if you wasn’t married.”

  “Yes,” said another, “that’s just what I complain of. I promise you I ’ad ’alf a mind to take me marriage lines out of me pocket an’ show ’er. It ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed about. Nice thing it would be after ’aving sixteen if I was bashful.”

  But of course the more unpleasant a duty was, the more zealously Miss Glover performed it; she felt it right to visit Bertha with frequency, and manfully bore the young wife’s persistence in referring to an unpleasant subject. She carried her herosim to the pitch of knitting socks for the forthcoming baby, although to do so made her heart palpitate uncomfortably, and when she was surprised at the work by her brother her cheeks burned like two fires.

  “Now, Bertha dear,” she said one day, pulling herself together and straightening her back as she always did when she was mortifying her flesh, “now, Bertha dear, I want to talk to you seriously.”

  Bertha smiled: “Oh, don’t, Fanny, you know how uncomfortable it makes you.”

  “I must,” answered the good creature gravely. “I know you’ll think me ridiculous; but it’s my duty.”

  “I shan’t think anything of the kind,” said Bertha, touched by her friend’s humility.

  “Well, you talk a great deal of—of what’s going to happen.” Miss Glover blushed. “But I’m not sure if you are really prepared for it.”

  “Oh, is that all?” cried Bertha. “The nurse will be here in a fortnight, and Dr Ramsay says she’s a most reliable woman.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of earthly preparations,” said Miss Glover. “I was thinking of the other. Are you quite sure you’re approaching the—the thing in the right spirit?”

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Bertha.

  “It isn’t what I want you to do. It’s what you ought to do. I’m nobody. But have you thought at all of the spiritual side of it?”

  Bertha gave a sigh that was chiefly voluptuous.

  “I’ve thought that I’m going to have a son that’s mine and Eddie’s, and I’m awfully thankful.”

  “Wouldn’t you like me to read the Bible to you sometimes?”

  “Good Heavens, you talk as if I were going to die.”

  “One can never tell, dear Bertha,” replied Miss Glover, gloomily. “I think you ought to be prepared. In the midst of life we are in death, and one can never tell what may happen.”

  Bertha looked at her a trifle anxiously. She had been forcing herself of late to be cheerful, and had found it necessary to stifle a recurring presentiment of evil fortune. The vicar’s sister never realized that she was doing everything possible to make Bertha thoroughly unhappy.

  “I brought my own Bible with me,” she said. “Do you mind if I read you a chapter?”

  “I should like it,” said Bertha, and a cold shiver went through her.

  “Have you got any preference for some particular part?” asked Miss Glover, on extracting the book from a little black bag that she always carried.

  On Bertha’s answer that she had no preference, she suggested opening the Bible at random and reading on from the first line that crossed her eyes.

  “Charles doesn’t quite approve of it,” she said. “He thinks it smacks of superstition. But I can’t help doing it, and the early Protestants constantly did the same.”

  Miss Glover, having opened the book with closed eyes, began to read: “The sons of Pharez; Hezron, and Hamul. And the sons of Zerah; Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara: five of them in all.” Miss Glover cleared her throat: “And the sons of Ethan; Azariah. The sons also of Hezron, that were born unto him; Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Chelubai. And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah.”

  She had fallen upon the genealogical table at the beginning of the Book of Chronicles. The chapter was very long, and consisted entirely of names, uncouth and difficult to pronounce; but Miss Glover shirked not one of them. With grave and rather high-pitched delivery, modelled upon her brother’s, she read out the endless list. Bertha looked at her in amazement, but Miss Glover went steadily on.

  “That’s the end of the chapter,” she said at last. “Would you like me to read you another one?”

  “Yes, I should like it very much; but I don’t think the part you’ve hit on is quite to the point.”

  “My dear, I don’t want to reprove you—that’s not my duty—but all the Bible is to the point.”

  * * *

  And as the time of her delivery approached, Bertha quite lost her courage, and was often seized by a panic fear; suddenly, without obvious cause, her heart sank, and she asked herself frantically how she could possibly get through her confinement. She thought she was going to die, and wondered what would happen if she did. What would Edward do without her? The tears came to her eyes thinking of his bitter grief; but her lips trembled with pity for herself when the suspicion came to her that he would not be heart-broken; he was not a man to feel either grief or joy very poignantly. He would not weep; at the most his gaiety for a couple of days would be obscured, and then he would go about as before. She imagined him relishing the sympathy of his friends. In six months he would almost have forgotten her, and such memory as remained would not be extraordinarily pleasing. He would marry again, she thought bitterly; Edward loathed solitude, and next time doubtless he would choose a different sort of woman, one less remote than she from his ideal. Edward cared nothing for appearance, and Bertha imagined her successor plain as Miss Hancock or dowdy as Miss Glover; and the irony of it lay in the knowledge that either of those two would make a wife more suitable than she to his character, answering better to his conception of a helpmate.

  Bertha fancied that Edward would willingly have given her beauty for some solid advantage, such as a knowledge of dressmaking; her taste, her arts and accomplishments were nothing to him, and her impulsive passion was a positive defect. Handsome is as handsome does, said he; he was a plain, simple man, and he wanted a plain, simple wife.

  She wondered if her death would really cause him much sorrow. Bertha’s will gave him everything of which she was possessed, and he would spend it with a second wife. She was seized with insane jealousy.

  “No, I won’t die,” she cried between her teeth. “I won’t!”

  But one day, while Edward was out hunting, her morbid thoughts took another turn; supposing he should die! The thought was unendurable, but the very horror of it fascinated her; she could not drive away the scenes which, with strange distinctness, her imagination set before her. She was sitting at the piano and heard suddenly a horse stop at the front door—Edward was back. But the bell rang. Why should Edward ring? There was a murmur of voices without, and then Arthur Branderton came in. In her mind’s eye she saw every detail most clearly. He was in his hunting things! Something had happened, and, knowing what it was, Bertha was yet able to realize her terrified wonder as one possibility and another rushed through her brain. He was uneasy; he had something to tell, but dared not say it; she looked at him, horror-stricken, and a faintness came over he
r so that she could hardly stand.

  Bertha’s heart beat fast; she told herself it was absurd to allow her imagination to run away with her; but while she was arguing with herself the pictures went on developing themselves in her mind: she seemed to be assisting at a ghastly play in which she was the principal actor.

  And what would she do when the fact was finally told her that Edward was dead? She would faint or cry out.

  “There’s been an accident,” said Branderton. “Your husband is rather hurt.”

  Bertha put her hands to her eyes, the agony was dreadful.

  “You musn’t upset yourself,” he went on, trying to break it to her.

  Then, rapidly passing over the intermediate details, she found herself with her husband. He was dead, lying on the floor, and she pictured him to herself; she knew exactly how he would look; sometimes he slept so soundly, so quietly, that she was nervous, and put her ear to his heart to hear if it was beating. Now he was dead. Despair suddenly swept down upon her, overpoweringly. Bertha tried again to shake off her fancies, she even went to the piano and played a few notes; but the morbid attraction was too strong for her, and the scene went on. Now that he was dead he could not repulse her passion; now he was helpless and she kissed him with all her love; she passed her hands through his hair, and stroked his face (he had hated this in life), she kissed his lips and his closed eyes.

  The imagined grief was so poignant that Bertha burst into tears. She remained with the body, refusing to be separated from it, and Bertha buried her face in cushions so that nothing might disturb her illusion; she had ceased trying to drive it away. Ah, she loved him passionately, she had always loved him and could not live without him. She knew that she would shortly die—and she had been afraid of death. Ah, now it was welcome! She kissed his hands—he could not prevent her now—and with a little shudder opened one of his eyes; it was glassy, expressionless, immobile. She burst into tears and, clinging to him, sobbed in love and anguish. She would let no one touch him but herself; it was a relief to perform the last offices for him who had been her whole life. She did not know that her love was so great.

  She undressed the body and washed it; she washed the limbs one by one and sponged them; then very gently dried them with a towel. The touch of the cold flesh made her shudder voluptuously: she thought of him taking her in his strong arms, kissing her on the mouth. She wrapped him in the white shroud and surrounded him with flowers. They placed him in the coffin, and her heart stood still. She could not leave him, she passed with him all day and all night, looking ever at the quiet, restful face. Dr Ramsay came and Miss Glover came, urging her to go away, but she refused. What was the care of her own health now? She had only wanted to live for him. The coffin was closed, and she saw the faces of the undertakers; she had seen her husband’s face for the last time, her beloved; her heart was like a stone, and she clutched at her breast in the pain of the oppression.

  Hurriedly now the pictures thronged upon her, the drive to the churchyard, the service, the coffin covered with flowers and finally the graveside. They tried to keep her at home. What cared she for the silly, the abominable convention that sought to prevent her from going to the funeral? Was it not her husband, the only light of her life, whom they were burying? They could not realize the horror of it, the utter despair. And distinctly, by the dimness of the winter day, in the drawing-room of Court Leys, Bertha saw the lowering of the coffin, heard the rattle of earth thrown upon it.

  What would her life be afterwards? She would try to live, she would surround herself with Edward’s things, so that his memory might be always with her. The loneliness of life was appalling. Court Leys was empty and bare. She saw the endless succession of grey days; the seasons brought no change, and continually the clouds hung heavily above her; the trees were always leafless, and it was desolate. She could not imagine that travel would bring solace; the whole of life was blank, and what to her now were the pictures and churches, the blue skies of Italy? Her only happiness was to weep.

  Then distractedly Bertha thought she would kill herself; her life was impossible to endure. No life at all, the blankness of the grave was preferable to the pangs gnawing continually at her heart. It would be so easy to finish, with a little morphia to close the book of trouble; despair would give her courage, and the prick of the needle was the only pain. But her vision became dim, and she had to make an effort to retain it. Her thoughts, growing less coherent, travelled back to previous incidents, to the scene at the grave and to the voluptuous pleasure of washing the body.

  It was all so vivid that the entrance of Edward came upon her as a surprise. But the relief was almost too great for words, it was the awakening from a horrible nightmare. When he came forward to kiss her, she flung her arms round his neck and pressed him passionately to her heart.

  “Oh, thank God!” she cried.

  “Hulloa, what’s up now?”

  “I don’t know what’s been the matter with me. I’ve been so miserable, Eddie. I thought you were dead.”

  “You’ve been crying.”

  “It was so awful, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Oh, I should die also.”

  Bertha could hardly realize that her husband was by her side in the flesh, alive and well.

  “Would you be sorry if I died?” she asked him.

  “But you’re not going to do anything of the sort,” he said, cheerily.

  “Sometimes I’m so frightened, I don’t believe I’ll get over it.”

  He laughed at her, and his joyous tones were peculiarly comforting. She made him sit by her side, and held his strong hands, the hands that to her were the visible signs of his powerful manhood. She stroked them and kissed the palms. She was quite broken with the past emotions; her limbs trembled and her eyes glistened with tears.

  16

  The nurse arrived, bringing new apprehensions. She was an old woman who for twenty years had brought the neighbouring gentry into the world, and she had a copious store of ghastly anecdotes. In her mouth the terrors of birth were innumerable, and she told her stories with a cumulative art that was appalling. Of course, in her own mind she acted for the best. Bertha was nervous, and the nurse could imagine no better way of reassuring her than to give detailed accounts of patients who for days had been at death’s door, given up by all the doctors, and yet had finally recovered and lived happily ever afterwards.

  Bertha’s quick invention magnified the coming anguish till, for thinking of it, she could hardly sleep at night. The impossibility of even conceiving it rendered it more formidable; she saw before her a long, long agony and then death. She could not bear Eddie to be out of her sight.

  “Why, of course you’ll get over it,” he said. “I promise you it’s nothing to make a fuss about.”

  He had bred animals for years, and was quite used to the process that supplied him with veal, mutton and beef for the local butchers. It was a ridiculous fuss that human beings made over a natural and ordinary phenomenon.

  “Why, Dinah, the Irish terrier I used to have, had litters as regular as clockwork, and she was running about ten minutes afterwards.”

  Bertha lay with her face to the wall, holding Edward’s fingers with a feverish hand.

  “Oh, I’m so afraid of the pain. I feel certain that I shan’t get over it—it’s awful. I wish I hadn’t got to go through it.”

  Then as the days passed she looked upon Dr Ramsay as her very stay.

  “You won’t hurt me,” she begged. “I can’t bear pain a bit. You’ll give me chloroform all the time, won’t you?”

  “Good Heavens,” cried the doctor, “one would think no one had ever had a baby before you.”

  “Oh, don’t laugh at me. Can’t you see how frightened I am?”

  She asked the nurse how long her agony must last. She lay in bed, white, with terror-filled eyes, her lips set and a little vertical line between the brows.

  “I shall never get through it,” she whispered. “I have a presentiment that I shal
l die.”

  “I never knew a woman yet,” said Dr Ramsay, “who hadn’t a presentiment that she would die, even if she had nothing worse than a finger-ache the matter with her.”

  “Oh, you can laugh,” said Bertha. “I’ve got to go through it.”

  And the thought recurred persistently that she would die.

  Another day passed, and the nurse said the doctor must be immediately sent for. Bertha had made Edward promise to remain with her all the time.

  “I think I shall have courage if I can hold your hand,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” said Dr Ramsay, when Edward told him this. “I’m not going to have a man meddling about.”

  “I thought not,” said Edward, “but I just promised to keep her quiet.”

  “If you’ll keep yourself quiet,” answered the doctor, “that’s all I shall expect.”

  “Oh, you needn’t fear about me. I know all about these things. Why, my dear doctor, I’ve brought a good sight more living things into the world than you have, I bet.”

  Edward was an eminently sensible man, whom any woman might admire. He was neither hysterical nor nervous; calm, self-possessed and unimaginative, he was the ideal person for an emergency.

  “There’s no good my knocking about the house all the afternoon,” he said. “I should only mope, and if I’m wanted I can always be sent for.”

  He left word that he was going to Bewlie’s Farm to see a cow that was sick. He was anxious about her.

  “She’s the best milker I’ve ever had. I don’t know what I should do if something went wrong with her. She gives her so many pints a day as regular as possible. She’s brought in over and over again the money I gave for her.”

  He walked along with the free-and-easy stride that Bertha so much admired, glancing now and then at the fields that bordered the highway. He stopped to examine the beans of a rival farmer.

  “That soil’s no good,” he said, shaking his head. “It don’t pay to grow beans on a patch like that.”