Bertha.
P.S. Please do not think of any rapprochement. I am sure you will eventually see that we are both much happier apart.
May 15 72 Eliot Mansions,
Chelsea, S.W.
MY DEAR EDDIE,
I was pleased to get your letter. I am a little touched at your wanting to see me. You suggest coming to town; perhaps it is fortunate that I shall be no longer here. If you had expressed such a wish before much might have gone differently. Aunt Polly, having let her flat to friends, goes to Paris for the rest of the season; she starts tonight, and to Paris I have offered to accompany her, I am sick of London. I do not know whether she suspects anything, but I notice that she never mentions your name now; she looked a little sceptical the other day when I explained that I had long wished to go to Paris and that you were having the inside of Court Leys painted. Fortunately, however, she makes it a practice not to inquire into other people’s business, and I can rest assured that she will never ask me a single question.
Forgive the shortness of this letter, but I am very busy packing.
Your affectionate wife,
Bertha.
May 16 41 Rue des Ecoliers,
Paris.
MY DEAREST EDDIE,
I have been unkind to you. It is nice of you to want to see me, and my repugnance to it was, perhaps, unnatural. On consideration, I cannot think it will do any harm if we should see one another. Of course, I can never come back to Court Leys; there are some chains that, having broken, you can never weld together; and no fetters are so intolerable as those of love. But if you want to see me I will put no obstacle in your way, I will not deny that I also should like to see you. I am further away now, but if you care for me at all you will not hesitate to make the short journey.
We have here a very nice apartment, in the Latin Quarter, away from the rich people and the tourists. I do not know which is more vulgar, the average tripper or the part of Paris which he infests; I must say they become one another to a nicety. I loathe the shoddiness of the boulevards, with their gaudy cafés over-gilt and over-sumptuous, and their crowds of ill-dressed foreigners. But if you come I can show you a different Paris, a restful and old-fashioned Paris; theatres to which tourists do not go, gardens full of pretty children and nurse-maids with long ribbons to their caps. I can take you down innumerable grey streets with funny shops, in old churches where you see people praying; and it is all very quiet, calming to the nerves, and I can take you to the Louvre at hours when there are few visitors, and show you beautiful pictures and statues that have come from Italy and Greece, where the gods have their homes to this day. Come, Eddie.
Your ever loving wife,
Bertha.
41 Rue des Ecoliers,
Paris.
MY DEAREST EDDIE,
I am disappointed that you will not come. I should have thought, if you wanted to see me you could have found time to leave the farms for a few days. But perhaps it is really better that we should not meet. I cannot conceal from you that sometimes I long for you dreadfully. I forget all that has happened and desire with all my heart to be with you again. What a fool I am. I know that we can never meet again, and you are never absent from my thoughts. I look forward to your letters almost madly, and your handwriting makes my heart beat as if I were a school-girl. Oh, you don’t know how your letters disappoint me, they are so cold, you never say what I want you to say. It would be madness if we came together. I can only preserve my love to you by not seeing you. Does that sound horrible? And yet I would give anything to see you once more. I cannot help asking you to come here. It is not so very often I have asked you anything. Do come. I will meet you at the station and you will have no trouble or bother. Everything is perfectly simple, and Cook’s interpreters47 are everywhere. I’m sure you would enjoy yourself so much.
If you love me, come.
Bertha.
May 30 Court Leys,
Blackstable, Kent.
MY DEAREST BERTHA,
Sorry I haven’t answered yours of 25 inst before but I’ve been up to my eyes in work. You wouldn’t think that there would be so much to do on a farm at this time of year unless you saw it with your own eyes. I can’t possibly get away to Paris and besides I can’t stomach the French. I don’t want to see the capital and when I want a holiday London’s good enough for me. You’d better come back here, people are asking after you and the place seems all topsy-turvy without you. Love to Aunt P.
In haste
Your affectionate husband
E. Craddock.
June 1 41 Rue des Ecoliers,
Paris.
MY DEAREST, DEAREST EDDIE,
You don’t know how disappointed I was to get your letter, and how I longed for it. Whatever you do, don’t keep me waiting so long for an answer. I imagined all sorts of things—that you were ill or dying. I was on the point of wiring. I want you to promise me that if you are ever ill you will let me know. If you want me urgently I shall be pleased to come. But do not think that I can ever come back to Court Leys for good. Sometimes I feel ill and weak and I long for you, but I know I must not give way. I’m sure, for your good as well as for mine, I must never risk the unhappiness of our old life again. It was too degrading. With firm mind and the utmost resolution I swear that I will never, never return to Court Leys.
Your affectionate and loving wife,
Bertha.
Telegram.
Gare du Nord. 9.50 a.m. June 2.
Craddock, Court Leys. Blackstable.
Arriving 7.25 tonight. Bertha.
41 Rue des Ecoliers,
Paris.
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,
I am perturbed. Bertha, as you know, has for the last six weeks lived with me, for reasons the naturalness of which aroused my strongest suspicions. No one, I thought, would need so many absolutely conclusive motives to do so very simple a thing. I resisted the temptation to write to Edward (her husband—a nice man, but stupid!) to ask for an explanation, fearing that the reasons given me were the right ones (although I could not believe it), in which case I should have made myself ridiculous. Bertha in London pretended to go to a physician, but never was seen to take medicine, and I am certain no well-established specialist would venture to take two guineas from a malade imaginaire and not administer copious drugs. She accompanied me to Paris, ostensibly to get dresses, but has behaved as if their fit were of no more consequence than a change of ministry. She has taken great pains to conceal her emotions, and thereby made them the more conspicuous. I cannot tell you how often she has gone through the various stages from an almost hysterical elation to an equal despondency; she has mused as profoundly as it was fashionable for the young ladies of fifty years ago (we were all young ladies then—not girls), she has played Tristan and Isolde to the distraction of myself, she has snubbed an amorous French artist to the distraction of his wife; finally she has wept, and after weeping overpowdered her nose and eyes, which in a pretty woman is an infallible sign of extreme mental prostration.
This morning when I got up, I found at my door the following message: “Don’t think me an utter fool, but I couldn’t stand another day away from Edward. Leaving by the 10 o’clock train. B.” Now at 10.30 she had an appointment at Paquin’s to try on the most ravishing dinner dress you could imagine.
I will not insult you by drawing inferences from all these facts. I know you would much sooner draw them yourself, and I have a sufficiently good opinion of you to be certain that they will coincide with mine.
Yours very sincerely,
Mary Ley.
23
Bertha’s relief was unmistakable when she landed on English soil; at last she was near Edward, and she had been extremely seasick. Though it was less than thirty miles from Dover to Blackstable, the communications were so bad that it was necessary to wait for hours at the port, or take the boat train to London and then come sixty miles down again. Bertha was exasperated at the delay, forgetting that she was now (thank Heaven!) i
n a free country, where the railways were not run for the convenience of the passengers, but the passengers necessary evils to earn dividends for an ill-managed company. Bertha’s impatience was so great that she felt it impossible to wait at Dover, and made up her mind to go up to London and down again, thus saving herself ten minutes, rather than spend the afternoon in the dreary waiting-room or wandering about the town. The train seemed to crawl, and her restlessness became quite painful as she recognized the Kentish country, the fat meadows with trim hedges, the portly trees and the general air of prosperity.
Bertha had hoped, against her knowledge of him, that Edward would meet her at Dover, and it had been a disappointment not to see him; then she thought he might come up to London, though not explaining to herself how he could possibly have divined that she would be there; and her heart beat absurdly when she saw a back that might have been his. Still later, she comforted herself with the notion that he would certainly be at Faversley, which was the next station to Blackstable, and when they reached that place she put her head out of the window, looking along the platform—but he was not there.
“He might have come as far as this,” she thought.
Now, the train steaming on, she recognized the country more precisely, the desolate marsh and the sea. The line ran almost at the water’s edge. The tide was out, leaving a broad expanse of shining mud, over which the sea-gulls flew, screeching. Then the houses were familiar, cottages beaten by wind and weather, “The Jolly Sailor,” where in the old days many a smuggled keg of brandy had been hidden on its way to the cathedral city of Tercanbury. The coast-guard station was passed, low buildings painted pink; and finally they rattled across the bridge over the High Street, and the porters, with their Kentish drawl, called out, “Blackstable, Blackstable.”
Bertha’s emotions were always uncontrolled and so powerful as sometimes to unfit her for action. Now she had hardly strength to open the carriage door.
“At last!” she cried, with a gasp of relief.
She had never loved her husband so passionately as then; her love was a physical sensation that almost turned her faint. The arrival of the moment so anxiously awaited left her half afraid; she was of those who eagerly look for an opportunity and then can scarcely seize it. Bertha’s heart was so full that she was afraid of bursting into tears when at last she should see Edward walking towards her; she had pictured the meeting so often, her husband advancing with his swinging stride, waving his stick, the dogs in front, rushing towards her, and barking furiously. The two porters waddled, with their seaman’s walk, to the van to get out the luggage; people were stepping from the carriages. Next to her a pasty-faced clerk descended, in dingy black, with a baby in his arms; his pale-faced wife followed with another baby and innumerable parcels, then two or three children. A labourer sauntered down the platform, three or four sailors, and a couple of trim infantrymen. They all surged for the wicket at which stood the ticket collector. The porters got out the boxes and the train steamed off; an irascible city man was swearing volubly because his luggage had gone on to Margate. The station-master, in a decorated hat and a self-satisfied air, strolled up to see what was the matter. Bertha looked along the platform wildly. Edward was not there.
The station-master passed her and nodded patronisingly.
“Have you seen Mr Craddock?” she asked.
“No, I can’t say I have. But I think there’s a carriage below for you.”
Bertha began to tremble. A porter asked whether he should take her boxes; she nodded, unable to speak. She went down and found the brougham at the station door; the coachman touched his hat and gave her a note.
DEAR BERTHA,
Awfully sorry I can’t come to meet you. I never expected you, so accepted an invitation of Lord Philip Dirk to a tennis tournament and a ball afterwards. He’s going to sleep me, so I shan’t be back till tomorrow. Don’t get in a wax. See you in the morning.
E. C.
Bertha got into the carriage and huddled herself into one corner so that no one should see her. At first she hardly understood, she had spent the last hours on such a height of excitement that the disappointment deprived her of the power of thinking. She never took things reasonably and was now stunned. It was impossible. It seemed to be so callous that Edward should go playing tennis when she, looking forward so eagerly to seeing him, was coming home. And it was no ordinary homecoming, it was the first time she had ever left him, and then she had gone, hating him, as she thought for good. But her absence having revived her love, she had returned, yearning for reconciliation. And he was not there, he acted as though she had been to town for a day’s shopping.
“Oh, God, what a fool I was to come!”
Suddenly she thought of going away, there and then. Would it not be easier? She felt she could not see him. But there were no trains. The London, Chatham and Dover Railway has perhaps saved many an elopement. But he must have known how bitterly disappointed she would be, and the notion flashed through her that he would leave the tournament and come home. Perhaps he was already at Court Leys, waiting; she took fresh courage and looked at the well-remembered scene. He might be at the gate. Oh, what joy it would be, what a relief! But they came to the gate and he was not there; they drove to the portico and he was not there. Bertha went into the house expecting to find him in the hall or in the drawing-room, not having heard the carriage; but he was nowhere to be found, and the servants corroborated his letter.
The house was empty, dull and inhospitable; the rooms had an uninhabited air, the furniture was primly rearranged, and Edward had caused antimacassars48 to be placed on the chairs; these Bertha, to the housemaid’s surprise, took off one by one, and without a word threw into the empty fireplace. And still she thought it incredible that Edward should stay away. She sat down to dinner, expecting him every moment; she sat up very late, feeling sure that eventually he would come. But he did not.
“I wish to God I’d stayed away.”
Her thoughts went back to the struggle of the last few weeks. Pride, anger, reason, everything had been on one side and only love on the other; and love had conquered. The recollection of Edward had been seldom absent from her, and her dreams had been filled with his image. His letters had caused her an indescribable thrill, the sight of his handwriting had made her tremble; and she wanted to see him; she woke at night with his kisses on her lips. She begged him to come, and he would not, or could not. At last the yearning grew beyond control; and that very morning, not having received the letter she awaited, she had resolved to throw off all pretence of resentment and come. What did she care if Miss Ley laughed at her, or if Edward scored the victory in the struggle? She could not live without him. He still was her life and her love.
“Oh, God, I wish I hadn’t come.”
She remembered how she had prayed that Edward might love her as she wished to be loved. The passionate rebellion after her child’s death had ceased insensibly, and in her misery, in her loneliness, she had found a new faith. Belief with some comes and goes without reason; with them it is not a matter of conviction, but rather of sensibility; and Bertha found prayer easier in Catholic churches than in the cheerless meeting-houses she had been used to. She could not gabble prayers at stated hours with three hundred other people; the crowd caused her to shut away her emotions, and her heart could expand only in solitude. In Paris she had found quiet chapels, open at all hours, to which she could go for rest when the light without was over-dazzling; and in the evening, when the dimness, the fragrance of old incense and the silence were very restful. Then the only light came from the tapers, burning in gratitude or in hope, throwing a fitful, mysterious glimmer; and Bertha prayed earnestly for Edward and for herself.
But Edward would not let himself be loved. Her efforts all were useless. Her love was a jewel that he valued not at all, that he flung aside and cared not if he lost. But she was too unhappy, too broken in spirit to be angry. What was the use of anger? She knew that Edward would see nothing extraordinary in
what he had done; he would return, confident, well-pleased with himself, having slept well, and entirely unaware that she had been grievously disappointed.
“I suppose the injustice is on my side. I am too exacting. I can’t help it.” She only knew one way to love, and that, it appeared, was a foolish way. “Oh, I wish,” she cried, “I wish I could go away again now—for ever.”
She got up and ate a solitary breakfast, busying herself afterwards in the house. Edward had left word that he would be in to luncheon, and was it not his pride to keep his word? But all her impatience had gone, Bertha felt no particular anxiety now to see him. She was on the point of going out, the air was warm and balmy; but did not, in case Edward should return and be disappointed at her absence.
“What a fool I am to think of his feelings! If I’m not in he’ll just go about his work and think nothing more about me till I appear.”
But, notwithstanding, she stayed in. He arrived at last, and she did not hurry to meet him; she was putting things away in her bedroom, and continued, though she heard his voice below. The difference was curious between her intense and almost painful expectation of the previous day and her present indifference. She turned as he came in the room, but did not move towards him.
“So you’ve come back? Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Yes, rather.”
“But I say, it’s ripping to have you home. You weren’t in a wax at my not being here?”
“Oh, no,” she said, smiling. “I didn’t mind at all.”
“That’s all right. Of course I’d never been to Lord Philip’s before, and I couldn’t wire the last minute to say that my wife was coming home and I had to meet her.”
“Of course not, it would have made you appear too absurd.”
“But I was jolly sick, I can tell you. If you’d only let me know a week ago that you were coming, I should have refused the invitation.”
Mrs Craddock Page 23