Mrs Craddock

by W. Somerset Maugham

  “When are you coming back? We all miss you like anything.”

  “Do you?” she said. “I really don’t know. We’ll see after the season.”

  “What? Aren’t you coming for another couple of months?”

  “I don’t think Blackstable suits me very well. I’m always ill there.”

  “Oh, nonsense. It’s the finest air in England. Death-rate practically nil.”

  “D’you think our life was very happy, Edward?”

  She looked at him anxiously to see how he would take the tentative remark: but he was only astonished.

  “Happy? Yes, rather. Of course we had our little tiffs. All people do. But they were chiefly at first; the road was a bit rough, and we hadn’t got our tyres properly blown out. I’m sure I’ve got nothing to complain about.”

  “That, of course, is the chief thing,” said Bertha.

  “You look as well as anything now; I don’t see why you shouldn’t come back.”

  “Well, we’ll see later. We shall have plenty of time to talk it over.”

  She was afraid to speak the words on the tip of her tongue; it would be easier by correspondence.

  “I wish you’d give some fixed date, so that I could have things ready and tell people.”

  “It depends upon Aunt Polly; I really can’t say for certain; I’ll write to you.”

  They kept silence for a moment, and then an idea seized Bertha.

  “What d’you say to going to the Natural History Museum? Don’t you remember, we went there on our honeymoon?”

  “Would you like to go?” asked Edward.

  “I’m sure it would amuse you,” she replied.

  Next day while Bertha was shopping with her husband, Gerald and Miss Ley sat alone.

  “Are you very disconsolate without Bertha?” she asked.

  “Utterly miserable!”

  “That’s very rude to me, dear boy.”

  “I’m awfully sorry, but I can never be polite to more than one person at a time: and I’ve been using up all my good manners upon Mr Craddock.”

  “I’m glad you like him,” replied Miss Ley, smiling.

  “I don’t!”

  “He’s a very worthy man.”

  “If I hadn’t seen Bertha for six months, I shouldn’t take her off at once to see bugs.”

  “Perhaps it was Bertha’s suggestion.”

  “She must find Mr Craddock precious dull if she prefers black-beetles and stuffed kangaroos.”

  “You shouldn’t draw such rapid conclusions, my friend.”

  “D’you think she’s fond of him?”

  “My dear Gerald, what a question! Is it not her duty to love, honour and obey him?”

  “If I were a woman I could never honour a man who was bald.”

  “His locks are growing scanty; but he has a strong sense of duty.”

  “It oozes out of him whenever he gets hot, like gum.”

  “He is a County Councillor, and he makes speeches about the Union Jack, and he’s virtuous.”

  “I know that too. He simply reeks of the Ten Commandments; they stick out all over him, like almonds in a tipsy cake.”

  “My dear Gerald, Edward is a model; he is the typical Englishman, as he flourishes in the country, upright and honest, healthy, dogmatic, moral and rather stupid. I esteem him enormously, and I ought to like him much better than you, who are a disgraceful scamp.”

  “I wonder why you don’t.”

  “Because I’m a wicked old woman; and I’ve learnt by long experience that people generally keep their vices to themselves, but insist on throwing their virtues in your face. And if you don’t happen to have any of your own, you get the worst of the encounter.”

  “I think that’s what’s so comfortable in you, Aunt Polly, that you’re not obstreperously good. You’re charity itself.”

  “My dear Gerald,” said Miss Ley, putting up an admonishing forefinger, “women are by nature spiteful and intolerant; when you find one who exercises charity, it proves that she wants it very badly herself.”

  Miss Ley was glad that Edward could not stay more than two days for she was always afraid of surprising him. Nothing is more tedious than to talk with persons who treat your most ordinary remarks as startling paradoxes; and Edward suffered likewise from that passion for argument which is the bad talker’s substitute for conversation. People who cannot talk are always proud of their dialectic; they want to modify your most obvious statements, and if you do no more than observe that the day is fine insist on arguing it out. Miss Ley’s opinion on the subject was that no woman under forty was worth talking to at all, and a man only if he was an attentive listener. Bertha, in her husband’s presence, had suffered singular discomfort; it had been such a constraint that she found it an effort to talk with him, and had to rack her brain for subjects of conversation. Her heart was lightened when she returned from Victoria after seeing him off, and it gave her a thrill of pleasure to hear Gerald jump up when she came in. He ran towards her with glowing eyes.

  “Oh, I’m so glad. I’ve hardly had a chance of speaking to you these last two days.”

  “We have the whole afternoon before us.”

  “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”

  Bertha agreed, and like two school-fellows they sallied out, wandering by the river in the sunlight and the warmth: the banks of the Thames about Chelsea have a pleasing trimness, a levity that is infinitely grateful after the staidness of the rest of London. The embankments in spite of their novelty recall the days when the huge city was a great, straggling village, when the sedan-chair was a means of locomotion, and ladies wore patches69 and hoops; when epigram was the fashion and propriety was not.

  Presently, as they watched the gleaming water, a penny-steamboat approaching the adjoining stage gave Bertha a sudden idea.

  “Would you like to take me to Greenwich?” she cried. “Aunt Polly’s dining out; we can have dinner at the ‘Ship’ and come back by train.”

  “By Jove, it will be ripping.”

  They bolted down the gangway and took their tickets; the boat started, and Bertha, panting, sank on a seat. She felt a little reckless, rather pleased with herself, and amused to see Gerald’s unmeasured delight.

  “I feel as if we were eloping,” she said with a laugh. “I’m sure Aunt Polly will be dreadfully shocked.”

  The boat went on, stopping every now and then to take people in. They came to the tottering wharves of Millbank, and then to the footstool turrets of St John’s, the eight red blocks of St Thomas’s Hospital and the Houses of Parliament. They passed Westminster Bridge and the massive strength of New Scotland Yard, the hotels and flats and public buildings that line the Albert Embankment, the Temple Gardens: and opposite this grandeur, on the Surrey side, were the dingy warehouses and factories of Lambeth. At London Bridge, Bertha found new interest in the varying scene; she stood in the bows with Gerald by her side, not speaking; they were happy in being near one another. The traffic became denser and their boat more crowded, with artisans, clerks, noisy girls, going eastwards to Rotherhithe and Deptford. Great merchantmen lay by the riverside or slowly made their way downstream under the Tower Bridge; and here the broad waters were crowded, with every imaginable craft, with lazy barges as picturesque, with their red sails, as the fishing-boats of Venice, with little tugs, puffing and blowing, with ocean tramps and with great liners. And as they passed in the penny-steamer, they had swift pictures of groups of naked boys, wallowing in the Thames mud, diving from the side of an anchored coal-barge.

  A new atmosphere enveloped them now; grey warehouses that lined the river and the factories announced the commerce of a mighty nation, and the spirit of Charles Dickens gave to the passing scenes a fresh delight. How could they be prosaic when the great master had described them? An amiable stranger put names to the various places.

  “Look, there’s Wapping Old Stairs.”

  And the words thrilled Bertha like poetry.

  They passed innumerable wharv
es and docks, London Dock, John Cooper’s Wharves and William Gibbs’s Wharves (who are John Cooper and William Gibbs?), Limehouse Basin and West India Dock. Then with a great turn of the river they entered Limehouse Reach, and soon the noble lines of the Hospital, the immortal monument of Inigo Jones came in view, and they landed at Greenwich Pier.

  31

  They stood for a while on a terrace by the side of the hospital. Immediately below them a crowd of boys were bathing, animated and noisy, chasing and ducking one another, running to and fro with many cries and splashing in the mud, a fine picture of youthful movement.

  The river was stretched more widely before them. The sun played on the yellow wavelets so that they shone like gold. A tug grunted past with a long tail of barges, and a huge East Indiaman glided noiselessly. In the late afternoon there was over the scene an old-time air of case and spaciousness. The stately flood carried the mind away, so that the onlooker followed it with his thoughts, and went down, as it broadened, crowded with traffic; and presently a sea-smell reached the nostrils, and the river, ever majestic, flowed into the sea; and the ships went East and West and South, bearing their merchandise to the uttermost parts of the earth, to Southern sunnier lands of palm trees and dark-skinned peoples, bearing the name and wealth of England. The Thames became an emblem of the power of the mighty Empire, and those who watched felt strong in its strength and proud of their name and the undiminished glory of their race.

  But Gerald looked sadly.

  “In a very little while it must take me away from you, Bertha.”

  “But think of the freedom and the vastness. Sometimes in England one seems oppressed by the lack of room; one can hardly breathe.”

  “It’s the thought of leaving you.”

  She put her hand on his arm, caressingly; and then, to take him away from his sadness, suggested that they should stroll about.

  Greenwich is half London, half country town, and the unexpected union gives it a peculiar fascination. If the wharves and docks of London still preserve the spirit of Charles Dickens, here it is the happy breeziness of Captain Marryat70 that fills the imagination. Those tales of a freer life and of the sea-breezes come back amid the grey streets still peopled with the vivid characters of Poor Jack.71 In the park, by the side of the labourers asleep on the grass, navvies from the neighbouring docks, and the boys who play a primitive cricket, may be seen fantastic old persons who would have delighted the grotesque pen of the seaman-novelist.

  Bertha and Gerald sat beneath the trees, looking at the people till it grew late; and then wandered back to the “Ship” for dinner. It amused them immensely to sit in the old coffee-room and be waited on by a black waiter, who extolled absurdly the various dishes.

  “We won’t be economical today,” cried Bertha: “I feel utterly reckless. It takes all the fun away if one counts the cost.”

  “Well, for once let us be foolish and forget the morrow.”

  And they drank champagne, which to women and boys is the acme of dissipation and magnificence. Presently Gerald’s green eyes flashed more brightly, and Bertha turned red before their ardent gaze.

  “I shall never forget today, Bertha,” said Gerald. “As long as I live I shall look back upon it with regret.”

  “Oh, don’t think that it must come to an end; or we shall both be miserable.”

  “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Bertha laughed, showing her exquisite teeth, and was glad that her own knowledge told her she looked her best.

  “But come on the terrace again and smoke there. We’ll watch the sunset.”

  They sat alone, and the sun was already sinking. The heavy western clouds were rich and vivid red, and over the river the bricks and mortar stood out in ink-black masses. It was a sunset that singularly fitted the scene, combining in audacious colour with the river’s strength. The murky wavelets danced like little flames of fire.

  Bertha and the youth sat silently, very happy, but with the regret gnawing at their hearts that their hour of joy would have no morrow.

  The night fell, and one by one the stars shone out. The river flowed noiselessly, restfully, and around them twinkled the lights of the riverside towns. They did not speak, but Bertha knew the boy thought of her, and she wanted to hear him say so.

  “What are you thinking of, Gerald?”

  “What should I be thinking of but you, and that I must leave you?”

  Bertha could not help the pleasure that his words gave her: it was so delicious to be really loved; and she knew his love was real. She half turned her face, so that he saw her dark eyes, darker in the night.

  “I wish I hadn’t made a fool of myself before,” he whispered. “I feel it was all horrible; you’ve made me so ashamed.”

  “Oh, Gerald, you’re not remembering what I said the other day. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ve been so sorry ever since.”

  “I wish you loved me. Oh, Bertha, don’t stop me now. I’ve kept it in so long, and I can’t any more. I don’t want to go away without telling you.”

  “Oh, my dear Gerald, don’t,” said Bertha, her voice almost breaking. “It’s no good, and we shall both be dreadfully unhappy. My dear, you don’t know how much older I am than you. Even if I weren’t married, it would be impossible for us to love one another.”

  “But I love you with all my heart. I wish I could tell you what I feel.”

  He seized her hands and pressed them; she made no effort to resist.

  “Don’t you love me at all?” he asked.

  Bertha did not answer, and he bent nearer to look into her eyes. Then, letting her hands go, he flung his arms about her and pressed her to his heart.

  “Bertha, Bertha!”

  He kissed her passionately.

  “Oh, Bertha, say you love me. It would make me so happy.”

  “My dearest,” she whispered, and taking his head in her hands, kissed him.

  But the kiss that she had received had fired her blood, and she could not resist now from doing as she had wished. She kissed him on the lips and on the eyes, and she kissed his curly hair. But she tore herself away from him, and sprang to her feet.

  “What fools we are! Let’s go to the station, Gerald; it’s growing late.”

  “Oh, Bertha, don’t go yet,” he pleaded.

  “We must. I daren’t stay.”

  He tried to take her in his arms again, begging her passionately to remain.

  “Please don’t, Gerald,” she said. “Don’t ask me; you make me too unhappy. Don’t you see how hopeless it is? What is the use of our loving one another? You’re going away in a week and we shall never meet again. And even if you were staying, I’m married, and I’m twenty-six and you’re only nineteen. My dearest, we should only make ourselves ridiculous.”

  “But I can’t go away. What do I care if you’re older than I? And it’s nothing if you’re married; you don’t care for your husband and he doesn’t care two straws for you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Oh, I saw it. I felt so sorry for you.”

  “You dear boy!” murmured Bertha, almost crying. “I’ve been dreadfully unhappy. It’s true Edward never loved me, and he didn’t treat me very well. Oh, I can’t understand how I ever cared for him.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I would never allow myself to fall in love again. I suffered too much. I wonder I didn’t kill myself.”

  “But I love you with all my heart, Bertha; don’t you see I love you? Oh, this isn’t like what I’ve felt before; it’s something quite new and different. I can’t live without you, Bertha. Oh, let me stay.”

  “It’s impossible. Come away, dearest; we’ve been here too long.”

  “Kiss me again.”

  Bertha, half smiling, half in tears, put her arm round his neck and kissed the soft, boyish lips.

  “You are good to me,” he whispered.

  Then they walked to the station, silently; and eventually reached Chelsea. At the flat d
oor Bertha held out her hand, and Gerald looked at her with a sadness that almost broke her heart; then he just touched her fingers and turned away.

  But when Bertha was alone in her room she threw herself down on her bed and burst into tears. For she knew at last that she loved him. Gerald’s kisses still burned on her lips and the touch of his hands was tremulous on her arms. Suddenly she knew that she had deceived herself; it was more than friendship that held her heart as in a vice, it was more than affection: it was eager, passionate love.

  For a moment she was overjoyed, but quickly she remembered that she was married, that she was years older than he: to a boy of nineteen a woman of twenty-six must appear almost middle-aged. She seized a hand-mirror and looked at herself, she took it under the light so that the test might be more searching, and scrutinized her face for wrinkles and crow’s-feet, the signs of departing youth.

  “It’s absurd,” she said. “I’m making an utter fool of myself.”

  Gerald was fickle; in a week he would be in love with some girl he met on the steamer. Well, what of it? He loved her now, with all his heart and with all his soul; he trembled with desire at her touch, and his passion was an agony that blanched his cheek. She could not mistake the eager longing of his eyes. Ah, that was the love she wanted, the love that kills and the love that engenders. She stood up, stretching out her arms in triumph, and in the empty room her lips formed the words:

  “Come, my beloved, come, for I love you.”

  But the morning brought an intolerable depression. Bertha saw then the futility of her love; her marriage, his departure, made it impossible; the disparity of age made it even grotesque. But she could not dull the aching of her heart, she could not stop her tears.

  Gerald arrived about midday and found her alone. He approached almost timidly.

  “You’ve been crying, Bertha.”

  “I’ve been very unhappy,” she said. “Oh, please, Gerald, forget our idiocy of yesterday. Don’t say anything to me that I mustn’t hear.”

  “I can’t help loving you.”

  “Don’t you see that it’s all utter madness?”