Mrs. Craddock. W. Somerset Maugham

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've wanted to tell Miss Ley something of the kind; but somehow or other I can never get an opportunity."

      VII

      Exactly one month after her twenty-first birthday, 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 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? That's a thing I never do."

      "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 his wife, then putting his arm round her waist drew her nearer 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 Bertha, and was still 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, and 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."

      "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 which 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 which struck him for their profound originality. He was the unspoiled child of nature; his mind free from the million perversities of civilisation. 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 a melodrama, which made Bertha's lips curl with semi-amused contempt, moved him to facile tears; and in the darkness he held her hand to comfort her, imagining that his wife enjoyed the same emotions as himself. Ah, she wished she could; she hated the education in foreign countries, which, 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.

      But the lovers, the injured heroine and the wrongly suspected hero, had bidden one another a heartrending good-bye, and the curtain descended to rapturous applause. Edward cleared his throat and blew his nose.

      "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. How clean and big and simple and good must be his heart! 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.

      The curtain rose on the next act, and in his eagerness to see what was about 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, tumbling over tables and chairs; and it charmed Bertha again to see her husband's open-hearted hilarity. It tickled her immensely to hear his 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 somewhat amused her to be treated like a little schoolgirl. 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 dress-clothes, were new sensations which 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 sunburnt, 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 melodies 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 entracte. "Don't you?"

      With a tender smile she confessed she did, and for fear of hurting Edward's feelings did not suggest that the music in question made her almost vomit. What mattered it 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. It is only by a convention that the Pastoral Symphony is thought better art than Tarara-boom-deay. Perhaps, in two or three hundred years, when everything is done by electricity and every one is equal, when we are all happy socialists, with good educations and better morals, Beethoven's complexity will be like a mass of wickedness, and only the plain, honest homeliness of the comic song will appeal to our simple feelings.

      "When we get home," said Craddock, "I want you to play to me; I'm so