Mrs. Craddock. W. Somerset Maugham

Ramsay, opening his mouth, threw back his head and laughed immoderately.

      "Very good indeed," he cried. "Ha, ha!"

      Miss Ley looked at him with uplifted eyebrows.

      "Girls are coming on nowadays," he said, with much amusement. "Why, in my time, a young woman would have been all blushes and downcast glances. If any one had talked of marriage she would have prayed Heaven to send an earthquake to swallow her up."

      "Fiddlesticks!" said Miss Ley.

      Bertha was looking at Dr. Ramsay with a smile that she with difficulty repressed, and Miss Ley caught the expression.

      "So you intend to be married, Bertha?" said the doctor, again laughing.

      "Yes."

      "When?" asked Miss Ley, who did not take Bertha's remark as merely playful.

      Bertha was looking out of window, wondering when Edward would arrive.

      "When?" she repeated, turning round. "This day four weeks!"

      "What!" cried Dr. Ramsay, jumping up. "You don't mean to say you've found some one! Are you engaged? Oh, I see, I see. You've been having a little joke with me. Why didn't you tell me that Bertha was engaged all the time, Miss Ley?"

      "My good doctor," answered Miss Ley, with great composure, "until this moment I knew nothing whatever about it. . . . I suppose we ought to offer our congratulations; it's a blessing to get them all over on one day."

      Dr. Ramsay looked from one to the other with perplexity.

      "Well, upon my word," he said, "I don't understand."

      "Neither do I," replied Miss Ley, "but I keep calm."

      "It's very simple," said Bertha. "I got engaged last night, and as I say, I mean to be married exactly four weeks from to-day—to Mr. Craddock."

      "What!" cried Dr. Ramsay, jumping up in astonishment and causing the floor to quake in the most dangerous way. "Craddock! What d'you mean? Which Craddock?"

      "Edward Craddock," replied Bertha coolly, "of Bewlie's Farm."

      "Brrh!!" Dr. Ramsay's exclamation cannot be transcribed, but it sounded horrid! "The scoundrel! It's absurd. You'll do nothing of the sort"

      Bertha looked at him with a gentle smile, but did not trouble to answer.

      "You're very emphatic, dear doctor," said Miss Ley. "Who is this gentleman?"

      "He isn't a gentleman," said Dr. Ramsay, purple with vexation.

      "He's going to be my husband, Dr. Ramsay," said Bertha, compressing her lips in the manner which with Miss Ley had become habitual; and turned to that lady: "I've known him all my life, and father was a great friend of his father's. He's a gentleman-farmer."

      "The definition of which," said Dr. Ramsay, "is a man who's neither a farmer nor a gentleman."

      "I forget what your father was?" said Bertha, who remembered perfectly well.

      "My father was a farmer," replied Dr. Ramsay, with some heat, "and, thank God! he made no pretence of being a gentleman. He worked with his own hands; I've seen him often enough with a pitchfork, turning over a heap of manure, when no one else was handy."

      "I see," said Bertha.

      "But my father can have nothing to do with it; you can't marry him because he's been dead these thirty years, and you can't marry me because I've got a wife already."

      Miss Ley, amused at the doctor's bluntness, concealed a smile; but Bertha, getting rather angry, thought him singularly rude.

      "And what have you against him?" she asked.

      "If you want to make a fool of yourself, he's got no right to encourage you. He knows he isn't a fit match for you."

      "Why not, if I love him?"

      "Why not!" shouted Dr. Ramsay. "Because he's the son of a farmer—like I am—and you're Miss Ley of Court Leys. Because a man in that position without fifty pounds to his back doesn't make love on the sly to a girl with a fortune."

      "Five thousand acres which pay no rent," murmured Miss Ley, who was always in opposition.

      "You have nothing whatever against him," retorted Bertha; "you told me yourself that he had the very best reputation."

      "I didn't know you were asking me with a view to matrimony."

      "I wasn't. I care nothing for his reputation. If he were drunken and idle and dissolute I'd marry him, because I love him."

      "My dear Bertha," said Miss Ley, "the doctor will have an apoplectic fit if you say such things."

      "You told me he was one of the best fellows you knew, Dr. Ramsay," said Bertha.

      "I don't deny it," cried the doctor, and his red cheeks really had in them a purple tinge that was quite alarming. "He knows his business and he works hard, and he's straight and steady."

      "Good heavens, Doctor," cried Miss Ley, "he must be a miracle of rural excellence. Bertha would surely never have fallen in love with him if he were faultless."

      "If Bertha wanted an agent," Dr. Ramsay proceeded, "I could recommend no one better, but as for marrying him——"

      "Does he pay his rent?" asked Miss Ley.

      "He's one of the best tenants we've got," growled the doctor, somewhat annoyed by Miss Ley's frivolous interruptions.

      "Of course in these bad times," added Miss Ley, who was determined not to allow Dr. Ramsay to play the heavy father with too much seriousness, "I suppose about the only resource of the respectable farmer is to marry his landlady."

      "Here he is!" interrupted Bertha.

      "Good God, is he coming here?" cried her guardian.

      "I sent for him. Remember he is going to be my husband."

      "I'm damned if he is!" said Dr. Ramsay.

      IV

      Bertha threw off her troubled looks and the vexation which the argument had caused her. She blushed charmingly as the door opened, and with the entrance of the fairy prince her face was wreathed in smiles. She went towards him and took his hands.

      "Aunt Polly," she said, "this is Mr. Edward Craddock. . . . Dr. Ramsay you know."

      He shook hands with Miss Ley and looked at the doctor, who promptly turned his back on him. Craddock flushed, and sat down by Miss Ley.

      "We were talking about you, dearest," said Bertha. The pause at his arrival had been disconcerting, and while Craddock was rather nervously thinking of something to say, Miss Ley made no effort to help him. "I have told Aunt Polly and Dr. Ramsay that we intend to be married four weeks from to-day."

      This was the first that Craddock had heard of the date, but he showed no particular astonishment. He was, in fact, trying to recall the speech which he had composed for the occasion.

      "I will try to be a good husband to your niece, Miss Ley," he began.

      But that lady interrupted him: she had already come to the conclusion that he was a man likely to say on a given occasion the sort of thing which might be expected; and that, in her eyes, was a hideous crime.

      "Oh yes, I have no doubt," she replied. "Bertha, as you know, is her own mistress, and responsible for her acts to no one."

      Craddock was a little embarrassed; he had meant to express his sense of unworthiness and his desire to do his duty, also to make clear his own position, but Miss Ley's remark seemed to prohibit further explanation.

      "Which is really very convenient," said Bertha, coming to his rescue, "because I have a mind to manage my life in my own way, without interference from anybody."

      Miss Ley wondered whether the young man looked upon Bertha's statement as auguring complete tranquillity in the future, but Craddock seemed