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 around 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 of 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 sightseeing 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
fond of it.”
“I shall love to,” she murmured. She thought of the long winter evenings
which they would spend at the piano, her husband by her side to turn the
leaves, while to his astonished ears she unfolded the manifold riches of
the great composers. She was convinced that his taste was really
excellent.
“I have lots of music that my mother used to play,” he said. “By Jove, I
shall like to hear it again--some of those old tunes I can never hear
often enough--_The Last Rose of Summer_, and _Home, Sweet Home_, and a
lot more like that.”
* * * * *
“By Jove, that show was ripping,” said Craddock, when they were having
supper; “I should like to see it again before we go back.”
“We’ll do whatever you like, my dearest.”
“I think an evening like that does you good. It bucks me up; doesn’t it
you?”
“It does me good to see you amused,” replied Bertha, diplomatically.
The performance had appeared to her vulgar, but in the face of her
husband’s enthusiasm she could only accuse herself of a ridiculous
squeamishness. Why should she set herself up as a judge of these
things? Was it not somewhat vulgar to find vulgarity in what gave such
pleasure to the unsophisticated? She was like the _nouveau riche_ who is
distressed at the universal lack of gentility; but she was tired of
analysis and subtlety, and all the concomitants of decadent
civilisation.
“For goodness’s sake,” she thought, “let us be simple and easily
amused.”
She remembered the four young ladies who had appeared in flesh-coloured
tights and nothing else worth mentioning, and danced a singularly
ungraceful jig, which the audience, in its delight, had insisted on
having twice repeated.
* * * * *
With no business to do and no friends to visit, there is some difficulty
in knowing how to spend one’s time in London. Bertha would have been
content to sit all day with Edward in the private sitting-room,
contemplating him and her extreme felicity. But Craddock had the fine
energy of the Anglo-Saxon race, that desire to be always doing something
which has made the English athletes, and missionaries, and members of
Parliament.
After his first mouthful of breakfast he invariably asked, “What shall
we do to-day?” And Bertha ransacked her brain and a _Baedeker_ to find
sights to visit, for to treat London as a foreign town and
systematically to explore it was their only resource. They went to the
Tower of London and gaped at the crowns and sceptres, at the insignia of
the various orders; to Westminster Abbey and joined the party of
Americans and country folk who were being driven hither and thither by a
black-robed verger; they visited the tombs of the kings and saw
everything which it was their duty to see. Bertha developed a fine
enthusiasm for the antiquities of London; she quite enjoyed the
sensations of bovine ignorance with which the Cook’s tourist surrenders
himself into the hands of a custodian, looking as he is told and
swallowing with open mouth the most unreliable information. Feeling
herself more stupid, Bertha was conscious of a closer connection with
her fellow-men. Edward did not like all things in an equal degree;
pictures bored him (they were the only things that really did), and
their visit to the National Gallery was not a success. Neither did the
British Museum meet with his approval; for one thing, he had great
difficulty in directing Bertha’s attention so that her eyes should not
wander to various naked statues which are exhibited there with no regard
at all for the susceptibilities of modest persons. Once she stopped in
front of a group that some shields and swords quite inadequately
clothed, and remarked on their beauty. Edward looked about uneasily to
see whether any one noticed them, and agreeing briefly that they were
fine figures, moved rapidly away to some less questionable object.
“I can’t stand all this rot,” he said, when they stood opposite the
three goddesses of the Parthenon; “I wouldn’t give twopence to come to
this place again.”
Bertha felt somewhat ashamed that she had a sneaking admiration for the
statues in question.
“Now tell me,” he said, “where is the beauty of those creatures without
any heads?”
Bertha could not tell him, and he was triumphant. He was a dear, good
boy and she loved him with all her heart!
The Natural History Museum, on the other hand, aroused Craddock to great
enthusiasm. Here he was quite at home; no improprieties were there from
which he must keep his wife, and animals were the sort of things that
any man could understand. But they brought back to him strongly the
country of East Kent and the life which it pleased him most to lead.
London was all very well, but he did not feel at home, and it was
beginning to pall upon him. Bertha also began talking of home and of
Court Leys; she had always lived more in the future than in the present,
and even in this, the time of her greatest happiness, looked forward to
the days to come at Leanham, when complete felicity would indeed be
hers.
She was contented enough now--it was only the eighth day of her married
life, but she ardently wished to settle down and satisfy all her
anticipations. They talked of the alterations they must make in the
house, Craddock had already plans for putting the park in order, for
taking over the Home Farm and working it himself.
“I wish we were home,” said Bertha. “I’m sick of London.”
“I don’t think I should mind much if we’d got to the end of our
fortnight,” he replied.
Craddock had arranged with himself to stay in town fourteen days, and he
could not alter his mind. It made him uncomfortable to change his plans
and think out something new; he prided himself, moreover, on always
doing the thing he had determined.
But a letter came from Miss Ley announcing that she had packed her
trunks and was starting for the continent.
“Oughtn’t we to ask her to stay on?” said Craddock. “It seems a bit
rough to turn her out so quickly.”
“You don’t want to have her live with us, do you?” asked Bertha, in some
dismay.
“No, rather not; but I don’t see why you should pack her off like a
servant with a month’s notice.”
“Oh, I’ll ask her to stay,” said Bertha, anxious to obey her husband’s
smallest wish; and obedience was easy, for she knew that Miss Ley would
never dream of accepting the offer.
Bertha wished to see no one just then, least of all her aunt, feeling
confusedly that her bliss would be diminished by the intrusion of an
actor in her old life. Her emotions also were too intense for
concealment, and she would have been ashamed to display them to Miss
Ley’s critical instinct. Bertha saw only discomfort in meeting the elder
lady, with her calm irony and polite contempt for the things which on
her husband’s account Bertha most sincerely cherished.
But Miss Ley’s reply showed perhaps that she guessed her niece’s
thoughts better than Bertha had given her credit for.
_My dearest Bertha,--I am much obliged to your husband for his
politeness in asking me to stay at Court Leys; but I flatter
myself you have too high an opinion of me to think me capable of
accepting. Newly married people offer much matter for ridicule
(which, they say, is the noblest characteristic of man, being the
only one that distinguishes him from the brutes); but since I am a
peculiarly self-denying creature, I do not avail-myself of the
opportunity. Perhaps in a year you will have begun to see one
another’s imperfections and then, though less amusing, you will be
more interesting. No, I am going to Italy--to hurl myself once more
into that sea of pensions and second-rate hotels, wherein it is the
fate of single women, with moderate incomes, to spend their lives;
and I am taking with me a Baedeker, so that if ever I am inclined
to think myself less foolish than the average man I may look upon
its red cover and remember that I am but human. By the way, I hope
do not show your correspondence to your husband, least of all mine.
A man can never understand a woman’s epistolary communications, for
he reads them with his own simple alphabet of twenty-six letters,
whereas he requires one of at least fifty-two; and even that is
little. It is madness for a happy pair to pretend to have no
secrets from one another: it leads them into so much deception. If,
however, as I suspect, you think it your duty to show Edward this
note of mine, he will perhaps find it not unuseful for the
elucidation of my character, in the study of which I myself have
spent many entertaining years._
_I give you no address so that you may not be in want of an excuse
to leave this letter unanswered.--Your affectionate Aunt_,
_Mary Ley_.
Bertha impatiently tossed the letter to Edward.
“What does she mean?” he asked, when he had read it.
Bertha shrugged her shoulders. “She believes in nothing but the
stupidity of other people.... Poor woman, she has never been in love!
But we won’t have any secrets from one another, Eddie. I know that you
will never hide anything from me, and I--What can I do that is not at
your telling?”
“It’s a funny letter,” he replied, looking at it again.
“But we’re free now, darling,” she said. “The house is ready for us;
shall we go at once?”
“But we haven’t been here a fortnight yet,” he objected.
“What does it matter? We’re both sick of London; let us go home and
start our life. We’re going to lead it for the rest of our days, so we’d
better begin it quickly. Honeymoons are stupid things.”
“Well, I don’t mind. By Jove, fancy if we’d gone to Italy for six
weeks.”
“Oh, I didn’t know what a honeymoon was like. I think I imagined
something quite different.”
“You see I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Of course you were right,” she answered, flinging her arms round his
neck; “you’re always right, my darling.... Ah! you can’t think how I
love you.”