Bertha’s relief was unmistakable when she landed on English soil; at
last she was near Edward, and she had been extremely sea-sick. 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!) in a free country, where the railways were not run for the
convenience of passengers, but the passengers necessary evils to create
dividends for an ill-managed company. Bertha’s impatience was so great
that she felt it impossible to wait at Dover; she preferred to go the
extra hundred miles and save 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’s thoughts were full of Edward, and he was the whole cause of her
impatience. She had hoped, against her knowledge of him, that he would
meet her at Dover, and it had been a disappointment not to see him. Then
she thought he might have come to London, though not explaining to
herself how he could possibly have divined that she would be there. Her
heart beat absurdly when she saw a back which might have been Edward’s.
Still later, she comforted herself with the idea that he would certainly
be at Faversley, which was the next station to Blackstable. When they
reached that place she put her head out of window, looking along the
platform--but he was nowhere.
“He might have come as far this,” she thought.
Now, the train steaming on, she recognised 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
seagulls 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 coastguard station was passed, a long
building, trim and low. 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 adored her husband so passionately as then, and her love
was a physical sensation that turned her faint. The arrival of the
moment so anxiously awaited left her half-frightened; 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 she at last she should see Edward walking towards her; she had
pictured the scene 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 a dingy black, with a baby
in his arms; and he was followed by a haggard wife with another baby and
innumerable parcels. A labourer sauntered down the platform, three or
four sailors, and a couple of infantry-men. 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 to Margate. (It’s a free country,
thank Heaven!) 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, 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 to-morrow. 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
none should see her. At first she scarcely understood; she had spent the
last hours at such a height of excitement that the disappointment
deprived her of the power of thinking. She never took things reasonably,
and was now stunned; what had happened seemed impossible. It was so
callous that Edward should go to a tennis-tournament when she was coming
home--looking forward eagerly to seeing him. And it was no ordinary
home-coming; 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
idea 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, chill, and inhospitable; the rooms had an
uninhabited air, the furniture was primly rearranged, and Edward had
caused antimacassars to be placed on the chairs. These Bertha, to the
housemaids’ 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 still he came 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 mere sight of
his handwriting had made her tremble, and she wanted to see him; she
woke up 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, or if Edward scored a 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, beseeching God to grant her happiness. 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 a matter not 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 utter stated words at stated hours in a meaningless
chorus; 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 sun without
was over-dazzling; and in the evening, 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, and 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 after a good night’s rest, and
entirely unaware that she had been grievously hurt.
“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 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 now no particular anxiety 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 of me till I appear.”
But, notwithstanding, she stayed. 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 this present unconcern. She turned as he came in, 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.”
“My dear Edward, I’m so unpractical, I never know my own mind, and I’m
always doing things on the spur of the moment, to my own inconvenience
and other people’s. And I should never have expected you to deny
yourself anything for my sake.”
Bertha, perplexed, almost dismayed, looked at her husband with
astonishment. She scarcely recognised him. In the three years of their
common life Bertha had noticed no change in him, and with her great
faculty for idealisation, had carried in her mind always his image, as
he appeared when first she saw him, the slender, manly youth of
eight-and-twenty. Miss Ley had discerned alterations, and spiteful
feminine tongues had said that he was going off dreadfully. But his
wife had seen nothing. And the separation had given further
opportunities to her fantasy. In absence she had thought of him as the
handsomest of men, delighting over his clear features, his fair hair,
his inexhaustible youth and strength. The plain facts would have
disappointed her even if Edward had retained the looks of his youth, but
seeing now as well the other changes, the shock was extreme. It was a
different man she saw, almost a stranger. Craddock did not wear well;
though but thirty-one, he looked much older. He had broadened and put on
flesh, his features had lost their delicacy, and the red of his cheeks
was growing coarse. He wore his clothes in a slovenly fashion, and had
fallen into a lumbering walk as if his boots were always heavy with
clay; and there was in him, besides, the heartiness and intolerant
joviality of the prosperous farmer. Edward’s good looks had given Bertha
the keenest pleasure, and now, rushing, as was her habit, to the other
extreme, she found him almost ugly. This was an exaggeration, for though
he was no longer the slim youth of her first acquaintance, he was still,
in a heavy, massive way, better looking than the majority of men.
Edward kissed her with marital calm, and the propinquity wafted to
Bertha’s nostrils the strong scents of the farmyard, which, no matter
what his clothes, hung perpetually about him. She turned away, hardly
concealing a little shiver of disgust. Yet they were the same masculine
odours as once had made her nearly faint with desire.