W. Somerset Maugham

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.