Mrs. Craddock, W. Somerset Maugham [free biff chip and kipper ebooks txt] 📗

He seized both Miss Ley’s hands, and the terrifying thought flashed through her head that he would kiss her before the assembled multitude.

“He’s cultivating the airs of the country squire,” she thought. “I wish he wouldn’t.”

He took the innumerable bags with which she travelled and scattered them among the attendants. He even tried to induce her to take his arm to the dog-cart, but this honour she stoutly refused.

“Now, will you come round to this side and I’ll help you up. Your luggage will come on afterwards with the pony.”

He was managing everything in a self-confident and masterful fashion; Miss Ley noticed that marriage had dispelled the shyness which had been in him rather an attractive feature. He was becoming bluff and hearty. Also he was filling out. Prosperity and a knowledge of greater importance had broadened his back and straightened his shoulders; he was quite three inches more round the chest than when she had first known him, and his waist had proportionately increased.

“If he goes on developing in this way,” she thought, “the good man will be colossal by the time he’s forty.”

“Of course, Aunt Polly,” he said, boldly dropping the respectful Miss Ley, which hitherto he had invariably used, though his new relative was not a woman whom most men would have ventured to treat familiarly. “Of course it’s all rot about your leaving us in a week; you must stay a couple of months at least.”

“It’s very good of you, dear Edward,” replied Miss Ley drily, “but I have other engagements.”

“Then you must break them; I can’t have people leave my house immediately they come.”

Miss Ley raised her eyebrows and smiled; was it his house already? Dear me!

“My dear Edward,” she answered, “I never stay anywhere longer than two days—the first day I talk to people, the second I let them talk to me, and the third I go.... I stay a week at hotels so as to go en pension, and get my washing properly aired.”

“You’re treating us like a hotel,” said Edward, laughing.

“It’s a great compliment: in private houses one gets so abominably waited on.”

“Ah well, we’ll say no more about it. But I shall have your trunk taken to the box-room and I keep the key of it.”

Miss Ley gave the short, dry laugh which denoted that her interlocutor’s remark had not amused her, but something in her own mind. Presently they arrived at Court Leys.

“D’you see all the differences since you were last here?” asked Edward, jovially.

Miss Ley looked round and pursed her lips.

“It’s charming,” she said.

“I knew it would make you sit up,” he cried, laughing.

Bertha received her aunt in the hall and embraced her with the grave decorum which had always characterised their relations.

“How clever you are, Bertha,” said Miss Ley; “you manage to preserve your beautiful figure.”

Then she set herself solemnly to investigate the connubial bliss of the young couple.

THE passion to analyse the casual fellow-creature was the most absorbing vice that Miss Ley possessed; and no ties of relationship or affection (the two go not invariably together) prevented her from exercising her talents in that direction. She observed Bertha and Edward during luncheon: Bertha was talkative, chattering with a vivacity that seemed suspicious, about the neighbours—Mrs. Branderton’s new bonnets and new hair, Miss Glover’s good works and Mr. Glover’s visits to London; Edward was silent, except when he pressed Miss Ley to take a second helping. He ate largely, and the maiden lady noticed the enormous mouthfuls he took and the heartiness with which he drank his beer. Of course she drew conclusions; and she drew further conclusions, when, having devoured half a pound of cheese and taken a last drink of ale, he pushed back his chair and with a sort of low roar, reminding one of a beast of prey gorged with food, said—

“Ah, well, I suppose I must set about my work. There’s no rest for the weary.”

He pulled a new briar-wood pipe from his pocket, filled and lit it.

“I feel better now.... Well, so-long; I shall be in to tea.”

Conclusions buzzed about Miss Ley, like midges on a summer’s day. She drew them all the afternoon; she drew them all through dinner. Bertha was effusive too, unusually so; and Miss Ley asked herself a dozen times if this stream of chatter, these peals of laughter, proceeded from a light heart or from a base desire to deceive a middle-aged and inquiring aunt. After dinner, Edward, telling her that of course she was one of the family so he hoped she did not wish him to stand on ceremony, began to read the paper. When Bertha, at Miss Ley’s request, played the piano, good manners made him put it aside, and he yawned a dozen times in a quarter of an hour.

“I mustn’t play any more,” said Bertha, “or Eddie will go to sleep—won’t you, darling?”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” he replied, laughing. “The fact is that the things Bertha plays when we’ve got company give me the fair hump!”

“Edward only consents to listen when I play The Blue Bells of Scotland or Yankee Doodle.”

Bertha made the remark, smiling good-naturedly at her husband, but Miss Ley drew conclusions.

“I don’t mind confessing that I can’t stand all this foreign music. What I say to Bertha is—why can’t you play English stuff?”

“If you must play at all,” interposed his wife.

“After all’s said and done The Blue Bells of Scotland has got a tune about it that a fellow can get his teeth into.”

“You see, there’s the difference,” said Bertha, strumming a few bars of Rule Britannia, “it sets mine on edge.”

“Well, I’m patriotic,” retorted Edward. “I like the good, honest, homely English airs. I like ’em because they’re English. I’m not ashamed to say that for me the best piece of music that’s ever been written is God Save the Queen.”

“Which was written by a German, dear Edward,” said Miss Ley, smiling.

“That’s as it may be,” said Edward, unabashed, “but the sentiment’s English and that’s all I care about.”

“Hear! hear!” cried Bertha. “I believe Edward has aspirations towards a political career. I know I shall finish up as the wife of the local M.P.”

“I’m patriotic,” said Edward, “and I’m not ashamed to confess it.”

“Rule Britannia,” sang Bertha, “Britannia rules the waves, Britons never, never shall be slaves. Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!”

“It’s the same everywhere now,” proceeded the orator. “We’re choke full of foreigners and their goods. I think it’s scandalous. English music isn’t good enough for you—you get it from France and Germany. Where do you get your butter from? Brittany! Where d’you get your meat from? New Zealand!” This he said with great scorn, and Bertha punctuated the observation with a resounding chord. “And as far as the butter goes, it isn’t butter—it’s margarine. Where does your bread come from? America. Your vegetables from Jersey.”

“Your fish from the sea,” interposed Bertha.

“And so it is all along the line—the British farmer hasn’t got a chance!”

To this speech Bertha played a burlesque accompaniment, which would have irritated a more sensitive man than Craddock; but he merely laughed good-naturedly.

“Bertha won’t take these things seriously,” he said, passing his hand affectionately over her hair.

She suddenly stopped playing, and his good-humour, joined with the loving gesture, filled her with remorse. Her eyes filled with tears.

“You are a dear, good thing,” she faltered, “and I’m utterly horrid.”

“Now don’t talk stuff before Aunt Polly. You know she’ll laugh at us.”

“Oh, I don’t care,” said Bertha, smiling happily. She stood up and linked her arm with his. “Eddie’s the best tempered person in the world—he’s perfectly wonderful.”

“He must be, indeed,” said Miss Ley, “if you have preserved your faith in him after six months of marriage.”

But the maiden lady had stored so many observations that she felt an urgent need to retire to the privacy of her bed-chamber, and sort them. She kissed Bertha and held out her hand to Edward.

“Oh, if you kiss Bertha, you must kiss me too,” said he, bending forward with a laugh.

“Upon my word!” said Miss Ley, somewhat taken aback; then as he was evidently insisting she embraced him on the cheek. She positively blushed.

The upshot of Miss Ley’s investigations was that once again the hymeneal path had been found strewn with roses; and the idea crossed her head as she laid it on the pillow, that Dr. Ramsay would certainly come and crow over her: it was not in masculine human nature, she thought, to miss an opportunity of exulting over a vanquished foe.

“He’ll vow that I was the direct cause of the marriage. The dear man, he’ll be so pleased with my discomfiture that I shall never hear the last of it. He’s sure to call to-morrow.”

Indeed the news of Miss Ley’s arrival had been by Edward industriously spread abroad, and promptly Mrs. Ramsay put on her blue velvet calling-dress, and in the doctor’s brougham drove with him to Court Leys. The Ramsays found Miss Glover and the Vicar of Leanham already in possession of the field. Mr. Glover looked thinner and older than when Miss Ley had last seen him; he was more weary, meek and brow-beaten; Miss Glover never altered.

“The parish?” said the parson, in answer to Miss Ley’s polite inquiry, “I’m afraid it’s in a bad way. The dissenters have got a new chapel, you know—and they say the Salvation Army is going to set up ‘barracks’ as they call them. It’s a great pity the government doesn’t step in: after all we are established by law and the law ought to protect us from encroachment.”

“You don’t believe in liberty of conscience?” asked Miss Ley.

“My dear Miss Ley,” said the Vicar, in his tired voice, “everything has its limits. I should have thought there was in the Established Church enough liberty of conscience for any one.”

“Things are becoming dreadful in Leanham,” said Miss Glover. “Practically all the tradesmen go to chapel now, and it makes it so difficult for us.”

“Yes,” replied the Vicar, with a weary sigh; “and as if we hadn’t enough to put up with, I hear that Walker has ceased coming to church.”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” said Miss Glover.

“Walker, the baker?” asked Edward.

“Yes; and now the only baker in Leanham who goes to church is Andrews.”

“Well, we can’t possibly deal with him, Charles,” said Miss Glover, “his bread is too bad.”

“My dear, we must,” groaned her brother. “It would be against all my principles to deal with a tradesman who goes to chapel. You must tell Walker to send his book in, unless he will give an assurance that he’ll come to church regularly.”

“But Andrews’s bread always gives you indigestion, Charles,” cried Miss Glover.

“I must put up with it. If none of our martyrdoms were more serious than that, we should have no cause to complain.”

“Well, it’s quite easy to get your bread from Tercanbury,” said Mrs. Ramsay, who was severely practical.

Mr. Glover and his sister threw up their hands in dismay.

“Then Andrews would go to chapel too. The only thing that keeps them at church, I’m sorry to say, is the Vicarage custom, or the hope of getting it.”

Presently Miss Ley found herself alone with the parson’s sister.

“You must be very glad to see Bertha again, Miss Ley.”

“Now she’s going to crow,” thought the good lady. “Of course I am.”

“And it must be such a relief to you to see how well it’s all turned out.”

Miss Ley looked sharply at Miss Glover, but saw no trace of irony.

“Oh, I think it’s beautiful to see a married couple so thoroughly happy. It really makes me feel a better woman when I come here and see how those two worship one another.”

“Of course the poor thing’s a perfect idiot,” thought Miss Ley. “Yes, it’s very satisfactory,” she said, drily.

She glanced round for Dr. Ramsay, looking forward, notwithstanding that she was on the losing side, to the tussle she foresaw. She had the instincts of a