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

most unfortunate occurrence. I need not say that Fanny and I sympathise with you from the bottom of our hearts.”

“We do indeed,” said his sister.

Still Bertha did not answer and Miss Glover looked at her uneasily. The Vicar coughed again.

“But I always think that we should be thankful for the cross we have to bear. It is, as it were, a measure of the confidence that God places in us.”

Bertha remained quite silent and Miss Glover saw that no good would come by beating about the bush.

“The fact is, Bertha,” she said, breaking the awkward silence, “that Charles and I are very anxious that you should be churched. You don’t mind our saying so, but we’re both a great deal older than you are, and we think it will do you good. We do hope you’ll consent to it; but, more than that, Charles is here as the clergyman of your parish, to tell you that it is your duty.”

“I hope it won’t be necessary for me to put it in that way, Mrs. Craddock.”

Bertha paused a moment longer, and then asked for a prayer-book. Miss Glover gave a smile which for her was quite radiant.

“I’ve been wanting for a long time to make you a little present, Bertha,” she said, “and it occurred to me that you might like a prayer-book with good large print. I’ve noticed in church that the book you generally use is so small that it must try your eyes, and be a temptation to you not to follow the service. So I’ve brought you one to-day, which it will give me very much pleasure if you will accept.”

She produced a large volume, bound in gloomy black cloth, and redolent of the antiseptic odours which pervaded the Vicarage. The print was indeed large, but, since the society which arranged the publication insisted on the combination of cheapness with utility, the paper was abominable.

“Thank you very much,” said Bertha, holding out her hand for the gift. “It’s awfully kind of you.”

“Shall I find you the Churching of Women?”

Bertha nodded, and presently the Vicar’s sister handed her the book, open. She read a few lines and dropped it.

“I have no wish to ‘give hearty thanks unto God,’” she said, looking almost fiercely at the worthy pair. “I’m very sorry to offend your prejudices, but it seems to me absurd that I should prostrate myself in gratitude to God.”

“Oh, Mrs. Craddock, I trust you don’t mean what you say,” said the Vicar.

“This is what I told you, Charles,” said Miss Glover. “I don’t think Bertha is well, but still this seems to me dreadfully wicked.”

Bertha frowned, finding it difficult to repress the sarcasm which rose to her lips; her forbearance was sorely tried. But Mr. Glover was a little undecided.

“We must be as thankful to God for the afflictions He sends as for the benefits,” he said at last.

“I am not a worm to crawl upon the ground and give thanks to the foot that crushes me.”

“I think that is blasphemous, Bertha,” said Miss Glover.

“Oh, I have no patience with you, Fanny,” said Bertha, raising herself, a flush lighting up her face. “Can you realise what I’ve gone through, the terrible pain of it? Oh, it was too awful. Even now when I think of it I almost scream.”

“It is by suffering that we rise to our higher self,” said Miss Glover. “Suffering is a fire that burns away the grossness of our material natures.”

“What rubbish you talk,” cried Bertha, passionately. “You can say that when you’ve never suffered. People say that suffering ennobles one; it’s a lie, it only makes one brutal.... But I would have borne it—for the sake of my child. It was all useless—utterly useless. Dr. Ramsay told me the child had been dead the whole time. Oh, if God made me suffer like that, it’s infamous. I wonder you’re not ashamed to put it down to God. How can you imagine Him to be so stupid, so cruel! Why, even the vilest beast in the slums wouldn’t cause a woman such frightful and useless agony for the mere pleasure of it.”

Miss Glover sprang to her feet. “Bertha, your illness is no excuse for this. You must either be mad, or utterly depraved and wicked.”

“No, I’m more charitable than you,” cried Bertha. “I know there is no God.”

“Then I, for one, can have nothing more to do with you.” Miss Glover’s cheeks were flaming, and a sudden indignation dispelled her habitual shyness.

“Fanny, Fanny!” cried her brother, “restrain yourself.”

“Oh, this isn’t a time to restrain one’s self, Charles. It’s one’s duty to speak out sometimes. No, Bertha, if you’re an atheist, I can have nothing more to do with you.”

“She spoke in anger,” said the Vicar. “It is not our duty to judge her.”

“It’s our duty to protest when the name of God is taken in vain, Charles. If you think Bertha’s position excuses her blasphemies, Charles, then I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself.... But I’m not afraid to speak out. Yes, Bertha, I’ve known for a long time that you were proud and headstrong, but I thought time would change you. I have always had confidence in you, because I thought at the bottom you were good. But if you deny your Maker, Bertha, there can be no hope for you.”

“Fanny, Fanny,” murmured the Vicar.

“Let me speak, Charles; I think you’re a bad and wicked woman—and I can no longer feel sorry for you, because everything that you have suffered I think you have thoroughly deserved. Your heart is absolutely hard, and I know nothing so thoroughly wicked as a hard-hearted woman.”

“My dear Fanny,” said Bertha, smiling, “we’ve both been absurdly melodramatic.”

“I refuse to laugh at the subject. I see nothing ridiculous in it. Come, Charles, let us go, and leave her to her own thoughts.”

But as Miss Glover bounded to the door the handle was turned from the outside and Mrs. Branderton came in. The position was awkward, and her appearance seemed almost providential to the Vicar, who could not fling out of the room like his sister, but also could not make up his mind to shake hands with Bertha, as if nothing had happened. Mrs. Branderton entered, all airs and graces, smirking and ogling, and the gew-gaws on her brand-new bonnet quivered with every movement.

“I told the servant I could find my way up alone, Bertha,” she said. “I wanted so much to see you.”

“Mr. and Miss Glover were just going. How kind of you to come!”

Miss Glover bounced out of the room with a smile at Mrs. Branderton that was almost ghastly; and Mr. Glover, meek, polite, and as antiseptic as ever, shaking hands with Mrs. Branderton, followed his sister.

“What queer people they are!” said Mrs. Branderton, standing at the window to see them come out of the front door. “I really don’t think they’re quite human.... Why, she’s walking on in front—she might wait for him—taking such long steps; and he’s trying to catch her up. I believe they’re having a race. Ha! ha! What ridiculous people! Isn’t it a pity she will wear short skirts—my dear, her feet and ankles are positively awful. I believe they wear one another’s boots indiscriminately.... And how are you, dear? I think you’re looking much better.”

Mrs. Branderton sat in such a position as to have full view of herself in a mirror.

“What nice looking-glasses you have in your room, my love. No woman can dress properly without them. Now, you’ve only got to look at poor Fanny Glover to know that she’s so modest as never even to look at herself in the glass to put her hat on.”

Mrs. Branderton chattered on, thinking that she was doing Bertha good. “A woman doesn’t want one to be solemn when she’s ill. I know when I have anything the matter, I like some one to talk to me about the fashions. I remember in my young days, when I was ill, I used to get old Mr. Crowhurst, the former vicar, to come and read the ladies’ papers to me. He was such a nice old man, not a bit like a clergyman; and he used to say I was his only parishioner whom he really liked visiting.... I’m not tiring you, am I, dear?”

“Oh, dear, no!” said Bertha.

“Now I suppose the Glovers have been talking all sorts of stuff to you. Of course one has to put up with it, I suppose, because it sets a good example to the lower orders; but I must say I do think the clergy nowadays sometimes forget their place. I consider it most objectionable when they insist on talking religion with you, as if you were a common person.... But they’re not nearly so nice as they used to be. In my young days the clergy were always gentlemen’s sons—but then they weren’t expected to trouble about the poor. I can quite understand that now a gentleman shouldn’t like to become a clergyman; he has to mix with the lower classes, and they’re growing more familiar every day.”

But suddenly Bertha, without warning, burst into tears. Mrs. Branderton was flabbergasted!

“My dear, what is the matter? Where are your salts? Shall I ring the bell?”

Bertha, sobbing violently, begged Mrs. Branderton to take no notice of her. That fashionable creature had a sentimental heart, and would have been delighted to weep with Bertha; but she had several calls to make, and could not risk a disarrangement of her person. She was also curious, and would have given much to find out the cause of Bertha’s outburst. She comforted herself, however, by giving the Hancocks, whose At Home day it was, a detailed account of the affair; and they, shortly afterwards, recounted it with sundry embellishments to Mrs. Mayston Ryle.

Mrs. Mayston Ryle, magnificently imposing as ever, snorted like a charger eager for battle.

“Mrs. Branderton sends me to sleep frequently,” she said; “But I can quite understand that if the poor thing isn’t well, Mrs. Branderton would make her cry. I never see her myself unless I’m in the most robust health, otherwise I know she’d simply make me howl.”

“But I wonder what was the matter with poor Mrs. Craddock,” said Miss Hancock.

“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Mayston Ryle in her majestic manner. “But I’ll find out. I dare say she only wants a little good society. I shall go and see her.”

And she did!

Chapter XIX

BUT the apathy with which for weeks Bertha had looked upon all terrestrial concerns was passing away before her increasing strength. It had been due only to an utter physical weakness, of the same order as that merciful indifference to all earthly sympathies which gives ease to the final passage into the Unknown. The prospect of death would be unendurable if one did not know that the enfeebled body brought a like enfeeblement of spirit, dissolving the ties of this world: when the traveller must leave the hostel with the double gate, the wine he loved has lost its savour and the bread turned bitter in his mouth. Like useless gauds, Bertha had let fall the interests of life; her soul lay a-dying. Her soul was a lighted candle in a lantern, flickering in the wind so that its flame was hardly seen and the lantern was useless; but presently the wind of death was stilled, and the light shone out and filled the darkness.

With increasing strength the old passion returned; love came back like a conqueror, and Bertha knew that she had not done with life. In her loneliness she yearned for Edward’s affection; for now he was all she had, and she stretched out her arms to him with a great desire. She blamed herself bitterly for her coldness, she wept at the idea of what he must have suffered. And she was ashamed that the love which she had thought eternal, should have been for a while destroyed. But a