“You don’t seem to care very much for my society, all the same.”
Bertha looked up quickly. “What makes you think that?”
“Well, you’re a precious long time coming back to Court Leys,” he replied, laughing.
Bertha was relieved, for evidently he was not taking the matter seriously. She had not the courage to say that she meant never to return: the endless explanation, his wonder, the impossibility of making him understand, were more than she could bear.
“When are you coming back? We all miss you, like anything.”
“Do you?” she said. “I really don’t know. We’ll see after the season.”
“What? Aren’t you coming for another couple of months?”
“I don’t think Blackstable suits me very well. I’m always ill there.”
“Oh, nonsense. It’s the finest air in England. Deathrate practically nil.”
“D’you think our life was very happy, Edward?”
She looked at him anxiously to see how he would take the tentative remark: but he was only astonished.
“Happy? Yes, rather. Of course we had our little tiffs. All people do. But they were chiefly at first, the road was a bit rough and we hadn’t got our tyres properly blown out. I’m sure I’ve got nothing to complain about.”
“That of course is the chief thing,” said Bertha.
“You look as well as anything now. I don’t see why you shouldn’t come back.”
“Well, we’ll see later. We shall have plenty of time to talk it over.”
She was afraid to speak the words on the tip of her tongue; it would be easier by correspondence.
“I wish you’d give some fixed date—so that I could have things ready, and tell people.”
“It depends upon Aunt Polly; I really can’t say for certain. I’ll write to you.”
They kept silence for a moment and then an idea seized Bertha.
“What d’you say to going to the Natural History Museum? Don’t you remember, we went there on our honeymoon? I’m sure it would amuse you to see it again.”
“Would you like to go?” asked Edward.
“I’m sure it would amuse you,” she replied.
Next day while Bertha was shopping with her husband, Gerald and Miss Ley sat alone.
“Are you very disconsolate without Bertha?” she asked.
“Utterly miserable!”
“That’s very rude to me, dear boy.”
“I’m awfully sorry, but I can never be polite to more than one person at a time: and I’ve been using up all my good manners on—Mr. Craddock.”
“I’m glad you like him,” replied Miss Ley, smiling.
“I don’t!”
“He’s a very worthy man.”
“If I hadn’t seen Bertha for six months, I shouldn’t take her off at once to see bugs.”
“Perhaps it was Bertha’s suggestion.”
“She must find Mr. Craddock precious dull if she prefers blackbeetles and stuffed kangaroos.”
“You shouldn’t draw such rapid conclusions, my friend.”
“D’you think she’s fond of him?”
“My dear Gerald, what a question! Is it not her duty to love, honour, and obey him?”
“If I were a woman I could never honour a man who was bald.”
“His locks are somewhat scanty; but he has a strong sense of duty.”
“I know that,” shouted Gerald. “It oozes out of him whenever he gets hot, just like gum.”
“He’s a County Councillor, and he makes speeches about the Union Jack, and he’s virtuous.”
“I know that too. He simply reeks of the ten commandments: they stick out all over him, like almonds in a tipsy cake.”
“My dear Gerald, Edward is a model; he is the typical Englishman as he flourishes in the country, upright and honest, healthy, dogmatic, moral—rather stupid. I esteem him enormously, and I ought to like him much better than you, who are a disgraceful scamp.”
“I wonder why you don’t.”
“Because I’m a wicked old woman; and I’ve learnt by long experience that people generally keep their vices to themselves, but insist on throwing their virtues in your face. And if you don’t happen to have any of your own, you get the worst of the encounter.”
“I think that’s what is so comfortable in you, Aunt Polly, that you’re not obstreperously good. You’re charity itself.”
“My dear Gerald,” said Miss Ley, putting up an admonishing forefinger, “women are by nature spiteful and intolerant; when you find one who exercises charity, it proves that she wants it very badly herself.”
Miss Ley was glad that Edward could not stay more than two days, for she was always afraid of surprising him. Nothing is more tedious than to talk with persons who treat your most obvious remarks as startling paradoxes; and Edward suffered likewise from that passion for argument, which is the bad talker’s substitute for conversation. People who cannot talk are always proud of their dialectic: they want to modify your tritest observations, and even if you suggest that the day is fine insist on arguing it out.
Bertha, in her husband’s presence, had suffered singular discomfort; it had been such a constraint that she found it an effort to talk with him, and she had to rack her brain for subjects of conversation. Her heart was perceptibly lightened when she returned from Victoria after seeing him off, and it gave her a thrill of pleasure to hear Gerald jump up when she came in. He ran towards her with glowing eyes.
“Oh, I’m so glad. I’ve hardly had a chance of speaking to you these last two days.”
“We have the whole afternoon before us.”
“Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”
Bertha agreed, and like two schoolfellows they sallied out. The day was sunny and warm, and they wandered by the river. The banks of the Thames about Chelsea have a pleasing trimness, a levity which is infinitely grateful after the sedateness of the rest of London. The embankments, in spite of their novelty, recall the days when the huge city was a great, straggling village, when the sedan-chair was a means of locomotion, and ladies wore patches and hoops; when epigram was the fashion and propriety was not.
Presently, as they watched the gleaming water, a penny steamboat approached the adjoining stage, and gave Bertha an idea.
“Would you like to take me to Greenwich?” she cried. “Aunt Polly’s dining out; we can have dinner at the Ship and come back by train.”
“By Jove, it will be ripping.”
They bolted down the gangway and took their tickets; the boat started, and Bertha, panting, sank on a seat. She felt a little reckless, pleased with herself, and amused to see Gerald’s unmeasured delight.
“I feel as if we were eloping,” she said, with a laugh; “I’m sure Aunt Polly will be dreadfully shocked.”
The boat went on, stopping every now and then to take in passengers. They came to the tottering wharves of Millbank, and then to the footstool turrets of St. John’s, the eight red blocks of St. Thomas’s Hospital, and the Houses of Parliament.