BUT Edward was certainly not an ardent lover. Bertha could not tell when first she had noticed his irresponsiveness; at the beginning she had known only that she loved her husband with all her heart, and her ardour had lit up his somewhat pallid attachment till it seemed to glow as fiercely as her own. Yet gradually she began to think that he made very little return for the wealth of affection which she lavished upon him. The causes of her dissatisfaction were scarcely explicable: a slight motion of withdrawal, an indifference to her feelings—little nothings which had seemed almost comic. Bertha at first likened Edward to the Hippolitus of Phædra, he was untamed and wild; the kisses of woman frightened him; his phlegm pleased her disguised as rustic savagery, and she said her passion should thaw the icicles in his heart. But soon she ceased to consider his passiveness amusing, sometimes she upbraided him, and often, when alone, she wept.

“I wonder if you realise what pain you cause me at times,” said Bertha.

“Oh, I don’t think I do anything of the kind.”

“You don’t see it.... When I kiss you, it is the most natural thing in the world for you to push me away, as if—almost as if you couldn’t bear me.”

“Nonsense!”

To himself Edward was the same now as when they were first married.

“Of course after four months of married life you can’t expect a man to be the same as on his honeymoon. One can’t always be making love and canoodling. Everything in its proper time and season,” he added, with the unoriginal man’s fondness for proverbial philosophy.

After the day’s work he liked to read his Standard in peace, so when Bertha came up to him he put her gently aside.

“Leave me alone for a bit, there’s a good girl.”

“Oh, you don’t love me,” she cried then, feeling as if her heart would break.

He did not look up from his paper nor make reply; he was in the middle of a leading article.

“Why don’t you answer?” she cried.

“Because you’re talking nonsense.”

He was the best-humoured of men, and Bertha’s temper never disturbed his equilibrium. He knew that women felt a little irritable at times, but if a man gave ’em plenty of rope, they’d calm down after a bit.

“Women are like chickens,” he told a friend. “Give ’em a good run, properly closed in with stout wire netting, so that they can’t get into mischief, and when they cluck and cackle just sit tight and take no notice.”

Marriage had made no great difference in Edward’s life. He had always been a man of regular habits, and these he continued to cultivate. Of course he was more comfortable.

“There’s no denying it: a fellow wants a woman to look after him,” he told Dr. Ramsay, whom he sometimes met on the latter’s rounds. “Before I was married I used to find my shirts wore out in no time, but now when I see a cuff getting a bit groggy I just give it to the Missis and she makes it as good as new.”

“There’s a good deal of extra work, isn’t there, now you’ve taken on the Home Farm?”

“Oh, bless you, I enjoy it. Fact is, I can’t get enough work to do. And it seems to me that if you want to make farming pay nowadays you must do it on a big scale.”

All day Edward was occupied, if not on the farms, then with business at Blackstable, Tercanbury, and Faversley.

“I don’t approve of idleness,” he said. “They always say the devil finds work for idle hands to do, and upon my word I think there’s a lot of truth in it.”

Miss Glover, to whom this sentiment was addressed, naturally approved, and when Edward immediately afterwards went out, leaving her with Bertha, she said—

“What a good fellow your husband is! You don’t mind my saying so, do you?”

“Not if it pleases you,” said Bertha, drily.

“I hear praise of him from every side. Of course Charles has the highest opinion of him.”

Bertha did not answer, and Miss Glover added, “You can’t think how glad I am that you’re so happy.”

Bertha smiled. “You’ve got such a kind heart, Fanny.”

The conversation dragged, and after five minutes of heavy silence Miss Glover rose to go. When the door was closed upon her, Bertha sank back in her chair, thinking. This was one of her unhappy days—Eddie had walked into Blackstable, and she had wished to accompany him.

“I don’t think you’d better come with me,” he said. “I’m in rather a hurry and I shall walk fast.”

“I can walk fast too,” she said, her face clouding over.

“No, you can’t—I know what you call walking fast. If you like you can come and meet me on the way back.”

“Oh, you do everything you can to hurt me. It looks as if you welcomed an opportunity of being cruel.”

“How unreasonable you are, Bertha. Can’t you see that I’m in a hurry, and I haven’t got time to saunter along and chatter about the buttercups.”

“Well, let’s drive in.”

“That’s impossible. The mare isn’t well, and the pony had a hard day yesterday; he must rest to-day.”

“It’s simply because you don’t want me to come. It’s always the same, day after day. You invent anything to get rid of me.”

She burst into tears, knowing that what she said was unjust, but feeling notwithstanding extremely ill-used. Edward smiled with irritating good temper.

“You’ll be sorry for what you’ve said when you’ve calmed down, and then you’ll want me to forgive you.”

She looked up, flushing. “You think I’m a child and a fool.”

“No, I just think you’re out of sorts to-day.”

Then he went out, whistling, and she heard him give an order to the gardener in his usual manner, as cheerful as if nothing had happened. Bertha knew that he had already forgotten the little scene. Nothing affected his good humour. She might weep, she might tear her heart out (metaphorically), and bang it on the floor, Edward would not be perturbed; he would still be placid, good-tempered, forbearing. Hard words, he said, broke nobody’s bones—“Women are like chickens, when they cluck and cackle sit tight and take no notice!”

On his return Edward appeared not to see that his wife was out of temper. His spirits were always equable, and he was an unobservant person. She answered him in mono-syllables, but he chattered away, delighted at having driven a good bargain with a man in Blackstable. Bertha longed for him to remark upon her condition so that she might burst out with reproaches, but Edward was hopelessly dense—or else he saw and was unwilling to give her an opportunity to speak. Bertha, almost for the first time, was seriously angry with her husband and it frightened her—suddenly Edward seemed an enemy, and she wished to inflict some hurt upon him. She did not understand herself—what was going to happen next? Why wouldn’t he say something so that she might pour forth her woes and then be reconciled! The day wore on and she preserved a sullen silence; her heart was beginning to ache terribly—the night came, and still Edward made no sign; she looked about for a chance of beginning the quarrel, but nothing offered. Bertha pretended to go to sleep and she did not give him the kiss, the never-ending kiss of lovers which they always exchanged. Surely he would notice it, surely he would ask what troubled her, and then she could at last bring him to his knees. But he said nothing; he was dog-tired after a hard day’s work, and without a word went to sleep—in five minutes Bertha heard his heavy, regular breathing.

Then she broke down; she could never sleep without saying good-night to him, without the kiss of his lips.

“He’s stronger than I,” she said, “because he doesn’t love me.”

Bertha wept silently; she could not bear to be angry with her husband. She would submit to anything rather than pass the night in wrath, and the next day as unhappily as this. She was entirely humbled. At last, unable any longer to bear the agony, she woke him.

“Eddie, you’ve not said good-night to me.”

“By Jove, I forgot all about it,” he answered, sleepily. Bertha stifled a sob.

“Hulloa, what’s the matter?” he said. “You’re not crying just because I forgot to kiss you—I was awfully fagged, you know.”

He really had noticed nothing whatever; while she was passing through utter distress he had been as happily self-satisfied as usual. But the momentary recurrence of Bertha’s anger was quickly stilled. She could not afford now to be proud.

“You’re not angry with me?” she said. “I can’t sleep unless you kiss me.”

“Silly girl!” he whispered.

“You do love me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

He kissed her as she loved to be kissed, and in the delight of it her anger was quite forgotten.

“I can’t live unless you love me. Oh, I wish I could make you understand how I love you.... We’re friends again now, aren’t we?”

“We haven’t ever been otherwise.”

Bertha gave a sigh of relief, and lay in his arms completely happy. A minute more and Edward’s breathing told her that he had already fallen asleep; she dared not move for fear of waking him.

 

The summer brought Bertha new pleasures, and she set herself to enjoy the pastoral life which she had imagined. The elms of Court Leys now were dark with leaves; and the heavy, close-fitting verdure gave quite a stately look to the house. The elm is the most respectable of trees, over-pompous if anything, but perfectly well-bred; and the shade it casts is no ordinary shade, but solid and self-assured as befits the estate of a county family. The fallen trunk had been removed, and in the autumn young trees were to be planted in the vacant spaces. Edward had set himself with a will to put the place properly to rights. The spring had seen a new coat of paint on Court Leys, so that it looked spick and span as the suburban villa of a stockbroker. The beds which for years had been neglected, now were trim with the abominations of carpet bedding; squares of red geraniums contrasted with circles of yellow calcellarias; the overgrown boxwood was cut down to a just height; the hawthorn hedge was doomed, and Edward had arranged to enclose the grounds with a wooden pallisade and laurel bushes. The drive was decorated with several loads of gravel, so that it became a thing of pride to the successor of an ancient and lackadaisical race. Craddock had not reigned in their stead a fortnight before the grimy sheep were expelled from the lawns on either side of the avenue, and since then the grass had been industriously mown and rolled. Now a tennis-court had been marked out, which, as Edward said, made things look homely. Finally the iron gates were gorgeous in black and gold as suited the entrance to a gentleman’s mansion, and the renovated lodge proved to all and sundry that Court Leys was in the hands of a man who knew what was what, and delighted in the proprieties.

Though Bertha abhorred all innovations, she had meekly accepted Edward’s improvements: they formed an inexhaustible topic of conversation, and his enthusiasm always pleased her.

“By Jove,” he said, rubbing his hands, “the changes will make your aunt simply jump, won’t they?”

“They will indeed,” said Bertha, smiling.

She shuddered a little at the prospect of Miss Ley’s sarcastic praise.

“She’ll hardly recognise the place; the house looks as good as new, and the grounds might have been laid out only half-a-dozen years ago.... Give me five years more and even you won’t know your old home.”

 

Miss Ley had at last accepted one of the invitations which Edward insisted should be showered upon her, and wrote to say she was coming down for a week. Edward was of course much pleased; as he said, he wanted to be friends with everybody, and it didn’t seem natural that Bertha’s only relative should make a point of avoiding them.

“It looks as if she didn’t approve of our marriage, and it makes the people talk.”

He met the good lady at the station, and somewhat to her disgust greeted her with effusion.

“Ah, here you are at last!” he bellowed, in his jovial way. “We thought you were never coming. Here, porter!” He raised his voice so that the platform shook and rumbled.

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.