remembering by accident their wedding-day, Edward gave his wife a bracelet; and feeling benevolent in consequence, and having dined well, he patted her hand and remarked:—
“Time does fly, doesn’t it?”
“I have heard people say so,” she replied, smiling.
“Well, who’d have thought we’d been married eight years! it doesn’t seem above eighteen months to me. And we’ve got on very well, haven’t we?”
“My dear Edward, you are such a model husband. It quite embarrasses me sometimes.”
“Ha, ha! that’s a good one. But I can say this for myself, I do try to do my duty. Of course at first we had our little tiffs—people have to get used to one another, and one can’t expect to have all plain sailing just at once. But for years now—well, ever since you went to Italy, I think, we’ve been as happy as the day is long, haven’t we?”
“Yes, dear.”
“When I look back at the little rumpuses we used to have, upon my word, I wonder what they were all about.”
“So do I.” And this Bertha said quite truthfully.
“I suppose it was just the weather.”
“I dare say.”
“Ah, well—all’s well that ends well.”
“My dear Edward, you’re a philosopher.”
“I don’t know about that—but I think I’m a politician; which reminds me that I’ve not read about the new men-of-war in to-day’s paper. What I’ve been agitating about for years is more ships and more guns—I’m glad to see the Government have taken my advice at last.”
“It’s very satisfactory, isn’t it? It will encourage you to persevere. And, of course, it’s nice to know that the Cabinet read your speeches in the Blackstable Times.”
“I think it would be a good sight better for the country if those in power paid more attention to provincial opinion. It’s men like me who really know the feeling of the nation. You might get me the paper, will you—it’s in the dining-room.”
It seemed quite natural to Edward that Bertha should wait upon him: it was the duty of a wife. She handed him the Standard, and he began to read; he yawned once or twice.
“Lord, I am sleepy.”
Presently he could not keep his eyes open, the paper dropped from his hand, and he sank back in his chair with legs outstretched, his hands resting comfortably on his stomach. His head lolled to one side and his jaw dropped, and he began to snore. Bertha read. After a while he woke with a start.
“Bless me, I do believe I’ve been asleep,” he cried. “Well, I’m dead tired, I think I shall go to bed. I suppose you won’t come up yet?”
“Not just yet.”
“Well, don’t stay up too late, there’s a good girl, it’s not good for you; and put the lights out properly when you come.”
She turned to him her cheek, which he kissed, stifling a yawn; then he rolled upstairs.
“There’s one advantage in Edward,” murmured Bertha. “No one could accuse him of being uxorious.”
Mariage à la mode.
Bertha’s solitary walk was to the sea. The shore between Blackstable and the Medway was extraordinarily wild. At distant intervals were the long, low buildings of the coastguard stations; and the clean, pink walls, the neat railings, the well-kept gravel, contrasted rather surprisingly with the surrounding desolation. One could walk for miles without meeting a soul, and the country spread out from the sea, low and flat and marshy. The beach was of countless shells of every possible variety, which crumbled under foot; while here and there were great banks of seaweed and bits of wood or rope, the jetsam of a thousand tides. In one spot, a few yards out but high and dry at low water, were the remains of an old hulk, whose wooden ribs stood out weirdly like the skeleton of some huge sea-beast. And then all round was the lonely sea, with never a ship nor a fishing-smack in sight. In winter it was as if a spirit of solitude, like a mystic shroud, had descended upon the shore and upon the desert waters.
Then, in the melancholy, in the dreariness, Bertha found a subtle fascination. The sky was a threatening heavy cloud, low down; and the wind tore along shouting, screaming, and whistling: there was panic in the turbulent sea, murky and yellow, and the waves leaped up, one at the other’s heels, and beat down on the beach with an angry roar. It was desolate, desolate; the sea was so merciless that the very sight appalled one: it was a wrathful power, beating forwards, ever wrathfully beating forwards, roaring with pain when the chains that bound it wrenched it back; and after each desperate effort it shrank with a yell of anguish. And the seagulls swayed above the waves in their melancholy flight, rising and falling with the wind.
Bertha loved also the calm of winter, when the sea-mist and the mist of heaven were one; when the sea was silent and heavy, and the solitary gull flew screeching over the gray waters, screeching mournfully. She loved the calm of summer when the sky was cloudless and infinite. Then she spent long hours, lying at the water’s edge, delighted with the solitude and with her absolute peace. The sea, placid as a lake, unmoved by the lightest ripple, was a looking-glass reflecting the glory of heaven; and it turned to fire when the sun sank in the west; it was a sea of molten copper, red, brilliant, so that the eyes were dazzled. A troop of seagulls slept on the water; and there were hundreds of them, motionless and silent; one arose now and then, and flew for a moment with heavy wing, and sank down, and all was still.
Once the coolness was so tempting that Bertha could not resist it. Timidly, rapidly, she slipped off her clothes and looking round to see that there was really no one in sight, stepped in. The wavelets about her feet made her shiver a little, and then with a splash, stretching out her arms, she ran forward, and half fell, half dived into the water. Now it was delightful; she rejoiced in the freedom of her limbs, for it was an unknown pleasure to swim unhampered by costume. It gave a fine sense of power, and the salt water, lapping round her, was wonderfully exhilarating. She wanted to sing aloud in the joy of her heart. Diving below the surface, she came up with a shake of the head and a little cry of delight; then her hair was loosened and with a motion it all came tumbling about her shoulders and trailed out in its ringlets over the water.
She swam out, a fearless swimmer; and it gave her a feeling of strength and independence to have the deep waters all about her, the deep calm sea of summer; she turned on her back and floated, trying to look the sun in the face. The sea glimmered with the sunbeams and the sky was dazzling. Then, returning, Bertha floated again, quite near the shore; it amused her to lie on her back, rocked by the tiny waves, and to sink her ears so that she could hear the shingle rub together curiously with the ebb and flow of the tide. She shook out her long hair and it stretched about her like an aureole.
She exulted in her youth—in her youth? Bertha felt no older than when she was eighteen, and yet—she was thirty. The thought made her wince; for she had never realised the passage of the years, she had never imagined that her youth was waning. Did people think her already old? The sickening fear came to her that she resembled Miss Hancock, attempting by archness and by an assumption of frivolity, to persuade her neighbours that she was juvenile. Bertha asked herself whether she was ridiculous when she rolled in the water like a young girl: you cannot act the mermaid with crow’s feet about your eyes, with wrinkles round your mouth. In a panic she dressed herself, and going home, flew to a looking-glass. She
