As Dan sympathised with none of Beth's tastes or interests, and seemed
to have none of his own with which she could sympathise, their stock
of conversation was soon exhausted, and there was nothing like
companionship in their intercourse. If Beth had had no resources in
herself, she would have had but a sorry time of it in those days,
especially as she received no kindness from any one in Slane. Some of
the other medical men's wives called when she first arrived, and she
returned their calls punctually, but their courtesy went no farther.
Mrs. Carne, the wife of the leading medical practitioner, asked her to
lunch, and Mrs. Jeffreys, a surgeon's wife, asked her to afternoon
tea; but as these invitations did not include her husband, she refused
them. She invited these ladies and their husbands in return, however,
but they both pleaded previous engagements.
After the Maclures had been some little time at Slane, Lady Benyon
bethought her of an old friend of hers, one Lady Beg, who lived in the
neighbourhood, and asked her to call upon Beth, which she did
forthwith, for she was one of those delightful old ladies who like
nothing better than to be doing a kindness. She came immediately,
bringing an invitation to lunch on the following Sunday, already
written in case she should find no one at home.
Dan was delighted, "We shall meet nothing but county people there," he
said, "and that's the proper set for us. They always do the right
thing, you see. They're the only people worth knowing."
"But Beg is miles away from here," Beth said; "how shall we go?"
"We'll go in the dogcart, of course," Dan answered.
He had set up a dogcart on their arrival, but this was the first time
he had proposed to take Beth out in it.
As they drove along on Sunday morning in the bright sunshine, Dan's
spirits overflowed in a characteristic way at the prospect of meeting
"somebody decent," as he expressed it, and he made remarks about the
faces and figures of all the women they passed on the road,
criticising them as if they were cattle to be sold at so much a point.
"That little girl there," he said of one, whom he beamed upon and
ogled as they passed, "reminds me of a fair-haired little devil I
picked up one night in Paris. Gad! she _was_ a bad un! up to more
tricks than any other I ever knew. She used to--" (here followed a
description of some of her peculiar practices).
"I wish you would not tell me these things," Beth remonstrated.
But he only laughed. "You know you're amused," he said. "It's just
your conventional affectation that makes you pretend to object. That's
the way women drive their husbands elsewhere for amusement; they won't
take a proper intelligent interest in life, so there's nothing to talk
to them about. I agree with the advanced party. They're always
preaching that women should know the world. Women who _do_ know the
world have no nonsense about them, and are a jolly sight better
company than your starched Puritans who pretend to know nothing. It's
the most interesting side of life after all, and the most instructive;
and I wonder at your want of intelligence, Beth. You shouldn't be
afraid to know the natural history of humanity."
"Nor am I," Beth answered quietly; "nor the natural--or
unnatural--depravity either, which is what you really mean, I believe.
But knowing it, and delighting in it as a subject of conversation, are
two very different things. Jesting about that side of life affects me
like mud on a clean coat. I resent being splashed with it, and try to
get rid of it, but unfortunately it sticks and stains."
"Oh, you're quite right," Dan answered unctuously. "It's just shocking
the stories that are told--" and for the rest of the way he discoursed
about morals, illustrating his meaning as he proceeded with anecdotes
of the choicest description.
When they arrived at Beg House, they found the company more mixed than
Dan had anticipated. Dr. and Mrs. Carne were there, Mr. and Mrs.
Jeffreys, and Mr., Mrs., and Miss Petterick. Mr. Petterick was a
solicitor of bumptious manners and doubtful reputation, whom the whole
county hated, but tolerated because of his wealth and shrewdness,
either of which they liked to be in a position to draw upon if
necessary. But besides these townspeople, there were Sir George and
Lady Galbraith, Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe, and Mrs. Orton
Beg, a widowed daughter-in-law of Lady Beg's.
Dr. Maclure immediately made up to Sir George Galbraith, who was also
a medical man, and of great repute in his own line. He was a county
magnate besides, and a man of wealth and importance by reason of a
baronetcy somewhat unexpectedly inherited, and a beautiful
country-seat. He continued to practise, however, for love of his
profession, but used it as a means of doing good rather than as a
source of income. In appearance he was a tall, rather awkward man,
with a fine head and a strong, plain face. He spoke in that deliberate
Scotch way which has a ring of sincerity in it and inspires
confidence, and the contrast between his manner and Dan's struck Beth
unpleasantly. She wished Dan would be less effusive; it was almost as
if he were cringing; and she thought he should have waited for Sir
George Galbraith, who was the older man, to have made the first
advance.
Beth herself was at her ease as soon as she came among these people.
It was the social atmosphere to which she had been accustomed. Mrs.
Carne, Mrs. Jeffreys, and Mrs. Petterick were on their best behaviour,
but Beth had only to be natural. The county people were all nice to
her, and the other town ladies, who had hitherto slighted her, looked
on and wondered to see her so well received. At luncheon, as there
were not gentlemen enough to go round, she sat between Sir George
Galbraith and Mrs. Orton Beg. Mrs. Kilroy sat opposite. Sir George had
known Mrs. Kilroy all her life. It was he, in fact, who nicknamed her
and her brother "The Heavenly Twins" in the days when, as children,
they used to be the delight of their grandfather, the old Duke of
Morningquest, and the terror of their parents, Mr. and Lady Adeline
Hamilton-Wells.
As soon as they were seated, Mrs. Kilroy attacked Sir George on some
subject which they had previously discussed, and there ensued a little
playful war of words.
"Oh, you're just a phrase-maker," Mrs. Kilroy exclaimed at last,
finding herself worsted; "and phrases prove nothing."
"What is a phrase-maker?" he asked with a twinkle.
"Why, a phrase-maker is a person who recklessly launches a saying,
winged by wit, and of superior brevity and distinctness, but not
necessarily true--a saying which flies direct to the mind, and, being
of a cutting nature, carves an indelible impression there," said Mrs.
Kilroy--"an impression which numbs the intellect and prevents us
reasoning for ourselves. Opinion is formed for the most part of
phrases, not of knowledge and observation. The things people say
smartly are quoted, not because they are true, but because they are
smart. A lie well put will carry conviction to the average mind more
surely than a good reason if ill-expressed, because most people have
an aesthetic sense that is satisfied by a happy play upon words, but
few have reason enough to discriminate when the brilliant ingenuity
of the phrase-maker is pitted against a plain statement of the bald
truth."
"As, for instance?" asked Sir George.
"Man's love is of his life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence,"
Mrs. Kilroy responded glibly. "That is quoted everywhere, and I have
never heard it questioned, yet it is a flagrant case of confounding
smartness with accuracy. Love of the kind that Byron meant is quite as
much a thing apart from woman's life as from man's; more men, in fact,
make the pursuit of it their whole existence than women do."
"You are right," said Sir George thoughtfully. "Love is certainly not
a modern woman's whole existence, and she never dies of it. She feels
it strongly, but it does not swamp her. In a bad attack, she may go to
bed young one night and rise next day with grey hairs in her head, and
write a book about it; but then she recovers: and I think you are
right about phrases, too. 'Syllables govern the world,' John Selden
said; but 'phrases' would have been the better word. Phrases are the
keynotes to life; they set the tune to which men insensibly shape
their course, and so rule us for good and ill. This is a time of talk,
and formidable is the force of phrases. Catch-words are creative; they
do not prove that a thing is--they cause it to be."
"Then an unscrupulous phrase-maker may be a danger to the community,"
Beth observed.
"Yes," said Sir George; "but on the other hand, one who is scrupulous
would be a philanthropist of extraordinary power."
"Now, isn't that like his craft and subtlety, Evadne?" said Mrs.
Kilroy to Lady Galbraith. "He has been gradually working up to that in
order to make Mrs. Maclure suppose I intended to pay him a compliment
when I called him a phrase-maker."
"You are taking a mean advantage of an honest attempt on my part to
arrive at the truth," said Sir George.
"I believe you blundered into that without seeing in the least where
you were going," Beth observed naively.
Everybody smiled, except Dan, who told her on the way home she had
made a great mistake to say such a thing, and she must be careful in
future, or she would give offence and make enemies for him.
"No fear with people like that," said Beth. "They all understood me."
"Which is as much as to say that your husband does not," said Dan,
assuming his hurt expression. "Very well. Go your own way. But you'll
be sorry for it."
"What a delightful person Mrs. Orton Beg is," Beth observed, to make a
diversion; "and so nice-looking too!"
"You are easily pleased! Why, she's forty if she's a day!" Dan
ejaculated, speaking as if that were to her discredit, and must
deprive her of any consideration from him.
The next excitement was a military ball. Dan determined to go, and
Beth was ready enough; she had never been to a ball.
"But how about a dress?" she said. "There has been such a sudden
change in the fashion since mine were made, I'm afraid I have nothing
that will do."
"Then get a new one," Dan said.
"What! and add to the bills?" Beth objected.
"Oh, bother the bills!" he answered in the tone he called cheery.
"I've had them coming in all my life and I'm still here. Get a thing
when you want it, and pay for it when you can--that's my motto. Why,
my tailor's bill alone is up in the hundreds.
"But that was the bill mamma gave you the money to settle," Beth
exclaimed.
"I know," he answered casually. "I got the money out of her for that,
but I had to spend it on your amusement in town, my dear."
"Oh!" Beth ejaculated--"how could you?"
"How could I?" he answered coolly. "Well, I couldn't of course if I
hadn't been clever; but I can always get anything I like out of old
ladies. They dote on me. You've only got to amuse them, you know, and
pour in a little sentiment on occasion. Let them understand you've
been rather a naughty man, but you know what's right--that always
fetches them. Your mother would have sold out all she had to help me
when she found I meant to repent and settle. But of course I wouldn't
take anything that was not absolutely necessary," he added
magnanimously.
Beth compressed her lips and frowned. "Do you mean to say you obtained
money from a poor woman like my mother for a special purpose which she
approved, and spent that money on something else?" she asked.
Dan changed countenance. "I got the money from your mother to pay my
tailor's bill; but the circumstance of your spending more money in
town than I could afford compelled me to use it for another purpose,"
he answered in rather a blustering tone.
"I spent no money in town," Beth said.
"I had to spend it on you then," he rejoined, "and a nice lament you
would have made if I hadn't! But it's all the same. Husband and wife
are one; and I maintain that the money was given to me to pay a just
debt, and I paid a just debt with it. Now, what have you to say
against that to the disparagement of your husband?"
He looked Beth straight in the face as he spoke, as if the nature of
the transaction would be changed by staring her out of countenance,
and she returned his gaze unflinchingly; but not another word would
she say on the subject. There is a sad majority of wives whose
attitude towards their husbands must be one of contemptuous
toleration--toleration of their past depravity and of their present
deceits, whatever form they may take. Such a wife looks upon her
husband as a hopeless incurable, because she knows that he has not the
sense, even if he had the strength of character, to mend his moral
defects. Beth fully realised her husband's turpitude with regard to
the money, and also realised the futility of trying to make him see
his own conduct in the matter in any light not flattering to himself,
and she was deeply pained. She had taken it for granted that Dan would
pay interest on the money, but had not troubled herself to find out if
he were doing so, as she now thought that she ought to have done, for
clearly she should have paid it herself if he did not. True, she never
had any money; but that was no excuse, for there were honest ways of
making money, and make it she would. She was on her way upstairs to
her secret chamber to think the matter out undisturbed when she came
to this determination; and as soon as she had shut herself in, she
sank upon her knees, and vowed to God solemnly to pay back every
farthing, and the interest in full, if she had to work her fingers to
the bone. Curiously enough, it was with her fingers she first thought
of working, not with her brain. She had seen an advertisement in a
daily paper of several depots for the sale of "ladies' work" in London
and other places, and she determined at once to try that method of
making money. Work of all kinds came easily to her, and happily she
still had her two sovereigns, which would be enough to lay in a stock
of materials to begin with. Her pin-money Dan regularly appropriated
as soon as it arrived, with the facetious remark that it would just
pay for her keep; and so far Beth had let him have it without a
murmur, yielding in that as in all else, however much against her own
inclinations, for gentleness, and also with a vague notion of making
up to him in some sort for his own shortcomings, which she could not
help fancying must be as great a trouble to him as they were to her.
She had grown to have a very real affection for Dan, as indeed she
would have had for any one who was passably kind to her; but her
estimate of his character, as she gradually became acquainted with it,
was never influenced by her affection, except in so far as she pitied
him for traits which would have made her despise another man.
Since her marriage she had given up her free, wild, wandering habits.
She would go into the town to order things at the shops in the
morning, and take a solitary walk out into the country in the
afternoon perhaps, but without any keen enjoyment. Her natural zest
for the woods and fields was suspended. She had lost touch with
nature. Instead of looking about her observantly, as had been her
wont, she walked now, as a rule, with her eyes fixed on the ground,
thinking deeply. She was losing vitality too; her gait was less
buoyant, and she was becoming subject to aches and pains she had never
felt before. Dan said they were neuralgic, and showed that she wanted
a tonic, but troubled himself no more about them. He always seemed to
think she should be satisfied when he found a name for her complaint.
She had also become much thinner, which made her figure childishly
young; but in the face she looked old for her age--five-and-twenty at
least--although she was not yet eighteen.
There was one particularly strong and happy point in Beth's character:
she wasted little or no time in repining for the thing that was done.
All her thought was how to remedy the evil and make amends; so now,
when she had recovered from the first shock of her husband's
revelation, she put the thought of it aside, pulled herself together
quickly, and found relief in setting to work with a will. The exertion
alone was inspiriting, and re-aroused the faculty which had been
dormant in her of late. She went at once to get materials for her
work, and stepped out more briskly than she had done for many a day.
She perceived that the morning air was fresh and sweet, and she
inhaled deep draughts of it, and rejoiced in the sunshine. Just
opposite their house, across the road, on the other side of a wooden
paling, the park-like meadow was intensely green; old horse-chestnuts
dotted about it made refreshing intervals of shade; in the hedgerows
the tall elms stood out clear against the sky, and the gnarled oaks
cast fantastic shadows on the grass; while beyond it, at the farther
side of the meadow by the brook, the row of Canadian poplars which
bordered it kept up a continuous whispering, as was their wont, even
on the stillest days. When Beth first heard them, they spoke a
language to her which she comprehended but could not translate; but
the immediate effect of her life with Dan had been to deaden her
perception, so that she could not comprehend. Then the whispering
became a mere rustle of leaves, appealing to nothing but her sense of
hearing, and her delight in their murmur lapsed when its significance
was lost to her spirit.
But that morning Nature spoke to her again and her eyes were opened.
She saw the grey-green poplars, the gnarled oaks, the dark crests of
the elms upraised against the radiant blue of the sky, and felt a
thrill like triumph as she watched the great masses of cloud,
dazzlingly white, floating in infinite space majestically. The life
about her, too--the twittering of birds in the hedgerows; an Alderney
cow with its calf in the fields; a young colt careering wildly,
startled by a passing train; a big dog that saluted her with friendly
nose as he trotted by--all these said something to her which made her
feel that, let what might happen, it was good to be alive.
On her way into town she thought out a piece of work, something more
original and effective than the things usually sold in fancy-work
shops, which did not often please her. When she had bought all the
materials that she required, there was very little of her two pounds
left, but she returned in high spirits, carrying the rather large
parcel herself, lest, if it were sent, it should arrive when Dan was
at home and excite his curiosity. He always appeared if he heard the
door-bell ring, and insisted on knowing who or what had come, an
inquisitive trick that irritated Beth into baffling him whenever she
could.
She carried her precious packet up to her secret chamber, and set to
work at once. Dan, when he came in to lunch, was surprised to find her
unusually cheerful. After the temper she had displayed at breakfast,
he had expected to have anything but a pleasant time of it for a
little. Seeing her in good spirits put him also into a genial mood,
and he began at once to talk about himself--his favourite topic.
"Well, I've had a rattling hard day," he observed. "You'd be surprised
at the amount I've done in the time. I don't believe any other man
here could have done it. I was at that confounded hospital a couple of
hours, and after that I had a round! People are beginning to send for
me now as the last from school. They think I'm up to the latest
dodges. The old men won't like it! I had to go out to the Pettericks
to see that girl Bertha again. Their family doctor could make nothing
of her case, but it's simple enough. The girl's hysterical, that's
what she is; and I know what I'd like to prescribe for her, and that's
a husband. Hee-hee! Soon cure her hysterics! As to the old girl, her
mother, she's got"--then followed a minute description of her
ailments, told in the baldest language. Of two words Dan always chose
the coarsest in talking to Beth, now that they were married, which had
made her writhe at first; but when she had remonstrated, he assumed an
injured air, after which she silently endured the infliction for fear
of wounding him. And it was the same with regard to his patients. The
first time he described the ailment of a lady patient, and made gross
comments about her, Beth had exclaimed--
"O Dan! what would she think of you if she knew you had told me?
Surely it is a breach of confidence!"
"Well," he exclaimed, trying to wither her with a look, "you _have_ a
nice opinion of your husband! Is it possible that I cannot speak to my
own wife without bringing such an accusation upon myself! Well, well!
And I'm slaving for you morning, noon, and night, to keep you in some
sort of decency and comfort; and when I come home, and do my best to
be cheery and amuse you, instead of being morose after the strain of
the day, as most men are, all the thanks I get is a speech like that!
O holy matrimony!"
"I did not mean to annoy you, Dan; I'm sorry," Beth protested.
"So you should be!" he said; "so you should be! It's mighty hard for
me to feel that my own wife hasn't confidence enough in me to be sure
that I should never say a word either to her or anybody else about any
of my patients to which they'd object."
"People feel differently on the subject, perhaps," Beth ventured. "I
only know that if I had a doctor who talked to his wife about my
complaints, I should"--despise him, was what she was going to say, but
she changed the phrase--"I should not like it. But you should know
what your own patients feel about it better than I do."
Even as she spoke, however, her mother's remark of long ago about a
"talking doctor" recurred to her, and she felt lowered in her own
estimation by the kind of concession she was making to him. The
tragedy of such a marriage consists in the effect of the man's mind
upon the woman's, shut up with him in the closest intimacy day and
night, and all the time imbibing his poisoned thoughts. Beth's womanly
grace pleaded with her continually not to hurt her husband since he
meant no offence, not to damp his spirits even when they took a form
so distasteful to her. To check him was to offend him and provoke a
scene for nothing, since his taste was not to be improved; and she
would have to have checked him perpetually, and made a mere nag of
herself; for to talk in this way to her, to tell her objectionable
stories, and harp on depravity of all kinds, was his one idea of
pleasurable conversation. It was seldom, therefore, that she
remonstrated--especially in those early days when she had not as yet
perceived that by tacitly acquiescing she was lending herself to
inevitable corruption.
Just at that time, too, she did not trouble herself much about
anything. She was entirely absorbed in her new object in life--to get
the work done, to make the money, to pay her mother with interest;
there was continual exaltation of spirit in the endeavour. Every
moment that she could safely secure, she spent in her secret chamber,
hard at work. Her outlook was on the sky above, for ever changing; on
the gay garden below, whence light airs wafted the fragrance of
flowers from time to time, to her delight; and on a gentle green
ascent, covered and crowned with trees, which shut out the world
beyond. Here there was a colony of rooks, where the birds were busy
all day long sometimes, and from which they were sometimes absent from
early morning till sundown, when they came back cawing by ones and
twos and threes, a long straggling procession of them, their dark
iridescent forms with broad black wings outspread, distinct and
decorative, against the happy blue. Beth loved the birds, and even as
she worked she watched them, their housekeepings and comings and
goings; and heard their talk; and often as she worked she looked out
at the fair prospect and up at the sky hopefully, and vowed again to
accomplish one act of justice at all events. She stopped her regular
studies at this time, because she conceived them to be for her own
mere personal benefit, while the task which she had set herself was
for a better purpose. But, although she did not study as had been her
wont, while she sewed she occupied her mind in a way that was much
more beneficial to it than the purposeless acquisition of facts, the
solving of mathematical problems, or conning of parts of speech.
Beside her was always an open book, it might be a passage of
Scripture, a scene from Shakespeare, a poem or paragraph rich in the
wisdom and beauty of some great mind; and as she sewed she dwelt upon
it, repeating it to herself until she was word-perfect in it, then
making it even more her own by earnest contemplation. These passages
became the texts of many observations; and in them was also the light
which showed her life as it is, and as it should be lived. In
meditating upon them she taught herself to meditate; and in following
up the clues they gave her in the endeavour to discriminate and to
judge fairly, by slow degrees she acquired the precious habit of clear
thought. This lifted her at once above herself as she had been; and
what she had lost of insight and spiritual perception since her
marriage, she began to recover in another and more perfect form.
Wholesome consideration of the realities of life now took the place of
fanciful dreams. Her mind, wonderfully fertilised, teemed again--not
with vain imaginings, however, as heretofore, but with something more
substantial. Purposeful thought was where the mere froth of sensuous
seeing had been; and it was thought that now clamoured for expression
instead of the verses and stories--fireworks of the brain, pleasant,
transient, futile distractions with nothing more nourishing in them
than the interest and entertainment of the moment--which had occupied
her chiefly from of old. It was natural to Beth to be open, to discuss
all that concerned herself with her friends; but having no one to talk
to now, she began on a sudden to record her thoughts and impressions
in writing; and having once begun, she entered upon a new phase of
existence altogether. She had discovered a recreation which was more
absorbing than anything she had ever tried before; for her early
scribbling had been of another kind, not nearly so entrancing. Then it
had been the idle gossip of life, and the mere pictorial art of
word-painting, an ingenious exercise, that had occupied her; now it
was the more soul-stirring themes in the region of philosophy and
ethics which she pursued, and scenes and phases of life interested her
only as the raw material from which a goodly moral might be extracted.
Art for art's sake she despised, but in art for man's sake she already
discovered noble possibilities. But her very delight in her new
pursuit made her think it right to limit her indulgence in it. Duty
she conceived to be a painful effort necessarily, but writing was a
pleasure; she therefore attended first conscientiously to her
embroidery, and any other task she thought it right to perform,
although her eager impatience to get back to her desk made each in
turn a toil to her. Like many another earnest person, she mistook the
things of no importance for things that matter because the doing of
them cost her much; and it was the intellectual exercise, the delicate
fancy work of her brain, a matter of enormous consequence, that she
neglected. Not knowing that "_If a man love the labour of any trade,
apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called
him_," she made the fitting of herself for the work of her life her
last exercise at the tired end of the day. She rose early and went to
bed late in order to gain a little more time to write, but never
suspected that her delight in the effort to find expression for what
was in her mind of itself proclaimed her one of the elect.
When she had finished her embroidery, she despatched it secretly to
the depot in London; but then she found that she would have to pay a
small subscription before she could have it sold there, and she had no
money. She wrote boldly to the secretary and told her so, and asked if
the subscription could not be paid out of the price she got for her
work. The secretary replied that it was contrary to the rules, but the
committee thought that such an artistically beautiful design as hers
was sure to be snapped up directly, and they had therefore decided to
make an exception in her case.
While these letters were going backwards and forwards, Beth suffered
agonies of anxiety lest Dan should pounce upon them and discover her
secret; but he happened to be out always at post-time just then, so
she managed to secure them safely.
As she had no money, she could not buy any more materials for
embroidery, so she was obliged to take a holiday, the greater part of
which she spent in writing. She was deeply engrossed by thoughts on
progress, which had been suggested by a passage in one of Emerson's
essays: "_All conservatives are such from natural defects. They have
been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through
luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the
defensive._" Even in her own little life Beth had seen so much of the
ill effects of conservatism in the class to which she belonged, and
had suffered so much from it herself already, that the subject
appealed to her strongly, and she pursued it with enthusiasm--more
from the social than the political point of view, however. But,
unfortunately, in all too short a time, her holiday came to an end.
Her beautiful embroidery had sold for six guineas, and she found
herself with the money for more materials, and three pounds in hand
besides, clear profit, towards the debt. She had also received an
order from the depot for another piece of work at the same price,
which caused her considerable elation, and set her to work again with
a will; and it was only when she could no longer ply her needle that
she allowed herself to take up her pen.