When Beth returned to Slane, Dan received her so joyously she wondered
what particularly successful piece of turpitude he had been busy
about. He was always effusive to her when evil things went well with
him. At first she had supposed that this effusiveness was the outcome
of affection for her; but when she began to know him, she perceived
that it was only the expression of some personal gratification. He had
been quite demonstrative in his attentions to her during the time that
Bertha Petterick stayed in the house.
"By the way, there is a letter for you," he said, when they were at
lunch.
"Is there?" Beth answered. "Who from?"
"How the devil am I to know?" he rejoined, glancing up at the
mantelpiece. "I can't tell who your correspondents are by instinct."
Beth's eye followed his to the mantelpiece, where she saw a large
square envelope propped up against an ornament in a conspicuous
position, and recognised the unmistakable, big, clear, firm hand of
Bertha Petterick, and the thick kind of paper she always used.
Beth had been thinking about Bertha on the way home. She knew that, if
Bertha had been as wrong in body as in mind and moral nature, she
would have had compassion on her; and she had determined to tolerate
her as it was, to do what she could for her maimed soul, just as she
would have ministered to her had her malady been physical. But Dan's
hypocrisy about the letter ruffled her into opposition. He knew
Bertha's handwriting as well as she did, and was doubtless equally
well acquainted with the contents of the letter; and this affectation
of ignorance must therefore mean something special. Probably he was
anxious to propitiate her with regard to whatever Bertha might be
writing about. But Beth was not to be managed in that way, and so she
let the letter be.
As she was leaving the room after lunch, Dan called after her: "You
have forgotten your letter."
"It doesn't matter," Beth answered. "Any time will do for that."
The letter was left there for days unopened, and it had the effect of
stopping the conversation at meals, for although Dan did not allude to
it again, he constantly glanced at it, and it was evident that he had
it on his mind.
At last, one day, when he came in, he said, "I have just seen Mrs.
Petterick, and she tells me Bertha wrote to you days ago, and has had
no answer."
"Indeed," Beth observed indifferently. "I shouldn't think she could
have anything to say to me that specially required an answer."
Dan fidgeted about a little, then burst out suddenly, "Why the devil
don't you open the girl's letter?"
"Because you pretended you didn't know who it was from," Beth said.
"I declare to God I never pretended anything of the kind," Dan
answered hotly.
Beth laughed. Then she went to the mantelpiece, took down the letter,
turned it over and displayed the huge monogram and scroll with
"Bertha" printed on it, with which it was bedizened, laughed again a
little, and threw the letter unopened into the fire, "There!" she
said. "Let that be an end of the letter, and Bertha Petterick too, so
far as I am concerned. She bores me, that girl; I will not be bothered
with her."
"Well, well!" Dan exclaimed pathetically, looking hard at the ashes of
the letter on the coals: "that's gratitude! I do my best to make an
honest living for you, and you repay me by affronting one of my best
patients. And what the unfortunate girl has done to offend you, the
devil only knows. I'm sure she would have blacked your boots for you
when she was here, she was so devoted."
"She _was_ pretty servile, I grant that," Beth answered dispassionately.
"But that is enough of Bertha Petterick, please. Here is the butcher's
bill for the last month, and the baker's, the milk, the wine, the
groceries, all nearly doubled on Bertha's account. If adding to your
expenses in every way makes a good patient, she was excellent,
certainly. I'll leave you the bills to console you; but, if you value
your peace of mind, don't dare to worry _me_ about them. You were quite
right when you said I was too young to be troubled about money matters,
and I shall not let myself be troubled--especially when they are
matters, like these bills, for which I am not responsible." She was
leaving the room as she spoke, but stopped at the door: "And, Dan," she
added, quoting his favourite phrase, "I'd be cheery if I were you.
There's nothing like being cheery. Why, look at me! I never let anything
worry me!"
She left Dan speechless, and went to her secret chamber, where she sat
and suffered for an hour, blaming herself for her lightness, her
contrariness, her want of dignity, and all those faults which were the
direct consequence of Dan's evil influence. She was falling farther
and farther away from her ideal in everything, and knew it, but seemed
to have lost the power to save herself. The degeneration had begun in
small matters of discipline, apparently unimportant, but each one of
consequence, in reality, as part of her system of self-control. From
the moment we do a thing thinking it to be wrong, we degenerate. If it
be a principle that we abandon, it does not matter what the principle
is, our whole moral fibre is loosened by the gap it makes. Beth, who
had hitherto shunned easy-chairs, as Aunt Victoria had taught her,
lest she should be enervated by lolling, now began to take to them,
and so lost the strengthening effect of a wholesome effort. Other
little observances, too, little regular habits which discipline mind
and body to such good purpose, slipped from her,--such as the care of
her skin after the manner of the ladies of her family, who had been
renowned for their wonderful complexions. This had been enjoined upon
her by her mother in her early girlhood as a solemn duty, and had
entailed much self-denial in matters of food and drink, quantities
being restricted, and certain things prohibited at certain times,
while others were forbidden altogether. She had had to exercise
patience, also, in the concoction and use of delicately perfumed
washes of tonic and emollient properties, home distilled, so as to be
perfectly pure; all of which had been strictly practised by her, like
sacred rites or superstitious observances upon the exact performance
of which good fortune depends. In such matters she now became lax.
And, besides the care of her person, she neglected the care of her
clothes, which had been so beneficial to her mind; for it must be
remembered that it was during those long hours of meditation, while
she sat sewing, that her reading had been digested, her knowledge
assimilated, her opinions formed, and her random thoughts collected
and arranged, ready to be turned to account on an emergency. Until
this time, too, she had kept Sunday strictly as a day of rest. Books
and work, and all else that had occupied her during the week, were put
away on Saturday night, and not taken out again until Monday morning;
and the consequence was complete mental relaxation. But now she began
to do all kinds of little things which she had hitherto thought it
wrong to do on Sunday, so that the sanitary effect of the day of
rest--or of change of occupation, for sometimes Sunday duties are
arduous--was gradually lost, and she no longer returned to her work on
Monday strengthened and refreshed. Little by little her "good reading"
was also neglected, and instead of relying upon her own resolution, as
had hitherto been her wont, she began to seek the prop of an odd cup
of tea or coffee at irregular hours, to raise her spirits if she felt
down, or stimulate her if she were out of sorts and work was not easy;
all of which tended to weaken her will. Then, by degrees, she began to
lose the balance of mind which had been wont to carry her on from one
little daily doing to another, with calm deliberation, taking them
each in turn without haste or rest, and finding time for them all.
Now, the things that she did not care about she began to do with a
rush, so as to get to her writing. She wanted to be always at that;
and the consequence was a wearing sensation, as of one who is driven
to death, and has never time enough for any single thing.
But it was in these days, nevertheless, that she began to write with
decision. Hitherto, she had been merely trying her pen--feeling her
way; but now she unconsciously ceased to follow in other people's
footsteps, and struck out for herself boldly. She had come back from
Ilverthorpe with a burning idea to be expressed, and it was for the
shortest, crispest, clearest way to express it that she tried. Foreign
phrases she discarded, and she never attempted to produce an eccentric
effect by galvanising obsolete words, rightly discarded for lack of
vitality, into a ghastly semblance of life. Her own language, strong
and pure, she found a sufficient instrument for her purpose. When the
true impulse to write came, her fine theories about style only
hampered her, so she cast them aside, as habitual affectations are
cast aside and natural emotions naturally expressed, in moments of
deep feeling; and from that time forward she displayed, what had
doubtless been coming to her by practice all along, a method and a
manner of her own.
She produced a little book at this time, the first thing of any real
importance she had accomplished as yet; and during the writing of it
she enjoyed an interval of unalloyed happiness, the most perfect that
she had ever known. The world without became as nothing to her; it was
the world within that signified. The terrible sense of loneliness,
from which she had always suffered more or less, was suspended, and
she began to wonder how it was she had ever felt so desolate, that
often in the streets of Slane she would have been grateful to anybody
who had spoken to her kindly. Now she said to herself, sincerely,
"Never less alone than when alone!" And up in the quiet of her secret
chamber, with the serene blue above, the green earth and the
whispering trees below, and all her little treasures about her: the
books, the pictures, the pretty hangings, and little ornaments for
flowers; things she had indulged in by degrees since her mother's
death had left her with the money in her hands which she had made to
discharge Dan's debt--up there at her ease in that peaceful shrine,
secure from intrusion, "There is no joy but calm!" was her constant
ejaculation. Then again, too, she felt to perfection the fine wonder,
the fine glow of a great inspiration, and realised anew that therein
all the pleasures of the senses added together are contained; that
inspiration in its higher manifestations is like love--that it is
love, in fact--love without the lover; there being all the joy of love
in it, but none of the trouble.
But, like most young writers when they set up a high ideal for
themselves, and are striving conscientiously to arrive at it, because
the thing came easily she fancied she had not done her best, and was
dissatisfied. She talked to herself about fatal facility, without
reflecting that in time ease comes by practice; nor did she
discriminate between the flow of cheap ideas pumped up from any source
for the occasion, which satisfies the conceit of shallow workers, and
the deep stream that bubbles up of itself when it is once released,
and flows freely from the convictions, the observations, and the
knowledge of an earnest thinker. Diffidence is a help to some, but to
Beth it was a hindrance, a source of weakness. There was no fear of
her taking herself for a heaven-born genius. Her trouble had always
been her doubt of the merit of anything she did. She should have been
encouraged, but instead she had always been repressed. Accordingly,
when she had finished her little masterpiece, she put it away with the
idea of rewriting it, and making something of it when she should be
able; and then she began a much more pretentious work, and thought it
must be better because of the trouble it gave her.
Gradually, from now, she gave up all her time to reading and writing,
and she overdid it. Work in excess is as much a vice as idleness, and
it was particularly bad for Beth, whose constitution had begun to be
undermined by dutiful submission. The consulting rooms of specialists
are full of such cases. There are marriages which for the ignorant
girl preached into dutiful submission, whose "innocence" has been
carefully preserved for the purpose, mean prostitution as absolute, as
repugnant, as cruel, and as contrary to nature as that of the streets.
Beth's marriage was one of those. Until she went to Ilverthorpe, she
had never heard that there was a duty she owed to herself as well as
to her husband; and, as Sir George Galbraith had said, her brain was
too delicately poised for the life she had been leading. Work had been
her opiate; but unfortunately she did not understand the symptoms
which should have warned her that she was overdoing it, and her nerves
became exceedingly irritable. Noises which she had never noticed in
her life before began to worry her to death. Very often, when she was
spoken to, she could hardly answer civilly. At meals everything that
was handed to her was just the very thing she did not want. She
quarrelled with all her food, drank quantities of strong coffee for
the sake of the momentary exhilaration, and even tried wine; but as it
only made her feel worse, she gave that up. Writing became a rage with
her, and the more she had to force herself, the longer she sat at it.
She would spend hours over one sentence, turning it and twisting it,
and never be satisfied; and when she was at last obliged to stop and
go downstairs lest she should be missed, she went with her brain
congested, and her complexion, which was naturally pale and
transparent, all flushed or blotched with streaks of crimson.
"What's the matter with your face?" Dan said to her one day, apt, as
usual, to comment offensively on anything wrong.
"I should like you to tell me," Beth answered.
"You'd better take some citrate of iron and quinine."
"You've prescribed citrate of iron and quinine for everything I've
ever had since I knew you," said Beth. "If I have any more of it, I
shall be like the man in the quack advertisement, who felt he could
conscientiously recommend a tonic because he had taken it for fourteen
years. I should like something that would act a little quicker."
Dan left the room and banged the door.
That afternoon Beth, up in her shrine at work, suddenly began to
wonder what he was doing. As a rule, she did not trouble herself about
his pursuits, but now all at once she became anxious. The thought of
all the unholy places that he might be at (and the unfortunate girl
knew all about all of them, for there was no horror of life with which
her husband had not made her acquainted), filled her with dread--with
a sensation entirely new to her, and absolutely foreign to her normal
nature. Her feeling for Dan and Bertha, when she discovered their
treachery, had been one of contempt. Their disloyalty, and the petty
mean deceits which it entailed, made it difficult to tolerate their
presence, and she was always glad to get rid of them, wherever they
might go. Now, however, she was seized upon with a kind of rage at the
recollection of their intrigue, of the scene in the garden, the
glances she had intercepted, their stolen interviews, clandestine
correspondence, and impudent security. It was all retrospective this
feeling, but the torment of it was none the less acute for that. She
recalled the scene in the garden, and her heart throbbed with anger.
She regretted her own temperate conduct, and imagined herself stealing
out upon them, standing before them, and pouring forth floods of
invective till they cowered. She wished she had refused to let Bertha
enter the house again, and had threatened to expose Dan if he did not
meekly submit to her dictation. She ought to have exposed him too. She
should have gone to Bertha's mother. But where was Dan at that moment?
She jumped up, rushed down to her room, put on her outdoor things in
hot haste, and ran downstairs determined to go and see; but as she
entered the hall at one end of it, Dan himself came in by the
hall-door at the other. The relief was extraordinary.
"Hallo! where are you off to?" he said.
"Just going for a little walk," she answered, speaking ungraciously
and without looking at him. Now that she saw him, her ordinary feeling
for him returned; but instead of being quiet and indifferent as usual,
she found herself showing in her manner something of the contempt she
felt, and it pleased her to do it. She was glad to go out, and be in
the open air away from him; but she had not gone far before the
torment in her mind began again. Why had he come in so unusually
early? Was there anything going on in the house? He was always very
familiar with the servants.
She stopped short at this, turned back, and went in as hurriedly as
she had gone out. In the hall she stood a moment listening. The house
seemed unusually quiet. A green baize door separated the kitchen and
offices from the hall. She opened it, and saw Minna in the butler's
pantry, cleaning the plate. Minna was parlour-maid now, a housemaid
having been added to the establishment when Miss Petterick came, so
that that young lady might be well waited on.
"I think we should give the girl full value for her money, you know,
even if we do without something ourselves," Dan had said, in the
generous thoughtful way that had so often imposed upon Beth.
Beth asked Minna where Drew, the housemaid, was.
"It's her afternoon out, ma'am," Minna answered.
"So it is," said Beth. "I had forgotten."
"Do you want anything, ma'am?" Minna asked. "You're looking poorly.
Would you like a cup o' tea?"
"No, thank you," Beth rejoined, then changed her mind. "Yes, I should,
though. Get me one while I'm taking my things off, and bring it to me
in the dining-room. Where is your master?"
"I don't know, ma'am. I've not heard if he's come in; but it's full
early for him yet," Minna replied, as she took off her working apron.
While she was talking to the girl, the worry in Beth's head stopped,
and she felt as usual. Going quietly upstairs, she fancied she heard
some one moving in her bedroom, and, entering it by way of the
dressing-room, she discovered Dan on his knees on the floor, prying
into one of the boxes she had had with her at Ilverthorpe, and kept
locked until she should feel inclined to unpack it. He seemed to have
had all the contents out, and was just deftly repacking it. As he
replaced the dresses, he felt in the pocket of each, and in one he
found an old letter which he read.
Beth withdrew on tiptoe, and went downstairs again, wondering at the
man. She took off her hat and jacket, and ensconced herself with the
newspaper in an easy-chair. Minna came presently with fragrant tea and
hot buttered toast, and talked cheerfully about some of her own
interests. Beth treated her servants like human beings, and rarely had
any trouble with them. She had learnt the art from Harriet, who had
awakened her sympathies, and taught her practically, when she was a
child, what servants have to suffer; and "well loved and well served"
exactly described what Beth was as a mistress. When Minna withdrew,
and Beth had had her tea and toast, she felt quite right again, and
read the paper with interest. The shock of the real trouble had ousted
the imaginary one for the moment.
The next morning, however, as she toiled with flushed face and weary
brain, stultifying her work with painful elaboration, she was seized
with another fit of jealous rage, just as she had been the day before.
Her mind in a moment, like a calm sea caught by a sudden tempest,
seethed with horrible suspicions of her husband. His gross ideas,
expressed in coarse language, had hitherto been banished from her mind
by her natural refinement; but now, like the works of a disordered
machine, whirling with irresponsible force, thoughts suggested by him
came crowding in the language he habitually used, and she found
herself accusing him with conviction of all she had ever heard others
accused of by him. For a little she pursued this turn of thought, then
all at once she jumped up and rushed downstairs, goaded again to
act--to avenge herself--to dog him down to one of his haunts, and
there confront him, revile him, expose him.
It was a tranquil grey day in early autumn, the kind of day, full of
quiet charm, which had always been grateful to Beth; but now, as she
stood on the doorstep, with wrinkled forehead, dilated eyes, and
compressed lips, putting her gloves on in feverish haste, she felt no
tranquillising charm, and saw no beauty in the tangled hedgerows
bright with briony berries, the tinted beeches, the Canadian poplars
whispering mysteriously by the watercourse at the end of the meadow,
the glossy iridescent plumes of the rooks that passed in little
parties silhouetted darkly bright against the empty sky; it was all
without significance to her; her further faculty was suspended, and
even the recollection of anything she had been wont to feel had
lapsed, and she perceived no more in the scene surrounding, in the
colours and forms of things, the sounds and motions, than those
perceive whose eyes have never been opened to anything beyond what
appears to the grazing cattle. In many a heavy hour she had found
delight in nature; but now, again, she had lost that solace; the glory
had departed, and she had sunk to one of the lowest depths of human
pain.
Not understanding the frightful affliction that had come upon her, she
made no attempt to control her disordered fancy, but hurried off into
the town, and hovered about the places which Dan had pointed out as
being of special evil interest, and searched the streets for him,
acting upon the impulse without a doubt of the propriety of what she
was doing. Had the obsession taken another form, had it seemed right
to her to murder him, the necessity would have been as imperative, and
she would have murdered him, not only without compunction, but with a
sense of satisfaction in the deed.
She pursued her search for hours, but did not find him; then went
home, and there he was, standing on the doorstep, looking out for her.
"Where on earth have you been?" he said.
"Where on earth have you been yourself?" she rejoined.
"Minding my own business," he answered.
"So have I," she retorted, pushing past him into the hall.
He had never seen her like that before, and he stood looking after her
in perplexity.
She went upstairs and threw herself on her bed. The worry in her head
was awful. Turn and toss as she would, the one idea pursued her, until
at last she groaned aloud, "O God! release me from this dreadful man!"
After a time, being thoroughly exhausted, she dropped into a troubled
sleep.
When she awoke, Dan was standing looking at her.
"Aren't you well, Beth?" he said. "You've been moaning and muttering
and carrying on in your sleep as if you'd got fever."
"I don't think I am well," she answered in her natural manner, the
pressure on her brain being easier at the moment of awakening.
He felt her pulse. "You'd better get into bed," he said, "and I'll
fetch you a sedative draught. You'll be all right in the morning."
Beth was only too thankful to get into bed. When he returned with the
draught, she asked him if he were going out again.
"No, not unless I'm sent for," he said. "Where the devil should I be
going to? It's close on dinner-time."
Beth shut her eyes. "If he is sent for and goes," she reflected, "I
shall know it is a ruse to deceive me; and I shall get up and follow
him."
He left her to sleep and went downstairs. But Beth could not sleep.
The draught quieted her mind for a little; then the worry began again
as bad as ever, and she found herself straining her attention to
discover to whom he was talking, for she fancied she heard him
whispering with some one out in the passage. She bore the suspicion
awhile, then jumped out of bed impetuously and opened the door. The
gas was burning low in the passage, but she could see that there was
no one about. Surely, though, there were voices downstairs?
Barefooted, and only in her night-dress, she went to see. Yes, there
were voices in the dining-room--now! She flung the door wide open. Dan
and another man, a crony of his, who had dropped in casually, were
sitting smoking and chatting over their whiskeys-and-sodas.
Beth, becoming conscious of her night-dress the moment she saw them,
turned and fled back to her bed; greatly relieved in her mind by the
shock of her own indiscretion.
"What a mad thing to do!" she thought. "I hope to goodness they didn't
see me."
_A mad thing to do!_
The words, when they recurred to her, were a revelation. What had she
been doing all day? Mad things! What was this sudden haunting horror
that had seized upon her? Why, madness! Dan was just as he had always
been. The change was in herself, and only madness could account for
such a change. There was madness in the family. She remembered her
father and the "moon-faced Bessie"--the familiarities with servants,
too; surely her mother had suffered, and doubtless this misery which
had come upon her had been communicated to her before her birth.
Jealous-mad she was; that was what it meant, the one idea goading her
on to do what would otherwise have been impossible, possessing her in
spite of herself, and not to be banished by any effort of will.
"Heaven help me!" she groaned. "What will become of me?"
Then, as if in reply, there rose to her lips involuntarily the
assurance which recurred to her now for her help and comfort in every
hard moment of her life like a refrain: "I shall succeed."
And she set herself bravely to conceal her trouble, whatever it cost
her, and to conquer it.
But it was a hard battle. For months the awful worry in her head
continued, the same thoughts haunted her, the same jealous rage
possessed her, and she knew no ease except when Dan was at hand. The
trouble always passed when she had him under observation. She could
not read, she could not write, she was too restless to sit and sew for
more than a few moments at a time. Up and down stairs she went, out of
the house and in again, fancying always, when in one place, that she
would be better in another, but finding no peace anywhere, no
brightness in the sunshine, no beauty in nature, no interest in life.
Through the long solitary hours of the long solitary days she fought
her affliction with her mouth set hard in determination to conquer it.
She met the promptings of her disordered fancy with answers from her
other self. "He and Bertha Petterick are together, that is why he is
so late," the fiend would asseverate. "Very likely," her temperate
self would reply. "But they may have been together any day this two
years, and I knew it, and pitied and despised them, but felt no pain;
why should I suffer now? Because my mind is disordered. But I shall
recover! I shall succeed!"
She would look at the clock, however, every five minutes in an agony
of suspense until Dan came in. Then she had to fight against the
impulse to question him, which beset her as strongly as the impulse to
follow him, and that was always upon her except when his presence
arrested it. Never once through it all, however, did she think of
death as a relief; it was life she looked to for help, more life and
fuller. She could interest herself in nothing, care for nothing; all
feeling of affection for any one had gone, and was replaced by
suspicion and rage. In her torment her cry was, "Oh, if some one would
only care for me! for me as I am with all my faults! If they would
only forgive me my misery and help me to care again--help _me_ also to
the luxury of loving!"
Forgive her her misery! The world will forgive anything but that; it
tramples on the wretched as the herd turns on a wounded beast, not to
put it out of its pain, but because the sight of suffering is an
offence to it. If we cannot enliven our acquaintances, they will do
little to enliven us. Sad faces are shunned; and signs of suffering
excite less sympathy than repulsion. The spirit of Christ the Consoler
has been driven out from among us.
Beth poured herself out in letters at this time rather more than was
her habit; it was an effort to get into touch with the rest of the
world again. In one to Jim, speaking of her hopes of success, she said
she should get on better with her work if she had more sympathy shown
her; to which he replied by jeering at her. What did she mean by such
nonsense? But that was the way with women; they were all sickly
sentimental. Sympathy indeed! She should think herself devilish lucky
to have a good husband and a home of her own. Many a girl would envy
her. He wrote also to other members of the family on the subject, as
if it were a rare joke worth spreading that Beth wanted more sympathy;
and Beth received several letters in which the writers told her what
their opinion was of her and her complaints as compared to that good
husband of hers, who was always so bright and cheery. All their
concern was for the worthy man who had done so much for Beth. They had
no patience with her, could scarcely conceal their amusement with this
last absurdity, but thought she should be laughed out of her fads and
fancies. That was the only time Beth sought sympathy from any of her
relations. Afterwards she took to writing them bitter letters in which
she told them what she thought of them as freely as they told her.
"What is the use," she said to Jim, "what is the use of sisters and
wives being refined and virtuous if their fathers, brothers, husbands,
are bar-loafers, men of corrupt imagination and depraved conversation?
Surely, if we must live with such as these, all that is best in us
adds to our misery rather than helps us. If we did not love the higher
life ourselves, it would not hurt us to be brought into contact with
the lower."
On receiving this letter, Jim wrote kindly to Dan, and said many
things about what women were coming to with their ridiculous notions.
But men were men and women were women, and that was all about it,--a
lucid conclusion that appealed to Dan, who quoted it to Beth in
discussions on the subject ever afterwards.
Beth broke down and despaired many times during the weary struggle
with her mental affliction. She felt herself woefully changed; and not
only had the light gone out of her life, but it seemed as if it never
would return. When she awoke in the morning, she usually felt better
for awhile, but the terrible torment in her mind returned inevitably,
and rest and peace were banished for the day. It was then she learnt
what is meant by the inner calm, and how greatly to be desired it
is--desired above everything. The power to pray left her entirely
during this phase. She could repeat prayers and extemporise them as
of old, but there was no more satisfaction in the effort than in
asking a favour of an empty room. Sometimes, and especially during the
hideous nights, when she slept but little, and only in short snatches,
she felt tempted to take something, stimulant or sedative; but this
temptation she resisted bravely, and, the whole time, an extra cup of
tea or coffee for the sake of the momentary relief was the only excess
she committed. If she had not exercised her will in this, her case
would have been hopeless; but, as it was, her self-denial, and the
effort it entailed, kept up her mental strength, and helped more than
anything to save her.
To beguile the long hours, she often stood in the dining-room window
looking out. The window was rather above the road, so that she looked
down on the people who passed, and she could also see over the hedge
on the opposite side of the road into the meadow beyond. Small things
distracted her sometimes, though nothing pleased her. If two rooks
flew by together, she hoped for a better day; if one came first, she
would not accept the omen, but waited, watching for two. By a curious
coincidence, they generally passed, first one for sorrow, then two for
mirth, then three for a wedding; and she would say to herself, first,
bad luck, then good luck, then a marriage; and wonder how it would
come about, but anyhow--"I shall succeed!" would flash from her and
stimulate her.
One day, as she stood there watching, she saw a horseman come slowly
down the road.
"A bowshot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Launcelot."
Beth's attention sharpened to sudden interest. As he came abreast of
the window, the rider looked up, and Beth's heart bounded at the sight
of his face, which was the face of a man from out of the long ago,
virile, knightly, high-bred, refined; the face of one that lives for
others, and lives openly. He had glanced up indifferently, but, on
seeing Beth, a look of interest came into his eyes. It was as if he
had recognised her; and she felt herself as if she had seen him
before, but when or where, in what picture, in what dream, she could
not tell.
With the first flush of healthy interest she had experienced for a
long time, she watched him till he was all but out of sight, then shut
her eyes that she might not see him vanish, for fear of bad luck; a
superstition she had not practised since she was a child. When he had
gone, she found herself with a happy impression of him in her mind, an
impression of quiet dignity, and of strength in repose. "A man to be
trusted," she thought; "true and tender, a perfect knight." The flash
of interest or recognition that came into his countenance when he saw
her haunted her; she recalled the colour of his blue eyes, noted the
contrast they were to his dark hair and clear dark skin, and was
pleased. In the afternoon she sat and sewed, and smiled to herself
over her work with an easy mind. Her restlessness had subsided; Dan
scarcely cost her a thought; the tension was released and a reaction
had set in; but, at the time, she herself was quite unaware of it. All
she felt was a good appetite for her tea.
"Minna," she said to the parlour-maid, "bring me a big cup of tea and
a good plate of buttered toast. I'm famishing."
"That's good news, ma'am," Minna answered, for it was long since Beth
had had any appetite at all.
The next day Beth stood at the window again, but without intention.
She was thinking of her knight of the noble mien, however, and at
about the same hour as on the day before, he came again, riding slowly
down the road; and again he looked at Beth with a flash of interest in
his face, to which she involuntarily responded. When he was out of
sight she opened the window, and perceived to her glad surprise that
the air was balmy, and on all things the sun shone, shedding joy.
The horrid spell was broken.