"He's 'ad one scuttle to-day," Gwendolen reminded her, warningly.
"He must have two more, then, if necessary," said Beth.
"They're sixpence a scuttle, you know," Gwendolen remonstrated.
"Two for a shilling, and no charge for delivery," said Beth as she toiled up the long ascent once more with her heavy burden.
"Eh! it would be a gay glad world if they all took it like you," Gwendolen muttered, as she stood, with the pencil in her mouth, studying the slate that hung outside the coal-cellar, and let her generosity war with her accuracy and honesty for a little before she made two more strokes on the line that began with the name of Brock; and no sooner done than regretted.
"I wish to goodness I'd put 'em down to old Piggot and Mother Hauseman," she thought. "They'd never miss the money, and it 'ud be a good deed for the likes of them to help their betters, and might likely profit their own souls, though unbeknown."
For many weeks Beth watched beside the sick man's bed, doing all that was possible to ease his pain day and night, snatching brief intervals of rest when she could, and concealing her weariness at all times. She used to wonder at the young man's uncomplaining fortitude, his gentleness, gratitude, and unselfish concern about her fatigue. Even when he was at his worst, he would struggle back to consciousness in order to entreat her to liedown; and when, to please him, she had settled herself on a little couch there was in his room, he would make a superhuman effort to keep still as long as his flickering consciousness lasted. There was only one thing he was ever exacting about—to keep her in sight. So long as he could see her he was satisfied, and would lie for hours, patiently controlling himself for fear of disturbing her by uttering exclamations or making other signs of suffering; but when she had to leave him alone, he broke down and moaned in his weakness and pain for her to come back and help him.
The doctor having declared that the north-east aspect of his attic was all against the patient, Beth insisted on changing with him, and, as soon as he could be moved, she, Ethel Maud Mary, and Gwendolen, with the doctor's help, carried him into her room in a sheet; an awkward manœuvre because of his length, which made it hard to turn him on the narrow landing; his weight was nothing, for he was mere skin and bone by that time—all eyes, as Beth used to tell him.
It was Christmas Eve when they moved him, and late that night Beth kept her vigil by him, sitting over the fire with her elbows on her knees and her face between her hands, listening dreamily to the clang and clamour of the church-bells, which floated up to her over the snow, mellowed by distance and full-fraught with manifold associations. As she sat there she pondered. She thought of the long way she had drifted from the days when she knelt in spirit at the call of the bells and lost herself in happy prayer. She thought of her husband's hypocrisy, and the way in which, when it dawned upon her, her own faith had melted from her; and she pondered on the difference it would have made if only she had been married early—just to a good man. It would not have been necessary for her to have loved him—not with passion—only to have relied upon him. Some one to trust, she craved for, more than some one to love; yet she allowed that a loveless marriage is a mock marriage. She did not regret the loss of her conventional faith, but she wished she could join the congregation just for the human fellowship. She felt the need of union, of some central station, a centre of peace, unlike the church, the house of disunion. Without knowing it, she leant to Quaker-Catholicism, the name assumed for her religious principles by Caroline Fox—Quaker-Catholicism having direct spiritual teaching for its distinctive dogma.
"What are you thinking about?" Arthur Brock said suddenly from the bed.
Beth started. She thought he was asleep.
"God," she said; with a gasp, "and going to church," sheadded, laughing at her own abruptness. "I was wanting a church to go to."
"You don't belong to the Established Church, then," he said. "Well, I don't go to church myself; but I make a difference on Sundays. I don't work, and I read another kind of book. It is my day for the plains of heaven. I should like to be there all the time, if I could manage it; but I can't, not being a monk in a cell. When I can, I make the ascent, however, with the help of the books that take one there."
"I used to read religious books too," said Beth; "but I found little illumination in them, most of them being but the dry husks of the subject, uninformed of the spirit, containing no vital spark, and stained with blood."
"How?" he exclaimed.
"This God of the Hebrews," Beth began, looking dreamily into the fire, "what is his history? He loved cruelty and bloodshed. The innocent animals first suffered in his service; but, not content with that, he went from bad to worse, as men do, and ended by demanding human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own son. And for that specially we are required to adore him, although it must be clear to the commonest capacity to-day that the worship of such a deity is devil-worship. I do not say there is no God; I only say this is not God—this blood-lover, this son-slayer, this blind omniscience, this impotent omnipotence, this merciful cruelty, this meek arrogance, this peaceful combatant; this is not God, but man. The mind of man wars with the works of God to mar them. Man tries to make us believe that he is made in the image of God; but what happened was just the reverse. Man was of a better nature originally, a more manifold nature. He had intellect for a toy to play with on earth, and spirit for a power to help him to heaven. But instead of toiling to strengthen his spirit, he preferred to play with his intellect; and he played until he became so expert in the use of it, and so interested in the game, that he forgot his origin. And then it was that he projected an image of himself into space, and was so delighted with his own appearance from that point of view, that he called it God and fell down and worshipped it. If you would understand man, consider God; if you would know his God, study man."
Arthur Brock reflected for a little.
"What you say sounds real smart," he said at last, "and there's a kind of glamour in your words that dazzles and prevents one seeing just how much they mean at first. It is true that religion culminates in human sacrifice both here and in Africa, and, for refinement of horror, we have here the literal bloody sacrifice of a son by his father. But that is not God, as yousay; that is the ultimate of the priest. And the priest is the same at all times, in all ages, beneath all veneers of civilisation. His credit depends upon a pretence to power. He is not a humble seeker after truth, but a bigoted upholder of error and an impudent time-server. He destroys the scientific discoverer in one age; in the next he finds his own existence is threatened because he refuses to acknowledge that the discoverer was right; then he confesses the truth, and readjusts his hocus-pocus to suit it. He does not ask us to pin our faith to fancies which seem real to a child in its infancy, yet he would have us credulous about those which were the outcome of the intellectual infancy of the race. What he can't get over in himself is the absence of any sense of humour. I'm real sorry for him at times, and I tell him so."
Beth smiled. "I could not be so kindly courteous," she said. "Some things make me fierce. The kingdom of heaven is or is not within us, I believe; and half the time I know it is not in me, because there is no room for anything in me but the hate and rage that rend me for horror of all the falsehood, injustice, and misery I know of and cannot prevent. A sense of humour would save the church perhaps; but I'm too sore to see it. All I can say is: your religion to me is horrifying—human sacrifice and devil-worship, survivals from an earlier day welded on to our own time, and assorting ill with it. I would not accept salvation at the hands of such futile omnipotence, such cruel mercy, such blood-stained justice. The sight of suffering was grateful to man when the world was young, as it still is to savages; but we revolt from it now. We should not be happy in heaven, as the saved were said to be in the old tales, within sight of the sinners suffering in hell."
"Which is to say that there is more of Christ in us now than there was in the days of old," he said, speaking dispassionately, and with the confident deliberation of one who takes time to think. "I believe those old tales were founded on muddle-headed confusion of mind in the days when dreams were as real to mankind as the events of life. There are obscure tribes still on earth who cannot distinguish between what they have done and what they have only dreamt they did, and probably every race has gone through that stage of development. I don't know if excessive piety be a disease of the nerves, as some say, although what is piety in one generation does appear to be perversity in the next, as witness the sons of the clergy, and other children of pious people, who don't answer to expectation, as a rule. And I don't go much on churches or creeds, or faith in this personality or that. The old ideas have lost their hold upon me, as they have upon you; but that is no reason why we should give up theold truths that have been in the world for all time, the positive right and wrong, which are facts, not ideas. I believe that there is good and evil, that the one is at war with the other always; and that good can do no evil, evil no good. I've got beyond all the dogma and fiddle-faddle of the intellect with which the church has overlaid the spirit, and all the ceremonial so useful and necessary for individual souls in early stages of development. I used to think if I could find a religion with no blood in it, I would embrace it. Now I feel sure that it does not matter what the expression of our religious nature is so that it be religious. Religion is an attitude of mind, the attitude of prayer, which includes reverence for things holy and deep devotion to them. I would not lose that for anything—the right of appeal; but now, when I think of our Father in heaven, I do not despise our mother on earth."
Beth sat some time looking thoughtfully into the fire. "Go to sleep," she said at last, abruptly. "You ought not to be talking at this time of night."
"I wish you would go to sleep yourself," he said, as he settled himself obediently; "for I lose half the comfort of being saved, while you sit up there suffering for me."
The expression was not too strong for the strain Beth had to put upon herself in those days; for she had no help. Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen felt for her and her patient, as they said; but there of necessity their kindness ended. The other lodgers kept Gwendolen for ever running to and fro; each seemed to think she had nobody else to look after, and it was seldom indeed that any of them noticed her weariness or took pity on her. Beth did everything for herself, fetched the coals from the cellar, the water from the bath-room, swept and dusted, cleaned the grate, ran out to do the shopping, and returned to do the cooking and mending. Ethel Maud Mary stole the time to run up occasionally to show sympathy; but her own poor little hands were overfull, what with her mother ill in bed, both ends to be made to meet, and lodgers uncertain in money matters. She lost all her plumpness that winter, her rose-leaf complexion faded to the colour of dingy wax, and her yellow hair, so brightly burnished when she had time to brush it, became towzled and dull; but her heart beat as bravely-kind as ever, and she never gave in.
She climbed up one day in a hurry to Mr. Brock's room, which Beth occupied, snatching a moment to make inquiries and receive comfort; and as soon as she entered she subsided suddenly on to a chair out of breath.
"How you do it a dozen times a day, Miss Maclure, I can't think," she gasped.
"Those stairs have taught me what servants suffer," Beth said, as if that, at all events, were a thing for which to be thankful.
"You'd not have driven 'em, even if you hadn't known what they suffer," said Ethel Maud Mary. "That's the worst of this world. All the hard lessons have got to be learnt by the people who never needed them to make them good, while the bad folk get off for nothing."
"I don't know about not needing them," said Beth. "But I do know this: that every sorrowful experience I have ever had has been an advantage to me sooner or later."
"I wish I could believe that Ma's temper would be an advantage to me," Ethel Maud Mary said, sighing; "she's that wearing! But there, poor dear! she's sick, and there's no keeping the worries from her. There's only you and Mr. Brock in the house just now that pays up to the day, so you may guess what it is! He's getting on nicely now, I suppose; but you shouldn't be sitting here in the cold. A shawl don't make the difference; it's the air you breathe; and you ought to have your oil-stove going. Isn't the fire enough for him? I can't think so many degrees it need be in his room always, when there's no degree at all in yours."
"Oh, I'm hardy," said Beth. "I never was better."
"You look it," Ethel Maud Mary said sarcastically, "like a pauper just out of prison. What are you worrying about?"
"Beef-tea," said Beth. And so she was, and bread and butter, fuel, light, and lodging—everything, in fact, that meant money; for the money was all but done, and she had had a shock on the subject lately that had shaken her considerably.
She had spread out a newspaper to save the carpet, and was kneeling on the floor, one morning, in front of the window, cleaning and filling the little oil-stove, and Arthur was lying contentedly watching her—"superintending her domestic duties," he used to call it, that being all that he was equal to in his extreme weakness just then.
"You're a notable housekeeper," he said. "I shouldn't have expected you from your appearance to be able to cook and clean as you do."
"I used to do this kind of thing as a child to help a lazy servant we had, bless her," Beth answered. "The cooking and cleaning she taught me have stood me in good stead."
"If you had a daughter, how would you bring her up?" he asked.
Beth opened the piece of paper with which she was cleaning the oil off the stove, and regarded it thoughtfully. "I would bring her up in happy seclusion, to begin with," she said. "She should have all the joys of childhood; and then an educationcalculated to develop all her intellectual powers without forcing them, and at the same time to fit her for a thoroughly normal woman's life: childhood, girlhood, wifehood, motherhood, each with its separate duties and pleasures all complete. I would have her happy in each, steadfast, prudent, self-possessed, methodical, economical; and if she had the capacity for any special achievement, I think that such an education would have developed the strength of purpose and self-respect necessary to carry it through. I would also have her to know thoroughly the world that she has to live in, so that she might be ready to act with discretion in any emergency. I should, in fact, want to fit her for whatever might befall her, and then leave her in confidence to shape her own career. The life for a woman to long for—and a man too, I think—is a life of simple duties and simple pleasures, a normal life; but I only call that life normal which is suited to the requirements of the woman's individual temperament."
"You don't clamour for more liberty, then?"
"It depends upon what you mean by that. The cry for more liberty is sometimes the cry of the cowardly anxious to be excused from their share of the duties and labours of life; and it is also apt to be a cry not for liberty but for licence. One must discriminate."
"But how?"
"By the character and principles of the people you have to deal with—obviously."
She had lighted her little oil-stove by this time, and set a saucepan of water on it to boil. Then she fetched a chopping board and a piece of raw beef-steak, which she proceeded to cut up into dice and put into a stone jar until it was crammed full. Her sensitive mouth showed some shrinking from the rawness, and her white fingers were soon dyed red; but she prepared the meat none the less carefully for that. When the jar was filled and the contents seasoned, she put it in the pot on the stove for the heat to extract the juice.
"What is it going to be to-day?" he asked.
"Beef-jelly," she said. "You must be tired of beef-tea."
"I'm tired of nothing you do for me," he rejoined. "This is the homiest time I've had in England."
Beth smiled. In spite of poverty, anxiety, and fatigue, it was the "homiest time" she had had since Aunt Victoria's death, and she loved it. Now that she had some one she could respect and care for dependent on her, whose every look and word expressed appreciation of her devotion, the time never hung heavily on her hands, as it used to do in the married days that had been so long in the living. It was all as congenial as it was new to her, this close association with a man of the highest character and themost perfect refinement. She had never before realised that there could be such men, so heroic in suffering, so unselfish, and so good; and this discovery had stimulated her strangely—filled her with hope, strengthened her love of life, and made everything seem worth while.
She went on with her work in silence after that last remark of his, and he continued to watch her with all an invalid's interest in the little details of his narrow life.
"It would be a real relief to me to be able to get up and do all that for you," he finally observed. "I don't feel much of a man lying here and letting you work for me."
"This is woman's work," Beth said.
"Woman's work and man's work are just anything they can do for each other," he rejoined. "I wonder if I should get on any quicker with a change of treatment. Resignation is generally prescribed for rheumatism, and a variety of drugs which distract attention from the seat of pain to other parts of the person, and so relieve the mind. My head is being racked just now by that last dose I took. I should like to try Salisbury."
"What is Salisbury?" Beth asked.
"Principally beef and hot water, to begin with," he replied. "You'll find a little work on the subject among my books."
Beth read the volume, and then said, "You shall try Salisbury. It is easy enough."
"Yes," he answered. "It is easy enough with a nurse like you."
But in order to carry out the treatment some things had to be bought, and this led to the discovery which was a shock to Beth. Arthur's income depended principally upon the pictures he sold, and no more money came in after he fell ill. He had had some by him, but not nearly so much as he supposed, and it was all gone now, in spite of the utmost economy on Beth's part. Her own, too, was running short, but she had not troubled about that, because she still had some of her secret hoard to fall back upon. She had left it in one of the boxes which were sent on after her from Slane—a box which she had not opened until now, when she wanted the money. The money, however, was not there. She searched and searched, but in vain; all she found was the little bag that had contained it. She was stunned by the discovery, and sat on the floor for a little, with the contents of the box all scattered about her, trying to account for her loss. Then all at once a vision of Maclure, as she had seen him on one occasion with the bunch of duplicate keys, peering into her dress-basket with horrid intentness, flashed before her; but she banished it resolutely with the inevitable conclusion to which it pointed. She would not allow her mind to be sullied by such asuspicion. And as to the money, since it was lost, why should she waste her time worrying about it? She had better set herself to consider how to procure some more. She had still some of Arthur Brock's, but that she kept that she might be able to tell him truthfully that it was not all done when he asked about it—a pious fraud which relieved his mind and kept him from retarding his recovery by attempting to begin work again before he was fit for it. What money she had of her own would last but a little longer, and how to get more was the puzzle.
Her evening dresses had been in the box which she had just unpacked, and while she was still sitting on the floor amongst them cogitating, Ethel Maud Mary came into the attic out of breath to ask how she was getting on.
"Why," she exclaimed in admiration of Beth's finery, "you've got some clothes! They'd fetch something, those frocks, if you sold them."
"Then tell me where to sell them, for money I must have," Beth rejoined precipitately.
"And it's no use keeping gowns; they only go out of fashion," Ethel Maud Mary suggested, as if she thought Beth should have an excuse. "Gwendolen would manage it best. She's great at a bargain; and there's a place not far from here. I'd begin with the worst, if I was you."
"Advise me, then, there's a dear," said Beth, and Ethel Maud Mary knelt down beside her, and proceeded to advise.
Only a few shillings was the result of the first transaction; but the better dresses had good trimmings on them, and real lace, which fetched something, as Ethel Maud Mary declared it would, if sold separately; so, with the strictest self-denial, Beth was still able to pay her way and provide for the sick man's necessities.
From the time she put him on the Salisbury treatment, he suffered less and began to gain strength; but the weather continued severe, and Beth suffered a great deal herself from exposure and cold and privations of all kinds. She used to be so hungry sometimes that she hurried past the provision shops when she had to go out, lest she should not be able to resist the temptation to go in and buy good food for herself. If her sympathy with the poor could have been sharpened, it would have been that winter by some of the sights she saw. Sometimes she was moved by pity to wrath and rebellion, as on one occasion when she was passing a house where there had evidently been a fashionable wedding. The road in front of the house, and the red cloth which covered the steps and pavement, were thickly strewed with rice, and on this a band of starving children had pounced, and were scraping it up with their bony claws of hands, clutching itfrom each other, fighting for it, and devouring it raw, while a supercilious servant looked on as though he were amused. Beth's heart was wrung by the sight, and she hurried by, cursing the greedy rich who wallow in luxury while children starve in the streets.
In a squalid road which she had often to cross there was a butcher's shop, where great sides of good red beef with yellow fat were hung in the doorway. Coming home one evening after dark, she noticed in front of her a gaunt little girl who carried a baby on her arm and was dragging a small child along by the hand. When they came to the butcher's shop, they stopped to look up at the great sides of beef, and the younger child stole up to one of them, laid her little hand upon it caressingly, then kissed it. The butcher came out and ordered them off, and Beth pursued her way through the mire with tears in her eyes. She had suffered temptation herself that same evening. She had to pass an Italian eating-house where she used to go sometimes, before she had any one depending on her, to have a two-shilling dinner—a good meal, decently served. Now, when she was always hungry, this was one of the places she had to hurry past; but even when she did not look at it, she thought about it, and was tormented by the desire to go in and eat enough just for once. Visions of thick soup, and fried fish with potatoes, and roast beef with salad, whetted an appetite that needed no whetting, and made her suffer an ache of craving scarcely to be controlled. That day had been a particularly hungry one. The coffee was done, every precious tea-leaf she had to husband for Arthur, and the butter had also to be carefully economised because a good deal was required for his crisp toast, which was unpalatable without it. Beth lived principally on the crusts she cut off the toast. When they were very stale, she steeped them in hot water, and sweetened them with brown sugar. This mess reminded her of Aunt Victoria's bread-puddings, and the happy summer when they lived together, and she learnt to sit upright on Chippendale chairs. She would like to have talked to Arthur of those tender memories, but she could not trust herself, being weak; the tears were too near the surface.
That day she had turned against her crusts, even with sugar, and had felt no hunger until she got out into the air, when an imperious craving for food seized upon her suddenly, and she made for the Italian restaurant as if she had been driven. The moment she got inside the place, however, she recovered her self-possession. She would die of hunger rather than spend two precious shillings on herself while there was that poor boy at home, suffering in silence, gratefully content with the poorest fare she brought him, always making much of all she did.
Beth got no farther than the counter.
"I want something savoury for an invalid," she said.
That evening, for the first time, Arthur sat up by the fire in the grandfather chair with a blanket round him, and enjoyed a dainty little feast which had been especially provided, as he understood, in honour of the event.
"But why won't you have some yourself?" he remonstrated.
"Well, you see," Beth answered, "I went to the Italian restaurant when I was out."
"Oh, did you?" he said. "That's right. I wish you would go every day, and have a good hot meal. Will you promise me?"
"I'll go every day that I possibly can," Beth answered, smiling brightly as she saw him fall-to contentedly with the appetite of a thriving convalescent. Practising pious frauds upon him had become a confirmed habit by this time—of which she should have been ashamed; but instead, she felt a satisfying sense of artistic accomplishment when they answered, and was only otherwise affected with a certain wonderment at the very slight and subtle difference there is between truth and falsehood as conveyed by the turn of a phrase.
But now the money ran shorter and shorter; she had nothing much left to sell; and it was a question whether she could possibly hold out until her half-year's dividend was due. Perhaps the old lawyer would let her anticipate it for once. She wrote and asked him, but while she was waiting for a reply the pressure became acute.
Out of doors one day, walking along dejectedly, wondering what she should do when she came to her last shilling, her eye rested on a placard in the window of a fashionable hairdresser's shop, and she read mechanically: "A GOOD PRICE GIVEN FOR FINE HAIR." She passed on, however, and was half-way down the street before it occurred to her that her own hair was of the finest; but the moment she thought of it, she turned back, and walked into the hairdresser's shop in a business-like way without hesitation. A gentleman was sitting beside the counter at one end of the shop, waiting to be attended on; Beth took a seat at the other end, and waited too. She sat there, deep in thought and motionless, until she was roused by somebody saying, "What can I do for you, miss?"
Then she looked up and saw the proprietor, a man with a kindly face.
"Can I speak to you for a moment?" she asked.
"Come this way, if you please," he replied, after a glance at her glossy dark-brown hair and shabby gloves.
When she went in that day, Arthur uttered an exclamation.
"Do you mean to say you've had your hair cut short?" heasked, speaking to her almost roughly. "Are you going to join the unsexed crew that shriek on platforms?"
"I don't know any unsexed crew that shriek on platforms," she answered, "and I am surprised to hear you taking the tone of cheap journalism. There has been nothing in the woman movement to unsex women except the brutalities of the men who oppose them."
He coloured somewhat, but said no more—only sat looking into the fire with an expression on his face that cut Beth to the quick. It was the first cloud that had come to overshadow the perfect sympathy of their intercourse. She was getting his tea at the moment, and, when it was ready, she put it beside him and retired to his attic, which she occupied, and looked at herself in the glass for the first time since she had sacrificed her pretty hair. At the first glance, she laughed; then her eyes filled with tears, and she threw herself on the bed and sobbed silently—not because she regretted her hair, but because he was hurt, and for once she had no comfort to give him.
Just after she left him, an artist friend of his, Gresham Powell, came in casually to look him up, and was surprised to find he had been so ill.
"I missed you about," he said, "but I thought you had shut yourself up to work. Who's been looking after you?"
Brock gave him the history of his illness.
Powell shook his head when he heard of Beth's devotion.
"Take care, my boy," he said. "The girls you find knocking about town in these sort of places are not desirable associates for a promising young man. They're worse than the regular bad ones—more likely to trap you, you know, especially when you're shorn of your strength and have good reason to be grateful. You might think you were rewarding her by marrying her; but you'll find your mistake. Look at Simpson! Could a man have done a girl a worse turn than he did when he married Florrie Crone? They haven't a thought in common except when he's ill and she nurses him; but a man can't be always getting ill in order to keep in touch with his wife. I don't know, of course, what this girl's like; but half of them are adventuresses bent on marrying gentlemen. Is she a clergyman's daughter, by any chance?"
"I know nothing about her but her name," Brock answered coldly. "She has never tried to excite sympathy in any way."
"Well, they are of all kinds, of course," said Powell temperately. "But you'd better break away in any case. Nothing will set you up so soon as a change. Come with me. I'm going into the country to see the spring come in, and the fruit treesflower, and to hear the nightingales. I know a lovely spot. Come!"
"I'll think about it, and let you know," Arthur Brock answered to get rid of him.
When he had gone Beth appeared. To please Arthur, she had covered her cropped head with a white muslin mob-cap bound round with a pale pink ribbon, and put on a high ruffle and a large white apron, in which she looked pretty and prim, like a sweet little Puritan, in spite of the pale pink vanity; and Arthur smiled when he saw her, but afterwards grumbled: "Why did you cut your pretty hair off? I shouldn't have thought you could do such a tasteless thing."
Beth knelt down beside his chair to mend the fire, and then she began to tidy the hearth.
"Am I not the same person?" she asked.
"No, not quite," he answered. "You have set up a doubt where all was settled certainty."
She had taken off the gloves she wore to do the grate, and was about to pull herself up from her knees by the arm of his chair when he spoke, but paused to ponder his words. It was with her left hand that she had grasped the arm of his chair, and he happened to notice it particularly as it rested there.
"You wear a wedding-ring, I see," he remarked. "Do you find it a protection?"
"I never looked at it in that light," she answered. "In this vale of tears I have a husband. That is why I wear it."
There was a perceptible pause, then he asked with an effort, "Where is your husband?"
"At home, I suppose," said Beth, her voice growing strident with dislike of the subject. "We do not correspond. He wishes to divorce me."
"And what shall you do if he tries?" Brock asked.
"Nothing," she replied, and was for leaving him to draw his own conclusions, but changed her mind. "Shall I tell you the story," she said after a while.
"No, don't tell me," he rejoined quickly. "Your past is nothing to me. Nothing that you may have done, and nothing that you may yet do, can alter my feeling—my respect for you. As I have known you, so will you always be to me—the sweetest, kindest friend I ever had, the best woman I ever knew."
Men are monotonous creatures. Given a position, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will come to the same conclusion about it, only by diverse methods, according to their prejudices; and this is especially the case when women are in question. Woman is generally out of focus in the mind of man; he sees her less as she is than as she ought or ought not to be. Bethdid not thank Arthur Brock for his magnanimity. The fact that he should shrink from hearing the story bespoke a doubt that made his generous expression an offence. It may be kind to ignore the past of a guilty person, but the innocent ask to be heard and judged; and full faith has no fear of revelations.
Beth rose from her knees, and began to prepare the invalid's evening meal in silence. Usually they chattered like children the whole time, but that evening they were both constrained. One of those subtle changes, so common in the relations of men and women, had set in suddenly since the morning; they were not as they had been with each other, nor could they continue together as they were; there must be a readjustment, which was in preparation during the pause.
"You have heard me speak of Gresham Powell?" Brock began at last. "He was here this afternoon. He thinks I had better go away with him into the country for a change as soon as I can manage it."
"It is a good idea," said Beth—"inland of course, not near the sea with your rheumatism. I will get your things ready at once."
This immediate acquiescence depressed him. He played with his supper a little, pretending to eat it, then forgot it, and sat looking sadly into the fire. Beth watched him furtively, but once he caught her gazing at him with concern.
"What's the matter?" he asked, with an effort to be cheerful.
"The matter is the pained expression in your eyes," she answered. "Are you suffering again?"
"Just twinges," he said, then set his firm full lips, resolute to play the man.
But the twinges were mental, not bodily, and Beth understood. Their happy days were done, and there was nothing to be said. They must each go their own way now, and the sooner the better. Fortunately the old lawyer had consented without demur to let Beth have her half-year's dividend in advance, so that there was money for Arthur. He expressed some surprise that there should be, but took what she gave him without suspicion, and did not count it. He was careless in money matters, and had forgotten what he had had when he was taken ill.
"You're a great manager," he said to Beth. "But I suppose you haven't paid up everything. You must let me know. Itwillbe good to be at work again!"
"Yes," Beth answered; "but don't worry about it. You won't want money before you are well able to make it."
"I wish I knew for certain that you would go somewhere yourself to see the spring come in," he said, looking at her wistfully.
"All in good time," she answered in her sprightliest way.
When the last morning came, Beth attended to her usual duties methodically. She had made every arrangement for him, packed the things he was to take, and put away those that were to be left behind. When the cab was called, she went downstairs with him, and stood with Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen on the doorstep in the spring sunshine, smiling and waving her hand to him as he drove off. Her last words to him were, "You will go home before we meet again. Give my love to America—and may she send us many more such men," Beth added under her breath.
"Amen!" Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen echoed.
When the cab was out of sight, Beth turned and went into the house, walking wearily. At the foot of the stairs she looked up as if she were calculating the distance; then she began the long ascent with the help of the banisters, counting each step she took mechanically. The attic seemed strangely big and bare when she entered it—it was as if something had been taken away and left a great gap. There was something crude and garish about the light in it, too, which gave an unaccustomed look to every familiar detail. The first thing she noticed was the chair beside the fire, the old grandfather chair in which he had been sitting only a few minutes before, resting after the effort of dressing—the chair in which she had seen him sit and suffer so much and so bravely. She would never see him there again, nor hear his voice—the kindest voice she had ever heard. At his worst, it was always of her he thought, of her comfort, of her fatigue; but all that was over now. He had gone, and there could be no return—nothing could ever be as it had been between them, even if they met again; but meet again they never would, Beth knew, and at the thought she sank on the floor beside the senseless chair, and, resting her head against it, broke down and cried the despairing cry of the desolate for whom there is no comfort and no hope.
The fire she had lighted for Arthur to dress by had gone out; there were no more coals. The remains of his breakfast stood on the table; she had not touched anything herself as yet. But she felt neither cold nor hunger; she was beyond all that. The chair was turned with its back to the window, and as she cowered beside it, she faced the opposite whitewashed wall. A ray of sunshine played upon it, wintry sunshine still, crystal cold and clear. Beth began to watch it. There was something she had to think about—something to see to—something she must think about—something she ought to see to, but precisely what it was she could not grasp. It seemed to be hovering on the outskirts of her mind, but it always eluded her. However, she had betternot move for fear of making a noise. And there was far too much noise as it was—the wind rising and the waves breaking
"All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos——"
"All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos——"
No, though; it was a procession of camels crossing the desert, and in the distance was an oasis surrounded by palms, and there was white stonework gleaming between the trees in the wonderful light. And those great doors that opened from within? They were opening although she had not knocked. She was expected, then—there, where there was no more weariness, nor care, nor hunger. But that was not where she wished to go. No! no! that did not tempt her.
"Take me where I shall not remember," she implored.
Poor Beth! the one boon she had to ask of Heaven at five-and-twenty was oblivion: "Let me be where I shall forget."
Downstairs on the doorstep, Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen lingered a while before they turned to follow Beth into the house, and, as they did so, they noticed that a lady had stopped her carriage in the middle of the road, jumped out impetuously, and was running towards them, regardless of the traffic.
"That was Mrs. Maclure who was standing with you here just now and went into the house?" she exclaimed.
"MissMaclure," Ethel Maud Mary corrected her.
"Oh, Miss or Mrs., what does it matter?" the lady cried. "It was Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure looking like death—where is she? Take me to her at once!" She emphasised the request with an imperious stamp of her foot.
A few minutes later, Angelica, kneeling on the attic floor beside Beth, cried aloud in horror, "Why, she is dead!"
Onewarm morning when the apple-trees were out, Arthur Brock was sitting with Gresham Powell in the garden of the farm-house where they were lodging in the country, turning over a portfolio full of Powell's sketches, and Powell was looking at them over his shoulder, and discussing them with him. Arthur had just come upon a clever study of the head of a girl in a hat, and was looking hard at it.
"That's a study in starvation," Powell explained. "It's an interesting face, isn't it? She came into a hairdresser's one day when I was there, and sat down just in that attitude, and I sketched her on the spot. She was too far through at the momentto notice me. Look at her pretty hair particularly. You'll see why in the next sketch, which is the sequel."
Brock took up the next sketch hurriedly. It was the same girl in the same hat, but with her hair cut short.
"I asked the barber fellow about her when she'd gone," Gresham pursued. "He'd taken her into an inner room, and when she came out she was cropped like that. She told him she had come to her last shilling, and she had an invalid at home depending on her entirely, and she entreated him to give her all he could for her hair. I believe the chap did too," he seemed so moved by her suffering and gentleness. "What's the matter?"
Brock had risen abruptly with the sketches still in his hand. The colour had left his face, and he looked as pinched and ill as he had done during the early days of his convalescence.
"The matter!" he ejaculated. "I've just discovered what a blind fool I am, that's what's the matter; and I'll keep these two studies with your permission to remind me of the fact. Choose amongst mine any you like instead of them, old chap, but these you must let me have."
Without waiting for an answer, he took the sketches away with him into the house. When he returned a short time afterwards, he was dressed for a journey, and had a travelling bag in his hand.
"I'm going to town," he said, "to see the original of these sketches. I've run up an account with her I shall never be able to settle, but at all events I can acknowledge my debt, dolt that I am!Iwas that invalid. And I thought myself such a gentleman too! not counting my change and asking no questions, trusting her implicitly: that was my pose from the day you came and poisoned my mind. Before that I had neither trusted nor distrusted, but just taken things for granted as they came, beautifully. I was too self-satisfied even to suspect that she might be imposing her bounty upon me, starving herself that I might have all I required, and sending me off here finally with the last penny she had in the world. I told you I was wondering she did not answer my letters. I expect she hadn't the stamp. But you said it was out of sight out of mind, and she'd be trying it on with some one else in my absence. If I'd the strength, I'd thrash you, Gresham, for an evil-minded bounder."
"I'll carry your bag to the station, old chap," Gresham replied with contrition, "and take the thrashing at your earliest convenience."
Ethel Maud Mary was standing on the steps in the sunshine looking out when Arthur Brock arrived, just as she had stood towatch him depart, but in the interval a happy change had pleasantly transformed her. Her golden hair was brightly burnished again, her blue eyes sparkled, and her delicate skin had recovered its rose-leaf tinge. She wore a new frock, a new ring, a new watch and chain, and there was a new look in her face, one might say, as if the winter of care had passed out of her life with the snow and been forgotten in the spring sunshine of better prospects.
"O Mr. Brock!" she exclaimed; "you back! But none too well yet, judging by appearances."
"Where is Mrs. Maclure?" he demanded.
"I wish I knew!" Ethel Maud Mary rejoined, becoming important all at once. "She's gone for good, that's all I can tell you. O Mr. Brock! fancy her being tip-top all the time, and us not suspecting it, though I might have thought something when I saw the dresses she sold when you were ill, only I'd got the fashion papers in my mind, and didn't know but what she'd been paid in dresses! Come into the parlour; you look faint."
"You said she sold her dresses?"
"Yes; sit down, Mr. Brock. A glass of port wine is what you want, as she'd say herself if she was here; and you'll get it good too, for it's been sent for Ma. My! the things that have come! Look at me—all presents—everything she ever heard me say I'd like to have; and Gwendolen the same."
She got out the wine and the biscuits from a chiffonier as she chattered, and set them before him.
"Yes, she sold her dresses, and her rings, and her books, and every other blessed thing she possessed except what had belonged to an old aunt. She gotthemout too, one day, but cried so when it came to parting with them, I persuaded her to wait. I said something would turn up, I was sure. And something did, foryouwent away, and directly after—the next minute, so to speak, for you were scarcely out of sight—a lady stopped her carriage—a fine carriage and pair and coachman and footman all silver-mounted—and ran up the steps in a great way. She'd seen Mrs. Maclure go into the house, and she said she'd been hunting for her everywhere for months, and all her friends were in a way about her, not knowing what had happened to her. I took the lady up to the attic, and there was Mrs. Maclure lying on the floor looking like death, with her head up against the big chair where you used to sit. We thought shewasdead at first, but the doctor came and brought her round. He said it was just exhaustion from fatigue and starvation."
Arthur Brock uttered an exclamation.
"You needn't reproach yourself, Mr. Brock," Ethel Maud Mary pursued sympathetically. "You weren't worse than therest of us. I saw her every day, and never suspected she was denying herself everything, she was always so much the same—happy, you know, in her quiet way."
"Do you think she was happy?" he groaned.
"Yes, she was happy," Ethel Maud Mary said simply. "She's that disposition—contented, you know; and she was happy from the first; but she was happier still from the time she had you to care for. I'd read about ladies of that kind, Mr. Brock, but had not seen one before. It's being good does it, I suppose. Do you know she'd not have told a lie was it ever so, Mrs. Maclure wouldn't!"
"And she went away with that lady?" Arthur asked, after a pause.
"Yes, if you can call it going," Ethel Maud Mary replied; "for the lady didn't ask her leave, but just rolled her up in wraps, and had her carried down to the carriage and took her off. And that's all we know about her. She's written me a letter I'd like to show you, and sent me money, pretending she owed it, because I'd let her have her attic too cheap. She sent the presents afterwards, but no address. The lady came back once alone, and had the attic photographed, with everything arranged just as Mrs. Maclure used to have it. And she bought all the things in it that belonged to us, and had them and all Mrs. Maclure's own things taken away to keep, she said. She sat a long time in the attic, looking at it, just as if she was trying to imagine what living in it was like, and she kept dabbing her eyes with a little lace handkerchief, and then she got up and sighed and said, 'Poor Beth! poor Beth!' several times. She talked to me a lot about Mrs. Maclure. She seemed to know all about me, and treated me as if we'd been old friends. And she knew all about you too, and asked after you kindly. She said Mrs. Maclure was going to be a great woman—a great genius or something of that sort—and do a lot for the world; and she wanted to know if you'd ever suspected it. I told her I thought not. The two letters you wrote she took to give Mrs. Maclure, so she'd getthemall right."
"And see the particular kind of fatuous ass I am set down clearly in my own handwriting!" he said to himself.
Then he rose. "I'll just go up and look at the attics," he said.
Ethel Maud Mary waited below, and waited long for him. When at last he came down, he shook hands with her, but without looking at her.
"I'm going to find that lady—Mrs. Maclure," he said, jamming his hat down on his head, "if I have to spend the rest of my life in the search."
Beth,surrounded by friends, saw the spring come in that year at Ilverthorpe, and felt it the fairest spring she could remember. Blackbird and thrush sang in an ecstasy by day, and all night long the nightingales trilled in the happy dusk. She did not ask herself why it was there was a new note in nature that year, nor did she trouble herself about time or eternity. Her eternity was the exquisite monotony of tranquil days, her time-keepers the spring flowers, the apple-blossom and quince, daffodil, wallflower, lilac and laburnum, the perfumed calycanthus, forget-me-nots, pansies, hyacinths, lilies-of-the-valley in the woods, and early roses on a warm south wall; and over all the lark by day, and again at night the nightingale. In a life like hers, after a period of probation there comes an interval of this kind occasionally, a pause for rest and renewal of strength before active service begins again.
While she had been shut up with Arthur, seeing no papers and hearing no news, her book had come out and achieved a very respectable success, for the sort of thing it was; and she was pleased to hear it, but not elated. The subject had somehow lapsed from her mind, and the career of the book gave her no more personal pleasure than if it had been the work of a friend. Had it come out when it was first finished, she would have felt differently about it; but now she saw it as only one of the many things which had happened to her, and considered it more as the old consider the works of their youth, estimating them in proportion, as is the habit of age, and moderately rather than in excess. For the truth was that a great change had come over Beth during the last few months in respect to her writing; her enthusiasm had singularly cooled; it had ceased to be a pleasure, and become an effort to her to express herself in that way.
Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce had been looking out for Beth's book, and, while waiting for it to appear, he had, misled by his own suppositions, prepared an elaborate article upon the kind of thing he expected it to be. Nothing was wanting to complete the article but a summary of the story and quotations from it, for which he had left plenty of space. He condemned the book utterly from the point of view of art, and for the silly ignorance of life displayed in it, and the absurd caricatures which were supposed to be people; he ridiculed the writer for taking herself seriously (but without showing why exactly she should not take herself seriously if she chose); he pitied her for her disappointmentwhen she should realise where in literature her place would be; and he ended with a bitter diatribe against the works of women generally, as being pretentious, amateur, without originality, and wanting in humour, like the wretched stuff it had been his painful duty to expose. Unfortunately for him, however, the book appeared anonymously, and immediately attracted attention enough to make him wish to discover it; and before he found out that Beth was the author, he had committed himself to a highly eulogistic article upon it inThe Patriarch, which he took the precaution to sign, that the coming celebrity might know to whom gratitude was due, and in which he declared that there had arisen a new light of extraordinary promise on the literary horizon. The book, as it happened, was not a work of fiction at all.
Beth had heard nothing more from Dr. Maclure, and knew nothing about him, except that he must have lost his degrading appointment, the Acts having been rescinded. He had forwarded none of the letters her friends had addressed to her at Slane. The Kilroys had endeavoured to obtain her address from him, but he denied that he knew it. Unknown to her, Mr. Kilroy, Mr. Hamilton-Wells, and Sir George Galbraith had taken the best legal advice in the hope of getting her a divorce; but there was little chance of that, as the acute mental suffering her husband had caused her had merely injured her health and endangered her reason, which does not amount to cruelty in the estimation of the law. The matter was therefore allowed to drop, and Beth had not yet begun to think of the future, when one day she received a letter from Dan, couched in the most affectionate terms, entreating her to return to him.
"You must own that I had cause for provocation," he said, "but I confess that I was too hasty. It is natural, though, that a man should feel it if his wife gets herself into such a position, however innocently; and the more he has trusted, loved, and respected his wife, the more violent will the reaction be. I know, however, that I have had my own shortcomings since we were married, and therefore that I should make every allowance for you. So let us be friends, Beth, and begin all over again, as you once proposed. I am ready to leave Slane and settle wherever you like. Make your own conditions; anything that pleases you will please me."
This letter upset Beth very much. She would almost rather have had an action for divorce brought against her than have been asked to return to Daniel Maclure.
"Ought I to go back?" she asked, willing, with the fatuous persistency of women in like cases, to persevere if it were thoughtright that she should, although she knew pretty well that the sacrifice would be unavailing so far as he was concerned, and would only entail upon herself the common lot of women so mated—a ruined constitution and corroded mind.
"Why does he suddenly so particularly wish it?" was the question.
The obvious explanation was indirectly conveyed in a letter from her old lawyer. He had written to her in her London lodgings, first of all, but the letter was returned from the Dead Letter Office. Then he had written to Slane, but as he received no answer to that letter and it was not returned, he went in person to inquire about it. Dan declared that he knew nothing about the letter, or about Beth either, if she had left London; but he thought her intimate friends the Kilroys might know where she was. The old gentleman applied to the Kilroys, and having found Beth, wrote to inform her that her great-aunt Victoria Bench's investments had recovered at last, as he had always been pretty sure that they would, and she would accordingly, for the future, find herself in receipt of an income of seven or eight hundred pounds a year. Dan's sudden magnanimity was accounted for. Beth put his effusion and the lawyer's letter before her friends, and asked to be advised. They decided unanimously that, on the one hand, Dan was not a proper person for her to live with, that no decent woman could associate with a man of his mind, habits, and conversation without suffering injury in some sort; while, on the other, they pointed out that, although it would be nice, it would not be good for Dan to have the benefit of Beth's little income. While he was forced to work, he would have to conduct himself with a certain amount of propriety; but if Beth relieved him of the necessity, there would be nothing to restrain him.
This episode roused Beth from her tranquil apathy, and made her think of work once more. But first she had to settle somewhere and make a home for herself; and although she had ample means for all her requirements now, it was not an easy thing to find the special conditions on which she had set her heart. The first impulse of a woman of noble nature is to be consistent, to live up to all she professes to admire. As Beth grew older, to live for others became more and more her ideal of life;—not to live in the world, however, or to be of it, but to work for it.
"I must be quiet," she said to Angelica one day when they were discussing her future. "I am done for so far as work is concerned when I come into contact with crowds. I want to live things then; I don't want to think about them. Excitement makes me content to be, and careless about doing. My truestand best life is in myself, and I can only live it in circumstances of tranquil monotony. People talk so much about making the most of life, but their attempts are curiously bungling. What they call living is for the most part more pain than pleasure to them; for the truth is, that life should not be lived by men of mind, but contemplated; it is the spectator, not the actor, who enjoys and profits. The actor has his moment of applause, but all the rest is misery. People rush to great centres to obtain a knowledge of life, and do not succeed, for there they see nothing but broad effects. We find our knowledge of life in individuals, not in crowds. There is no more individuality in a crowd of people than there is in a flock of sheep. All I know of life, of its infinite diversity, I have learnt here and there from some one person or another, known intimately. A solitary experience, rightly considered in all its bearings, teaches us more than numbers of those incidents of which we see the surface only 'in the joy of eventful living;' and, if the truth were known, I expect it would be found that each one of us had obtained the most valuable part of our experience in such homely details of simple unaffected human nature as came under our observation in our native villages."
"Yes," Angelica answered thoughtfully, "the looker-on sees most of the game. But I don't think you allow enough for differences of temperament. You are thinking of the best conditions for creative work. You mustn't lose sight of all the active service that is going on."
"No; but it is in retirement that the best preparation is made for active service also. And I was thinking of active service more than of creative work just then. The truth is, I am in a state of being oppressed by the thought of my new book. I don't know what has come to me. I am all fretty about it. Writing has lost its charm. I doubt if I shall ever do well enough to make it worth while to write at all. And even if I could, I don't think mere literary success would satisfy me. I have tasted enough of that to know what it would be—a sordid triumph, a mere personal thing."
"Ideala does not think that it is necessarily as a literary woman that you will succeed," Angelica answered. "Ithought it was because all the indications you have given of special capacity seem to me to lie in that direction. However, versatile people make mistakes sometimes. They don't always begin with the work they are best able to do; but there is no time lost, for one thing helps another—one thing is necessary to another, Ishouldsay, perhaps. Your writing may have helped to perfect you in some other form of expression."
"You cheer me!" Beth exclaimed. "But what form?" She reflected a little, and then she put the puzzle from her. "Itwill come to me, I dare say," she said, "if I shut the din of the world far from me, and sit with folded arms in contemplation, waiting for the moment and the match which shall fire me to the right pitch of enthusiasm. Nothing worth doing in art is done by calculation."
"I think you are right to keep out of the crowd," said Angelica. "You will get nothing but distraction from without. I should take one of the privileges of a great success to be the right to refuse all invitations that draw one into the social swim. Men and women of high purpose do not arrive in order to be crowded into stuffy drawing-rooms to be stared at."
"My idea of perfect bliss," Beth pursued, "when my work is done, and my friends are not with me, is to lie my length upon a cliff above the sea, listening to the many-murmurous, soothed by it into a sense of oneness with Nature, till I seem to be mixed with the elements, a part of sky and sea and shore, and akin to the wandering winds. This mood for my easy moments; but give me work for my live delight. I know nothing so altogether ecstatic as a good mood for work."
"What you call work is power of expression," said Angelica; "the power to express something in yourself, I fancy."
"Ye—yes," Beth answered, hesitating, as if the notion were new to her. "I believe you are right. What I call work is the effort to express myself."
Mr. Kilroy had come in while they were talking, and sat listening to the last part of the conversation.
"I have just the sort of 'neat little cot in a quiet spot, with a distant view of the rolling sea' that you yearn for, Beth," he said, smiling, when she paused, "and I have come to ask you and Angelica to drive over with me to see it."
"You mean Ilverthorpe Cottage," said Angelica, jumping up. "O Daddy! it's the very place. Two storeys, Beth, ivy, roses, jasmine, wisteria without; and within, space and comfort of every kind—and the sea in sight! Such a pretty garden, too, grass and trees and shrubs and flowers. And near enough for us all to see you as often as you wish. Beth, be excited too! I must bring my violin, I think, and play a triumphal march on the way."
Ilverthorpe Cottage was all and more than Angelica had said, and Beth did not hesitate to take it. It was Mr. Kilroy's property, and the rent was suspiciously low, but Beth supposed that that was because the house was out of the way. She and Angelica spent long happy days in getting it ready for occupation, choosing paper, paint, and furnishments. Mr. Kilroy saw to the stables, which he completed with a saddle-horse and a pony-carriage. There was a short cut across the fields, a lovely walk, from Ilverthorpe House to the Cottage, and when Angelica could notaccompany her, Beth would stroll over alone to see how things were getting on, and wander about her little demesne, and love it. Outside her garden, in front of the house, the highroad ran, a sheltered highroad, with a raised footpath, bordered on either side with great trees, oak and elm, chestnut and beech, and a high hawthorn hedge just whitening into blossom. The field-path came out on this highroad, down which she had to walk a few hundred yards to her own gate. Day after day there was an old Irish labourer, a stonebreaker, by the wayside, kneeling on a sack beside a great heap of stones, who gave her a cheery good-morrow as she passed. Once she went across the road and spoke to him. He had the face of a saint at his devotions.
"You kneel there all day long," she said, "and as you kneel you pray, perhaps. Will you pray for me? Pray, pray that I may"—she was going to say succeed, but stopped—"that I may be good."
The man raised his calm eyes, and looked her in the face. "Youaregood, lady," he said simply.
"Yet pray," she entreated; "and pray too that all I do may be good, and of good effect."
"All you do is good, lady," he answered once more, in the same quiet tone of conviction.
"But I want all I do to be the best for the purpose that can be done."
She put some money in his hand and turned away, and as she went he watched her. She had touched him with her soft gloveless fingers in giving him the money, and when she had gone, he was conscious of the touch; it tingled through him, and he looked at the spot on which the impression remained, as if he expected it to be in some sort visible.
"Now Our Lady love you and the saints protect you, bless your sweet face," he muttered; "and may all you do be the best that can be done for every one. Amen."
A few months in her lovely little house sufficed to restore Beth's mind to its natural attitude—an attitude of deep devotion. She even began to work again, but rather with a view to making herself useful to her friends than to satisfy any ambition or craving of her own. Whatever she did, however, she approached in the spirit of the great musician who dressed himself in his best, and prayed as at a solemn service, when he shut himself up to compose. Beth had stepped away from the old forms by this time. She had escaped from the bondage of the letter that killeth into the realm of the spirit that giveth life. It is not faith in any particular fetish that makes a mind religious, but the quality of reverence. Churches Beth had come to look upon, not with distrust, but withindifference, as an ineffectual experiment of man's. She could find no evidence of a holier spirit or a more divine one in the church than in any other human institution for the propagation of instruction. The church has never been superior to the times, never as far advanced as the best men of the day, never a leader, but rather an opposer of progress, hindering when ideas were new, and only coming in to help when workers without had proved their discoveries, and it was evident that credit would be lost by refusing to recognise them. There is no cruelty the church has not practised, no sin it has not committed, no ignorance it has not displayed, no inconsistency it has not upheld, from teaching peace and countenancing war, to preaching poverty and piling up riches. True, there have been great saints in the church; but then there have been great saints out of it. Saintliness comes of conscientiously cultivating the divine in human nature; it is a seed that is sown and flourishes under the most diverse conditions.
Beth thought much on religion in those quiet days, and read much, looking for spiritual sustenance among the garbage of mind with which man has overlaid it, and finding little to satisfy her, until one night, quite suddenly, as she sat holding her mind in the attitude of prayer, there came to her a wonderful flash of illumination. She had not been occupied with the point that became apparent. It entered her mind involuntarily, and was made clear to her without conscious effort on her part; but it was that which she sought, the truth that moves, makes evident, makes easy, props and stays, and is the instigator of religious action, the source of aspiration, the ground of hope—the which was all contained for Beth in the one old formula interpreted in a way that was new to her:The communion of saints(that inexplicable sympathy between soul and soul),the forgiveness of sins, (working out our own salvation in fear and trembling),the resurrection of the body(reincarnation),and the life everlasting(which is the crown or glory, the final goal).
"But God?" Beth questioned.
"God is love," she read in the book that lay open on the table before her.
Then she clasped her hands over the passage and laid her head on them, and for a long time she sat so, not thinking, but just repeating it to herself softly: "God is love," till all at once there was a blank in her consciousness; thought was suspended. When it returned, she looked up, and in herself were the words: "God is Love—no!Love is God!"
In the joy of the revelation, she arose, and, going to the window, flung it wide open. Far down the east the dawn was dimly burning; the faint sweet breath of it fanned her cheeks;her chest expanded with a great throb, and she exclaimed aloud: "I follow, follow—God—I know not where."
Beth had a task before her that day which she did not relish in the anticipation. She was going as a stopgap to speak at a large meeting to oblige Angelica. She had the credit of being able to speak, and she herself supposed that she could in a way, because of the success of her first attempt; but she did not consent to try again without much hesitation and many qualms, and she would certainly not have consented had not her friends been in a difficulty, with no one at hand to help them out of it but herself. But to be drawn from her hallowed seclusion into such a blaze of publicity, even for once, was not at all to her mind, and much of her wakefulness of the night before had been caused by her shrinking from the prospect.
Late that night after the meeting she returned to her cottage alone, cowering in a corner of the Kilroys' carriage. She was cowering from the recollection of a great crowd that rose with deafening shouts and seemed to be rushing at her—cowering, too, from the inevitable which she had been forced to recognise—her vocation—discovered by accident, and with dismay, for it was not what she would have chosen for herself in any way had it occurred to her that she had any choice in the matter. There were always moments when she would fain have led the life which knows no care beyond the cultivation of the arts, no service but devotion to them, no pleasure like the enjoyment of them,—a selfish life made up of impersonal delights, such as music, which is emotion made audible, painting, which is emotion made visible, and poetry, which is emotion made comprehensible;—and such a life could not have been anything but grateful to one like Beth, who had the capacity for so many interests of the kind. She was debarred from all that, however, by grace of nature. Beth could not have lived for herself had she tried. So that now, when the call had come, and the way in which she could best live for others was made plain to her, she had no thought but to pursue it.
The carriage put her down at her garden-gate, and she stood awhile in the moonlight, listening to it as it rolled away with patter of horses' hoofs and rattle of harness, listening intently as if the sound concerned her. Then she let herself in, and was hurrying up to her room, but stopped short on the stairs, cowering from the crowd that rose and cheered and cheered and seemed to be rushing at her.
Her bedroom had windows east, west, and south, so that she had sunrise and sunset and the sun all day. When she went in now, she found the lamps lighted and all the windows shut, and she went round and flung them open with an irritable gesture.Her nerves were overwrought; the slightest contrariety upset her. The sweet fresh country air streamed in and the tranquil moonlight. These alone would ordinarily have been enough to soothe her, but now she paid no heed to them. When she had opened the windows, she began to take off her things in feverish haste, pacing about the room restlessly the while, as if that helped her to be quicker. Everything she wore seemed too hot, too heavy, or too tight, and she flung hat and cloak and bodice down just where she took them off in her haste to get rid of them. Throwing her things about like that was an old trick of her childhood, and becoming conscious of what she was doing, she remembered it, and began to think of herself as she had been then, and so forget her troubled self as she was at that moment—fresh from the excitement and terror of an extraordinary achievement, a great success. For she had spoken that night as few have spoken—spoken to a hostile audience and fascinated them by the power of her personality, the mesmeric power which is part of the endowment of an orator, and had so moved them that they rose at last and cheered her for her eloquence, whether they held her opinions or not. Then there had come friendly handshakes and congratulations and encouragement; and one had said, "Beth is launched at last upon her true career."