"They seem worse, in fact, because we expect so much more of them in the way of loyalty and disinterestedness," said Mrs. Orton Beg; "and their power is so much greater, too, in social matters; when they misuse it, they do much more harm. This will not always be so, of course. As their minds expand, they will see and understand better. At present they do not know enough to appreciate their own deficiencies – they do not measure the weakness of their vacillations by comparing it with the steady strength of purpose that prevails; and, for want of comprehension, they aim their silly animadversions to-day at some one whose work they are glad enough to profit by to-morrow; they make the task of a benefactress so hard that they kill her, and then they give her a public funeral. I pity them!"
"Oh, do not be hasty," said Lady Fulda. "Human beings are not like packs of cards, to be shuffled into different combinations at will and nobody the worse. There are feelings to be considered. The old sores must be tenderly touched even by those who would heal them. And when we uproot we must be careful to replant under more favourable conditions; when we demolish we should be prepared to rebuild, or no comfort will come of the changes. These things take time, and are best done deliberately, and even then the most cautious make their mistakes. But, still, I believe that the force which is carrying us along is the force that makes for righteousness. We women have in our minds now what will culminate in the recognition by future generations of the beauty of goodness. Woman is to be the mother of God in Man."
Beth's heart swelled at the words. This attitude was new to her; and yet all that was said she seemed to have heard before, and known from the first. And she knew more also, away back in that region beyond time and space to which she had access, and where she found herself at happy moments transported by an impulse outside herself, which she could not control by any effort of will. That day, with those new friends, she felt like one who returns to a happy home after weary wanderings, and is warmly welcomed. A great calm settled upon her spirit. She said little the whole time, but sat, sure of their sympathetic tolerance, and listened to them with that living light of interest in her eyes to which the heart responds with confidence more surely than to any spoken word. The evil influences which had held her tense at Slane had no power to trouble her here. She was high enough above Dan and Bertha to look down upon them dispassionately, knowing them for what they were, yet personally unaffected by their turpitude. It was as if she had heard of some bad deed, and knew it to be repulsive, a thing intolerable, meriting punishment; yet, because it did not concern her, it had lapsed from her thoughts like a casual paragraph read in a paper which had not brought home to her any realisation of what it recorded.
During the afternoon her mind was stored with serene impressions – service in the venerable Cathedral; the fluting of an anthem by a boy with a birdlike voice; some strong words from the pulpit, not on the dry bones of doctrine, nor the doings of a barbarous people led by a vengeful demon of perplexing attributes whom they worshipped as a deity, but on the conduct of life – a vital subject. Then, as they drove through the beautiful old city, there came impressions of grey and green; grey gateways, ancient buildings, ivy, and old trees, and, over all, sounding slow, calm, and significant, the marvellous chime, the message which Morningquest heard hourly year by year, and heeded no more than it heeded death at a distance or political complications in Peru.
The same party met again at Ilverthorpe, but there were others there as well – Ideala, Mrs. Kilroy's father and mother Mr. and Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells, and Lady Galbraith, but not Sir George.
In the drawing-room after dinner, Beth was intent upon a portfolio of drawings, and Ideala, seeing her alone, went up to her.
"Are you fond of pictures?" she said to Beth.
"Yes, that is just the word," Beth answered. "I am so 'fond' of them that even such a collection as this, which shows great industry rather than great art, I find full of interest, and delight in. Happy for me, perhaps, that I don't know anything about technique. Subject appeals to my imagination as it used to do when I was a child, and loved to linger over the pictures on old-fashioned pieces of music. Those pictures lure me still with strange sensations such as no others make me feel. I wish I could realise now as vividly as I realised then the beauty of that lovely lady on the song, and the whole pathetic story – the gem that decked her queenly brow and bound her raven hair, remained a sad memorial of blighted love's despair; and that other young creature who wore a wreath of roses on the night when first we met; and the one who related that we met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me; he came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me, and concluded that 'twas thou that had caused me this anguish, my mother. There was the gallant corsair, too, just stepping out of a boat, waving his hat. His curly hair, open shirt collar, and black tie with flying ends remain in my mind, intimately associated with Byron, young love, some who never smiled again, the sapphire night, crisp, clear, cold, thick-strewn with stars, all sparkling with frosty brightness – impressions I would not exchange for art understood, or anything I am capable of feeling now before the greatest work of art in the world – so strangely am I blunted."
"What, already!" Ideala said compassionately. "But that is only a phase. You will come out of it, and be young again and feel strongly, which is better than knowing, I concede. The truest appreciation of a work of art does not take place in the head, but in the heart; not in thinking, but in feeling. When we stand before a picture, it is not by the thoughts formulated in the mind, but by the appreciation which suffuses our whole being with pleasure that we should estimate it."
"But isn't that a sensuous attitude?" Beth objected.
"Yes, of the right kind," Ideala rejoined. "The senses have their uses, you know. And it is exactly your attitude as a child towards the pictures on the songs. You felt it all – all the full significance – long before you knew it so that you could render it into words; and felt more, probably, than you will ever be able to express. Feeling is the first stage of fine thought."
Mr. Hamilton-Wells strolled towards them. He was a rather tall, exceedingly thin man, with straight, thick, grey-brown hair, parted in the middle, and plastered down on either side of his head. He was dressed in black velvet. His long thin white hands were bedecked with handsome antique rings, art treasures in their way. One intaglio, carved in red coral, caught the eye especially, on the first finger of his right hand. As he talked he had a trick of shaking his hands back with a gesture that suggested lace ruffles getting in the way, and in his whole appearance and demeanour there was something that recalled the days when velvet and lace were in vogue for gentlemen. He spoke with great preciseness, and it was not always possible to be sure that he at all appreciated the effect of the extraordinary remarks he was in the habit of making; which apparent obliviousness enabled him to discourse about many things without offence which other people were obliged to leave unmentioned.
"Nowadays, when I see two ladies together in a corner, talking earnestly," he observed, "I always suspect that they are discussing the sex question."
"Oh, the sex question!" Ideala exclaimed. "I am sick of sex! Sex is a thing to be endured or enjoyed, not to be discussed."
"Indeed!" said Mr. Hamilton-Wells, nodding slowly, as if in profound consideration, and shaking back his imaginary ruffles. "Is that your opinion, Mrs. Maclure?"
"I keep a separate compartment in my mind for the sex question," Beth answered, colouring – "a compartment which has to be artificially lighted. There is no ray of myself that would naturally penetrate to it. When I take up a book, and find that it is nothing but she was beautiful, he loved her, I put it down again with a groan. The monotony of the subject palls upon me. It is the stock-in-trade of every author, as if there were nothing of interest in the lives of men and women but their sexual relations."
"Indeed, yes," said Mr. Hamilton-Wells, with bland deliberation, "but society thinks of nothing else. Blatant sexuality is the predominant characteristic of the upper classes, and the rage for the sexual passion is principally set up and fostered by a literature inflated with sexuality, and by costumes which seem to be designed for the purpose. In the evening, now, just think! Even quite elderly ladies, with a laudable desire to please, offer themselves in evening dress – and a very great deal of themselves sometimes – to the eye that may be attracted."
When he had spoken, he shook back his imaginary ruffles, brought his hands together in front of him with the fingers tip to tip in a pious attitude, and strolled up the long room slowly, shaking his head at intervals with an intent expression, as if he were praying for society.
"What a bomb!" Beth gasped. "Is he always so?"
"Generally," Ideala rejoined. "And I can never make out whether he means well, but is stupid and tactless, or whether he delights to spring such explosives on inoffensive people. He sits on a Board of Guardians composed of ladies and gentlemen, and the other day, at one of their meetings, he proposed to remove the stigma attaching to illegitimacy. He said that illegitimacy cannot justly be held to reflect on anybody's conduct, since, so he had always understood, illegitimacy was birth from natural causes."
"And what happened?"
Ideala slightly shrugged her shoulders. "The proposition was seriously discussed, and a parson and one or two other members of the board threatened to retire if he remained on it. But remain he did, and let them retire; and I cannot help fancying that his whole object was to get them to go. Sometimes I think that he must have a peculiar sense of humour, which it gives him great gratification to indulge, as others do good, by stealth. He makes questionable jests for himself only, and enjoys them alone. But apart from this eccentricity, he is a kind and generous man, always ready to help with time and money when there is any good to be done."
When Beth went to her room that night, she experienced a strange sense of satisfaction which she could not account for until she found herself alone, with no fear of being disturbed. It seemed to her then that she had never before known what comfort was, never slept in such a delightful bed, so fresh and cool and sweet. She was like one who has been bathed and perfumed after the defilements of a long dusty journey, and is able to rest in peace. As she stretched herself between the sheets, she experienced a blessed sensation of relief, which was a revelation to her. Until that moment, she had never quite realised the awful oppression of her married life; the inevitable degradation of intimate association with such a man as her husband.
The next day the ladies went out to sit on the lawn together in the shade of the trees, with their books and work. There were no sounds but such as, in the country, seem to accentuate the quiet, and are aids, not to thought, but to that higher faculty which awakes in the silence, and is to thought what the mechanical instrument is to the voice.
"How heavenly still it is!" Beth ejaculated. "It stirs me – fills me – how shall I express it? – makes me cognisant in some sort – conscious of things I don't know – things beyond all this, and even better worth our attention. The stillness here in these surroundings has the same benign effect on me that perfect solitude has elsewhere. What a luxury it is, though – solitude! I mean the privilege of being alone when one feels the necessity. I am fortunate, however," she added quickly, lest she should seem to be making a personal complaint, "in that I have a secret chamber all to myself, and so high up that I can almost hear what the wind whispers to the stars to make them twinkle. I go there when I want to be alone to think my thoughts, and no one disturbs me – not even my nearest neighbours, the angels; though if they did sometimes, I should not complain."
"They come closer than you think, perhaps," said Lady Fulda, who had just strolled up, with a great bunch of lilies on her arm. "Consider the lilies," she went on, holding them out to Beth. "Look into them. Think about them. No, though, do not think about them – feel. There is purification in the sensation of their beauty."
"Is purification always possible?" Beth said. "Can evil ever be cast out once it has taken root in the mind?"
"Are you speaking of thoughts or acts, I wonder?" Lady Fulda rejoined, sitting down beside Beth and looking dreamily into her flowers. "You know what we hold here: that no false step is irretrievable so long as we desire what is perfectly right. It is not the things we know of, nor even the things we have done, if the act is not habitual, – but the things we approve of that brand us as bad. The woman whose principles are formed out of a knowledge of good and evil is better, is more to be relied upon, than the woman who does not know enough to choose between them. It is not what the body does, but what the mind thinks that corrupts us."
"But from certain deeds evil thoughts are inseparable," Beth sighed; "and surely toleration of evil comes from undue familiarity with it?"
"Yes, if you do not keep your condemnation side by side with your knowledge of it," Lady Fulda agreed.
The night before she returned to Slane, Beth attended a meeting of the new order which Ideala had founded. It was the first thing of the kind she had been to, and she was much interested in the proceedings. Only women were present. Beth was one of a semicircle of ladies who sat on the platform behind the chair. There were subjects of grave social importance under discussion, and most of the speaking was exceedingly good, wise, temperate, and certainly not wanting in humour.
Towards the end of the evening there was an awkward pause because a lady who was to have spoken had not arrived. Mrs. Kilroy, who was in the chair, looked round for some one to fill the gap, and caught Beth's eye.
"May I speak?" Beth whispered eagerly, leaning over to her. "I have something to say."
Angelica nodded, gave the audience Beth's name, and then leant back in her chair. The shorthand writers looked up indifferently, not expecting to hear anything worth recording.
Beth went forward to the edge of the platform with a look of intentness on her delicate face, and utterly oblivious of herself, or anything else but her subject. She never thought of asking herself if she could speak. All she considered was what she was going to say. She clasped her slender hands in front of her, and began, slowly, with the formula she had heard the other speakers use: "Madam Chairman, ladies – " She paused, then suddenly spoke out on The Desecration of Marriage.
At the first resonant notes of her clear, dispassionate voice, there was a movement of interest, a kind of awakening, in the hall, and the ladies on the platform behind her, who had been whispering to each other, writing notes and passing them about, and paying more attention to the business of the meeting generally than to the speakers, paused and looked up.
Suddenly Ideala, with kindling eyes, leant over to Mrs. Orton Beg, grasped her arm, and said something eagerly. Mrs. Orton Beg nodded. The word went round. Beth held the hall, and was still rising from point to point, carrying the audience with her to a pitch of excitement which finally culminated in a great burst of applause.
Beth, taken aback, stopped short, surprised and bewildered by the racket; looked about her, faltered a few more words, and then sat down abruptly.
The applause was renewed and prolonged.
"What does it mean?" Beth asked Ideala in an agony. "Did I say something absurd?"
"My dear child," Ideala answered, laughing, "they are not jeering, but cheering!"
"Is that cheering?" Beth exclaimed in an awe-stricken tone, overcome to find she had produced such an effect. "I feared they meant to be derisive."
"I didn't know you were a speaker," Mrs. Orton Beg whispered.
"I am not," Beth answered apologetically. "I never spoke before, nor heard any one else speak till to-night. Only I have thought and thought about these things, and I could not keep it back, what I had to say."
"That is the stuff an orator is made of," some strange lady muttered approvingly.
CHAPTER XLV
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.