The Beth Book
the truth, if you were a little more devoted to your duty."
"You allude to my wife," he said. "Oh, how can I make you understand!
But you have said it yourself--duty! What is duty? The conscientious
performance of uncongenial tasks. But if a man does his duty, then he
deserves his reward. I do my duty with what heart I have for it. No
fault can be found with me either as a husband or a citizen.
Therefore, as a man, I consider myself entitled to claim my reward."
"I am afraid you are not well," Beth said. "Don't you think you had
better go home and rest?"
"Not until we come to an understanding," he answered tragically.
Beth shrugged her shoulders resignedly, folded her hands, and waited,
more interested in him as a human specimen in spite of herself than
disturbed by anything his attitude foreboded.
There was a bright wood fire burning on the hearth. Mrs. Kilroy liked
to have one to welcome her when they had been out late, not for warmth
so much as for cheerfulness. The summer midnight was chilly enough,
however, for the gentle heat to be grateful; and Beth turned to the
blaze and gazed into it tranquilly. The clock on the mantelpiece
struck one. Roberts brought in a tray with refreshments on it, and set
it down on a small table beside Beth. Before she helped herself she
asked Mr. Pounce what he would have, but he curtly declined to take
anything. She shrugged her shoulders, and fell-to herself with a
healthy appetite.
"How can you--how can you?" he ejaculated several times.
"I'm hungry," she said, laughing, "and I really don't see why I
shouldn't eat."
"You have no feeling for me," he complained.
"I have a sort of feeling that you are posing," she answered bluntly;
"and I wish you wouldn't. You'd better have some sandwiches."
"How terribly complex life is!" he muttered.
"Life is pretty much what we make of it by the way we live it," she
rejoined, taking another sandwich. "We are what we allow ourselves to
be. The complexities come of wrong thinking and wrong doing. Right and
wrong are quite distinct; there is no mistaking one for the other. In
any dilemma we have only to think what is right to be done, and to do
it, and there is an end of all perplexities and complexities.
Principle simplifies everything."
"I see you have never loved," he declared, "or you would not think the
application of principle such a simple thing."
"It is principle that makes love last," Beth answered, "and introduces
something permanent into this weary world of change. There is nothing
in life so well worth living for as principle; the most exquisite form
of pleasure is to be found in the pain of sacrificing one's
inclinations in order to live up to one's principles--so much so that
in time, when principle and inclination become identical, and we cease
to feel tempted, something of joy is lost, some gladness that was wont
to mingle with the trouble."
"But principles themselves are mutable," he maintained. "They get out
of date. And there are, besides, exceptional characters that do not
come under the common law of humanity; exceptional temperaments, and
exceptional circumstances to which common principles are inapplicable,
or for which they are inadequate."
"That is the hypocrisy of the vicious," Beth said, with her eyes fixed
meditatively on the fire, "the people who lay down excellent
principles, and publicly profess them for the sake of standing well
with society, but privately make exceptions for themselves in any
arrangement that may suit their own convenience. Your people of
'exceptional temperament' settle moral difficulties by not allowing
any moral consideration to clash with their inclinations, and misery
comes of it. The plea of exceptional character, exceptional
circumstances, exceptional temperament, and what not, is merely
another way of expressing exceptional selfishness and excusing
exceptional self-indulgence."
"Surely _you_ are not content to be a mere slave to social
convention!" he exclaimed.
"I am talking of fundamental principles, not of social conventions,"
she replied; "please to discriminate. Self-control is not slavery, but
emancipation; to control our passions makes us lords of ourselves and
free of our most galling bonds--the bonds of the flesh."
"What a drawback the want of--er--a proper philosophic training is,"
he observed. "Culture does a great deal. It makes us more modest, for
one thing. I don't suppose you know, for instance, that you are
setting up an opinion of your own in opposition to such men as
Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer maintained that as the man of genius gave
his whole life for the profit of humanity, he had a license of conduct
which was not accorded to the rest of mankind."
"If culture leaves us liable to be taken in by a false postulate of
any man's, however well turned the postulate or able the man, then I
have no respect for culture. The fact that Schopenhauer said such a
thing does not prove it true. An assertion like that is a mere matter
of opinion. Half the worry in the world is caused by differences of
opinion. Let us have the facts and form our own opinions. Have the men
of genius who allowed themselves license of conduct been any the
better for it? the happier? the greater? Schopenhauer himself, for
instance!" She smiled at him with honest eyes when she had spoken, and
took another sandwich. "But don't let us talk sophistry and
silliness," she proceeded, "nor the kind of abstract that serves as a
cover for unrighteousness. Those tricks don't carry conviction to my
uncultivated mind. I know how they're done."
"You are lowering yourself in my estimation," he said severely.
"And what comes after that?" she asked.
He shook his head and gazed at her reproachfully. "How can you be so
trivial," he said, "in a moment like this?--you who are situated even
as I am. If we were to die now, in six months it would be as though we
had never been. No one would remember us."
"But what have we done for any one," Beth asked, in her equable way,
"that we should be specially remembered?"
He made no reply, and Beth went on with the sandwiches.
"I thought," he began at last, "I did think that you at least would
understand and feel for me."
Beth stopped eating and considered a moment.
"Are you in any real trouble?" she asked at last.
He rose and began to pace up and down. "I will tell you," he said,
"and leave you to judge for yourself."
Beth looked somewhat ruefully at the tray, and wished that the
conversation had been more suited to the satisfaction of an honest
appetite.
"I have made it plain to you what my marriage is without blaming
anybody," he proceeded. "It is the rock upon which all my hopes were
wrecked. I found my ideal. I won her like a man. I haven't a word to
say against her. She is a woman who might have made any ordinary man
happy; but she has been no help to me. It is not her fault. She has
done her best. And it is not my fault."
"Then whose fault is it?" said Beth; "it must be somebody's. I think
of marriage as I think of life; it is pretty much what people choose
to make it. It does not fail when husband and wife have good
principles, and live up to them; and good manners in private as well
as in public--not to mention high ideals. When we are not happy in the
intimate relations of life, it is generally for some trivial
reason--as often as not because we don't take the trouble to make
ourselves agreeable, as because we fail in other duties. I consider it
a duty to be agreeable. In married life happiness depends on loyalty,
to begin with, the loyalty that will not even let its thoughts stray.
All that we want in everyday intercourse is truth and affection,
kindness, consideration, and unvarying politeness. If people practised
these as a duty from the first, sympathy would eventually come of the
effort. Marriage is the state that develops the noblest qualities, and
that is why happily married people are the best worth knowing, the
most delightful to live amongst. You have no fault to find with your
wife, therefore the fault must be in yourself if you are not happy. Do
your duty like a man, and cure yourself of it."
"It surprises me to hear you talk in that way," he exclaimed, "you who
have suffered so much yourself!"
"I make no pretence of having suffered," she answered. "I have no
patience with people who do. We have our destiny in our own hands to
make or mar, most of us. If we fail in one thing we shall succeed in
another. Life is a fertile garden, full of plants that bud and blossom
and bear fruit not once but every season while it lasts. If the crop
of happiness fails one year, we should set to work bravely, and
cultivate it all the more diligently for the next."
"All this is beside the mark," he responded peevishly. "You are
offering me the generalisations that only apply to ordinary people.
Allowance _must_ be made for exceptional natures. Look at me! I tell
you if I had met the right woman, I should have been at the top of the
tree by this time. I have the greatest respect for woman. I believe
that her part in life is to fertilise the mind of man; and if the able
man does not find the right woman for this purpose, he must remain
sterile, and the world will be the loser. I never knew such a woman
till I met you; but in you I have discovered one rich in all womanly
attributes, mental, moral, and physical; and, beyond these, dowered
also with genius, the divine gift--the very woman to help a man to do
his best."
"And what is the man going to do for me?" Beth inquired with a twinkle
in her eyes.
"He would surround you with every comfort, every luxury--jewels----"
"Like a ballet-girl!" she interjected. "I am really afraid you are
old-fashioned. You begin by offering me gewgaws--the paltry price
women set on themselves in the days of their intellectual infancy. We
know our value better now."
"You should have all that an ideal woman ought to have," he put in.
"What more can a woman require?"
"She would like to know what all she ought to have consists of," Beth
replied. "As a rule, a man's ideal woman is some one who will make him
comfortable; and he thinks he has done all that is necessary for her
when he allows her to contribute to his happiness."
"Ah, be serious!" he ejaculated. "You should be above playing in that
cruel way with a man who is in earnest. Hear what I have to say.
Remember _we_ are the people who make history. You talk about knowing
your own value! You do not know it. Without me you never will know it.
You do not know what is being said already about your unpublished
work. Those who have read it tell me you promise to be to England what
Georges Sand was to France when she appeared, a new light on the
literary horizon. But where would Georges Sand have been without De
Musset? They owe half their prestige to each other. While they were
alive every one talked of them, and now that they are dead reams are
written about them. Let us also go down to posterity together. All I
want is you; what you want is me. Will you--will you let me be to
you--De Musset?"
"What you really do want," said Beth, "is a sense of humour."
"For God's sake, do not be trivial!" he exclaimed. "You cannot think
what this means to me--how I have set my heart on it--how I already
seem to hear the men at the clubs mention my name and yours when I
pass. Night after night I have paced up and down outside this house,
looking up at your window, thinking it all out."
Beth flushed angrily. "I consider that a most improper proceeding,"
she said, "and I do not know how you can excuse it to yourself."
"I--much may be excused when a man feels as strongly as I do," he
protested.
"And how about your wife?" said Beth, "where do you place her in your
plans? Has she no feelings to be considered?"