The Beth Book
"I shall not hurt her feelings, I assure you, I never do," he
answered. "I keep her in a quiet country place so that she may hear no
gossip, and I excuse my long absences from home on the plea of work.
She understands that my interests would suffer if I were not on the
spot."
"In other words, you lie to your wife," said Beth, aghast at the
shabby deceit.
"That is scarcely polite language," he rejoined in an offended tone.
"It is correct language," she retorted. "We shall understand what we
are talking about much better if we call things by their right names.
But are you never afraid of what your wife may be driven to in the
dulness of the country, while you are here in town, dancing attendance
on other men's wives?"
"Never in the least," he answered complacently. "She is entirely
devoted to me and to her duty. Her faith in me is absolute."
"And so you deceive her."
"I am not bound to tell her all my doings," he protested.
"You are in honour bound not to deceive her," Beth said; "and if you
deceive her it is none the less low because she does not suspect you.
On the contrary. It seems to me that one of the worst things that can
happen to a man is to have docile women to deal with."
"I am grieved to hear you talk like that," he said. "I am really
grieved. It shows a want of refinement that surprises and shocks me. I
maintain that I do her no injury. These things can always be arranged
so that no one is injured; that is all that is necessary."
"These things can never be arranged so that no one is injured," Beth
replied. "We injure ourselves, if no one else. We are bound to
deteriorate when we live deceitfully. How can you be honest and manly
and lead a double life? The false husband in whom his wife believes
must be a sneak; and for the man who rewards a good faithful wife by
deceiving her, I have no term of contempt sufficiently strong."
"I am disappointed in you," he said. "I should never have suspected
that you were so narrow and conventional."
"Are you prepared to defy public opinion?" Beth asked.
"No, that would be gross," he said. "Outwardly we must conform. Only
the _elite_ understand these things, and only the _elite_ need know of
them. You are of the _elite_ yourself; you must know, you must feel
the power, the privilege conferred by a great passion."
"Pray do not class me with the _elite_ if passion is what they
respect," Beth said. "Passion at the best--honourable passion--is but
the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The passion that has no
honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift
and sure to decay."
"Passion is more than that, the passion of which I speak. It is a
great mental stimulant," he declared.
"Yes," said Beth, "passion is a great mental stimulant--passion
resisted."
"Georges Sand, whom I would have you follow, always declared that she
only wrote her best under the influence of a strong passion," he
assured her.
"But how do we know that she might not have written better than that
best under some holier influence?" Beth rejoined. "George Eliot's
serener spirit appeals to me more. I believe it is only those who
renounce the ruinous riot of the senses, and find their strength and
inspiration in contemplation, who reach the full fruition of their
powers. Ages have not talked for nothing of the pains of passion and
the pleasures of love. Love is a great ethical force; but passion,
which is compact of every element of doubt and deceit, is cosmic and
brutal, a tyrant if we yield to it, but if we master it, an obedient
servant willing to work. I would rather die of passion myself, as I
might of any other disease, than live to be bound by it."
Pounce, who had been pacing about the room restlessly until now, sat
down by the fire, and gazed into it for a little, discomfited. He had
come primed with the old platitudes, the old sophistries, the old
flatteries, come to treat amicably, and found himself met with armed
resistance, his flatteries and platitudes ridiculed, his sophistries
exposed, and his position attacked with the confidence and courage of
those who are sure of themselves.
"Have you no feeling for me?" he said at last, after a long pause,
speaking somewhat hoarsely.
"I feel sorry for you," was the unexpected answer.
"Pity is akin to love," he said.
"Pity is also akin to contempt," she rejoined. "And how can a woman
feel anything else for a man who is false to the most sacred
obligations? who makes vows and breaks them according to his
inclination? If we make a law of our own inclinations, what assurance
can we give to any one that we shall ever be true?"
"I have found at last what I have yearned for all my life long," he
protested. "I know I shall never waver in my devotion to you."
"That may be," she answered. "But what guarantee could you give me
that _I_ should not waver? What comfort would your fidelity be if I
tired of you in a month?"
Again he was discomfited, and there was another pause.
"If you did change," he said at last, "I should be the only sufferer."
Beth sat silent for a little, then she said slowly, "What you have
ventured to propose to me to-night, Mr. Cayley Pounce, is no more
credit to your intelligence than it is to your principles. You come
here and find me living openly, in an assured position, with powerful
friends, whose affection and respect for me rest on their confidence
in me, and with brilliant prospects besides, as you say, which,
however, depend to a great extent upon my answering to the
expectations I have raised. You allow that I have some ability, some
sense, and yet you offer me in exchange for all these----"
"I offer you _love_!" he exclaimed fervently.
"Love!" she ejaculated with contempt, "you offer me yourself for a
lover, and you seek to inspire confidence in me by deceiving your
wife. You would have me sacrifice a position of safety for a position
of danger--one that might be changed into an invidious position by the
least indiscretion--and all for what?"
"For love of you," he pleaded, "that I may help you to develop the
best that is in you."
"All for the prestige of having your name associated with mine by men
about town in the event of mine becoming distinguished," she
interrupted.
He winced.
"I only ask you to do what George Eliot did greatly to her advantage,"
he answered reproachfully.
"You asked me to do what Georges Sand did greatly to her detriment,"
Beth said. "George Eliot is an after-thought. And you certainly have
no intention of asking me to do what she did, for she acted openly,
she deceived no one, and injured no one."
"And you do not blame her?" he exclaimed with a flash of hope.
Beth answered indirectly: "When I think about that, I ask myself have
Church and State arranged the relations of the sexes successfully
enough to convince us that they cannot be better arranged? Are
marriages holier now than they were in the days when there were no
churches to bless them? or happier here than in other countries where
they are simple private contracts? And it seems to me that we have no
historical proof that the legal bond is necessarily the holiest
between man and woman, or that there is never justification for a more
irregular compact. I know that 'holy matrimony' is often a state of
absolute degradation, especially for the woman; and I believe that two
honourable people can live together honourably without the
conventional bond, so long as no one else is injured, no previous
compact broken. But all the same I think the legal bond is best. It is
a safeguard to the family and a restraint on the unprincipled. And, at
any rate, all my experience, all my thought, all my hope argue for the
dignity of permanence in human relations. Anything else is bad for the
individual, for the family, for the state. As civilisation, as
evolution advances from lower to higher, we find it makes more and
more for monogamy. Our highest types of men and women are monogamous.
Those whose contracts are lightly made and lightly broken are trivial
people. That useful Oneida Creek experiment proved that the instinct,
if not the ideal, of modern humanity is monogamous."
"What was that?" he asked.
"A number of people formed a community at Oneida Creek to live
together in a kind of ordered promiscuity, but the experiment failed
because it was found eventually that the members were living together
secretly in pairs. No. The more I know of life the less I like the
idea of allowing any laxity in the marriage relation. In certain cases
of course there is good and sufficient reason for two people to
separate. But I believe that right-minded people can generally, and
almost always do, make their marriages answer. Marriage is compact of
every little incident in life, it is not merely made up of one strong
feeling, otherwise men and women would be as the animals who pair and
part casually; therefore, if two people are disappointed in each other
in some things, they must have other things in common to fall back
upon. My ideal of life is love in marriage and loyal friends."
"It is interesting to hear you express these views," he said bitterly,
"considering what your experience has been."
"I don't see that my petty personal experience has anything to do with
the truth of the matter," said Beth, bridling somewhat. "You really
have a poor opinion of me if you think I shall allow my judgment to be
warped by anything that may happen to myself. Because my own
experience is not a happy one, you would have me declare that family
life is a mistake! Doubtless many an outcry is raised for no better
reason. But do you not see yourself that the tranquil home-life is the
most beautiful, the most conducive to the development of all that is
best in us--that there is nothing like the delight of being a member
of a large and united family. Can you come into a house like this and
not see it?"
"This house was not always a model of domestic felicity," he sneered.
"That proves my point," she rejoined. "The difficulties can be lived
down if people are right-minded."
"Your argument does not alter the fact that I am a miserable man," he
said dejectedly.
"You were not born to be a miserable man," she answered gently, "and
'we always may be what we might have been.' But you have lost much
ground, Alfred Cayley Pounce, since the days when you roamed about the
cliffs and sandy reaches of Rainharbour with Beth Caldwell, making
plans. You had your ideals then, and lived up to them. You cultivated
your flowers for delight in their beauty, and went to your modelling
for love of the work. You gave your flowers to your friends with an
honest intention to please; you modelled with honest ambition to do
good work. In those days you were above caring to cultivate the
acquaintance of the best people. You had touched the higher life at
that time; you had felt such rapture in it as has never come to you
since--even among the best people--I am sure; yet you fell away; you
deserted Beth--not basely, perhaps, but weakly; and you have been
deteriorating ever since."
He had started straight in his chair when she mentioned Beth Caldwell,
and was staring at her now with puzzled intentness.
"What do you know about Beth?" he said quickly. "Have you ever met
her?"
She smiled. "I can honestly say I never have," she answered. But she
looked away from him into the fire as she spoke, and he recognised the
set of her head on her shoulders as she turned it; he had noted it
often.
"God!" he exclaimed, "what a blind idiot I have been--Beth! Beth!" He
threw himself down on his knees beside her chair, caught her hand, and
covered it with kisses.
Beth snatched her hand away, and he returned embarrassed to his seat
and sat gazing at her for a little, then took out his handkerchief and