The Beth Book
Beth fetched her oil-stove first, with the kettle on it, and, while
the water was boiling, she cut bread and butter and lighted the fire.
"We'll have tea together, if you please," she said cheerfully. "I've a
horrible suspicion that you've had nothing to eat or drink all day."
Her sympathy recalled his pleasant, patient smile.
"My appetite is not devouring," he said, "but my thirst is. Talk about
selling one's birthright! I'd sell my brains, I believe, for a cup of
tea at this moment."
"There's a bowl full for nothing, then," Beth rejoined. "Sip it while
I boil you an egg."
He took the bowl in both hands and tried the tea.
"Oh!" he exclaimed with a long-drawn sigh, "it's nectar! it's mead!
it's nepenthe! it's all the drinks ever brewed for all the gods in
one! But I'm afraid to touch it lest I should finish it."
"Don't be afraid, then," said Beth, "for you'll find it like liquor
for the gods in another respect; it will be to be had whenever you
want it. What's the matter?"
"Did I make lament?" he asked. "I didn't know it. But I'm all one
ache. I can't lie still for it, and I can't move without adding to it.
I've been watching the ice-floes on the river from the Embankment and
bridges by all lights lately; I never saw finer effects--such colour!
It's wonderful what colour there is under your sombre sky if you know
how to look for it; and it has the great advantage over the colour
other countries teem with of being unexpected. It's not obvious; you
have to look out for it; but when you have found it, you rejoice in it
as in something rare and precious, and it excites you to enthusiasm
beyond your wont--which should prevent chills, but it doesn't, as
witness my aches."
Beth felt his hand and found it dry and burning.
"The doctor is the next and only thing for you, young man, after this
frugal meal," she said, "and I'll go and fetch him. I hope to goodness
these are the right things to give you."
He objected to the doctor, but she paid no attention to his
remonstrance, and when she had done all she could think of for the
moment, she put on her wet boots and walking things again, got the
address of a good man from Ethel Maud Mary, and sallied out into the
snow once more.
Rheumatic fever was the doctor's diagnosis, and his directions to Beth
concluded with a long list of expensive medical comforts which it
seemed were absolutely necessary. She went out again when he had gone,
and brought back everything, toiling up the long flights of stairs
with both arms full, breathless but cheerful; and having set all in
order for use--sheets of medicated cotton-wool, medicines, Valentine's
extract, clinical thermometer and chart--she settled herself to watch
the patient, the clock, and the temperature of the room, which had to
be equable, with the exactness and method of a capable nurse. Before
the household retired, she went downstairs to fetch more coals,
fearing they might run short in the night.
"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 lie down; 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
manoeuvre 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," she added,
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 you say; 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