The Beth Book
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 the old 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 education calculated 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 the most 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 a suspicion. 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.