The Beth Book
"You said she sold her dresses?"
"Yes; sit down, Mr. Brock. A glass of port wine is what you want, as
she'd say herself if she was here; and you'll get it good too, for
it's been sent for Ma. My! the things that have come! Look at me--all
presents--everything she ever heard me say I'd like to have; and
Gwendolen the same."
She got out the wine and the biscuits from a chiffonier as she
chattered, and set them before him.
"Yes, she sold her dresses, and her rings, and her books, and every
other blessed thing she possessed except what had belonged to an old
aunt. She got _them_ out too, one day, but cried so when it came to
parting with them, I persuaded her to wait. I said something would
turn up, I was sure. And something did, for _you_ went away, and
directly after--the next minute, so to speak, for you were scarcely
out of sight--a lady stopped her carriage--a fine carriage and pair
and coachman and footman all silver-mounted--and ran up the steps in a
great way. She'd seen Mrs. Maclure go into the house, and she said
she'd been hunting for her everywhere for months, and all her friends
were in a way about her, not knowing what had happened to her. I took
the lady up to the attic, and there was Mrs. Maclure lying on the
floor looking like death, with her head up against the big chair where
you used to sit. We thought she _was_ dead at first, but the doctor
came and brought her round. He said it was just exhaustion from
fatigue and starvation."
Arthur Brock uttered an exclamation.
"You needn't reproach yourself, Mr. Brock," Ethel Maud Mary pursued
sympathetically. "You weren't worse than the rest of us. I saw her
every day, and never suspected she was denying herself everything, she
was always so much the same--happy, you know, in her quiet way."
"Do you think she was happy?" he groaned.
"Yes, she was happy," Ethel Maud Mary said simply. "She's that
disposition--contented, you know; and she was happy from the first;
but she was happier still from the time she had you to care for. I'd
read about ladies of that kind, Mr. Brock, but had not seen one
before. It's being good does it, I suppose. Do you know she'd not have
told a lie was it ever so, Mrs. Maclure wouldn't!"
"And she went away with that lady?" Arthur asked, after a pause.
"Yes, if you can call it going," Ethel Maud Mary replied; "for the
lady didn't ask her leave, but just rolled her up in wraps, and had
her carried down to the carriage and took her off. And that's all we
know about her. She's written me a letter I'd like to show you, and
sent me money, pretending she owed it, because I'd let her have her
attic too cheap. She sent the presents afterwards, but no address. The
lady came back once alone, and had the attic photographed, with
everything arranged just as Mrs. Maclure used to have it. And she
bought all the things in it that belonged to us, and had them and all
Mrs. Maclure's own things taken away to keep, she said. She sat a long
time in the attic, looking at it, just as if she was trying to imagine
what living in it was like, and she kept dabbing her eyes with a
little lace handkerchief, and then she got up and sighed and said,
'Poor Beth! poor Beth!' several times. She talked to me a lot about
Mrs. Maclure. She seemed to know all about me, and treated me as if
we'd been old friends. And she knew all about you too, and asked after
you kindly. She said Mrs. Maclure was going to be a great woman--a
great genius or something of that sort--and do a lot for the world;
and she wanted to know if you'd ever suspected it. I told her I
thought not. The two letters you wrote she took to give Mrs. Maclure,
so she'd get _them_ all right."
"And see the particular kind of fatuous ass I am set down clearly in
my own handwriting!" he said to himself.
Then he rose. "I'll just go up and look at the attics," he said.
Ethel Maud Mary waited below, and waited long for him. When at last he
came down, he shook hands with her, but without looking at her.
"I'm going to find that lady--Mrs. Maclure," he said, jamming his hat
down on his head, "if I have to spend the rest of my life in the
search."
CHAPTER LII
Beth, surrounded by friends, saw the spring come in that year at
Ilverthorpe, and felt it the fairest spring she could remember.
Blackbird and thrush sang in an ecstasy by day, and all night long the
nightingales trilled in the happy dusk. She did not ask herself why it
was there was a new note in nature that year, nor did she trouble
herself about time or eternity. Her eternity was the exquisite
monotony of tranquil days, her time-keepers the spring flowers, the
apple-blossom and quince, daffodil, wallflower, lilac and laburnum,
the perfumed calycanthus, forget-me-nots, pansies, hyacinths,
lilies-of-the-valley in the woods, and early roses on a warm south
wall; and over all the lark by day, and again at night the
nightingale. In a life like hers, after a period of probation there
comes an interval of this kind occasionally, a pause for rest and
renewal of strength before active service begins again.
While she had been shut up with Arthur, seeing no papers and hearing
no news, her book had come out and achieved a very respectable
success, for the sort of thing it was; and she was pleased to hear it,
but not elated. The subject had somehow lapsed from her mind, and the
career of the book gave her no more personal pleasure than if it had
been the work of a friend. Had it come out when it was first finished,
she would have felt differently about it; but now she saw it as only
one of the many things which had happened to her, and considered it
more as the old consider the works of their youth, estimating them in
proportion, as is the habit of age, and moderately rather than in
excess. For the truth was that a great change had come over Beth
during the last few months in respect to her writing; her enthusiasm
had singularly cooled; it had ceased to be a pleasure, and become an
effort to her to express herself in that way.
Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce had been looking out for Beth's book, and,
while waiting for it to appear, he had, misled by his own
suppositions, prepared an elaborate article upon the kind of thing he
expected it to be. Nothing was wanting to complete the article but a
summary of the story and quotations from it, for which he had left
plenty of space. He condemned the book utterly from the point of view
of art, and for the silly ignorance of life displayed in it, and the
absurd caricatures which were supposed to be people; he ridiculed the
writer for taking herself seriously (but without showing why exactly
she should not take herself seriously if she chose); he pitied her for
her disappointment when she should realise where in literature her
place would be; and he ended with a bitter diatribe against the works
of women generally, as being pretentious, amateur, without
originality, and wanting in humour, like the wretched stuff it had
been his painful duty to expose. Unfortunately for him, however, the
book appeared anonymously, and immediately attracted attention enough
to make him wish to discover it; and before he found out that Beth was
the author, he had committed himself to a highly eulogistic article
upon it in _The Patriarch_, which he took the precaution to sign, that
the coming celebrity might know to whom gratitude was due, and in
which he declared that there had arisen a new light of extraordinary
promise on the literary horizon. The book, as it happened, was not a
work of fiction at all.
* * * * *
Beth had heard nothing more from Dr. Maclure, and knew nothing about
him, except that he must have lost his degrading appointment, the Acts
having been rescinded. He had forwarded none of the letters her
friends had addressed to her at Slane. The Kilroys had endeavoured to
obtain her address from him, but he denied that he knew it. Unknown to
her, Mr. Kilroy, Mr. Hamilton-Wells, and Sir George Galbraith had
taken the best legal advice in the hope of getting her a divorce; but
there was little chance of that, as the acute mental suffering her
husband had caused her had merely injured her health and endangered
her reason, which does not amount to cruelty in the estimation of the
law. The matter was therefore allowed to drop, and Beth had not yet
begun to think of the future, when one day she received a letter from
Dan, couched in the most affectionate terms, entreating her to return
to him.
"You must own that I had cause for provocation," he said, "but I
confess that I was too hasty. It is natural, though, that a man should
feel it if his wife gets herself into such a position, however
innocently; and the more he has trusted, loved, and respected his
wife, the more violent will the reaction be. I know, however, that I
have had my own shortcomings since we were married, and therefore that
I should make every allowance for you. So let us be friends, Beth, and
begin all over again, as you once proposed. I am ready to leave Slane
and settle wherever you like. Make your own conditions; anything that
pleases you will please me."
This letter upset Beth very much. She would almost rather have had an
action for divorce brought against her than have been asked to return
to Daniel Maclure.
"Ought I to go back?" she asked, willing, with the fatuous persistency
of women in like cases, to persevere if it were thought right that
she should, although she knew pretty well that the sacrifice would be
unavailing so far as he was concerned, and would only entail upon
herself the common lot of women so mated--a ruined constitution and
corroded mind.
"Why does he suddenly so particularly wish it?" was the question.
The obvious explanation was indirectly conveyed in a letter from her
old lawyer. He had written to her in her London lodgings, first of
all, but the letter was returned from the Dead Letter Office. Then he
had written to Slane, but as he received no answer to that letter and
it was not returned, he went in person to inquire about it. Dan
declared that he knew nothing about the letter, or about Beth either,
if she had left London; but he thought her intimate friends the
Kilroys might know where she was. The old gentleman applied to the
Kilroys, and having found Beth, wrote to inform her that her
great-aunt Victoria Bench's investments had recovered at last, as he
had always been pretty sure that they would, and she would
accordingly, for the future, find herself in receipt of an income of
seven or eight hundred pounds a year. Dan's sudden magnanimity was
accounted for. Beth put his effusion and the lawyer's letter before
her friends, and asked to be advised. They decided unanimously that,
on the one hand, Dan was not a proper person for her to live with,
that no decent woman could associate with a man of his mind, habits,
and conversation without suffering injury in some sort; while, on the
other, they pointed out that, although it would be nice, it would not
be good for Dan to have the benefit of Beth's little income. While he
was forced to work, he would have to conduct himself with a certain
amount of propriety; but if Beth relieved him of the necessity, there
would be nothing to restrain him.
This episode roused Beth from her tranquil apathy, and made her think
of work once more. But first she had to settle somewhere and make a
home for herself; and although she had ample means for all her
requirements now, it was not an easy thing to find the special
conditions on which she had set her heart. The first impulse of a
woman of noble nature is to be consistent, to live up to all she
professes to admire. As Beth grew older, to live for others became
more and more her ideal of life;--not to live in the world, however,
or to be of it, but to work for it.