The Beth Book
before she quite recovered, and in one sense of the word she was never
the same again.
CHAPTER XLI
Dan said no more about Sir George Galbraith; and indeed he had no
excuse, for Sir George did not come again. There were other men,
however, who came to the house, Dan's own friends; and now that Beth's
eyes were opened, she perceived that he watched them all suspiciously
if they paid her any attention; and if she showed the slightest
pleasure in the conversation of any of them, he would be sure to make
some sneering remark about it afterwards. Dan was so radically vicious
that the notion of any one being virtuous except under compulsion was
incomprehensible to him.
"Your spirits seem to go up when Mr. Vanrickards is here," he observed
one day.
"Thank you for warning me," Beth answered, descending to his level in
spite of herself. "I will be properly depressed the next time he
comes."
But although she could keep him in check so that he dared not say all
that he had in his mind, she understood him; and the worst of it was
that his coarse and brutal jealousy accustomed her to the suspicion,
and made her contemplate the possibility of such a lapse as he had in
his mind. She began to believe that he would not have tormented
himself so if husbands did not ordinarily have good reason to be
jealous of their wives. She concluded that such treachery of man to
man as he dreaded must be normal. And then also she realised that it
was thought possible for a married woman to fall in love, and even
wondered at last if that would ever be her own case. Dan had, in fact,
destroyed his own best safeguard. If a man would keep his wife from
evil, he should not teach her to suspect herself--neither should he
familiarise her with ideas of vice. Since their marriage Dan's whole
conversation, and the depravity of his tastes and habits, had tended
towards the brutalisation of Beth. Married life for her was one long
initiation into the ways of the vicious.
Dr. Maclure's sordid jealousy made him the laughing-stock of the
place, though he never suspected it. His conceit was too great to let
him suppose that any sentiment of his could provoke ridicule. It
became matter for common gossip, however, and from that time forward
gentlemen ceased to visit the house. Men of a certain kind came still,
men who were bound to Dan by kindred tastes, but not such as he cared
to introduce to Beth. These boon companions generally came in the
evening, and were entertained in the dining-room, where they spent the
night together, smoking, drinking, and talking after the manner of
their kind. Beth could not use her secret chamber after dark for fear
of the light being seen, so she stayed in the drawing-room alone till
she went to bed. She found those evenings interminable, and the nights
more trying still. She could not read or write because of the noise in
the dining-room, and had to fall back on her sewing for occupation;
but sewing left her mind open to any obsession, and only too often,
with the gross laughter from the next room, scraps of the lewd topics
her husband delighted in came to her recollection. When Dan
discoursed about such things he was at the high-water mark of
pleasure, his countenance glowed, and enjoyment of the subject was
expressed in all his person. Beth's better nature revolted, but alas!
she had become so familiar with such subjects by this time that,
although she loathed them, she could not banish them. Life from her
husband's point of view was a torment to her, yet under the pressure
of his immediate influence it was forced upon her attention more and
more--from his point of view.
When she went to bed on his festive nights she suffered from the dread
of being disturbed. If her husband were called out at night
professionally, it was a pleasure to her to lie awake so that she
might be ready to rise the moment he returned, and get him anything he
wanted. On those occasions she always had a tray ready for him, with
soup to be heated, or coffee to be made over a spirit-lamp, and any
little dainty she thought would refresh him. She was fully in sympathy
with him in his work, and would have spared herself no fatigue to make
it easier for him, but she despised him for his vices, and refused to
sacrifice herself in order to make them pleasanter for him. When he
stayed up smoking and drinking half the night she resented the loss of
sleep entailed upon her, which meant less energy for her own work the
next day. The dread of being disturbed made her restless, and the
futility of it under the circumstances exasperated her. She suffered,
too, more than can be mentioned, from the smell of alcohol and
tobacco, of which he reeked, and from which he took no trouble to
purify himself. Often and often, when she had tossed herself into a
fever on these dreadful nights, she craved for long hours, with
infinite yearning, to be safe from disturbance, in purity and peace;
and thought how happily, how serenely she would have slept until the
morning, and how strong and fresh she would have arisen for another
day's work had she been left alone. Only once, however, did she
complain. Dan was going out in a particularly cheerful mood that
night.
"Shall you be late?" she asked.
"Yes, probably. Why?"
"I was thinking, if you wouldn't mind, I would have a bed made up for
you in the spare room. _I_ only sleep in snatches when you are out and
I am expecting you. Every sound rouses me. I think it is the door
opening. And then when you do come it disturbs me, and I do not sleep
again. If you don't mind I should prefer to be alone--on your late
nights--your late festive nights."
Dr. Maclure stood looking gloomily into the fireplace.
"Have I annoyed you, Dan?" Beth asked at last.
He walked to the door, stood a moment with his back to her, then
turned and looked at her. "Annoyed is not the word," he said. "You
have wounded me deeply."
He opened the door as he spoke, and went out. When he had gone Beth
sat and suffered. She could not bear to hurt him, she was not yet
sufficiently brutalised for that; so she said no more on the subject,
but patiently endured the long lonely night watches, and the after
companionship which had in it all that is most trying and offensive to
a refined and delicate woman.
* * * * *
After that first display of jealousy Beth discovered that her husband
pried upon her continually. He was very high and mighty on the subject
of women spying upon men, but there seemed no meanness he would not
compass in order to spy upon a woman. He had duplicate keys to her
drawers and boxes, and rummaged through all her possessions when she
went out. One day she came upon him standing before her wardrobe,
feeling in the pockets of her dresses, and on another occasion she
discovered him unawares in her bedroom, picking little scraps of paper
out of the slop-pail and piecing them together to see what she had
been writing. To Beth, accustomed to the simple, honourable principles
of her parents, and to the confidence with which her mother had left
her letters lying about, because she knew that not one of her children
would dream of looking at them, Dan's turpitude was revolting. On
those occasions when she caught him, he did not hear her enter the
room, and she made her escape without disturbing him, and stole up to
her secret chamber, and sat there, suffering from one of those attacks
of nausea and shivering which came upon her in moments of deep
disgust.
After that she had an attack of illness which kept her in bed for a
week; but even then, feverish and suffering as she was, and yearning
for the coolness and liberty of a room to herself, she dared not
suggest such a thing for fear of a scene.
While she was still in bed Dan brought her some letters one morning.
He made no remark when he gave them to her, but he had opened them as
usual, and stood watching her curiously while she read them. The first
she looked at was from her sister Bernadine, and had a black border
round it; but she took it out of its envelope unsuspiciously, and read
the words that were uppermost, "_Mamma died this morning_." In a
moment it flashed upon her that Dan had read the letter, and was
waiting now to see the effect of the shock upon her. She immediately,
but involuntarily, set herself to baffle his cruel curiosity. With a
calm, illegible face she read the letter from beginning to end, folded
it, and put it back in its envelope deliberately, then took up another
which had also been opened.
But suppressed feeling finds vent in some form or other, and Beth
showed temper now instead of showing grief. "I wish you would not open
my letters," she said irritably. "All the freshness of them is gone
for me when you open them without my permission and read them first.
Besides, it is an insult to my correspondents. What they say to me is
intended for me, and not for you."
"I have a perfect right to open your letters," he retorted.
"I should like to see the Scripture that gives you the right, and I
should advise you to waive it if you do not wish me to assume the
right to open yours. Your petty prying keeps me in a continual state
of irritation. I shall be lowered to retaliate sooner or later. So
stop it, please, once and for all."
"My petty prying, indeed!" he exclaimed. "Well, that is a nice thing
to say to your husband! Why, even when I do open your letters, which
is not often, I never read them without your permission."
"Indeed," said Beth, who had ceased to be stunned by falsehoods. "Then
be good enough not even to open them in future."
Dan tried to express injury and indignation in a long, hard look; but
Beth was reading another letter, and took no further notice of him.
He hung about a little watching her.
"Any news," he ventured at last, with an imperfect assumption of
indifference.
"You know quite well what my news is," she answered bluntly, "and I am
not going to discuss it with you. I wish you would leave me alone."
"Well, you're a nice pill!" said Dan, discomfited.
Beth looked up at him. "What are you doing with your hat on in my
bedroom?" she asked sharply. "I thought I had made you understand that
you must treat me with respect, even if I am your wife."
Dan uttered a coarse oath, and left the room, banging the door after
him.
"Thank Heaven--at last!" Beth ejaculated. She had been too anxious to
get rid of him to scruple about the means, but when he had gone a
reaction set in, and she lay back on her pillows, flushed, excited,
furious with him, disgusted with herself. She felt she was falling
away from all her ideals. "As the husband is the wife is"--the words
flashed through her mind, but she would not believe it inevitable. But
even if she should degenerate, her own nature was too large, too
strong, too generous to cast the blame on any one but herself. "No!"
she exclaimed. "We are what we allow ourselves to be."
Swift following upon that thought came the recollection of a bad fall
she had had when she was a little child in Ireland, and the way her
mother had picked her up, and cuddled her, and comforted her. Beth
burst into a paroxysm of tears. She had understood her mother better
than her mother had understood her, had felt for her privations, had
admired and imitated her patient endurance; and now to think that it
was too late, to think that she had gone, and it would never be in
Beth's power to brighten her life or lessen the hardship of it! That
was all she thought of. Every week since her marriage she had sent her
mother a long, cheerful, amusing letter, full of pleasant details--an
exercise in that form of composition; but with never a hint of her
troubles; and Mrs. Caldwell died under the happy delusion that it was