The Beth Book
she not seen it herself. The first effect of the shock was to narrow
her judgment and make her severe on men generally; but she will get
over that in time. Man, like woman, is too big a subject to generalise
about. He has his faults, you know, but he must be educated; that is
all he wants. He must be taught to have a better opinion of himself.
At present, he wallows because he thinks he can't keep out of the
mire; but of course he can when he learns how. He's not a bit worse
than woman naturally, only he has a lower opinion of himself, and that
keeps him down. With his training we shouldn't be a bit better than he
is. In all things that concern men and women, you dear, you will find
that, when they start fair, one is not a bit better or worse than the
other. Here we are."
Mrs. Orton Beg came into the hall to greet her guest. She was a
slender, elegant, middle-aged woman, in graceful black draperies, with
hair prematurely grey, and a face that had always been interesting,
but never handsome--a refined, intellectual, but not strong face; the
face of a patient, self-contained, long-enduring person, of settled
purpose, slowly arrived at, and then not easily shaken. She welcomed
Beth cordially, and placed her at table so that she might look out at
the old grey Cathedral. It was the first time Beth had seen it, and
she could have lost herself in the sensation of realising its
traditions, its beauty, and its age; but the conversation went on
briskly, and she had to take her part. Lady Fulda Guthrie, an aunt of
Mrs. Kilroy's, was the only other guest. She was a beautiful saint,
with a soul which had already progressed as far as the most spiritual
part of Catholicism could take it, and she could get no farther in
this incarnation.
"I hope you are prepared to discuss any and every thing, Mrs.
Maclure," Mrs. Orton Beg warned Beth; "for that is what you will find
yourself called upon to do among us. The peculiarity of man is that he
will do the most atrocious things without compunction, but would be
shocked if he were called upon to discuss them. Do what you like, is
his principle, but don't mention it; people form their opinions in
discussion, and opinions are apt to be adverse. Our principle is very
much the opposite."
"I have just begun to know the necessity for open discussion," Beth
answered tranquilly. "I do not see how we can arrive at happiness in
life if we do not try to discover the sources of misery. I know of
nothing that earnest men and women should hesitate to discuss openly
on proper occasions."
"Oh, I'm thankful to hear you say 'men and women,'" Angelica broke in.
"That is the right new spirit! Let us help one another. Any attempt to
separate the interests of the sexes, as women here and there, and men
generally, would have them separated, is fatal to the welfare of the
whole race. The efforts of foolish people to divide the interests of
men and women make me writhe--as if we were not utterly bound up in
one another, and destined to rise or fall together! But this woman
movement is towards the perfecting of life, not towards the
disruption of it. I asked a sympathetic woman the other day why she
took no part in it, and she answered profoundly, 'Because I am a part
_of_ it.' And I am sure she was right. I am sure it is evolutionary.
It is an effort of the race to raise itself a step higher in the scale
of being. For see what it resolves itself into! Men respond to what
women expect of them. When warriors were the women's ideal, men were
warriors. When women preferred knights, priests, or troubadours, a
man's ambition was to be a knight, priest, or troubadour. When women
thought drunkenness fine, men were drunken. Now women want husbands of
a nobler nature, strong in all the attributes, moral and physical, of
the perfect man, that their children may be noble too, and thus the
ascent of man to higher planes of being become assured."
"Great is the power of thought," said Lady Fulda. "By thinking these
things the race is evolving them. Thought married to suggestion is a
creative force. If the race believed it would have wings; in the
course of ages wings would come of the faith."
"And discussion is not enough," Beth resumed. "We should experiment.
It is very well to hold opinions and set up theories, but opinions and
theories are alike valueless until they are tested by experiment."
"I see you are a true radical," said Mrs. Orton Beg. "You would go to
the root of the matter."
"Oh yes, I am a radical in that sense of the word," Beth answered. "I
have a horror of conservatism. Nothing is stationary. All things are
always in a state of growth or decay; and conservatism is a state of
decay."
"Yes," said Angelica. "That is very true, especially as applied to
women--if they are ever to advance."
"Then don't you think they are advancing?" Beth asked.
"Yes," said Angelica, "but not as much as they might. When you mix
more with them in the way of work you will be disheartened. Women are
their own worst enemies just now. They don't follow their leaders
loyally and consistently; they have little idea of discipline; their
tendency is to go off on side issues and break up into little cliques.
They are largely actuated by petty personal motives, by petty
jealousies, by pettinesses of all kinds. One amongst them will arise
here and there, and do something great that is an honour to them all;
but they do not honour her for it--perhaps because something in the
way she dresses, or some trick of manner, does not meet with the
approval of the majority. Women are for ever stumbling over trifling
details. To prove themselves right pleases them better than to arrive
at the truth; and a vulgar personal triumph is of more moment than
the triumph of a great cause. In these things they are practically not
a bit better than men."
"They seem worse, in fact, because we expect so much more of them in the
way of loyalty and disinterestedness," said Mrs. Orton Beg; "and their
power is so much greater, too, in social matters; when they misuse it,
they do much more harm. This will not always be so, of course. As their
minds expand, they will see and understand better. At present they do
not know enough to appreciate their own deficiencies--they do not
measure the weakness of their vacillations by comparing it with the
steady strength of purpose that prevails; and, for want of
comprehension, they aim their silly animadversions to-day at some one
whose work they are glad enough to profit by to-morrow; they make the
task of a benefactress so hard that they kill her, and then they give
her a public funeral. I pity them!"
"Oh, do not be hasty," said Lady Fulda. "Human beings are not like
packs of cards, to be shuffled into different combinations at will and
nobody the worse. There are feelings to be considered. The old sores
must be tenderly touched even by those who would heal them. And when
we uproot we must be careful to replant under more favourable
conditions; when we demolish we should be prepared to rebuild, or no
comfort will come of the changes. These things take time, and are best
done deliberately, and even then the most cautious make their
mistakes. But, still, I believe that the force which is carrying us
along is the force that makes for righteousness. We women have in our
minds now what will culminate in the recognition by future generations
of the beauty of goodness. Woman is to be the mother of God in Man."
Beth's heart swelled at the words. This attitude was new to her; and
yet all that was said she seemed to have heard before, and known from
the first. And she knew more also, away back in that region beyond
time and space to which she had access, and where she found herself at
happy moments transported by an impulse outside herself, which she
could not control by any effort of will. That day, with those new
friends, she felt like one who returns to a happy home after weary
wanderings, and is warmly welcomed. A great calm settled upon her
spirit. She said little the whole time, but sat, sure of their
sympathetic tolerance, and listened to them with that living light of
interest in her eyes to which the heart responds with confidence more
surely than to any spoken word. The evil influences which had held her
tense at Slane had no power to trouble her here. She was high enough
above Dan and Bertha to look down upon them dispassionately, knowing
them for what they were, yet personally unaffected by their turpitude.
It was as if she had heard of some bad deed, and knew it to be
repulsive, a thing intolerable, meriting punishment; yet, because it
did not concern her, it had lapsed from her thoughts like a casual
paragraph read in a paper which had not brought home to her any
realisation of what it recorded.
During the afternoon her mind was stored with serene impressions--service
in the venerable Cathedral; the fluting of an anthem by a boy with a
birdlike voice; some strong words from the pulpit, not on the dry bones
of doctrine, nor the doings of a barbarous people led by a vengeful
demon of perplexing attributes whom they worshipped as a deity, but on
the conduct of life--a vital subject. Then, as they drove through the
beautiful old city, there came impressions of grey and green; grey
gateways, ancient buildings, ivy, and old trees, and, over all, sounding
slow, calm, and significant, the marvellous chime, the message which
Morningquest heard hourly year by year, and heeded no more than it
heeded death at a distance or political complications in Peru.
The same party met again at Ilverthorpe, but there were others there
as well--Ideala, Mrs. Kilroy's father and mother Mr. and Lady Adeline
Hamilton-Wells, and Lady Galbraith, but not Sir George.
In the drawing-room after dinner, Beth was intent upon a portfolio of
drawings, and Ideala, seeing her alone, went up to her.
"Are you fond of pictures?" she said to Beth.
"Yes, that is just the word," Beth answered. "I am so 'fond' of them
that even such a collection as this, which shows great industry rather
than great art, I find full of interest, and delight in. Happy for me,
perhaps, that I don't know anything about technique. Subject appeals
to my imagination as it used to do when I was a child, and loved to
linger over the pictures on old-fashioned pieces of music. Those
pictures lure me still with strange sensations such as no others make
me feel. I wish I could realise now as vividly as I realised then the
beauty of that lovely lady on the song, and the whole pathetic
story--the gem that decked her queenly brow and bound her raven hair,
remained a sad memorial of blighted love's despair; and that other
young creature who wore a wreath of roses on the night when first we
met; and the one who related that we met, 'twas in a crowd, and I
thought he would shun me; he came, I could not breathe, for his eye
was upon me, and concluded that 'twas thou that had caused me this
anguish, my mother. There was the gallant corsair, too, just stepping
out of a boat, waving his hat. His curly hair, open shirt collar, and
black tie with flying ends remain in my mind, intimately associated
with Byron, young love, some who never smiled again, the sapphire
night, crisp, clear, cold, thick-strewn with stars, all sparkling
with frosty brightness--impressions I would not exchange for art
understood, or anything I am capable of feeling now before the
greatest work of art in the world--so strangely am I blunted."
"What, already!" Ideala said compassionately. "But that is only a
phase. You will come out of it, and be young again and feel strongly,
which is better than knowing, I concede. The truest appreciation of a
work of art does not take place in the head, but in the heart; not in
thinking, but in feeling. When we stand before a picture, it is not by