The Beth Book
undertake to say I'm a pretty good specimen both of health and
spirits."
It was so unusual for Dan to recommend Beth to do anything for her own
good that she began to wonder what he wanted; she had observed that he
always felt kindly disposed towards people when he was asking a favour
of them.
"And, by-the-bye," he pursued, turning his back to the mirror and
craning his neck to see the set of his coat-tails, "you might do
something for me when you are out. Wilberforce is worrying for his
money. It's damned cheek. I sent him a large order for whisky the
other day to keep him quiet, but it hasn't answered. I wish you would
go and see him--go with a long face, like a good girl, and tell him
I'm only waiting till I get my own accounts in. Have a little chat
with him, you know, and all that sort of thing--lay yourself out to
please him, in fact. He's a gentlemanly fellow for a wine-merchant,
and has a weakness for pretty women. If you go, I'll take my dick
he'll not trouble us with a bill for the next six months."
"It seems to me," said Beth in her quietest way, "that when a husband
asks his wife to make use of her personal appearance or charm of
manner to obtain a favour for him from another man, he is requiring
something of her which is not at all consistent with her
self-respect."
Dan stopped short with his hand up to his moustache to twist it, his
bonhomie cast aside in a moment. "Oh, damn your self-respect!" he said
brutally. "Your cursed book-talk is enough to drive a man to the
devil. Anybody but you, with your 'views' and 'opinions' and fads and
fancies generally, would be only too glad to oblige a good husband in
such a small matter. And surely to God _I_ know what is consistent
with your self-respect! _I_ should be the last person in the world to
allow you to compromise it! But your eyes will be opened, and the
cursed conceit taken out of you some day, madam, I can tell you!
You'll live to regret the way you've treated me, I promise you!"
"My eyes have been pretty well opened as it is," Beth answered. "You
left the key in the surgery door last night."
"And you went in there _spying_ on me, did you? That was honourable!"
he exclaimed in a voice of scorn.
"I heard the wretched creature you had been vivisecting crying in its
agony, and I thought it was a human being, and went to see," Beth
answered, speaking in the even, dispassionate way which she had found
such an effectual check on Dan's vulgar bluster.
"You killed that dog, then!" he exclaimed, turning on her savagely.
"How dare you?"
Beth rose from the writing-table, and went and stretched herself out
on the sofa, deliberately facing him.
"How dare _you_?" she inquired.
"How dare I, indeed, in my own house!" he bawled. "Now, look here,
madam, I'm not going to have any of your damned interference, and so I
tell you."
"Please, I am not deaf," she remonstrated gently. "And now, look here,
sir, I am not going to have any of your _damnable_ cruelties going on
under the same roof with me. I have endured your sensuality and your
corrupt conversation weakly, partly because I knew no better, and
partly because I was the only sufferer, as it seemed to me, in the
narrow outlook I had on life until lately; but I know better now. I
know that every woman who submits in such matters is not only a party
to her own degradation, but connives at the degradation of her whole
sex. Our marriage never can be a true marriage, the spiritual,
intellectual, physical union of a man and a woman for the purpose of
perfect companionship. We have none of the higher aspirations in
common, we should be none the happier for tender experiences of
parenthood, none the holier for any joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure,
that might come to us to strengthen and ennoble us if rightly enjoyed
or endured. And this, I think, is not altogether my fault. But however
that may be, it is out of my power to remedy it now. All I can do is
to prevent unedifying scenes between us by showing you such courtesy
and consideration as is possible. On this occasion I will show you
courtesy, but the consideration is due to me. A woman does not marry
to have her heart wrung, her health destroyed, her life made wretched
by anything that is preventable, and I intend to put a stop to this
last discovered hellish practice of yours. I will not allow it, and if
you dare to attempt it again, I will call in the townsfolk to see you
at your brutal work."
She spoke with decision, in the tone of one who has determined on her
plan of action and will fearlessly pursue it. A great gravity settled
on Daniel Maclure. He stood still a little reflecting, then came to
the fire, beside which Beth, who had risen restlessly as she spoke,
was now sitting in an arm-chair. He drew up another chair, and sat
down also, having resolved, in face of the gravity of the situation,
to try some of his old tactics, and some new ones as well. His first
pose was to gaze into the fire ruefully for awhile, and then his fine
eyes slowly filled with tears.
"It must have been a brutal sight," he said at last, "and I can't tell
you how sorry I am you saw it. I don't wonder you're shaken, poor
little girl, and it's natural that the shock should have made you
unreasonable and uncharitable--unlike yourself, in fact, for I never
knew a more reasonable woman when you are in your right mind, or a
more charitable. I'm not so bad, however, as you think me. I never
intended to inflict suffering on the creature. I didn't know he'd
recover. I had given him a dose of curare."
"The drug that paralyses without deadening the sense of pain," Beth
interposed. "I have heard of the tender mercies of the vivisector. He
saves himself as much as he can in the matter of distracting noises."
Dan had mentioned curare to give a persuasive touch of scientific
accuracy to his explanation, not suspecting that she knew the
properties of the drug, and he was taken aback for a moment; but he
craftily abandoned that point and took up another.
"These experiments must be made, in the interests of suffering
humanity, more's the pity," he said, sighing.
"In the interests of cruel and ambitious scientific men, struggling to
outstrip each other, and make money, and win fame for themselves
regardless of the cost. They were ready enough in old days to vivisect
human beings when it was allowed, and they would do it again if they
dared."
"Now look here, Beth; don't be rabid," said Dan temperately. "Just
think of the sufferings medical men are able to relieve nowadays in
consequence of these researches."
"Good authorities say that nothing useful has been discovered by
vivisection that could not have been discovered without it," Beth
rejoined. "And even if it had been the means of saving human life,
that would not justify your employment of it. There never could be a
human life worth saving at such an expense of suffering to other
creatures. It isn't as if you made an experiment and had done with it
either. One generation after another of you repeats the same
experiments to verify them, to see for yourselves, for practice; and
so countless helpless creatures are being tortured continually by
numbers of men who are degraded and brutalised themselves by their
experiments. Had I known you were a vivisector, I should not only have
refused to marry you, I should have declined to associate with you. To
conceal such a thing from the woman you were about to marry was a
cruel injustice--a fraud."
"I concealed nothing from you that you were old enough to understand
and take a right view of," Dan protested.
"According to custom," said Beth. "Anything that might prevent a woman
accepting a man is carefully concealed from her. That kind of cant is
wearisome. You did not think me too young to put at the head of a
house, or to run the risk of becoming a mother, although I have heard
you dilate yourself on the horrors of premature motherhood. But that
is the way with men. For anything that suits their own convenience
they are ingenious in finding excuses. As a rule, they see but one
side of a social question, and that is their own. I cannot understand
any but unsexed women associating with vivisectors. Don't pretend you
pursue such experiments reluctantly--you delight in them. But,
whatever the excuse for them, I am sure that the time is coming when
the vivisector will be treated like the people who prepared the dead
for embalming in ancient Egypt. You will be called in when there is no
help for it; but, your task accomplished, you will be driven out of
all decent society, to consort with the hangman--if even he will
associate with you."
"Well, well!" Dan ejaculated, gazing into the fire sorrowfully. "But I
suppose this is what we should expect. It's the way of the world. A
scientific man who devotes all his time and talents to relieving his
fellow-creatures must expect to be misunderstood and reviled by way of
reward. You send for us when you want us--there's nobody like the
doctor then; but you'll grudge every penny you've got to give us, and
you'd not pay at all if you could help it. I should know."
"I was not speaking of doctors," Beth rejoined. "I was speaking of
vivisectors. But after all, what is the great outcome of your
extraordinary science? What do you do with it? Keep multitudes alive
and suffering who would be happily dead and at rest but for you! If
you practised with the honest intention of doing as much good as you
could, you would not be content merely to treat effects as you do for
the most part; you would strike at causes also; and we should hear
more of prevention and less of wonderful cures. You dazzle the
blockhead public with a showy operation, and no one thinks of asking
why it is that the necessity for this same operation recurs so often.
You know, probably, but you disclaim responsibility in the matter. It
is not your place to teach the public, you modestly protest."
"I don't know how you can say that in the face of the effort we have
made to stamp out disease. Why, look at zymotic diseases alone!"
"Exactly!" Beth answered. "Zymotic diseases alone! But why draw the
line there? And what are you doing to improve the race, to strengthen
its power to resist disease? You talk about Nature when it suits you;
but it is the cant of the subject you employ, for you are at variance
with Nature. Your whole endeavour is to thwart her. Nature decrees the
survival of the fittest; you exercise your skill to preserve the
unfittest, and stop there--at the beginning of your responsibilities,
as it seems to me. Let the unfit who are with us live, and save them
from suffering when you can, by all means; but take pains to prevent
the appearance of any more of them. By the reproduction of the unfit,
the strength, the beauty, the morality of the race is undermined, and
with them its best chances of happiness. Yes, you certainly do your
best to stamp out measles, smallpox, scarlet fever, and all that
group--diseases that do not necessarily leave any permanent mark on
the constitution; but at the same time you connive at the spread of
the worst disease to which we are liable. About that you preserve the
strictest professional secrecy. Only to-day, in the _Times_, there is
the report of a discussion on the subject at a meeting of the
International Congress of Legal Medicine--where is it?" She took up
the paper and read:--"'There was an important debate on the spread of
an infamous disease by wet nurses. This question is all the more
urgent because, though the greatest dangers and complications are
involved, _it is very generally neglected_.... When a doctor knows
that the parents of a child are tainted, should he so far disregard
the professional secrecy to which he is bound as to warn the nurse of