The Beth Book

"By the way, there is a letter for you," he said, when they were at lunch.

"Is there?" Beth answered. "Who from?"

"How the devil am I to know?" he rejoined, glancing up at the mantelpiece. "I can't tell who your correspondents are by instinct."

Beth's eye followed his to the mantelpiece, where she saw a large square envelope propped up against an ornament in a conspicuous position, and recognised the unmistakable, big, clear, firm hand of Bertha Petterick, and the thick kind of paper she always used.

Beth had been thinking about Bertha on the way home. She knew that, if Bertha had been as wrong in body as in mind and moral nature, she would have had compassion on her; and she had determined to tolerate her as it was, to do what she could for her maimed soul, just as she would have ministered to her had her malady been physical. But Dan's hypocrisy about the letter ruffled her into opposition. He knew Bertha's handwriting as well as she did, and was doubtless equally well acquainted with the contents of the letter; and this affectation of ignorance must therefore mean something special. Probably he was anxious to propitiate her with regard to whatever Bertha might be writing about. But Beth was not to be managed in that way, and so she let the letter be.

As she was leaving the room after lunch, Dan called after her: "You have forgotten your letter."

"It doesn't matter," Beth answered. "Any time will do for that."

The letter was left there for days unopened, and it had the effect of stopping the conversation at meals, for although Dan did not allude to it again, he constantly glanced at it, and it was evident that he had it on his mind.

At last, one day, when he came in, he said, "I have just seen Mrs. Petterick, and she tells me Bertha wrote to you days ago, and has had no answer."

"Indeed," Beth observed indifferently. "I shouldn't think she could have anything to say to me that specially required an answer."

Dan fidgeted about a little, then burst out suddenly, "Why the devil don't you open the girl's letter?"

"Because you pretended you didn't know who it was from," Beth said.

"I declare to God I never pretended anything of the kind," Dan answered hotly.

Beth laughed. Then she went to the mantelpiece, took down the letter, turned it over and displayed the huge monogram and scroll with "Bertha" printed on it, with which it was bedizened, laughed again a little, and threw the letter unopened into the fire, "There!" she said. "Let that be an end of the letter, and Bertha Petterick too, so far as I am concerned. She bores me, that girl; I will not be bothered with her."

"Well, well!" Dan exclaimed pathetically, looking hard at the ashes of the letter on the coals: "that's gratitude! I do my best to make an honest living for you, and you repay me by affronting one of my best patients. And what the unfortunate girl has done to offend you, the devil only knows. I'm sure she would have blacked your boots for you when she was here, she was so devoted."

"She was pretty servile, I grant that," Beth answered dispassionately. "But that is enough of Bertha Petterick, please. Here is the butcher's bill for the last month, and the baker's, the milk, the wine, the groceries, all nearly doubled on Bertha's account. If adding to your expenses in every way makes a good patient, she was excellent, certainly. I'll leave you the bills to console you; but, if you value your peace of mind, don't dare to worry me about them. You were quite right when you said I was too young to be troubled about money matters, and I shall not let myself be troubled – especially when they are matters, like these bills, for which I am not responsible." She was leaving the room as she spoke, but stopped at the door: "And, Dan," she added, quoting his favourite phrase, "I'd be cheery if I were you. There's nothing like being cheery. Why, look at me! I never let anything worry me!"

She left Dan speechless, and went to her secret chamber, where she sat and suffered for an hour, blaming herself for her lightness, her contrariness, her want of dignity, and all those faults which were the direct consequence of Dan's evil influence. She was falling farther and farther away from her ideal in everything, and knew it, but seemed to have lost the power to save herself. The degeneration had begun in small matters of discipline, apparently unimportant, but each one of consequence, in reality, as part of her system of self-control. From the moment we do a thing thinking it to be wrong, we degenerate. If it be a principle that we abandon, it does not matter what the principle is, our whole moral fibre is loosened by the gap it makes. Beth, who had hitherto shunned easy-chairs, as Aunt Victoria had taught her, lest she should be enervated by lolling, now began to take to them, and so lost the strengthening effect of a wholesome effort. Other little observances, too, little regular habits which discipline mind and body to such good purpose, slipped from her, – such as the care of her skin after the manner of the ladies of her family, who had been renowned for their wonderful complexions. This had been enjoined upon her by her mother in her early girlhood as a solemn duty, and had entailed much self-denial in matters of food and drink, quantities being restricted, and certain things prohibited at certain times, while others were forbidden altogether. She had had to exercise patience, also, in the concoction and use of delicately perfumed washes of tonic and emollient properties, home distilled, so as to be perfectly pure; all of which had been strictly practised by her, like sacred rites or superstitious observances upon the exact performance of which good fortune depends. In such matters she now became lax. And, besides the care of her person, she neglected the care of her clothes, which had been so beneficial to her mind; for it must be remembered that it was during those long hours of meditation, while she sat sewing, that her reading had been digested, her knowledge assimilated, her opinions formed, and her random thoughts collected and arranged, ready to be turned to account on an emergency. Until this time, too, she had kept Sunday strictly as a day of rest. Books and work, and all else that had occupied her during the week, were put away on Saturday night, and not taken out again until Monday morning; and the consequence was complete mental relaxation. But now she began to do all kinds of little things which she had hitherto thought it wrong to do on Sunday, so that the sanitary effect of the day of rest – or of change of occupation, for sometimes Sunday duties are arduous – was gradually lost, and she no longer returned to her work on Monday strengthened and refreshed. Little by little her "good reading" was also neglected, and instead of relying upon her own resolution, as had hitherto been her wont, she began to seek the prop of an odd cup of tea or coffee at irregular hours, to raise her spirits if she felt down, or stimulate her if she were out of sorts and work was not easy; all of which tended to weaken her will. Then, by degrees, she began to lose the balance of mind which had been wont to carry her on from one little daily doing to another, with calm deliberation, taking them each in turn without haste or rest, and finding time for them all. Now, the things that she did not care about she began to do with a rush, so as to get to her writing. She wanted to be always at that; and the consequence was a wearing sensation, as of one who is driven to death, and has never time enough for any single thing.

But it was in these days, nevertheless, that she began to write with decision. Hitherto, she had been merely trying her pen – feeling her way; but now she unconsciously ceased to follow in other people's footsteps, and struck out for herself boldly. She had come back from Ilverthorpe with a burning idea to be expressed, and it was for the shortest, crispest, clearest way to express it that she tried. Foreign phrases she discarded, and she never attempted to produce an eccentric effect by galvanising obsolete words, rightly discarded for lack of vitality, into a ghastly semblance of life. Her own language, strong and pure, she found a sufficient instrument for her purpose. When the true impulse to write came, her fine theories about style only hampered her, so she cast them aside, as habitual affectations are cast aside and natural emotions naturally expressed, in moments of deep feeling; and from that time forward she displayed, what had doubtless been coming to her by practice all along, a method and a manner of her own.

She produced a little book at this time, the first thing of any real importance she had accomplished as yet; and during the writing of it she enjoyed an interval of unalloyed happiness, the most perfect that she had ever known. The world without became as nothing to her; it was the world within that signified. The terrible sense of loneliness, from which she had always suffered more or less, was suspended, and she began to wonder how it was she had ever felt so desolate, that often in the streets of Slane she would have been grateful to anybody who had spoken to her kindly. Now she said to herself, sincerely, "Never less alone than when alone!" And up in the quiet of her secret chamber, with the serene blue above, the green earth and the whispering trees below, and all her little treasures about her: the books, the pictures, the pretty hangings, and little ornaments for flowers; things she had indulged in by degrees since her mother's death had left her with the money in her hands which she had made to discharge Dan's debt – up there at her ease in that peaceful shrine, secure from intrusion, "There is no joy but calm!" was her constant ejaculation. Then again, too, she felt to perfection the fine wonder, the fine glow of a great inspiration, and realised anew that therein all the pleasures of the senses added together are contained; that inspiration in its higher manifestations is like love – that it is love, in fact – love without the lover; there being all the joy of love in it, but none of the trouble.

But, like most young writers when they set up a high ideal for themselves, and are striving conscientiously to arrive at it, because the thing came easily she fancied she had not done her best, and was dissatisfied. She talked to herself about fatal facility, without reflecting that in time ease comes by practice; nor did she discriminate between the flow of cheap ideas pumped up from any source for the occasion, which satisfies the conceit of shallow workers, and the deep stream that bubbles up of itself when it is once released, and flows freely from the convictions, the observations, and the knowledge of an earnest thinker. Diffidence is a help to some, but to Beth it was a hindrance, a source of weakness. There was no fear of her taking herself for a heaven-born genius. Her trouble had always been her doubt of the merit of anything she did. She should have been encouraged, but instead she had always been repressed. Accordingly, when she had finished her little masterpiece, she put it away with the idea of rewriting it, and making something of it when she should be able; and then she began a much more pretentious work, and thought it must be better because of the trouble it gave her.

Gradually, from now, she gave up all her time to reading and writing, and she overdid it. Work in excess is as much a vice as idleness, and it was particularly bad for Beth, whose constitution had begun to be undermined by dutiful submission. The consulting rooms of specialists are full of such cases. There are marriages which for the ignorant girl preached into dutiful submission, whose "innocence" has been carefully preserved for the purpose, mean prostitution as absolute, as repugnant, as cruel, and as contrary to nature as that of the streets. Beth's marriage was one of those. Until she went to Ilverthorpe, she had never heard that there was a duty she owed to herself as well as to her husband; and, as Sir George Galbraith had said, her brain was too delicately poised for the life she had been leading. Work had been her opiate; but unfortunately she did not understand the symptoms which should have warned her that she was overdoing it, and her nerves became exceedingly irritable. Noises which she had never noticed in her life before began to worry her to death. Very often, when she was spoken to, she could hardly answer civilly. At meals everything that was handed to her was just the very thing she did not want. She quarrelled with all her food, drank quantities of strong coffee for the sake of the momentary exhilaration, and even tried wine; but as it only made her feel worse, she gave that up. Writing became a rage with her, and the more she had to force herself, the longer she sat at it. She would spend hours over one sentence, turning it and twisting it, and never be satisfied; and when she was at last obliged to stop and go downstairs lest she should be missed, she went with her brain congested, and her complexion, which was naturally pale and transparent, all flushed or blotched with streaks of crimson.

"What's the matter with your face?" Dan said to her one day, apt, as usual, to comment offensively on anything wrong.

"I should like you to tell me," Beth answered.

"You'd better take some citrate of iron and quinine."

"You've prescribed citrate of iron and quinine for everything I've ever had since I knew you," said Beth. "If I have any more of it, I shall be like the man in the quack advertisement, who felt he could conscientiously recommend a tonic because he had taken it for fourteen years. I should like something that would act a little quicker."

Dan left the room and banged the door.

That afternoon Beth, up in her shrine at work, suddenly began to wonder what he was doing. As a rule, she did not trouble herself about his pursuits, but now all at once she became anxious. The thought of all the unholy places that he might be at (and the unfortunate girl knew all about all of them, for there was no horror of life with which her husband had not made her acquainted), filled her with dread – with a sensation entirely new to her, and absolutely foreign to her normal nature. Her feeling for Dan and Bertha, when she discovered their treachery, had been one of contempt. Their disloyalty, and the petty mean deceits which it entailed, made it difficult to tolerate their presence, and she was always glad to get rid of them, wherever they might go. Now, however, she was seized upon with a kind of rage at the recollection of their intrigue, of the scene in the garden, the glances she had intercepted, their stolen interviews, clandestine correspondence, and impudent security. It was all retrospective this feeling, but the torment of it was none the less acute for that. She recalled the scene in the garden, and her heart throbbed with anger. She regretted her own temperate conduct, and imagined herself stealing out upon them, standing before them, and pouring forth floods of invective till they cowered. She wished she had refused to let Bertha enter the house again, and had threatened to expose Dan if he did not meekly submit to her dictation. She ought to have exposed him too. She should have gone to Bertha's mother. But where was Dan at that moment? She jumped up, rushed down to her room, put on her outdoor things in hot haste, and ran downstairs determined to go and see; but as she entered the hall at one end of it, Dan himself came in by the hall-door at the other. The relief was extraordinary.

"Hallo! where are you off to?" he said.

"Just going for a little walk," she answered, speaking ungraciously and without looking at him. Now that she saw him, her ordinary feeling for him returned; but instead of being quiet and indifferent as usual, she found herself showing in her manner something of the contempt she felt, and it pleased her to do it. She was glad to go out, and be in the open air away from him; but she had not gone far before the torment in her mind began again. Why had he come in so unusually early? Was there anything going on in the house? He was always very familiar with the servants.

She stopped short at this, turned back, and went in as hurriedly as she had gone out. In the hall she stood a moment listening. The house seemed unusually quiet. A green baize door separated the kitchen and offices from the hall. She opened it, and saw Minna in the butler's pantry, cleaning the plate. Minna was parlour-maid now, a housemaid having been added to the establishment when Miss Petterick came, so that that young lady might be well waited on.

"I think we should give the girl full value for her money, you know, even if we do without something ourselves," Dan had said, in the generous thoughtful way that had so often imposed upon Beth.

Beth asked Minna where Drew, the housemaid, was.

"It's her afternoon out, ma'am," Minna answered.

"So it is," said Beth. "I had forgotten."

"Do you want anything, ma'am?" Minna asked. "You're looking poorly. Would you like a cup o' tea?"

"No, thank you," Beth rejoined, then changed her mind. "Yes, I should, though. Get me one while I'm taking my things off, and bring it to me in the dining-room. Where is your master?"

"I don't know, ma'am. I've not heard if he's come in; but it's full early for him yet," Minna replied, as she took off her working apron.

While she was talking to the girl, the worry in Beth's head stopped, and she felt as usual. Going quietly upstairs, she fancied she heard some one moving in her bedroom, and, entering it by way of the dressing-room, she discovered Dan on his knees on the floor, prying into one of the boxes she had had with her at Ilverthorpe, and kept locked until she should feel inclined to unpack it. He seemed to have had all the contents out, and was just deftly repacking it. As he replaced the dresses, he felt in the pocket of each, and in one he found an old letter which he read.

Beth withdrew on tiptoe, and went downstairs again, wondering at the man. She took off her hat and jacket, and ensconced herself with the newspaper in an easy-chair. Minna came presently with fragrant tea and hot buttered toast, and talked cheerfully about some of her own interests. Beth treated her servants like human beings, and rarely had any trouble with them. She had learnt the art from Harriet, who had awakened her sympathies, and taught her practically, when she was a child, what servants have to suffer; and "well loved and well served" exactly described what Beth was as a mistress. When Minna withdrew, and Beth had had her tea and toast, she felt quite right again, and read the paper with interest. The shock of the real trouble had ousted the imaginary one for the moment.

The next morning, however, as she toiled with flushed face and weary brain, stultifying her work with painful elaboration, she was seized with another fit of jealous rage, just as she had been the day before. Her mind in a moment, like a calm sea caught by a sudden tempest, seethed with horrible suspicions of her husband. His gross ideas, expressed in coarse language, had hitherto been banished from her mind by her natural refinement; but now, like the works of a disordered machine, whirling with irresponsible force, thoughts suggested by him came crowding in the language he habitually used, and she found herself accusing him with conviction of all she had ever heard others accused of by him. For a little she pursued this turn of thought, then all at once she jumped up and rushed downstairs, goaded again to act – to avenge herself – to dog him down to one of his haunts, and there confront him, revile him, expose him.

It was a tranquil grey day in early autumn, the kind of day, full of quiet charm, which had always been grateful to Beth; but now, as she stood on the doorstep, with wrinkled forehead, dilated eyes, and compressed lips, putting her gloves on in feverish haste, she felt no tranquillising charm, and saw no beauty in the tangled hedgerows bright with briony berries, the tinted beeches, the Canadian poplars whispering mysteriously by the watercourse at the end of the meadow, the glossy iridescent plumes of the rooks that passed in little parties silhouetted darkly bright against the empty sky; it was all without significance to her; her further faculty was suspended, and even the recollection of anything she had been wont to feel had lapsed, and she perceived no more in the scene surrounding, in the colours and forms of things, the sounds and motions, than those perceive whose eyes have never been opened to anything beyond what appears to the grazing cattle. In many a heavy hour she had found delight in nature; but now, again, she had lost that solace; the glory had departed, and she had sunk to one of the lowest depths of human pain.

Not understanding the frightful affliction that had come upon her, she made no attempt to control her disordered fancy, but hurried off into the town, and hovered about the places which Dan had pointed out as being of special evil interest, and searched the streets for him, acting upon the impulse without a doubt of the propriety of what she was doing. Had the obsession taken another form, had it seemed right to her to murder him, the necessity would have been as imperative, and she would have murdered him, not only without compunction, but with a sense of satisfaction in the deed.

She pursued her search for hours, but did not find him; then went home, and there he was, standing on the doorstep, looking out for her.

"Where on earth have you been?" he said.

"Where on earth have you been yourself?" she rejoined.

"Minding my own business," he answered.

"So have I," she retorted, pushing past him into the hall.

He had never seen her like that before, and he stood looking after her in perplexity.

She went upstairs and threw herself on her bed. The worry in her head was awful. Turn and toss as she would, the one idea pursued her, until at last she groaned aloud, "O God! release me from this dreadful man!"

After a time, being thoroughly exhausted, she dropped into a troubled sleep.

When she awoke, Dan was standing looking at her.

"Aren't you well, Beth?" he said. "You've been moaning and muttering and carrying on in your sleep as if you'd got fever."

"I don't think I am well," she answered in her natural manner, the pressure on her brain being easier at the moment of awakening.

He felt her pulse. "You'd better get into bed," he said, "and I'll fetch you a sedative draught. You'll be all right in the morning."

Beth was only too thankful to get into bed. When he returned with the draught, she asked him if he were going out again.

"No, not unless I'm sent for," he said. "Where the devil should I be going to? It's close on dinner-time."

Beth shut her eyes. "If he is sent for and goes," she reflected, "I shall know it is a ruse to deceive me; and I shall get up and follow him."

He left her to sleep and went downstairs. But Beth could not sleep. The draught quieted her mind for a little; then the worry began again as bad as ever, and she found herself straining her attention to discover to whom he was talking, for she fancied she heard him whispering with some one out in the passage. She bore the suspicion awhile, then jumped out of bed impetuously and opened the door. The gas was burning low in the passage, but she could see that there was no one about. Surely, though, there were voices downstairs? Barefooted, and only in her night-dress, she went to see. Yes, there were voices in the dining-room – now! She flung the door wide open. Dan and another man, a crony of his, who had dropped in casually, were sitting smoking and chatting over their whiskeys-and-sodas.

Beth, becoming conscious of her night-dress the moment she saw them, turned and fled back to her bed; greatly relieved in her mind by the shock of her own indiscretion.

"What a mad thing to do!" she thought. "I hope to goodness they didn't see me."

A mad thing to do!

The words, when they recurred to her, were a revelation. What had she been doing all day? Mad things! What was this sudden haunting horror that had seized upon her? Why, madness! Dan was just as he had always been. The change was in herself, and only madness could account for such a change. There was madness in the family. She remembered her father and the "moon-faced Bessie" – the familiarities with servants, too; surely her mother had suffered, and doubtless this misery which had come upon her had been communicated to her before her birth. Jealous-mad she was; that was what it meant, the one idea goading her on to do what would otherwise have been impossible, possessing her in spite of herself, and not to be banished by any effort of will.