The Beth Book

Her evening dresses had been in the box which she had just unpacked, and while she was still sitting on the floor amongst them cogitating, Ethel Maud Mary came into the attic out of breath to ask how she was getting on.

"Why," she exclaimed in admiration of Beth's finery, "you've got some clothes! They'd fetch something, those frocks, if you sold them."

"Then tell me where to sell them, for money I must have," Beth rejoined precipitately.

"And it's no use keeping gowns; they only go out of fashion," Ethel Maud Mary suggested, as if she thought Beth should have an excuse. "Gwendolen would manage it best. She's great at a bargain; and there's a place not far from here. I'd begin with the worst, if I was you."

"Advise me, then, there's a dear," said Beth, and Ethel Maud Mary knelt down beside her, and proceeded to advise.

Only a few shillings was the result of the first transaction; but the better dresses had good trimmings on them, and real lace, which fetched something, as Ethel Maud Mary declared it would, if sold separately; so, with the strictest self-denial, Beth was still able to pay her way and provide for the sick man's necessities.

From the time she put him on the Salisbury treatment, he suffered less and began to gain strength; but the weather continued severe, and Beth suffered a great deal herself from exposure and cold and privations of all kinds. She used to be so hungry sometimes that she hurried past the provision shops when she had to go out, lest she should not be able to resist the temptation to go in and buy good food for herself. If her sympathy with the poor could have been sharpened, it would have been that winter by some of the sights she saw. Sometimes she was moved by pity to wrath and rebellion, as on one occasion when she was passing a house where there had evidently been a fashionable wedding. The road in front of the house, and the red cloth which covered the steps and pavement, were thickly strewed with rice, and on this a band of starving children had pounced, and were scraping it up with their bony claws of hands, clutching it from each other, fighting for it, and devouring it raw, while a supercilious servant looked on as though he were amused. Beth's heart was wrung by the sight, and she hurried by, cursing the greedy rich who wallow in luxury while children starve in the streets.

In a squalid road which she had often to cross there was a butcher's shop, where great sides of good red beef with yellow fat were hung in the doorway. Coming home one evening after dark, she noticed in front of her a gaunt little girl who carried a baby on her arm and was dragging a small child along by the hand. When they came to the butcher's shop, they stopped to look up at the great sides of beef, and the younger child stole up to one of them, laid her little hand upon it caressingly, then kissed it. The butcher came out and ordered them off, and Beth pursued her way through the mire with tears in her eyes. She had suffered temptation herself that same evening. She had to pass an Italian eating-house where she used to go sometimes, before she had any one depending on her, to have a two-shilling dinner – a good meal, decently served. Now, when she was always hungry, this was one of the places she had to hurry past; but even when she did not look at it, she thought about it, and was tormented by the desire to go in and eat enough just for once. Visions of thick soup, and fried fish with potatoes, and roast beef with salad, whetted an appetite that needed no whetting, and made her suffer an ache of craving scarcely to be controlled. That day had been a particularly hungry one. The coffee was done, every precious tea-leaf she had to husband for Arthur, and the butter had also to be carefully economised because a good deal was required for his crisp toast, which was unpalatable without it. Beth lived principally on the crusts she cut off the toast. When they were very stale, she steeped them in hot water, and sweetened them with brown sugar. This mess reminded her of Aunt Victoria's bread-puddings, and the happy summer when they lived together, and she learnt to sit upright on Chippendale chairs. She would like to have talked to Arthur of those tender memories, but she could not trust herself, being weak; the tears were too near the surface.

That day she had turned against her crusts, even with sugar, and had felt no hunger until she got out into the air, when an imperious craving for food seized upon her suddenly, and she made for the Italian restaurant as if she had been driven. The moment she got inside the place, however, she recovered her self-possession. She would die of hunger rather than spend two precious shillings on herself while there was that poor boy at home, suffering in silence, gratefully content with the poorest fare she brought him, always making much of all she did.

Beth got no farther than the counter.

"I want something savoury for an invalid," she said.

That evening, for the first time, Arthur sat up by the fire in the grandfather chair with a blanket round him, and enjoyed a dainty little feast which had been especially provided, as he understood, in honour of the event.

"But why won't you have some yourself?" he remonstrated.

"Well, you see," Beth answered, "I went to the Italian restaurant when I was out."

"Oh, did you?" he said. "That's right. I wish you would go every day, and have a good hot meal. Will you promise me?"

"I'll go every day that I possibly can," Beth answered, smiling brightly as she saw him fall-to contentedly with the appetite of a thriving convalescent. Practising pious frauds upon him had become a confirmed habit by this time – of which she should have been ashamed; but instead, she felt a satisfying sense of artistic accomplishment when they answered, and was only otherwise affected with a certain wonderment at the very slight and subtle difference there is between truth and falsehood as conveyed by the turn of a phrase.

But now the money ran shorter and shorter; she had nothing much left to sell; and it was a question whether she could possibly hold out until her half-year's dividend was due. Perhaps the old lawyer would let her anticipate it for once. She wrote and asked him, but while she was waiting for a reply the pressure became acute.

Out of doors one day, walking along dejectedly, wondering what she should do when she came to her last shilling, her eye rested on a placard in the window of a fashionable hairdresser's shop, and she read mechanically: "A GOOD PRICE GIVEN FOR FINE HAIR." She passed on, however, and was half-way down the street before it occurred to her that her own hair was of the finest; but the moment she thought of it, she turned back, and walked into the hairdresser's shop in a business-like way without hesitation. A gentleman was sitting beside the counter at one end of the shop, waiting to be attended on; Beth took a seat at the other end, and waited too. She sat there, deep in thought and motionless, until she was roused by somebody saying, "What can I do for you, miss?"

Then she looked up and saw the proprietor, a man with a kindly face.

"Can I speak to you for a moment?" she asked.

"Come this way, if you please," he replied, after a glance at her glossy dark-brown hair and shabby gloves.

When she went in that day, Arthur uttered an exclamation.

"Do you mean to say you've had your hair cut short?" he asked, speaking to her almost roughly. "Are you going to join the unsexed crew that shriek on platforms?"

"I don't know any unsexed crew that shriek on platforms," she answered, "and I am surprised to hear you taking the tone of cheap journalism. There has been nothing in the woman movement to unsex women except the brutalities of the men who oppose them."

He coloured somewhat, but said no more – only sat looking into the fire with an expression on his face that cut Beth to the quick. It was the first cloud that had come to overshadow the perfect sympathy of their intercourse. She was getting his tea at the moment, and, when it was ready, she put it beside him and retired to his attic, which she occupied, and looked at herself in the glass for the first time since she had sacrificed her pretty hair. At the first glance, she laughed; then her eyes filled with tears, and she threw herself on the bed and sobbed silently – not because she regretted her hair, but because he was hurt, and for once she had no comfort to give him.

Just after she left him, an artist friend of his, Gresham Powell, came in casually to look him up, and was surprised to find he had been so ill.

"I missed you about," he said, "but I thought you had shut yourself up to work. Who's been looking after you?"

Brock gave him the history of his illness.

Powell shook his head when he heard of Beth's devotion.

"Take care, my boy," he said. "The girls you find knocking about town in these sort of places are not desirable associates for a promising young man. They're worse than the regular bad ones – more likely to trap you, you know, especially when you're shorn of your strength and have good reason to be grateful. You might think you were rewarding her by marrying her; but you'll find your mistake. Look at Simpson! Could a man have done a girl a worse turn than he did when he married Florrie Crone? They haven't a thought in common except when he's ill and she nurses him; but a man can't be always getting ill in order to keep in touch with his wife. I don't know, of course, what this girl's like; but half of them are adventuresses bent on marrying gentlemen. Is she a clergyman's daughter, by any chance?"

"I know nothing about her but her name," Brock answered coldly. "She has never tried to excite sympathy in any way."

"Well, they are of all kinds, of course," said Powell temperately. "But you'd better break away in any case. Nothing will set you up so soon as a change. Come with me. I'm going into the country to see the spring come in, and the fruit trees flower, and to hear the nightingales. I know a lovely spot. Come!"

"I'll think about it, and let you know," Arthur Brock answered to get rid of him.

When he had gone Beth appeared. To please Arthur, she had covered her cropped head with a white muslin mob-cap bound round with a pale pink ribbon, and put on a high ruffle and a large white apron, in which she looked pretty and prim, like a sweet little Puritan, in spite of the pale pink vanity; and Arthur smiled when he saw her, but afterwards grumbled: "Why did you cut your pretty hair off? I shouldn't have thought you could do such a tasteless thing."

Beth knelt down beside his chair to mend the fire, and then she began to tidy the hearth.

"Am I not the same person?" she asked.

"No, not quite," he answered. "You have set up a doubt where all was settled certainty."

She had taken off the gloves she wore to do the grate, and was about to pull herself up from her knees by the arm of his chair when he spoke, but paused to ponder his words. It was with her left hand that she had grasped the arm of his chair, and he happened to notice it particularly as it rested there.

"You wear a wedding-ring, I see," he remarked. "Do you find it a protection?"

"I never looked at it in that light," she answered. "In this vale of tears I have a husband. That is why I wear it."

There was a perceptible pause, then he asked with an effort, "Where is your husband?"

"At home, I suppose," said Beth, her voice growing strident with dislike of the subject. "We do not correspond. He wishes to divorce me."

"And what shall you do if he tries?" Brock asked.

"Nothing," she replied, and was for leaving him to draw his own conclusions, but changed her mind. "Shall I tell you the story," she said after a while.

"No, don't tell me," he rejoined quickly. "Your past is nothing to me. Nothing that you may have done, and nothing that you may yet do, can alter my feeling – my respect for you. As I have known you, so will you always be to me – the sweetest, kindest friend I ever had, the best woman I ever knew."

Men are monotonous creatures. Given a position, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will come to the same conclusion about it, only by diverse methods, according to their prejudices; and this is especially the case when women are in question. Woman is generally out of focus in the mind of man; he sees her less as she is than as she ought or ought not to be. Beth did not thank Arthur Brock for his magnanimity. The fact that he should shrink from hearing the story bespoke a doubt that made his generous expression an offence. It may be kind to ignore the past of a guilty person, but the innocent ask to be heard and judged; and full faith has no fear of revelations.

Beth rose from her knees, and began to prepare the invalid's evening meal in silence. Usually they chattered like children the whole time, but that evening they were both constrained. One of those subtle changes, so common in the relations of men and women, had set in suddenly since the morning; they were not as they had been with each other, nor could they continue together as they were; there must be a readjustment, which was in preparation during the pause.

"You have heard me speak of Gresham Powell?" Brock began at last. "He was here this afternoon. He thinks I had better go away with him into the country for a change as soon as I can manage it."

"It is a good idea," said Beth – "inland of course, not near the sea with your rheumatism. I will get your things ready at once."

This immediate acquiescence depressed him. He played with his supper a little, pretending to eat it, then forgot it, and sat looking sadly into the fire. Beth watched him furtively, but once he caught her gazing at him with concern.

"What's the matter?" he asked, with an effort to be cheerful.

"The matter is the pained expression in your eyes," she answered. "Are you suffering again?"

"Just twinges," he said, then set his firm full lips, resolute to play the man.

But the twinges were mental, not bodily, and Beth understood. Their happy days were done, and there was nothing to be said. They must each go their own way now, and the sooner the better. Fortunately the old lawyer had consented without demur to let Beth have her half-year's dividend in advance, so that there was money for Arthur. He expressed some surprise that there should be, but took what she gave him without suspicion, and did not count it. He was careless in money matters, and had forgotten what he had had when he was taken ill.

"You're a great manager," he said to Beth. "But I suppose you haven't paid up everything. You must let me know. It will be good to be at work again!"

"Yes," Beth answered; "but don't worry about it. You won't want money before you are well able to make it."

"I wish I knew for certain that you would go somewhere yourself to see the spring come in," he said, looking at her wistfully.

"All in good time," she answered in her sprightliest way.

When the last morning came, Beth attended to her usual duties methodically. She had made every arrangement for him, packed the things he was to take, and put away those that were to be left behind. When the cab was called, she went downstairs with him, and stood with Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen on the doorstep in the spring sunshine, smiling and waving her hand to him as he drove off. Her last words to him were, "You will go home before we meet again. Give my love to America – and may she send us many more such men," Beth added under her breath.

"Amen!" Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen echoed.

When the cab was out of sight, Beth turned and went into the house, walking wearily. At the foot of the stairs she looked up as if she were calculating the distance; then she began the long ascent with the help of the banisters, counting each step she took mechanically. The attic seemed strangely big and bare when she entered it – it was as if something had been taken away and left a great gap. There was something crude and garish about the light in it, too, which gave an unaccustomed look to every familiar detail. The first thing she noticed was the chair beside the fire, the old grandfather chair in which he had been sitting only a few minutes before, resting after the effort of dressing – the chair in which she had seen him sit and suffer so much and so bravely. She would never see him there again, nor hear his voice – the kindest voice she had ever heard. At his worst, it was always of her he thought, of her comfort, of her fatigue; but all that was over now. He had gone, and there could be no return – nothing could ever be as it had been between them, even if they met again; but meet again they never would, Beth knew, and at the thought she sank on the floor beside the senseless chair, and, resting her head against it, broke down and cried the despairing cry of the desolate for whom there is no comfort and no hope.

The fire she had lighted for Arthur to dress by had gone out; there were no more coals. The remains of his breakfast stood on the table; she had not touched anything herself as yet. But she felt neither cold nor hunger; she was beyond all that. The chair was turned with its back to the window, and as she cowered beside it, she faced the opposite whitewashed wall. A ray of sunshine played upon it, wintry sunshine still, crystal cold and clear. Beth began to watch it. There was something she had to think about – something to see to – something she must think about – something she ought to see to, but precisely what it was she could not grasp. It seemed to be hovering on the outskirts of her mind, but it always eluded her. However, she had better not move for fear of making a noise. And there was far too much noise as it was – the wind rising and the waves breaking

"All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos – "

No, though; it was a procession of camels crossing the desert, and in the distance was an oasis surrounded by palms, and there was white stonework gleaming between the trees in the wonderful light. And those great doors that opened from within? They were opening although she had not knocked. She was expected, then – there, where there was no more weariness, nor care, nor hunger. But that was not where she wished to go. No! no! that did not tempt her.

"Take me where I shall not remember," she implored.

Poor Beth! the one boon she had to ask of Heaven at five-and-twenty was oblivion: "Let me be where I shall forget."

Downstairs on the doorstep, Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen lingered a while before they turned to follow Beth into the house, and, as they did so, they noticed that a lady had stopped her carriage in the middle of the road, jumped out impetuously, and was running towards them, regardless of the traffic.

"That was Mrs. Maclure who was standing with you here just now and went into the house?" she exclaimed.

"Miss Maclure," Ethel Maud Mary corrected her.

"Oh, Miss or Mrs., what does it matter?" the lady cried. "It was Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure looking like death – where is she? Take me to her at once!" She emphasised the request with an imperious stamp of her foot.

A few minutes later, Angelica, kneeling on the attic floor beside Beth, cried aloud in horror, "Why, she is dead!"