The Beth Book Part 102

Beth thought much on religion in those quiet days, and read much, looking for spiritual sustenance among the garbage of mind with which man has overlaid it, and finding little to satisfy her, until one night, quite suddenly, as she sat holding her mind in the att.i.tude of prayer, there came to her a wonderful flash of illumination. She had not been occupied with the point that became apparent. It entered her mind involuntarily, and was made clear to her without conscious effort on her part; but it was that which she sought, the truth that moves, makes evident, makes easy, props and stays, and is the instigator of religious action, the source of aspiration, the ground of hope--the which was all contained for Beth in the one old formula interpreted in a way that was new to her: _The communion of saints_ (that inexplicable sympathy between soul and soul), _the forgiveness of sins_, (working out our own salvation in fear and trembling), _the resurrection of the body_ (reincarnation), _and the life everlasting_ (which is the crown or glory, the final goal).

"But G.o.d?" Beth questioned.

"G.o.d is love," she read in the book that lay open on the table before her.

Then she clasped her hands over the pa.s.sage and laid her head on them, and for a long time she sat so, not thinking, but just repeating it to herself softly: "G.o.d is love," till all at once there was a blank in her consciousness; thought was suspended. When it returned, she looked up, and in herself were the words: "G.o.d is Love--no! _Love is G.o.d!_"

In the joy of the revelation, she arose, and, going to the window, flung it wide open. Far down the east the dawn was dimly burning; the faint sweet breath of it fanned her cheeks; her chest expanded with a great throb, and she exclaimed aloud: "I follow, follow--_G.o.d_--I know not where."

Beth had a task before her that day which she did not relish in the antic.i.p.ation. She was going as a stopgap to speak at a large meeting to oblige Angelica. She had the credit of being able to speak, and she herself supposed that she could in a way, because of the success of her first attempt; but she did not consent to try again without much hesitation and many qualms, and she would certainly not have consented had not her friends been in a difficulty, with no one at hand to help them out of it but herself. But to be drawn from her hallowed seclusion into such a blaze of publicity, even for once, was not at all to her mind, and much of her wakefulness of the night before had been caused by her shrinking from the prospect.

Late that night after the meeting she returned to her cottage alone, cowering in a corner of the Kilroys' carriage. She was cowering from the recollection of a great crowd that rose with deafening shouts and seemed to be rus.h.i.+ng at her--cowering, too, from the inevitable which she had been forced to recognise--her vocation--discovered by accident, and with dismay, for it was not what she would have chosen for herself in any way had it occurred to her that she had any choice in the matter. There were always moments when she would fain have led the life which knows no care beyond the cultivation of the arts, no service but devotion to them, no pleasure like the enjoyment of them,--a selfish life made up of impersonal delights, such as music, which is emotion made audible, painting, which is emotion made visible, and poetry, which is emotion made comprehensible;--and such a life could not have been anything but grateful to one like Beth, who had the capacity for so many interests of the kind. She was debarred from all that, however, by grace of nature. Beth could not have lived for herself had she tried. So that now, when the call had come, and the way in which she could best live for others was made plain to her, she had no thought but to pursue it.

The carriage put her down at her garden-gate, and she stood awhile in the moonlight, listening to it as it rolled away with patter of horses' hoofs and rattle of harness, listening intently as if the sound concerned her. Then she let herself in, and was hurrying up to her room, but stopped short on the stairs, cowering from the crowd that rose and cheered and cheered and seemed to be rus.h.i.+ng at her.

Her bedroom had windows east, west, and south, so that she had sunrise and sunset and the sun all day. When she went in now, she found the lamps lighted and all the windows shut, and she went round and flung them open with an irritable gesture. Her nerves were overwrought; the slightest contrariety upset her. The sweet fresh country air streamed in and the tranquil moonlight. These alone would ordinarily have been enough to soothe her, but now she paid no heed to them. When she had opened the windows, she began to take off her things in feverish haste, pacing about the room restlessly the while, as if that helped her to be quicker. Everything she wore seemed too hot, too heavy, or too tight, and she flung hat and cloak and bodice down just where she took them off in her haste to get rid of them. Throwing her things about like that was an old trick of her childhood, and becoming conscious of what she was doing, she remembered it, and began to think of herself as she had been then, and so forget her troubled self as she was at that moment--fresh from the excitement and terror of an extraordinary achievement, a great success. For she had spoken that night as few have spoken--spoken to a hostile audience and fascinated them by the power of her personality, the mesmeric power which is part of the endowment of an orator, and had so moved them that they rose at last and cheered her for her eloquence, whether they held her opinions or not. Then there had come friendly handshakes and congratulations and encouragement; and one had said, "Beth is launched at last upon her true career."

"But who could have thought that that was her bent?" another had asked.

Beth did not hear the answer, but she knew what it should have been.

She had been misled herself, and so had every one else, by her pretty talent for writing, her love of turning phrases, her play on the music of words. The writing had come of cultivation, but this--the last discovered power--was the natural gift. Angelica had said that all the indications had pointed to literary ability in Beth, but there had been other indications. .h.i.therto unheeded. There was that day at Castletownrock when Beth invited the country people in to see the house, and, for the first time, found words flowing from her lips eloquently; there were her preachings to Emily and Bernadine in the acting-room, of which they never wearied; her first harangue to the girls who had caught her bathing on the sands, and the power of her subsequent teaching which had bound them to the Secret Service of Humanity for as long as she liked; there was her storytelling at school, too, and her lectures to the girls--not to mention the charm of her ordinary conversation when the mood was upon her, as in the days when she used to sit and fish with the bearded sailors, and held them with curious talk as she had held the folk in Ireland, fascinating them. And then there was the unexpected triumph of her first public attempt--indications enough of a natural bent, had there been any one to interpret them.

Beth, as she thought on these things, wandered from window to window, too restless and excited to sit still; but, even occupied as she was, after she had changed her dress the old trick came upon her, and she was all the while observing.

It was autumn, and on the south she overlooked a field of barley, standing in stooks, waiting to be carted. She noticed how the long, irregular rows and their shadows showed in the moonlight. Across the field the farm to which it belonged nestled in an apple-orchard. From the east end of the house she obtained a glimpse of the sea, which was near enough, for the drowsy murmur of it reached her even in calm weather. To the west the highroad ran, and in her wanderings from window to window Beth paused to contemplate it, to follow it in imagination whither it led, to think of the weary way it was to so many weary feet, to mourn because she could not offer rest and refreshment to every one that pa.s.sed.

The night was clear and the air was crisp, with a suspicion of frost in it, such as sometimes comes in the late autumn. The moon was sinking, and the stars shone out ever more brightly. Down in the roadway a little brazier burned, where the road had been taken up and blocked for repairs, and over the brazier the old watchman, who should have been guarding the tools and materials that had been left lying about, dozed in a sort of sentry-box. It occurred to Beth that the task was long and dreary, and that the air grew chilly towards the dawn. Surely some food would cheer and refresh him, and help to pa.s.s the time. She went down to the pantry and got some, then carried it out on a tray. But the old man was sound asleep, and, standing there in her long white wrapper, she had to call him several times, "Old man! old man!" before she roused him.

He awoke at last with a start, and seeing the unexpected apparition in the dim light, exclaimed, "Holy Mother! why have you come to me?"

Beth silently set the tray before him and slipped away, leaving him in the happy certainty that a heavenly vision had been vouchsafed him.

But the moon set, the stars paled, and, from her window to the east, Beth watched the dark melt to dusk, and the dusk pale to an even grey, into which were breathed the burnished colours of the happy dawn.

Then, when the sun was high, and the accustomed sounds of life and movement that held her ear by day had well begun, down the long road beneath the old gnarled trees the postman came beladen, and there were brought to her pamphlets, papers, cards, letters, telegrams, a fine variety of praise, abuse, sympathy, derision, insults, and admiration.

Quietly Beth read, and knew what it meant, all of it--success! and the success she had most desired: that her words should come with comfort to thousands of those that suffer, who, when they heard, would raise their heads once more in hope. In one paper that she opened she read: "A great teacher has arisen among us, a woman of genius--"

Hastily she put the paper aside, burning with a kind of shame, although alone, to see so much said of herself. Beth was one of the first swallows of the woman's summer. She was strange to the race when she arrived, and uncharitably commented upon; but now the type is known, and has ceased to surprise.

When she was dressed that morning, she went down to her bright little breakfast parlour. Before her was the harvest-field, looking its loveliest in the early morning sunlight. As she contemplated the peaceful scene, she thought that she should feel herself a singularly fortunate being. The dead would be with her no more, alas! except in the spirit; but all else that heart could desire, was it not hers? The answer came quick, No! Something was wanting. But she did not ask herself what the something was.

The harvesters were not at work that morning, and she had not seen a soul since she sat down to breakfast; but before she left the table, a horseman came out from the farm, and rode towards her across the long field, deliberately. She watched him, absently at first, but as he approached he reminded her of the Knight of her daily vision, her saviour, who had come to rescue her in the dark days of her deep distress at Slane--

"A bowshot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves."

"The barley-sheaves!" suddenly Beth's heart throbbed and fluttered and stood still. The words had come to her as the interpretation of an augury, the fulfilment of a promise. It seemed as if she ought to have known it from the first, known that he would come like that at last, that he had been coming, coming, coming through all the years. As he drew near, the rider looked up at her, the sun shone on his face, he raised his hat. In dumb emotion, not knowing what she did, Beth reached out her hands towards him as if to welcome him. He was not the Knight of her dark days, however, this son of the morning, but the Knight of her long winter vigil--Arthur Brock.