The Beth Book Part 76

"Why should I?" she asked.

"Well, it isn't right that he should come to see you, and I won't have it," he reiterated.

"Do you mean that I am not to have any friends of my own?" she demanded.

"_He_ is not to be one of your friends," Dan answered doggedly.

"And what explanation am I to give him, please?" she asked politely.

"I won't have you giving him any explanation."

"My dear Dan," she rejoined, "when you speak in that way, you show an utter want of knowledge of my character. If I will not allow you to insult me, and bully me, and bl.u.s.ter at me, it is not likely that I will allow you to insult my friends. If Sir George Galbraith's visits are to stop, I shall tell him the reason exactly. He at least is a gentleman."

"That is as much as to say that I am not," Dan bl.u.s.tered.

"You certainly are not behaving like one now," Beth coolly rejoined.

"But there! You have my ultimatum. I am not going to waste any more time in vulgar scenes with you."

"Ultimatum, indeed!" he jeered. "Well, you _are_, you know! You'll write and explain to him, will you, that your husband's jealous of him? That shows the terms you are on!"

"It is jealousy then, is it?" said Beth. "Thank you. Now I understand you."

Dan's evil mood took another turn. His anger changed to self-pity. "Oh dear! oh dear! what am I to do with you?" he exclaimed. "And after all I've done for you--to treat me like this." He took out his pocket-handkerchief and wiped away the tears which any mention of his own goodness and the treatment he received from others always brought to his eyes.

Beth watched him contemptuously, yet her heart smote her. He was a poor creature, but for that very reason, and because she was strong, surely she should be gentle with him.

"Look here, Dan," she said. "I have never knowingly done you any wrong in thought, or word, or deed; all you have said to me to-day has been ridiculously wrong-headed; but never mind. Stop crying, do, and don't let us have any more idiotic jealousy. Why, it was Lady Galbraith who sent me the flowers and fruit, with a kind message of apology because she has not been able to call. Why should not she be jealous?"

"Oh, she's a fool!" Dan rejoined, recovering himself. "She leads him the life of a dog with her fears and fancies, and she won't take any part in his philanthropic work, though he wishes it. She's a pretty pill!"

The servant came in at this moment to lay the table for lunch, and Dan went to the looking-gla.s.s with the inconsequence of a child, and forgot his grievance in the contemplation of his own beloved image and in abusing Lady Galbraith. Abusing somebody was mental relaxation of the most agreeable kind to him. Feeling that he had gone too far, he was gracious to Beth during lunch, and just before he went out he kissed her, and said, "We won't mention that fellow again, Beth. I don't believe you'd do anything dishonourable."

"I should think not!" said Beth.

When he had gone, she returned to her secret chamber, the one little corner sacred to herself, to her purest, n.o.blest thoughts, her highest aspirations; and as she looked round, it seemed as if ages had pa.s.sed since she last entered it, full of happiness and hope. It was as if she had been innocent then, and was now corrupted. Her self-control did not give way, but she could do nothing, and just sat there, wan with horror; and as she sat, every now and then she s.h.i.+vered from head to foot. She had known of course in a general way that such things did happen, that married women did give their husbands cause for jealousy; but to her mind they were a kind of married women who lived in another sphere where she was not likely to encounter them. She had never expected to be brought near such an enormity, let alone to have it brought home to herself in a horrible accusation; and the effect of it was a shock to her nervous system--one of those stunning blows which are scarcely felt at first, but are agonising in their after effects.

When the reaction set in, Beth's disgust was so great it took a physical form, and ended by making her violently sick. It was days before she quite recovered, and in one sense of the word she was never the same again.

CHAPTER XLI

Dan said no more about Sir George Galbraith; and indeed he had no excuse, for Sir George did not come again. There were other men, however, who came to the house, Dan's own friends; and now that Beth's eyes were opened, she perceived that he watched them all suspiciously if they paid her any attention; and if she showed the slightest pleasure in the conversation of any of them, he would be sure to make some sneering remark about it afterwards. Dan was so radically vicious that the notion of any one being virtuous except under compulsion was incomprehensible to him.

"Your spirits seem to go up when Mr. Vanrickards is here," he observed one day.

"Thank you for warning me," Beth answered, descending to his level in spite of herself. "I will be properly depressed the next time he comes."

But although she could keep him in check so that he dared not say all that he had in his mind, she understood him; and the worst of it was that his coa.r.s.e and brutal jealousy accustomed her to the suspicion, and made her contemplate the possibility of such a lapse as he had in his mind. She began to believe that he would not have tormented himself so if husbands did not ordinarily have good reason to be jealous of their wives. She concluded that such treachery of man to man as he dreaded must be normal. And then also she realised that it was thought possible for a married woman to fall in love, and even wondered at last if that would ever be her own case. Dan had, in fact, destroyed his own best safeguard. If a man would keep his wife from evil, he should not teach her to suspect herself--neither should he familiarise her with ideas of vice. Since their marriage Dan's whole conversation, and the depravity of his tastes and habits, had tended towards the brutalisation of Beth. Married life for her was one long initiation into the ways of the vicious.

Dr. Maclure's sordid jealousy made him the laughing-stock of the place, though he never suspected it. His conceit was too great to let him suppose that any sentiment of his could provoke ridicule. It became matter for common gossip, however, and from that time forward gentlemen ceased to visit the house. Men of a certain kind came still, men who were bound to Dan by kindred tastes, but not such as he cared to introduce to Beth. These boon companions generally came in the evening, and were entertained in the dining-room, where they spent the night together, smoking, drinking, and talking after the manner of their kind. Beth could not use her secret chamber after dark for fear of the light being seen, so she stayed in the drawing-room alone till she went to bed. She found those evenings interminable, and the nights more trying still. She could not read or write because of the noise in the dining-room, and had to fall back on her sewing for occupation; but sewing left her mind open to any obsession, and only too often, with the gross laughter from the next room, sc.r.a.ps of the lewd topics her husband delighted in came to her recollection. When Dan discoursed about such things he was at the high-water mark of pleasure, his countenance glowed, and enjoyment of the subject was expressed in all his person. Beth's better nature revolted, but alas!

she had become so familiar with such subjects by this time that, although she loathed them, she could not banish them. Life from her husband's point of view was a torment to her, yet under the pressure of his immediate influence it was forced upon her attention more and more--from his point of view.

When she went to bed on his festive nights she suffered from the dread of being disturbed. If her husband were called out at night professionally, it was a pleasure to her to lie awake so that she might be ready to rise the moment he returned, and get him anything he wanted. On those occasions she always had a tray ready for him, with soup to be heated, or coffee to be made over a spirit-lamp, and any little dainty she thought would refresh him. She was fully in sympathy with him in his work, and would have spared herself no fatigue to make it easier for him, but she despised him for his vices, and refused to sacrifice herself in order to make them pleasanter for him. When he stayed up smoking and drinking half the night she resented the loss of sleep entailed upon her, which meant less energy for her own work the next day. The dread of being disturbed made her restless, and the futility of it under the circ.u.mstances exasperated her. She suffered, too, more than can be mentioned, from the smell of alcohol and tobacco, of which he reeked, and from which he took no trouble to purify himself. Often and often, when she had tossed herself into a fever on these dreadful nights, she craved for long hours, with infinite yearning, to be safe from disturbance, in purity and peace; and thought how happily, how serenely she would have slept until the morning, and how strong and fresh she would have arisen for another day's work had she been left alone. Only once, however, did she complain. Dan was going out in a particularly cheerful mood that night.

"Shall you be late?" she asked.

"Yes, probably. Why?"

"I was thinking, if you wouldn't mind, I would have a bed made up for you in the spare room. _I_ only sleep in s.n.a.t.c.hes when you are out and I am expecting you. Every sound rouses me. I think it is the door opening. And then when you do come it disturbs me, and I do not sleep again. If you don't mind I should prefer to be alone--on your late nights--your late festive nights."

Dr. Maclure stood looking gloomily into the fireplace.

"Have I annoyed you, Dan?" Beth asked at last.

He walked to the door, stood a moment with his back to her, then turned and looked at her. "Annoyed is not the word," he said. "You have wounded me deeply."

He opened the door as he spoke, and went out. When he had gone Beth sat and suffered. She could not bear to hurt him, she was not yet sufficiently brutalised for that; so she said no more on the subject, but patiently endured the long lonely night watches, and the after companions.h.i.+p which had in it all that is most trying and offensive to a refined and delicate woman.

After that first display of jealousy Beth discovered that her husband pried upon her continually. He was very high and mighty on the subject of women spying upon men, but there seemed no meanness he would not compa.s.s in order to spy upon a woman. He had duplicate keys to her drawers and boxes, and rummaged through all her possessions when she went out. One day she came upon him standing before her wardrobe, feeling in the pockets of her dresses, and on another occasion she discovered him unawares in her bedroom, picking little sc.r.a.ps of paper out of the slop-pail and piecing them together to see what she had been writing. To Beth, accustomed to the simple, honourable principles of her parents, and to the confidence with which her mother had left her letters lying about, because she knew that not one of her children would dream of looking at them, Dan's turpitude was revolting. On those occasions when she caught him, he did not hear her enter the room, and she made her escape without disturbing him, and stole up to her secret chamber, and sat there, suffering from one of those attacks of nausea and s.h.i.+vering which came upon her in moments of deep disgust.

After that she had an attack of illness which kept her in bed for a week; but even then, feverish and suffering as she was, and yearning for the coolness and liberty of a room to herself, she dared not suggest such a thing for fear of a scene.

While she was still in bed Dan brought her some letters one morning.

He made no remark when he gave them to her, but he had opened them as usual, and stood watching her curiously while she read them. The first she looked at was from her sister Bernadine, and had a black border round it; but she took it out of its envelope unsuspiciously, and read the words that were uppermost, "_Mamma died this morning_." In a moment it flashed upon her that Dan had read the letter, and was waiting now to see the effect of the shock upon her. She immediately, but involuntarily, set herself to baffle his cruel curiosity. With a calm, illegible face she read the letter from beginning to end, folded it, and put it back in its envelope deliberately, then took up another which had also been opened.

But suppressed feeling finds vent in some form or other, and Beth showed temper now instead of showing grief. "I wish you would not open my letters," she said irritably. "All the freshness of them is gone for me when you open them without my permission and read them first.

Besides, it is an insult to my correspondents. What they say to me is intended for me, and not for you."

"I have a perfect right to open your letters," he retorted.

"I should like to see the Scripture that gives you the right, and I should advise you to waive it if you do not wish me to a.s.sume the right to open yours. Your petty prying keeps me in a continual state of irritation. I shall be lowered to retaliate sooner or later. So stop it, please, once and for all."

"My petty prying, indeed!" he exclaimed. "Well, that is a nice thing to say to your husband! Why, even when I do open your letters, which is not often, I never read them without your permission."

"Indeed," said Beth, who had ceased to be stunned by falsehoods. "Then be good enough not even to open them in future."

Dan tried to express injury and indignation in a long, hard look; but Beth was reading another letter, and took no further notice of him.

He hung about a little watching her.

"Any news," he ventured at last, with an imperfect a.s.sumption of indifference.

"You know quite well what my news is," she answered bluntly, "and I am not going to discuss it with you. I wish you would leave me alone."

"Well, you're a nice pill!" said Dan, discomfited.