"Nowadays, when I see two ladies together in a corner, talking earnestly," he observed, "I always suspect that they are discussing the s.e.x question."

"Oh, the s.e.x question!" Ideala exclaimed. "I am sick of s.e.x! s.e.x is a thing to be endured or enjoyed, not to be discussed."

"Indeed!" said Mr. Hamilton-Wells, nodding slowly, as if in profound consideration, and shaking back his imaginary ruffles. "Is that your opinion, Mrs. Maclure?"

"I keep a separate compartment in my mind for the s.e.x question," Beth answered, colouring--"a compartment which has to be artificially lighted. There is no ray of myself that would naturally penetrate to it. When I take up a book, and find that it is nothing but _she was beautiful, he loved her_, I put it down again with a groan. The monotony of the subject palls upon me. It is the stock-in-trade of every author, as if there were nothing of interest in the lives of men and women but their s.e.xual relations."

"Indeed, yes," said Mr. Hamilton-Wells, with bland deliberation, "but society thinks of nothing else. Blatant s.e.xuality is the predominant characteristic of the upper cla.s.ses, and the rage for the s.e.xual pa.s.sion is princ.i.p.ally set up and fostered by a literature inflated with s.e.xuality, and by costumes which seem to be designed for the purpose. In the evening, now, just think! Even quite elderly ladies, with a laudable desire to please, offer themselves in evening dress--and a very great deal of themselves sometimes--to the eye that may be attracted."

When he had spoken, he shook back his imaginary ruffles, brought his hands together in front of him with the fingers tip to tip in a pious att.i.tude, and strolled up the long room slowly, shaking his head at intervals with an intent expression, as if he were praying for society.

"What a bomb!" Beth gasped. "Is he always so?"

"Generally," Ideala rejoined. "And I can never make out whether he means well, but is stupid and tactless, or whether he delights to spring such explosives on inoffensive people. He sits on a Board of Guardians composed of ladies and gentlemen, and the other day, at one of their meetings, he proposed to remove the stigma attaching to illegitimacy. He said that illegitimacy cannot justly be held to reflect on anybody's conduct, since, so he had always understood, illegitimacy was birth from natural causes."

"And what happened?"

Ideala slightly shrugged her shoulders. "The proposition was seriously discussed, and a parson and one or two other members of the board threatened to retire if he remained on it. But remain he did, and let them retire; and I cannot help fancying that his whole object was to get them to go. Sometimes I think that he must have a peculiar sense of humour, which it gives him great gratification to indulge, as others do good, by stealth. He makes questionable jests for himself only, and enjoys them alone. But apart from this eccentricity, he is a kind and generous man, always ready to help with time and money when there is any good to be done."

When Beth went to her room that night, she experienced a strange sense of satisfaction which she could not account for until she found herself alone, with no fear of being disturbed. It seemed to her then that she had never before known what comfort was, never slept in such a delightful bed, so fresh and cool and sweet. She was like one who has been bathed and perfumed after the defilements of a long dusty journey, and is able to rest in peace. As she stretched herself between the sheets, she experienced a blessed sensation of relief, which was a revelation to her. Until that moment, she had never quite realised the awful oppression of her married life; the inevitable degradation of intimate a.s.sociation with such a man as her husband.

The next day the ladies went out to sit on the lawn together in the shade of the trees, with their books and work. There were no sounds but such as, in the country, seem to accentuate the quiet, and are aids, not to thought, but to that higher faculty which awakes in the silence, and is to thought what the mechanical instrument is to the voice.

"How heavenly still it is!" Beth e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "It stirs me--fills me--how shall I express it?--makes me cognisant in some sort--conscious of things I don't know--things beyond all this, and even better worth our attention. The stillness here in these surroundings has the same benign effect on me that perfect solitude has elsewhere. What a luxury it is, though--solitude! I mean the privilege of being alone when one feels the necessity. I am fortunate, however," she added quickly, lest she should seem to be making a personal complaint, "in that I have a secret chamber all to myself, and so high up that I can almost hear what the wind whispers to the stars to make them twinkle. I go there when I want to be alone to think my thoughts, and no one disturbs me--not even my nearest neighbours, the angels; though if they did sometimes, I should not complain."

"They come closer than you think, perhaps," said Lady Fulda, who had just strolled up, with a great bunch of lilies on her arm. "Consider the lilies," she went on, holding them out to Beth. "Look into them.

Think about them. No, though, do not think about them--feel. There is purification in the sensation of their beauty."

"Is purification always possible?" Beth said. "Can evil ever be cast out once it has taken root in the mind?"

"Are you speaking of thoughts or acts, I wonder?" Lady Fulda rejoined, sitting down beside Beth and looking dreamily into her flowers. "You know what we hold here: that no false step is irretrievable so long as we desire what is perfectly right. It is not the things we know of, nor even the things we have done, if the act is not habitual,--but the things we approve of that brand us as bad. The woman whose principles are formed out of a knowledge of good and evil is better, is more to be relied upon, than the woman who does not know enough to choose between them. It is not what the body does, but what the mind thinks that corrupts us."

"But from certain deeds evil thoughts are inseparable," Beth sighed; "and surely toleration of evil comes from undue familiarity with it?"

"Yes, if you do not keep your condemnation side by side with your knowledge of it," Lady Fulda agreed.

The night before she returned to Slane, Beth attended a meeting of the new order which Ideala had founded. It was the first thing of the kind she had been to, and she was much interested in the proceedings. Only women were present. Beth was one of a semicircle of ladies who sat on the platform behind the chair. There were subjects of grave social importance under discussion, and most of the speaking was exceedingly good, wise, temperate, and certainly not wanting in humour.

Towards the end of the evening there was an awkward pause because a lady who was to have spoken had not arrived. Mrs. Kilroy, who was in the chair, looked round for some one to fill the gap, and caught Beth's eye.

"May I speak?" Beth whispered eagerly, leaning over to her. "I have something to say."

Angelica nodded, gave the audience Beth's name, and then leant back in her chair. The shorthand writers looked up indifferently, not expecting to hear anything worth recording.

Beth went forward to the edge of the platform with a look of intentness on her delicate face, and utterly oblivious of herself, or anything else but her subject. She never thought of asking herself if she could speak. All she considered was what she was going to say. She clasped her slender hands in front of her, and began, slowly, with the formula she had heard the other speakers use: "Madam Chairman, ladies--" She paused, then suddenly spoke out on _The Desecration of Marriage_.

At the first resonant notes of her clear, dispa.s.sionate voice, there was a movement of interest, a kind of awakening, in the hall, and the ladies on the platform behind her, who had been whispering to each other, writing notes and pa.s.sing them about, and paying more attention to the business of the meeting generally than to the speakers, paused and looked up.

Suddenly Ideala, with kindling eyes, leant over to Mrs. Orton Beg, grasped her arm, and said something eagerly. Mrs. Orton Beg nodded.

The word went round. Beth held the hall, and was still rising from point to point, carrying the audience with her to a pitch of excitement which finally culminated in a great burst of applause.

Beth, taken aback, stopped short, surprised and bewildered by the racket; looked about her, faltered a few more words, and then sat down abruptly.

The applause was renewed and prolonged.

"What does it mean?" Beth asked Ideala in an agony. "Did I say something absurd?"

"My dear child," Ideala answered, laughing, "they are not jeering, but cheering!"

"Is that cheering?" Beth exclaimed in an awe-stricken tone, overcome to find she had produced such an effect. "I feared they meant to be derisive."

"I didn't know you were a speaker," Mrs. Orton Beg whispered.

"I am not," Beth answered apologetically. "I never spoke before, nor heard any one else speak till to-night. Only I have thought and thought about these things, and I could not keep it back, what I had to say."

"That is the stuff an orator is made of," some strange lady muttered approvingly.

CHAPTER XLV

When Beth returned to Slane, Dan received her so joyously she wondered what particularly successful piece of turpitude he had been busy about. He was always effusive to her when evil things went well with him. At first she had supposed that this effusiveness was the outcome of affection for her; but when she began to know him, she perceived that it was only the expression of some personal gratification. He had been quite demonstrative in his attentions to her during the time that Bertha Petterick stayed in the house.

"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 compa.s.sion 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?"