Chapter 3

_WHITHER, BETH?_

Beth was lying in the hammock, watching the white clouds chase each other over the sky. Her face was quite unclouded, though the morning had not passed just as she had hoped. It was the next afternoon after she had taken tea at the Mayfair's, and Clarence had come to see her father that morning. They had had a long talk in the study, and Beth had sat in her room anxiously pulling to pieces the roses that grew at her window. After a little while she was called down. Clarence was gone, and she thought her father did not look quite satisfied, though he smiled as she sat down beside him.

"Beth, I am sorry you are engaged so young," he said gently. "Are you sure you love him, Beth?"

"Oh, yes, papa, dear. You don't understand," and she put both arms about his neck. "I am in love, truly. Believe me, I shall be happy."

"Clarence is delicate, too," said her father with a grave look.

They were both silent for a few minutes.

"But, after all, he cannot marry for three or four years to come, and you must take your college course, Beth."

They were silent again for a moment.

"Well, God bless you, Beth, my darling child." There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was very gentle. He kissed her and went out to his office.

What a dear old father he was! Only Beth wished he had looked more hopeful and enthusiastic over the change in her life. Aunt Prudence had been told before dinner, and she had taken it in a provokingly quiet fashion that perplexed Beth. What was the matter with them all? Did they think Clarence the pale-faced boy that he looked? They were quite mistaken. Clarence was a man.

So Miss Beth reasoned, and the cloud passed off her brow, for, after all, matters were about as they were before. The morning had been rather pleasant, too. Arthur had played some of his sweet old pieces, and then asked as a return favor to see some of her writing. She had given him several copies of the Briarsfield _Echo_, and he was still reading. In spite of her thoughts of Clarence, she wondered now and again what Arthur would think of her. Would he be proud of his old play-mate? He came across the lawn at last and drew one of the chairs up beside the hammock.

"I have read them all, Beth, and I suppose I should be proud of you. You are talented--indeed, you are more than talented: you are a genius, I believe. But do you know, Beth, I do not like your writings?"

He looked at her as if it pained him to utter these words.

"They are too gloomy. There is a sentimental gloom about everything you write. I don't know what the years since we parted have brought you, Beth, but your writings don't seem to come from a full heart, overflowing with happiness. It seems to me that with your command of language and flowing style you might bring before your reader such sweet little homes and bright faces and sunny hearts, and that is the sweetest mission a writer has, I believe."

Beth watched him silently. She had not expected this from Arthur. She thought he would overwhelm her with praise; and, instead, he sat there like a judge laying all her faults before her. Stern critic! Somehow he didn't seem just like the old Arthur.

"I don't like him any more," she thought. "He isn't like his old self."

But somehow she could not help respecting him as she looked at him sitting there with that great wave of dark hair brushed back from his brow, and his soulful eyes fixed on something in space. He looked a little sad, too.

"Still, he isn't a writer like Clarence," she thought, "and he doesn't know how to praise like Clarence does."

"But Arthur," she said, finally speaking her thoughts aloud; "you speak as though I could change my way of writing merely by resolving to. I can write only as nature allows."

"That's too sentimental, Beth; just like your writing. You are a little bit visionary."

"But there are gloomy and visionary writers as well as cheerful ones. Both have their place."

"I do not believe, Beth, that gloom has a place in this bright earth of ours. Sadness and sorrow will come, but there is sweetness in the cup as well. The clouds drift by with the hours, Beth, but the blue sky stands firm throughout all time."

She caught sight of Clarence coming as he was speaking, and scarcely heeded his last words, but nevertheless they fastened themselves in her mind, and in after years she recalled them.

Clarence and Arthur had never met before face to face, and somehow there was something striking about the two as they did so. Arthur was only a few years older, but he looked so manly and mature beside Clarence. They smiled kindly when Beth introduced them, and she felt sure that they approved of each other. Arthur withdrew soon, and Beth wondered if he had any suspicion of the truth.

Once alone with her, Clarence drew her to his heart in true lover-like fashion.

"Oh, Clarence, don't! People will see you."

"Suppose they do. You are mine."

"But you mustn't tell it, Clarence. You won't, will you?"

He yielded to her in a pleasant teasing fashion.

"Have you had a talk with your father, Beth?"

"Yes," she answered seriously, "and I rather hoped he would take it differently."

"I had hoped so, too; but, still, he doesn't oppose us, and he will become more reconciled after a while, you know, when he sees what it is to have a son. Of course, he thinks us very young; but still I think we are more mature than many young people of our age."

Beth's face looked changed in the last twenty-four hours. She had a more satisfied, womanly look. Perhaps that love-craving heart of hers had been too empty.

"I have been looking at the upstair rooms at home," said Clarence. "There will have to be some alterations before our marriage."

"Why, Clarence!" she exclaimed, laughing; "you talk as though we were going off to Gretna Green to be married next week."

"Sure enough, the time is a long way off, but it's well to be looking ahead. There are two nice sunny rooms on the south side. One of them would be so nice for study and writing. It has a window looking south toward the lake, and another west. You were always fond of watching the sun set, Beth. But you must come and look at them. Let's see, to-day's Saturday. Come early next week; I shall be away over Sunday, you know."

"Yes, you told me so last night."

"Did I tell you of our expected guest?" he asked, after a pause. "Miss Marie de Vere, the daughter of an old friend of my mother's. Her father was a Frenchman, an aristocrat, quite wealthy, and Marie is the only child, an orphan. My mother has asked her here for a few weeks."

"Isn't it a striking name?" said Beth, "Marie de Vere, pretty, too. I wonder what she will be like."

"I hope you will like her, Beth. She makes her home in Toronto, and it would be nice if you became friends. You will be a stranger in Toronto, you know, next winter. How nice it will be to have you there while I am there, Beth. I can see you quite often then. Only I hate to have you study so hard."

"Oh, but then it won't hurt my brain, you know. Thoughts of you will interrupt my studies so often" she said, with a coquettish smile.

Clarence told her some amusing anecdotes of 'Varsity life, then went away early, as he was going to leave the village for a day or two.

Beth hurried off to the kitchen to help Aunt Prudence. It was unusual for her to give any attention to housework, but a new interest in domestic affairs seemed to have aroused within her to-day.

The next day was Sunday, and somehow it seemed unusually sacred to Beth. The Woodburn household was at church quite early, and Beth sat gazing out of the window at the parsonage across the road. It was so home-like--a great square old brick, with a group of hollyhocks beside the study window.

The services that day seemed unusually sweet, particularly the Sunday-school hour. Beth's attention wandered from the lesson once or twice, and she noticed Arthur in the opposite corner teaching a class of little girls--little tots in white dresses. He looked so pleased and self-forgetful. Beth had never seen him look like that before; and the children were open-eyed. She saw him again at the close of the Sunday-school, a little light-haired creature in his arms.

"Why, Arthur, I didn't think you were so fond of children."

"Oh, yes, I'm quite a grandfather, only minus the grey hair."

It was beautiful walking home that afternoon in the light June breeze. She wondered what Clarence was doing just then. Home looked so sweet and pleasant, too, as she opened the gate, and she thought how sorry she should be to leave it to go to college in the fall.

Beth stayed in her room a little while, and then came down stairs. Arthur was alone in the parlor, sitting by the north window, and Beth sat down near. The wind had ceased, the sun was slowly sinking in the west, a flock of sheep were resting in the shadow of the elms on the distant hill-slope, and the white clouds paused in the blue as if moored by unseen hands. Who has not been moved by the peace and beauty of the closing hours of a summer Sabbath? Arthur and Beth were slow to begin conversation, for silence seemed more pleasing.

"Arthur, when are you going out as a missionary?" asked Beth, at last.

"Not for three or four years yet."

"Where are you going, do you know?"

"To the Jews, at Jerusalem."

"Are you sure you will be sent just where you want to go?"

"Yes, for I am going to pay my own expenses. A bachelor uncle of mine died, leaving me an annuity."

"Don't you dread going, though?"

"Dread it! No, I rejoice in it!" he said, with a radiant smile. "One has so many opportunities of doing good in a work like that."

"Do you always think of what you can do for others?"

"That is the best way to live," he answered, a sweet smile in the depths of his dark eyes.

"But don't you dread the loneliness?"

"I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."

"Oh, Arthur!"--she buried her face for a moment in the cushions, and then looked up at him with those searching grey eyes of hers--"you are brave; you are good; I wish I were, too."

He looked down upon her tenderly for a moment.

"But, Beth, isn't your life a consecrated one--one of service?"

"It is all consecrated but one thing, and I can't consecrate that."

"You will never be happy till you do. Beth, I am afraid you are not perfectly happy," he said, after a pause. "You do not look to be."

"Oh, yes, I am quite happy, very happy, and I shall be happier still by and by," she said, thinking of Clarence. "But, Arthur, there is one thing I can't consecrate. I am a Christian, and I do mean to be good, only I can't consecrate my literary hopes and work."

"Oh, why not, Beth? That is the very thing you should consecrate. That's the widest field you have for work. But why not surrender that, too, Beth?"

"Oh, I don't know. I couldn't write like 'Pansy' does, it isn't natural to me."

"You don't need to write like 'Pansy.' She has done splendid work, though, and I don't believe there is a good home where she isn't loved. But it may not be your place to be just like 'Pansy.'"

"No; I want to be like George Eliot."

A graver look crossed his face.

"That is right to a certain extent. George Eliot certainly had a grand intellect, but if she had only been a consecrated Christian woman how infinitely greater she might have been. With such talent as hers undoubtedly was, she could have touched earth with the very tints of heaven. Beth, don't you see what grand possibilities are yours, with your natural gifts and the education and culture that you will have?"

"Ah, yes. Arthur, but then--I am drifting somehow. Life is bearing me another way. I feel it within me. By-and-by I hope to be famous, and perhaps wealthy, too, but I am drifting with the years."

"But it is not the part of noble men and women to drift like that, Beth. You will be leaving home this fall, and life is opening up to you. Do you not see there are two paths before you? Which will you choose, Beth? 'For self?' or 'for Jesus?' The one will bring you fame and wealth, perhaps, but though you smile among the adoring crowds you will not be satisfied. The other--oh, it would make you so much happier! Your books would be read at every fire-side, and Beth Woodburn would be a name to be loved. You are drifting--but whither, Beth?"

His voice was so gentle as he spoke, his smile so tender, and there was something about him so unlike any other man, she could not forget those last words.

The moon-beams falling on her pillow that night mingled with her dreams, and she and Clarence were alone together in a lovely island garden. It was so very beautiful--a grand temple of nature, its aisles carpeted with dewy grass, a star-gemmed heaven for its dome, a star-strewn sea all round! No mortal artist could have planned that mysteriously beautiful profusion of flowers--lily and violet, rose and oleander, palm-tree and passion-vine, and the olive branches and orange blossoms interlacing in the moon-light above them. Arthur was watering the tall white lilies by the water-side and all was still with a hallowed silence they dared not break. Suddenly a wild blast swept where they stood. All was desolate and bare, and Clarence was gone. In a moment the bare rocks where she had stood were overwhelmed, and she was drifting far out to sea--alone! Stars in the sky above--stars in the deep all round and the winds and the waters were still! And she was drifting--but whither?