The Beth Book
with brave and happy thoughts. But we came at last in our wanderings
to one neat shelf of beautiful books, and I began to look at them.
There were no marks in them, no signs of wear and tear. The shelf was
evidently not popular, yet it contained the books that had been
specially recommended to me as best worth reading by my stylist
friends. 'There is style for you!' said my friend. 'Style lasts, you
see. Style is engraved upon stone. All the other books about us wear
out and perish, but here are your stylists still, as fresh as the day
they were bought.' 'Because nobody reads them!' I exclaimed.
'Precisely,' he said. 'There is no comfort in life in them. They are
the mere mechanics of literature, and nobody cares about them except
the mechanicians.' After that I prayed for notable matter to indite,
and tried only for the most appropriate words in which to express it;
and then I arrived. If you have the matter, the manner will come, as
handwriting comes to each of us; and it will be as good, too, as you
are conscientious, and as beautiful as you are good."
CHAPTER XLVIII
Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce called on Beth continually. He was announced
one day when she was sitting at lunch with the Kilroys.
"Really I do not think I ought to let you be bored by that man," Mr.
Kilroy exclaimed. "I once had ten minutes of the academic platitudes
of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce, and that was enough to last me my life.
You are too good-natured to see him so often. It is a weakness of
yours, I believe, to suffer yourself rather than hurt other people's
feelings, however much they may deserve it. But really you must snub
him. There is nothing else for it. Send out and say you are engaged."
"If I do, he will wait until I am disengaged, or call again, or write
in an offended tone to ask _when_ I can be so good as to make it
convenient to see him!" Beth answered in comical despair.
"I don't believe he bores her a bit at _present_," Angelica observed.
"He is merely an intellectual exercise for Beth. She watches the
workings of his mind quite dispassionately, draws him out with little
airs and graces, and then adjusts him under the microscope. It
interests her to dissect the creature. When she has studied him
thoroughly, she will cast him out, as a worthless specimen."
"Oh, I hope that isn't true," said Beth, with a twinge of conscience.
"I own it has interested me to see what he has developed into; but
surely that isn't unfair?" She looked at Mr. Kilroy deprecatingly.
"It is vivisection," said Angelica.
"But under such agreeable anaesthetics that I should think he enjoys
it," said Mr. Kilroy. "I should have no objection myself."
"Daddy, be careful!" Angelica cried. "A rare specimen like you is
never safe when unscrupulous naturalists are about."
"But no microscope is needed to demonstrate Mr. Kilroy's position in
the scale of being," Beth put in. "It is writ large all over him."
"Good and true, Beth!" said Angelica, smiling. "You can go and gloat
over your worthless specimen as a reward, if you like. But the
scientific mind is a mystery to me, and I shall never understand how
you have the patience to do it."
Beth found Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce pacing about her sitting-room,
biting his nails in an irritable manner.
"You were at lunch, I think," he said. "I wonder why I was not asked
in?"
Beth said nothing.
"I consider it a slight on Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy's part," he pursued
huffily. "Why should _I_ be singled out for this kind of thing?"
"Aren't you just a little touchy?" Beth suggested.
"I confess I am sensitive, if that is what you mean," he replied.
"Well, yes, if you like," she said, "hyper-sensitive. But I thought
you asked for me."
"It is true I came to see you; but that is no reason why I should be
slighted by your friends--especially when I came because I think I
have something to show you that will interest you." He took a little
packet from the breast-pocket of his coat as he spoke, and began to
undo it. "I took the trouble to go all the way home to get them to
show you. My mother was the only person who had them. They are
photographs of myself when I was a boy."
"I wonder your mother parted with them," Beth said.
"I persuaded her with difficulty," he rejoined complacently. "I have
often tried before, but nothing would induce her to part with them,
until this time, when a bright idea occurred to me. I told her they
were to be published among portraits of celebrated people when my new
book comes out, and naturally she liked the idea. Her only son, you
know!"
"And are they to be published?" Beth asked.
"Oh--well--of course I hope so--some day," he answered, smiling and
hesitating. "But the truth is I got them for you."
Beth did not thank him, but he was too engrossed with his own
portraits to notice the omission. She was interested in them, too,
when at last he let her look at them.
"What do you think of that?" he asked, showing her a good likeness of
himself as she remembered him. "I was a pretty boy then, I think, with
my curls! Burning the midnight oil had not bared my forehead in those
days, and my beard had not grown. Life was all poetry then!" he sighed
affectedly. What had once been spontaneous feeling in him had become a
mere recollection, only to be called up by an effort.
"Later it became all excesses, I suppose," said Beth.
"Ah!" he ejaculated in a tone of pleased regret. "I had to live like
other men of my standing, you know, and I had to pay for it. The boy
was lost, but the man developed. You may think the change a falling
off----"
He waited for Beth to express an opinion; but as it was impossible for
her to say what she thought of the difference between the conceited,
dissipated-looking, hysterical man of many meannesses, and the
diffident unspoilt promising boy, she held her peace.
When she had seen the photographs, and he had looked at them himself
to his heart's content, he did them up again, and then formally
presented her with the packet. "Will you keep them?" he said solemnly.
"Oh no!" she answered with decision. "I am not the proper person to
keep them. If they did not belong to your mother, they would be for
your wife and children."
"Ah, my wife!" he ejaculated bitterly. "I haven't a word to say
against my wife, remember that! Only--you are the one to whom I would
confide them."
"I decline the responsibility," Beth said, keeping her countenance
with difficulty.
He returned the packet to the breast-pocket of his coat. "I shall
carry them here, then," he said, tapping his chest with the points of
his fingers, "until you ask for them."
As usual, he stayed a preposterous time that day, and when at last he
went, even Beth's kindly forbearance was exhausted, and she determined
to see no more of him. He was not the man to take a hint, however, and
it was no easy matter to get rid of him. He sent her flowers, for
which she did not thank him, books which she did not read; wrote her
long letters of the clever kind, discussing topics of the day or
remarks she herself had made, which she left unanswered; called, but
never found her at home, yet still persisted, until she was fain to
exclaim: "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?"
"It is your own fault," said Angelica. "I warned you that good-nature
is wasted on that sort of man."
"But surely he must see that I wish to avoid him," Beth exclaimed.
"Of course he sees it," Angelica rejoined, "but you may be sure that
he interprets your reluctance in some way very flattering to himself."
"I shall really be rude to him," Beth said desperately. "He is a most
exasperating person, the kind of man to drive a woman mad, and then
blame her for it. I pity his wife!"
* * * * *
Beth stayed with the Kilroys until the end of June, when the season
was all but over and everybody was leaving town; and it was the
busiest and happiest time she had ever known. She had enjoyed the
work, the play, the society, the solitude, and had blossomed forth in
that congenial atmosphere both mentally and physically, and become a
braver and a better woman.
The Kilroys were to go abroad the day that Beth returned to Slane. The
evening before, she went with Angelica to a theatre. But Angelica,
being much occupied at the moment with arrangements that had to be
made for the carrying on of her special work during her absence, was
not able to stay for the whole performance, so she left Beth alone at
the theatre, and sent the carriage back to take her home.
Beth, sitting in the corner of a box, had eyes for nothing the whole
time but the play, which, being one of those that stimulate the mind,
had appealed to her so powerfully that even after it was over she
remained where she was a little, deep in thought. On leaving the
theatre, she found the footman on the steps looking out for her, and
he remained, standing a little behind her, till the carriage came up.
While she waited, she was annoyed to see Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce
making his way towards her officiously. "You are alone!" he exclaimed,
with a note of critical disapproval in his voice, as if the
circumstance reflected on somebody.
"Hardly!" Beth said, glancing up at her escort. "But even if I were,
Mr. Pounce, I am in London, not in the dark ages, and as sure of
respect here, at the doors of a theatre, as I am in my own
drawing-room. I believe, by the way," she added lightly, not liking to
hurt him by too blunt a snub, "I believe this is the only big city in
Europe of which so much can be said; and English women may thank
themselves for it. We demand not protection, but respect. Here is the
carriage. Good night!" She stepped in as she spoke, and took her
seat.
"Oh pray, you really must allow me to see you safe home," he
exclaimed, following her into the carriage and taking the seat beside
her before she could remonstrate. The servant shut the door, and they
drove away. Beth boiled with indignation, but she thought it more
dignified not to show it, and she dreaded to have a scene before the
servants. Her demeanour was somewhat frigid, and she left him to open
the conversation; but when he spoke she answered him in her usual
tone. He, on the contrary, was extremely formal. He stroked his
pointed beard, looked out of the window, and made remarks about the
weather and the people in the streets, not avoiding the obvious, which
was a relief.
The hall-door was opened as soon as the carriage stopped, and they got
out.
"Thank you for your escort, and good night," Beth said, holding out
her hand to him, but he ignored it.
"I feel faint," he said, and he looked it. "Will you let me come in
and sit down a minute, and give me a glass of water?"
"Why, of course," Beth said. "But have something stronger than water.
Come this way, into the library. Roberts, bring Mr. Pounce something
to revive him."
"What will you have, sir?" the butler asked.
"A glass of water, nothing but a glass of water," Mr. Pounce said,
most preciously, sinking into an easy-chair as he spoke.
The butler brought the water, and told Beth that Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy
had not come in. She ordered some tea for herself.
Mr. Pounce sipped the water and appeared to revive.
"I have suffered terribly during the last three weeks," he said at
last.
"Have you really?" Beth rejoined with concern. "What was the matter?"
"Need you ask!" he ejaculated. "Why, why have you treated me so?"
"Really, Mr. Pounce, I do not see that you have any claim on my
special consideration," Beth answered coldly.
"I have the claim of one who is entirely devoted to you," he said.
"I have never accepted your devotion, and I will not have it forced
upon me," Beth answered decidedly. "I should like you better, to tell