The Beth Book
human being to another, seizing upon Beth as Beth might have seized
upon her, in despair; for Mrs. Petterick had also been having her
share of snubs. Oh, those Christians! how they do love one another!
how tender they are to one another's feelings! how careful to make the
best of one another! how gentle, good, and kind, and true! How
singular it is that when the wicked unbeliever comes to live amongst
them, and sees them as they are, he is not immediately moved by
admiration to adopt their religion in order that he also may acquire
the noble attributes so conspicuously displayed by them!
"You're not dancing, my dear," Mrs. Petterick said. "Come along and
sit with me on that couch against the wall yonder. We shall see all
that's going on from there."
Beth was only too thankful to go. A waltz was being played, and Dan
passed them, dancing with Bertha Petterick. They glided over the floor
together with the gentle voluptuous swing, dreamy eyes, and smiling
lips of two perfect dancers, conscious of nothing but the sensuous
delight of interwoven paces and clasping arms.
"My! but they do step well together, him and Bertha!" Mrs. Petterick
exclaimed. "He's a handsome man, your husband, and a gay one--flirting
about with all the ladies! I wonder you're not jealous!"
"Jealous!" Beth answered, smiling. "Not I, indeed! Jealousy is a want
of faith in one's self."
"Well, my dear, if you always looked as well as you do just now, you
need not want confidence in yourself," Mrs. Petterick observed. "But
what would you do if your husband gave you cause for jealousy?"
"Despise him," Beth answered promptly.
Mrs. Petterick looked as if she could make nothing of this answer.
Then she became uneasy. The music had stopped, but Bertha had not
returned to her. "I must go and look after my daughter," she said,
rising from her comfortable seat with a sigh. "Gels are a nuisance.
You've got to keep your eye on them all the time, or you never know
what they're up to."
Beth stayed where she was, and soon began to feel uncomfortable.
People stared coldly at her as they passed, and she could not help
fancying herself the subject of unpleasant remark because she was
alone. She prayed hard that some one would come and speak to her. Dan
had disappeared. After a time she recognised Sir George Galbraith
among the groups of people at the opposite side of the room. He was
receiving that attention from every one which is so generously
conferred on a man or woman of consequence, whose acquaintance adds to
people's own importance, and to whom it is therefore well to be seen
speaking; but although his manner was courteously attentive he looked
round as if anxious to make his escape, and finally, to Beth's intense
relief, he recognised her, and, leaving the group about him
unceremoniously, came across the room to speak to her.
"Would it be fair to ask you to sit out a dance with me?" he said. "I
do not dance."
"I would rather sit out a dance with you than dance it with any one
else I know here," she answered naively; "but, as it happens, I do not
dance either."
"Indeed! How is that? I should have thought you would like dancing."
"So I should, I am sure, if I could," she replied. "But I can't dance
at all. They would not let me learn dancing at one school where I was,
and I was not long enough at the other to learn properly."
"Now, that is a pity," he said, considering Beth, his professional eye
having been struck by her thinness and languor. "But have some
lessons. Dancing in moderation is capital exercise, and it
exhilarates; and anything that exhilarates increases one's vitality.
Why don't you make your husband teach you? He seems to know all about
it."
"Yes," Beth answered, smiling; "but I shouldn't think teaching me is
at all in his line. Why don't you dance yourself?"
"Oh, I am far too clumsy," he said good-naturedly. "My wife says if I
could even learn to move about a room without getting in the way and
upsetting things, it would be something."
"Is she here to-night?" Beth asked.
"No, she was not feeling up to it," he answered. "She tired herself in
the garden this afternoon, helping me to bud roses."
"Oh, can you bud roses?" Beth exclaimed. "I should so like to know how
it is done."
"I'll show you with pleasure."
"Will you really?" said Beth. "How kind of you."
"Not at all. Let me see, when will you be at home? We mustn't lose any
time, or it will be too late in the year."
"I'm pretty nearly always at home," Beth said.
"Then if I came to-morrow morning would that be convenient?"
"Quite; and I hope you will stay lunch," Beth answered.
Dan returned to the ball-room just then, and, on seeing who was with
her, he immediately joined them; but Sir George only stayed long
enough to exchange greetings politely.
"You seem to get on very well with Galbraith," Dan observed.
"Don't you like him?" Beth asked in surprise, detecting a note of
enmity in his voice.
"I haven't had much chance," he said bitterly. "He doesn't play the
agreeable to me as he does to you."
Beth missed the drift of this remark in considering the expression
"play the agreeable," which was unpleasantly suggestive to her of
under-bred gentility.
"You will be able to give him an opportunity to-morrow then," she
said, "if you are in at lunch-time, for he is coming to show me how to
bud roses, and I have asked him to stay."
"Have you, indeed?" Dan exclaimed, obviously displeased, but why or
wherefore Beth could not conceive. "I hope to goodness there's
something to eat in the house," he added upon reflection, fussily.
"There is as much as there always is," Beth placidly rejoined.
"Well, that's not enough then. Just think what a man like that has on
his own table!"
"A man like that won't expect our table to be like his."
"You'd better make it appear so for once then, or you'll be having our
hospitality criticised as I heard the Barrack fellows criticise Mrs.
Jeffery's the other day. A couple of them called about lunch-time, and
she asked them to stay, and they said there was nothing but beer and
sherry, and the fragments of a previous feast, and they were blessed
if they'd go near the old trout again."
"An elegant expression!" said Beth. "It gives the measure of the mind
it comes from. Please don't introduce the person who uses it to me.
But as to Sir George Galbraith, you need not be afraid that _he_ will
accept hospitality and criticise it in that spirit. He will neither
grumble at a cutlet, nor describe his hostess by a vulgar epithet
after eating it."
She shut her mouth hard after speaking. Disillusion is a great
enlightener; our insight is never so clear as when it is turned on the
character of a person in whom we used to believe; and as Dan gradually
revealed himself to Beth, trait by trait, a kind of distaste seized
upon her, a want of respect, which found involuntary expression in
trenchant comments upon his observations and in smart retorts. She did
not seek sympathy from him now for the way in which she had been
slighted at the ball, knowing perfectly well that he was more likely
to blame her than anybody else. He had, in fact, by this time, so far
as any confidence she might have reposed in him was concerned, dropped
out of her life completely, and left her as friendless and as much
alone as she would have been with the veriest stranger.
That night when she went home she felt world-worn and weary, but next
morning, out in the garden with Sir George Galbraith budding roses,
she became young again. Before they had been together half-an-hour she
was chatting to him with girlish confidence, telling him about her
attempts to cultivate her mind, her reading and writing, to all of
which he listened without any of that condescension in his manner
which Dan displayed when perchance he was in a good-humour and Beth
had ventured to expand. Sir George was genuinely interested.
Dan came in punctually to lunch, for a wonder. He glanced at Beth's
animated face sharply when he entered, but took no further notice of
her. He was one of those husbands who have two manners, a coarse one
for their families, and another, much more polished, which they assume
when it is politic to be refined. But Dan's best behaviour sat ill
upon him, because it was lacking in sincerity, and Beth suffered all
through lunch because of the obsequious pose he thought it proper to
assume towards his distinguished guest.
After lunch, when Sir George had gone, he took up his favourite
position before the mirror over the chimney-piece, and stood there for
a little, looking at himself and caressing his moustache.
"You talk a great deal too much, Beth," he said at last.
"Do you think so?" she rejoined.
"Yes, I do," he assured her. "Of course Galbraith had to be polite and
affect to listen, but I could see that he was bored by your chatter.
He naturally wanted to talk to me about things that interest men."
"Then why on earth didn't he talk to you?" Beth asked.
"How could he when you monopolised the conversation?"
"It was he who kept me talking," she protested.
"Oh yes; I notice you are very animated when anything in the shape of
a man comes in," Dan sneered.
Beth got up and left the room, less affected by the insinuation,
however, than by the vulgar expression of it.
The following week Sir George came in one morning with some cuttings,
and stayed a while in the garden with Beth, showing her how to set
them; but he would not wait for lunch. Dan showed considerable
annoyance when he heard of the visit.
"He should come when I am at home," he said. "It is damned bad taste
his coming when you are alone."
The next time Sir George came Dan happened to be in, to Beth's relief.
She had brought her writing down that day, and was working at it on
the dining-room table, not expecting Dan till much later. He was in a
genial mood, for a wonder.
"What on earth are you scribbling about there?" he asked.
"Just something I was thinking about," Beth answered evasively.
"Going in for authorship, eh?"
"Why not?" said Beth.
Dan laughed. "You are not at all ambitious," he remarked; then added
patronisingly, "A little of that kind of thing will do you no harm, of
course; but, my dear child, your head wouldn't contain a book, and if
you were just a little cleverer you would know that yourself."
Beth bit the end of her pencil and looked at him dispassionately, and
it was at this moment that Sir George Galbraith was announced.
Dan received him with effusion as usual; and also, as usual, Sir
George responded with all conventional politeness, but the greeting
over, he turned his attention to Beth. He had brought her a packet of
books.
"This looks like work in earnest," he said, glancing at the table. "I
see you have a good deal of something done. Is it nearly finished?"
"All but," Beth rejoined.
"What are you going to do with it?"
Beth looked at him, and then at her manuscript vaguely. "I don't
know," she said. "What can I do with it?"
"Publish it, if it is good," he answered.
"But how am I to know?" Beth asked eagerly. "Do you think it possible
I could do anything fit to publish?"
Before he could reply, Dan chimed in. "I've just been telling her," he
said, "that little heads like hers can't contain books. It's all very
well to scribble a little for pastime, and all that, but she mustn't
seriously imagine she can do that sort of work. She'll only do herself
harm. Literature is men's work."
"Yet how many women have written, and written well, too," Beth
observed.
"Oh yes, of course--exceptional women."
"And why mayn't I be an exceptional woman?" Beth asked, smiling.
"Coarse and masculine!" Dan exclaimed. "No, thank you. We don't want
you to be one of that kind--do we, Galbraith?"