The Beth Book
"There is not the slightest fear," Sir George answered dryly.
"Besides, I don't think any class of women workers--not even the
pit-brow women--are necessarily coarse and masculine. And I differ
from you, too, with regard to that head," he added, fixing his keen,
kindly eyes deliberately on Beth's cranium till she laughed to cover
her embarrassment, and put up both hands to feel it. "I should say
there was good promise both of sense and capacity in the size and
balance of it--not to mention anything else."
"Well, you ought to know if anybody does," said Dan with a facetious
sort of affectation of agreement, which left no doubt of his
insincerity.
"I wish," Sir George continued, addressing Beth, "you would let me
show some of your work to a lady, a friend of mine, whose opinion is
well worth having."
"I would rather have yours," Beth jerked out.
"Oh, mine is no good," he rejoined. "But if you will let me read what
you give me to show my lady, I should be greatly interested. We were
talking about style in prose the other day, and I have ventured to
bring you these books--some of our own stylists, and some modern
Frenchmen. You read French, I know."
"There is nothing like the French," Dan chimed in. "We have no
literature at all now. Look at their work compared to ours, how short,
crisp, and incisive it is! How true to life! A Frenchman will give you
more real life in a hundred pages than our men do in all their
interminable volumes."
"More sexuality, you mean, I suppose," said Galbraith, "Personally I
find them monotonous, and barren of happy phrases to enrich the mind,
of noble sentiments to expand the heart, of great thoughts to help the
soul; without balance, with little of the redeeming side of life, and
less aspiration towards it. If France is to be judged by the tendency
of its literature and art at present, one would suppose it to be
dominated and doomed to destruction by a gang of lascivious authors
and artists who are sapping the manhood of the country and degrading
the womanhood by idealising self-indulgence and mean intrigue. The man
or woman who lives low, or even thinks low, in that sense of the word,
will tend always to descend still lower in times of trial. Moral
probity is the backbone of our courage; without it we have nothing to
support us when a call is made upon our strength."[1]
[1] The truth of this assertion was lately proved in a
terrible manner at the burning of the Charity Bazaar in the Rue Jean
Goujon, when the nerves of the luxurious gentlemen present,
debilitated by close intimacy with the _haute cocotterie_ in and out
of society, betrayed them, and they displayed the white feather of
vice by fighting their own way out, not only leaving the ladies to
their fate, but actually beating them back with their sticks and
trampling on them in their frantic efforts to save themselves, as many
a bruised white arm or shoulder afterwards testified. There was
scarcely a man burnt on the occasion, husbands, lovers, and fathers
escaped, leaving all the heroic deeds to be done by some few devoted
men-servants, some workmen who happened to be passing, a stray
Englishman or American, and mothers who perished in attempting to
rescue their children.
"I can't stand English authors myself," was Dan's reply. "They're so
devilish long-winded, don't you know."
"Poverty of mind accounts for the shortness of the book as a rule,"
said Galbraith. "I like a long book myself when it is rich in thought.
The characters become companions then, and I miss them when we are
forced to part."
Beth nodded assent to this. She had been turning over the books that
Galbraith had brought her, with the tender touch of a true book-lover
and that evident interest and pleasure which goes far beyond thanks.
Mere formal thanks she forgot to express, but she had brightened up in
the most wonderful way since Galbraith appeared, and was all smiles
when he took his leave.
Not so Dan, however; but Beth was too absorbed in the books to notice
that.
"How kind he is!" she exclaimed. "Dan, won't it be delightful if I
really can write? I might make a career for myself."
"Rot!" said Dan.
"Sir George differs from you," Beth rejoined.
"I say that's all rot. What does he know about it? I tell you you're a
silly fool, and your head wouldn't contain a book. I ought to know!"
"Doctors differ again, then, it seems," Beth said. "But in this case
the patient is going to decide for herself. What is the use of opinion
in such matters? One must experiment. I'm going to write, and if at
first I don't succeed--I shall persevere."
"Oh, of course!" Dan sneered. "You'll take anybody's advice but your
husband's. However, go your own way, as I know you will. Only, I warn
you, you'll regret it."
Beth was dipping into one of the books, and took no notice of this.
Dan's ill-humour augmented.
"Did you know the fellow was coming to-day?" he asked.
"No--if by fellow you mean Sir George Galbraith," she answered
casually, still intent on the book.
"You know well enough who I mean, and that's just a nag," he retorted.
"And it looks uncommonly as if you did expect him, and had set all
that rubbish of writing out to make a display."
Beth bit the end of her pencil, and looked at Dan contemptuously.
"I dare say he'd like to get hold of you to make a tool of you," he
pursued. "He's in with Lord Dawne and the whole of that advanced
woman's party at Morne, who are always interfering with everything."
"How?" Beth asked.
"By poking their noses into things that don't concern them," he
asseverated, "things they wouldn't know anything about if they weren't
damned nasty-minded. There's that fanatical Lady Fulda Guthrie, and
Mrs. Orton Beg, and Mrs. Kilroy, besides Madam Ideala--they're all
busybodies, and if they succeed in what they're at just now, by Jove,
they'll ruin me! I'll have my revenge, though, if they do! I'll attack
your distinguished friend. He has established himself as a
humanitarian, and travels on that reputation; but he has an hospital
of his own, where I have no doubt some pretty games are played in the
way of experiments which the public don't suspect. _I_ know the kind
of thing! Patients mustn't ask questions! The good doctor will do his
best for them--trust him! He'll try nothing that he doesn't know to
be for their good; and when they're under chloroform he'll take no
unfair advantage in the way of cutting a little more for his own
private information than they've consented to. Oh, I know! Galbraith
seems to be by way of slighting me, but I'll show him up if it comes
to that--and, at any rate, I'm on the way to discoveries myself, and I
bet I'll teach him some things in his profession yet that will make
him sit up--things he doesn't suspect, clever and all as he is."
Beth knew nothing of the things to which Dan alluded, and therefore
missed the drift of this tirade; but the whole tone of it was so
offensive to her that she gathered up her books and papers and left
the room. Silence and flight were her weapons of defence in those
days.
CHAPTER XL
There was a gap of six months between that last visit of Sir George
Galbraith's and the next, and in the interval Beth had worked hard,
reading and re-reading the books he had lent her, writing, and perhaps
most important of all, reflecting, as she sat in her secret chamber,
busy with the beautiful embroideries which were to pay off that
dreadful debt. She had made seven pounds by this time, and Aunt Grace
Mary had sent her five for a present surreptitiously, advising her to
keep it herself and say nothing about it--Aunt Grace Mary knew what
husbands were. Beth smiled as she read the letter. She, too, was
beginning to know what husbands are--husbands of the Uncle James kind.
She added the five pounds to her secret hoard, and thanked goodness
that the sum was mounting up, little by little.
But she wished Sir George would return. He was a busy man, and lived
at the other side of the county, so that she could not expect him to
come to Slane on her account; but surely something more important
would bring him eventually, and then she might hope to see him. She
knew he would not desert her. And she had some manuscript ready to
confide to him now if he should repeat his offer; but she was too
diffident to send it to him except at his special request.
She was all energy now that the possibility of making a career for
herself had been presented to her, but it was the quietly restrained
energy of a strong nature. She never supposed that she could practise
a profession without learning it, and she was prepared to serve a long
apprenticeship to letters if necessary. She meant to write and write
and write until she acquired power of expression. About what she
should have to express she never troubled herself. It was the need to
express what was in her that had set her to work. She would never have
to sit at a writing-table with a pen in her hand waiting for ideas to
come. She had discovered by accident that she could have books in
plenty, and of the kind she required, from the Free Library at Slane.
Dan never troubled himself to consult her taste in books, but he was
in the habit of bringing home three-volume novels for himself from the
library, a form of literature he greatly enjoyed in spite of his
strictures. He made Beth read them aloud to him in the evening, one
after the other--an endless succession--while he smoked, and drank
whiskies-and-sodas. He brought them home himself at first, but soon
found it a trouble to go for them, and so sent her; and then it was
she discovered that there were other books in the library. The
librarian, an educated and intelligent man, helped her often in the
choice of books. They had long talks together, during which he made
many suggestions, and gave Beth many a hint and piece of information
that was of value to her. He was her only congenial friend in Slane,
and her long conversations with him often took her out of herself and
raised her spirits. He little suspected what a help he was to the
lonely little soul. For the most part she took less interest in the
books themselves than in the people who wrote them; biographies,
autobiographies, and any scrap of anecdote about authors and their
methods she eagerly devoured. Life as they had lived it, not as they
had observed and imagined it, seemed all-important to her; and as she
read and thought, sitting alone in the charmed solitude of her secret
chamber, her self-respect grew. Her mind, which had run riot,
fancy-fed with languorous dreams in the days when it was unoccupied
and undisciplined, came steadily more and more under control, and grew
gradually stronger as she exercised it. She ceased to rage and worry
about her domestic difficulties, ceased to expect her husband to add
to her happiness in any way, ceased to sorrow for the slights and
neglects that had so wounded and perplexed her during the first year
of her life in Slane; and learnt by degrees to possess her soul in
dignified silence so long as silence was best, feeling in herself
_that_ something which should bring her up out of all this and set her
apart eventually in another sphere, among the elect--feeling this
through her further faculty to her comfort, although unable as yet to
give it any sort of definite expression. As she read of those who had
gone before, she felt a strange kindred with them; she entered into
their sorrows, understood their difficulties, was uplifted by their
aspirations, and gloried in their successes. Their greatness never
disheartened her; on the contrary, she was at home with them in all
their experiences, and at her ease as she never was with the petty
people about her. It delighted her when she found in them some small