The Beth Book
thought. It was the result of this training, and her constancy in
pursuing it, that her further faculty, hitherto so fitful, at last
shot up a bright and steady light which made manifest to her the
thoughts of others that they were not all evil, and helped her by the
grace in her own heart to perceive hidden processes of love at work in
other hearts, all tending to purification, and by the goodness of her
own soul to search out the goodness in other souls as the elements
find their constituent parts in the atmosphere.
Beth was looking her best that afternoon, although she had taken no
pains with herself. She seemed well dressed by dint of looking well in
her clothes; but she had not chosen to make herself look well. In the
exasperated phase of revolt through which she was passing, she could
not have been persuaded to dress so as to heighten the effect of her
appearance, and so make of herself a trap to catch admiring glances.
To be neat and fresh was all her care; but that was enough. The young
man with the pointed beard, who had been looking about the room
uneasily, seemed to have found what he wanted when he noticed her. He
asked an elderly man standing near him who the young lady of
distinguished appearance might be. "A friend of Mrs. Kilroy's, I
believe," the gentleman answered, and moved off as if he resented the
question.
But Pointed Beard was persistent. He asked two or three other people,
strangers, who did not know either, and then he made his way to Mrs.
Kilroy, but she was so surrounded he could not get near her. At last
he bethought him of the servants who were handing tea about, and
learnt Beth's name from one of them.
When Beth next noticed him, he was making his way towards her with a
cup of tea in one hand and a plate of cakes in the other.
"I have ventured to bring you some tea," he said, "but I do not know
if it is as you like it. I can easily get you some more, however, if
it is not."
"Thank you; I do not want any," Beth answered somewhat coldly.
"I'll put it here, then, on this console," he rejoined. "If I move
away I shall not be able to get near you again in this crowd. I wonder
why Mrs. Kilroy has so many people. Now, _I_ like just a few, eight or
ten for a dinner, you know, and twenty or so on these sort of
occasions. And they must all be interesting people, worth talking to.
I am exceedingly fastidious about the kind of people I know. Even as a
boy I was fastidious."
As he uttered that last sentence, Beth was again aware of something
familiar in his appearance, and she felt sure she had heard him make
that same remark more than once before--but when? but where?
"That is Lord Fitzkillingham," he continued, "that tall man who has
just come in--see, there!--shaking hands with Mrs. Kilroy. He looks
like a duke, don't you know. I admire people of distinguished
appearance much more than good-looking people--people who are merely
good-looking, I mean, of course. I saw _you_ directly I came into the
room, and was determined to find out who you were; and I asked I can't
tell you how many people, whether I knew them or not. What do you
think of that for perseverance?"
"You certainly seem to be persistent," Beth answered with a smile.
"Oh, I'm nothing if not persistent," he rejoined complacently. "I'll
undertake to find out anything I want to know. Do you see that lady
there in black? I wanted to know her age, so I went to Somerset House
and looked it up."
"What did you do that for?" Beth asked.
"I wanted to know."
"But did she want you to know?"
"Well, naturally not, or she would have told me. But it is no use
trying to conceal things from me. I am not to be deceived."
"You must be quite a loss to Scotland Yard," Beth ventured. "You would
have been admirably fitted for that--er--delicate kind of work."
"Well, I think I should," he rejoined. "You see I found _you_ out, and
it was not so easy, for--er--no one seemed to know you. However, that
does not matter. We'll soon introduce you."
Beth smiled. "Thank you," she said drily, "that will be very nice."
"I'll bring Fitzkillingham presently; he'll do anything for me. He was
one of our set at the 'Varsity. That's the best of going to the
'Varsity. You meet the right kind of people there, people who can help
you, you know, if you can get in with them as I did. You'll like
Fitzkillingham. He's a very good fellow."
"Indeed!" said Beth. "What has he done?"
"Done!" he echoed. "Oh, nothing that I know of. Consider his position!
The Earl of Fitzkillingham, with a rent-roll of fifty thousand a year,
has no need to do; he has only to be. There, he's caught my eye. I'll
go and fetch him."
"Pray do nothing of the kind," said Beth emphatically. "I have no wish
to know him."
The young man, disconcerted, turned and looked her full in the face.
"Why not?" he gasped.
"First of all, because you were going to present him without asking my
permission," Beth said, "which is a liberty I should have had to
resent in any case by refusing to know him; and secondly, because a
man worth fifty thousand a year who has done no good in the world is
not worth knowing. I don't think he should be allowed to _be_ unless
he can be made to _do_. Pray excuse me if I shock your prejudices,"
she added, smiling. "You do not know, perhaps, that in _our_ set,
knowing people for position rather than for character is quite out of
date?"
The young man smiled superciliously. "That is rather a bourgeois
sentiment, is it not?" he said.
"On the contrary," said Beth, "it is the other that is the huckster
spirit. What is called knowing the right people is only the commercial
principle of seeking some advantage. Certain people make a man's
acquaintance, and pay him flattering attentions, not because their
hearts are good and they wish to give him pleasure, but because there
is some percentage of advantage to be gained by knowing him. That is
to be bourgeois in the vulgar sense, if you like! And that is the
trade-mark stamped upon most of us--selfishness! snobbishness! One
sees it in the conventional society manners, which are superficially
veneered, fundamentally bad; the outcome of self-interest, not of good
feeling; one knows exactly how, where, and when they will break down."
"What are you holding forth about, Beth?" said Mrs. Kilroy, coming up
behind her.
"The best people," Beth answered, smiling.
"You mean the people who call themselves the best people--Society,
that is to say," said Mrs. Kilroy cheerfully. "Society is the scum
that comes to the surface because of its lightness, and does not
count, except in sets where ladies' papers circulate."
"I am surprised to hear _you_ talk so, Mrs. Kilroy," said Pointed
Beard in an offended tone, as if society had been insulted in his
person.
"I am sorry if I disappoint you," said Mrs. Kilroy. "And I confess I
like my own set and their pretty manners; but I know their weaknesses.
There is no snob so snobbish as a snob of good birth. The upper
classes will be the last to learn that it is sterling qualities which
are wanted to rule the world,--head and heart."
"This gentleman will tell you that all that is bourgeois," said Beth.
"I believe that at heart the bourgeois are sound," said Angelica.
"Bourgeois signifies good, sound, self-respecting qualities to me, and
steady principles."
"But scarcely 'pretty manners,' I should suppose," said Pointed Beard
superciliously.
"Why not?" said Angelica. "Sincerity and refinement make good manners,
and principle is the parent of both."
"Don't you think that for the most part Englishwomen are singularly
lacking in charms of manner?" he asked precisely.
"Just as Englishmen are, and for the same reason," said Angelica;
"because they only try to be agreeable when it suits themselves. A
good manner is a decoration that must be kept on always if it is to be
worn with ease. Good manners are rare because good feeling is rare,
for good manners are the outcome of good feeling. Manners are not the
mere society show of politeness, but the inward kindly sympathy of
which politeness is the natural outward manifestation; given these,
grace and charm of manner come of themselves."
She moved off as she spoke to attend to other guests.
"Mrs. Kilroy is obvious," said Pointed Beard, in a tone that suggested
sympathy with Beth for being bored. "I wonder she did not give us 'For
manners are not idle,' et cetera, or something equally banal--the kind
of thing we are taught in our infancy----"
"And fail to apply ever after," said Beth.
"I see you are ready," he observed fatuously, striking the personal
note again, which she resented.
"I dislike that cant of the obvious which there is so much of here in
town," she rejoined. "It savours of preciosity. All that is finest in
thought is obvious. A great truth, well put, when heard for the first
time, is so crystal clear to the mind, one seems to have known it
always. No one fears to be obvious who has anything good to say."
He stroked his beard in silence for some seconds. "I suppose you go in
for politics, and all that sort of thing," he said at last.
"Why?" Beth asked in her disconcerting way.
"Oh, judging by your friends."
"Not a safe guide," she assured him. "My friends have the most varied
interests; and even if they had not, it would be somewhat monotonous
for them to associate exclusively with people of the same pursuits."
"Then you do not take an interest in politics?" he jerked out, almost
irritably, as if he had a right to know.
For a moment Beth had a mind to baffle him for his tasteless
persistency, but her natural directness saved her from such
small-mindedness. "If I must answer your catechism," she said,
smiling, "social subjects interest me more. I find generalisations
bald and misleading, and politics are a generalisation of events. I
rarely read a political speech through, and remember very little of
what it is all about when I do. Details, individuals, and actions
fascinate me, but the circumstances of a people as a state rarely
interest me much."
"Ah, I fear that is--er--a feminine point of view, rather--is it not?"
he rejoined patronisingly.
"Yes," she said, "and a scientific method. We go from the particular
to the general, and only draw broad conclusions when we have collected
our facts in detail. But excuse me, I see a friend," she broke off
hastily, seizing the chance to escape.
A little later Beth saw that the demure-looking little person in the
princess bonnet was taking her leave. She passed down the room with
her set little smile on her lips, looking about her, but apparently
without seeing any one in particular till she got to the door, when
her eye lighted on the young man of Shakesperian mien, and her smile
flickered a moment, and went out. The young man turned and looked at a
picture with an elaborately casual air, then sauntered across the room
to Mrs. Kilroy, shook hands with her, spoke to one or two other
people, and finally reached the door and opened it with the same
solemn affectation of not being in a hurry, and disappeared. Beth
wondered if he kept his caution up before the footmen in the hall, or
if he made an undignified bolt of it the moment he was out of sight of
society.
At dinner that evening she asked Mrs. Kilroy who and what that
thin-nosed man, that sort of reminiscence of Shakespeare, was.
"He is by way of being a literary man, I believe," Angelica answered.
"He is not a friend of ours, and I cannot think why he comes here. I
never ask him. He got himself introduced to me somehow, and then came
and called, which I thought an impertinence. Did you notice that woman
with an Alsatian bow in her bonnet, that made her look like a horse
with its ears laid back? Her pose is to improve young men. She