Beth had no more zest for the ball after that conversation with Daniel
about the money her mother had given him. She felt obliged to go to it
because he insisted that it was necessary for the wives of
professional men to show themselves on public occasions; but she would
not get a new dress. She had never worn her white silk trimmed with
myrtle, and when she came to look at it again, she decided that it was
not so much out of the fashion after all, and, at any rate, it must
do.
When she came down to dinner dressed in it on the night of the ball,
she looked very winsome, and smiled up at Dan in shy expectation of a
word of approval; but none came. In the early days of their
acquaintance he had remarked that she was much more easily depressed
than elated about herself, and would be the better of a little more
confidence--not to say conceit; but since their marriage he had never
given her the slightest sympathy or encouragement to cure her of her
diffidence. If anything were amiss in her dress or appearance, he told
her of it in the offensive manner of an ill-conditioned under-bred
man, generally speaking when they were out of doors, or in some house
where she could do nothing to put herself right, as if it were some
satisfaction to him to make her feel ill at ease; and if she were
complimented by any one else about anything, he had usually something
derogatory to say on the subject afterwards. Now, when he had
inspected her, he sat down to table without a word.
"Is there anything wrong?" Beth asked anxiously.
"No," he answered. "That stuff on your sleeves might have been
fresher, that's all."
"This will be my first ball," Beth ventured, breaking a long silence.
"Well, don't go and tell everybody," he rejoined. "They'll think you
want to make yourself interesting, and it's nothing to boast about.
Just lay yourself out to be agreeable to people who will further your
husband's interests, for once."
"But am I not always agreeable?" Beth exclaimed, much mortified.
"It doesn't appear so," he answered drily. "At any rate, you don't
seem to go down here."
"How do you mean?" Beth asked.
"Why, the ladies in the place all seem to shun you, for some reason or
other; not one of them ever comes near you in a friendly way."
"They were all very nice to me the other day at Beg," Beth protested,
her heart sinking at this recurrence of the old reproach; for to be
shunned, or in any way set apart, seemed even more dreadful to her now
than it had done when she was a child.
"See that they keep it up then," he answered grimly.
"If it depends upon me, they will," said Beth, setting her sensitive
mouth in a hard determined line that added ten years to her age and
did not improve her beauty. And it was with a sad heart, and sorely
dissatisfied with herself, that she drove to her first ball.
When they entered the ball-room, however, and Dan beamed about him on
every one in his "thoroughly good fellow" way, her spirits rose. The
decorations, the handsome uniforms, the brilliant dresses and jewels,
the flowers and foliage plants, and, above all, the bright dance-music
and festive faces, delighted her, and she gazed about her with lips
just parted in a little smile, wondering to find it all so gay.
A young military man was brought up to her and introduced by one of
the stewards before she had been five minutes in the room. He asked
for the pleasure of a dance; but, alas! thanks to the scheme of
education at the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters having
been designed by the authorities to fit the girls for the next world
only, Beth could not dance. She had had some lessons at Miss
Blackburne's, but not enough to give her confidence, so she was
obliged to decline. Another and another would-be partner, and some
quite important people, as Dan said, offered, but in vain; and he
looked furious.
"Well," he exclaimed, "this is nice for me!"
"I am sorry," Beth answered nervously. She was beginning to have a
painful conviction that a man had to depend almost entirely on his
wife for his success in life, and the responsibility made her quail.
"I shall have to go and do _my_ duty, at any rate," he proceeded. "I
must leave you alone."
"Yes, do," said Beth. "Mrs. Kilroy and Mrs. Orton Beg have just come
in; I will go and join them." She naturally expected Dan to escort
her, and he probably would have done so had he waited to hear what she
was saying; but his marital manners were such that he had taken
himself off while she was speaking, and left her to fend for herself.
She was too glad, however, to see her charming new acquaintances, who
had been so kindly, to care much, and she crossed the room to them,
smiling confidently. As she approached, she saw that they recognised
her and said something to each other. When she came close, they both
bowed coldly, and turned their heads in the opposite direction.
Beth stopped short and her heart stood still. The slight was
unmistakable; but what had she done? She looked about her as if for an
explanation, and saw Lady Beg close beside her, talking to Mrs. Carne.
"Ah, how do you do? Nice ball, isn't it?" Lady Beg observed, but
without shaking hands.
"How do you do?" said Mrs. Carne, and then they resumed their
conversation, taking no further notice of Beth, who would probably
have turned and fled from the dreadful place incontinently, if Mrs.
Petterick had not come up at that moment and spoken to her as one
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?"
"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.