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
trait or habit which she herself had already developed or contracted,
such as she found in the early part of George Sand's _Histoire de ma
Vie_, and in the lives of the Brontes. Under the influence of
nourishing books, her mind, sustained and stimulated, became nervously
active. It had a trick of flashing off from the subject she was
studying to something wholly irrelevant. She would begin Emerson's
essay on _Fate_ or _Beauty_ with enthusiasm, and presently, with her
eyes still following the lines, her thoughts would be busy forming a
code of literary principles for herself. In those days her mind was
continually under the influence of any author she cared about,
particularly if his style were mannered. Involuntarily, while she was
reading Macaulay, for instance, her own thoughts took a dogmatic turn,
and jerked along in short, sharp sentences. She caught the
peculiarities of De Quincey too, of Carlyle, and also some of the
simple dignity of Ruskin, which was not so easy; and she had written
things after the manner of each of these authors before she perceived
the effect they were having upon her. But it was unfortunate for her
that her attention had been turned from the matter which she had to
express to the manner in which she should express it. From the time
she began to think of the style and diction of prose as something to
be separately acquired, the spontaneous flow of her thoughts was
checked and hampered, and she expended herself in fashioning her
tools, as it were, instead of using her tools to fashion her work.
When, in her reading, she came under the influence of academic minds,
she lost all natural freshness, and succeeded in being artificial. Her
English became turgid with Latinities. She took phrases which had
flowed from her pen, and were telling in their simple eloquence, and
toiled at them, turning and twisting them until she had laboured all
the life out of them; and then, mistaking effort for power, and having
wearied herself, she was satisfied. Being too diffident to suspect
that she had any natural faculty, she conceived that the more trouble
she gave herself the better must be the result; and consequently she
did nothing worth the doing except as an exercise of ingenuity. She
was serving her apprenticeship, however--making her mistakes.
It was late in the autumn before she saw her good friend Sir George
Galbraith again. He came on a bright, clear, frosty morning, and found
her out in the garden, pacing up and down briskly, and looking greatly
exhilarated by the freshness. When she saw him coming towards her, she
uttered a little joyful exclamation, and hurried forward to meet him.
"I have been longing to see you," she said in her unaffected way; "but
I know what the distance is, and how fully your time is occupied. It
is very good of you to come at all."
"Only the time and distance have prevented me coming sooner," he
rejoined. "But, tell me, how have you been getting on? And have you
thought any more of making a career for yourself?"
"I have thought of nothing else," Beth answered brightly; "and I
wonder I ever thought of anything else, for the idea has been in me, I
believe, all my life. I must have discussed it, too, at a very early
age, for I have remembered lately that I was once advised by an old
aunt of mine, the best and dearest friend I ever had, to write only
that which is--or aims at being--soul-sustaining."
He nodded his head approvingly. "From such seed a good crop should
come," he said. "But what line shall you take?"
"I don't know."
"Not novels then, for certain?"
"Nothing for certain--whatever comes and calls for expression."
They were pacing up and down together, and there was a pause.
"Did you expect I should try to write novels, and do you think I
ought?" Beth asked at last.
"I think I did expect it," he answered; "but as to whether you ought
or ought not, that is for you to decide. There is much to be said
against novel reading and writing. I think it was De Quincey who said
that novels are the opium of the West; and I have myself observed that
novel-reading is one of those bad habits that grow upon people until
they are enslaved by it, demoralised by it; and if that is the case
with the reader, what must the writer suffer?"
Beth bent her brows upon this. "But that is only one side of it, is it
not?" she asked after a moment's reflection. "I notice in all things a
curious duality, a right side and a wrong side. Confusion is the wrong
side of order, misery of happiness, falsehood of truth, evil of good;
and it seems to me that novel-reading, which can be a vice, I know,
may also be made a virtue. It depends on the writer."
"And on the taste of the reader," he suggested. "But I believe the
taste of the intelligent 'general reader' is much better than one
supposes. The mind craves for nourishment; and the extraordinary
success of books in which any attempt, however imperfect, is made to
provide food for thought, as distinguished from those which merely
offer matter to distract the attention, bears witness, it seems to me,
to the involuntary effort which is always in progress to procure it. I
believe myself that good fiction may do more to improve the mind,
enlarge the sympathies, and develop the judgment than any other form
of literature--partly because it looks into the hidden springs of
action, and makes all that is obscure in the way of impulse and motive
clear to us. Biography, for instance, merely skims the surface of
life, as a rule; and in history, where man is a puppet moved by
events, there can be very little human nature."
"I wonder if you read many novels," said Beth. "I have to read them
aloud to my husband until I am satiated. And I am determined, if I
ever do try to write one, to avoid all that is conventional. I never
will have a faultlessly beautiful heroine, for instance. I am sick of
that creature. When I come to her, especially if she has golden hair
yards long, a faultless complexion, and eyes of extraordinary
dimensions, I feel inclined to groan and shut the book. I have met her
so often in the weary ways of fiction! I know every variety of her so
well! She consists of nothing but superlatives, and is as conventional
as the torso of an Egyptian statue, with her everlasting physical
perfection. I think her as repulsive as a barber's block. I confess
that a woman who has golden hair and manages to look like a lady, or
to be like one even in a book, is a wonder, considering all that is
associated with golden hair in our day; but I should avoid the
abnormal as much as the conventional. I would not write plotty-plotty
books either, nor make a pivot of the everlasting love-story, which
seems to me to show such a want of balance in an author, such an
absence of any true sense of proportion, as if there was nothing else
of interest in life but our sexual relations. But, oh!" she broke off,
"how I do appreciate what the difficulty of selection must be! In
writing a life, if one could present all sides of it, and not merely
one phase--the good and the bad of it, the joys and the sorrows, the
moments of strength and of weakness, of wisdom and of folly, of misery
and of pure delight--what a picture!"
"Yes; and how utterly beyond the average reader, who never understands
complexity," he answered. "But I think it a good sign for your chances
of success that you should have complained of the difficulty of
selection in the matter of material rather than bemoan your want of
experience of life. Most young aspirants to literary fame grumble that
they are handicapped for want of experience. They are seldom content
with the material they have at hand--the life they know. They want to
go and live in London, where they seem to think that every one worth
knowing is to be found."
"That isn't my feeling at all," said Beth. "The best people may be met
in London, but I don't believe that they are at their best. The
friction of the crowd rubs out their individuality. In a crowd I feel
mentally as if I were in a maze of telegraph wires. The thoughts of so
many people streaming out in all directions about me entangle and
bewilder me."
"You do not seem to like anything exceptional."
"No, I do not," said Beth. "I like the normal--the everyday. Great
events are not the most significant, nor are great people the most
typical. It is the little things that make life livable. The person
who comes and talks clever is not the person we love, nor the person
who interests us most. Those we love sympathise with us in the
ordinary everyday incidents of our lives, and discuss them with us,
merely touching, if at all, on the thoughts they engender. I don't
want to know what people think as a rule; I want to know what they
have experienced. People who talk facts, I like; people who talk
theories, I fly from. And I think upon the whole that I shall always
like the kind people better than the clever ones. I believe we owe
more to them, too, and learn more from them--more human nature, which
after all is what we want to know."
"But the clever people are kind also sometimes," said Sir George.
"When they are, of course it is perfect," Beth answered. "But judging
the clever ones of to-day by what they write, I cannot often think
them so. The works of our smartest modern writers, particularly the
French, satiate me with their cleverness; but they are vain, hollow,
cynical, dyspeptic; they appeal to the head, but the heart goes empty
away. Few of them know or show the one thing needful--that happiness
is the end of life; and that by trying to live rightly we help each
other to happiness. That is the one thing well worth understanding in
this world; but that, with all their ingenuity, they are not
intelligent enough to see."
"You are an optimist, I perceive," Sir George said, smiling, "and I
entirely agree with you. So long as we understand that happiness is
the end of life, and that the best way to secure it for ourselves is
by helping others to attain to it, we are travelling in the right
direction. By happiness I do not mean excitement, of course, nor the
pleasure we owe to others altogether; but that quiet content in
ourselves, that large toleration and love which should overflow from
us continually, and make the fact of our existence a source of joy and
strength to all who know us."
They walked up and down a little in silence, then Sir George asked her
what she thought of some of the specimens of style and art in
literature he had lent her to study.
"I don't know yet," Beth said. "My mind is in a state of chaos on the
subject. I seem to reject 'style' and 'art.' I ask for something more
or something else, and am never satisfied. But tell me what you think
of the stylists."
"I think them brilliant," he rejoined, "but their work is as the
photograph is to the painting, the lifeless accuracy of the machine to
the nervous fascinating faultiness of the human hand. No, I don't care
for the writers who are specially praised for their style. I find
their productions cold and bald as a rule. I want something
warmer--more full-blooded. Most of the stylists write as if they began
by acquiring a style and then had to sit and wait for a subject. I
believe style is the enemy of matter. You compress all the blood out
of your subject when you make it conform to a studied style, instead
of letting your style form itself out of the necessity for expression.
This is rank heresy, I know, and I should not have ventured on it a
few years ago; but now, I say, give me a style that is the natural
outcome of your subject, your mind, your character, not an artificial
but a natural product; and even though it be as full of faults as
human nature is, faults of every kind, so long as there is no fault of
the heart in it, that being the one unpardonable fault in an
author--if you have put your own individuality into your work--I'll
answer for it that you will arrive sooner and be read longer than the
most admired stylist of the day. Be prepared to sacrifice form to
accuracy, to avoid the brilliant and the marvellous for the simple and
direct. What matters it how the effect is got so that it comes
honestly? But of course it will be said that this, that, and the other
person did not get their effects so; they will compare you to the
greatest to humiliate you."
"Oh, that would be nothing to me so that I produced my own effects,"
Beth broke in. "That is just where I am at present. I mean to be
myself. But please do not think that I have too much assurance. If I
go wrong, I hope I shall find it out in time; and I shall certainly be
the first to acknowledge it. I do not want to prove myself right; I
want to arrive at the truth."
"Then you will arrive," he assured her. "But above everything, mind
that you are not misled by the cant of art if you have anything
special to say. If a writer would be of use in his day, and not merely
an amuser of the multitude, he must learn that right thinking, right
feeling, and knowledge are more important than art. When you address
the blockhead majority, you must not only give them your text, you
must tell them also what to think of it, otherwise there will be fine
misinterpretation. You may be sure of the heart of the multitude if
you can touch it; but its head, in the present state of its
development, is an imperfect machine, manoeuvred for the most part
by foolishness. People can see life for themselves, but they cannot
always see the meaning of it, the why and wherefore, whence things
come and whither they are tending, so that the lessons of life are
lost--or would be but for the efforts of the modern novelist."
Beth reflected a little, then she said: "I am glad you think me an
optimist. It seems to me that healthy human nature revolts from
pessimism. The work that lasts is the work that cheers. Give us
something with hope in it--something that appeals to the best part of
us--something which, while we read, puts us in touch with fine ideals,
and makes us feel better than we are."
"That is it precisely," said he. "The school of art-and-style books
wearies us because there is no aspiration in it, nothing but a deadly
dull artistic presentment of hopeless levels of life. It is all cold
polish, as I said before, with never a word to warm the heart or stir
the better nature."
"That is what I have felt," said Beth; "and I would rather have
written a simple story, full of the faults of my youth and ignorance,
but with some one passage in it that would put heart and hope into
some one person, than all that brilliant barren stuff. And I'm going
to write for women, not for men. I don't care about amusing men. Let
them see to their own amusements, they think of nothing else. Men
entertain each other with intellectual ingenuities and Art and Style,
while women are busy with the great problems of life, and are striving
might and main to make it beautiful."
"Now that is young in the opprobrious sense of the word," said Sir
George. "It is only when we are extremely young that we indulge in
such sweeping generalisations."
Beth blushed. "I am always afraid my judgment will be warped by my own
narrow personal experience,--I must guard against that!" she
exclaimed, conscious that she had had her husband in her mind when she
spoke.
Sir George nodded his head approvingly, and looked at his watch. "I
must go," he said, "but I hope there will not be such a long interval
before I come again. My wife is sorry that she has not been able to
call. She is not equal to such a long drive. But she desired me to
explain and apologise; and she has sent you some flowers and fruit
which she begs you will accept. Have you some of your work ready for
me this time? I have asked my friend Ideala to give you her opinion,
which is really worth having, and she says she will with pleasure. You
must know her. I am sure you would like her extremely."
"But would she like me?" slipped from Beth unawares.
"Now, that is young again," he said, with his kindly smile-indulgent.
"It is the outcome of sad experience," Beth rejoined with a sigh. "No
woman I have met here so far has shown any inclination to cultivate my
acquaintance. I think I am being punished for some unknown crime."
Sir George became thoughtful, but said nothing.
As they approached the house, Beth saw Dan peeping at them from behind
the curtain of an upstairs window. The hall-table was covered with the
fruit and flowers Sir George had brought. Beth sent a servant for Dan.
The girl came back and said that the doctor was not in.
"Nonsense!" said Beth. "I saw him at one of the windows just now. If
you will excuse me, Sir George, I will find him myself."
She called him as she ran upstairs, and Dan made his appearance,
looking none too well pleased.
He went down to Sir George, and Beth ran on up to her secret chamber
for her manuscripts and the books Sir George had lent her, which had
been waiting ready packed for many a day.
* * * * *
When he had gone, Beth danced round the dining-room, clapping her
hands.
"I can't contain myself," she exclaimed. "I do feel encouraged,
strengthened, uplifted."
She caught a glimpse of Dan's face, and stopped short.
"What's the matter?" she said.
"The matter is that I'll have no more of this," he answered in a
brutal tone.
"No more of what?" Beth demanded.
"No more of this man's philandering after you," he retorted.
"I don't understand you," Beth gasped.
"Oh, you're mighty innocent," he sneered. "You'll be telling me next
that he comes to see _me_, lends _me_ books, walks up and down by the
hour together with _me_, brings _me_ fruit and flowers! You think I'm
blind, I suppose! _You_'re a nice person! and so particular too! and
so fastidious in your conversation! Oh, trust a prude! But I tell
you," he bawled, coming up close to her, and shaking his fist in her
face, "I tell you I won't have it. Now, do you understand that?"
Beth did not wince, but oh, what a drop it was from the heights she
had just left to this low level! "Be good enough to explain your
meaning precisely," she said quietly. "I understand that you are
bringing some accusation against me. It is no use blustering and
shaking your fist in my face. I am not to be frightened. Just explain
yourself. And I advise you to weigh your words, for you shall answer
to me in public for any insult you may offer me in private."
Dr. Maclure was sobered by this unexpected flash of spirit. They had
been married nearly three years by this time, and Beth's habitual
docility had deceived him. Hitherto men have been able to insult their
wives in private with impunity when so minded, and Dan was staggered
for a moment to find himself face to face with a mere girl who boldly
refused to suffer the indignity. He was not prepared for such a
display of self-respect.
"You're very high and mighty!" he jeered at last.
"I am very determined," Beth rejoined, and set her lips.
He tried to subdue her by staring her out of countenance; but Beth
scornfully returned his gaze. Then suddenly she stamped her foot, and
brought her clenched fist down on the dining-room table, beside which
she was standing. "Come, come, sir," she said, "we've had enough of
this theatrical posing. You are wasting my time, explain yourself."
He took a turn up and down the room.
"Look here, Beth," he began, lowering his tone, "you cannot pretend
that Galbraith comes to see me."
"Why should I?" she asked.
"Well, it isn't right that he should come to see you, and I won't have
it," he reiterated.
"Do you mean that I am not to have any friends of my own?" she
demanded.
"_He_ is not to be one of your friends," Dan answered doggedly.
"And what explanation am I to give him, please?" she asked politely.
"I won't have you giving him any explanation."
"My dear Dan," she rejoined, "when you speak in that way, you show an
utter want of knowledge of my character. If I will not allow you to
insult me, and bully me, and bluster at me, it is not likely that I
will allow you to insult my friends. If Sir George Galbraith's visits
are to stop, I shall tell him the reason exactly. He at least is a
gentleman."
"That is as much as to say that I am not," Dan blustered.
"You certainly are not behaving like one now," Beth coolly rejoined.
"But there! You have my ultimatum. I am not going to waste any more
time in vulgar scenes with you."
"Ultimatum, indeed!" he jeered. "Well, you _are_, you know! You'll
write and explain to him, will you, that your husband's jealous of
him? That shows the terms you are on!"
"It is jealousy then, is it?" said Beth. "Thank you. Now I understand
you."
Dan's evil mood took another turn. His anger changed to self-pity. "Oh
dear! oh dear! what am I to do with you?" he exclaimed. "And after all
I've done for you--to treat me like this." He took out his
pocket-handkerchief and wiped away the tears which any mention of his
own goodness and the treatment he received from others always brought
to his eyes.
Beth watched him contemptuously, yet her heart smote her. He was a
poor creature, but for that very reason, and because she was strong,
surely she should be gentle with him.
"Look here, Dan," she said. "I have never knowingly done you any wrong
in thought, or word, or deed; all you have said to me to-day has been
ridiculously wrong-headed; but never mind. Stop crying, do, and don't
let us have any more idiotic jealousy. Why, it was Lady Galbraith who
sent me the flowers and fruit, with a kind message of apology because
she has not been able to call. Why should not she be jealous?"
"Oh, she's a fool!" Dan rejoined, recovering himself. "She leads him
the life of a dog with her fears and fancies, and she won't take any
part in his philanthropic work, though he wishes it. She's a pretty
pill!"
The servant came in at this moment to lay the table for lunch, and Dan
went to the looking-glass with the inconsequence of a child, and
forgot his grievance in the contemplation of his own beloved image and
in abusing Lady Galbraith. Abusing somebody was mental relaxation of
the most agreeable kind to him. Feeling that he had gone too far, he
was gracious to Beth during lunch, and just before he went out he
kissed her, and said, "We won't mention that fellow again, Beth. I
don't believe you'd do anything dishonourable."
"I should think not!" said Beth.
When he had gone, she returned to her secret chamber, the one little
corner sacred to herself, to her purest, noblest thoughts, her highest
aspirations; and as she looked round, it seemed as if ages had passed
since she last entered it, full of happiness and hope. It was as if
she had been innocent then, and was now corrupted. Her self-control
did not give way, but she could do nothing, and just sat there, wan
with horror; and as she sat, every now and then she shivered from head
to foot. She had known of course in a general way that such things did
happen, that married women did give their husbands cause for jealousy;
but to her mind they were a kind of married women who lived in another
sphere where she was not likely to encounter them. She had never
expected to be brought near such an enormity, let alone to have it
brought home to herself in a horrible accusation; and the effect of it
was a shock to her nervous system--one of those stunning blows which
are scarcely felt at first, but are agonising in their after effects.
When the reaction set in, Beth's disgust was so great it took a
physical form, and ended by making her violently sick. It was days
before she quite recovered, and in one sense of the word she was never
the same again.