Some one in Slane gave Sir George Galbraith a hint of Dan's coarse
jealousy, and he had judged it better for Beth that he should not call
again; but his interest in her and his desire to help her increased if
anything. He had read her manuscript carefully himself, and obtained
Ideala's opinion of it also; but Beth had not done her best by any
means in the one she had given him. She had written it for the
purpose, for one thing, which was fatal, for her style had stiffened
with anxiety to do her best, and her ideas, instead of flowing
spontaneously, had been forced and formal, as her manner was when she
was shy. It is one thing to have a fine theory of art and high
principles (and an excellent thing, too), but it is quite another to
put them into effect, especially when you're in a hurry to arrive.
Hurry misplaced is hindrance. If Beth had given Sir George some one of
the little things which she had written in sheer exuberance of thought
and feeling, without hampering hopes of doing anything with them, he
would have been very differently impressed; but, even as it was, what
she had given him was as full of promise as it was full of faults, and
he was convinced that he had not been mistaken in her, especially when
he found that Ideala thought even better of her prospects than he did.
Ideala, who was an impulsive and generous woman, wrote warmly on the
subject, and Sir George sent her letter to Beth with a few lines of
kindly expressed encouragement from himself. He returned her
manuscript; but when Beth saw it again, she was greatly dissatisfied.
The faults her friends had pointed out to her she plainly perceived,
and more also; but she could not see the merits. Praise only made her
the more fastidious about her work; but in that way it helped her.
Sir George's kindness did not stop at criticism however. He was cut
off from her himself, and could expect no help from his wife, whose
nervous system had suffered so much from the shock of unhappy
circumstances in her youth that she could not now bear even to hear
of, let alone to be brought in contact with, any form of sorrow or
suffering; but there were other ladies--Mrs. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe,
for instance. Sir George had known her all her life, and went
specially to ask her as a favour to countenance Beth.
"I want you to be kind to Mrs. Maclure, Angelica," he said. "She's far
too good for that plausible bounder of a barber's block she's
married."
"Then why did she marry him?" Angelica interrupted, in her vivacious
way.
"Pitchforked into it at the suggestion of her friends in her infancy,
I should say, reasoning by induction," he answered. "That's generally
the explanation in these cases. But, at any rate, she's not going to
be happy with him. And she's a charming little creature, very sweet
and docile naturally, and with unusual ability, or I'm much mistaken,
and plenty of spirit, too, when she's roused, I should anticipate. But
at present, in her childish ignorance, she's yielding where she should
resist, and she'll be brutalised if no one comes to the rescue. I
don't trust that man Maclure. A man who speaks flippantly of things
that should be respected is not a man who will be scrupulous when his
own interests are concerned; and such a man has it in his power to
make the life of a girl a hell upon earth in ways which she will not
complain of, if she has no knowledge to use in self-defence; and girls
seldom have."
"As I have learnt, alas! from bitter experience in my work amongst the
victims of holy matrimony," Angelica interposed bitterly. "Oh, how
sickening it all is! Sometimes I envy Evadne in that she is able to
refuse to know."
Sir George was silent for a little, then he said, "This is likely to
be a more than usually pathetic case, because of the girl's unusual
character and promise, and also because her brain is too delicately
poised to stand the kind of shocks and jars that threaten her. You
will take pity on her, Angelica?"
Mrs. Kilroy shrugged her shoulders. "How can I countenance a woman who
acquiesces in such a position as her husband holds, and actually lives
on his degrading work?"
"I don't believe she knows anything about it," he rejoined.
"If I were sure of that," said Angelica, meditating.
"It is easy enough to make sure," he suggested.
* * * * *
Mrs. Carne, wife of the leading medical man in Slane, conceived it to
be her duty to patronise Beth to the extent of an occasional formal
call, as she was the wife of a junior practitioner; and Beth duly
returned these calls, because she was determined not to make enemies
for Dan by showing any resentment for the slights she had suffered in
Slane.
Feeling depressed indoors one dreary afternoon, she set off, alone as
usual, to pay one of these visits. She rather hoped perhaps to find
some sort of satisfaction by way of reward for the brave discharge of
an uncongenial duty.
On the way into town, Dan passed her in his dogcart with a casual nod,
bespattering her with mud. "You'll have your carriage soon, please
God! and never have to walk. I hate to see a delicate woman on foot in
the mud." Beth remembered the words so well, and Dan's pious
intonation as he uttered them, and she laughed. She had a special
little laugh for exhibitions of this kind of divergence between Dan's
precepts and his practices. But even as she laughed her face
contracted as with a sudden spasm of pain, and she ejaculated--"But I
shall succeed!"
Mrs. Carne was at home, and Beth was shown into the drawing-room,
where she found several other lady visitors--Mrs. Kilroy, Mrs. Orton
Beg, Lady Fulda Guthrie, and Ideala. The last two she had not met
before.
"Where will you sit?" said Mrs. Carne, who was an effusive little
person. "What a day! You were brave to come out, though perhaps it
will do you good. My husband says go out in all weathers and battle
with the breeze; there's nothing like exercise."
"Battling with the breeze and an umbrella on a wet day is not
exercise, it is exasperation," Beth answered, and at the sound of her
peculiarly low, clear, cultivated voice, the conversation stopped
suddenly, and every one in the room looked at her. She seemed unaware
of the attention. In fact, she ignored every one present except her
hostess. This was her habitual manner now, assumed to save herself
from slights. When she entered, Mrs. Kilroy had half risen from her
seat, and endeavoured to attract her attention; but Beth passed her
by, deliberately chose a seat, and sat down. Her demeanour, so
apparently cold and self-contained, was calculated to command respect,
but it cost Beth a great deal to maintain it. She felt she was alone
in an unfriendly atmosphere--a poor little thing, shabbily dressed in
home-made mourning, and despised for she knew not what offence; and
she suffered horribly. She had grown very fragile by this time, and
looked almost childishly young. Her eyes were unnaturally large and
wistful, her mouth drooped at the corners, and the whole expression of
her face was pathetic. Mrs. Kilroy looked at her seriously, and
thought to herself, "That girl is suffering."
Mrs. Carne offered Beth tea, but she refused it. She could not accept
such inhuman hospitality. She had come to do her duty, not to force a
welcome. She glanced at the clock. Five minutes more, and she might
go. The conversation buzzed on about her. She was sitting next to a
strange lady, a serene and dignified woman, dressed in black velvet
and sable. Beth glanced at her the first time with indifference, but
looked again with interest. Mrs. Carne bustled up and spoke to the
lady in her effusive way.
"You are better, I hope," she said, as she handed her some tea. "It
really is _sweet_ to see you looking so _much_ yourself again."
"Oh yes, I am quite well again now, thanks to your good husband," the
lady answered. "But he has given me so many tonics and things lately,
I always seem to be shaking bottles. I am quite set in that attitude.
Everything I touch I shake. I found myself shaking my watch instead of
winding it up the other day."
"Ah, then, you are quite yourself again, I see," Mrs. Carne said
archly. "But why didn't you come to the Wilmingtons' last night?"
"Oh, you know I never go to those functions if I can help it," the
lady answered, her gentle rather drawling voice lending a charm to the
words quite apart from their meaning. "I cannot stand the kind of
conversation to which one is reduced on such occasions--if you can
call that conversation which is but the cackle of geese, each
repeating the utterances of the other. When the Lord loves a woman, I
think He takes her out of society by some means or other, and keeps
her out of it for her good."
Beth knew that if she had said such a thing, Mrs. Carne would have
received it with a stony stare, but now she simpered. "That is so like
you!" she gushed. "But the Wilmingtons were _dreadfully_
disappointed."
"They will get over it," the lady answered, glancing round
indifferently.
"How are you getting on with your new book, Ideala?" Mrs. Kilroy asked
her across the room. Beth instantly froze to attention. This was her
friend, then, Sir George's Ideala.
"I have not got into the swing of it yet," Ideala answered. "It is all
dot-and-go-one--a uniform ruggedness which is not true either to life
or mind. Our ways in the world are stony enough at times, but they are
not all stones. There are smooth stretches along which we gallop, and
sheltered grassy spaces where we rest."
"What _I_ love about _your_ work is the _style_," said Mrs. Carne.
"Do you?" Ideala rejoined, somewhat dryly as it seemed to Beth. "But
what is style?"
"I am so bad at definitions," said Mrs. Carne, "but I _feel_ it, you
know."
"As if it were a thing in itself to be adopted or acquired?" Ideala
asked.
"Yes, quite so," said Mrs. Carne in a tone of relief--as of one who
has acquitted herself better than she expected and is satisfied.
"I am sure it is not," Beth burst out, forgetting herself and her
slights all at once in the interest of the subject. "I have been
reading the lives of authors lately, together with their works, and it
seems to me, in the case of all who had genius, that their style was
the outcome of their characters--their principles--the view they took
of the subject--that is, if they were natural and powerful writers.
Only the second-rate people have a manufactured style, and force their
subject to adapt itself to it--the kind of people whose style is
mentioned quite apart from their matter. In the great ones the style
is the outcome of the subject. Each emotion has its own form of
expression. The language of passion is intense; of pleasure jocund,
easy, abundant; of content calm, of happiness strong but restrained;
of love warm, tender. The language of artificial feeling is
artificial; there is no mistaking insincerity when a writer is not
sincere, and the language of true feeling is equally unmistakable. It
is simple, easy, unaffected; and it is the same in all ages. The
artificial styles of yesterday go out of fashion with the dresses
their authors wear, and become an offence to our taste; but
Shakespeare's periods appeal to every generation. He wrote from the
heart as well as the head, and triumphed in the grace of nature."
Beth stopped short and coloured crimson, finding that every one in the
room was listening to her.
Mrs. Carne stood while she was speaking with a cup of tea in her hand,
and tried to catch Ideala's eye in order to signal with raised
eyebrows her contempt for Beth's opinion; but Ideala was listening
with approval.
"That is exactly what I think," she exclaimed, "only I could not have
expressed it so. You write yourself doubtless?"
But Beth had become confused, and only gazed at her by way of reply.
She felt she had done the wrong thing to speak out like that in such
surroundings, and she regretted every word, and burned with vexation.
Then suddenly in herself, as before, something seemed to say, or
rather to flash forth the exclamation for her comfort: "I shall
succeed! I shall succeed!"
She drew herself up and looked round on them all with a look that
transformed her. Such an assurance in herself was not to be doubted.
The day would come when they would be glad enough to see her, when she
too would be heard with respect and quoted. She, the least considered,
she in her shabby gloves, neglected, slighted, despised, alone, she
would arrive, would have done something--more than them all!
She arose with her eyes fixed on futurity, and was half-way home
before she came to and found herself tearing along through the rain
with her head forward and her hands clasped across her chest, urged to
energy by the cry in her heart, "I shall succeed! I shall succeed!"
"Who was that?" said Ideala in a startled voice when Beth jumped up
and left the room.
"The wife of that Dr. Maclure, you know," Mrs. Carne replied. "Her
manners seem somewhat abrupt. She forgot to say good-bye. I did not
know she was by way of being clever."
"By way of being clever!" Ideala ejaculated. "I wish I had known who
she was. Why didn't you introduce her? By way of being clever, indeed!
Why, she is just what I have missed being with all my cleverness, or I
am much mistaken, and that is a genius. And what is more important to
us, I suspect she is the genius for whom we are waiting. Why, _why_
didn't you name her? It is the old story. She came unto her own, and
her own received her not."
"I--I never dreamt you would care to know her--her position, you
know," Mrs. Carne stammered disconcerted.
"Her position! What is her position to me?" Ideala exclaimed. "It is
the girl herself I think of. Besides, I daresay she doesn't even know
what her position is!"
"That is what Sir George says, and he knows her well," Mrs. Kilroy
interposed.
"But I never suspected that she was in the least interesting," Mrs.
Carne protested; "and I'm sure she doesn't look attractive--such an
expression!"
"You are to blame for that, all of you," Ideala rejoined, with
something in her gentle way of speaking which had the effect of
strength and vehemence. "I know how it has been. She is sensitive, and
you have made her feel there is something wrong. You have treated her
so that she expects no kindness from you, and so, from diffidence and
restraint of tenderness, her face has set hard into coldness. But that
is only a mask. How you treat each other, you women! And you are as
wanting in discernment, too, as you are in kindness and sympathy. She
has had to put on that mask of coldness to hide what you make her
suffer, and it will take long loving to melt it now, and make her look
human again. You misinterpret her silence too. How can you expect her
to be interesting if you take no interest in her? But look at her
eyes? Any one with the least kindly discernment might have seen the
love and living interest there! If she had been in a good position,
everybody would have found her as singularly interesting as she,
without caring a rap for our position, has found us. She sees through
us all with those eyes of hers--ay, and beyond! She sees what we have
never seen, and never shall in this incarnation; hers are the vision
and the dream that are denied to us. Were she to come forward as a
leader to-morrow, I would follow her humbly and do as she told me....
I read some of her writings the other day, but I thought they were the
work of a mature woman. Had I known she was such a child I should have
wondered!"
"Dear me! does she really write?" said Mrs. Carne. "Well, you surprise
me! I should never have dreamt that she had anything in her!"
"You make me feel ashamed of myself, Ideala," said Mrs. Kilroy with
contrition. "I ought to have known. But I could think of nothing, see
nothing in her but that horrible business. I shall certainly do my
best now, however, when we return from town, to cultivate her
acquaintance, if she will let me."
"Let you!" Mrs. Carne ejaculated with her insinuating smile. "I should
think she would be flattered."
"I am not so sure of that," said Ideala.
"Neither am I," said Mrs. Kilroy. "I only wish I were. But she ignored
us all rather pointedly when she came in."
"To save herself from being ignored, I suppose," said Ideala bitterly.
"The girl is self-respecting."
"I confess I liked her the first time I saw her," said Mrs. Orton Beg;
"but afterwards, when I heard what her husband was, I felt forced to
ignore her. How can you countenance her if she approves?"
"It was a mistake to take her approval for granted," said Mrs. Kilroy.
"Ideala would have inquired."
"Yes," said Ideala. "I take nothing for granted. If I hear anything
nice, I believe it; but if I hear anything objectionable about any
one, I either inquire about it or refuse to believe it point-blank.
And in a case like this, I should be doubly particular, for, in one of
its many moods, genius is a young child that gazes hard and sees
nothing."
"And you really think the little woman is a genius, and will be a
great writer some day?" Mrs. Carne asked with exaggerated deference to
Ideala's opinion.
"I don't know about being a writer," said Ideala. "Genius is
versatile. There are many ways in which she might succeed. It depends
on herself--on the way she is finally impelled to choose. But great
she will be in something--if she lives."
"Let us hope that she will be a great benefactor of her own sex then,
and do great good," said the gentle Lady Fulda.
"Amen!" Ideala ejaculated fervently.
Mrs. Carne tried to put off her agreeable society smile and put on her
Sunday-in-church expression, but was not in time. When we only assume
an attitude once a week, be it mental or physical, we do not fall into
it readily on a sudden.
"Not that working for women as a career is what I should wish her for
her own comfort," said Ideala after a pause. "Women who work for women
in the present period of our progress--I mean the women who bring
about the changes which benefit their sex--must resign themselves to
martyrdom. Only the martyr spirit will carry them through. Men will
often help and respect them, but other women, especially the workers
with methods of their own, will make their lives a burden to them with
pin-pricks of criticism, and every petty hindrance they can put in
their way. There is little union between women workers, and less
tolerance. Each leader thinks her own idea the only good one, and
disapproves of every other. They seldom see that many must be working
in many ways to complete the work. And as to the bulk of women, those
who will benefit by our devotion, they bespatter us with mud, stone
us, slander us, calumniate us; and even in the very act of taking
advantage of the changes we have brought about, ignore us, slight us,
push us under, and step up on our bodies to secure the benefits which
our endeavours have made it possible for them to enjoy. I know! I have
worked for women these many years, and could I show you my heart, you
would find it covered with scars--the scars of the wounds with which
they reward me."
* * * * *
When Beth got in that day, she found Dan standing in the hall,
examining a letter addressed to herself. She took it out of his hand
without ceremony, and tore it open. "Hurrah!" she exclaimed, "it's
accepted."
"What's accepted?" he asked.
"An article I sent to _Sunshine_. And the editor says he would like to
see some more of my work," Beth rejoined, almost dancing with delight.
"I don't suppose that will put much in your pocket," Dan observed. "He
wouldn't praise you if he meant to pay you."
"But he has sent me a cheque for thirty shillings," said Beth.
Dan's expression changed. "Then you may be sure it's worth double," he
said. "But you might get some nice notepaper for me out of it, and
have it stamped with my crest, like a good girl. It's necessary in my
profession, and I've finished the last you got."
Beth laughed as she had laughed--that same peculiar mirthless little
laugh--when he drove past her and splashed her with mud on the road.
"It never seems to occur to you that I may have some little wants of
my own, Dan," she said; "you are a perfect horseleech's daughter."
Dan gazed at her blankly. He never seemed to understand any such
allusion. "You've got a grievance, have you?" he snarled. "Do _I_ ever
prevent you getting anything you like?"
Beth shrugged her shoulders by way of answer, and went into the
dining-room. He followed her, bent on making a scene; and she,
perceiving this, set herself down on a chair and folded her hands.
He took a turn up and down the room. "And this is my fine marriage
into a county family, which was to have done so much for me!" he
ejaculated at last. "But I might have known better, considering the
hole I took you out of. You've soon forgotten all I've done for you."
Beth smiled enigmatically.
"Oh yes! it's a laughing matter," he proceeded. "I've just ruined
myself by marrying you; that's what I've done. Not a soul in the place
will come to the house because of you. Nobody could ever stand you but
me; and what have I got by it? Not a halfpenny! It was just a swindle,
the whole business."
"Be careful!" Beth flashed forth. "If you make such assertions you
must prove them. The day is past when a man might insult his wife with
impunity. I have already told you I won't stand it. It would neither
be good for you nor for me if I did."
"It _was_ a swindle," he bawled. "Where are the seven or eight hundred
a year I married you for?"
Beth looked at him a moment, then burst out laughing. "Dear Dan," she
said, offering him the cheque, "you shall have the thirty shillings
all to yourself. You deserve it for telling the truth for once. I
consider I have had the best of the bargain, though. Thirty shillings
is cheap for such valuable information."
"Oh, damn you!" said Dan, leaving the room and banging the door after
him.
Beth signed the cheque and left it lying on his writing-table. She
never saw it again.
Then she went up to her secret chamber, and spent long hours--sobbing,
sobbing, sobbing, as if the marks of her married life on her character
could be washed away with tears.