Beth had taken to rambling about alone in the quiet streets and squares for exercise; and as she returned a few days later from one of these rambles, she encountered Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce coming out of a florist's with a large bouquet of orchids in his hand.
"You see I do not forget you," he said, holding the bouquet out to her. "Every lady has her flower. These delicate orchids are for you."
But Beth ignored the offering. "You are still fond of flowers then?" slipped from her.
"We do not leave a taste for flowers behind us with our toys," he rejoined. "If we like flowers as children, we love them as men. The taste develops like a talent when we cultivate it. To love flowers with true appreciation of their affinities in regard to certain persons, is an endowment, a grace of nature which bespeaks the most absolute refinement of mind. And what would life be without refinement of mind!"
Beth had walked on, and he was walking beside her.
"And how does the book progress?" he inquired.
"It is finished," she answered.
"What! already?" he exclaimed. "Why, it takes me a week to write five hundred words. But then, of course, my work is highly concentrated. I have sent home for some of it to show you. You see I am pertinacious. I said I would help you, and I will. I hope you will live to be glad that we have met. But you must not write at such a rate. You can only produce poor thin stuff in that way."
Beth shrugged her shoulders, and let him assume what he liked on the subject.
They walked on a little way in silence, then he began again about the flowers. "Flowers," he informed her, "were the great solace of my boyhood – the sole solace, I may say, for I had no friends, no companions, except a poor little chap, a cripple, on whom I took pity. My people did not think me strong enough for a public school, so they sent me to a private tutor, a man of excellent family, Rector of a large seaside parish in the north. He only took me as a favour; he had no other pupils. But it was very lonely in that great empty house. And the seashore, although it filled my mind with poetry, was desolate, desolate!"
Beth, as she listened to these meanderings of his fancy, and recalled old Vicar Richardson and the house full of children, thought of Mr. Pounce's remarks about feminine accuracy.
"But had you no girl-friend?" she asked.
"Only the lady of my dreams," he answered. "There was no other lady I should have looked at in the place. I was always refined. I met the lady of my dreams eventually. It was among the mountains of the Tyrol. Imagine a lordly castle, with drawbridge and moat, portcullis and pleasaunce, and sauntering in the pleasaunce, among the flowers, a lady – dressed in white – "
"Samite?" Beth ventured, controlling her countenance.
"I cannot recall the texture," he said seriously. "How could one think of textures at such a moment! That would have been too commercial! All I noted was the lily whiteness – and her eyes, dark eyes! All the poetry and passion of her race shone in them. And on the spot I vowed to win her. I went back to the 'Varsity, and worked myself into the best set. Lord Fitzkillingham became, as you know, my most intimate friend. He was my best man at the wedding."
"Then you married your ideal," said Beth. "You should be very happy."
He sighed. "I would not say a word against her for the world," he asserted. "When I compare her with other women, I see what a lucky man I must be thought. But," he sighed again, "I was very young, and youth has its illusions. As we grow older, mere beauty does not satisfy, mere cleverness and accomplishments do not satisfy, nor wealth, nor rank. A man may have all that, and yet may yearn for a certain something which is not there – and that something is the one thing needful."
They were opposite to the house by this time, and he looked up at the windows sentimentally. "Which is yours?" he asked. "I pass by daily and look up."
They had stopped at the door. "I cannot ask you in," Beth said hastily. "Please excuse me. This is my time for work."
"Ah, the time and the mood!" he ejaculated. "I know it all so well! Inspiration! Inspiration comes of congenial conversation, as I hope you will find. You will take my flowers. I cannot claim to have culled them for you, but at least I chose them."
As the door had been opened, and the footman in the hall stood looking on, Beth thought it better to take the flowers in a casual way as if they belonged to her. A card tied to the bouquet by a purple ribbon fell out from among the flowers as she took them. On it was written: "Mrs. Merton Merivale." Beth held the flowers out to Mr. Pounce, with the card dangling, and raised her eyebrows interrogatively.
"Ah, yes," he began slowly, detaching the card as he spoke to gain time, and changing countenance somewhat. "I confess some one else had had the good taste to choose these orchids before I saw them; but I always insist on having just what I want, so I took them, and suggested that another bouquet might be made for the lady. I overlooked the card."
Beth bowed and left him without further ceremony.
She tossed the flowers under the table in the hall on her way upstairs, and never knew what became of them. Later in the day she described her morning's adventure to Angelica, and asked her if she knew who Mrs. Merton Merivale was.
"Oh, that woman in the princess bonnet with the big Alsatian bow, you know," Angelica said. "Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce's sometime intellectual affinity."
"Poor Alfred! he is too crude!" Beth ejaculated. "How I have outgrown him!"
Ideala called next day, and found Angelica alone. "I hear that Beth is with you?" she said. "What is she doing?"
"Writing a book."
"What kind of a book?"
"Not a book for babes, I should say," said Angelica. "She does not pretend to consider the young person in the least. It is for parents and guardians, she says, not for authors, to see to it that the books the young person reads are suitable to her age. She thinks it very desirable for her only to read such as are; but personally she does not see the sense of writing down to her, or of being at all cramped on her account. She means to address mature men and women."
"That is brave and good," said Ideala. "What is the subject?"
"I don't know," said Angelica; "but she is certain to put some of herself into it."
"If by that you mean some of her personal experiences, I should think you are wrong," said Ideala. "Genius experiences too acutely to make use of its own past in that way; it would suffer too much in the reproduction. And besides, it can make better use and more telling of what it intuitively knows than of what it has actually seen."
"I do not think you believe that Beth will succeed," said Angelica.
"On the contrary," Ideala rejoined, "I expect her success will be unique; only I don't know if it will be a literary success. Genius is versatile. But we shall see."
Having finished her book, Beth collected her friends and read it aloud to them. "I don't know what to think of it," she said. "Advise me. Is it worth publishing, or had I better put it aside and try again?"
"Publish it, by all means," was the unanimous verdict; and Mr. Kilroy took the manuscript himself to a publisher of his acquaintance, who read it and accepted it.
"Oh," Beth exclaimed, when she heard the reader's report, "I do know now what is meant by all in good time! If I had been able to publish the first things I wrote, how I should have regretted it now! And I did think so much of myself at that time, too! You should have heard how I dogmatised to Sir George Galbraith; and he was so good and kind – he never snubbed me. But I believe I am out of the amateur stage now, and far advanced enough to begin all over again humbly and learn my profession. But I find my point of view unchanged. Manner has always been less to me than matter. When I think of all the preventable sin and misery there is in the world, I pray God give us books of good intention – never mind the style! Polished periods put neither heart nor hope in us; theirs is the polish of steel which we admire for the labour bestowed upon it, but by which we do not benefit. The inevitable ills of life strengthen and refine when they are heroically borne; it is the preventable ones that act on our evil passions, and fill us with rage and bitterness; and what we want from the written word that reaches all of us is help and advice, comfort and encouragement. If art interferes with that, then art had better go. It would not be missed by the wretched – the happy we need not consider. I am speaking of art for art's sake, of course."
"We need not trouble about that," said Ideala. "The works of art for art's sake, and style for style's sake, end on the shelf much respected, while their authors end in the asylum, the prison, and the premature grave. I had a lesson on that subject long ago, which enlarged my mind. I got among the people who talk of style incessantly, as if style were everything, till at last I verily believed it was. I began to lose all I had to express for worry of the way to express it! Then one day a wise old friend of mine took me into a public library; and we spent a long time among the books, looking especially at the ones that had been greatly read, and at the queer marks in them, the emphatic strokes of approval, the notes of admiration, the ohs! of enthusiasm, the ahs! of agreement. At the end of one volume some one had written: 'This book has done me good.' It was all very touching to me, very human, very instructive. I never quite realised before what books might be to people, how they might help them, comfort them, brighten the time for them, and fill them with brave and happy thoughts. But we came at last in our wanderings to one neat shelf of beautiful books, and I began to look at them. There were no marks in them, no signs of wear and tear. The shelf was evidently not popular, yet it contained the books that had been specially recommended to me as best worth reading by my stylist friends. 'There is style for you!' said my friend. 'Style lasts, you see. Style is engraved upon stone. All the other books about us wear out and perish, but here are your stylists still, as fresh as the day they were bought.' 'Because nobody reads them!' I exclaimed. 'Precisely,' he said. 'There is no comfort in life in them. They are the mere mechanics of literature, and nobody cares about them except the mechanicians.' After that I prayed for notable matter to indite, and tried only for the most appropriate words in which to express it; and then I arrived. If you have the matter, the manner will come, as handwriting comes to each of us; and it will be as good, too, as you are conscientious, and as beautiful as you are good."
CHAPTER XLVIII
Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce called on Beth continually. He was announced one day when she was sitting at lunch with the Kilroys.
"Really I do not think I ought to let you be bored by that man," Mr. Kilroy exclaimed. "I once had ten minutes of the academic platitudes of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce, and that was enough to last me my life. You are too good-natured to see him so often. It is a weakness of yours, I believe, to suffer yourself rather than hurt other people's feelings, however much they may deserve it. But really you must snub him. There is nothing else for it. Send out and say you are engaged."
"If I do, he will wait until I am disengaged, or call again, or write in an offended tone to ask when I can be so good as to make it convenient to see him!" Beth answered in comical despair.
"I don't believe he bores her a bit at present," Angelica observed. "He is merely an intellectual exercise for Beth. She watches the workings of his mind quite dispassionately, draws him out with little airs and graces, and then adjusts him under the microscope. It interests her to dissect the creature. When she has studied him thoroughly, she will cast him out, as a worthless specimen."
"Oh, I hope that isn't true," said Beth, with a twinge of conscience. "I own it has interested me to see what he has developed into; but surely that isn't unfair?" She looked at Mr. Kilroy deprecatingly.
"It is vivisection," said Angelica.
"But under such agreeable anæsthetics that I should think he enjoys it," said Mr. Kilroy. "I should have no objection myself."
"Daddy, be careful!" Angelica cried. "A rare specimen like you is never safe when unscrupulous naturalists are about."
"But no microscope is needed to demonstrate Mr. Kilroy's position in the scale of being," Beth put in. "It is writ large all over him."
"Good and true, Beth!" said Angelica, smiling. "You can go and gloat over your worthless specimen as a reward, if you like. But the scientific mind is a mystery to me, and I shall never understand how you have the patience to do it."
Beth found Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce pacing about her sitting-room, biting his nails in an irritable manner.
"You were at lunch, I think," he said. "I wonder why I was not asked in?"
Beth said nothing.
"I consider it a slight on Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy's part," he pursued huffily. "Why should I be singled out for this kind of thing?"
"Aren't you just a little touchy?" Beth suggested.
"I confess I am sensitive, if that is what you mean," he replied.
"Well, yes, if you like," she said, "hyper-sensitive. But I thought you asked for me."
"It is true I came to see you; but that is no reason why I should be slighted by your friends – especially when I came because I think I have something to show you that will interest you." He took a little packet from the breast-pocket of his coat as he spoke, and began to undo it. "I took the trouble to go all the way home to get them to show you. My mother was the only person who had them. They are photographs of myself when I was a boy."
"I wonder your mother parted with them," Beth said.
"I persuaded her with difficulty," he rejoined complacently. "I have often tried before, but nothing would induce her to part with them, until this time, when a bright idea occurred to me. I told her they were to be published among portraits of celebrated people when my new book comes out, and naturally she liked the idea. Her only son, you know!"
"And are they to be published?" Beth asked.
"Oh – well – of course I hope so – some day," he answered, smiling and hesitating. "But the truth is I got them for you."
Beth did not thank him, but he was too engrossed with his own portraits to notice the omission. She was interested in them, too, when at last he let her look at them.
"What do you think of that?" he asked, showing her a good likeness of himself as she remembered him. "I was a pretty boy then, I think, with my curls! Burning the midnight oil had not bared my forehead in those days, and my beard had not grown. Life was all poetry then!" he sighed affectedly. What had once been spontaneous feeling in him had become a mere recollection, only to be called up by an effort.
"Later it became all excesses, I suppose," said Beth.
"Ah!" he ejaculated in a tone of pleased regret. "I had to live like other men of my standing, you know, and I had to pay for it. The boy was lost, but the man developed. You may think the change a falling off – "
He waited for Beth to express an opinion; but as it was impossible for her to say what she thought of the difference between the conceited, dissipated-looking, hysterical man of many meannesses, and the diffident unspoilt promising boy, she held her peace.
When she had seen the photographs, and he had looked at them himself to his heart's content, he did them up again, and then formally presented her with the packet. "Will you keep them?" he said solemnly.
"Oh no!" she answered with decision. "I am not the proper person to keep them. If they did not belong to your mother, they would be for your wife and children."
"Ah, my wife!" he ejaculated bitterly. "I haven't a word to say against my wife, remember that! Only – you are the one to whom I would confide them."
"I decline the responsibility," Beth said, keeping her countenance with difficulty.
He returned the packet to the breast-pocket of his coat. "I shall carry them here, then," he said, tapping his chest with the points of his fingers, "until you ask for them."
As usual, he stayed a preposterous time that day, and when at last he went, even Beth's kindly forbearance was exhausted, and she determined to see no more of him. He was not the man to take a hint, however, and it was no easy matter to get rid of him. He sent her flowers, for which she did not thank him, books which she did not read; wrote her long letters of the clever kind, discussing topics of the day or remarks she herself had made, which she left unanswered; called, but never found her at home, yet still persisted, until she was fain to exclaim: "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?"
"It is your own fault," said Angelica. "I warned you that good-nature is wasted on that sort of man."
"But surely he must see that I wish to avoid him," Beth exclaimed.
"Of course he sees it," Angelica rejoined, "but you may be sure that he interprets your reluctance in some way very flattering to himself."
"I shall really be rude to him," Beth said desperately. "He is a most exasperating person, the kind of man to drive a woman mad, and then blame her for it. I pity his wife!"
Beth stayed with the Kilroys until the end of June, when the season was all but over and everybody was leaving town; and it was the busiest and happiest time she had ever known. She had enjoyed the work, the play, the society, the solitude, and had blossomed forth in that congenial atmosphere both mentally and physically, and become a braver and a better woman.
The Kilroys were to go abroad the day that Beth returned to Slane. The evening before, she went with Angelica to a theatre. But Angelica, being much occupied at the moment with arrangements that had to be made for the carrying on of her special work during her absence, was not able to stay for the whole performance, so she left Beth alone at the theatre, and sent the carriage back to take her home.
Beth, sitting in the corner of a box, had eyes for nothing the whole time but the play, which, being one of those that stimulate the mind, had appealed to her so powerfully that even after it was over she remained where she was a little, deep in thought. On leaving the theatre, she found the footman on the steps looking out for her, and he remained, standing a little behind her, till the carriage came up. While she waited, she was annoyed to see Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce making his way towards her officiously. "You are alone!" he exclaimed, with a note of critical disapproval in his voice, as if the circumstance reflected on somebody.
"Hardly!" Beth said, glancing up at her escort. "But even if I were, Mr. Pounce, I am in London, not in the dark ages, and as sure of respect here, at the doors of a theatre, as I am in my own drawing-room. I believe, by the way," she added lightly, not liking to hurt him by too blunt a snub, "I believe this is the only big city in Europe of which so much can be said; and English women may thank themselves for it. We demand not protection, but respect. Here is the carriage. Good night!" She stepped in as she spoke, and took her seat.
"Oh pray, you really must allow me to see you safe home," he exclaimed, following her into the carriage and taking the seat beside her before she could remonstrate. The servant shut the door, and they drove away. Beth boiled with indignation, but she thought it more dignified not to show it, and she dreaded to have a scene before the servants. Her demeanour was somewhat frigid, and she left him to open the conversation; but when he spoke she answered him in her usual tone. He, on the contrary, was extremely formal. He stroked his pointed beard, looked out of the window, and made remarks about the weather and the people in the streets, not avoiding the obvious, which was a relief.
The hall-door was opened as soon as the carriage stopped, and they got out.
"Thank you for your escort, and good night," Beth said, holding out her hand to him, but he ignored it.
"I feel faint," he said, and he looked it. "Will you let me come in and sit down a minute, and give me a glass of water?"
"Why, of course," Beth said. "But have something stronger than water. Come this way, into the library. Roberts, bring Mr. Pounce something to revive him."
"What will you have, sir?" the butler asked.
"A glass of water, nothing but a glass of water," Mr. Pounce said, most preciously, sinking into an easy-chair as he spoke.
The butler brought the water, and told Beth that Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy had not come in. She ordered some tea for herself.
Mr. Pounce sipped the water and appeared to revive.
"I have suffered terribly during the last three weeks," he said at last.
"Have you really?" Beth rejoined with concern. "What was the matter?"
"Need you ask!" he ejaculated. "Why, why have you treated me so?"
"Really, Mr. Pounce, I do not see that you have any claim on my special consideration," Beth answered coldly.
"I have the claim of one who is entirely devoted to you," he said.
"I have never accepted your devotion, and I will not have it forced upon me," Beth answered decidedly. "I should like you better, to tell the truth, if you were a little more devoted to your duty."
"You allude to my wife," he said. "Oh, how can I make you understand! But you have said it yourself – duty! What is duty? The conscientious performance of uncongenial tasks. But if a man does his duty, then he deserves his reward. I do my duty with what heart I have for it. No fault can be found with me either as a husband or a citizen. Therefore, as a man, I consider myself entitled to claim my reward."
"I am afraid you are not well," Beth said. "Don't you think you had better go home and rest?"
"Not until we come to an understanding," he answered tragically.
Beth shrugged her shoulders resignedly, folded her hands, and waited, more interested in him as a human specimen in spite of herself than disturbed by anything his attitude foreboded.
There was a bright wood fire burning on the hearth. Mrs. Kilroy liked to have one to welcome her when they had been out late, not for warmth so much as for cheerfulness. The summer midnight was chilly enough, however, for the gentle heat to be grateful; and Beth turned to the blaze and gazed into it tranquilly. The clock on the mantelpiece struck one. Roberts brought in a tray with refreshments on it, and set it down on a small table beside Beth. Before she helped herself she asked Mr. Pounce what he would have, but he curtly declined to take anything. She shrugged her shoulders, and fell-to herself with a healthy appetite.
"How can you – how can you?" he ejaculated several times.
"I'm hungry," she said, laughing, "and I really don't see why I shouldn't eat."
"You have no feeling for me," he complained.
"I have a sort of feeling that you are posing," she answered bluntly; "and I wish you wouldn't. You'd better have some sandwiches."
"How terribly complex life is!" he muttered.
"Life is pretty much what we make of it by the way we live it," she rejoined, taking another sandwich. "We are what we allow ourselves to be. The complexities come of wrong thinking and wrong doing. Right and wrong are quite distinct; there is no mistaking one for the other. In any dilemma we have only to think what is right to be done, and to do it, and there is an end of all perplexities and complexities. Principle simplifies everything."
"I see you have never loved," he declared, "or you would not think the application of principle such a simple thing."
"It is principle that makes love last," Beth answered, "and introduces something permanent into this weary world of change. There is nothing in life so well worth living for as principle; the most exquisite form of pleasure is to be found in the pain of sacrificing one's inclinations in order to live up to one's principles – so much so that in time, when principle and inclination become identical, and we cease to feel tempted, something of joy is lost, some gladness that was wont to mingle with the trouble."
"But principles themselves are mutable," he maintained. "They get out of date. And there are, besides, exceptional characters that do not come under the common law of humanity; exceptional temperaments, and exceptional circumstances to which common principles are inapplicable, or for which they are inadequate."
"That is the hypocrisy of the vicious," Beth said, with her eyes fixed meditatively on the fire, "the people who lay down excellent principles, and publicly profess them for the sake of standing well with society, but privately make exceptions for themselves in any arrangement that may suit their own convenience. Your people of 'exceptional temperament' settle moral difficulties by not allowing any moral consideration to clash with their inclinations, and misery comes of it. The plea of exceptional character, exceptional circumstances, exceptional temperament, and what not, is merely another way of expressing exceptional selfishness and excusing exceptional self-indulgence."
"Surely you are not content to be a mere slave to social convention!" he exclaimed.
"I am talking of fundamental principles, not of social conventions," she replied; "please to discriminate. Self-control is not slavery, but emancipation; to control our passions makes us lords of ourselves and free of our most galling bonds – the bonds of the flesh."
"What a drawback the want of – er – a proper philosophic training is," he observed. "Culture does a great deal. It makes us more modest, for one thing. I don't suppose you know, for instance, that you are setting up an opinion of your own in opposition to such men as Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer maintained that as the man of genius gave his whole life for the profit of humanity, he had a license of conduct which was not accorded to the rest of mankind."
"If culture leaves us liable to be taken in by a false postulate of any man's, however well turned the postulate or able the man, then I have no respect for culture. The fact that Schopenhauer said such a thing does not prove it true. An assertion like that is a mere matter of opinion. Half the worry in the world is caused by differences of opinion. Let us have the facts and form our own opinions. Have the men of genius who allowed themselves license of conduct been any the better for it? the happier? the greater? Schopenhauer himself, for instance!" She smiled at him with honest eyes when she had spoken, and took another sandwich. "But don't let us talk sophistry and silliness," she proceeded, "nor the kind of abstract that serves as a cover for unrighteousness. Those tricks don't carry conviction to my uncultivated mind. I know how they're done."
"You are lowering yourself in my estimation," he said severely.
"And what comes after that?" she asked.
He shook his head and gazed at her reproachfully. "How can you be so trivial," he said, "in a moment like this? – you who are situated even as I am. If we were to die now, in six months it would be as though we had never been. No one would remember us."
"But what have we done for any one," Beth asked, in her equable way, "that we should be specially remembered?"
He made no reply, and Beth went on with the sandwiches.
"I thought," he began at last, "I did think that you at least would understand and feel for me."
Beth stopped eating and considered a moment.
"Are you in any real trouble?" she asked at last.
He rose and began to pace up and down. "I will tell you," he said, "and leave you to judge for yourself."
Beth looked somewhat ruefully at the tray, and wished that the conversation had been more suited to the satisfaction of an honest appetite.
"I have made it plain to you what my marriage is without blaming anybody," he proceeded. "It is the rock upon which all my hopes were wrecked. I found my ideal. I won her like a man. I haven't a word to say against her. She is a woman who might have made any ordinary man happy; but she has been no help to me. It is not her fault. She has done her best. And it is not my fault."
"Then whose fault is it?" said Beth; "it must be somebody's. I think of marriage as I think of life; it is pretty much what people choose to make it. It does not fail when husband and wife have good principles, and live up to them; and good manners in private as well as in public – not to mention high ideals. When we are not happy in the intimate relations of life, it is generally for some trivial reason – as often as not because we don't take the trouble to make ourselves agreeable, as because we fail in other duties. I consider it a duty to be agreeable. In married life happiness depends on loyalty, to begin with, the loyalty that will not even let its thoughts stray. All that we want in everyday intercourse is truth and affection, kindness, consideration, and unvarying politeness. If people practised these as a duty from the first, sympathy would eventually come of the effort. Marriage is the state that develops the noblest qualities, and that is why happily married people are the best worth knowing, the most delightful to live amongst. You have no fault to find with your wife, therefore the fault must be in yourself if you are not happy. Do your duty like a man, and cure yourself of it."
"It surprises me to hear you talk in that way," he exclaimed, "you who have suffered so much yourself!"
"I make no pretence of having suffered," she answered. "I have no patience with people who do. We have our destiny in our own hands to make or mar, most of us. If we fail in one thing we shall succeed in another. Life is a fertile garden, full of plants that bud and blossom and bear fruit not once but every season while it lasts. If the crop of happiness fails one year, we should set to work bravely, and cultivate it all the more diligently for the next."
"All this is beside the mark," he responded peevishly. "You are offering me the generalisations that only apply to ordinary people. Allowance must be made for exceptional natures. Look at me! I tell you if I had met the right woman, I should have been at the top of the tree by this time. I have the greatest respect for woman. I believe that her part in life is to fertilise the mind of man; and if the able man does not find the right woman for this purpose, he must remain sterile, and the world will be the loser. I never knew such a woman till I met you; but in you I have discovered one rich in all womanly attributes, mental, moral, and physical; and, beyond these, dowered also with genius, the divine gift – the very woman to help a man to do his best."