"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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.serted. "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 pa.s.s 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 ma.n.u.script 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sions, 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 n.o.body reads them!" I exclaimed.
"Precisely," he said. "There is no comfort in life in them. They are the mere mechanics of literature, and n.o.body 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 plat.i.tudes 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 dispa.s.sionately, 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 anaesthetics 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.