"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.

"Coa.r.s.e 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 cla.s.s of women workers--not even the pit-brow women--are necessarily coa.r.s.e 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 s.e.xuality, you mean, I suppose," said Galbraith, "Personally I find them monotonous, and barren of happy phrases to enrich the mind, of n.o.ble 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 a.s.sertion 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 pa.s.sing, 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.severated, "things they wouldn't know anything about if they weren't d.a.m.ned 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.

CHAPTER XL

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 surrept.i.tiously, 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 h.o.a.rd, 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 ma.n.u.script 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 sc.r.a.p 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.