The Beth Book Part 87

She had spoken all through in the most temperate tone, and now, when she had finished, she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands with a sigh, as of one who had finished a hard task and would rest.

Dan looked at her with evident distaste, and considered a little, searching for something more to say that might move her, some argument that should persuade or convince; but, as nothing occurred to him, he left the room, banging the door after him in his ill-conditioned way, because he knew that the noise would be a racking offence to her overwrought nerves.

But from that time forward everything he did was an offence to Beth, a source of irritation. In spite of herself, she detected all the insincerity of his professions, the mean motives of his acts. Up to this time she had been more kindly disposed towards him than she herself knew. All she had wanted was to be able to care for him, to find some consistency in him, something to respect, and to which she could pin her faith; but now she knew him for what he was exactly--shallow, pretentious, plausible, vulgar-minded, without principle; a man of false pretensions and vain professions; utterly untrustworthy; saying what would suit himself at the moment, or just what occurred to him, not what he thought, but what he imagined he was expected to say. Beth had never heard him condemn a vice or habit which she did not afterwards find him practising himself. She used to wonder if he deceived himself, or was only intent on deceiving her; but from close observation of him at this period, she became convinced that, for the time being, he entered into whatever part he was playing, and hence his extreme plausibility. Beth found herself studying him continually with a curious sort of impersonal interest; he was a subject that repelled her, but from which, nevertheless, she could not tear herself away. His hands in particular, his handsome white hands, had a horrid sort of fascination for her. She had admired them while she thought of them as the healing hands of the physician, bringing hope and health; but now she knew them to be the cruel hands of the vivisector, a.s.sociated with torture, from which humanity instinctively shrinks; and when he touched her, her delicate skin crisped with a shudder. She used to wonder how he could eat with hands so polluted, and once, at dessert, when he handed her a piece of orange in his fingers, she was obliged to leave it on her plate, she could not swallow it.

After that last scene the days dragged more intolerably than ever; but happily for Beth there were not many more of them without a break, for just as it seemed that endurance must end in some desperate act, Mrs.

Kilroy sent her a pressing invitation to go and pay her a long visit in London; and Beth accepted it, and went with such a sense of relief as an invalid feels who, after long suffering, finds herself well, and out in the free fresh air once more.

CHAPTER XLVII

When Beth went to stay with the Kilroys in London, it was a question whether she might not end by joining the valiant army of those who are in opposition to everything; but before she had been there a week, she had practically recovered her balance, and began to look out upon life once more with dispa.s.sionate attention. Her depression when she first arrived was evident, and the Kilroys were concerned to see her looking so thin and ill; but, by degrees, she expanded in that genial atmosphere, and although she said little as a rule, she had begun to listen and to observe again with her usual vivid interest. She could not have been better situated for the purpose, for people of all kinds came to the Kilroys; and in moving among them merely as an onlooker, she was bound to see and hear enough to take her out of herself. Her own personality was too distinct, however, for her to remain for long an onlooker merely. That mesmeric quality in her which, whether it fascinates or displeases, attracts or repels, marks a distinct personality which is not to be overlooked, made people ask at once who she was, in the hope that her acquaintance might be worth cultivating. For there was a certain air of distinction about her which made her look like a person with some sort of prestige, whom it might be useful to know--don't you know.

One afternoon soon after Beth's arrival, Mrs. Kilroy being at home to visitors, and the rooms already pretty full, Beth noticed among the callers an old-looking young man whose face seemed familiar to her. He wore a pointed beard upon his chin, and a small moustache cut away from his upper lip, and waxed and turned up at the ends. His face was thin and narrow, his forehead high and bald; what hair he had grew in a fringe at the back of his head, and was curly, and of a nondescript brown colour. Had he worn the dress of the Elizabethan period, he might have pa.s.sed for a bad attempt to look like Shakespeare; and Beth thought that that perhaps might be the resemblance which puzzled her.

While she was looking at him a lady was announced, a most demure-looking little person in a grey costume, and a small, close-fitting princess bonnet, tied under her chin, and trimmed with a big Alsatian bow in front. She entered smiling slightly, and she continued to smile, as if she had set the smile on her lips as she put the bonnet on her head, to complete her costume. After she had shaken hands with Angelica, she looked round as if in search of some one else, and seemed satisfied when she discovered the old-looking young man of Shakesperian aspect. He was watching her, and their eyes met with a momentary significance, but they took no further notice of each other. Most people would have perceived no more in the glance than showed on the surface:--a lady and gentleman who looked at each other and then looked away, like indifferent acquaintances or casual strangers; but Beth's infallible intuition revealed to her an elaborate precaution in this seeming unconcern. It was clear to her that the two had expected to meet each other there, and their apparent insensibility to each other's presence was a pose, which, however, betrayed to her the intimacy it was affected to conceal. She hated herself for seeing so much, and burned with blame of Dan for opening her eyes to behold the inward wickedness beneath the conventional propriety of the outward demeanour; but therein she was unjust to Dan.

He had opened her eyes sooner than they should have been opened, but in any case she must have seen for herself eventually. Nothing in life can be concealed from such a mind. What books could not teach her, she discovered from people by sympathy, by insight, by intuition; but she did not come into full possession of her faculties all at once. The conditions of her life had tended rather to r.e.t.a.r.d than to develop the best that was in her, and the wonder was that her vision had not been permanently distorted, so that she could see nothing but evil in all things--see it, too, till her eyes were accustomed and her soul corrupted, so that she not only ceased to resent it, but finally accepted it as the inevitable order to which it is best to accommodate oneself if one is to get any good out of life. This is the fate of most young wives situated as Beth had been, the fate she had only narrowly escaped by help of the strength that came of the brave self-contained habits she had cultivated in her life of seclusion and thought. It was the result of this training, and her constancy in pursuing it, that her further faculty, hitherto so fitful, at last shot up a bright and steady light which made manifest to her the thoughts of others that they were not all evil, and helped her by the grace in her own heart to perceive hidden processes of love at work in other hearts, all tending to purification, and by the goodness of her own soul to search out the goodness in other souls as the elements find their const.i.tuent parts in the atmosphere.

Beth was looking her best that afternoon, although she had taken no pains with herself. She seemed well dressed by dint of looking well in her clothes; but she had not chosen to make herself look well. In the exasperated phase of revolt through which she was pa.s.sing, she could not have been persuaded to dress so as to heighten the effect of her appearance, and so make of herself a trap to catch admiring glances.

To be neat and fresh was all her care; but that was enough. The young man with the pointed beard, who had been looking about the room uneasily, seemed to have found what he wanted when he noticed her. He asked an elderly man standing near him who the young lady of distinguished appearance might be. "A friend of Mrs. Kilroy's, I believe," the gentleman answered, and moved off as if he resented the question.

But Pointed Beard was persistent. He asked two or three other people, strangers, who did not know either, and then he made his way to Mrs.

Kilroy, but she was so surrounded he could not get near her. At last he bethought him of the servants who were handing tea about, and learnt Beth's name from one of them.

When Beth next noticed him, he was making his way towards her with a cup of tea in one hand and a plate of cakes in the other.

"I have ventured to bring you some tea," he said, "but I do not know if it is as you like it. I can easily get you some more, however, if it is not."

"Thank you; I do not want any," Beth answered somewhat coldly.

"I'll put it here, then, on this console," he rejoined. "If I move away I shall not be able to get near you again in this crowd. I wonder why Mrs. Kilroy has so many people. Now, _I_ like just a few, eight or ten for a dinner, you know, and twenty or so on these sort of occasions. And they must all be interesting people, worth talking to.

I am exceedingly fastidious about the kind of people I know. Even as a boy I was fastidious."

As he uttered that last sentence, Beth was again aware of something familiar in his appearance, and she felt sure she had heard him make that same remark more than once before--but when? but where?

"That is Lord Fitzkillingham," he continued, "that tall man who has just come in--see, there!--shaking hands with Mrs. Kilroy. He looks like a duke, don't you know. I admire people of distinguished appearance much more than good-looking people--people who are merely good-looking, I mean, of course. I saw _you_ directly I came into the room, and was determined to find out who you were; and I asked I can't tell you how many people, whether I knew them or not. What do you think of that for perseverance?"

"You certainly seem to be persistent," Beth answered with a smile.

"Oh, I'm nothing if not persistent," he rejoined complacently. "I'll undertake to find out anything I want to know. Do you see that lady there in black? I wanted to know her age, so I went to Somerset House and looked it up."

"What did you do that for?" Beth asked.

"I wanted to know."

"But did she want you to know?"

"Well, naturally not, or she would have told me. But it is no use trying to conceal things from me. I am not to be deceived."

"You must be quite a loss to Scotland Yard," Beth ventured. "You would have been admirably fitted for that--er--delicate kind of work."

"Well, I think I should," he rejoined. "You see I found _you_ out, and it was not so easy, for--er--no one seemed to know you. However, that does not matter. We'll soon introduce you."

Beth smiled. "Thank you," she said drily, "that will be very nice."

"I'll bring Fitzkillingham presently; he'll do anything for me. He was one of our set at the 'Varsity. That's the best of going to the 'Varsity. You meet the right kind of people there, people who can help you, you know, if you can get in with them as I did. You'll like Fitzkillingham. He's a very good fellow."

"Indeed!" said Beth. "What has he done?"

"Done!" he echoed. "Oh, nothing that I know of. Consider his position!

The Earl of Fitzkillingham, with a rent-roll of fifty thousand a year, has no need to do; he has only to be. There, he's caught my eye. I'll go and fetch him."

"Pray do nothing of the kind," said Beth emphatically. "I have no wish to know him."

The young man, disconcerted, turned and looked her full in the face.

"Why not?" he gasped.

"First of all, because you were going to present him without asking my permission," Beth said, "which is a liberty I should have had to resent in any case by refusing to know him; and secondly, because a man worth fifty thousand a year who has done no good in the world is not worth knowing. I don't think he should be allowed to _be_ unless he can be made to _do_. Pray excuse me if I shock your prejudices,"

she added, smiling. "You do not know, perhaps, that in _our_ set, knowing people for position rather than for character is quite out of date?"

The young man smiled superciliously. "That is rather a bourgeois sentiment, is it not?" he said.

"On the contrary," said Beth, "it is the other that is the huckster spirit. What is called knowing the right people is only the commercial principle of seeking some advantage. Certain people make a man's acquaintance, and pay him flattering attentions, not because their hearts are good and they wish to give him pleasure, but because there is some percentage of advantage to be gained by knowing him. That is to be bourgeois in the vulgar sense, if you like! And that is the trade-mark stamped upon most of us--selfishness! sn.o.bbishness! One sees it in the conventional society manners, which are superficially veneered, fundamentally bad; the outcome of self-interest, not of good feeling; one knows exactly how, where, and when they will break down."

"What are you holding forth about, Beth?" said Mrs. Kilroy, coming up behind her.

"The best people," Beth answered, smiling.

"You mean the people who call themselves the best people--Society, that is to say," said Mrs. Kilroy cheerfully. "Society is the sc.u.m that comes to the surface because of its lightness, and does not count, except in sets where ladies' papers circulate."

"I am surprised to hear _you_ talk so, Mrs. Kilroy," said Pointed Beard in an offended tone, as if society had been insulted in his person.

"I am sorry if I disappoint you," said Mrs. Kilroy. "And I confess I like my own set and their pretty manners; but I know their weaknesses.

There is no sn.o.b so sn.o.bbish as a sn.o.b of good birth. The upper cla.s.ses will be the last to learn that it is sterling qualities which are wanted to rule the world,--head and heart."

"This gentleman will tell you that all that is bourgeois," said Beth.

"I believe that at heart the bourgeois are sound," said Angelica.

"Bourgeois signifies good, sound, self-respecting qualities to me, and steady principles."

"But scarcely 'pretty manners,' I should suppose," said Pointed Beard superciliously.

"Why not?" said Angelica. "Sincerity and refinement make good manners, and principle is the parent of both."

"Don't you think that for the most part Englishwomen are singularly lacking in charms of manner?" he asked precisely.