The Beth Book Part 88

"Just as Englishmen are, and for the same reason," said Angelica; "because they only try to be agreeable when it suits themselves. A good manner is a decoration that must be kept on always if it is to be worn with ease. Good manners are rare because good feeling is rare, for good manners are the outcome of good feeling. Manners are not the mere society show of politeness, but the inward kindly sympathy of which politeness is the natural outward manifestation; given these, grace and charm of manner come of themselves."

She moved off as she spoke to attend to other guests.

"Mrs. Kilroy is obvious," said Pointed Beard, in a tone that suggested sympathy with Beth for being bored. "I wonder she did not give us 'For manners are not idle,' et cetera, or something equally ba.n.a.l--the kind of thing we are taught in our infancy----"

"And fail to apply ever after," said Beth.

"I see you are ready," he observed fatuously, striking the personal note again, which she resented.

"I dislike that cant of the obvious which there is so much of here in town," she rejoined. "It savours of preciosity. All that is finest in thought is obvious. A great truth, well put, when heard for the first time, is so crystal clear to the mind, one seems to have known it always. No one fears to be obvious who has anything good to say."

He stroked his beard in silence for some seconds. "I suppose you go in for politics, and all that sort of thing," he said at last.

"Why?" Beth asked in her disconcerting way.

"Oh, judging by your friends."

"Not a safe guide," she a.s.sured him. "My friends have the most varied interests; and even if they had not, it would be somewhat monotonous for them to a.s.sociate exclusively with people of the same pursuits."

"Then you do not take an interest in politics?" he jerked out, almost irritably, as if he had a right to know.

For a moment Beth had a mind to baffle him for his tasteless persistency, but her natural directness saved her from such small-mindedness. "If I must answer your catechism," she said, smiling, "social subjects interest me more. I find generalisations bald and misleading, and politics are a generalisation of events. I rarely read a political speech through, and remember very little of what it is all about when I do. Details, individuals, and actions fascinate me, but the circ.u.mstances of a people as a state rarely interest me much."

"Ah, I fear that is--er--a feminine point of view, rather--is it not?"

he rejoined patronisingly.

"Yes," she said, "and a scientific method. We go from the particular to the general, and only draw broad conclusions when we have collected our facts in detail. But excuse me, I see a friend," she broke off hastily, seizing the chance to escape.

A little later Beth saw that the demure-looking little person in the princess bonnet was taking her leave. She pa.s.sed down the room with her set little smile on her lips, looking about her, but apparently without seeing any one in particular till she got to the door, when her eye lighted on the young man of Shakesperian mien, and her smile flickered a moment, and went out. The young man turned and looked at a picture with an elaborately casual air, then sauntered across the room to Mrs. Kilroy, shook hands with her, spoke to one or two other people, and finally reached the door and opened it with the same solemn affectation of not being in a hurry, and disappeared. Beth wondered if he kept his caution up before the footmen in the hall, or if he made an undignified bolt of it the moment he was out of sight of society.

At dinner that evening she asked Mrs. Kilroy who and what that thin-nosed man, that sort of reminiscence of Shakespeare, was.

"He is by way of being a literary man, I believe," Angelica answered.

"He is not a friend of ours, and I cannot think why he comes here. I never ask him. He got himself introduced to me somehow, and then came and called, which I thought an impertinence. Did you notice that woman with an Alsatian bow in her bonnet, that made her look like a horse with its ears laid back? Her pose is to improve young men. She improves them away from their wives, and I object to the method; and I do not ask her here either. Yet she comes. His wife I have much sympathy with; but he keeps her in the country, out of the way, so I see very little of her."

"What is his name?" Beth asked.

"Alfred Cayley Pounce."

"Why!" Beth exclaimed. "He must be a youth I knew long ago, when I was a child. I was sure I had seen him before. But what a falling off! I wondered if he were an old young man, or a young old man when I first saw him. He was refined as a boy and had artistic leanings; I should have thought he might have developed something less ba.n.a.l in the time than a bald forehead."

"That kind of man spends most of his time in cultivating acquaintances,"

said Mr. Kilroy. "When he hasn't birth, his pose is usually brains. But Pounce took a fair degree at the University. And he's not such a bad fellow, really. He's precious, of course, and by way of being literary--that is to say, he is literary to the extent of having written some little things of no consequence, upon which he a.s.sumes the right to give his opinion, with appalling a.s.surance, of the works of other people, which are of consequence. There is a perfect epidemic of that kind of a.s.surance among the clever young men of the day, and it's wrecking half of them. A man who begins by having no doubt of the worth of his own opinion gets no further for want of room to move in."

Next day Beth was alone in a sunny sitting-room at the back of the house, looking out into grounds common to the whole square. It was about tea-time. The windows were wide open, the sunblinds were drawn down outside, and the warm air, fragrant with mignonette, streamed in over the window boxes. Angelica had given this room up to Beth, and here she worked or rested; read, wrote, or reflected, as she felt inclined; soothed rather than disturbed by the far-off sounds of the city, and eased in mind by the grace and beauty of her surroundings.

For the room was a work of art in itself, an Adams room, with carved white panels, framing s.p.a.ces of rich brocade, delicately tinted, on the walls; with furniture chosen for comfort as well as elegance, and no more of it than was absolutely necessary, no crowding of chairs and tables, no congestion of useless ornaments, no plethora of pictures, putting each other out--only two, in fact, one a summer seascape, with tiny waves bursting on s.h.i.+ning sands; the other a corner of a beautiful old garden, shady with trees, glowing with flowers, whence two young lovers, sitting on an old stone seat, looked out with dreamy eyes on a bright glimpse, framed in foliage, of the peaceful country beyond. Angelica had thought that room out carefully for Beth, every detail being considered, so that the whole should make for rest and refreshment, and she had succeeded perfectly. Nothing could have eased Beth's mind of the effect of her late experiences, or strengthened it again more certainly, than the harmony, the quiet, and the convenience of everything about her--books on the shelves, needlework on the work-table, writing materials in abundance on the bureau, exquisite forms of flowers, and prevailing tints of apple-blossom, white, and pink, and green; music when she chose to play; comfort of couch and chairs when she wished to repose; and, above all, freedom from intrusion, the right to do as she liked gladly conceded, the respect which adds to the dignity of self-respect, and altogether the kind of independence that makes most for pleasure and peace. Before she had been there three weeks she was happily released from herself by the recovery of her power to work. She began to revise the book she had thought so little of when it was first written. She had brought it to town because it was not very bulky, rather than because she had any hope of it; but when she took it out and read it here alone in peace, it seized upon her with power, and, in her surprise, like Galileo, she exclaimed: "But it does turn round!" The book was already "radiant with inborn genius," but it still lacked the "acquired art," and feeling this, she sat down to it regularly, and rewrote it from beginning to end, greatly enriching it. She had no amateur impatience to appear in print and become known; the thought of production induced her to delay and do her utmost rather than to make indiscreet haste; her delight was in the doing essentially; she was not one to glory in public successes, however great, or find anything but a tepid satisfaction therein compared to the warm delight that came when her thoughts flowed, and the material world melted out of mind.

She had been busy with her book that afternoon, and very happy, until tea came. Then, being somewhat tired, she got up from the bureau at which she worked, and went to the tea-table, leaving her papers all scattered about; and she was in the act of pouring herself out a cup of tea, when the door opened, and the footman announced, "Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce."

Very much surprised, she put the teapot down deliberately and looked at him. He held his hat to his breast, and bowed with exaggerated deference, in an affected, foreign way.

"I insisted on seeing you," he began, as if that were something to boast of. "Perhaps I ought to apologise."

Beth, not knowing what to say, asked him to sit down. Then there was a little pause. He looked at the tea-table.

"I see that you do take tea," he observed. "Why did you refuse it when I offered you some yesterday?"

"I am afraid I am not prepared to give you a reason," Beth answered stiffly.

"Would it be out of place if I were to ask for some tea?" he said.

Beth silently poured him out a cup, and he got up, took what he wanted in the way of sugar and cream and cake, and sat down again, making himself very much at home.

"Do take some yourself," he pleaded. "You are making me feel such an outsider."

"I beg your pardon," said Beth, helping herself.

She did not know whether to be annoyed or amused by his a.s.surance. Had she not known who he was she would certainly have been annoyed; but the recollection of their days together, when the world was young and life was all pure poetry, came upon her suddenly as she found something of the boy in the face and voice of the man before her, making it impossible for her to treat him as a stranger, and melting her into a smile.

"Confess that you were surprised to see me," he said.

"I was," she answered.

"And not glad, perhaps," he pursued.

"Surprised means neither glad nor sorry," she observed.

"D'you know, the moment I saw you----" he began sentimentally; "but never mind that now," he broke off. "Let me give you my reason for coming, which is also my excuse. I hope you will accept it."

Beth waited quietly.

"I told you I could always find out anything I wanted to know about anybody," he pursued, "and last night I happened to sit next a lady at a dinner-party who turned out to be a great friend of yours. I always talk to strange ladies about what I've been doing; that kind of thing interests them, you know; and I described the party here yesterday afternoon, and said I only met one lady in the whole a.s.sembly worth looking at and worth speaking to, and that was Mrs. Maclure, who was staying in the house. 'Oh, I know her quite well,' the lady said.

'She's a neighbour of mine at Slane. Her husband is a doctor, but I hear _she_ is connected with some of the best county people in the north. She's very clever, I believe, and by way of being literary and all that sort of thing, don't you know. But I don't think she has any one to advise her.'"

"Oh," said Beth, enlightened, "I know who my great friend is then--Mrs. Carne!"

"Yes," said Mr. Pounce, "and when I heard you were literary, I felt a further affinity, for, as I daresay you have heard, I am a literary man myself."

"Yes; I heard you were 'by way of being literary,' too," Beth rejoined.

"Who told you so?" he demanded quickly, his whole thought instantly concentrated on the interesting subject when it concerned himself.

"I do not feel at liberty to tell you," she replied.

"Was it Mrs. Kilroy?"

Beth made no sign.

"Was it Mr. Kilroy?" he persisted.