"And what is the man going to do for me?" Beth inquired with a twinkle in her eyes.
"He would surround you with every comfort, every luxury – jewels – "
"Like a ballet-girl!" she interjected. "I am really afraid you are old-fashioned. You begin by offering me gewgaws – the paltry price women set on themselves in the days of their intellectual infancy. We know our value better now."
"You should have all that an ideal woman ought to have," he put in. "What more can a woman require?"
"She would like to know what all she ought to have consists of," Beth replied. "As a rule, a man's ideal woman is some one who will make him comfortable; and he thinks he has done all that is necessary for her when he allows her to contribute to his happiness."
"Ah, be serious!" he ejaculated. "You should be above playing in that cruel way with a man who is in earnest. Hear what I have to say. Remember we are the people who make history. You talk about knowing your own value! You do not know it. Without me you never will know it. You do not know what is being said already about your unpublished work. Those who have read it tell me you promise to be to England what Georges Sand was to France when she appeared, a new light on the literary horizon. But where would Georges Sand have been without De Musset? They owe half their prestige to each other. While they were alive every one talked of them, and now that they are dead reams are written about them. Let us also go down to posterity together. All I want is you; what you want is me. Will you – will you let me be to you – De Musset?"
"What you really do want," said Beth, "is a sense of humour."
"For God's sake, do not be trivial!" he exclaimed. "You cannot think what this means to me – how I have set my heart on it – how I already seem to hear the men at the clubs mention my name and yours when I pass. Night after night I have paced up and down outside this house, looking up at your window, thinking it all out."
Beth flushed angrily. "I consider that a most improper proceeding," she said, "and I do not know how you can excuse it to yourself."
"I – much may be excused when a man feels as strongly as I do," he protested.
"And how about your wife?" said Beth, "where do you place her in your plans? Has she no feelings to be considered?"
"I shall not hurt her feelings, I assure you, I never do," he answered. "I keep her in a quiet country place so that she may hear no gossip, and I excuse my long absences from home on the plea of work. She understands that my interests would suffer if I were not on the spot."
"In other words, you lie to your wife," said Beth, aghast at the shabby deceit.
"That is scarcely polite language," he rejoined in an offended tone.
"It is correct language," she retorted. "We shall understand what we are talking about much better if we call things by their right names. But are you never afraid of what your wife may be driven to in the dulness of the country, while you are here in town, dancing attendance on other men's wives?"
"Never in the least," he answered complacently. "She is entirely devoted to me and to her duty. Her faith in me is absolute."
"And so you deceive her."
"I am not bound to tell her all my doings," he protested.
"You are in honour bound not to deceive her," Beth said; "and if you deceive her it is none the less low because she does not suspect you. On the contrary. It seems to me that one of the worst things that can happen to a man is to have docile women to deal with."
"I am grieved to hear you talk like that," he said. "I am really grieved. It shows a want of refinement that surprises and shocks me. I maintain that I do her no injury. These things can always be arranged so that no one is injured; that is all that is necessary."
"These things can never be arranged so that no one is injured," Beth replied. "We injure ourselves, if no one else. We are bound to deteriorate when we live deceitfully. How can you be honest and manly and lead a double life? The false husband in whom his wife believes must be a sneak; and for the man who rewards a good faithful wife by deceiving her, I have no term of contempt sufficiently strong."
"I am disappointed in you," he said. "I should never have suspected that you were so narrow and conventional."
"Are you prepared to defy public opinion?" Beth asked.
"No, that would be gross," he said. "Outwardly we must conform. Only the élite understand these things, and only the élite need know of them. You are of the élite yourself; you must know, you must feel the power, the privilege conferred by a great passion."
"Pray do not class me with the élite if passion is what they respect," Beth said. "Passion at the best – honourable passion – is but the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The passion that has no honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift and sure to decay."
"Passion is more than that, the passion of which I speak. It is a great mental stimulant," he declared.
"Yes," said Beth, "passion is a great mental stimulant – passion resisted."
"Georges Sand, whom I would have you follow, always declared that she only wrote her best under the influence of a strong passion," he assured her.
"But how do we know that she might not have written better than that best under some holier influence?" Beth rejoined. "George Eliot's serener spirit appeals to me more. I believe it is only those who renounce the ruinous riot of the senses, and find their strength and inspiration in contemplation, who reach the full fruition of their powers. Ages have not talked for nothing of the pains of passion and the pleasures of love. Love is a great ethical force; but passion, which is compact of every element of doubt and deceit, is cosmic and brutal, a tyrant if we yield to it, but if we master it, an obedient servant willing to work. I would rather die of passion myself, as I might of any other disease, than live to be bound by it."
Pounce, who had been pacing about the room restlessly until now, sat down by the fire, and gazed into it for a little, discomfited. He had come primed with the old platitudes, the old sophistries, the old flatteries, come to treat amicably, and found himself met with armed resistance, his flatteries and platitudes ridiculed, his sophistries exposed, and his position attacked with the confidence and courage of those who are sure of themselves.
"Have you no feeling for me?" he said at last, after a long pause, speaking somewhat hoarsely.
"I feel sorry for you," was the unexpected answer.
"Pity is akin to love," he said.
"Pity is also akin to contempt," she rejoined. "And how can a woman feel anything else for a man who is false to the most sacred obligations? who makes vows and breaks them according to his inclination? If we make a law of our own inclinations, what assurance can we give to any one that we shall ever be true?"
"I have found at last what I have yearned for all my life long," he protested. "I know I shall never waver in my devotion to you."
"That may be," she answered. "But what guarantee could you give me that I should not waver? What comfort would your fidelity be if I tired of you in a month?"
Again he was discomfited, and there was another pause.
"If you did change," he said at last, "I should be the only sufferer."
Beth sat silent for a little, then she said slowly, "What you have ventured to propose to me to-night, Mr. Cayley Pounce, is no more credit to your intelligence than it is to your principles. You come here and find me living openly, in an assured position, with powerful friends, whose affection and respect for me rest on their confidence in me, and with brilliant prospects besides, as you say, which, however, depend to a great extent upon my answering to the expectations I have raised. You allow that I have some ability, some sense, and yet you offer me in exchange for all these – "
"I offer you love!" he exclaimed fervently.
"Love!" she ejaculated with contempt, "you offer me yourself for a lover, and you seek to inspire confidence in me by deceiving your wife. You would have me sacrifice a position of safety for a position of danger – one that might be changed into an invidious position by the least indiscretion – and all for what?"
"For love of you," he pleaded, "that I may help you to develop the best that is in you."
"All for the prestige of having your name associated with mine by men about town in the event of mine becoming distinguished," she interrupted.
He winced.
"I only ask you to do what George Eliot did greatly to her advantage," he answered reproachfully.
"You asked me to do what Georges Sand did greatly to her detriment," Beth said. "George Eliot is an after-thought. And you certainly have no intention of asking me to do what she did, for she acted openly, she deceived no one, and injured no one."
"And you do not blame her?" he exclaimed with a flash of hope.
Beth answered indirectly: "When I think about that, I ask myself have Church and State arranged the relations of the sexes successfully enough to convince us that they cannot be better arranged? Are marriages holier now than they were in the days when there were no churches to bless them? or happier here than in other countries where they are simple private contracts? And it seems to me that we have no historical proof that the legal bond is necessarily the holiest between man and woman, or that there is never justification for a more irregular compact. I know that 'holy matrimony' is often a state of absolute degradation, especially for the woman; and I believe that two honourable people can live together honourably without the conventional bond, so long as no one else is injured, no previous compact broken. But all the same I think the legal bond is best. It is a safeguard to the family and a restraint on the unprincipled. And, at any rate, all my experience, all my thought, all my hope argue for the dignity of permanence in human relations. Anything else is bad for the individual, for the family, for the state. As civilisation, as evolution advances from lower to higher, we find it makes more and more for monogamy. Our highest types of men and women are monogamous. Those whose contracts are lightly made and lightly broken are trivial people. That useful Oneida Creek experiment proved that the instinct, if not the ideal, of modern humanity is monogamous."
"What was that?" he asked.
"A number of people formed a community at Oneida Creek to live together in a kind of ordered promiscuity, but the experiment failed because it was found eventually that the members were living together secretly in pairs. No. The more I know of life the less I like the idea of allowing any laxity in the marriage relation. In certain cases of course there is good and sufficient reason for two people to separate. But I believe that right-minded people can generally, and almost always do, make their marriages answer. Marriage is compact of every little incident in life, it is not merely made up of one strong feeling, otherwise men and women would be as the animals who pair and part casually; therefore, if two people are disappointed in each other in some things, they must have other things in common to fall back upon. My ideal of life is love in marriage and loyal friends."
"It is interesting to hear you express these views," he said bitterly, "considering what your experience has been."
"I don't see that my petty personal experience has anything to do with the truth of the matter," said Beth, bridling somewhat. "You really have a poor opinion of me if you think I shall allow my judgment to be warped by anything that may happen to myself. Because my own experience is not a happy one, you would have me declare that family life is a mistake! Doubtless many an outcry is raised for no better reason. But do you not see yourself that the tranquil home-life is the most beautiful, the most conducive to the development of all that is best in us – that there is nothing like the delight of being a member of a large and united family. Can you come into a house like this and not see it?"
"This house was not always a model of domestic felicity," he sneered.
"That proves my point," she rejoined. "The difficulties can be lived down if people are right-minded."
"Your argument does not alter the fact that I am a miserable man," he said dejectedly.
"You were not born to be a miserable man," she answered gently, "and 'we always may be what we might have been.' But you have lost much ground, Alfred Cayley Pounce, since the days when you roamed about the cliffs and sandy reaches of Rainharbour with Beth Caldwell, making plans. You had your ideals then, and lived up to them. You cultivated your flowers for delight in their beauty, and went to your modelling for love of the work. You gave your flowers to your friends with an honest intention to please; you modelled with honest ambition to do good work. In those days you were above caring to cultivate the acquaintance of the best people. You had touched the higher life at that time; you had felt such rapture in it as has never come to you since – even among the best people – I am sure; yet you fell away; you deserted Beth – not basely, perhaps, but weakly; and you have been deteriorating ever since."
He had started straight in his chair when she mentioned Beth Caldwell, and was staring at her now with puzzled intentness.
"What do you know about Beth?" he said quickly. "Have you ever met her?"
She smiled. "I can honestly say I never have," she answered. But she looked away from him into the fire as she spoke, and he recognised the set of her head on her shoulders as she turned it; he had noted it often.
"God!" he exclaimed, "what a blind idiot I have been – Beth! Beth!" He threw himself down on his knees beside her chair, caught her hand, and covered it with kisses.
Beth snatched her hand away, and he returned embarrassed to his seat and sat gazing at her for a little, then took out his handkerchief and suddenly burst into tears.
"What a mess I have made of my life!" he exclaimed. "Everything that would have been best for me has been within reach at some time or other, but I invariably took the wrong thing and let the right one go. But, Beth, I was only a boy then, and I suffered when they separated us."
This reflection seemed to ease his mind on the subject. That she might also have suffered did not occur to him; as usual his whole concern was for himself.
"Yes, you are right, Beth," he proceeded. "I have deteriorated; but 'we always may be what we might have been' – and you have been sent to me again as a sign that it is not too late for me. You were my first love, my earliest ideal, and I have not changed, you see, I have been true to you; for, although I never suspected you were Beth, I recognised my rightful mate in you the moment we met. Yes, I was on the right road when we were boy and girl together, but the promise of that time has not been fulfilled. All the poetry in me has lain dormant since the days when you drew it forth. I gave up modelling when I went to the 'Varsity because they didn't care for that kind of thing in my set, you know. They were all men of position, who wouldn't associate with artists unless they were at the top of the tree; clever fellows, and good themselves at squibs and epigrams. If you'd ever been to the 'Varsity you'd know that a man must adapt himself to his environment if he means to get on. My dream had been to make my visions of beauty visible, as you used to suggest; but I had to give that up, there was nothing else for it. Still, I was not content to do nothing, to be nobody; therefore, when I abandoned the clay, I took to the pen; I gave up the marble for the manuscript. Many men of position have written, you know, and so long as you didn't mug, fellows didn't mind. In fact, they thought you smart if they fancied you could dash things off without an effort. You understand now why I am a literary man instead of a sculptor."
"Perfectly," Beth said drily. "It was in those days, I suppose, that you were bitten by French literature, and began to idealise mean intrigues, and to delight in foul matter if the manner of its presentation were an admirable specimen of style."
"Ah," he said solemnly, "style is everything."
"It is all work of word-turning and little play of fancy with those who make style everything," said Beth, glad to get away from love, "and that makes your Jack-of-style a dull boy and morbid in spite of his polish. Less style and more humour would be the saving of some of you, the making of others."
"Flaubert wrote 'Madame Bovary' six times," he assured her impressively.
"I wonder how much it lost each time," said Beth. "But you know what Flaubert himself said about style before he had done – just what I am saying!"
"I cannot understand your being insensible to the charms of style," he said, evading the thrust.
"I am not. I only say it is not of the most vital importance. Thackeray was a Titan – well, look at his slipshod style in places, his careless grammar, his constant tautology. He knew better, and he could have done better, and it would have been well if he had, I don't deny it; but his work would not have been a scrap more vital, nor he himself the greater. I have seen numbers of people here in town studying art. They go to the schools to learn to draw, not because they have ideas to express, apparently, but in the hope that ideas will come when they know how to express them. And I think it is the same in literature. One school talks of style as if it were the end and not the means. They form a style, but have nothing to express that is worth expressing. It would be better to pray the gods to send them the matter; if the matter is there in the mind it will out, and the manner will form itself in the effort to produce it – so said the great."
There was a pause, during which Alfred Cayley Pounce sighed heavily and Beth looked at the clock.
"You were stimulating as a child, Beth," he said at last, "and you are stimulating still. Think what it would be to me to have you always by my side! I cannot – I cannot let you go again now that I have found you! We were boy and girl together."
"That does not alter anything in our present position," Beth answered; "nor does it affect my principles in any way. But even if I had been inclined – if I had had no principles, I should have been just clever enough to know better than to run any risk of the kind you suggest. You do not know perhaps that you have injured your own standing already – that there are houses in which you are not welcome because you are suspected of intrigue."
"Me– suspected of intrigue!" he exclaimed. "It isn't possible!"
Beth laughed. "If it is so disagreeable to be suspected," she said, "what would it be to be found out! And what have you gained by it? What says the Dhammapada? 'There is bad reputation, and the evil way (to hell); there is the short pleasure of the frightened in the arms of the frightened, and the king imposes heavy punishment; therefore let no man think of his neighbour's wife.'"
"It is evident that you don't trust me," he said in an injured tone. "Ah, Beth! does the fact that we were boy and girl together not weigh with you?"
"Well, it would," Beth said soberly, "even if worldly wisdom were my only guide in life. I should think of the time that we got into that scrape, and you wriggled out of it, leaving me to shift for myself as best I could; and I should remember the boy is father to the man. But I have been trying to show you that worldly wisdom is not my only guide in life. I have professed the most positive puritan principles of conduct, and given you the reasons upon which they are based, yet you persist; you ignore what I say as if you had not heard me or did not believe me, and pursue the subject as if you were trying to weary me into agreement. And you have wearied me, but not into agreement; so, if you please, we will not discuss it any longer."
"You will be sorry, I think, some day for the way you have treated me," he exclaimed, showing temper; "and what you expect to gain by it I cannot imagine."
"Oh, please," Beth protested, "I am not imbued with the commercial spirit of the churches. I do not expect a percentage in the way of reward on every simple duty I do."
"Virtue is its own reward," he sneered.
"It has been said that 'the pleasure of virtue is one which can only be obtained on the express condition of its not being the object sought,'" she rejoined good-naturedly. "Try it, Alfred, and see if you do not become a happier man insensibly. Order your thoughts to other and nobler ends, for thoughts are things, and we are branded or beautified by them. An American scientist has been making experiments to test the effect of thought on the body, and has found that a continuous train of evil thought injures the health and spoils the personal appearance, but high and holy thoughts have a beautifying effect. Be a man and embrace a manly creed. Live for others, live openly. Deceit is treachery, and treachery is cowardice of the most despicable kind. Life has to be lived. It might as well be lived earnestly. Life is better lived when it is held earnestly. Personally I detest all flippancy and cynicism, all cheapening of serious subjects by lack of reverence. Irreverence portends defects of character and poverty of intellect. All serious subjects are sacred subjects, and to treat them with levity or insincerity is to prove yourself a person to be avoided."
Alfred Cayley Pounce was stooping forward with his elbows on his knees and his face between his hands, gazing blankly into the fire. The light shone on his bald forehead and accentuated the lines which wounded vanity, petty purposes thwarted, and an ignoble life had written prematurely on his face, and his attitude emphasised the attenuation of his body. He looked a poor, peevish, neurotic specimen; and although he had only himself to thank for it, Beth, remembering the promise of his youth, felt a qualm of pity.
"What a mistake my marriage has been!" he ejaculated at last. "But I doubt if I should ever have found a woman who would have understood me enough to be all in all to me. For a man of my temperament there is nothing but celibacy."
"I don't believe in celibacy at all," Beth said cheerfully. "Celibacy is an attempt to curb a healthy instinct with a morbid idea. He is the best man and the truest gentleman who honourably fulfils every function of life. And I don't believe your marriage was of necessity a mistake either. But if you must be miserable, be loyal as well. You will find that the best in the end. If, being miserable, we are also disloyal, then we are insensibly degraded – so insensibly, perhaps, that we are not conscious of any part of the process, and only become aware of what has been going on when we have to face a crisis, and find ourselves prepared to act ignobly, and to justify the act with specious excuses." She glanced up at the mantelpiece. "Come," she said, "it is four o'clock, and I am sleepy. I must go to bed."
He started to his feet. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed, "you can talk of being sleepy when I – "
"Never mind about that now," said Beth, yawning frankly. "Everybody has gone to bed and forgotten us, I suppose. I shall have to let you out."
She gathered the evening cloak she had come back in from the theatre about her as she spoke, and led the way. He let her open the hall-door for him. It was grey daylight in the street. At the foot of the steps a policeman was standing on the pavement making a note in a little book.
"Is it any use whistling for a hansom at this hour?" Beth asked.
The policeman looked up at her. "I'll try, miss, if you like," he said.
He whistled several times, but there was no response, and Alfred Cayley Pounce at last crammed his hat down on his head with a peevish show of impatience, and walked off down the street, without a word of leave-taking. The fact that Beth was sleepy had wounded his vanity more than any word she had said. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders as she watched him depart, then went down on to the pavement and strolled about, enjoying the freshness. The policeman kept watch and ward, meanwhile, at the open door, and, before she went in, Beth stood and talked to him a little in her pretty kindly way. She found his tone and manner in their simple directness strengthening and refreshing to the mind after the tortuous posings of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce.