Part 74 (1/2)
”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.