Part 77 (2/2)
”It is easy enough to make sure,” he suggested.
Mrs. Carne, wife of the leading medical man in Slane, conceived it to be her duty to patronise Beth to the extent of an occasional formal call, as she was the wife of a junior pract.i.tioner; and Beth duly returned these calls, because she was determined not to make enemies for Dan by showing any resentment for the slights she had suffered in Slane.
Feeling depressed indoors one dreary afternoon, she set off, alone as usual, to pay one of these visits. She rather hoped perhaps to find some sort of satisfaction by way of reward for the brave discharge of an uncongenial duty.
On the way into town, Dan pa.s.sed her in his dogcart with a casual nod, bespattering her with mud. ”You'll have your carriage soon, please G.o.d! and never have to walk. I hate to see a delicate woman on foot in the mud.” Beth remembered the words so well, and Dan's pious intonation as he uttered them, and she laughed. She had a special little laugh for exhibitions of this kind of divergence between Dan's precepts and his practices. But even as she laughed her face contracted as with a sudden spasm of pain, and she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed--”But I shall succeed!”
Mrs. Carne was at home, and Beth was shown into the drawing-room, where she found several other lady visitors--Mrs. Kilroy, Mrs. Orton Beg, Lady Fulda Guthrie, and Ideala. The last two she had not met before.
”Where will you sit?” said Mrs. Carne, who was an effusive little person. ”What a day! You were brave to come out, though perhaps it will do you good. My husband says go out in all weathers and battle with the breeze; there's nothing like exercise.”
”Battling with the breeze and an umbrella on a wet day is not exercise, it is exasperation,” Beth answered, and at the sound of her peculiarly low, clear, cultivated voice, the conversation stopped suddenly, and every one in the room looked at her. She seemed unaware of the attention. In fact, she ignored every one present except her hostess. This was her habitual manner now, a.s.sumed to save herself from slights. When she entered, Mrs. Kilroy had half risen from her seat, and endeavoured to attract her attention; but Beth pa.s.sed her by, deliberately chose a seat, and sat down. Her demeanour, so apparently cold and self-contained, was calculated to command respect, but it cost Beth a great deal to maintain it. She felt she was alone in an unfriendly atmosphere--a poor little thing, shabbily dressed in home-made mourning, and despised for she knew not what offence; and she suffered horribly. She had grown very fragile by this time, and looked almost childishly young. Her eyes were unnaturally large and wistful, her mouth drooped at the corners, and the whole expression of her face was pathetic. Mrs. Kilroy looked at her seriously, and thought to herself, ”That girl is suffering.”
Mrs. Carne offered Beth tea, but she refused it. She could not accept such inhuman hospitality. She had come to do her duty, not to force a welcome. She glanced at the clock. Five minutes more, and she might go. The conversation buzzed on about her. She was sitting next to a strange lady, a serene and dignified woman, dressed in black velvet and sable. Beth glanced at her the first time with indifference, but looked again with interest. Mrs. Carne bustled up and spoke to the lady in her effusive way.
”You are better, I hope,” she said, as she handed her some tea. ”It really is _sweet_ to see you looking so _much_ yourself again.”
”Oh yes, I am quite well again now, thanks to your good husband,” the lady answered. ”But he has given me so many tonics and things lately, I always seem to be shaking bottles. I am quite set in that att.i.tude.
Everything I touch I shake. I found myself shaking my watch instead of winding it up the other day.”
”Ah, then, you are quite yourself again, I see,” Mrs. Carne said archly. ”But why didn't you come to the Wilmingtons' last night?”
”Oh, you know I never go to those functions if I can help it,” the lady answered, her gentle rather drawling voice lending a charm to the words quite apart from their meaning. ”I cannot stand the kind of conversation to which one is reduced on such occasions--if you can call that conversation which is but the cackle of geese, each repeating the utterances of the other. When the Lord loves a woman, I think He takes her out of society by some means or other, and keeps her out of it for her good.”
Beth knew that if she had said such a thing, Mrs. Carne would have received it with a stony stare, but now she simpered. ”That is so like you!” she gushed. ”But the Wilmingtons were _dreadfully_ disappointed.”
”They will get over it,” the lady answered, glancing round indifferently.
”How are you getting on with your new book, Ideala?” Mrs. Kilroy asked her across the room. Beth instantly froze to attention. This was her friend, then, Sir George's Ideala.
”I have not got into the swing of it yet,” Ideala answered. ”It is all dot-and-go-one--a uniform ruggedness which is not true either to life or mind. Our ways in the world are stony enough at times, but they are not all stones. There are smooth stretches along which we gallop, and sheltered gra.s.sy s.p.a.ces where we rest.”
”What _I_ love about _your_ work is the _style_,” said Mrs. Carne.
”Do you?” Ideala rejoined, somewhat dryly as it seemed to Beth. ”But what is style?”
”I am so bad at definitions,” said Mrs. Carne, ”but I _feel_ it, you know.”
”As if it were a thing in itself to be adopted or acquired?” Ideala asked.
”Yes, quite so,” said Mrs. Carne in a tone of relief--as of one who has acquitted herself better than she expected and is satisfied.
”I am sure it is not,” Beth burst out, forgetting herself and her slights all at once in the interest of the subject. ”I have been reading the lives of authors lately, together with their works, and it seems to me, in the case of all who had genius, that their style was the outcome of their characters--their principles--the view they took of the subject--that is, if they were natural and powerful writers.
Only the second-rate people have a manufactured style, and force their subject to adapt itself to it--the kind of people whose style is mentioned quite apart from their matter. In the great ones the style is the outcome of the subject. Each emotion has its own form of expression. The language of pa.s.sion is intense; of pleasure jocund, easy, abundant; of content calm, of happiness strong but restrained; of love warm, tender. The language of artificial feeling is artificial; there is no mistaking insincerity when a writer is not sincere, and the language of true feeling is equally unmistakable. It is simple, easy, unaffected; and it is the same in all ages. The artificial styles of yesterday go out of fas.h.i.+on with the dresses their authors wear, and become an offence to our taste; but Shakespeare's periods appeal to every generation. He wrote from the heart as well as the head, and triumphed in the grace of nature.”
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