Part 89 (1/2)
”I have already said that I shall not tell you, Mr. Pounce,” she answered frigidly.
He sat in silence for a little, looking extremely annoyed. Beth, to relieve the tension, offered him some more tea, which he refused curtly; but as she only smiled at the discourtesy and helped herself, he saw fit to change his mind, and then resumed the conversation.
”When Mrs. Carne heard that I was a literary man,” he said with importance, ”she begged me to do what I could to help you. She said it would be a great kindness; so I promised I would, and here I am.”
”So it seems,” said Beth.
He stared at her. ”I mean it,” he said.
”I don't doubt it,” Beth answered. ”You and Mrs. Carne are extremely kind.”
”Oh, not at all!” he a.s.sured her blandly. ”To me, at all events, it will be a great pleasure to help and advise you.”
”How do you propose to do it?” Beth asked, relaxing. Such obtuseness was not to be taken seriously.
He glanced over his shoulder at the bureau where her papers were spread. ”I shall get you to let me see some of your work,” he said, ”and then I can judge of its worth.”
”What have you done yourself?” she asked.
”I--well, I write regularly for the _Patriarch_,” he said, with the complacency of one who thinks that he need say no more. ”The editor himself came to stay with us last week, and that means something. Just now, however, I am contemplating a work of fiction, an important work, if I may venture to say so myself. It has been on my mind for years.”
”Indeed,” said Beth. ”What is its purpose?”
”Purpose!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”Had you said pur-port instead of pur-pose, it would have been a sensible question. It is hardly likely I shall write a novel with a purpose. I leave that to the ladies.”
”I have read somewhere that Milton said the poet's mission was '_to allay the perturbation of the mind and set the affections in right tune_,'--is not that a purpose?” Beth asked. ”And one in our own day has talked of '_that great social duty to impart what we believe and what we think we have learned. Among the few things of which we can p.r.o.nounce ourselves certain is the obligation of inquirers after truth to communicate what they obtain._'”
”But not in the form of fiction,” Alfred Cayley Pounce put in dogmatically.
”Yet there is always purpose in the best work of the great writers of fiction,” Beth maintained.
Not being able to deny this, he supposed sarcastically that she had read all the works to which she alluded.
”I see you suspect that I have not,” she answered, smiling.
”I suspect you did not find that pa.s.sage you quoted just now from Milton in his works,” he rejoined.
”I said as much,” she reminded him.
”Well, but you ought to know better than to quote an author you have not read,” he informed her.
”Do you mean that I should read all a man's works before I presume to quote a single pa.s.sage?”
”I do,” he replied. ”Women never understand thoroughness,” he observed, largely.
”Some of us see a difference between thoroughness and niggling,” Beth answered. ”I should say, beware of endless preparation! We have heard of Mr. Casaubon and _The Key to all Mythologies_.”
”I understand now what your friend Mrs. Carne meant about the manner in which you take advice,” Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce informed her, in a slightly offended tone.
Beth, wondering inwardly why so many people a.s.sume they are competent to advise, prayed that she herself might always be modest enough to wait at least until her advice was asked.