Part 94 (2/2)

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 refres.h.i.+ng to the mind after the tortuous posings of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce.

CHAPTER XLIX

At breakfast next morning Beth described the way in which Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce had forced his attentions upon her the night before. Mr.

Kilroy was exceedingly angry. ”He shall not come into any house of mine again,” he declared, and gave the old butler Roberts, who happened to be the only servant in the room at the moment, orders to that effect. ”Do you mean to say,” he asked Beth, ”that the fellow had the a.s.surance to tell you he had actually been hanging about the house?”

”He seemed rather proud of that, as of something poetical and romantic,” Beth answered.

”I suppose the illness was all an excuse,” Angelica observed.

”I don't know,” Beth said. ”He certainly looked ill, but he's a poor neurotic creature now, and might easily work himself up into a state of hysterical collapse, I should think. What was your impression, Roberts?”

”He looked real bad, ma'am; and well he might, the way he's been goin'

on, 'anging about 'alf the night We've all seen im,” Roberts rejoined imperturbably.

”Why didn't you report it to me?” Mr. Kilroy wanted to know.

”Well, sir, I couldn't be sure it was this 'ouse, sir, in partic'lar.

You see there's a good many in the square, sir. I was just waitin' to make sure. He come after you'd gone last night, and said he 'ad to meet the ladies, but he'd forgotten where they were goin' to, and James, suspectin' nothin', told 'im.”

”Well, I don't think he will trouble me again,” Beth said cheerfully, concerned to see Mr. Kilroy so seriously annoyed. ”I told him what I thought of him in such unmistakable terms that he walked out of the house without any form of farewell.”

Angelica looked grave. ”I am afraid you've made a spiteful enemy, Beth,” she observed. ”That kind of cat-man is capable of any meanness if his vanity is wounded; if he can injure you, he will.”

”Oh, as to that, I don't see what he can do,” said Mr. Kilroy.

”He can supply the press with odious personal paragraphs, spread calumnies at the clubs, and write scratch-cat criticisms on the book when it appears,” Angelica said. ”There are plenty of people who will listen to that kind of man, and take their opinions from him.”

”But what does it matter,” said Beth in her tolerant way. ”All you whom I love and respect will judge me and my work for yourselves. If you are pleased, I shall rejoice; if you find fault, I shall be grateful and profit. But I should be a poor shallow thing, like society itself, if I allowed myself to be disturbed or influenced by the Alfred Cayley Pounces of the press. And as to society!” Beth laughed. ”At first, when I went anywhere, I used to ask myself all the time when would the pleasure begin! But now I am younger, thanks to you; and I enjoy everything. I look on and laugh. But for the rest, I must be indifferent. It would be an insult to one's intellect to set any store on such tinsel as that of which the verdicts of society are made.”

Beth had been thinking a good deal about Dan lately, and had come to the conclusion that, with all his faults, he was very much to be preferred to the Alfred Cayley Pounce kind of creature. She had more hope of him, somehow; and she went back determined that it should not be her fault if they did not arrive at a better understanding. He gave her a good opportunity on the evening of her arrival. They were sitting out in the garden after dinner, on that comfortable seat by the privet hedge which Beth overlooked from her secret chamber. Behind them the hedge was thick, and in front a border of flowers surrounded a little green lawn, which was shut in beyond by a belt of old trees in full foliage. It was an exquisite evening, warm and still; and Dan, having dined well, and begun a good cigar, was in a genial mood. As he grew older he attached a more enormous importance than ever to meals.

If the potatoes were boiled when he wanted them mashed or baked, it made a serious difference to him, and he would grow red in the face and shout at the servants if his eggs for breakfast were done a moment more or less than he liked. He was a ridiculous spectacle in his impatience if dinner were late, and a sad one in his sensual satisfaction if it answered to his expectations. Beth watched him at such times with sensations that pa.s.sed through various degrees of irritation from positive contempt to the kindly tolerance one feels for the greed of a hungry child. Dan had been ”doing himself well,” as he called it, during her absence, and was looking somewhat bloated and blotched. His wonderful complexion was no longer so clear and bright as it had been; the red was redder and the white opaque. A few more years and his character would be seen distinctly in the shape and colour of his face; and Beth, who had marked the first signs of deterioration slowly set in, was saddened by the progress it had made.

Alfred Cayley Pounce would succ.u.mb to his nerves, Daniel Maclure to his tissues; the one was earning atrophy for himself, the other fatty degeneration. Beth was right. The real old devil is disease, and our evil appet.i.tes are his ministers.

”You seem solemn this evening,” Daniel said to her. ”I suppose you're regretting your friends.”

”Yes,” said Beth; ”but I have been away long enough, and I am glad to be back. I saw some things in the great wicked city that made me think--Dan,” she broke off abruptly, ”I wish you and I were better friends. So very little would bring us to a right understanding, and I am sure we should both be the better and the happier.”

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