"Oh, damn you!" said Dan, leaving the room and banging the door after him.
Beth signed the cheque and left it lying on his writing-table. She never saw it again.
Then she went up to her secret chamber, and spent long hours—sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, as if the marks of her married life on her character could be washed away with tears.
CHAPTER XLIII
Beth had made fifty pounds in eighteen months by her beautiful embroideries; but after her mother's death she did no more for sale, neither did she spend the money. She had suffered so many humiliations for want of money, it made her feel safer to have some by her. She gave herself up to study at this time, and wrote a great deal. It was winter now, and she was often driven down from her secret chamber to the dining-room by the cold. When Dan came in and found her at work, he would sniff contemptuously or facetiously, according to his mood at the moment. "Wasting paper as usual, eh? Better be sewing on my buttons," was his invariable remark. Not that his buttons were ever off, or that Beth ever sewed them on either. She was too good an organiser to do other people's work for them.
She made no reply to Dan's sallies. With him her mind was in a state of solitary confinement always—not a good thing for her health, but better on the whole than any attempt to discuss her ideas with him, or to talk to him about anything, indeed, but himself.
Beth fared well that winter, however—fared well in herself, that is. She had some glorious moments, revelling in the joy of creation. There is a mental analogy to all physical processes. Fertility in life comes of love; and in art the fervour of production is also accompanied by a rapture and preceded by a passion of its own. When Beth was in a good mood for work, it was like love—love without the lover; she felt all the joy of love, with none of the disturbance. When the idea of publication was first presented to her, it robbed her of this joy. As she wrote, she thought more of what she might gain than of what she was doing. Visions of success possessed her, and the ideas upon which her attention should have been fully concentrated were thinned by anticipations; and during that period her work was indifferent. Later, however, she worked again for work's sake, loving it; and then she advanced. She saw little of Dan in those days, and thought less; but when they met, she was, as usual, gentle and tolerant, patiently enduring his "cheeriness," and entering into no quarrel unless he forced one upon her.
One bright frosty morning he came in rather earlier than usual and found her writing in the dining-room.
"Well, I've had a rattling good ride this morning," he began, plunging into his favourite topic as usual without any pretence of interest in her or in her pursuits. "Nothing like riding for improving the circulation! I wish to goodness I could keep another horse. It would add to my income in the long run. But I'm so cursedly handicapped by those bills. They keep me awake at night thinking of them."