While she had been shut up with Arthur, seeing no papers and hearing no news, her book had come out and achieved a very respectable success, for the sort of thing it was; and she was pleased to hear it, but not elated. The subject had somehow lapsed from her mind, and the career of the book gave her no more personal pleasure than if it had been the work of a friend. Had it come out when it was first finished, she would have felt differently about it; but now she saw it as only one of the many things which had happened to her, and considered it more as the old consider the works of their youth, estimating them in proportion, as is the habit of age, and moderately rather than in excess. For the truth was that a great change had come over Beth during the last few months in respect to her writing; her enthusiasm had singularly cooled; it had ceased to be a pleasure, and become an effort to her to express herself in that way.
Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce had been looking out for Beth's book, and, while waiting for it to appear, he had, misled by his own suppositions, prepared an elaborate article upon the kind of thing he expected it to be. Nothing was wanting to complete the article but a summary of the story and quotations from it, for which he had left plenty of space. He condemned the book utterly from the point of view of art, and for the silly ignorance of life displayed in it, and the absurd caricatures which were supposed to be people; he ridiculed the writer for taking herself seriously (but without showing why exactly she should not take herself seriously if she chose); he pitied her for her disappointment when she should realise where in literature her place would be; and he ended with a bitter diatribe against the works of women generally, as being pretentious, amateur, without originality, and wanting in humour, like the wretched stuff it had been his painful duty to expose. Unfortunately for him, however, the book appeared anonymously, and immediately attracted attention enough to make him wish to discover it; and before he found out that Beth was the author, he had committed himself to a highly eulogistic article upon it in The Patriarch, which he took the precaution to sign, that the coming celebrity might know to whom gratitude was due, and in which he declared that there had arisen a new light of extraordinary promise on the literary horizon. The book, as it happened, was not a work of fiction at all.
Beth had heard nothing more from Dr. Maclure, and knew nothing about him, except that he must have lost his degrading appointment, the Acts having been rescinded. He had forwarded none of the letters her friends had addressed to her at Slane. The Kilroys had endeavoured to obtain her address from him, but he denied that he knew it. Unknown to her, Mr. Kilroy, Mr. Hamilton-Wells, and Sir George Galbraith had taken the best legal advice in the hope of getting her a divorce; but there was little chance of that, as the acute mental suffering her husband had caused her had merely injured her health and endangered her reason, which does not amount to cruelty in the estimation of the law. The matter was therefore allowed to drop, and Beth had not yet begun to think of the future, when one day she received a letter from Dan, couched in the most affectionate terms, entreating her to return to him.
"You must own that I had cause for provocation," he said, "but I confess that I was too hasty. It is natural, though, that a man should feel it if his wife gets herself into such a position, however innocently; and the more he has trusted, loved, and respected his wife, the more violent will the reaction be. I know, however, that I have had my own shortcomings since we were married, and therefore that I should make every allowance for you. So let us be friends, Beth, and begin all over again, as you once proposed. I am ready to leave Slane and settle wherever you like. Make your own conditions; anything that pleases you will please me."
This letter upset Beth very much. She would almost rather have had an action for divorce brought against her than have been asked to return to Daniel Maclure.
"Ought I to go back?" she asked, willing, with the fatuous persistency of women in like cases, to persevere if it were thought right that she should, although she knew pretty well that the sacrifice would be unavailing so far as he was concerned, and would only entail upon herself the common lot of women so mated—a ruined constitution and corroded mind.
"Why does he suddenly so particularly wish it?" was the question.
The obvious explanation was indirectly conveyed in a letter from her old lawyer. He had written to her in her London lodgings, first of all, but the letter was returned from the Dead Letter Office. Then he had written to Slane, but as he received no answer to that letter and it was not returned, he went in person to inquire about it. Dan declared that he knew nothing about the letter, or about Beth either, if she had left London; but he thought her intimate friends the Kilroys might know where she was. The old gentleman applied to the Kilroys, and having found Beth, wrote to inform her that her great-aunt Victoria Bench's investments had recovered at last, as he had always been pretty sure that they would, and she would accordingly, for the future, find herself in receipt of an income of seven or eight hundred pounds a year. Dan's sudden magnanimity was accounted for. Beth put his effusion and the lawyer's letter before her friends, and asked to be advised. They decided unanimously that, on the one hand, Dan was not a proper person for her to live with, that no decent woman could associate with a man of his mind, habits, and conversation without suffering injury in some sort; while, on the other, they pointed out that, although it would be nice, it would not be good for Dan to have the benefit of Beth's little income. While he was forced to work, he would have to conduct himself with a certain amount of propriety; but if Beth relieved him of the necessity, there would be nothing to restrain him.
This episode roused Beth from her tranquil apathy, and made her think of work once more. But first she had to settle somewhere and make a home for herself; and although she had ample means for all her requirements now, it was not an easy thing to find the special conditions on which she had set her heart. The first impulse of a woman of noble nature is to be consistent, to live up to all she professes to admire. As Beth grew older, to live for others became more and more her ideal of life;—not to live in the world, however, or to be of it, but to work for it.