"I must be quiet," she said to Angelica one day when they were discussing her future. "I am done for so far as work is concerned when I come into contact with crowds. I want to live things then; I don't want to think about them. Excitement makes me content to be, and careless about doing. My truest and best life is in myself, and I can only live it in circumstances of tranquil monotony. People talk so much about making the most of life, but their attempts are curiously bungling. What they call living is for the most part more pain than pleasure to them; for the truth is, that life should not be lived by men of mind, but contemplated; it is the spectator, not the actor, who enjoys and profits. The actor has his moment of applause, but all the rest is misery. People rush to great centres to obtain a knowledge of life, and do not succeed, for there they see nothing but broad effects. We find our knowledge of life in individuals, not in crowds. There is no more individuality in a crowd of people than there is in a flock of sheep. All I know of life, of its infinite diversity, I have learnt here and there from some one person or another, known intimately. A solitary experience, rightly considered in all its bearings, teaches us more than numbers of those incidents of which we see the surface only 'in the joy of eventful living;' and, if the truth were known, I expect it would be found that each one of us had obtained the most valuable part of our experience in such homely details of simple unaffected human nature as came under our observation in our native villages."
"Yes," Angelica answered thoughtfully, "the looker-on sees most of the game. But I don't think you allow enough for differences of temperament. You are thinking of the best conditions for creative work. You mustn't lose sight of all the active service that is going on."
"No; but it is in retirement that the best preparation is made for active service also. And I was thinking of active service more than of creative work just then. The truth is, I am in a state of being oppressed by the thought of my new book. I don't know what has come to me. I am all fretty about it. Writing has lost its charm. I doubt if I shall ever do well enough to make it worth while to write at all. And even if I could, I don't think mere literary success would satisfy me. I have tasted enough of that to know what it would be—a sordid triumph, a mere personal thing."
"Ideala does not think that it is necessarily as a literary woman that you will succeed," Angelica answered. "I thought it was because all the indications you have given of special capacity seem to me to lie in that direction. However, versatile people make mistakes sometimes. They don't always begin with the work they are best able to do; but there is no time lost, for one thing helps another—one thing is necessary to another, I should say, perhaps. Your writing may have helped to perfect you in some other form of expression."
"You cheer me!" Beth exclaimed. "But what form?" She reflected a little, and then she put the puzzle from her. "It will come to me, I dare say," she said, "if I shut the din of the world far from me, and sit with folded arms in contemplation, waiting for the moment and the match which shall fire me to the right pitch of enthusiasm. Nothing worth doing in art is done by calculation."
"I think you are right to keep out of the crowd," said Angelica. "You will get nothing but distraction from without. I should take one of the privileges of a great success to be the right to refuse all invitations that draw one into the social swim. Men and women of high purpose do not arrive in order to be crowded into stuffy drawing-rooms to be stared at."
"My idea of perfect bliss," Beth pursued, "when my work is done, and my friends are not with me, is to lie my length upon a cliff above the sea, listening to the many-murmurous, soothed by it into a sense of oneness with Nature, till I seem to be mixed with the elements, a part of sky and sea and shore, and akin to the wandering winds. This mood for my easy moments; but give me work for my live delight. I know nothing so altogether ecstatic as a good mood for work."
"What you call work is power of expression," said Angelica; "the power to express something in yourself, I fancy."
"Ye—yes," Beth answered, hesitating, as if the notion were new to her. "I believe you are right. What I call work is the effort to express myself."
Mr. Kilroy had come in while they were talking, and sat listening to the last part of the conversation.