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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Beth Book, by Sarah Grand
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Beth Book
+       Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius
+
+
+Author: Sarah Grand
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2009  [eBook #28088]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BETH BOOK***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jen Haines, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE BETH BOOK
+
+Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure
+A Woman of Genius
+
+by
+
+SARAH GRAND
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IAGO.     Come, hold your peace.
+
+EMILIA.  'Twill out, 'twill out:--I hold my peace, Sir? no;
+   I'll be in speaking, liberal as the air:
+   Let heaven, and men, and devils, let them all
+   All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak.
+                               SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+New York:
+D. Appleton
+1897.
+
+
+     "_I cannot gather the sunbeams out of the east, or I
+     would make them tell you what I have seen; but read this
+     and interpret this, and let us remember together. I
+     cannot gather the gloom out of the night sky, or I would
+     make that tell you what I have seen; but read this and
+     interpret this, and let us feel together. And if you have
+     not that within you which I can summon to my aid, if you
+     have not the sun in your spirit and the passion in your
+     heart which my words may awaken, though they be
+     indistinct and swift, leave me, for I will give you no
+     patient mockery, no labouring insults of that glorious
+     Nature whose I am and whom I serve._"--RUSKIN.
+
+
+     "_The men who come on the stage at one period are all
+     found to be related to one another. Certain ideas are in
+     the air. We are all impressionable, for we are made of
+     them; all impressionable, but some more than others, and
+     these first express them. This explains the curious
+     temporaneousness of inventions and discoveries. The truth
+     is in the air, and the most impressionable brain will
+     announce it first, but all will announce it a few minutes
+     later. So women, as most susceptible, are the best index
+     of the coming hour._"--EMERSON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The day preceding Beth's birth was a grey day, a serene grey day, awesome
+with a certain solemnity, and singularly significant to those who seek a
+sign. There is a quiet mood, an inner calm, to which a grey day adds
+peculiar solace. It is like the relief which follows after tears, when
+hope begins to revive, and the warm blood throbs rebelliously to be free
+of the shackles of grief; a certain heaviness still lingers, but only as
+a luxurious languor which is a pleasure in itself. In other moods,
+however, in pain, in doubt, in suspense, the grey day deepens the
+depression of the spirits, and also adds to the sense of physical
+discomfort. Mrs. Caldwell, looking up at noon from the stocking she was
+mending, and seeing only a slender strip of level gloom above the houses
+opposite, suddenly experienced a mingled feeling of chilliness and
+dread, and longed for a fire, although the month was June. She could not
+afford fires at that time of year, yet she thought how nice it would be
+to have one, and the more she thought of it the more chilly she felt. A
+little comfort of the kind would have meant so much to her that morning.
+She would like to have felt it right to put away the mending, sit by a
+good blaze with a book, and absorb herself in somebody else's thoughts,
+for her own were far from cheerful. She was weak and ill and anxious,
+the mother of six children already, and about to produce a seventh on an
+income that would have been insufficient for four. It was a reckless
+thing for a delicate woman to do, but she never thought of that. She
+lived in the days when no one thought of the waste of women in this
+respect, and they had not begun to think for themselves. What she
+suffered she accepted as her "lot," or "The Will of God"--the expression
+varied with the nature of the trouble; extreme pain was "The Will of
+God," but minor discomforts and worries were her "lot." That much of the
+misery was perfectly preventable never occurred to her, and if any one
+had suggested such a thing she would have been shocked. The parson in
+the pulpit preached endurance; and she understood that anything in the
+nature of resistance, any discussion even of social problems, would not
+only have been a flying in the face of Providence, but a most indecent
+proceeding. She knew that there was crime and disease in the world, but
+there were judges and juries to pursue criminals, doctors to deal with
+diseases, and the clergy to speak a word in season to all, from the
+murderer on the scaffold to the maid who had misconducted herself. There
+was nothing eccentric about Mrs. Caldwell; she accepted the world just
+as she found it, and was satisfied to know that effects were being dealt
+with. Causes she never considered, because she knew nothing about them.
+
+But she was ill at ease that morning, and did think it rather hard
+that she should not have had time to recover from her last illness.
+She acknowledged to herself that she was very weak, that it was hard
+to drag the darning-needle through that worn stocking, and, oh dear!
+the holes were so many and so big that week, and there were such
+quantities of other things to be done, clothes mended and made for the
+children, besides household matters to be seen to generally; why
+wasn't she strong? That was the only thing she repined about, poor
+woman, her want of physical strength. She would work until she
+dropped, however, and mortal man could expect no more of her, she
+assured herself with a sigh of satisfaction, in anticipation of the
+inevitable event which would lay her by, and so release her from all
+immediate responsibility. Worn and weary working mothers, often
+uncomplaining victims of the cruelest exactions, toilers whose day's
+work is never done, no wonder they welcome even the illness which
+enforces rest in bed, the one holiday that is ever allowed them. Mrs.
+Caldwell thought again of the fire and the book. She had read a good
+deal at one time, and had even been able to play, and sing, and draw,
+and paint with a dainty touch; but since her marriage, the many
+children, the small means, and the failing strength had made all such
+pursuits an impossible luxury. The fire and the book--who knows what
+they might not have meant, what a benign difference the small
+relaxation allowed to the mother at this critical time might not have
+made in the temperament of the child? Perhaps, if we could read the
+events even of that one day aright, we should find in them the clue to
+all that was inexplicable in its subsequent career.
+
+In deciding that she could not afford a fire for herself, Mrs.
+Caldwell had glanced round the room, and noticed that the whisky
+bottle on the sideboard was all but empty. She got up hastily, and
+went into the kitchen.
+
+"I had quite forgotten the whisky," she said to the maid-of-all-work,
+who was scraping potatoes at the sink. "Your master will be so put
+out if there isn't enough. You must go at once and get some--six
+bottles. Bring one with you, and let them send the rest."
+
+The girl turned upon her with a scowl. "And who's to do my dinner?"
+she demanded.
+
+"I'll do what I can," Mrs. Caldwell answered. The servant threw the
+knife down on the potatoes, and turned from the sink sullenly, wiping
+her hands on her apron as she went.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell rolled up her sleeves, and set to work, but awkwardly.
+Household work comes naturally to many educated women; they like it,
+and they do it well; but Mrs. Caldwell was not one of this kind. She
+was not made for labour, but for luxury; her hands and arms, both
+delicately beautiful in form and colour, alone showed that. Her whole
+air betokened gentle birth and breeding. She looked out of place in
+the kitchen, and it was evident that she could only acquit herself
+well among the refinements of life. She set to work with a will,
+however, for she had the pluck and patience of ten men. She peeled
+vegetables, chopped meat, fetched water, carried coals to mend the
+fire, did all that had to be done to the best of her ability, although
+she had to cling many times to table, or chair, or dresser, to recover
+from the exertion, and brace herself for a fresh attempt. When she had
+done in the kitchen she went to the dining-room and laid the cloth.
+The sulky servant did not hurry back. She had a trick of lingering
+long on errands, and when at last she did appear she brought no
+whisky.
+
+"They're going to send it," she explained. "They promised to send it
+at once."
+
+"But I told you to bring a bottle!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, stamping
+her foot imperiously.
+
+The girl walked off to the kitchen, and slammed the door.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell's forehead was puckered with a frown, but she got out
+the mending again, and sat down to it in the dining-room with dogged
+determination.
+
+Presently there was a step outside. She looked up and listened. The
+front door opened. Her worn face brightened; backache and weariness
+were forgotten; her husband had come home; and it was as if the clouds
+had parted and the sun shone forth.
+
+She looked up brightly to greet him. "You've got your work over early
+to-day," she said.
+
+"I have," he answered drily, without looking at her.
+
+The smile froze on her lips. He had come back in an irritable mood. He
+went to the sideboard when he had spoken, and poured himself out a
+stiff glass of whisky-and-water, which he carried to the window, where
+he stood with his back to his wife, looking out. He was a short man,
+who made an instant impression of light eyes in a dark face. You would
+have looked at him a second time in the street, and thought of him
+after he had passed, so striking was the peculiar contrast. His
+features were European, but his complexion, and his soft glossy black
+hair, curling close and crisp to the head, betrayed a dark drop in
+him, probably African. In the West Indies he would certainly have been
+set down as a quadroon. There was no record of negro blood in the
+family, however, no trace of any ancestor who had lived abroad; and
+the three moors' heads with ivory rings through their noses which
+appeared in one quarter of the scutcheon were always understood by
+later generations to have been a distinction conferred for some
+special butchery-business among the Saracens.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell glanced at her husband, as he stood with his back to her
+in the window, and then went on with the mending, patiently waiting
+till the mood should have passed off, or she should have thought of
+something with which to beguile him.
+
+When he had finished the whisky-and-water, he turned and looked at her
+with critical disapprobation.
+
+"I wonder why it is when a woman marries she takes no more pains with
+herself," he ejaculated. "When I married you, you were one of the
+smartest girls I ever saw."
+
+"It would be difficult to be smart just now," she answered.
+
+He made a gesture of impatience. "But why should a woman give up
+everything when she marries? You had more accomplishments than most of
+them, and now all you do, it seems to me, is the mending."
+
+"The mending must be done," she answered deprecatingly, "and I'm not
+very strong. I'm not able to do everything. I would if I could."
+
+There was a wild stampede at this moment. The four elder children had
+returned from school, and the two younger ones from a walk with their
+nurse, and now burst into the room, in wild spirits, demanding dinner.
+It was the first bright moment of the morning for their mother, but
+her husband promptly spoilt her pleasure.
+
+"Sit down at table," he roared, "and don't let me hear another word
+from any of you. A man comes home to be quiet, and this is the kind of
+thing that awaits him!"
+
+The children shrank to their places abashed, while their mother
+escaped to the kitchen to hurry the dinner. The form--or farce--of
+grace was gone through before the meal commenced. The children ate
+greedily, but were obediently silent. All the little confidences and
+remarks which it would have been so healthy for them to make, and so
+good for their mother to hear, had to be suppressed, and the silence
+and constraint made everyone dyspeptic. The dinner consisted of only
+one dish, a hash, which Mrs. Caldwell had made because her husband had
+liked it so much the last time they had had it. He turned it over on
+his plate now, however, ominously, blaming the food for his own want
+of appetite. Mrs. Caldwell knew the symptoms, and sighed.
+
+"I can't eat this stuff," he said at last, pushing his plate away from
+him.
+
+"There's a pudding coming," his wife replied.
+
+"Oh, a pudding!" he exclaimed. "I know what our puddings are. Why
+aren't women taught something sensible? What's the use of all your
+accomplishments if you can't cook the simplest dish? What a difference
+it would have made to my life if you had been able to make pastry
+even."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell thought of the time she had spent on her feet in the
+kitchen that morning doing her best, and she also thought how easy it
+would have been for him to marry a woman who could cook, if that were
+all he wanted; but she had no faint glimmering conception that it was
+unreasonable to expect a woman of her class to cook her dinner as well
+as eat it. One servant is not expected to do another's work in any
+establishment; but a mother on a small income, the most cruelly tried
+of women, is too often required to be equal to anything. Mrs. Caldwell
+said nothing, however. She belonged to the days when a wife's meek
+submission to anything a man chose to say made nagging a pleasant
+relaxation for the man, and encouraged him to persevere until he
+acquired a peculiar ease in the art, and spoilt the tempers of
+everybody about him.
+
+The arrival of the family doctor put an end to the scene. Mrs.
+Caldwell told the children to run away, and her husband's countenance
+cleared.
+
+"Glad to see you, Gottley," he said. "What will you have?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, thank you. I can't stay a moment. I just looked in to
+see how Mrs. Caldwell was getting on."
+
+"Oh, she's all right," her husband answered for her cheerfully. "How
+are you all, especially Miss Bessie?"
+
+"Ha! ha!" said the old gentleman, sitting down by the table. "That
+reminds me I'm not on good terms with Bessie this morning. I'm generally
+careful, you know, but it seems I said something disrespectful about a
+Christian brother--a _Christian_ brother, mind you--and I've been had up
+before the family tribunal for blasphemy, and condemned to everlasting
+punishment. Lord!--But, mark my words," he exclaimed emphatically, "a
+time will come when every school-girl will see, what my life is made a
+burden to me for seeing now, the absurdity of the whole religious
+superstition."
+
+"O doctor!" Mrs. Caldwell cried, "surely you believe in God?"
+
+"God has not revealed Himself to me, madam; I know nothing about Him,"
+the old gentleman answered gently.
+
+"Ah, there you know you are wrong, Gottley," Mr. Caldwell chimed in,
+and then he proceeded to argue the question. The old doctor, being in
+a hurry, said little in reply, and when he had gone Mrs. Caldwell
+exclaimed, with wifely tact--
+
+"Well, I think you had the best of that!"
+
+"Well, I think I had, poor old buffer!" her husband answered
+complacently, his temper restored. "By the way, I've brought in the
+last number of Dickens. Shall I read it to you?"
+
+Her face brightened. "Yes, do," she rejoined. "One moment, till Jane
+has done clearing the table. Here's your chair," and she placed the
+only easy one in the room for him, in the best light.
+
+These readings were one of the joys of her life. He read to her often,
+and read exceedingly well. Books were the bond of union between them,
+the prop and stay of their married life. Poor as they were, they
+always managed to find money for new ones, which they enjoyed together
+in this way. Intellectuality balanced the morbid irritability of the
+husband's temperament, and literature made life tolerable to them both
+as nothing else could have done. As he read now, his countenance
+cleared, and his imaginary cares fell from him; while his wife's very
+real ones were forgotten as she listened, and there was a blessed
+truce to trouble for a time. Unfortunately, however, as the reading
+proceeded, he came to a rasping bit of the story, which began to grate
+upon his nerves. The first part had been pleasurably exciting, but
+when he found the sensation slipping from him, he thought to stay it
+with a stimulant, and went to the sideboard for the purpose. Mrs.
+Caldwell's heart sank; the whisky bottle was all but empty.
+
+"Oh, damn it!" he exclaimed, banging it down on the sideboard. "And I
+suppose there is none in the house. There never is any in the house.
+No one looks after anything. My comfort is never considered. It is
+always those damned children."
+
+"Henry!" his wife protested; but she was too ill to defend herself
+further.
+
+"What a life for a man," he proceeded; "stuck down in this cursed
+hole, without a congenial soul to speak to, in or out of the house."
+
+"That is a cruel thing to say, Henry," she remonstrated with dignity.
+
+"Well, I apologise," he rejoined ungraciously. "But you must confess
+that I have some cause to complain."
+
+He was standing behind her as he spoke, and she felt that he eyed her
+the while with disapproval of her appearance, and anger at her
+condition. She knew the look only too well, poor soul, and her
+attitude was deprecating as she sat there gazing up pitifully at the
+strip of level greyness above the houses opposite. She said nothing,
+however, only rocked herself on her chair, and looked forlornly
+miserable; seeing which brought his irritation to a climax. He flung
+the book across the room; but even in the act, his countenance
+cleared. He was standing in the window, and caught a glimpse of Bessie
+Gottley, who was passing at the moment on the opposite side of the
+road, and looked across at him, smiling and nodding invitingly. Mrs.
+Caldwell saw the pantomime, and her heart contracted with a pang when
+she saw how readily her husband responded. It was hard that the evil
+moods should not be conquered for her as well as for Bessie Gottley.
+
+Bridget came in just then, bringing the belated whisky.
+
+"Oh, you did order it," he graciously acknowledged. "Why didn't you
+say so?" He opened the bottle, and poured some out for himself.
+"Here's to the moon-faced Bessie!" he said jocularly.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell went on with the mending. Her husband began to walk up
+and down the room, in a good humour again. He walked peculiarly, more
+on his toes than his heels, with an odd little spring in each step, as
+if it were the first step of a dance. This springiness gave to his
+gait a sort of buoyancy which might have seemed natural to him, if
+exaggerated, in his youth, but had the air of an affectation in middle
+life, as if it were part of an assumption of juvenility.
+
+"Won't you go on with the reading?" his wife said at last. His
+restlessness worried her.
+
+"No," he answered; "I shall go out. I want exercise."
+
+"When will you be back?" she asked wistfully.
+
+"Oh, hang it all! don't nag me. I shall come back when I like."
+
+He left the room as he spoke, slamming the door behind him. Mrs.
+Caldwell did not alter her attitude, but the tears welled up in her
+eyes, and ran down her haggard cheeks unheeded. The children came in,
+and finding her so, quietly left the room, all but the eldest girl,
+who went and leant against her, slipping her little hand through her
+mother's arm. The poor woman kissed the child passionately; then, with
+a great effort, recovered her self-control, put her work away, gave
+the children their tea, read to them for an hour, and saw them to bed.
+The front door was open when she came downstairs, and she went to shut
+it. A lady, who knew her, happened to be passing, and stopped to shake
+hands. "I saw your husband just now sitting on the beach with Bessie
+Gottley," she informed Mrs. Caldwell pleasantly. "They were both
+laughing immoderately."
+
+"Very likely," Mrs. Caldwell responded with a smile. "She amuses my
+husband immensely. But won't you come in?"
+
+"No, thank you. Not to-night. I am hurrying home. Glad to see you
+looking so well;" with which she nodded, and went her way; and Mrs.
+Caldwell returned to the little dining-room, holding her head high
+till she had shut the door, when she burst into a tempest of tears.
+She was a lymphatic woman ordinarily, but subject to sudden squalls of
+passion, when she lost all self-control.
+
+She would have sobbed aloud now, when the fit was on her, in the face
+of the whole community, although the constant effort of her life was
+to keep up appearances. She had recovered herself, however, before the
+servant came in with the candles, and was sitting in the window
+looking out anxiously. The greyness of the long June day was darkening
+down to night now, but there was no change in the sultry stillness of
+the air. Summer lightning played about in the strip of sky above the
+houses opposite. One of the houses was a butcher's shop, and while
+Mrs. Caldwell sat there, the butcher brought out a lamb and killed it.
+Mrs. Caldwell watched the operation with interest. They did strange
+things in those days in that little Irish seaport, and, being an
+Englishwoman, she looked on like a civilised traveller intelligently
+studying the customs of a savage people.
+
+But as the darkness gathered, the trouble of her mind increased. Her
+husband did not return, and a sickening sensation of dread took
+possession of her. Where had he gone? What was he doing? Doubtless
+enjoying himself--what bitterness there was in the thought! She did
+not grudge him any pleasure, but it was hard that he should find so
+little in her company. Why was there no distraction for her? The
+torment of her mind was awful; should she try his remedy? She went to
+the sideboard and poured herself out some whisky, but even as she
+raised it to her lips she felt it unworthy to have recourse to it, and
+put the glass down untouched.
+
+After that she went and leant against the window-frame. It was about
+midnight, and very few people passed. Whenever a man appeared in the
+distance, she had a moment of hope, but only to be followed by the
+sickening sensation of another disappointment. The mental anguish was so
+great that for some time she paid no attention to physical symptoms
+which had now begun. By degrees, however, these became importunate, and
+oh the relief of it! The trouble of her mind ceased when the physical
+pain became acute, and therefore she welcomed it as a pleasant
+distraction. She was obliged to think and be practical too; there was no
+one in the house to help her. The sleeping children were of course out
+of the question, and the two young servants, maid-of-all-work and
+nurse, nearly as much so. Besides, there was the difficulty of calling
+them. She felt she must not disturb Jane who was in the nursery, for
+fear of rousing the children; but should she ever get to Bridget's room,
+which was further off? Step by step she climbed the stairs, clinging to
+the banister with one hand, holding the candle in the other. Several
+times she sank down and waited silently, but with contracted face, till
+a paroxysm had passed. At last she reached the door. Bridget was awake
+and had heard her coming. "Holy Mother!" she exclaimed, startled out of
+her habitual sullenness by her mistress's agonised face. "Yer ill,
+ma'am! Let me help you to your bed!"
+
+"Fetch the doctor and the nurse, Bridget," Mrs. Caldwell was just able
+to gasp.
+
+In the urgency and excitement of the moment, there was a truce to
+hostilities. Bridget jumped up, in night-dress and bare feet, and
+supported her mistress to her room. There she was obliged to leave her
+alone; and so it happened that, just as the grey dawn trembled with
+the first flush of a new and brighter day, the child arrived
+unassisted and without welcome, and sent up a wail of protest. When
+the doctor came at last, and had time to attend to her, he pronounced
+her to be a fine child, and declared that she had made a good
+beginning, and would do well for herself, which words the nurse
+declared to be of happy omen. Her father was not fit to appear until
+late in the day. He came in humbly, filled with remorse for that
+mis-spent night, and was received with the feeble flicker of a smile,
+which so touched and softened him that he made more of the new child,
+and took a greater interest in her than he had done in any of the
+others at the time of their birth. There was some difficulty about a
+name for her. Her father proposed to call her Elizabeth--after his
+sister, he said--but Mrs. Caldwell objected. Elizabeth was Miss
+Gottley's name also, a fact which she recollected, but did not
+mention. That she did not like the name seemed reason enough for not
+choosing it; but her husband persisted, and then there was a hot
+dispute on the subject above the baby's cradle. The dispute ended in a
+compromise, the mother agreeing to have the child christened Elizabeth
+if she were not called so; and she would not have her called Eliza,
+Elsie, Elspeth, Bessie, Betsy, or Bess either. This left nothing for
+it but to call her Beth, and upon consideration both parents liked the
+diminutive, her father because it was unaccustomed, and her mother
+because it had no association of any kind attached to it.
+
+For the first three months of her life Beth cried incessantly, as if
+bewailing her advent. Then, one day, she opened her eyes wide, and
+looked out into the world with interest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was the sunshine really that first called her into conscious
+existence, the blessed heat and light; up to the moment that she
+recognised these with a certain acknowledgment of them, and consequently
+of things in general outside herself, she had been as unconscious as a
+white grub without legs. But that moment roused her, calling forth from
+her senses their first response in the thrill of warmth and well-being
+to which she awoke, and quickening her intellect at the same time with
+the stimulating effort to discover from whence her comfort came. She
+could remember no circumstance in connection with this earliest
+awakening. All she knew of it was the feeling of warmth and brightness,
+which she said recurred to her at odd times ever afterwards, and could
+be recalled at will.
+
+Some may see in this first awakening a foreshadowing of the fact that
+she was born to be a child of light, and to live in it; and certainly
+it was always light for which she craved, the actual light of day,
+however; but nothing she yearned for ever came to her in the form she
+thought of, and thus, when she asked for sunshine it was grudgingly
+given, fate often forcing her into dark dwellings; but all the time
+that light which illumines the spirit was being bestowed upon her in
+limitless measure.
+
+The next step in her awakening was to a kind of self-consciousness.
+She was lying on her nurse's lap out of doors, looking up at the sky,
+and some one was saying, "Oh, you pretty thing!" But it was long years
+before she connected the phrase with herself, although she smiled in
+response to the voice that uttered it. Then she found herself on her
+feet in a garden, moving very carefully for fear of falling; and
+everything about her was gigantic, from Jane Nettles, the nurse, at
+whose skirt she tugged when she wanted to attract attention, to the
+brown wallflower and the purple larkspur which she could not reach to
+pull. There was a thin hedge at the end of the garden, through which
+she looked out on a path across a field, and a thick hedge on her
+left, in which a thrush had built a nest at an immense height above
+her head. Jane lifted her up to look into the nest, and there was
+nothing in it; then Jane lifted her up again, and, oh! there was a
+blue egg there; and Jane lifted her up a third time, and the egg had
+brown spots on it. The mystery of the egg awed her. She did not ask
+herself how it came to be there, but she felt a solemn wonder in the
+fact, and the colour caused a sensation of pleasure, a positive
+thrill, to run through her. This was her first recognition of beauty,
+and it was to the beauty of colour, not of form, that her senses
+awoke! Through life she had a keen joy and nice discrimination in
+colours, and seemed to herself to have always known their names.
+
+But those spots on the egg. She was positive that they had come
+between her first and second peep, which shows how defective her
+faculty of observation, which became so exact under cultivation, was
+to begin with. Beth also betrayed other traits with regard to the
+spots, which she carried through life--the trick of being most
+positive when she was quite in the wrong, for one; and want of faith
+in other people, for another.
+
+Jane said: "Did you see the spots that time, dearie?"
+
+"Spots just comed," Beth declared.
+
+"No, dearie, spots always there," Jane answered.
+
+"Spots _comed_," Beth maintained.
+
+"No, dearie. Spots always there, only you didn't see them."
+
+"Spots comed _now_!" Beth stamped, and then, because Jane shook her
+head, she sat down suddenly on the gravel, and sent up a howl which
+brought her father out. He chucked Jane under the chin. Jane giggled,
+then made a sign; and there was Mrs. Caldwell looking from one to the
+other.
+
+To Beth's recollection it seemed as if she had rapidly acquired the
+experiences of this first period. Each incident that she remembered is
+apparently trifling in itself, but who can say of what significance as
+an indication? In those first few years, had there been any there with
+intelligence to interpret, they probably would have found foreshadowings
+of all she might be, and do, and suffer; and that would have been the
+time to teach her. To me, therefore, these earliest impressions are more
+interesting than much that occurred to her in after life, and I have
+carefully collected them in the hope of finding some clue in them to
+what followed. In several instances it seems to me that the impression
+left by some chance observation or incident on her baby mind, made it
+possible for her to do many things in after life which she certainly
+never would have done but for those early influences. It would be
+affectation, therefore, to apologise for such detail. Nothing can be
+trivial or insignificant that tends to throw light on the mysterious
+growth of our moral and intellectual being. Many a cramped soul that
+struggles on in after years, vainly endeavouring to rise on a broken
+wing, might, had the importance of such seeming trifles in its
+development been recognised, have won its way upward from the first,
+untrammelled and uninjured. It was a Jesuit, was it not, who said: "Give
+me the child until it is six years old; after that you can do as you
+like with it." That is the time to make an indelible impression of
+principles upon the mind. In the first period of life, character is a
+blossom that should be carefully touched; in the second the petals
+fall, and the fruit sets; it is hard and acrid then until the third
+period, when, if things go well, it will ripen on the bough, and be
+sweet and wholesome--if ill, it will drop off immediately, and rot upon
+the ground.
+
+Beth was a combative child, always at war with Jane. There was a great
+battle fought about a big black velvet bonnet that Beth wanted to wear
+one day. Beth screamed and kicked and scratched and bit, and finally
+went out in the bonnet triumphantly, and found herself standing alone
+on the edge of a great green world dotted with yellow gorse. A hot,
+wide dusty road stretched miles away in front of her; and at an
+infinite distance overhead was the blue sky flecked with clouds so
+white and dazzling that her eyes ached when she looked at them. She
+had stopped a moment to cry, "Wait for me!" Jane walked on, however,
+taking no notice, and Beth struggled after her, whimpering, out of
+breath, choked with dust, scorched with heat, parched with thirst,
+tired to death--how she suffered! A heartless lark sang overhead,
+regardless of her misery: and she never afterwards heard a lark
+without recalling the long white road, the heat, and dust, and
+fatigue. She tore off the velvet bonnet, and threw it away, then began
+another despairing "Wait for me!" But in the midst of the cry she saw
+some little yellow flowers growing in the grass at the roadside, and
+plumped down then and there inconsequently to gather them. By that
+time Jane was out of sight; and at the moment Beth became aware of the
+fact, she also perceived an appalling expanse of bright blue sky above
+her, and sat, gazing upwards, paralysed with terror. This was her
+first experience of loneliness, her first terrified sensation of
+immensity.
+
+Then the snowdrops and crocuses were out, and the sky grew black, and
+she sat on the nursery floor and looked up at it in solemn wonder.
+Flakes of snow began to fall, a few at first, then thicker and
+thicker, till the air was full of them, and Jane said, "The Scotch are
+picking their geese," and immediately Beth saw the Scotch sitting in
+some vague scene, picking geese in frenzied haste, and throwing great
+handfuls of feathers up in the air; which was probably the first
+independent flight of her imagination.
+
+It is astonishing how little consciousness of time there is in these
+reminiscences. The seasons are all confounded, and it is as if things
+had happened not in succession but abreast. There was snow on the
+ground when her brother Jim was with her in the wash-house, making
+horse-hair snares to catch birds. They made running loops of the
+horse-hair, and tied them on to sticks, then went out and stuck them
+in the ground in the garden outside the wash-house window, sprinkled
+crumbs of bread, and crept carefully back to watch. First came a
+robin with noiseless flight, and lit on the ground with its head on
+one side; but the children were too eager, and in their excitement
+they made a noise, and the robin flew away. Next came a sparrow, saw
+the children, saw the crumbs, and, with the habitual self-possession
+of his race, stretched in his head between the sticks, picked out the
+largest piece of bread, and carried it off in triumph. Immediately
+afterwards a blackbird flew down, and hopped in among the snares
+unconsciously. In a moment he was caught, and, with a wild shout of
+joy, the children rushed out to secure their prize; but when they
+reached the spot the blackbird had burst his bonds and escaped. Then
+Beth threw a chunk of wood at her brother, and cut his head open. His
+cries brought out the household, and Beth was well shaken--she was
+always being shaken at this time--and marched off promptly to papa's
+dressing-room, and made to sit on a little chair in the middle of the
+floor, where she amused herself by singing at the top of her voice--
+
+    "All around Sebastopol,
+       All around the ocean,
+     Every time a gun goes off,
+       Down falls a Russian."
+
+She wondered why her father and mother were laughing when they came to
+release her. Before they appeared, however, brother Jim, her victim,
+had come to the door with his head tied up, and peeped in; and she
+knew that they were friends again, because he shot ripe gooseberries
+at her across the floor as if they had been marbles. There is a
+discrepancy here, seeing that snow and ripe gooseberries are not in
+season at the same time. It is likely, however, that she broke her
+brother's head more than once, and the occasions became confounded in
+her recollection.
+
+When the children went to bathe off the beach, Beth would not let Jane
+dip her if kicking, scratching, and screaming could prevent it. There
+used to be terrible scenes between them, until at last one day
+somebody else's old Scotch nurse interfered, and persuaded Beth to go
+into the water with her and consent to be dipped three times. Beth
+went like a lamb--instead of having to be dragged in and pushed under,
+given no time to recover her breath between each dip, half choked with
+sand and salt water, and finally dragged out, exhausted by the
+struggle, and certainly suffering more than she had benefited by the
+immersion. The cold water came up about her and took her breath away
+as the old Scotch nurse led her in, and Beth clung to her hand and
+panted "Wait!" as she nerved herself for the dip. Nurse had promised
+to wait until Beth was ready, and it was Beth's faith in her promise
+that gave her courage to go bravely through the ordeal. The old Scotch
+nurse never deceived her as Jane had done, and so Beth learnt that
+there are people in the world you can depend on.
+
+There was one painful circumstance in connection with those battles on
+the beach. Beth was such a tiny girl, they did not think it necessary
+to give her a bathing dress, and consequently she was marched into the
+water with nothing on; and the agony of shame she suffered is
+indescribable. But the worst of it was, the shame wore off. Jim teased
+her about it and called her "a little girl," a dreadful term of
+reproach in those days, when the boys were taught to consider
+themselves superior beings. Beth flew at him, and fought him for it,
+but was beaten; and then she took off her things in the nursery, and
+scampered up and down before them all, with nothing on, just to show
+how little she cared.
+
+It is astonishing how small a part Beth's family play in these
+childish recollections. Her father took very little notice of the
+children. He was out of health and irritable, and only tried to save
+himself annoyance; not to disturb him was the object of everybody's
+life. Probably he only appeared on the scene when Beth was naughty,
+and the recollection, being painful, was quickly banished. She
+remembered him coming downstairs when she was standing in the hall one
+day, when her mother was away from home. He had a letter in his hand,
+and asked her if she would send her love to mamma. Her heart bounded;
+it seemed to her such a tremendous thing to be asked; and she was
+dying to send her love; but such an agony of shyness came upon her,
+she could not utter a word. She had a little hymn-book in her hand,
+however, which she held out to her father. No, that would not do. He
+could not send the book, only her love. Didn't she love mamma? Didn't
+she! But not a word would come.
+
+All through life she was afflicted with that inability to speak at
+critical times. Dumb always was she apt to be when her affections were
+concerned, except occasionally, in moments of strong excitement; and
+in anger, when she was driven to bay. The intensity of her feelings
+would probably have made her dumb in any case in moments of emotion;
+but doubtless the hardness of those about her at this impressionable
+period strengthened the defect. It is impossible to escape from the
+hampering influences of our infancy. Among Beth's many recollections
+of these days, there was not one of a caress given or received, or of
+any expression of tenderness; and so she never became familiar with
+the exquisite language of love, and was long in learning that it is
+not a thing to be ashamed of and concealed.
+
+Later that day, with a mighty effort, she summoned up courage enough
+to go down to her father. She was determined to send the message to
+mamma; but when it came to the point, she was again unable to utter a
+word on the subject. Her mother had gone to stay with her relations in
+England. Beth found her father in the dining-room, and several other
+people were present. He was standing by the sideboard, mixing
+whisky-and-water, so, instead of sending her love to mamma, Beth
+exclaimed, confidently and pleasantly, "If you drink whisky, you'll be
+drunk again."
+
+A smart slap rewarded this sally. Beth turned pale and recoiled. It
+was her first taste of human injustice. To drink and to be drunk was
+to her merely the natural sequence of cause and effect, and she could
+not conceive why she should be slapped and turned out of the room so
+promptly for uttering such a simple truth.
+
+Beth was present at many discussions between her father and mother,
+and took much interest in them, all the more perhaps, because most of
+what was said was a mystery to her. She wondered why any mention of
+the "moon-faced Bessie" disturbed her mother's countenance. Jane
+Nettles, too--when her mother was out, her father used to come and
+talk to Jane, and they laughed a good deal. He admired Jane's white
+teeth, and the children used to make Jane show them her teeth after
+that.
+
+"Papa says Jane's got nice white teeth," Beth said to her mother one
+day, and she never forgot the glance which Mrs. Caldwell threw at her
+husband. His eyes fell before it.
+
+"What! even the servants, Henry!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, and then
+she left the room. Beth learned what it all meant in after years, the
+career of one of her brothers furnishing the clue. Like father, like
+son.
+
+It was after this that Mrs. Caldwell went to visit her relations in
+England, accompanied by two of the children. It was in the summer, and
+Jane took Beth to the Castle Hill that morning to see the steamer,
+with her mother on board, go by. The sea was iridescent, like molten
+silver, the sky was high and cloudless, and where sea and sky met and
+mingled on the horizon it was impossible to determine. Numbers of
+steamers passed far out. They looked quite small, and Beth did not
+think there was room in any of them for her mother and brother and
+sister. They did not, therefore, interest her much, nor did the
+policeman who came and talked to Jane. But the Castle Hill, and the
+little winding path up which she had come, the green of the grass, the
+brambles, the ferns, the ruined masonry against which she leant, the
+union of sea and sky and shore, the light, the colour, absorbed her,
+and drew her out of herself. Her soul expanded, it spread its wings,
+it stretched out spiritual arms to meet and clasp the beloved nature
+of which it felt itself to be a part. It was her earliest recognition
+of their kinship, a glimpse of greatness, a moment of ecstasy never to
+be forgotten, the first stirring in herself of the creative faculty,
+for in her joy she burst out into a little song--
+
+    "Far on the borders of the Arcane."
+
+It was as if the pleasure played upon her, using her as a passive
+instrument by which it attained to audible expression. For how should
+a child know a word like Arcane? It came to her as things do which we
+have known and forgotten--the whole song did in fact; but she held it
+as a possession sacred to herself, and never recorded it, or told more
+than that one line, although it stayed with her, lingered on her lips,
+and in her heart, for the rest of her life. It was a great moment for
+Beth, the moment when her further faculty first awoke. On looking back
+to it in after years, she fancied she found in it confirmation of an
+opinion which she afterwards formed. Genius to her was yet only
+another word for soul. She could not believe that we all have souls,
+or that they are at all equally developed even in those who have
+obtained them. She was a child under six at this time, Jane Nettles
+was a woman between twenty and thirty, and the policeman--she could
+not say what age he was; but she was the only one of the three that
+throbbed responsive to the beauty of the wonderful scene before them,
+or felt her being flooded with the glory of the hour.
+
+Meanwhile, what her parents would have called her education had begun.
+She went with Mildred, her elder sister, to a day school. They used to
+run down the street together without a nurse, and the sense of freedom
+was delicious to Beth. They had to pass the market where the great
+mealy specimen potatoes were displayed, and Mary Lynch's shop--she was
+the vegetable woman, who used to talk to Mrs. Caldwell about the
+children when they went there, and one or the other always called them
+"poor little bodies," upon which they commented afterwards among
+themselves. Mary Lynch was a large red-faced woman, and when the
+children wanted to describe a stout person they always said, "As fat
+as Mary Lynch." One house which Beth had to pass on her way to school
+made a strong impression on her imagination. It was a gloomy abode
+with a broad doorstep and deep portico, broken windows, and a
+mud-splashed door, from beneath which she always expected to see a
+slender stream of blood slowly trickling. For a man called Macgregor
+had murdered his wife there--beaten her brains out with a poker. Beth
+never heard the name Macgregor in after life without a shiver of
+dislike. Much of her time at school was spent in solitary confinement
+for breaches of the peace. With a face as impassive as a monkey's she
+would do the most mischievous things, and was always experimenting in
+naughty tricks, as on one occasion when Miss Deeble left the
+schoolroom for a minute, but had to come hurrying back, recalled by
+wild shrieks; and found that Beth had managed in that minute to tip up
+a form with four children on it, throw their books out of the window,
+and sprinkle ink all over the floor. Miss Deeble marched her
+downstairs to an empty kitchen, and left her sitting on a stool in the
+middle of it with an A B C in her hand. But Beth took no interest in
+the alphabet in those days, and hunted black-beetles with the bellows
+instead of learning it. The hearthstone was the place of execution.
+When she found a beetle, she would blow him along to it with the
+bellows, and there despatch him. She had no horror of any creature in
+her childhood, but as she matured, her whole temperament changed in
+this respect, and when she met a beetle on the stairs she would turn
+and fly rather than pass it, and she would feel nauseated, and shiver
+with disgust for hours after if she thought of it. She knew the exact
+moment that this horror came upon her; it happened when she was ten
+years old. She found a beetle one day lying on its back, and thinking
+it was dead, she took it up, and was swinging it by its antennae when
+the creature suddenly wriggled itself round, and twined its prickly
+legs about her finger, giving her a start from which she never
+recovered.
+
+Beth probably got as far as A B ab, while she was at Miss Deeble's;
+but if she were backward with her book, her other faculties began to
+be acute. It was down in that empty kitchen that she first felt the
+enchantment of music. Some one suddenly played the piano overhead and
+Beth listened spell-bound. Again and again the player played, and
+always the same thing, practising it. Beth knew every note. Long
+afterwards she was trying some waltzes of Chopin's, and came upon one
+with which she was quite familiar. She knew that she had heard it all,
+over and over again, but could not think when or where. Presently,
+however, as she played it, she perceived a smell of black-beetles, and
+instantly she was back in that disused kitchen of Miss Deeble's,
+listening to the practising overhead.
+
+All Beth's senses were acute, and from the first her memory helped
+itself by the involuntary association of incongruous ideas. Many
+people's recollections are stimulated by the sense of smell, but it is
+a rarer thing for the sense of taste to be associated with the past in
+the same way, as it was in Beth's case. There were many circumstances
+which were recalled by the taste of the food she had been eating at
+the time they occurred. The children often dined in the garden in
+those early days, and once a piece of apple-dumpling Beth was eating
+slid off her plate on to the gravelled walk. Some one picked it up,
+and put it on her plate again, all covered with stones and grit, and
+the sight of hot apple-dumpling made her think of gravel ever
+afterwards, and filled her with disgust; so that she could not eat it.
+She had a great aversion to bread and butter too for a long time, but
+that she got over. It would have been too great an inconvenience to
+have a child dislike its staple food, and in all probability she was
+forced to conquer her aversion, and afterwards she grew to like bread
+and butter; but still, if by any chance the circumstances which caused
+her dislike to it recurred to her when she was eating a piece, she was
+obliged to stop. The incident which set up the association happened
+one evening when her father and mother were out. Beth was alone in the
+dining-room eating bread and butter, and Towie, the cat, came into the
+room with a mouse in her mouth. The mouse was alive, and Towie let it
+run a little way, and then pounced down upon it, then gave it a pat to
+make it run again. Beth, lying on her stomach on the floor, watching
+these proceedings, naturally also became a cat with a mouse. At last
+Towie began to eat her mouse, beginning with its head, which it
+crushed. Beth, eating her bread and butter in imitation, saw the white
+brains, but felt no disgust at the moment. The next time she had bread
+and butter, however, she thought of the mouse's brains and felt sick;
+and always afterwards the same association of ideas was liable to
+recur to her with the same result.
+
+But even the description of anything horrifying affected her in this
+way. One day when she was growing up her mother told her at dinner
+that she had been on the pier that morning and had seen the body of a
+man, all discoloured and swollen from being in the water a long time,
+towed into the harbour by a fishing boat. Beth listened and asked
+questions, as she always did on these occasions, with the deepest
+interest. She was taking soup strongly flavoured with catsup at the
+moment, and the story in no way interfered with her appetite; but the
+next time she tried catsup, and ever afterwards, she perceived that
+swollen, discoloured corpse, and immediately felt nauseated. It is
+curious that all these associations of ideas are disagreeable. She had
+not a single pleasant one in connection with food.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+All of Beth that was not eyes at this time was ears, and her brain was
+as busy as a squirrel in the autumn, storing observations and
+registering impressions. It does not do to trust to a child's not
+understanding. It may not understand at the moment, but it will
+remember all the same--all the more, perhaps, because it does not
+understand; and its curiosity will help it to solve the problem. Beth
+did humorous things at this time, but she had no sense of humour; she
+was merely experimenting. Her big eyes looked out of an impassive face
+solemnly; no one suspected the phenomenal receptivity which that
+stolid mask concealed, and, because the alphabet did not interest her,
+they formed a poor opinion of her intellect. The truth was that she
+had no use for letters or figures. The books of nature and of life
+were spread out before her, and she was conning their contents to more
+purpose than any one else could have interpreted them to her in those
+days. And as to arithmetic, as soon as her father began to allow her a
+penny a week for pocket-money, she discovered that there were two
+half-pennies in it, which was all she required to know. She also
+mastered the system of debit and credit, for, when she found herself
+in receipt of a regular income, and had conquered the first awe of
+entering a shop and asking for things, she ran into debt. She received
+the penny on Saturday, and promptly spent it in sweets, but by Monday
+she wanted more, and the craving was so imperative, that when Miss
+Deeble sent her down to the empty kitchen in the afternoon, she could
+not blow black-beetles with any enthusiasm, and began to look about
+for something else to interest her. It being summer, the window was
+open, but it was rather out of her reach. She managed, however, with
+the help of her stool, to climb on to the sill, and there, in front of
+her, was the sea, and down below was the street--a goodish drop below
+if she had stopped to think of it; but Beth dropped first and thought
+afterwards, only realising the height when she had come down plump,
+and looked up again to see what had happened to her, surprised at the
+thud which had jarred her stomach and made her feet sting. She picked
+herself up at once, however, and limped away, not heeding the hurt
+much, so delightful was it to be out alone without her hat. By the
+time she got to Mary Lynch's she was Jane Nettles going on an errand,
+an assumption which enabled her to enter the shop at her ease.
+
+"Good-day," she began. "Give me a ha'porth of pear-drops, and a
+ha'porth of raspberry-drops, Mary Lynch, please. I'll pay you on
+Saturday."
+
+"What are you doing out alone without your hat?" Mary Lynch rejoined,
+beaming upon her. "I'm afraid you're a naughty little body."
+
+"No, I'm not," Beth answered. "It's my own money." Mary Lynch laughed,
+and helped her liberally, adding some cherries to the sweets; and, to
+Beth's credit be it stated, the money was duly paid, and without
+regret, she being her mother at the moment, looking much relieved to
+be able to settle the debt, which shows that, even by this time, Beth
+had somehow become aware of money-troubles, and also that she learned
+to read a countenance long before she learned to read a book.
+
+She straggled home with the sweets in her hand, but did not eat them,
+for now she was a lady going to give a party, and must await the
+arrival of her guests. She did not go in by the front door for obvious
+reasons, but up the entry down which the open wooden gutter-spout ran,
+at a convenient height, from the house into the street. The wash-house
+was covered with delicious white roses, which scented the summer
+afternoon. Beth concealed her sweets in the rose-tree, and then leant
+against the wall and buried her nose in one of the flowers, loving it.
+The maids were in the wash-house; she heard them talking; it was all
+about what he said and she said. Presently a torrent of dirty water
+came pouring down the spout, mingling its disagreeable soapy smell
+with that of the flowers. Beth plucked some petals from the rose she
+was smelling, set them on the soapy water, and ran down the passage
+beside them, until they disappeared in the drain in the street. This
+delight over, she wandered into the garden. She was always on
+excellent terms with all animals, and was treated by them with
+singular confidence. Towie, the cat, had been missing for some time,
+but now, to Beth's great joy, she suddenly appeared from Beth could
+not tell where, purring loudly, and rubbing herself against Beth's
+bare legs. The sun poured down upon them, and the sensation of the
+cat's warm fur above her socks was delicious. Beth tried to lift her
+up in her arms, but she wriggled herself out of them, and began to run
+backwards and forwards between her and a gap in the hedge, until Beth
+understood that she wished her to follow her through it into the next
+garden. Beth did so, and the cat led her to a little warm nest where,
+to Beth's wild delight, she showed her a tiny black kitten. Beth
+picked it up, and carried it, followed by the cat, into the house in a
+state of breathless excitement, shrieking out the news as she ran.
+Beth was immediately seized upon. What was she doing at home when she
+ought to have been at school? and without her hat, too! Beth had no
+explanation to offer, and was hustled off to the nursery, and there
+shut up for the rest of the day. She stood in the window most of the
+time, a captive princess in the witch's palace, waiting for the
+fairy-prince to release her, and catching flies.
+
+The sky became overcast, and a big gun was fired. Beth's father had
+something to do with the firing of big guns, and she connected this
+with the gathering gloom, stories of God striking wicked people down
+with thunder and lightning for their sins, and her own naughtiness,
+and felt considerably awed. Presently a little boy was carried down
+the street on a bed. His face looked yellow against the sheets. He
+was lying flat on his back, and had a little black cap on, which was
+right out of doors, but wrong in bed. He smiled up at Beth as they
+carried him under the window, and she stretched out her arms to him
+with infinite pity. She knew he was going to die. They all died, that
+family, or had something dreadful happen to them. Jane Nettles said
+there was a curse upon them, and Beth never thought of them without a
+shudder. That boy's sisters both died, and one had something dreadful
+happen to her, for they dug her up again, and when they opened the
+coffin the corpse was all in a jelly, and every colour of the rainbow,
+according to Jane Nettles. Beth believed she had been present upon the
+occasion, in a grass-grown graveyard, by the wall of an old church,
+beneath which steps led down into a vault. The stones of the steps
+were mossy, and the sun was shining. There was a little group of
+people standing round, with pale, set, solemn faces, and presently
+something was brought up, and they all pressed forward to look at it.
+Beth could not see what it was for the grown-up people, and never knew
+whether or not the whole picture had been conjured up by her
+imagination; but as there was always a foundation of fact in the
+impressions of this period of her life, it is not improbable that she
+really was present at the exhumation, with the curious and
+indefatigable Jane Nettles.
+
+Opposite the nursery window, on the other side of the road, was the
+butcher's shop, in front of which the butcher made his shambles. Late
+in the evening he brought out a board and set it on trestles, then he
+brought a sheep, lifted it up by its legs and put it on its back on
+the board, tied its feet, and cut its throat. Beth watched the
+operation with grave interest, but no other feeling. She had been
+accustomed to see it all her life.
+
+Presently Beth's father and mother went out together, and then Beth
+stole downstairs, and out to the wash-house to find the sweets in the
+white rose-tree. Mildred and Jim were doing their lessons in the
+dining-room, and she burst in upon them with the sweets; but Mildred
+was cross, and said:
+
+"Don't make such a noise, Beth, my head aches."
+
+The next day was Sunday. Beth knew it by the big black bonnet which
+played such a large part in her childish recollections. She had a kind
+of sensation of having seen herself in it, bobbing along to church, a
+sort of Kate Greenaway child, with a head out of all proportion to the
+rest of her body, and feeling singularly satisfied--a feeling,
+however, which was less a recollection than an experience continually
+renewed, for a nice gown or bonnet was always a pleasure to her.
+
+In church she sat in a big square pew on one side of the aisle, and on
+the other side was another pew exactly like it, in which sat a young
+lady whom Beth believed to be Miss Augusta Noble in the _Fairchild
+Family_. Augusta Noble was very vain, and got burnt to death for
+standing on tiptoe before the fire to look at herself in a new frock
+in the mirror on the mantelpiece. Beth thought it a suitable end for
+her, and did not pity her at all--perhaps because she went on coming
+to church regularly all the same.
+
+After the service they climbed the Castle Hill; and there was the grey
+of stonework against a bright blue sky, and green of grass and trees
+against the grey, and mountainous clouds of dazzling white hung over a
+molten sea; and because of the beauty of it all, Beth burst into a
+passion of tears.
+
+"What is the matter with that child?" her father exclaimed
+impatiently. "It's very odd other people can bring up their children
+properly, Caroline, but you never seem to be able to manage yours."
+
+"What's the matter with you, you tiresome child?" Mrs. Caldwell
+exclaimed, shaking Beth by the arm. Beth only sobbed the more. "Look,"
+said her mother, pointing to a small lake left by the sea on the shore
+when the tide went out, where the children used to wade knee-deep, or
+bathe when it was too rough for them to go into the sea; "look,
+there's the pond, that bright round thing over there. And look below,
+near the Castle--that great green mound is the giant's grave. When the
+giant died they buried him there, and he was so big, he reached all
+that length when they laid him in the ground."
+
+"And when he stood up where did he reach to?" said Beth, interested in
+a moment.
+
+"Oh, when he sat here, I should think he could make a footstool of his
+own grave, and when he stood up he could look over the Castle."
+
+Beth, with big dilated eyes and wet cheeks, saw him do both, and was
+oppressed to tears no more that day by delight and wonder of the
+beautiful; but she was always liable to these paroxysms, the outcome
+of an intensity of pleasure which was positive pain. So, from the
+first, she was keenly susceptible to outdoor influences, and it was
+now that her memory was stored with impressions which were afterwards
+of inestimable value to her, for she never lived amongst the same kind
+of scenery again.
+
+The children had the run of some gentleman's grounds, which they
+called The Walks. There were banks of flowers, and sidewalks where the
+London pride grew, and water, and great trees with hollows in them
+where the water lodged. Beth called these fairy wells, and put her
+fingers in to see how deep they were, and there were dead leaves in
+them; and there, on a memorable occasion, she found her first
+skeleton leaf, and told Jane Nettles she really didn't know before
+that there were such things. Once there was a wasp's nest hanging from
+a branch, and they met a young man coming away from it, holding a
+handkerchief to his face. He stopped to tell Jane Nettles how he had
+been stung, and the children wandered off unheeded to look at the
+nest. It was all grey and gossamer, like cobwebs laid in layers. Beth
+was an Indian scout inspecting it from behind a neighbouring tree; and
+then she shelled it with sticks, but did not wait to see it surrender.
+
+They picked up horse-chestnuts from under the trees, in the season,
+and hammered the green rind off with stones for the joy of seeing the
+beautiful shining, slippery, dark brown, or piebald, polished fruit
+within; and also, when there were wet leaves on the ground, they
+gathered walnuts from out of the long tangled grass, and stained their
+fingers picking off the covering, which was mealy-green when it burst,
+and smelt nice; but the nut itself, when they came to it, was always
+surprisingly small. There were horrid mahogany-coloured pieces of
+liver put about the walks on sticks sometimes. Jane Nettles said they
+were to poison the dogs because they came in and destroyed the
+flowers. Beth wondered how it was people could eat liver if it
+poisoned dogs, and was careful afterwards not to touch it herself.
+Most children would have worried the reason out of their nurse, but
+Jane Nettles was not amiable, and Beth could never bring herself to
+ask a question of any one who was likely either to snub her for
+asking, or to jeer at her for not knowing. There are unsympathetic
+people who have a way of making children feel ashamed of their
+ignorance, and rather than be laughed at, a sensitive child will
+pretend to know. Beth was extraordinarily sensitive in this respect,
+and so it happened that, in later life, she sometimes found herself in
+ignorance of things which less remarkable people had learnt in their
+infancy for the asking.
+
+These were certainly days of delight to Beth, but the charm of them was
+due less to people than to things--to some sight or scent of nature, the
+smell of new-mown hay from a waggon they had stood aside to let pass in
+a narrow lane, a glimpse of a high bank on the other side of the road--a
+high grassy bank, covered and crowned with trees, chiefly chestnuts, on
+which the sun shone; hawthorn hedgerows from which they used to pick the
+green buds children call bread-and-butter, and eat them; and one
+privet-hedge in their own garden, an impenetrable hedge, on the other
+side of which, as Beth imagined, all kinds of wonderful things took
+place. The flowers of those early days were crocuses, snowdrops, white
+roses, a little yellow flower they called ladies' fingers, sea-pinks,
+and London pride--particularly London pride. In the walks Jane Nettles
+used to teach her the wonderful rhyme of--
+
+    "London Bridge is broken down,
+     Grand, said the little Dee,
+     London Bridge is broken down,
+       Fair-Lade-ee."
+
+And so the rhyme, London pride amongst the rock-work, the ornamental
+water, a rustic bridge, shining laurel leaves, mahogany-coloured
+liver, warmth, light, and sweet airs all became mingled in one
+gracious memory.
+
+People, however, as has been already shown, also came into her
+consciousness, but with less certainty of pleasing, wherefore she
+remembered them less, for it was always her habit to banish a
+disagreeable thought if she could. One day she went into the garden
+with her spade and an old tin biscuit-box. She put the box on the
+ground beside her, with the lid off, and began to dig. By-and-by the
+kitten came crooning and sidling up to her, and hopped into the box.
+Beth instantly put on the lid, and the kitten was a corpse which must
+be buried. She hurriedly dug its grave, put in the box, and covered it
+up with earth. Just as she had finished, a gruff voice exclaimed:
+"What are ye doing there, ye little divil?" and there was old Krangle
+the gardener, looking at her over the hedge. "Dig it up again
+directly," he said, and Beth, much startled, dug it up quicker than
+she had buried it. The kitten had been but loosely covered, and was
+not much the worse, but had got some earth in its eye, which was very
+sore afterwards. People wondered what had hurt it, and Beth looked
+from one to the other and listened with grave attention to their
+various suppositions on the subject. She said nothing, however, and
+Krangle also held his peace, which led to a very good understanding
+between them. Krangle had a cancer on his lip, and Beth was forbidden
+to kiss him for fear of catching it. He had a garden of his own too,
+and a pig, and little boiled potatoes in his cottage. The doctor's
+brother died of cancer, and Beth supposed he had been naughty and
+kissed old Krangle, though she wondered he cared to, as Krangle had a
+very prickly chin. The doctor often came to see papa. He used to talk
+about the Bible, and then the children were sent out of the room. Once
+Beth hid under the table to hear what he said. It was all about God,
+whom it appeared that he did not like. He had a knob at the end of his
+nose, and Beth laughed at it, in punishment of which, as she used to
+believe, her own nose developed a little knob at the end. Her mind was
+very much exercised about the doctor and his household. He and his
+brother and sister used to live together, but now he lived alone, and
+on a bed in one of the rooms, according to Jane Nettles, there were
+furs, and lovely silks, satins, and laces, all being eaten by moths
+and destroyed because there was no one to look after them. It seemed
+such a pity, but whose were they? Where was the lady?
+
+Bridget used to come up to the nursery when the children were in bed,
+to talk to Jane Nettles, and look out of the window. Those gossips in
+the nursery were a great source of disturbance to Beth when she ought
+to have been composing herself to sleep. She recollected nothing of
+the conversations more corrupting than that ghastly account of how the
+girl was exhumed, so it is likely that the servants exercised some
+discretion when they dropped their voices to a whisper, as they often
+did; but these whispered colloquies made her restless and cross, and
+brought down upon her a smart order to go to sleep, to which she used
+to answer defiantly, "I will if you'll ask me a riddle." One of the
+riddles was: "Between two sticks, between two stones, between two old
+men's shin-bones. What's that?" The answer had something to do with a
+graveyard, but Beth could not remember what.
+
+She used to suffer a small martyrdom in her little crib on those
+evenings from what she called "snuff up her nose," a hot, dry, burning
+sensation which must have been caused by a stuffy room, and the
+feverish state she tossed herself into when she was kept awake after
+her regular hour for sleep. Sometimes she sat up in bed suddenly, and
+cried aloud. Then Jane Nettles would push her down again on her pillow
+roughly, and threaten to call mamma if she wasn't good directly.
+Occasionally mamma heard her, and came up of her own accord, and shook
+her by the shoulder, and scolded her. Then Beth would lie still
+sobbing silently, and wretched as only a lonely, uncomprehended, and
+uncomplaining child can be. No one had the faintest conception of what
+she suffered. Her naughtinesses were remembered against her, but her
+latent tenderness was never suspected. Once the old Doctor said:
+"That's a peculiarly sensitive, high-strung, nervous child; you must
+be gentle with her," and both parents had stared at him. They were
+matter-of-fact creatures themselves, comparatively speaking, with a
+notion that such nonsense as nervousness should be shaken out of a
+child.
+
+At dinner, one day, Beth saw little creatures crawling in a piece of
+cheese she had on her plate, and uttered an exclamation of disgust.
+
+"Those are only mites, you silly child," her father said, and then to
+her horror, he took up the piece, and ate it. "Do look at that child,
+Caroline!" he exclaimed, "she's turned quite pale."
+
+Beth puzzled her head for long afterwards to know what it meant to
+turn pale.
+
+Little seeds of superstition were sown in her mind at this time, and
+afterwards flourished. She found a wedding-ring in her first piece of
+Christmas cake, and was told she would be the first of the party to
+marry, which made her feel very important.
+
+Being so sensitive herself, she was morbidly careful of the feelings
+of others, and committed sins of insincerity without compunction in
+her efforts to spare them. She and Mildred were waiting ready dressed
+one day to go and pay a call with mamma. Beth had her big bonnet on,
+and was happy; and Mildred also was in a high state of delight. She
+said Beth's breath smelt of strawberries, and wanted to know what her
+own smelt of.
+
+"Raspberries," Beth answered instantly. It was not true, but Beth felt
+that something of the kind was expected of her, and so responded
+sympathetically. When they got to the house, they were shown into an
+immense room, and wandered about it. Beth upset some cushions, and had
+awful qualms, expecting every moment to be pounced upon, and shaken;
+but she forgot her fright on approaching her hostess, and discovering
+to her great surprise that she was busy doing black monkeys on a grey
+ground in woolwork. She was astonished to find that it was possible to
+do such wonderful work, and she wanted to be taught immediately; but
+her mother made her ashamed of herself for supposing that _she_ could
+do it, silly little body. They stayed dinner, and Beth cried with rage
+because the servant poured white sauce over her fish, and without
+asking her too. The fish was an island, and Beth was the hungry sea,
+devouring it bit by bit. Of course if you put white sauce over it, you
+converted it into a table with a white cloth on, or something of that
+kind, which you could not eat, so the fish was spoilt. She got into a
+difficulty, too, about Miss Deeble's drawing-room, which was upstairs,
+overlooking the bay, and you could only see the water from the window,
+so there were water-colours on the wall. Her mother smilingly tried to
+explain, but Beth stamped, and stuck to her point; the water accounted
+for the water-colours.
+
+On the way home, Beth found a new interest in life. The mill had been
+burnt down, and they went to see the smouldering embers, and Beth
+smelt fire for the first time. The miller's family had been burnt out,
+and were sheltering in a shed. One little boy had his fingers all
+crumpled up from the fire. Beth's benevolence awoke. She was all
+sympathetic excitement, and wanted to do something for somebody. The
+miller's wife was lying on a mattress on the floor. She had a little
+baby, a new one, a pudgy red-looking thing. Mrs. Caldwell fed the
+other children with bread-and-milk, and Beth offered to teach them
+their letters.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell laughed at her: "_You_ teach them their letters!" she
+exclaimed. "You had better learn your own properly." And Mildred also
+jeered. Beth subsided, crimson with shame at being thus lowered in
+everybody's estimation. She was deficient in self-esteem, and required
+to be encouraged. Praise merely gave her confidence; but her mother
+never would praise her. She brought all her children up on the same
+plan, regardless of their different dispositions. It made Mildred vain
+to praise her, and therefore Beth must not be praised; and so her
+mother checked her mental growth again and again instead of helping
+her to develop it. "It's no use your trying to do that, Beth, you
+can't," she would say, when Beth would have done it easily, if only
+she had been assured that she could.
+
+Beth had a strange dream that night after the fire, which made a
+lasting impression upon her. Dorman's Isle was a green expanse, flat
+as a table, and covered with the short grass that grows by the sea. At
+high tide it was surrounded by water, but when the tide was low, it
+rested on great grey, rugged rocks, as the lid of a box rests upon its
+sides. Between the grey of the rocks and the green of the grass there
+was a fringe of sea-pinks. That night she dreamt that she was under
+Dorman's Isle, and it was a great bare cave, not very high, and
+lighted by torches which people held in their hands. There were a
+number of people, and they were all members of her own family,
+ancestors in the dresses of their day, distant relations--numbers of
+strange people whom she had never heard of; as well as her own father
+and mother, brothers and sisters. She knew she was under Dorman's
+Isle, but she knew also that it was the dark space beneath the stage
+of a theatre. When she entered, the rest of the family were already
+assembled; but they none of them spoke to each other, and the doors
+kept opening and shutting, and the people seemed to melt away, until
+at last only three or four remained, and they were just going. She saw
+the shine on the paint of the door-posts, and the smoke of the
+torches, as they let themselves out. Then they had all gone, and left
+her alone in a cave full of smoke. Vainly she struggled to follow
+them, the doors were fast, the smoke was smothering her, and in the
+agony of a last effort to escape she awoke.
+
+In after days, when Beth began to think, she used to wonder how it was
+she knew those people were her ancestors, and that the place was like
+any part of a theatre. She had never heard either of ancestors or
+theatres at that time. Was it recollection? Or is there some more
+perfect power to know than the intellect--a power lying latent in the
+whole race, which will eventually come into possession of it; but with
+which, at present, only some few rare beings are perfectly endowed.
+Beth had the sensation of having been nearer to something in her
+infancy than she ever was again--nearer to knowing what it is the
+trees whisper--what the murmur means, the all-pervading murmur which
+sounds incessantly when everything is hushed, as at night; nearer to
+the "arcane" of that evening on the Castle Hill when she first felt
+her kinship with nature, and burst into song. It may have been
+hereditary memory, a knowledge of things transmitted to her by her
+ancestors along with their features, virtues, and vices; but, at any
+rate, she herself was sure that she possessed a power of some kind in
+her infancy which gradually lapsed as her intellectual faculties
+developed. She was conscious that the senses had come between her and
+some mysterious joy which was not of the senses, but of the spirit.
+There lingered what seemed to be the recollection of a condition
+anterior to this, a condition of which no tongue can tell, which is
+not to be put into words, or made evident to those who have no
+recollection; but which some will comprehend by the mere allusion to
+it. All her life long Beth preserved a half consciousness of this
+something--something which eluded her--something from which she
+gradually drifted further away as she grew older--some sort of vision
+which opened up fresh tracts to her; but whether of country, or
+whether of thought, she could not say. Only, when it came to her, all
+was immeasurable about her; and she was above--above in a great calm
+through which she moved without any sort of effort that is known to
+us; she just thought it, and was there; while humanity dwindled away
+into insignificance below.
+
+One other strange vision she had which she never forgot. With her
+intellect, she believed it to have been a dream, but her further
+faculty always insisted that it was a recollection. She was with a
+large company in an indescribable, hollow space, bare of all
+furnishments because none were required; and into this space there
+came a great commotion, bright light and smoke, without heat or sense
+of suffocation. Then she was alone, making for an aperture; struggling
+and striving with pain of spirit to gain it; and when she had found
+it, she shot through, and awoke in the world. She awoke with a
+terrible sense of desolation upon her, and with the consciousness of
+having traversed infinite space at infinite speed in an interval of
+time which her mortal mind could not measure.
+
+All through life, when she was in possession of her further faculty,
+and perceived by that means--which was only at fitful intervals,
+doubtless because of unfavourable circumstances and surroundings--she
+was calm, strong, and confident. She looked upon life as from a
+height, viewing it both in detail and as a whole. But when she had
+only her intellect to rely upon, all was uncertain, and she became
+weak, vacillating, and dependent. So that she appeared to be a
+singular mixture of weakness and strength, courage and cowardice,
+faith and distrust; and just what she would do depended very much on
+what was expected of her, or what influence she was under, and also on
+some sudden impulse which no one, herself included, could have
+anticipated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Up to this time, Beth's reminiscences jerk along from incident to
+incident, but now there come the order and sequence of an eventful
+period, perfectly recollected. The date is fixed by a change of
+residence. Her father, who was a commander in the coastguard, was
+transferred on promotion from the north of Ireland to another
+appointment in the wild west, and Beth was just entering upon her
+seventh year when they moved. Captain Caldwell went on in advance to
+take up his appointment, and Jim accompanied him; Mildred, Beth, and
+Bernadine, the youngest, who had arrived two years after Beth, being
+left to follow with their mother. The elder children had been sent to
+England to be educated. In their father's absence Mildred and
+Bernadine were transferred to their mother's room, Jane Nettles and
+Bridget, the sulky, had disappeared, and Kitty slept in the nursery
+with Beth. Beth had grown too long for her crib, but still had to
+sleep in it, and her legs were cramped at night and often ached
+because she could not stretch them out, and the pain kept her awake.
+
+"Mamma, my legs do ache in bed," she said one day.
+
+"Beth, you really _are_ a whiny child, you always have a grievance,"
+her mother complained.
+
+"But, mamma, they _do_ ache."
+
+"Well, it's only growing pains," Mrs. Caldwell replied with a satisfied
+air, as if to name the trouble were to ease it. And so Beth's legs ached
+on unrelieved, and, when they kept her awake, Kitty became the object of
+her contemplation. The sides of the crib were like the seat of a
+cane-bottomed chair, and Beth had enlarged one of the holes by fidgeting
+at it with her fingers. This was her look-out station. A night-light had
+been conceded to her nervousness at the instance of Dr. Gottley, when it
+became a regular thing for her to wake in the dark out of one of her
+vivid dreams, and shriek because she could not see where she was. The
+usual beating and shaking had been tried to cure her of her nonsense,
+but this sensible treatment only seemed to make her worse, she was such
+a tiresome child, till at last, when Dr. Gottley threatened serious
+consequences, the light was allowed, a dim little float that burned on
+an inch of oil in a glass of water, and made Kitty look so funny when
+she came up to bed. Kitty began to undress, and at the same time to
+mutter her prayers, as soon as she got into the room; and sometimes she
+would go down on her knees and beat her breast, and sigh and groan to
+the Blessed Virgin, beseeching her to help her. Beth thought at first
+she was in great distress, and pitied her, but after a time she believed
+that Kitty was enjoying herself, perhaps because she also had begun to
+enjoy these exercises. Beth had been taught to say her Protestant
+prayers, but not made to feel that she was addressing them to any
+particular personality that appealed to her imagination, as Kitty's
+Blessed Lady did.
+
+"Kitty, Kitty," she cried one night, sitting up in her crib, with a
+great dry sob. "Tell _me_ how to do it. I want to speak to her too."
+
+Kitty, who was on her knees on the floor, with her rosary clasped in
+her hands, her arms and shoulders bare, and her dark hair hanging down
+her back, looked up, considerably startled: "Holy Mother! how you
+frightened me!" she exclaimed. "Go to sleep."
+
+"But I _want_ to speak to her," Beth persisted.
+
+"Arrah, be good now, Miss Beth," Kitty coaxed, still on her knees.
+
+"I'll be good if you'll tell me what to say," Beth bargained.
+
+Kitty rose from her knees, went to the side of the crib, and looked
+down at the child.
+
+"What do ye want to say to her at all?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know," Beth answered. "I just want to speak to her. I just
+want to say, 'Holy Mother, come close, I love you. Stay by me all
+night long, and when the daylight comes don't forget me.' How would
+you say that, Kitty?"
+
+"Bless your purty eyes, darlint!" said Kitty, "just say it that way
+every time. It couldn't be better said, not by the praste himself. An'
+if the Blessed Mother ever hears anything from this world," she added
+in an undertone, "she'll hear that. But turn over now, an' go to
+sleep, honey. See! I'll stand here till ye do, and sing to you!"
+
+Beth turned over on her left side with her face to the wall, and
+settled herself to sleep contentedly, while Kitty stood beside her,
+patting her shoulder gently, and crooning in a low sweet voice--
+
+    "Look down, O Mother Mary,
+       From thy bright throne above;
+     Send down upon thy children
+       One holy glance of love!
+     And if a heart so tender
+       With pity flows not o'er,
+     Then turn, O Mother Mary,
+       And smile on me no more."
+
+As Beth listened her little heart expanded, and presently the Blessed
+Virgin stood beside her bed, a heavenly vision, like Kitty, with dark
+hair growing low on her forehead and hanging down her back, blue eyes,
+and an earnest, guileless face. Beth's little mouth, drooping with
+dissatisfaction ordinarily, curled up at the corners, and so,
+thoroughly tranquillised, she fell happily asleep, with a smile on her
+lips.
+
+Kitty bent low to look at her, and shook her head several times.
+"Coaxin's better nor bating you, anyway," she muttered. "But what are
+they going to do wid ye at all?" She stood up, and raised her clasped
+hands. "Holy Mother, it 'ud be well maybe if ye'd take her to
+yourself--just now--God forgive me for saying it."
+
+Next morning Mrs. Caldwell was sitting at breakfast with Beth and
+Mildred. Every moment she glanced at the window, and at last the
+postman passed. She listened, but there was no knock, and her heart
+sank.
+
+"Beth, will you stop drumming with your spoon?" she exclaimed
+irritably. As she spoke, however, Kitty came in with the expected
+letter in her hand, and Mrs. Caldwell's countenance cleared: "I
+thought the postman had passed," she exclaimed.
+
+"No, m'em," Kitty rejoined. "I was standin' at the door, an' he gave
+me the letter."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell had opened it by this time, but it was very short. "How
+often am I to tell you not to stand at the door, letting in the cold
+air, Kitty?" she snapped.
+
+"And how'd I sweep the steps, m'em, if you plase, when I'm not to
+stand at the door?"
+
+But Mrs. Caldwell was reading the letter, and again her countenance
+cleared. "Papa wants us to go to him as soon as ever we can get
+ready!" was her joyful exclamation. "And, oh, they've had such snow!
+See, Mildred, here's a sketch of the chapel nearly buried."
+
+"Oh, let me see, too," Beth cried, running round the table to look
+over Mildred's shoulder.
+
+"Did papa draw that? How _wonderful_!"
+
+"Beth, don't lean on me so," Mildred said crossly, shaking her off.
+
+The sketch, which was done in ink on half a sheet of paper, showed a
+little chapel with great billows of snow rolling along the sides and
+up to the roof. After breakfast, Mildred sat down and began to copy it
+in pencil, to Beth's intense surprise. The possibility of copying it
+herself would never have occurred to her, but when she saw Mildred
+doing it of course she must try too. She could make nothing of it,
+however, till Mildred showed her how to place each stroke, and then
+she was very soon weary of the effort, and gave it up, yawning.
+Drawing was not to be one of her accomplishments.
+
+Kitty was to accompany them to the west.
+
+When the day of departure arrived, a great coach and pair came to the
+door, and the luggage was piled up on it. Beth, with her mouth set, and
+her eyes twice their normal size from excitement, was everywhere,
+watching everybody, afraid to miss anything that happened. Her mother's
+movements were a source of special interest to her. At the last moment
+Mrs. Caldwell slipped away alone to take leave of the place which had
+been the first home of her married life. She was a young girl when she
+came to it, the daughter of a country gentleman, accustomed to luxury,
+but right ready to enjoy poverty with the man of her heart; and poverty
+enough she had had to endure, and sickness and sorrow too--troubles
+inevitable--besides some of those other troubles, which are the harder
+to bear because they are not inevitable. But still, she had had her
+compensations, and it was of these she thought as she took her last
+leave of the little place. She went to the end of the garden first,
+closely followed by Beth, and looked through the thin hedge out across
+the field. She seemed to be seeing things which were farther away than
+Beth's eyes could reach. Then she went to an old garden seat, touched it
+tenderly, and stood looking down at it for some seconds. Many a summer
+evening she had sat there at work while her husband read to her. It was
+early spring, and the snowdrops and crocuses were out. She gathered a
+little bunch of them. When she had made the tour of the garden, she
+returned to the house, and went into every room, Beth following her
+faithfully, at a safe distance. In the nursery she stood some little
+time looking round at the bare walls, and seeming to listen expectantly.
+No doubt she heard ghostly echoes of the patter of children's feet, the
+ring of children's voices. As she turned to go she pressed her
+handkerchief to her eyes. In her own room she lingered still longer,
+going from one piece of furniture to another, and laying her hand on
+each. It was handsome furniture, such as a lady should have about her,
+and every piece represented a longer or shorter period of self-denial,
+both on her own part and on her husband's, and a proportionately keen
+joy in the acquisition of it. She remembered so well when the wardrobe
+came home, and the dressing-table too, and the mahogany drawers. The
+furniture was to follow to the new home, and each piece would still have
+its own history, but, once it was moved from its accustomed place, new
+associations would have to be formed, and that was what she dreaded. She
+could picture the old home deserted, and herself yearning for it, and
+for the old days; but she could not imagine a new home or a new chapter
+of life with any great interest or pleasure in it, anything, in fact,
+but anxiety.
+
+When at last she left the house, she was quite overcome to find that a
+little crowd of friends of every degree had collected to wish her good
+speed. She went from one to the other, shaking hands, and answering
+their words in kindly wise. Mary Lynch gave Beth a currant-cake, and
+lifted her into the coach, though she could quite well have got in by
+herself. Then they were off, and Mrs. Caldwell stood at the door,
+wiping her eyes, and gazing at the little house till they turned the
+corner of the street, and lost sight of it for ever.
+
+The tide was out, Dorman's green Isle rested on its grey rocks, the
+pond shone like a mirror on the shore, and the young grass was
+springing on the giant's grave; but the branches were still bare and
+brown on the Castle Hill, and the old grey castle stood out whitened
+by contrast with a background of dark and lowering sky. Beth's
+highly-strung nerves, already overstrained by excitement, broke down
+completely under the oppression of those heavy clouds, and she became
+convulsed with sobs. Kitty took her on her knee, but tried in vain to
+soothe her before the currant-cake and the motion of the coach had
+made her deadly sick, after which she dozed off from sheer exhaustion.
+
+The rest of the journey was a nightmare of nausea to her. She was
+constantly being lifted out of the carriage, and made to lie on a sofa
+somewhere while the horses were being changed, or put to bed for the
+night, and dragged up again unrefreshed in the early morning, and
+consigned once more to misery. Sometimes great dark mountains towered
+above her, filling her with dread; and sometimes a long lonely level
+of bare brown bogs was all about her, overwhelming her little soul
+with such a terrible sense of desolation that she cowered down beside
+Kitty, and clung to her shivering.
+
+Once her mother shook her for something, and Beth turned faint.
+
+"What's the matter with her, Kitty?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, alarmed
+by her white face.
+
+"You've jest shook the life out of her, m'em, I think," Kitty answered
+her tranquilly: "An' ye'll not rare her that way, I'm thinking."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell began to dislike Kitty.
+
+On the third day they drove down a delightful road, with hedges on
+either hand, footpaths, and trees, among which big country-houses
+nestled. The mountains were still in the neighbourhood, but not near
+enough to be awesome. On one side of the road was a broad shallow
+stream, so clear you could see the brown stones at the bottom, a
+salmon-stream with weirs and waterfalls.
+
+They were nearing a town, and Kitty began to put the things together.
+Beth became interested. Mamma looked out of the window every instant,
+and at last she exclaimed in a tone of relief, which somehow belied
+the words: "Here's papa! I _knew_ he would come!" And there was a
+horse at the window, and papa was on the horse, looking in at them.
+Mamma's face became quite rosy, and she laughed a good deal and showed
+her teeth. Beth had not noticed them before.
+
+"What are you staring at, Beth?" Mildred whispered.
+
+"Mamma's all pink," Beth said.
+
+"That's blushing," said Mildred.
+
+"What's blushing?" said Beth.
+
+"Getting pink."
+
+"What does she do it for?"
+
+"She can't help it."
+
+Beth continued to stare, and at last Mrs. Caldwell noticed it, and
+asked her what she was looking at.
+
+"You've got nice white teeth," said Beth. Mrs. Caldwell smiled.
+
+"Have you only just discovered that?" papa asked through the window.
+
+"You never told me," Beth protested, thinking herself reproached. "You
+said Jane Nettles had."
+
+The smile froze on mamma's lips, and papa's horse became unmanageable.
+Beth saw there was something wrong, and stopped, looking from one to
+the other intently.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell recovered herself. "What a stolid face she has!" she
+remarked presently by way of breaking an awkward pause.
+
+Beth wondered what "stolid" meant, and who "she" was.
+
+"She doesn't look well," papa observed.
+
+"She's jest had the life shook out of her, sir," Kitty put in.
+
+"Kitty, how dare you?" Mrs. Caldwell began.
+
+"It's to the journey I'm alludin' now, m'em," Kitty explained with
+dignity. "The child can't bear the travellin'."
+
+"Well, it won't last much longer now," said papa, and then made some
+remark to mamma in Italian, which brought back her good-humour. They
+always spoke Italian to each other, because papa did not know French
+so well as mamma did. Beth supposed at that time that all grown-up
+people spoke French or Italian to each other, and she used to wonder
+which she would speak when she was grown up.
+
+They stopped at an inn for an hour or two, for there was still another
+stage of this interminable journey. Mildred had a bag with a big doll
+in it, and some almond-sweets. She left it on a window-seat when they
+went to have something to eat, and when she thought of it again it was
+nowhere to be found.
+
+"They would steal the teeth out of your head in this God-forsaken
+country," Captain Caldwell exclaimed, in a tone of exasperation.
+
+An awful vision of igneous rocks, with mis-shapen creatures prowling
+about amongst them, instantly appeared to Beth in illustration of a
+God-forsaken country, but she tried vainly to imagine how stealing
+teeth out of your head was to be managed.
+
+When they set off again, and had left the grey town with its green
+trees and clear rivulet behind, the road lay through a wild and
+desolate region. Great dark mountains rolled away in every direction,
+and were piled up above the travellers to the very sky. The scene was
+most melancholy in its grandeur, and Beth, gazing at it fascinated,
+with big eyes dilated to their full extent, became exceedingly
+depressed. At one turn of the way, in a field below, they saw a
+gentleman carrying a gun, and attended by a party of armed policemen.
+
+"That's Mr. Burke going over his property," Captain Caldwell observed
+to his wife. "He's unpopular just now, and daren't move without an
+escort. His life's not worth a moment's purchase a hundred yards from
+his own gate, and I expect he'll be shot like a dog some day, with all
+his precautions."
+
+"Oh, why does he stay?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
+
+"Just pluck," her husband answered; "and he likes it. It certainly
+does add to the interest of life."
+
+"O Henry! don't speak like that," Mrs. Caldwell remonstrated. "They
+can't owe you any grudge."
+
+Captain Caldwell flipped a fly from his horse's ear.
+
+Beth gazed down at the doomed gentleman, and fairly quailed for him.
+She half expected to see the policemen turn on him and shoot him
+before her eyes, and a strange excitement gradually grew upon her. She
+seemed to be seeing and hearing and feeling without eyes, or ears, or
+a body.
+
+The carriage rocked like a ship at sea, and once or twice it seemed to
+be going right over.
+
+"What a dreadfully bad road!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," her husband rejoined, "the roads about here are the very devil.
+This is one of the best. Do you see that one over there?" pointing
+with his whip to a white line that zigzagged across a neighbouring
+mountain. "It's disused now. That's Gallows Hill, where a man was
+hanged."
+
+Beth gazed at the spot with horror. "I see him!" she cried.
+
+"See whom?" said her mother.
+
+"I see the man hanging."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. "Why, the man was hanged ages
+ago. He isn't there now."
+
+"You must speak the truth, young lady," papa said severely.
+
+Beth, put to shame by the reproof, shrank into herself. She was keenly
+sensitive to blame. But all the same her great grey eyes were riveted
+on the top of the hill, for there, against the sky, she did distinctly
+see the man dangling from the gibbet.
+
+"Kitty," she whispered, "don't you see him?"
+
+"Whisht, darlint," Kitty said, covering Beth's eyes with her hand. "I
+don't see him. But I'll not be after calling ye a liar because ye do,
+for I guess ye see more nor most, Holy Mother purtect us! But whisht
+now, you mustn't look at him any more."
+
+The carriage came to the brow of the mountain, and down below was
+their destination, Castletownrock, a mere village, consisting
+principally of one long, steep street. Some distance below the village
+again, the great green waves of a tempestuous sea broke on a dangerous
+coast.
+
+"The two races don't fuse," papa was saying to mamma, "in this part of
+the country, at all events. There's an Irish and an English side to
+the street. The English side has a flagged footpath, and the houses
+are neat and clean, and well-to-do; on the Irish side all is poverty
+and dirt and confusion."
+
+Just outside the village, a little group of people waited to welcome
+them--Mr. Macbean the rector, Captain Keene, the three Misses Keene,
+and Jim.
+
+The carriage was stopped, and they all got out and walked the rest of
+the distance to the inn, where they were to stay till the furniture
+arrived. On the way down the street they saw their new home. It made
+no impression on Beth. But she recognised the Roman Catholic Chapel on
+the other side of the road from papa's drawing, only it looked
+different because there was no snow.
+
+The "gentleman and lady" who kept the inn, Mr. and Mrs. Mayne, with
+their two daughters, met them at the door, and shook hands with mamma,
+and kissed the children.
+
+Then they went into the inn parlour, and there was wine and plum-cake,
+and Dr. and Mrs. Macdougall came with their little girl Lucy, who was
+eleven years old, Mildred's age.
+
+Mr. Macbean, the rector, who was tall and thin, and had a brown beard
+that waggled when he talked, drew Beth to his side, and began to ask
+her questions, just when she wanted so much to hear what everybody
+else was saying, too.
+
+"Well, and what have you been taught?" he began.
+
+Beth gazed at him blankly.
+
+"Do you love God?" he proceeded, putting his hand on her head.
+
+Beth looked round the room, perplexed, then fixed her eyes on his
+beard, and watched it waggle with interest.
+
+"Ask her if she knows anything about the other gentleman," Captain
+Keene put in jocosely--"here's to his health!" and he emptied his
+glass.
+
+Beth's great eyes settled upon him with sudden fixity.
+
+"I suppose you never heard of the devil?" he proceeded.
+
+"Oh yes, I have," was Beth's instant and unexpected rejoinder. "The
+devil is a bad road."
+
+There was an explosion of laughter at this.
+
+"But you said so, papa," Beth remonstrated indignantly.
+
+"My dear child, I said just the reverse."
+
+"What's the reverse?" said Beth, picturing another personality.
+
+"There now, that will do," Mrs. Caldwell interposed. "Little bodies
+must be seen and not heard."
+
+Mr. Macbean stroked Beth's head--"There is something in here, I
+expect," he observed.
+
+"Not much, I'm afraid," Mrs. Caldwell answered. "We've hardly been
+able to teach her anything."
+
+"Ah!" Mr. Macbean ejaculated, reflecting on the specimen he had heard
+of the method pursued. "You must let me see what _I_ can do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+In a few days all the bustle of getting into the new house began. The
+furniture arrived in irregular batches. Some of it came and some of it
+did not come. When a box was opened there was nothing that was wanted
+in it, only things that did not go together, and mamma was worried,
+and papa was cross.
+
+The workpeople were wild and ignorant, and only trustworthy as long as
+they were watched. They were unaccustomed to the most ordinary comforts
+of civilised life, particularly in the way of furniture. When the family
+arrived at the house one morning, they found Mrs. Caldwell's wardrobe,
+mahogany drawers, and other articles of bedroom furniture, set up in
+conspicuous positions in the sitting-room, and the carpenter was much
+ruffled when he was ordered to take them upstairs.
+
+"Shure it's mad they are," he remonstrated to one of the servants, "to
+have sich foine things put in a bedroom where nobody'll see thim."
+
+The men came up from the coastguard station to scrape the walls, and
+Ellis, the petty officer, used the bread-knife, and broke it, and papa
+bawled at him. Beth was sorry for Ellis.
+
+The house was built of stone, and very damp. There was a great deal of
+space in it, but little accommodation. On the ground-floor were a huge
+hall, kitchen, pantry and sitting-room, all flagged. The sitting-room
+was the only one in the house, and had to be used as dining-room and
+drawing-room, but it was large enough for that and to spare. There was
+a big yard and a big garden too, and Riley was in the stable, and
+Biddy and Anne in the kitchen, and Kitty in the nursery. This increase
+of establishment, which meant so much to the parents, was accepted as
+a matter of course by the children.
+
+Kitty told Riley and Biddy and Anne about what Beth had seen on
+Gallows Hill, and they often asked Beth what she saw when she used to
+sit looking at nothing. Then Beth would think things, and describe
+them, because it seemed to please the servants. They used to be very
+serious, and shake their heads and cross themselves, with muttered
+ejaculations, but all the time they liked it. This encouraged Beth,
+and she used to think and think of things to tell them.
+
+Beth was exceedingly busy in her own way at this time. Her mind was
+being rapidly stored with impressions, and nothing escaped her.
+
+The four children and Kitty were put all together in one great
+nursery, an arrangement of which Kitty, with the fastidious delicacy
+of a strict Catholic, did not at all approve.
+
+"Indeed, m'em," she said, "I'm thinkin' Master Jim's too sharp to be
+in the nursery wid his sisters now."
+
+"Nonsense, Kitty," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. "How can you be so
+evil-minded? Master Jim's only a child--a baby of ten!"
+
+"Och, thin, me'm, it's an ould-fashioned baby he is," said Kitty; "and
+I'm thinkin' it's a bit of a screen or a curtain I'd like for dressin'
+behind if he's to be wid us."
+
+"I have nothing of the kind to give you," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. And
+afterwards she made merry with papa about Kitty's prudishness.
+
+But Kitty was right as it happened. Jim had been left pretty much to
+his own devices during the time he had been alone with his father at
+Castletownrock. Captain Caldwell's theory was that boys would look
+after themselves, "and the sooner you let 'em the sooner you'd make
+men of 'em. Blood will tell, sir. Your gentleman's son is a match for
+any ragamuffin"--a theory which Jim justified in many a free fight;
+but, during the suspension of hostilities he hobnobbed with the
+ragamuffins, who took a terrible revenge, for by the time Mrs.
+Caldwell arrived Jim was thoroughly corrupted. Kitty took precautions,
+however. She arranged the nursery-life so that Master Jim did not
+associate with his sisters more than was absolutely necessary. She had
+him up in the morning, bathed, and sent off to school before she
+disturbed the little girls, and at night she never left the nursery
+until he was asleep. Out of her slender purse she bought some print,
+and fixed up a curtain for his sisters to dress behind, and all else
+that she had to do for the children was done decently and in order.
+She had almost entire charge of them, their mother being engrossed
+with her husband, whose health and spirits had already begun to suffer
+from overwork and exposure to the climate.
+
+Kitty was teaching her charges dainty ways, mentally as well as
+physically. When she had washed them at night, she made them purge their
+little souls of all the sins of the day in prayer, and in the morning
+she taught them how to fortify themselves with good resolutions. Beth
+took naturally to the Catholic training, and solemnly dedicated herself
+to the Blessed Virgin; Mildred conformed, but without enthusiasm; the
+four-year-old baby Bernadine lisped little _Aves_; but Jim, in the words
+of Captain Keene, "the old buffalo," as their father called him, sneered
+at that sort of thing "as only fit for women."
+
+"Men drink whisky," said Jim, puffing out his chest.
+
+"True for ye," said Kitty; "but I've been told that them as drinks
+whisky here goes dry in the next world."
+
+"Well, I shall drink whisky and kiss the girls all the same," said
+Jim. "And I wouldn't be a Catholic now, not to save me sowl. I owe the
+Catholics a grudge. They insulted me."
+
+"How so?" asked Kitty.
+
+"At the midnight Mass last Christmas. Father John got up, and ordered
+all heretics out of the sacred house of God, and Pat Fagan ses to me,
+'Are ye a heretic?' and I ses, 'I am, Pat Fagan.' 'Thin out ye go,'
+ses he, and, but for that, I'd 'a' bin a Catholic; so see what you
+lose by insulting a gentleman."
+
+"What's insulting?" Beth asked.
+
+Jim slapped her face. "That's insulting," he explained.
+
+Beth struck him back promptly, and a scuffle ensued.
+
+"Oh, but it's little divils yez are, the lot of ye!" cried Kitty as
+she separated them.
+
+During fits of nervous irritability Captain Caldwell had a habit of
+pacing about the house for hours at a time. One evening he happened to
+be walking up and down on the landing outside the nursery door, which
+was a little way open, and his attention was attracted by Beth's
+voice. She was reciting a Catholic hymn softly, but with great
+feeling, as if every word of it were a pleasure to her.
+
+"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded, breaking in on her
+devotions. "What papistical abominations have you been teaching the
+child, Kitty?"
+
+"Shure, sorr, it's jest a bit of a hymn," said Kitty bravely; but her
+heart sank, and the colour left her lips.
+
+Captain Caldwell was furious.
+
+"Caroline!" he called peremptorily, going to the head of the stairs,
+"Caroline, come up directly!"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell fussed up in hot haste.
+
+"Do you know," Captain Caldwell demanded, "that this woman is making
+idolaters of your children? I heard this child just now praying to the
+Virgin Mary! Do you hear?"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell's pale face flushed with anger.
+
+"How dare you do such a thing, you wicked woman?" she exclaimed. "I
+shall not keep you another day in the house. Pack up your things at
+once, and go the first thing in the morning."
+
+"O mamma!" Beth cried, "you're not going to send Kitty away? Kitty,
+Kitty, you won't go and leave me?"
+
+"There, you see!" Captain Caldwell exclaimed. "You see the influence
+she's got over the child already! That's the Jesuit all over!"
+
+"An ignorant woman like you, who can hardly read and write, setting up
+to teach _my_ children, indeed--how dare you?" Mrs. Caldwell stormed.
+
+"Well, m'em, I _am_ an ignorant woman that can hardly read and write,"
+Kitty answered with dignity; "but I could tell you some things ye'll
+not find out in all yer books, and may be they'd surprise ye."
+
+"Kitty, ye'll not go and leave me," Beth repeated passionately.
+
+"Troth, an' I'd stay for your sake if I could," said Kitty, "fur it's
+a bad time I'm afraid ye'll be havin' once I'm gone."
+
+"Do you hear that?" Captain Caldwell exclaimed. "Now you see what
+comes of getting people of this kind into the house. She's going to
+make out that the child is ill-treated."
+
+"One of _my_ children ill-treated!" Mrs. Caldwell cried scornfully.
+"Who would believe her?" Then turning to Beth: "If I ever hear you
+repeat a word that wicked woman has taught you, I'll beat you as long
+as I can stand over you."
+
+Kitty looked straight into Mrs. Caldwell's face, and smiled
+sarcastically, but uttered not a word.
+
+"How dare you stand there, grinning at me in that impertinent way, you
+low woman?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed with great exasperation. "I
+believe you _are_ a Jesuit, sent here to corrupt my children. But go
+you shall to-morrow morning."
+
+"Oh, I'll go, m'em," Kitty answered quietly. She knew the case was
+hopeless.
+
+"There, now," said Mrs. Caldwell, turning to her husband. "Do you see?
+That shows you! She doesn't care a bit."
+
+Beth was clinging to Kitty, but her mother seized her by the arm, and
+flung her half across the room, and was about to follow her, but
+Captain Caldwell interfered. "That will do," he said significantly.
+"It's no use venting your rage on the child. In future choose your
+nurses better."
+
+"Then, in future, give me better advice when I consult you about
+them," Mrs. Caldwell retorted, following him out of the room.
+
+Beth clung to Kitty the whole night long, and had to be torn from her
+in the morning, screaming and kicking. She stood in front of her
+mother, her eyes and cheeks ablaze:--
+
+"I shall pray to the Blessed Virgin--I shall pray to the Blessed
+Virgin--every _hour_ of my life," she gasped, "and you can't prevent
+me. Beat me as long as you can stand over me if you like, but I'll
+only pray the harder."
+
+"For God's sake, m'em," Kitty cried, clasping her hands, "let that child
+alone. Shure she's a sweet lamb if you'd give her a chance. But ye put
+the divil into her wid yer shakin' an' yer batin', and mischief'll come
+of it sooner or later, mark my words."
+
+When Kitty had gone, Mrs. Caldwell shut Beth up in the nursery with
+Baby Bernadine. Beth threw herself on the floor, and sobbed until she
+had exhausted her tears; then she gathered herself together, and sat
+on the floor with her hands clasped round her legs, her chin on her
+knees, looking up dreamily at the sky, through the nursery window. Her
+pathetic little face was all drawn and haggard and hopeless. But
+presently she began to sing--
+
+        "Ave Maria!
+    Mother of the desolate!
+    Guide of the unfortunate!
+        Hear from thy starry home our prayer:
+    If sorrow will await us,
+    Tyrants vex and hate us,
+        Teach us thine own most patient part to bear!
+            Sancta Maria!
+    When we are sighing,
+    When we are dying,
+       Give to us thine aid of prayer!"
+
+As she sang, comfort came to her, and the little voice swelled in
+volume.
+
+Baby Bernadine also sat on the floor, opposite to Beth, and gazed at
+her, much impressed. When she had finished singing, Beth became aware
+of her sister's reverent attention, and put out her tongue at her.
+Bernadine laughed. Then Beth crisped up her hands till they looked like
+claws, and began to make a variety of hideous faces. Bernadine thought
+it was a game and smiled at first, but finally she ceased to recognise
+her sister and shrieked aloud in terror. Beth heard her mother hurrying
+up, and got behind the door so that her mother could not see her as she
+opened it. Mrs. Caldwell hurried up to the baby--"The darling, then,
+what have they been doing to you?"--and Beth made her escape. As she
+crossed the hall, some one knocked at the front door. Beth opened it a
+crack. Captain Keene was outside. When she saw him, she recollected
+something she had heard about his religious opinions, and began to
+question him eagerly. His answers were apparently exciting, for
+presently she flung the door wide open to let him in, then ran to the
+foot of the stairs, and shouted at the top of her voice--
+
+"Papa, papa, come down! come directly! Here's old Keene, the old
+Buffalo, and he says there is no God!"
+
+Captain Caldwell descended the stairs hurriedly, but, on catching a
+glimpse of his countenance, Beth did not wait to receive him.
+
+She had to pass through the kitchen to get into the yard. It was the
+busy time of the day, and Biddy and Anne and Riley, all without shoes
+or stockings, were playing football with a bladder.
+
+Biddy tried to detain Beth.
+
+"Arrah, bad luck to ye, Biddy," Beth cried, imitating the brogue. "Let
+me go, d'ye hear?"
+
+"Holy Mother, preserve us!" Biddy exclaimed, crossing herself. "Don't
+ye ever be afther wishin' anybody bad luck, Miss Beth; shure ye'll
+bring it if ye do."
+
+"Thin don't ye ever be afther stoppin' me when I want to be going,
+Biddy," Beth rejoined, stamping her foot, "or I'll _blast_ ye," she
+added as she passed out into the sunlight.
+
+Fowls and ducks and Jim's pet pigeons were the only creatures moving in
+the yard. Beth stood among them, watching them for a little, then went
+to the cornbin in the stable, and got some oats. There was a shallow tub
+of water for the birds to drink; Beth hunkered down beside it, and held
+out her hand, full of corn. The pigeons were very tame, and presently a
+beautiful blue-rock came up confidently, and began to eat. His eyes were
+a deep rich orange colour. Beth caught him, and stroked his glossy
+plumage, delighting in the exquisite metallic sheen on his neck and
+breast. The colour gave her an almost painful sensation of pleasure,
+which changed on a sudden into a fit of blind exasperation. Her grief
+for the loss of Kitty had gripped her again with a horrid twinge. She
+clenched her teeth in her pain, her fingers closed convulsively round
+the pigeon's throat, and she held him out at arm's length, and shook him
+viciously till the nictitating membrane dropped over his eyes, his head
+sank back, his bill opened, and he hung from her hand, an inert heap of
+ruffled feathers. Then the tension of her nerves relaxed; it was a
+relief to have crushed the life out of something. She let the bird drop,
+and stood looking at him, as an animal might have looked, with an
+impassive face which betrays no shade of emotion. As she did so,
+however, the bird showed signs of life; and, suddenly, quickening into
+interest, she stooped down, turned him over, and examined him; then
+sprinkled him with water, and made him drink. He rapidly revived, and
+when he was able to stand, she let him go; and he was soon feeding among
+his companions as if nothing had happened.
+
+Beth watched them for a little with the same animal-like
+expressionless gravity of countenance, then moved off unconcernedly.
+
+She never mentioned the incident to any one, and never forgot it; but
+her only feeling about it was that the pigeon had had a narrow escape.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Beth was a fine instrument, sensitive to a touch, and, considering the
+way she was handled, it would have been a wonder if discordant effects
+had not been constantly produced upon her. Hers was a nature with a
+wide range. It is probable that every conceivable impulse was latent
+in her, every possibility of good or evil. Exactly which would
+predominate depended upon the influences of these early years; and
+almost all the influences she came under were haphazard. There was no
+intelligent direction of her thoughts, no systematic training to form
+good habits. Her brothers were sent to school as soon as they were old
+enough, and so had the advantage of regular routine and strict
+discipline from the first; but a couple of hours a day for lessons was
+considered enough for the little girls; and, for the rest of the time,
+so long as they were on the premises and not naughty, that is to say,
+gave no trouble, it was taken for granted that they were safe, morally
+and physically. Neither of their parents seem to have suspected their
+extreme precocity; and there is no doubt that Beth suffered seriously
+in after life from the mistakes of those in authority over her at this
+period. People admired her bright eyes without realising that she
+could see with them, and not only that she could see, but that she
+could not help seeing. But even if they had realised it, they would
+merely have scolded her for learning anything in that way which they
+preferred that she should not know. They were not sufficiently
+intelligent themselves to perceive that it is not what we know of
+things, but what we think of them, which makes for good or evil. Beth
+was accordingly allowed to run wild, and expected to see nothing; but
+all the time her mind was being involuntarily stored with observations
+from which, in time to come, for want of instruction, she would be
+forced to draw her own--often erroneous--conclusions.
+
+Kitty's departure was Beth's first great grief, and she suffered
+terribly. The prop and stay of her little life had gone, the comfort
+and kindness, the order and discipline, which were essential to her
+nature. Mrs. Caldwell was a good woman, who would certainly do what
+she thought best for her children; but she was exhausted by the
+unconscionable production of a too numerous family, a family which she
+had neither the means nor the strength to bring up properly. Her
+husband's health, too, grew ever more precarious, and she found
+herself obliged to do all in her power to help him with his duties,
+which were arduous. There was a good deal that she could do in the way
+of writing official letters and managing money-matters, tasks for
+which she was much better fitted than for the management of children;
+but the children, meanwhile, had to be left to the care of others--not
+that that would have been a bad thing for them had their mother had
+sufficient discrimination to enable her to choose the proper kind of
+people to be with them. Unfortunately for everybody, however, Mrs.
+Caldwell had been brought up on the old-fashioned principle that
+absolute ignorance of human nature is the best qualification for a
+wife and mother, and she was consequently quite unprepared for any
+possibility which had not formed part of her own simple and limited
+personal experience. She never suspected, for one thing, that a
+servant's conversation could be undesirable if her appearance and her
+character from her last mistress were satisfactory; and, therefore,
+when Kitty had gone, she put Anne in her place without misgiving,
+Anne's principal recommendation being that she was a nice-looking
+girl, and had pretty deferential manners.
+
+Anne came from one of the cabins on the Irish side of the road, where
+people, pigs, poultry, with an occasional cow, goat, or donkey herded
+together indiscriminately. The windows were about a foot square, and
+were not made to open. Sometimes they had glass in them, but were
+oftener stopped up with rags. Before the doors were heaps of manure
+and pools of stagnant water. There was no regular footway, but a mere
+beaten track in front of the cabins, and this, on wet days, was
+ankle-deep in mud. The women hung about the doors all day long,
+knitting the men's blue stockings, and did little else apparently.
+Both men and women were usually in a torpid state, the result,
+doubtless, of breathing a poisoned atmosphere, and of insufficient
+food. It took strong stimulants to rouse them: love, hate, jealousy,
+whisky, battle, murder, and sudden death. Their conversation was
+gross, and they were very immoral; but it is hardly necessary to say
+so, for with men, women, children, and animals all crowded together in
+such surroundings, and the morbid craving for excitement to which
+people who have no comfort or wholesome interest in life fall a prey,
+immorality is inevitable. It was the boast of the place that there
+were no illegitimate children; it would have been a better sign if
+there had been.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell, true to her training, lived opposite to all this vice
+and squalor, serenely indifferent to it. Anne, therefore, who knew
+nothing about the management of children, and was not in any respect a
+proper person to have the charge of them, had it all her own way in
+the nursery: and her way was to do nothing that she could help. She
+used to call the children in the morning, and then leave them to their
+own devices. The moment they were awake, which was pretty soon, for
+they were full of life, they began to batter each other with pillows,
+dance about the room in their night-dresses, pitch tents with the
+bed-clothes on the floor, and make noise enough to bring their mother
+down upon them. Then Anne would be summoned and come hurrying up, and
+help them to huddle on their clothes somehow. She never washed them,
+but encouraged them to perform their own ablutions, which they did
+with the end of a towel dipped in a jug. The consequence was they were
+generally in a very dirty state. They took their meals with their
+parents, and papa would notice the dirt eventually, and storm at mamma
+in Italian, when words would ensue in a tone which made the children
+quake. Then mamma would storm at Anne, for whom the children felt
+sorry, and the result would be a bath, which they bore with fortitude,
+for fear of getting Anne into further trouble. They even made good
+resolutions about washing themselves, which they kept for a few days;
+then, however, they began to shirk again, and had again to be
+scrubbed. The resolutions of a child must be shored up by kindly
+supervision, otherwise it is hardly likely that they will cement into
+good habits.
+
+Beth suffered from a continual sense of discomfort in those days for
+want of proper attention. All her clothing fitted badly, and were
+fastened on with anything that came to hand in the way of tape and
+buttons; her hair was ill brushed, and she was so continually found
+fault with that her sense of self-respect was checked in its
+development, and she lost all faith in her own power to do anything
+right or well. The consequence was the most profound disheartenment,
+endured in silence, with the exquisite uncomplaining fortitude of a
+little child. It made its mark on her countenance, however, in a
+settled expression of discontent, which, being mistaken for a bad
+disposition, repelled people, and made her many enemies. People
+generally said that Mildred was a dear, but Beth did not look
+pleasant; and for many a long day to come, very few troubled
+themselves to try and make her look so.
+
+It cannot be said that Beth's parents neglected their children. On the
+contrary, her father thought much of their education, and of their
+future; it was the all-importance of the present that did not strike
+him, and so with her mother. Neither parent was careless, but their
+care stopped short too soon; and it is astonishing the amount of
+liberty the children had. They were sent out of doors as soon as they
+were dressed in the morning, because sunshine and air are so essential
+to children. If they went for a walk, Anne accompanied them; but very
+often Anne was wanted, and then the children were left to loiter about
+the garden or stable-yard, where, doubtless with the help of reasoning
+powers much in advance of her age, Beth had soon heard and seen enough
+to make her feel a certain contempt for her father's veracity when he
+told her that she had originally been brought to the house in the
+doctor's black bag.
+
+After Kitty's departure Beth had many a lonely hour, and the time hung
+heavy on her hands. Mildred, her senior by four years, was of a
+simpler disposition, and always able to amuse herself, playing with
+the Baby Bernadine, or with toys which were no distraction to Beth.
+Mildred, besides, was fond of reading; but books to be deciphered
+remained a wonder and a mystery to Beth.
+
+Jim went to the national school, the only one in the place, with all
+the other little boys. The master was a young curate who gave Mildred
+and Beth their lessons also, when school-hours were over. Beth used to
+yearn for lesson-time, just for the sake of being obliged to do
+something; but lessons were disappointing, for the curate devoted
+himself to Mildred, who was docile and studious, and took no special
+pains to interest Beth, and consequently she soon wearied of the dull
+restraint, and became troublesome. Sometimes she was boisterous, and
+then the tutor had to spend half his time in chasing her to rescue his
+hat, a book, an ink-bottle, or some other article which she threatened
+to destroy; and, sometimes she was so depressed that he had to give up
+trying to teach her, and just do his best to distract her. In her
+eighth year she was able to follow the church-service in the
+prayer-book, and make out the hymns, but that was all.
+
+Sunday-school was held in the church, and was attended by all the
+unmarried parishioners. Mildred taught some of the tiny mites, and
+Beth was put into her class at first; but Beth had no respect for
+Mildred, and had consequently to be removed. She was expected to
+learn the collect for the day and the verse of a hymn every Sunday,
+but never by any chance knew either. No one ever thought of reading
+the thing over to her, and fixing her attention on it by some little
+explanation; and learning by heart from a book did not come naturally
+to her. She learned by ear easily enough, but not by sight. The hymns
+and prayers which Kitty had repeated to her, she very soon picked up;
+but Kitty had true sympathetic insight to inform her of what the child
+required, and all her little lessons were proper to some occasion, and
+had comfort in them. What Beth learned now, on the contrary, often
+filled her with gloom. Some of the hymns, such as,
+
+    "When gathering clouds around I view,
+     And days are dark, and friends are few,"
+
+made her especially miserable. It was always a dark day to her when
+she repeated it, with heavy clouds collecting overhead, and herself, a
+solitary little speck on the mountain side wandering alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It is significant to note that church figures largely in Beth's
+recollection of this time, but religion not at all. There was, in
+fact, no connection between the two in her mind.
+
+Both Captain and Mrs. Caldwell protested strongly against what they
+called cant; and they seemed to have called everything cant except an
+occasional cold reading aloud of the Bible on Sundays, and the bald
+observance of the church service. The Bible they read aloud to the
+children without expounding it, and the services they attended without
+comment. Displays of religious emotion in everyday life they regarded
+as symptoms of insanity; and if they heard people discuss religion
+with enthusiasm, and profess to love the Lord, they were genuinely
+shocked. All that kind of thing they thought "such cant," "and so like
+those horrid dissenters;" which made them extra careful that the
+children should hear nothing of the sort. This, from their point of
+view, was right and wise; in Beth's case especially; for her
+unsatisfied soul was of the quality which soon yearns for the fine
+fulness of faith; her little heart would have filled to bursting with
+her first glad conception of the love divine, and her whole being
+would have stirred to speak her emotion, even though speech meant
+martyrdom. Thanks to the precautions of her parents, however, she
+heard nothing to stimulate her natural tendency to religious fervour
+after Kitty's departure; and gradually the image of our Blessed Lady
+faded from her mind, and was succeeded by that of the God of her
+parents, a death-dealing deity, delighting in blood, whom she was
+warned to fear, and from whom she did accordingly shrink with such
+holy horror that, when she went to church, she tried to think of
+anything but Him. This was how it happened that church, instead of
+being the threshold of the next world to her mind, became the centre
+of this, where she made many interesting observations of men and
+manners; for in spite of her backwardness in the schoolroom, Beth's
+intellect advanced with a bound at this period. She had left her
+native place an infant, on whose mind some chance impressions had been
+made and lingered; she arrived at Castletownrock with the power to
+observe for herself, and even to reflect upon what she saw--of course
+to a certain extent only; but still the power had come, and was far in
+advance of her years. So far, it was circumstances that had impressed
+her; she knew one person from another, but that was all. Now, however,
+she began to be interested in people for themselves, apart from any
+incident in which they figured; and most of her time was spent in a
+curiously close, but quite involuntary study of those about her, and
+of their relations to each other.
+
+Church was often a sore penance to the children, it was so long, and
+cold, and dull; but they set off on Sunday happy in the consciousness
+of their best hats and jackets, nevertheless; and the first part of
+the time was not so bad, for then they had Sunday-school, and the
+three Misses Keene--Mary, Sophia, and Lenore--and the two Misses
+Mayne, Honor and Kathleen, and Mr. and Mrs. Small, the Vicar and his
+wife, and the curate, were all there talking and teaching. Beth
+remembered nothing about the teaching except that, on one occasion,
+Mr. Macbean, the rector, tried to explain the meaning of the trefoil
+on the ends of the pews to Mildred and herself; but she could think of
+nothing but the way his beard wagged as he spoke, and was disconcerted
+when he questioned her. He had promised to be a friend to Beth; but he
+was a delicate man, and not able to live much at Castletownrock, where
+the climate was rigorous; so that she seldom saw him.
+
+When Sunday-school was over, the children went up to the gallery;
+their pew and the Keenes', roomy boxes, took up the whole front of it.
+Mrs. Caldwell always sat up in the gallery with the children, but
+Captain Caldwell often sat downstairs in the rectory-pew to be near
+the fire; when he sat in the gallery he wore a little black cap to
+keep off the draught. He and Mr. O'Halloran the Squire, and Captain
+Keene, stood and talked in the aisle sometimes before the service
+commenced. One Sunday they kept looking up at the children in the
+gallery.
+
+"I'll bet Mildred will be the handsomest woman," Mr. O'Halloran was
+saying.
+
+"I'll back Beth," Captain Keene observed. "If all the men in the place
+are not after her soon, I'm no judge of her sex, eh?"
+
+"Oh, don't look at me!" said Captain Caldwell complacently. "I can't
+pretend to say. But let's hope that they'll go off well, at all
+events. They'll have every chance I can give them of making good
+matches."
+
+Beth heard her father repeat this conversation to her mother
+afterwards, but was too busy wondering what a handsome woman was to
+understand that it was her own charms which had been appraised; but
+Mildred understood, and was elated.
+
+Mr. O'Halloran, the squire, had a red beard, which was an offence to
+Beth. His wife wore bonnets about which everybody used to make remarks
+to Mrs. Caldwell. Beth understood that Mrs. O'Halloran was young and
+pretty, and had three charming children, but was not happy because of
+Sophia Keene.
+
+"Just fancy," she heard Mrs. Small, the Vicar's wife, say to her
+mother once. "Just fancy, he was in a carriage with them at the races,
+and stayed with Sophia the whole time; and poor Mrs. O'Halloran left
+at home alone. I call it scandalous. But you know what Sophia is!"
+Mrs. Small concluded significantly.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell drew herself up, and looked at Mrs. Small, but said
+nothing; yet somehow Beth knew that she too was unhappy because of
+Sophia Keene. Beth was not on familiar terms with her mother, and
+would not have dared to embrace her spontaneously, or make any other
+demonstration of affection; but she was loyally devoted to her all the
+same, and would gladly have stabbed Sophia Keene, and have done battle
+with the whole of the rest of the family on her mother's behalf had
+occasion offered.
+
+She was curled up among the fuchsias on the window-seat of the
+sitting-room one day, unobserved by her parents, who entered the room
+together after she had settled herself there, and began to discuss the
+Keenes.
+
+"You did not tell me, Henry, you spent all your time with them before
+we came," Mrs. Caldwell said reproachfully.
+
+"Why should I?" he answered, with a jaunty affectation of ease.
+
+"It is not why you should," his wife said with studied gentleness,
+"but why you should not. It seems so strange, making a mystery of it."
+
+"I described old Keene to you--the old buffalo!" he replied; "and I'll
+describe the girls now if you like. Mary is a gawk, Sophia is as
+yellow as a duck's foot, and Lenore is half-witted."
+
+The Keenes were ignorant, idle, good-tempered young women, and kind to
+the children, whom they often took to bathe with them. They were
+seldom able to go into the sea itself, for it was a wild, tempestuous
+coast; but there were lovely clear pools on the rocky shore, natural
+stone baths left full of water when the tide went out, sheltered from
+the wind by tall, dark, precipitous cliffs, and warmed by the sun; and
+there they used to dabble by the hour together. Anne went with them,
+and it was a pretty sight, the four young women in white chemises that
+clung to them when wet, and the three lovely children--little white
+nudities with bright brown hair--scampering over the rocks, splashing
+each other in the pools, or lying about on warm sunny slabs, resting
+and chattering. One day Beth found some queer things in a pool, and
+Sophia told her they were barnacles.
+
+"They stick to the bottom of a ship," she said, "and grow heavier and
+heavier till at last the ship can make no more way, and comes to a
+standstill in a shining sea, where the water is as smooth as a mirror;
+you would think it was a mirror, in fact, if it did not heave gently
+up and down like your breast when you breathe; and every time it
+heaves it flushes some colour, blue, or green, or pink, or purple. And
+the barnacles swell and swell at the bottom of the ship, till at last
+they burst in two with a loud report; and then the sailors rush to the
+side of the ship and look over, and there they see a flock of
+beautiful big white geese coming up out of the water; and sometimes
+they shoot the geese, but if they do a great storm comes on and
+engulfs the ship, and they are all drowned; but sometimes they stand
+stockstill, amazed, and then the birds rise up out of the air on their
+great white wings, up, up, drifting along, together, till they look
+like the clouds over there. Then a gentle breeze springs up, and the
+ship sails away safely into port."
+
+"And where do the geese go?" Beth demanded, with breathless interest.
+
+"They make for the shore too, and in the dead of winter, on stormy
+nights, they fly over the land, uttering strange cries, and if you
+wake and hear them, it means somebody is going to die."
+
+Beth's eyes were staring far out beyond the great green Atlantic rollers
+that came bursting in round the sheltering headland, white-crested with
+foam, flying up the beach with a crash, and scattering showers of
+spray that sparkled in the sunshine. She could see the ships and the
+barnacles, and the silent sea, heaving great sighs and flushing with
+fine colour in the act; and the geese, and the sailors peering over the
+side and shooting at them and sinking immediately in a storm, but also
+sailing into a safe haven triumphantly, where the sun shone on white
+houses, although, at the same time, it was dark night, and overhead
+there were strange cries that made her cower--"Beth!" cried Sophia,
+"what's the matter with you, child?"
+
+Beth returned with a start, and stared at her--"I know who it will
+be," she said.
+
+"Who what'll be, Miss Beth?" Anne asked in awe.
+
+"Who'll die," said Beth.
+
+"You mustn't say, Beth; you'll bring bad luck if you do," Miss Keene
+interposed hastily.
+
+"I'm not going to say," Beth answered dreamily; "but I know."
+
+"You shouldn't have told the child that story, miss," Anne said.
+"Shure, ye know what she is--she sees." Anne nodded her head several
+times significantly.
+
+"I forgot," said Sophia.
+
+"She'll forget too," said Mary philosophically. "I say, Beth," she
+went on, raising herself on her elbow--she was lying prone on a slab
+of rock in the sun--"what does your mother think of us?"
+
+Beth roused herself. "I don't know," she answered earnestly; "she
+never says. But I know what papa thinks of you. He says Mary's a gawk,
+Sophia is as yellow as a duck's foot, and Lenore is only half-witted."
+
+The effect of this announcement astonished Beth. The Misses Keene,
+instead of being interested, all looked at her as if they did not like
+her, and Anne burst out laughing. When they got in, Anne told Mrs.
+Caldwell, who flushed suddenly, and covered her mouth with her
+handkerchief.
+
+"Yes, mamma," Mildred exclaimed with importance, "Beth did say so. And
+Mary tossed her head, and Sophia sneered."
+
+"What is sneered?" Beth demanded importunately. "What is sneered?"
+
+"O Beth! don't bother so," Mildred exclaimed irritably. "It's when you
+curl up your lip."
+
+"Beth, how could you be so naughty?" Mrs. Caldwell said at last from
+behind her handkerchief. "Don't you know you should never repeat
+things you hear said? A lady never repeats a private conversation."
+
+"What's a private conversation?" said Beth.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell gave her a broad definition, during which she lowered
+her handkerchief, and Beth discovered that she was trying not to
+smile.
+
+This was Beth's first lesson in honour, which was her mother's god,
+and she felt the influence of it all her life.
+
+Later in the day, Beth was curled up on the window-seat among the
+fuchsias, looking out. Behind the thatched cabins opposite, the sombre
+mountains rolled up, dark and distinct, to the sky; but Beth would not
+look at them if she could help it, they oppressed her. It was a close
+afternoon, and the window was wide open. A bare-legged woman, in a
+short petticoat, stood in an indolent attitude leaning against a
+door-post opposite; a young man in low shoes, light blue stockings,
+buff knee-breeches, a blue-tailed coat with brass buttons, and a soft
+high-crowned felt hat, came strolling up the street with his hands in
+his pockets.
+
+"Hallo, Biddy," he remarked, as he passed the woman, "you're all
+swelled."
+
+"Yes," she answered tranquilly, "I've been drinking buttermilk."
+
+"Well, let's hope it'll be a boy," he rejoined.
+
+The woman looked up and down the street complacently.
+
+Presently Beth saw Honor and Kathleen Mayne come out of the inn. The
+Maynes used to pet the children and play the piano to them when they
+were at the inn, and had been very good to Jim also when he was there
+alone with his father before the family arrived. Their manners were
+gentle and caressing, and they did their best to win their way into Mrs.
+Caldwell's good graces, but at first she coldly repulsed them, which
+hurt Beth very much. The Maynes, however, did not at all understand that
+they were being repulsed. A kindly feeling existed among all classes in
+those remote Irish villages. The squire's family, the doctor's,
+clergyman's, draper's, and innkeeper's visited each other, and shook
+hands when they met. There was no feeling of condescension on the one
+hand, or of pretension on the other; but Mrs. Caldwell had the strong
+class prejudice which makes such stupid snobs of the English. It was not
+_what_ people were, but _who_ they were, that was all important to her;
+and she would have bowed down cheerfully, as whole neighbourhoods do,
+and felt exhilarated by the notice of some stupid county magnate, who
+had not heart enough to be loved, head enough to distinguish himself, or
+soul enough to get him into heaven. She was a lady, and Mayne was an
+innkeeper. His daughters might amuse the children, but as to associating
+with Mrs. Caldwell, that was absurd!
+
+The girls were not to be rebuffed, however. They persevered in their
+kindly attentions, making excuses to each other for Mrs. Caldwell's
+manner; explaining her coldness by the fact that she was English, and
+flattering her, until finally they won their way into her good graces,
+and so effectually too, that when they brought a young magpie in a
+basket for Beth one day, her mother graciously allowed her to accept
+it.
+
+Beth liked the Maynes, but now as they came up the road she slid from
+the window-seat. She knew they would stop and talk if she waited, and
+she did not want to talk. She was thinking about something, and it
+irritated her to be interrupted. So she tore across the hall and
+through the kitchen out into the yard, impelled by an imperative
+desire to be alone.
+
+The magpie was the first pet of her own she had ever had, and she
+loved it. At night it was chained to a perch stuck in the wall of the
+stable-yard. On the other side of that wall was the yard of Murphy the
+farrier. The magpie soon became tame enough to be let loose by day,
+and Beth always went to release it the first thing in the morning and
+give it its breakfast. It came hopping to meet her now, and followed
+her into the garden. The garden was entered by an archway under the
+outbuildings, which divided it from the stable-yard. It was very long,
+but narrow for its length. On the right was a high wall, but on the
+left was a low one--at least one half of it was low--and Beth could
+look over it into the farrier's garden next door. The other half had
+been raised by Captain Caldwell on the understanding that if he raised
+one half the farrier would raise the other, but the farrier had proved
+perfidious. The wall was built without mortar, of rough, uncut stones.
+Captain Caldwell had his half neatly finished off at the top with
+sods, but Murphy's piece was still all broken down. The children used
+to climb up by it on to the raised half, and dance there at the risk
+of life and limb, and jeer at Murphy as he dug his potatoes, calling
+his attention to the difference between the Irish and English half of
+the wall, till he lost his temper and pelted them. This was the signal
+for a battle. The children returned his potatoes with stones by way of
+interest, and hit him as often as he hit them. (Needless to say, their
+parents were not in the garden at the time.) They had a great contempt
+for the farrier because he fought them, and he used to go about the
+village complaining of them and their "tratement" of him, "the little
+divils, spoilin' the pace of the whole neighbourhood."
+
+There was a high wall at the end of the garden, and Beth liked to sit on
+the top of it. She went there now, picked up her magpie, and climbed up
+with difficulty by way of Pat Murphy's broken bit. Immediately below her
+was a muddy lane, beyond which the land sloped down to the sea, and as
+she sat there, the sound of the waves, that dreamy, soft murmur for
+which we have no word, filled the interstices of her consciousness with
+something that satisfied.
+
+She was not left long in peace to enjoy it that afternoon, however,
+for the farrier was at work in his garden below, and presently he
+looked up and saw the magpie.
+
+"There ye are agin, Miss Beth, wi' yer baste of a burrd; bad luck to
+it!" he exclaimed, crossing himself. "Shure, don't I tell ye ivery day
+uf your life it's wan fur sorrow."
+
+"Bad luck to yerself, Pat Murphy," Beth rejoined promptly. "It's a
+foine cheek ye have to be spakin' to a gentleman's daughter, an' you
+not a man uv yer wurrd."
+
+"Not a man o' me wurrd! what d'ye mane?" said Murphy, firing.
+
+"Look at that wall," Beth answered; "didn't ye promise ye'd build it?"
+
+"An' so I will when yer father gives me the stones he promised me,"
+Murphy replied. "It's a moighty foine mon uv his wurrd he is."
+
+"Is it my father yer maning, Pat Murphy?" Beth asked.
+
+"It is," he said, sticking his spade in the ground emphatically.
+
+"Ye know yer lying," said Beth. "My father promised you no stones.
+He's not a fool."
+
+"I niver met a knave that was," Pat observed, turning over a huge
+spadeful of earth, and then straightening himself to look up at her.
+
+Beth's instinct was always to fight when she was in a rage; words
+break no bones, and she preferred to break bones at such times. It was
+some seconds before she saw the full force of Pat's taunt, but the
+moment she did, she seized the largest loose stone within reach on the
+top of the wall, and shied it at him. It struck him full in the face,
+and cut his cheek open.
+
+"That'll teach ye," said Beth, blazing.
+
+The man turned on her with a very ugly look.
+
+"Put yer spade down," she said. "I'm not afraid of you."
+
+"Miss Beth! Miss Beth!" some one called from the end of the garden.
+
+Murphy stuck his spade in the ground, and wiped his jaw. "Ye'll pay
+for this, ye divil's limb," he muttered, "yew an' yours."
+
+"Miss Beth! Miss Beth!"
+
+"I'm coming!" Beth rejoined irritably, and slid from the wall to the
+ground regardless of the rough loose stones she scattered in her
+descent. "Ye'll foind me ready to pay when ye send in yer bill, Pat,"
+she called out as she ran down the garden.
+
+The children were to have tea at the vicarage that day, and Anne had
+been sent to fetch her.
+
+In the drawing-room at the vicarage there was a big bay-window which
+looked out across a desolate stretch of bog to a wild headland,
+against which the waves beat tempestuously in almost all weathers. The
+headland itself was high, but the giant breakers often dashed up far
+above it, and fell in showers of spray on the grass at the top. There
+was a telescope in the window at the vicarage, and people used to come
+to see the sight, and went into raptures over it. Beth, standing out
+of the way, unnoticed, would gaze too, fascinated; but it was the
+attraction of repulsion. The cruel force of the great waves agitated
+her, and at the same time made her unutterably sad. Her heart beat
+painfully when she watched them, her breath became laboured, and it
+was only with an effort that she could keep back her sobs. It was not
+fear that oppressed her, but a horrible sort of excitement, which so
+gained upon her on that afternoon in particular that she felt she must
+shriek aloud, or make her escape. If she showed any emotion she would
+be laughed at, if she made her escape she would probably be whipped;
+she preferred to be whipped; so, watching her opportunity, she quietly
+slipped away.
+
+At home the window of the sitting-room was still wide open, and as she
+ran down the street she noticed some country people peeping in
+curiously, and apparently astonished by the luxury they beheld. Beth,
+who was picking up Irish rapidly, understood some exclamations she
+overheard as she approached, and felt flattered for the furniture.
+
+She ran up the steps and opened the front door: "Good day to ye all,"
+she said sociably; "will ye not come in and have a look round? now
+do!"
+
+She led the way as she spoke, and the country people followed her, all
+agape. In the hall they paused to wonder at the cocoanut matting; but
+when they stood on the soft pile carpet, so grateful to their bare
+feet, in the sitting-room, and looked round, they lowered their voices
+respectfully, and this gave Beth a sudden sensation of superiority.
+She began to show them the things: the pictures on the walls, the
+subjects of which she explained to them; the egg-shell china, which
+she held up to the light that they might see how thin it was; and some
+Eastern and Western curios her father had brought home from various
+voyages. She told them of tropical heat and Canadian cold, and began
+to be elated herself when she found all that she had ever heard on the
+subject flowing fluently from her lips.
+
+The front door had been left open, and the passers-by looked in to see
+what was going on, and then entered uninvited. Neighbours, too, came
+over from the Irish side of the road, so that the room gradually
+filled, and as her audience increased, Beth grew excited and talked
+away eloquently.
+
+"Lord," one man exclaimed with a sigh, on looking round the room, "it's
+aisy to see why the likes of these looks down on the likes of us."
+
+"Eh, dear, yes!" a woman with a petticoat over her head solemnly
+responded.
+
+"The durrty heretics," a slouching fellow, with a flat white face,
+muttered under his breath. "But if they benefit here, they'll burn
+hereafter, holy Jasus be praised."
+
+"Will they?" said Beth, turning on him. "Will they burrn hereafter,
+Bap-faced Flanagan? No, they won't! They'll hunt ye out of heaven as
+they hunted ye out o' Maclone.
+
+    "Oh, the Orange militia walked into Maclone,
+     And hunted the Catholics out of the town.
+     Ri' turen nuren nuren naddio,
+     Right tur nuren nee."
+
+She sang it out at the top of her shrill little voice, executing a
+war-dance of defiance to the tune, and concluding with an elaborate
+curtsey.
+
+As she recovered herself, she became aware of her father standing in the
+doorway. His lips were white, and there was a queer look in his face.
+
+"Oh! So this is _your_ party, is it, Miss Beth?" he said. "You ask
+your friends in, and then you insult them, I see."
+
+Beth was still effervescing. She put her hands behind her back and
+answered boldly--
+
+"'Deed, thin, he insulted me, papa. It was Bap-faced Flanagan. He
+said we were durrty heretics, and--and--I'll not stand that! It's
+a free country!"
+
+Captain Caldwell looked round, and the people melted from the room
+under his eye. Then Anne appeared from somewhere.
+
+"Anne, do you teach the children party-songs?" he demanded.
+
+"Shure, they don't need taching, yer honour," said Anne, disconcerted.
+"Miss Beth knows 'em all, and she shouts 'em at the top of her voice
+down the street till the men shake their fists at her."
+
+"Why do you do that, Beth?" her father demanded.
+
+"I like to feel," Beth began, gasping out each word with a mighty
+effort to express herself--"I like to feel--that I can _make_ them
+shake their fists."
+
+Her father looked at her again very queerly.
+
+"Will I take her to the nursery, sir?" Anne asked.
+
+Beth turned on her impatiently, and said something in Irish which made
+Anne grin. Beth did not understand her father in this mood, and she
+wanted to see more of him.
+
+"What's that she's saying to you, Anne?" he asked.
+
+"Oh--sure, she's just blessin' me, yer honour," Anne answered
+unabashed.
+
+"I believe you!" Captain Caldwell said dryly, as he stretched himself
+on the sofa. "Go and fetch a hair-brush."
+
+While Anne was out of the room he turned to Beth. "I'll give you a
+penny," he said, "if you'll tell me what you said to Anne."
+
+"I'll tell you for nothing," Beth answered. "I said, 'Yer soul to the
+devil for an interfering hussy.'"
+
+Captain Caldwell burst out laughing, and laughed till Anne returned
+with the brush. "Now, brush my hair," he said to Beth; and Beth went
+and stood beside the sofa, and brushed, and brushed, now with one
+hand, and now with the other, till she ached all over with the effort.
+Her father suffered from atrocious headaches, and this was the one
+thing that relieved him.
+
+"There, that's punishment enough for to-day," he said at last.
+
+Beth retired to the foot of the couch, and leant there, looking at him
+solemnly, with the hair-brush still in her hand. "That's no
+punishment," she observed.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked.
+
+"I mean I like it," she said. "I'd brush till I dropped if it did you
+any good."
+
+Captain Caldwell looked up at her, and it was as if he had seen the
+child for the first time.
+
+"Beth," he said, after a while, "would you like to come out with me on
+the car to-morrow?"
+
+"'Deed, then, I would, papa," Beth answered eagerly.
+
+Then there was a pause, during which Beth rubbed her back against the
+end of the couch thoughtfully, and looked at the wall opposite as if
+she could see through it. Her father watched her for a little time
+with a frown upon his forehead from the pain in his head.
+
+"What are you thinking of, Beth?" he said at last.
+
+"I've got to be whipped to-night," she answered drearily; "and I wish
+I hadn't. I do get so tired of being whipped and shaken."
+
+Her little face looked pinched and pathetic as she spoke, and for the
+first time her father had a suspicion of what punishment was to this
+child--a thing as inevitable as disease, a continually recurring
+torture, but quite without effect upon her conduct--and his heart
+contracted with a qualm of pity.
+
+"What are you going to be whipped for now?" he asked.
+
+"We went to tea at the vicarage, and I ran away home."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because of the great green waves. They rush up the rocks--wish--st--st!"
+(she took a step forward, and threw up her little arms in
+illustration)--"then fall, and roll back, and gather, and come rushing
+on again; and I feel every time--every time--that they are coming right
+at me!"--she clutched her throat as if she were suffocating; "and if I
+had stayed I should have shrieked, and then I should have been whipped.
+So I came away."
+
+"But you expect to be whipped for coming away?"
+
+"Yes. But you see I don't have the waves as well. And mamma won't say
+I was afraid."
+
+"Were you afraid, Beth?" her father asked.
+
+"No!" Beth retorted, stamping her foot indignantly. "If the waves did
+come at me, I could stand it. It's the coming--coming--coming--I can't
+bear. It makes me ache here." She clutched at her throat and chest
+again.
+
+Captain Caldwell closed his eyes. He felt that he was beginning to
+make this child's acquaintance, and wished he had tried to cultivate
+it sooner.
+
+"You shall not be whipped to-night, Beth," he said presently, looking
+at her with a kindly smile.
+
+Instantly an answering smile gleamed on the child's face, transfiguring
+her; and, by the light of it, her father realised how seldom he had seen
+her smile.
+
+Unfortunately for Beth, however, while her countenance was still
+irradiated, her mother swooped down upon her. Mrs. Caldwell had come
+hurrying home in a rage in search of Beth; and now, mistaking that
+smile for a sign of defiance, she seized upon her, and had beaten her
+severely before it was possible to interfere. Beth, dazed by this
+sudden onslaught, staggered when she let her go, and stretched out her
+little hands as if groping for some support.
+
+"It wasn't your fault!--it wasn't your fault!" she gasped, her first
+instinct being to exonerate her father.
+
+Captain Caldwell had started up and caught his wife by the arm.
+
+"That's enough," he said harshly. "You are going altogether the wrong
+way to work with the child. Let this be the last time, do you
+understand? Beth, go to the nursery, and ask Anne to get you some tea."
+A sharp pain shot through his head. He had jumped up too quickly, and
+now fell back on the sofa with a groan.
+
+"Oh, let me brush it again," Beth cried, in an agony of sympathy.
+
+Her father opened his haggard eyes and smiled.
+
+"Go to the nursery, like a good child," he said, "and get some tea."
+
+Beth went without another word. But all that evening her mind was with
+her parents in the sitting-room, wondering--wondering what they were
+saying to each other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Next day Beth jumped out of bed early, and washed herself all over, in
+an excess of grateful zeal, because she was to be taken out on the
+car. As soon as she had had her breakfast, she ran into the yard to
+feed her magpie. Its perch was in a comfortable corner sheltered by
+the great turf-stack which had been built up against the wall that
+divided the Caldwells' yard from that of Pat Murphy, the farrier.
+Beth, in wild spirits, ran round the stack, calling "Mag, Mag!" as she
+went. But Mag, alas! was never more to respond to her call. He was
+hanging by the leg from his perch, head downward, wings outstretched,
+and glossy feathers ruffled; and below him, on the ground, some stones
+were scattered which told the tale of cruelty and petty spite.
+
+Beth stood for a moment transfixed; but in that moment the whole thing
+became clear to her--the way in which the deed was done, the man that
+did it, and his motive. She glanced up to the top of the high wall,
+and then, breathing thick through her clenched teeth, in her rage she
+climbed up the turf-stack with the agility of a cat, and looked over
+into the farrier's yard.
+
+"Come out of that, Pat Murphy, ye black-hearted, murthering villain,"
+she shrieked. "I see ye skulking there behind the stable-door. Come
+out, I tell ye, and bad luck to you for killing my bird."
+
+"Is it me, miss?" Pat Murphy exclaimed, appearing with an injured and
+innocent look on his face. "Me kill yer burrd! Shure, thin, ye never
+thought such a thing uv me!"
+
+"Didn't I, thin! and I think it still," Beth cried. "Say, 'May I never
+see heaven if I kilt it'--or I'll curse ye."
+
+"Ah, thin, it isn't such bad language ye'd hev me be using, and you a
+young lady, Miss Beth," said Pat in a wheedling tone.
+
+"'Deed, thin, it is, Pat Murphy; but I know ye daresn't say it," said
+Beth. "Oh, bad luck to ye! bad luck to ye every day ye see a wooden
+milestone, and twice every day ye don't. And if ye killed my bird, may
+the devil attend ye, to rob ye of what ye like best wherever ye are."
+
+She slid down the stack when she had spoken, and found her father
+standing at the bottom, looking at the dead bird with a heavy frown on
+his dark face. He must have heard Beth's altercation with Murphy, but
+he made no remark until Mrs. Caldwell came out, when he said something
+in Italian, to which she responded, "The cowardly brute!"
+
+Beth took her bird, and buried it deep in her little garden, by which
+time the car was ready. She had not shed a tear, nor did she ever
+mention the incident afterwards; which was characteristic, for she was
+always shy of showing any feeling but anger.
+
+Captain Caldwell had a wild horse called Artless, which few men would
+have cared to ride, and fewer still have driven. People wondered that
+he took his children out on the car behind such an animal, and perhaps
+he would not have done so if he had had his own way, but Mrs. Caldwell
+insisted on it.
+
+"They've no base blood in them," she said; "and I'll not have them
+allowed to acquire any affectation of timidity."
+
+Artless was particularly fresh that morning. He was a red chestnut,
+with a white star on his forehead, and one white stocking.
+
+When Beth returned to the stable-yard she found him fidgeting between
+the shafts, with his ears laid back, and the whites of his wicked eyes
+showing, and Riley struggling with his head in a hard endeavour to
+keep him quiet enough for the family to mount the car. Captain and
+Mrs. Caldwell and Mildred were already in their seats, and Beth
+scrambled up to hers unconcernedly, although Artless was springing
+about in a lively manner at the moment. Beth sat next her father, who
+drove from the side of the car, and then they were ready to be off as
+soon as Artless would go; but Artless objected to leave the yard, and
+Riley had to lead him round and round, running at his head, and
+coaxing him, while Captain Caldwell gathered up the reins and held the
+whip in suspense, watching his opportunity each time they passed the
+gate to give Artless a start that would make him bound through it.
+Round and round they went, however, several times, with Artless
+rearing, backing, and plunging; but at last the whip came down at the
+right moment, just the slightest flick, Riley let go his head, and out
+he dashed in his indignation, the battle ending in a wild gallop up
+the street, with the car swinging behind him, and the whole of the
+Irish side of the road out cheering and encouraging, to the children's
+great delight. But their ebullition of glee was a little too much for
+their father's nerves.
+
+"These children of yours are perfect little devils, Caroline!" he
+exclaimed irritably. Mrs. Caldwell smiled as at a compliment. She had
+been brought up on horseback herself, and insisted on teaching the
+children to regard danger as a diversion--not that that was difficult,
+for they were naturally daring. She would have punished them promptly
+on the slightest suspicion of timidity. "Only base-born people were
+cowardly," she scornfully maintained. "No lady ever shows a sign of
+fear."
+
+Once, when they were crossing Achen sands, a wide waste, innocent of
+any obstacle, Artless came down without warning, and Mildred uttered
+an exclamation.
+
+"Who was it made that ridiculous noise?" Mrs. Caldwell asked, looking
+hard at Beth.
+
+Beth could not clear herself without accusing her sister, so she said
+nothing, but sat, consumed with fiery indignation; and for long
+afterwards she would wake up at night, and clench her little fists,
+and burn again, remembering how her mother had supposed she was
+afraid.
+
+Artless went at breakneck speed that day, shied at the most unexpected
+moments, bolted right round, and stopped short occasionally; but Beth
+sat tight mechanically, following her own fancies. Captain Caldwell was
+going to inspect one of the outlying coastguard stations; and they went
+by the glen road, memorable to Beth because it was there she first felt
+the charm of running water, and found her first wild violets and tuft of
+primroses. The pale purple of the violets and the scent of primroses,
+warm with the sun, were among the happy associations of that time. But
+her delight was in the mountain-streams, with their mimic waterfalls and
+fairy wells. She loved to loiter by them, to watch them bubbling and
+sparkling over the rocks, to dabble her hands and feet in them, or to
+lie her length upon the turf beside them, in keen consciousness of the
+incessant, delicate, delicious murmur of the water, a sound which
+conveyed to her much more than can be expressed in articulate speech. At
+times too, when she was tired of loitering, she would look up and see
+the mountain-top just above her, and begin to climb; but always when she
+came to the spot, there was the mountain-top just as far above her as
+before; so she used to think that the mountain really reached the sky.
+
+When they returned, late that afternoon, Riley met them with a very
+serious face, and told Captain Caldwell mysteriously that Pat Murphy's
+horse was ill.
+
+"What a d----d unfortunate coincidence," Captain Caldwell muttered to
+his wife; and Beth noticed that her mother's face, which had looked
+fresh and bright from the drive, settled suddenly into its habitual
+anxious, careworn expression.
+
+Beth loitered about the yard till her parents had gone in; then she
+climbed the turf-stack, and looked over. The sick horse was tied to
+the stable-door, and stood, hanging his head with a very woebegone
+expression, and groaning monotonously. Murphy was trying to persuade
+him to take something hot out of a bucket, while Bap-faced Flanagan
+and another man, known as Tony-kill-the-cow, looked on and gave good
+advice.
+
+Beth's fury revived when she saw Murphy, and she laughed aloud
+derisively. All three men started and looked up, then crossed
+themselves.
+
+"Didn't I tell ye, Pat!" Beth exclaimed. "Ye may save yourself the
+trouble of doctoring him. He's as dead as my magpie."
+
+Murphy looked much depressed. "Shure, Miss Beth, the poor baste done
+ye no harm," he pleaded.
+
+"No," said Beth, "nor my bird hadn't done you any harm, nor the cow
+Tony cut the tail off hadn't done him any harm."
+
+"I didn't kill yer burrd," Murphy asserted doggedly.
+
+"We'll see," said Beth. "When the horse dies we'll know who killed the
+bird. Then one of you skunks can try and kill me. But I'd advise you
+to use a silver bullet; and if you miss, you'll be damned.--Blast ye,
+Riley, will ye let me alone!"
+
+Riley, hearing what was going on, and having called to her vainly to
+hold her tongue, had climbed the stack himself, and now laid hold of
+her. Beth struck him in the face promptly, whereupon he shook her, and
+loosening her hold of the wall, began to carry her down--a perilous
+proceeding, for the stack was steep, and Beth, enraged at the
+indignity, doubled herself up and scratched and bit and kicked the
+whole way to the ground.
+
+"Ye little divil," said Riley, setting her on her feet, "ye'll get us
+all into trouble wid that blasted tongue o' yours."
+
+"Who's afraid?" said Beth, shaking her tousled head, and standing up
+to Riley with her little fists clenched.
+
+"If the divil didn't put ye out when he gave up housekeeping, I dunno
+where you come from," Riley muttered as he turned away and stumped off
+stolidly.
+
+During the night the horse died, and Beth found when she went out next
+day that the carcass had been dragged down Murphy's garden and put in
+the lane outside. She climbed the wall, and discovered the farrier
+skinning the horse, and was much disgusted to see him using his hands
+without gloves on in such an operation. Her anger of the day before
+was all over now, and she was ready to be on the usual terms of
+scornful intimacy with Murphy.
+
+"Ye'll never be able to touch anything to eat again with those hands,"
+she said.
+
+"Won't I, thin!" he answered sulkily, and without looking up. He was
+as inconsequent as a child that resents an injury, but can be diverted
+from the recollection of it by anything interesting, only to return to
+its grievance, however, the moment the interest fails. "Won't I, thin!
+Just you try me wid a bit o' bread-an'-butter this instant, an' see
+what I'll do wid it."
+
+Beth, always anxious to experiment, tore indoors to get some
+bread-and-butter, and never did she forget the horror with which she
+watched the dirty man eat it, with unwashed hands, sitting on the
+horse's carcass.
+
+That carcass was a source of interest to her for many a long day to
+come. She used to climb on the wall to see how it was getting on, till
+the crows had picked the bones clean, and the weather had bleached
+them white; and she would wonder how a creature once so full of life
+could become a silent, senseless thing, not feeling, not caring, not
+knowing, no more to itself than a stone--strange mystery; and some day
+_she_ would be like that, just white bones. She held her breath and
+suspended all sensation and thought, time after time, to see what it
+felt like; but always immediately there began a great rushing sound in
+her ears as of a terrific storm, and that, she concluded, was death
+coming. When he arrived then all would be blotted out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The country was in a very disturbed state, and it was impossible to
+keep all hints of danger from the children's sharp ears. Beth knew a
+great deal of what was going on and what might be expected, but then a
+few chance phrases were already enough for her to construct a whole
+story upon, and with wonderful accuracy generally. Her fine faculty of
+observation developed apace at this time, and nothing she noticed now
+was ever forgotten. She would curl up in the window-seat among the
+fuchsias, and watch the people in the street by the hour together,
+especially on Sundays and market-days, when a great many came in from
+the mountains, women in close white caps with goffered frills, short
+petticoats, and long blue cloaks; and men in tail-coats and
+knee-breeches, with shillalahs under their arms, which they used very
+dexterously. They talked Irish at the top of their voices, and
+gesticulated a great deal, and were childishly quarrelsome. One
+market-day, when Beth was looking out of the sitting-room window, her
+mother came and looked out too, and they saw half-a-dozen countrymen
+set upon a young Castletownrock man. In a moment their shillalahs were
+whirling about his head, and he was driven round the corner of the
+house. Presently he came staggering back across the road, blubbering
+like a child, with his head broken, and the blood streaming down over
+his face, which was white and distorted with pain. They had knocked
+him down, and kicked him when he was on the ground.
+
+"Oh! the cowards! the cowards!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. Beth felt
+sick, but it was not so much what she saw as what she heard that
+affected her--the man's crying, and the graphic description of the
+nature and depth of the wound which another man, who had been present
+while the doctor dressed it, stopping at the window, kindly insisted
+on giving them, Mrs. Caldwell being obliged to listen courteously for
+fear of making herself unpopular. The man's manner impressed
+Beth--there was such a solemn joy in it, as of one who had just
+witnessed something refreshing.
+
+There were two priests in the place, Father Madden and Father John.
+Captain Caldwell said Father Madden was a gentleman. He shook hands
+with everybody, even with the curate and Mr. Macbean; but Father John
+would not speak to a protestant, and used to scowl at the children
+when he met them, and then Mildred would seize Bernadine's hand and
+drag her past him quickly, because she hated to be scowled at; but
+Beth always stopped and made a face at him. He used to carry a long
+whip, and crack it at the people, and on Sunday mornings, if they did
+not go to mass, he would patrol the streets in a fury, rating the
+idlers at the top of his voice, and driving them on before him. Beth
+used to glance stealthily at the chapel as she went to church; it had
+the attraction of forbidden fruit for her, and of Father John's
+exciting antics--nothing ever happened in church. Chapel she
+associated with the papists, and not at all with Kitty, whose tender
+teaching occupied a separate compartment of her consciousness
+altogether. There she kept the "Blessed Mother" and the "Dear Lord"
+for her comfort, although she seldom visited them now. Terms of
+endearment meant a great deal to Beth, because no one used them
+habitually in her family; in fact, she could not remember ever being
+called dear in her life by either father or mother.
+
+Since the day when she had run away from the great green waves,
+however, her father had taken an interest in her. He often asked her
+to brush his hair, and laughed very much sometimes at things she said.
+He used to lie on the couch reading to himself while she brushed.
+
+"Read some to me, papa," she said one day. He smiled and read a
+little, not in the least expecting her to understand it, but she soon
+showed him that she did, and entreated him to go on; so he gradually
+fell into the habit of reading aloud to her, particularly the
+"Ingoldsby Legends." She liked to hear them again and again, and would
+clamour for her favourites. On one occasion when he had stopped, and
+she had been sitting some time at the foot of the couch, with the
+brush in her hand, she suddenly burst out with a long passage from
+"The Execution"--the passage that begins:--
+
+    "God! 'tis a fearsome thing to see
+     That pale wan man's mute agony."
+
+Captain Caldwell raised his eyebrows as she proceeded, and looked at
+his wife.
+
+"I thought a friend of ours was considered stupid," he said.
+
+"People can do very well when they like," Mrs. Caldwell answered
+tartly; "but they're too lazy to try. When did you learn that, Beth?"
+
+"I didn't learn it," Beth answered.
+
+"Then how do you know it?"
+
+"It just came to me," Beth said.
+
+"Then I wish your lessons would _just come_ to you."
+
+"I wish they would," said Beth sincerely.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell snapped out something about idleness and obstinacy, and
+left the room. The day was darkening down, and presently Captain
+Caldwell got up, lit a lamp at the sideboard, and set it on the
+dining-table. When he had done so, he took Beth, and set her on the
+table too. Beth stood up on it, laughing, and put her arm round his
+neck.
+
+"Look at us, papa!" she exclaimed, pointing at the window opposite.
+The blinds were up, and it was dark enough outside for them to see
+themselves reflected in the glass.
+
+"I think we make a pretty picture, Beth," her father said, putting his
+arm round her.
+
+He had scarcely spoken, when there came a terrific report and a crash;
+something whizzed close to Beth's head; and a shower of glass fell on
+the floor. In a moment Beth had wriggled out of her father's arm, slid
+from the table, and scrambled up on to the window-seat, scattering the
+flower-pots, and slapping at her father's hand in her excitement, when
+he tried to stop her.
+
+"It's Bap-faced Flanagan--or Tony-kill-the-cow," she cried. "I can
+see--O papa! why did you pull me back? Now I shall never know!"
+
+The servants had rushed in from the kitchen, and Mrs. Caldwell came
+flying downstairs.
+
+"What is it, Henry?" she cried.
+
+"The d----d scoundrels shot at me with the child in my arms," he
+answered, looking in his indignation singularly like Beth herself in a
+stormy mood. As he spoke he turned to the hall door, and walked out
+into the street bareheaded.
+
+"For the love of the Lord, sir," Riley remonstrated, keeping well out
+of the way himself.
+
+But Captain Caldwell walked off down the middle of the road alone
+deliberately to the police station, his wife standing meanwhile on the
+doorstep, with the light behind her, coolly awaiting his return.
+
+"Pull down the blind in the sitting-room, Riley, and keep Miss Beth
+there," was all she said.
+
+Presently Captain Caldwell returned with a police-officer and two men.
+They immediately began to search the room. The glass of a picture had
+been shattered at the far end. Riley pulled the picture to one side,
+and discovered something imbedded in the wall behind, which he picked
+out with his pocket-knife and brought to the light. It looked like a
+disc all bent out of shape. He turned it every way, examining it, then
+tried it with his teeth.
+
+"I thought so," he said significantly. "It wouldn't be yer honour
+they'd be afther wid a silver bullet. I heard her tell 'em herself to
+try one."
+
+"And I said if they missed they'd be damned," Beth exclaimed
+triumphantly.
+
+"Beth!" cried her mother, seizing her by the arm to shake her, "how
+dare you use such a word?"
+
+"I heard it in church," said Beth, in an injured tone.
+
+"Look here, Beth," said her father, rescuing her from her mother's
+clutches, and setting her on the table--he had been talking aside with
+the police officer--"I want you to promise something on your word of
+honour as a lady, just to please me."
+
+Beth's countenance dropped: "O papa!" she exclaimed, "it's something I
+don't want to promise."
+
+"Well, never mind that, Beth," he answered. "Just promise this one
+thing to please me. If you don't, the people will try and kill you."
+
+"I don't mind that," said Beth.
+
+"But I do--and your mother does."
+
+Beth gave her mother a look of such utter astonishment, that the poor
+lady turned crimson.
+
+"And perhaps they'll kill me too," Captain Caldwell resumed. "You see
+they nearly did to-night."
+
+This was a veritable inspiration. Beth turned pale, and gasped: "I
+promise!"
+
+"Not so fast," her father said. "Never promise anything till you hear
+what it is. But now, promise you won't say bad luck to any of the
+people again."
+
+"I promise," Beth repeated; "but"--she slid from the table, and nodded
+emphatically--"but when I shake my fist and stamp my foot at them
+it'll mean the same thing."
+
+It was found next morning that Bap-faced Flanagan and Tony-kill-the-cow
+had disappeared from the township; but Murphy remained; and Beth was not
+allowed to go out alone again for a long time, not even into the garden.
+All she knew about it herself, however, was, that she had always either
+a policeman or a coastguardsman to talk to, which added very much to her
+pleasure in life, and also to Anne's.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+One of the interests of Captain Caldwell's life was his garden. He
+spent long hours in cultivating it, and that summer his vegetables,
+fruits, and flowers had been the wonder of the neighbourhood. But now
+autumn had come, vegetables were dug, fruits gathered, flowers
+bedraggled; and there was little to be done but clear the beds, plant
+them with bulbs, and prepare them for the spring.
+
+Now that Captain Caldwell had made Beth's acquaintance, he liked to
+have her with him to help him when he was at work in the garden, and
+there was nothing that she loved so much.
+
+One day they were at work together on a large flower-bed. Her father
+was trimming some rose-bushes, and she was kneeling beside him on a
+little mat, weeding.
+
+"I'm glad I'm not a flower," she suddenly exclaimed, after a long
+silence.
+
+"Why, Beth, flowers are very beautiful."
+
+"Yes, but they last so short a time. I'd rather be less beautiful, and
+live longer. What's your favourite flower, papa?"
+
+She had stopped weeding for the moment, but still sat on the mat,
+looking up at him. Captain Caldwell clipped a little more, then
+stopped too, and looked down at her.
+
+"I don't get a separate pleasure from any particular flower, Beth;
+they all delight me," he answered.
+
+Beth pondered upon this for a little, then she asked, "Do you know
+which I like best? Hot primroses." Captain Caldwell raised his
+eyebrows interrogatively. "When you pick them in the sun, and put them
+against your cheek, they're all warm, you know," Beth explained; "and
+then they _are_ good! And fuchsias are good too, but it isn't the same
+good. You know that one in the sitting-room window, white outside and
+salmon-coloured inside, and such a nice shape--the flowers--and the
+way they hang down; you have to lift them to look into them. When I
+look at them long, they make me feel--oh--feel, you know--feel that I
+could take the whole plant in my arms and hug it. But fuchsias don't
+scent sweet like hot primroses."
+
+"And therefore they are not so good?" her father suggested, greatly
+interested in the child's attempt to express herself. "They say that
+the scent is the soul of the flower."
+
+"The scent is the soul of the flower," Beth repeated several times;
+then heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction. "I want to sing it," she
+said. "I always want to sing things like that."
+
+"What other 'things like that' do you know, Beth?"
+
+    "The song of the sea in the shell,
+       The swish of the grass in the breeze,
+     The sound of a far-away bell,
+       The whispering leaves on the trees,"
+
+Beth burst out instantly.
+
+"Who taught you that, Beth?" her father asked.
+
+"Oh, no one taught me, papa," she answered. "It just came to me--like
+this, you know. I used to listen to the sea in that shell in the
+sitting-room, and I tried and tried to find a name for the sound, and
+all at once _song_ came into my head--_The song of the sea in the
+shell_. Then I was lying out here on the grass when it was long,
+before you cut it to make hay, and you came out and said, 'There's a
+stiff breeze blowing.' And it blew hard and then stopped, and then it
+came again; and every time it came the grass went--swish-h-h! _The
+swish of the grass in the breeze._ Then you know that bell that rings
+a long way off, you can only just hear it out here--_The sound of a
+far-away bell_. Then the leaves--it _was_ a long time before anything
+came that I could sing about them. I used to try and think it, but you
+can't sing a thing you think. It's when a thing comes, you can sing
+it. I was always listening to the leaves, and I always felt they were
+doing something; then all at once it came one day. Of course they were
+whispering--_The whispering leaves on the trees_. That was how they
+came, papa. At first I used to sing them by themselves; but now I sing
+them all together. You can sing them three different ways--the way I
+did first, you know, then you can put _breeze_ first--
+
+    The swish of the grass in the breeze,
+    The whispering leaves on the trees,
+    The song of the sea in the shell,
+    The sound of a far-away bell.
+
+Or you can sing--
+
+    The sound of a far-away bell,
+      The whispering leaves on the trees,
+      The swish of the grass in the breeze,
+    The song of the sea in the shell.
+
+Which way do you think the nicest?" She had rattled all this off as
+fast as she could speak, looking and pointing towards the various
+things she mentioned as she proceeded, the sea, the grass, the trees,
+the distance; now she looked up to her father for an answer. He was
+looking at her so queerly, she was filled with alarm. "Am I naughty,
+papa?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh no," he said, with a smile that reassured her. "I was just
+thinking. I like to hear how 'things come' to you. You must always
+tell me--when new things come. By the way, who told you that fuchsia
+was salmon-coloured?"
+
+"I _saw_ it was," she said, surprised that he needed to ask such a
+question. "I saw it one day when we had boiled salmon for dinner.
+Isn't it nice when you see that one thing's like another? I have a
+pebble, and it's just the shape of a pear--now you know what shape it
+is, don't you?" He nodded. "But if I said it's thick at one end and
+thin at another, you wouldn't know what shape it is a bit, would you?"
+
+"No, I should not," he answered, beginning to prune again,
+thoughtfully. "Beth," he said presently, "I should like to see you
+grow up."
+
+"Shan't I grow up?" said Beth in dismay.
+
+"Oh yes--at least I should hope so. But--it's not likely that _I_
+shall be--looking on. But, Beth, I want you to remember this. When you
+grow up, I think you will want to do something that only a few other
+people can do well--paint a picture, write a book, act in a theatre,
+make music--it doesn't matter what; if it comes to you, if you feel
+you can do it, just do it. You'll not do it well all at once; but try
+and try until you _can_ do it well. And don't ask anybody if they
+think you can do it; they'll be sure to say no; and then you'll be
+disheartened--What's disheartened? It's the miserable feeling you
+would get if I said you would never be able to learn to play the
+piano. You'd try to do it all the same, perhaps, but you'd do it
+doubtfully instead of with confidence."
+
+"What's confidence?" said Beth.
+
+"You are listening to me now with confidence. It is as if you said, I
+believe you."
+
+"But I can't say 'I believe you' to arithmetic, if I want to do it."
+
+"No, but you can say, I believe I can do it--I believe in myself."
+
+"Is that confidence in myself?" Beth asked, light breaking in upon
+her.
+
+"That's it. You're getting quite a vocabulary, Beth. A vocabulary is
+all the words you know," he added hastily, anticipating the inevitable
+question.
+
+Beth went on with her weeding for a little.
+
+"And there is another thing, Beth, I want to tell you," her father
+recommenced. "Never do anything unless you are quite sure it is the
+right thing to do. It doesn't matter how much you may want to do it,
+you mustn't, if you are not quite, quite sure it is right."
+
+"Not even if I am just half sure?"
+
+"No, certainly not. You must be quite, quite sure."
+
+Beth picked some more weeds, then looked up at him again: "But, papa,
+I shall never want to do anything I don't think right when I'm grown
+up, shall I?"
+
+"I'm afraid you will. Everybody does."
+
+"Did _you_ want to, papa?" Beth asked in amazement.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"And did you do it?"
+
+"Yes," he repeated.
+
+"And what happened?"
+
+"Much misery."
+
+"Were you miserable?"
+
+"Yes, very. But that wasn't the worst of it."
+
+"What was the worst of it?"
+
+"The worst of it was that I made other people miserable."
+
+"Ah, that's bad," said Beth, with perfect comprehension. "That makes
+you feel so horrid inside yourself."
+
+"Well, Beth, just you remember that. You can't do wrong without making
+somebody else miserable. Be loyal, be loyal to yourself, loyal to the
+best that is in you; that means, be as good as your friends think you,
+and better if you can. Tell the truth, live openly, and stick to your
+friends; that's the whole of the best code of morality in the world.
+Now we must go in."
+
+As they walked down the garden together, Beth slipped her dirty little
+hand into his, and looked up at him: "Papa," she said solemnly, "when
+you want to be with somebody always, more than with anybody else; and
+want to look at him, and want to talk to him, and you find you can
+tell him lots of things you couldn't tell anybody else if you tried,
+you know; what does it mean?"
+
+"It means you love him very much."
+
+"Then I love you, papa, very much," she said, nestling her head
+against his arm. "And it does make me feel so nice inside. But it
+makes me miserable too," she added, sighing.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"When you have a headache, you know. I used only to be afraid you'd be
+angry if I made a noise. But now I'm always thinking how much it hurts
+you. I wake up often and often at night, and you are in my mind, and I
+try and see you say, 'It's better,' or 'It's quite well.'"
+
+"And what then, Beth?" her father asked, in a queer voice.
+
+"Then I don't cry any more, you know."
+
+She looked up at her father as she spoke, and saw that his eyes were
+full of tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+That was almost the last of those happy autumn days. Winter fell upon
+the country suddenly with nipping cold. The mountains, always sombre,
+lowered in great tumbled masses from under the heavy clouds that
+seldom rose from their summits. Terrible gales kept the sea in
+torment, and the voice of its rage and pain filled Castletownrock
+without ceasing. Torrents of rain tore up the roads, and rendered them
+almost impassable. There was stolid endurance and suffering written on
+every face out of doors, while within the people cowered over their
+peat fires, a prey to hunger, cold, and depression. Draughts made
+merry through the large rooms and passages in Captain Caldwell's
+house; the wind howled in the chimneys, rattled at the windows, and
+whistled at the keyholes, especially at night, when Beth would hide
+her head under the bed-clothes to keep out the racket, or, in another
+mood, lie and listen to it, and imagine herself out in the storm, till
+her nerves were strung to a state of ecstatic tension, and her mind
+fairly revelled in the sense of danger. When her father was at home in
+the evening, she would sit still beside the fire in the sitting-room,
+listening in breathless awe, and excitement wholly pleasurable, to the
+gale raging without; but if Captain Caldwell had not returned, as
+frequently happened now that the days were short, and the roads so
+bad, well knowing the risks he ran, she would see the car upset a
+hundred times, and hear the rattle of musketry in every blast that
+shook the house, and so share silently, but to the full, the terrible
+anxiety which kept her mother pacing up and down, up and down, unable
+to settle to anything until he entered and sank into a seat, often so
+exhausted that it was hard to rouse him to change his dripping
+clothes. His duties, always honourably performed whatever the risk to
+himself, were far too severe for him, and he was rapidly becoming a
+wreck;--nervous, liverish, a martyr to headache, and a slave to
+stimulants, although not a drunkard--he only took enough to whip him
+up to his work. His digestion too had become seriously impaired, and
+he had no natural appetite for anything. He was fond of his children,
+and proud of them, but had hitherto been too irritable to contribute
+anything to their happiness; on the contrary, his name was a terror to
+them, and "Hush, papa has come in!" was enough at any time to damp
+their wildest spirits. Now, however, he suffered more from depression
+than from irritability, and would cower over the fire on stormy days
+in a state of despondency which was reflected in every face, taking
+no notice of any of them. The children would watch him furtively in
+close silent sympathy, sitting still and whispering for fear of
+disturbing him; and if perchance they saw him smile, and a look of
+relief came into their mother's anxious face, their own spirits went
+up on the instant. But everything was against him. The damp came up
+from the flags in the sitting-room through the cocoanut matting and
+the thick carpet that covered it, which it defaced in great patches.
+Close to the fire the wires of the piano rusted, and had to be rubbed
+and rubbed every day, or half the notes went dumb. The paper, a rare
+luxury in those parts, began to drop from the walls. Great turf-fires
+were constantly kept up, but the damp stole a march on them when they
+smouldered in the night, and made mildew-marks upon everything.
+
+Good food and cooking would have helped Captain Caldwell, but the food
+was indifferent, and there were no cooks to be had in the country.
+Biddy had never seen such a thing as a kitchen-range before she took
+the situation, and when she first had to use the oven, she put the
+turf on the bottom shelf in order to heat the top one. Mrs. Caldwell
+made what were superhuman efforts to a woman of her training and
+constitution, to keep the servants up to the mark, and grew grey in
+the endeavour; but Mrs. Caldwell in the kitchen was like a racehorse
+at the plough; and even if she had been a born housewife, she could
+have done little with servants who would do nothing themselves except
+under her eyes, and stole everything they could lay their hands on,
+including the salt out of the salt-cellars between meals, if it were
+not locked up.
+
+Towards the end of January, Captain Caldwell was ill in bed; he had
+wet cloths on his head, and seemed as if he could hardly speak. Beth
+hung about his door all day, watching for opportunities to steal in.
+Mamma always sent her away if she could, but if papa heard her, he
+would whisper, "Let the child come in," and then mamma would let her
+in, but would still look cross. And Beth sat at one side of the bed,
+and mamma sat on the other, and no one spoke except papa sometimes;
+only you could seldom understand what he said. And mamma cried, but
+Beth did not. She ached too much inside for that. You can't cry when
+you ache so much.
+
+Beth day after day sat with her hands folded on her lap, and her feet
+dangling from a chair that was much too high for her, watching her
+father with an intensity of silent anxiety that was terrible to
+witness in so young a child. Her mother might have beaten her to
+death, but she could never have dislodged her from the room once she
+had her father's leave to stay there. Mrs. Caldwell rarely beat her
+now, however; she generally ignored her; so Beth came and went as she
+chose. She would climb up on to the bed when there was nobody in the
+room, and kiss the curls of papa's thick glossy black hair so softly
+that he never knew, except once, when he caught her, and smiled. His
+dark face grew grey in bed, and his blue eyes sunken and haggard; but
+he battled it out that time, and slowly began to recover.
+
+Beth was sitting in her usual place beside her father's bed one day
+when the doctor came and discovered her. He was standing on the other
+side of the bed, and exclaimed, "Why, it's all eyes!"
+
+"Yes, it's a queer pixie," her father said. "But it's going to do
+something some day, or _I'm_ much mistaken."
+
+"It's going to make a nuisance of itself if you put such nonsense into
+its head, or I'm much mistaken," Mrs. Caldwell observed.
+
+"I shall _not_ make a nuisance of myself," Beth indignantly protested.
+
+"I shall never be able to make you understand, Caroline," Captain
+Caldwell exclaimed. "Little pitchers are generally bad enough, but
+when there is large intelligence added to the long ears, they're the
+devil."
+
+Before the doctor left he said to Mrs. Caldwell, "We must keep our
+patient amused, you know."
+
+"O doctor!" Beth exclaimed, clasping her hands in her earnestness, "do
+you think if Sophie Keene came?"
+
+The doctor burst into a shout of laughter, in which Captain Caldwell
+also joined. "Just stay here yourself, Beth," he said, when he had
+recovered himself. "For amusement, neither Sophie Keene nor any one
+else I ever knew could hold a candle to you."
+
+"What's 'hold a candle to you'?" Beth instantly demanded.
+
+And then there was more laughter, in which even Mrs. Caldwell joined;
+and afterwards, when the doctor had gone, she actually patted Beth on
+the back, and stroked her hair, which was the first caress Beth ever
+remembered to have received from her mother.
+
+"Now, mamma," she exclaimed, with great feeling, in the fulness of her
+surprise and delight, "now I shall forget that you ever beat me."
+
+Her mother coloured painfully.
+
+Her father muttered something about a noble nature.
+
+"And that was the child you never wanted at all!" slipped, with a ring
+of triumph, from Mrs. Caldwell unawares--an interesting example of the
+complexity of human feelings.
+
+Captain Caldwell soon went back to his duty--all too soon for his
+strength. The dreadful weather continued. Day after day he returned
+soaking from some distant station to the damp and discomfort of the
+house, and the ill-cooked, unappetising food, which he could hardly
+swallow. And to all this was added great anxiety about the future of
+his family. His boys were doing well at school by this time; but he
+was not satisfied with the way in which the little girls were being
+brought up. There was no order in their lives, no special time for
+anything; and he knew the importance of early discipline. He tried to
+discuss the subject with his wife, but she met his suggestions
+irritably.
+
+"There's time enough for that," she said. "_I_ had no regular lessons
+till I was in my teens."
+
+"But what answered with you may be disastrous to these children," he
+ventured. "They are all unlike you in disposition, more especially
+Beth."
+
+"You spoil that child," Mrs. Caldwell protested. "And at any rate I
+can do no more. I am run off my feet."
+
+This was true, and Captain Caldwell let the subject drop. His patience
+was exemplary in those days. He suffered severely both mentally and
+physically, but never complained. The shadow was upon him, and he knew
+it, but he met his fate with fortitude. Whatever his faults, they were
+expiated in the estimation of all who saw him suffer now.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell never realised how ill he was, but still she was uneasy,
+and it was with intense relief that she welcomed a case of soups and
+other nourishing delicacies calculated to tempt the appetite, which
+arrived for him one day from one of his sisters in England.
+
+"This is just what you want, Henry," she said, with a brighter look in
+her face than he had seen there for months. "I shall soon have you
+yourself again now."
+
+Captain Caldwell's spirits also went up.
+
+In the evening they were all together in the sitting-room. Mrs.
+Caldwell was playing little songs for Mildred to sing, Baby Bernadine
+was playing with her bricks upon the floor, and Beth as usual was
+hanging about her father. He had shaken off his despondency, and was
+quite lively for the moment, walking up and down the room, and making
+merry remarks to his wife in Italian, at which she laughed a good
+deal.
+
+"Come, Beth, fetch 'Ingoldsby.' We shall just come to my favourite,
+and finish the book before you go to bed," he said.
+
+Beth brought the book, and then climbed up on his knee, and settled
+there happily, with her head on his shoulder.
+
+            "As I laye a-thynkynge, the golden sun was sinking,
+             O merrie sang that Bird as it glitter'd on her breast,
+                      With a thousand gorgeous dyes,
+                      While soaring to the skies,
+                     'Mid the stars she seem'd to rise,
+                          As to her nest;
+
+            As I laye a-thynkynge, her meaning was exprest:--
+                     'Follow, follow me away,
+                     It boots not to delay,'--
+                     'Twas so she seemed to saye,
+                        'HERE IS REST!'"
+
+After he had read those last lines, there was a moment's silence, and
+then Beth burst into a tempest of tears. "O papa--papa! No, no, no!"
+she sobbed. "I couldn't bear it."
+
+"What _is_ the matter with the child?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed,
+starting up.
+
+"'The vision and the faculty divine,' I think," her father answered.
+"Leave her to me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beth was awake when Anne entered the nursery next morning to call the
+children.
+
+"Get up, and be good," Anne said. "Your pa's ill."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell came into the nursery immediately afterwards, very much
+agitated. She kissed Beth, and from that moment the child was calm;
+but there settled upon her pathetic little face a terrible look of age
+and anxiety.
+
+When she was dressed, she ran right into her father's room before any
+one could stop her. He was moaning--"O my head, my head! O my head, my
+head!" over and over again.
+
+"You mustn't stay here, little woman--not to-day," the doctor said.
+"It will make your father worse if you do."
+
+Beth stole from the room, and returned to the nursery. There, however,
+she could still hear her father moaning, and she could not bear it, so
+she took her prayer-book, by way of life-saving apparatus, and went
+down to the kitchen to "see" what the servants were thinking--her own
+significant expression. They were all strangely subdued. "Sit down,
+Miss Beth," Biddy said kindly. "Sit down in the window there wid your
+book if you want company. It's a sore heart you'll be having, or I'm
+much mistaken."
+
+Beth sat in the window the whole morning, reading prayers to herself,
+while she watched and waited. The doctor sent Riley down from the
+sick-room several times to fetch things, and each time Beth consulted
+his countenance anxiously for news, but asked no questions. Biddy
+tried to persuade her to eat, but the child could not touch anything.
+
+Late in the afternoon Riley came down in a hurry.
+
+"Is the master better, Pat?" Biddy demanded.
+
+"'Deed, thin, he isn't," Riley replied; "and the doctor's sending me
+off on the horse as hard as I can go for Dr. Jamieson."
+
+"Och, thin, if the doctor's sending you for Dr. Jamieson it's all up.
+He's niver sent for till the last. The Lord himself won't save him
+now."
+
+Beth shuffled over the leaves of her prayer-book hurriedly. She had
+been crying piteously to God in her heart for hours to save her
+father, and He had not heard; now she remembered that the servants
+said if you read the Lord's Prayer backwards it would raise the devil.
+Beth tried; but the invocation was unavailing. Before Riley could
+saddle the horse, a message was sent down to stop him; and then Anne
+came for Beth, and took her up to her father's room. The dreadful
+sounds had ceased at last, and there was a strange silence in the
+house. Mrs. Caldwell was sitting beside her husband's bed, rocking
+herself a little as if in pain, but shedding no tears. Mildred was
+standing with her arm round her mother's neck crying bitterly, while
+Baby Bernadine gazed at her father wonderingly.
+
+He was lying on his side with his arms folded. His eyes were shut, and
+there was a lovely look of relief upon his face.
+
+"I sent for you children," their mother said, "to see your father just
+as he died. You must never forget him."
+
+Ellis and Rickards, two of papa's men, were in the room, and Mrs.
+Ellis too, and the doctor, and Riley, and Biddy, and Anne; and there
+was a foot-bath, with steaming hot water in it, on the floor; some
+mustard on the table; and the fire burnt brightly. These details
+impressed themselves on Beth's mind involuntarily, as indeed did
+everything else connected with that time. It seemed to her afterwards
+as if she had seen everything and felt nothing for the moment--nothing
+but breathless excitement and interest. Her grief was entirely
+suspended.
+
+Mrs. Ellis and the doctor led mamma down to the sitting-room; they
+didn't seem to think that she could walk. And then Mrs. Ellis made her
+some tea, and stood there, and coaxed her to drink it, just as if
+mamma had been a child. Mrs. Caldwell sat on the big couch with her
+back to the window, and Mildred sat beside her, with her arm round
+her, crying all the time. Bernadine cried too, but it was because she
+was hungry, and no one thought of giving her anything to eat. Beth
+fetched her some bread-and-butter, and then she was good. People began
+to arrive--Mr. Macbean, Captain and Mrs. Keene, the Smalls, the
+curate--Father Madden even. He had heard the news out in the country,
+and came hurrying back to pay his respects, and offer his condolences
+to Mrs. Caldwell, and see if there was anything he could do. He hoped
+it was not taking a liberty to come; but indeed he came in the fulness
+of his heart, and because he couldn't help it, for he had known him
+well, and a better man and truer gentleman never breathed. The widow
+held out her hand to the priest, and looked up at him gratefully.
+
+Beth opened the door for Mrs. Small, who exclaimed at once: "Oh, my
+dear child, how is your poor mother? Does she cry at all? I do hope
+she has been crying."
+
+"No," Beth answered, "nobody cries but Mildred."
+
+When Mrs. Small went in, Mrs. Caldwell spoke to her quite collectedly.
+"He was taken ill at eight o'clock this morning with a dreadful pain
+in his head," she told her. "He had suffered fearfully from his head
+of late. I sent for the doctor at once. But nothing relieved him. From
+ten o'clock he got worse and worse, and at four he was gone. He always
+wished to die suddenly, and be spared a lingering illness. He has been
+depressed of late, but this morning, early, he woke up quite brightly;
+and last night he was wonderfully better. After the children had gone
+to bed, he read aloud to me as he used to do in the old days; and he
+looked so much more like his old self again that I thought a happier
+time was coming. And so it was. But not for me."
+
+"Poor lady!" Mrs. Small whispered. "It has been a fearful shock."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell showed strength of character in the midst of the
+overwhelming calamity which had fallen upon her with such awful
+suddenness. She had a nice sense of honour, and her love was great;
+and by the help of these she was enabled to carry out every wish of
+her dead husband with regard to himself. He had had a fastidious
+horror of being handled after death by the kind of old women who are
+accustomed to lay out bodies, and therefore Mrs. Caldwell begged Ellis
+and Rickards to perform that last duty for him themselves.
+
+When the children went to bed, she took them to kiss their father. The
+stillness of the chamber struck a chill through Beth, but she thought
+it beautiful. The men had draped it in white, and decorated it with
+evergreens, there being no flowers in season. Papa was smiling, and
+looked serenely happy.
+
+"Years ago he was like that," mamma said softly, as if she were
+speaking to herself; "but latterly there has been a look of pain. I am
+glad to see him so once more. You are at peace now--dearest." She
+stroked his dark hair, and as she did so her hand showed white against
+it.
+
+The children kissed him; and then Mrs. Ellis persuaded mamma to come
+and help her to put them to bed; and mamma taught them to say: "_Yea,
+though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
+no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort
+me._" She told them to remember they had learnt it on the day their
+father died, and asked them to say it always in memory of him. Beth
+believed for a long time that it was he who would walk with her
+through the valley of the shadow, and in after years she felt sure
+that her mother had thought so too.
+
+Mrs. Ellis stayed all night, and slept with the children.
+
+When their mother left them, Beth could not sleep. She had noticed how
+cold her father was when she kissed him, and was distressed to think
+he had only a sheet to cover him. The longer she thought of it, the
+more wretched she became, especially when she contrasted the warmth
+and softness of her own little bed with the hardness and coldness of
+the one they had made up for him; and at last she could bear it no
+longer. She sat up in bed and listened. She could hear by their
+breathing that the other children were asleep, but she was not sure
+about Mrs. Ellis. Very stealthily, therefore, she slipped out of bed,
+and pulled off the clothes. She could only just clasp them in both
+arms, but the nursery door was ajar, and she managed to open it with
+her foot. It creaked noisily, and Beth waited, listening in suspense;
+but nobody moved; so she slipped out into the passage. It was quite
+dark there, and the floor felt very cold to her bare feet. She
+stumbled down the passage, tripping over the bed-clothes as she went,
+and dreading to be caught and stopped, but not afraid of anything
+else. The door was open when she reached it, and there was a dim light
+in the room. This was unexpected, and she paused to peep in before she
+entered. Two candles were burning on a table at the foot of the bed.
+Their flames flickered in a draught, and cast shadows on her father's
+face, so that it seemed as if he moved and breathed again. Her mother
+was kneeling beside the bed, with her face hidden on her husband's
+breast, her left arm round him, while with the fingers of her right
+hand she incessantly toyed with his hair. "Only last night," she was
+saying, "only last night; oh, I cannot believe it!--perhaps I ought to
+be glad--there will be no more pain for you--oh, my darling, I would
+have given my life to save you a moment's pain--and I could do so
+little--so little. Oh, if only you could come back to tell me that
+your life had ever been the better for me, that I had not spoilt it
+utterly, that I brought you some happiness." She raised her head and
+looked into the tranquil face. The flickering shadows flitted across
+it, but did not deceive her. She must ache on always for an answer
+now--always, for ever. With a convulsive sob, she crawled up closer on
+her knees, and laid her cheek beside his, but no tears came. She had
+not wept at all that day.
+
+Beth stood for a long time in the doorway, listening to her mother's
+rambling talk, and watching her white fingers straying through her
+father's hair. She hugged the bed-clothes close, but she had forgotten
+why she came. She felt no cold; she held no thought; her whole being
+was absorbed in the scene before her.
+
+Presently, however, something that her mother said aroused her--"Cold,"
+she was murmuring, "so cold. How you dreaded it too! You were always
+delicate and suffering, yet you did more than the strongest men, for our
+sakes. You never spared yourself. What you undertook to do, you did like
+an honourable gentleman, neglecting nothing. You have died doing your
+duty, as you wished to die. You have been dying all these months--and I
+never suspected--I did not know--dying--killed by exposure--and
+anxiety--and bad food. You came home hungry, and you could not eat what
+I had to give you--cold, and I could not warm you--oh, the cruel, bitter
+cold!"
+
+Beth slipped up to her noiselessly.
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell started.
+
+Beth held out the blankets--"to cover him."
+
+Her mother caught her in her arms. "O my poor little child! my poor
+little child!" she cried; and then at last she burst into tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the days that preceded her father's funeral, Beth did not miss
+him. It was as if he were somewhere else, that was all--away in the
+mountains--and was himself thinking, as Beth did continually, about the
+still, cold, smiling figure that reposed, serenely indifferent to them
+all, in his room upstairs. One day, what he had said about being laid
+out by old women came into her head, and she wondered what he would have
+looked like when they laid him out that he should have objected so
+strongly to their seeing him. She was near the death-chamber at the
+moment, and went in. No one was there, and she stood a long time looking
+at the figure on the bed. It was entirely covered, but she had only to
+lift the sheet and learn the secret. She turned it back from the placid
+face, then stopped, and whispered half in awe, half in interrogation,
+"Papa!" As she pronounced the word, the inhuman impulse passed and was
+forgotten.
+
+Hours later, Mrs. Ellis found her sitting beside him as she had so
+often done during his illness, on that same chair which was too high
+for her, her feet dangling, and her little hands folded in her lap,
+gazing at him with a face as placidly set, save for the eyes, as his
+own.
+
+The next day they had all to bid him the long farewell. Mrs. Caldwell
+stood looking down upon him, not wiping the great tears that welled up
+painfully into her eyes, lest in the act she should blot out the dear
+image and so lose sight of it for one last precious moment. She was an
+undemonstrative woman, but the lingering way in which she touched him,
+his hair, his face, his waxen hands, was all the more impressive for
+that in its restrained tenderness.
+
+Suddenly she uncovered his feet. They were white as marble, and
+beautifully formed. "Ah, I feared so!" she exclaimed. "They put them
+into hot water that day. I knew it was too hot, and I said so; he
+seemed insensible, but I felt him wince--and see!" The scar of a scald
+proved that she had been right. This last act, due to the fear that he
+had been made to suffer an unnecessary pang, struck Beth in after
+years as singularly pathetic.
+
+It was not until after the funeral that Beth herself realised that she
+had lost her father. When they returned, the house had been set in
+order, and made to look as usual--yet something was missing. The
+blinds were up, the sun was streaming in, the "Ingoldsby Legends" lay
+on the sofa in the sitting-room. When Beth saw the book her eyes
+dilated with a pang. It lay there, just as he had left it; but he was
+in the ground. He would never come back again.
+
+Suddenly the child threw herself on the floor in an agony of grief,
+sobbing, moaning, writhing, tearing her hair, and calling aloud,
+"Papa! papa! Come back! come back! come back!"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell in her fright would have tried her old remedy of shaking
+and beating; but Mrs. Ellis snatched the child up and carried her off
+to the nursery, where she kept her for the rest of that terrible day,
+rocking her on her knee most of the time, and talking to her about her
+father in heaven, living the life eternal, yet watching over her
+still, and waiting for her, until she fired Beth's imagination, and
+the terrible grave was forgotten.
+
+That night, however, and for many nights to come, the child started up
+out of her sleep, and wept, and wailed, and tore her hair, and had
+again to be nursed and comforted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Just like the mountains, all jumbled up together when you view them
+from a distance, had Beth's impulses and emotions already begun to be
+in their extraordinary complexity at this period; and even more like
+the mountains when you are close to them, for then, losing sight of
+the whole, you become aware of the details, and are surprised at their
+wonderful diversity, at the heights and hollows, the barren wastes,
+fertile valleys, gentle slopes, and giddy precipices--heights and
+hollows of hope and despair, barren wastes of mis-spent time, fertile
+valleys of intellectual accomplishment, gentle slopes of aspiration
+undefined, and giddy precipices of passionate impulse and desperate
+revolt. Genius is sympathetic insight made perfect; and it must have
+this diversity if it is ever to be effectual--must touch on every
+human experience, must suffer, and must also enjoy; great, therefore,
+are its compensations. It feels the sorrows of all mankind, and is
+elevated by them; whereas the pain of an individual bereavement is
+rather acute than prolonged. Genius is spared the continuous gnawing
+ache of the grief which stultifies; instead of an ever-present wearing
+sense of loss that would dim its power, it retains only those hallowed
+memories, those vivid recollections, which foster the joy of a great
+yearning tenderness; and all its pains are transmuted into something
+subtle, mysterious, invisible, neither to be named nor ignored--a
+fertilising essence which is the source of its own heaven, and may
+also contain the salvation of earth. So genius has no lasting griefs.
+
+Beth utterly rejected all thought of her father in his grave, and even
+of her father in heaven. When her first wild grief subsided, he
+returned to her, to be with her, as those we love are with us always
+in their absence, enshrined in our happy consciousness. She never
+mentioned him in these days, but his presence, warm in her heart, kept
+her little being aglow; and it was only when people spoke to her, and
+distracted her attention from the thought of him, that she felt
+disconsolate. While she could walk with him in dreams, she cared for
+no other companionship.
+
+It was a dreadful position for poor Mrs. Caldwell, left a widow--not
+without friends, certainly, for the people were kind--but with none of
+her own kith and kin, in that wild district, embarrassed for want of
+money, and broken in health. But, as is usual in times of great
+calamity, many things happened, showing both the best and the worst
+side of human nature.
+
+After Captain Caldwell's death, old Captain Keene, who had once held
+the appointment himself, and was indebted to Captain Caldwell for much
+kindly hospitality, went about the countryside telling people that
+Captain Caldwell had died of drink. Some officious person immediately
+brought the story to Mrs. Caldwell.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell had the house on her hands, but the officer who was sent
+to succeed Captain Caldwell would be obliged to take it, as there was
+no other. He arrived one day with a very fastidious wife, who did not
+like the house at all. There was no accommodation in it, no china
+cupboard, nothing fit for a lady. She must have it all altered. From
+the way she spoke, it seemed to Beth that she blamed her mother for
+everything that was wrong.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell said very little. She was suffering from a great
+swelling at the back of her neck--an anthrax, the doctor called
+it--and was not fit to be about at all, but her indomitable fortitude
+kept her up. Mrs. Ellis had stayed to nurse her, and help with the
+children. She and Mrs. Caldwell looked at each other and smiled when
+the new officer's wife had gone.
+
+"She's a very fine lady indeed, Mrs. Ellis," Mrs. Caldwell said,
+sighing wearily.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," Mrs. Ellis answered; "but people who have been used to
+things all their lives think less about them."
+
+Mrs. Ellis was very kind to the children, and when wet days kept Beth
+indoors, she would stay with her, and study her with interest. She was
+thin, precise, low-voiced, quiet in her movements, passionless, loyal;
+and every time she took a mouthful at table, she wiped her mouth.
+
+The doctor came every day to dress the abscess on Mrs. Caldwell's
+neck, and every day he said that if it had not burst of itself he
+should have been obliged to make a deep incision in it in the form of
+a cross. Mildred and Beth were always present on these occasions,
+fighting to be allowed to hold the basin. Mrs. Ellis wanted to turn
+them out, but Mrs. Caldwell said: "Let them stay, poor little bodies;
+they like to be with me."
+
+The poor lady, ill as she was, had neither peace nor quiet. The yard
+was full of great stones now, and stone-masons hammered at them from
+early morning till late at night, chipping them into shape for the
+alterations and additions to be made to the house; the loft was full
+of carpenters preparing boards for flooring; the yard-gates were
+always open, and people came and went as they liked, so that there was
+no more privacy for the family. Mildred stayed indoors with her mother
+a good deal; but Beth, followed by Bernadine, who had become her
+shadow, was continually in the yard among the men, listening,
+questioning, and observing. To Beth, at this time, the grown-up people
+of her race were creatures with a natural history other than her own,
+which she studied with great intelligence and interest, and sometimes
+also with disgust; for, although she was so much more with the common
+people, as she had been taught to call them, than with her own class,
+she did not adopt their standards, and shrank always with innate
+refinement from everything gross. No one thought of shooting her now.
+She had not only lived down her unpopularity, but, by dint of her
+natural fearlessness, her cheerful audacity of speech, and quick
+comprehension, had won back the fickle hearts of the people, who
+weighed her words again superstitiously, and made much of her. The
+workmen, with the indolent, inconsequent Irish temperament which makes
+it irksome to follow up a task continuously, and easier to do anything
+than the work in hand, would break off to amuse her at any time. One
+young carpenter--lean, sallow, and sulky--who was working for her
+mother, interested her greatly. He was making packing-cases, and the
+first one was all wrong, and had to be pulled to pieces; and the way
+he swore as he demolished it, ripping out oaths as he ripped up the
+boards, impressed Beth as singularly silly.
+
+There was another carpenter at work in the loft, a little wizened old
+man. He always brought a peculiar kind of yellow bread, and shared it
+with the children, who loved it, and took as much as they wanted
+without scruple, so that the poor old man must have had short-commons
+himself sometimes. He could draw all kinds of things--fish with
+scales, ships in full sail, horses, coaches, people--and Beth often
+made him get out his big broad pencil and do designs for her on the
+new white boards. When he was within earshot, the people in the yard
+were particular about what they said before the children; if they
+forgot themselves he called them to order, and silenced them
+instantly, which surprised Beth, because he was the smallest man
+there. There was one man, however, whom the old carpenter could never
+suppress. Beth did not know how this man got his living. He came from
+the village to gossip, wore a tweed suit, not like a workman's, nor
+was it the national Irish dress. He had a red nose and a wooden leg,
+and, after she knew him, for a long time she always expected a man
+with a wooden leg to have a red nose, but, somehow, she never expected
+a man with a red nose to have a wooden leg. This man was always
+cheery, and very voluble. He used the worst language possible in the
+pleasantest way, and his impervious good-humour was proof against all
+remonstrance. What he said was either blasphemous or obscene as a
+rule, but in effect it was not at all like the same thing from the
+other men, because, with them, such language was the expression of
+anger and evil moods, while with him it was the vehicle of thought
+from a mind habitually serene.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell was being hurried out of the house with indecent haste,
+considering the state of her health and all the arrangements she had
+to make; but she bore up bravely. She was touched one day by an offer
+of help from Beth, and begged her to take charge of Bernadine and be a
+little mother to her. Beth promised to do her best. Accordingly, when
+Bernadine was naughty, Beth beat her, in dutiful imitation. Bernadine,
+however, invariably struck back. When other interests palled, Beth
+would encourage Bernadine to risk her neck by persuading her to jump
+down after her from high places. She was nearly as good a jumper as
+Beth, the great difference being that Beth always lit on her feet,
+while Bernadine was apt to come down on her head; but it was this
+peculiarity that made her attempts so interesting.
+
+The yard very soon became a sociable centre for the whole idle place.
+Any one who chose came into it in a friendly way, and lounged about,
+gossiping, and inspecting the works in progress. Women brought their
+babies, and sat about on the stones suckling them and talking to the
+men--a proceeding which filled Beth with disgust, she thought it so
+peculiarly indelicate.
+
+Beth stood with her mother at the sitting-room window one day to see
+the last of poor Artless, as he was led away on a halter by a strange
+man, his glossy chestnut coat showing dappled in the sunshine, but his
+wild spirit much subdued for want of corn. The first time they had
+seen him was on the day of their arrival, when Captain Caldwell had
+ridden out on him to meet them. Mrs. Caldwell burst into tears at the
+recollection.
+
+"He was the first evidence of promotion and prosperity," she said.
+"But the promotion has been to a higher sphere, and I much fear that
+the prosperity, like Artless himself, has departed for ever."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell had decided to return to her own people in England, and
+a few days later they started. She took the children to see their
+father's grave the last thing before they left Castletownrock, and
+stood beside it for a long time in silence, her gloveless hand resting
+caressingly on the cold tombstone, her eyes full of tears, and a
+pained expression in her face. It was the real moment of separation
+for her. She had to tear herself away from her beloved dead, to leave
+him lonely, and to go out alone herself, unprotected, unloved,
+uncomforted, into the cold world with her helpless children. Poverty
+was in store for her; that she knew; and doubtless she foresaw many
+another trouble, and, could she have chosen, would gladly have taken
+her place there beside the one who, with all his faults, had been her
+best friend on earth.
+
+Her cold, formal religion was no comfort to her in moments like these.
+She was a pagan at heart, and where she had laid her dead, there, to
+her mind, he would rest for ever, far from her. The lonely grave on
+the wild west coast was the shrine towards which her poor heart would
+yearn thereafter at all times, always. She had erected a handsome
+tombstone on the hallowed spot, and was going away in her shabby
+clothes, the more at ease for the self-denial she had had to exercise
+in order to beautify it. The radical difference between herself and
+Beth, which was to keep them apart for ever, was never more apparent
+than at this moment of farewell. The other children cried, but Beth
+remained an unmoved spectator of her mother's emotion. She hated the
+delay in that painful place; and what was the use of it when her
+father would be with them just the same when they got into the yellow
+coach which was waiting at the gate to take them away? Beth's beloved
+was a spirit, near at hand always; her mother's was a corpse in a
+coffin, buried in the ground.
+
+A little way out of Castletownrock the coach was stopped, and Honor
+and Kathleen Mayne from the inn came up to the window.
+
+"We walked out to be the last to say good-bye to you, Mrs. Caldwell,
+and to wish you good luck," Kathleen said. "We were among the first to
+welcome you when you came. And we've brought a piece of music for Miss
+Mildred, if she will accept it for a keepsake."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell shook hands with them, but she could not speak; and the
+coach drove on. The days when she had thought the two Miss Maynes
+presumptuous for young women in their position seemed a long way off
+to her as she sat there, sobbing, but grateful for this last act of
+kindly feeling.
+
+Beth had been eager to be off in the yellow coach, but they had not
+long started before she began to suffer. The moving panorama of
+desolate landscape, rocky coast, rough sea, moor and mountain, with
+the motion of the coach, and the smell of stale tobacco and beer in
+inn-parlours where they waited to change horses, nauseated her to
+faintness. Her sensitive nervous system received too many vivid
+impressions at once; the intense melancholy of the scenes they passed
+through, the wretched hovels, the half-clad people, the lean cattle,
+and all the evidences of abject poverty, amid dreadful bogs under a
+gloomy sky, got hold of her and weighed upon her spirits, until at
+last she shrunk into her corner, pale and still, and sat with her eyes
+closed, and great tears running slowly down her cheeks. These were her
+last impressions of Ireland, and they afterwards coloured all her
+recollections of the country and the people.
+
+But the travellers came to a railway station at last, and left the
+coach. There was a long crowded train just about to start; and Mrs.
+Caldwell, dragging Beth after her by the hand, because she knew she
+would stand still and stare about her the moment she let her go,
+hurried from carriage to carriage, trying to find seats.
+
+"I saw some," Beth said. "You've passed them."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell turned, and, some distance back, found a carriage with
+only two people in it, a gentleman whom Beth did not notice
+particularly, and a lady, doubtless a bride, dressed in light
+garments, and a white bonnet, very high in front, the space between
+the forehead and the top being filled with roses. She sat upright in
+the middle of the compartment, and looked superciliously at the weary,
+worried widow, and her helpless children, in their shabby black, when
+they stopped at the carriage door. It was her cold indifference that
+impressed Beth. She could not understand why, seeing how worn they all
+were and the fix they were in, she did not jump up instantly and open
+the door, overjoyed to be able to help them. There were just four
+seats in the carriage, but she never moved. Beth had looked up
+confidently into her face, expecting sympathy and help, but was
+repelled by a disdainful glance. It was Beth's first experience of the
+wealthy world that does not care, and she never forgot it.
+
+"That carriage is engaged," her mother exclaimed, and dragged her
+impatiently away.
+
+In the hotel in Dublin where they slept a night, they had the use of a
+long narrow sitting-room, with one large window at the end, hung with
+handsome, heavy, dark green curtains, quite new. The valance at the
+top ended in a deep fringe of thick cords, and at the end of each cord
+there was a bright ornamental thing made of wood covered with silks of
+various colours. Beth had never seen anything so lovely, and on the
+instant she determined to have one. They were high out of her reach;
+but that was nothing if only she could get a table and chair under
+them, and the coast clear. Fortune favoured her during the evening,
+and she managed to secure one, and carried it off in triumph; and so
+great was her joy in the colour, that she took it out of her pocket
+whenever she had a chance next day, and gazed at it enraptured. On
+their way to the boat Mildred caught her looking at it, and asked her
+where she got it.
+
+Beth explained exactly.
+
+"But it's stealing!" Mildred exclaimed.
+
+"Is it?" said Beth, in pleased surprise. She had never stolen anything
+before, and it was a new sensation.
+
+"But don't you know stealing is very wicked?" Mildred asked
+impressively.
+
+Beth looked disconcerted: "I never thought of that. I'll put it back."
+
+"How can you? You'll never be there again," Mildred rejoined. "You've
+done it now. You've committed a sin."
+
+Beth slipped the bright thing into her pocket. "I'll repent," she
+said, and seemed satisfied.
+
+It was a lovely day, and the passage from Kingstown to Holyhead was so
+smooth that everybody lounged about the deck, and no one was ill. Beth
+was very much interested, first in the receding shore, then in the
+people about her. There was one group in particular, evidently of
+affluent people, dressed in a way that made her feel ashamed of her
+own clothes for the first time in her life. But what particularly
+attracted her attention were some bunches of green and purple grapes
+which the papa of the party took out of a basket and began to divide.
+Beth had never seen grapes before except in pictures, and thought they
+looked lovely. The old gentleman gave the grapes to his family, but in
+handing them, one little bunch fell on the deck. He picked it up,
+looked at it, blew some dust off it; then decided that it was not
+good enough for his own children, and handed it to Bernadine, who was
+gazing greedily.
+
+Beth dashed forward, snatched it out of her hand, and threw it into
+the sea.
+
+"We are not beggars!" she cried.
+
+"Well done, little one," a gentleman who was sitting near exclaimed.
+"Won't pick up the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table, eh?
+That's a very proper spirit. And who may you be?"
+
+"My father was a gentleman," Beth answered hotly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Uncle James Patten sent a landau to meet his sister and her family at
+the station, on their arrival from Ireland. Mildred was the first to
+jump in. She took the best seat, and sat up stiff and straight.
+
+"I do love carriages and horses, mamma," she said, as they drove
+through Rainharbour, the little north-country seaside place which was
+henceforth to be their home. "I wonder which is to be our house. There
+are several empty. Do you think it is that one?" She had singled out
+one of the largest in the place.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Caldwell rather bitterly, "more likely this," and she
+indicated a tiny two-storied tenement, wedged in between tall houses,
+and looking as if it had either got itself there by mistake, or had
+been put in in a hurry, just to fill up.
+
+"That _is_ the one," Beth said.
+
+"How do you know?" Mildred snapped.
+
+"Because we're going to live in Orchard Street, opposite the orchard;
+and this is Orchard Street, and there's the orchard, and that's the
+only house empty."
+
+"I'm afraid the child is right," Mrs. Caldwell said with a sigh.
+"However," she added, pulling herself up, "it is exceedingly kind of
+Uncle James to give us a house at all."
+
+"He might have given us something nicer," Mildred remarked
+disdainfully.
+
+"Oh!" Beth exclaimed, "he's given us the best he has, I expect. And
+it's a dear little place, with a little bow-window on either side of a
+little front door--just like the one where Snowdrop found the empty
+beds when the bears were out."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, Beth," Mildred cried crossly.
+
+But Beth hardly heard. She was busy peopling the quaint little town
+with the friends of her fancy, and sat smiling serenely as she looked
+about her.
+
+They had to drive right through Rainharbour, and about a mile out
+into the country on the other side, to arrive at Fairholm, Uncle James
+Patten's place. The sun had set, and the quaintly irregular red-brick
+houses, mellowed by age, shone warm in tint against the gathering grey
+of the sky, which rose like a leaden dome above them. At one part of
+the road the sea came in sight. Great dark mountainous masses of
+cloud, with flame-coloured fringes, hung suspended over its shining
+surface, in which they were reflected with what was to Beth terrible
+effect. She sat and shivered with awe so long as the lurid scene was
+in sight, and was greatly relieved when the carriage turned into a
+country lane, and sea and sombre sky were blotted out.
+
+It was early spring. Buds were bursting in the hedgerows, birds were
+building, songsters sang among the branches, and the air was sweet and
+mild. Fairholm lay all among fertile fields, well wooded and watered.
+It was a typical English home, with surroundings as unlike the great,
+bare, bald mountains and wild Atlantic seas Beth had hitherto
+shuddered amongst, as peace is unlike war. Certain natures are
+stimulated by the grandeur of such scenes; but Beth was too delicate
+an instrument to be played upon so roughly. Storms within reflected
+the storms without only too readily. She was tempest-tossed by
+temperament, and, in nature, all her yearning was for repose; so that
+now, as they drove up the well-ordered avenue to the house, the tender
+tone of colour, green against quiet grey, and the easy air of
+affluence, so soothing after the sorrowful signs of a hard struggle
+for life by which her feelings had hitherto been harrowed, drew from
+her a deep sigh of satisfaction.
+
+The hall-door stood open, but no one was looking out for them. They
+could hear the tinkle of a piano in the distance. Then a servant
+appeared, followed by a stout lady, who came forward to greet them in
+a hurried, nervous way.
+
+"I'm glad to see you," she said, kissing Mrs. Caldwell. She spoke in a
+breathless undertone, as if she were saying something wrong, and was
+afraid of being caught and stopped before she had finished the
+sentence. "I should like to have gone to meet you, but James said
+there were too many for the carriage as it was. He says more than two
+in the carriage makes it look like an excursion-party. But I was
+listening for you, only I don't hear very well, you know. You remember
+me, Mildred? This is Beth, I suppose, and this is Bernadine. You don't
+know who I am? I am your Aunt Grace Mary. James begs you to excuse him
+for a little, Caroline. It is his half-hour for exercises. So
+unfortunate. If you had only come a little later! But, however, the
+sooner the better for me. Come into the dining-room and see Aunt
+Victoria. We must stay there until Uncle James has finished practising
+his exercises in the drawing-room."
+
+Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was sitting bolt upright on a high chair in
+the dining-room, tatting. Family portraits, hung far too high all
+round the room, seemed to have been watching her complacently until
+the travellers entered, when they all turned instantly and looked hard
+at Beth.
+
+Aunt Victoria was a tall thin old lady, with a beautiful delicate
+complexion, an auburn front and white cap, and a severely simple black
+dress. She rose stiffly to receive Mrs. Caldwell, and kissed her on
+both cheeks with restrained emotion. Then she shook hands with each of
+the children.
+
+"I hope you had a pleasant journey," she was beginning formally, when
+Mrs. Caldwell suddenly burst into tears. "What is the matter,
+Caroline?" Aunt Victoria asked.
+
+"Oh, nothing," the poor lady answered in a broken voice. "Only it does
+seem a sad home-returning--alone--without _him_--you know."
+
+Aunt Grace Mary furtively patted Mrs. Caldwell on the back, keeping an
+eye on Aunt Victoria the while, however, as if she were afraid of
+being caught.
+
+All this time the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of "Hamilton's Exercises for
+Beginners" on the piano had been going on; now it stopped. Aunt Grace
+Mary slipped into a chair, and sat with a smile on her face; Aunt
+Victoria became a trifle more rigid over her tatting; and Mrs.
+Caldwell hurriedly wiped her eyes. Then the door opened deliberately,
+and there entered a great stout man, with red hair sprinkled with
+grey, large prominent light-coloured eyes, a nondescript nose, a wide
+shapeless gash of a mouth, and a red moustache with straight bristly
+hairs, like the bristles of a broom.
+
+"How do you do, Caroline?" he said, holding out his big, fat, white
+hand, and kissing her coldly on the forehead. He drawled his words out
+with a decided lisp, and in a very soft voice, which contrasted oddly
+with his huge bulk. Having greeted his sister, he turned and looked at
+the children. Mildred went up and shook hands with him.
+
+"Your sisters, I perceive, have no manners," he observed.
+
+Beth had been beaming round blandly on the group; but upon that last
+remark of Uncle James's the pleased smile faded from her face, and she
+coloured painfully, and offered him a small reluctant hand.
+
+"You are Elizabeth, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"I am Beth," she answered emphatically.
+
+She and Uncle James looked into each other's eyes for an instant, and
+in that instant she made a most disagreeable impression of
+fearlessness on the big man's brain.
+
+"I hope, Caroline," he said precisely, "that you will not continue to
+call your daughter by such an absurd abbreviation. That sort of thing
+was all very well in the wilds of Ireland, but here we must have
+something rational, ladylike, and recognised."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell looked distressed. "It would be so difficult to call her
+Elizabeth," she pleaded. "She is not at all--Elizabeth."
+
+"You may call me what you like, mamma," Beth put in with decision;
+"but I shall only answer to Beth. That was the name my father gave me,
+and I shall stick to it."
+
+Uncle James stared at her in amazement, but Beth, unabashed, stared
+back obstinately; and so they continued staring until Aunt Grace Mary
+made a diversion.
+
+"James," she hurriedly interposed, "wouldn't they like some
+refreshment?"
+
+Uncle James pulled the bell-rope. "Bring wine and cake," he lisped,
+when the servant answered.
+
+Then he returned to his seat, crossed one great leg over the other,
+folded his fat hands on his knee, and inspected his sister.
+
+"You certainly do not grow younger, Caroline," he observed.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell did not look cheered by the remark; and there was a
+painful pause, broken, happily, by the arrival of the cake and wine.
+
+"You will not take more than half a glass, I suppose, Caroline, at
+_this_ time of the day," Uncle James said playfully, as he took up the
+decanter; "and marsala, _not_ port. I know what ladies are."
+
+Poor Mrs. Caldwell was exhausted, and would have been the better for a
+good glass of port; but she meekly held her peace.
+
+Then Uncle James cut the cake, and gave each of the children a very
+small slice. Beth held hers suspended half-way to her mouth, and gazed
+at her uncle.
+
+"What _is_ that child staring at?" he asked her mother at last.
+
+"I think she is admiring you," was Mrs. Caldwell's happy rejoinder.
+
+"No, mamma, I am not," Beth contradicted. "I was just thinking I had
+never seen anything so big in my life."
+
+"_Anything!_" Uncle James protested. "What does she mean, Caroline?"
+
+"I don't mean this slice of cake," Beth chuckled.
+
+"Come, dear--come, dear," Aunt Grace Mary hurriedly interposed. "Come
+upstairs, and see--and see--the pretty room you're to have. Come and
+take your things off, like a good child."
+
+Beth rose obediently, but before she followed her aunt out of the room
+she said: "Here, Bernadine; you'd better have my slice. You'll howl if
+you don't get enough. Cakes are scarce and dear here, I suppose."
+
+Aunt Victoria had tatted diligently during this little scene. Now she
+looked up over her spectacles and inspected Uncle James.
+
+"I like that child," she said decidedly.
+
+"In which respect I should think you would probably find yourself in a
+very small minority," Uncle James lisped, spreading his mouth into
+what would have been a smile in any other countenance, but was merely
+an elongation of the lips in his.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell rocked herself forlornly. Mildred nestled close to her
+mother; while Baby Bernadine, with a slice of cake in each hand, took
+a mouthful first from the right and then from the left, impartially.
+
+Uncle James gazed at her. "I suppose that is an Irish custom," he said
+at length.
+
+"Bernadine! what are you doing?" Mrs. Caldwell snapped; and Bernadine,
+startled, let both slices fall on the floor, and set up a howl with
+her mouth full.
+
+"Ah!" Uncle James murmured tenderly. "Little children are such darling
+things! They make the sense of their presence felt the moment they
+enter a house. It becomes visible also in the crumbs on the floor.
+There is evidently nothing the matter with her lungs. But I should
+have thought it would be dangerous to practise her voice like that
+with the mouth full. Perhaps she would be more at her ease upstairs."
+Mrs. Caldwell took the hint.
+
+When the child had gone, Uncle James rang for a servant to sweep up
+the cake and crumbs, and carefully stood over her, superintending.
+
+"That will do," he said at length, "so far as the cake and crumbs are
+concerned, but I beg you to observe that you have brushed the pile of
+the carpet the wrong way."
+
+Meanwhile Aunt Grace Mary had taken Beth up a polished staircase,
+through a softly carpeted, airy corridor, at the end of which was a
+large room with two great mahogany four-post beds, hung with brown
+damask, the rest of the heavy old-fashioned furniture being to match.
+All over the house there was a delicious odour of fresh air and
+lavender, everything shone resplendent, and all was orderly to the
+point of stiffness; nothing looked as if it had ever been used.
+
+"This was your mamma's room when she was a girl," Aunt Grace Mary
+confided to Beth. "She used to fill the house with her girl-friends,
+and that was why she had such big beds. She used to be a very
+high-spirited girl, your dear mamma was. You are all to sleep here."
+
+"How good it smells," said Beth.
+
+"Ah, that's the lavender. I often burn lavender. Would you like to see
+me burn some lavender? Come to my room, then, and I'll show you. But
+take your things off first."
+
+Beth dragged off her hat and jacket and threw them aside. They
+happened to fall on the floor.
+
+"My dear child!" Aunt Grace Mary exclaimed, "look at your things!"
+
+Beth looked at them, but nothing occurred to her; so she looked at her
+aunt inquiringly.
+
+"I always put mine away--at least I should, you know, if I hadn't a
+maid," said Aunt Grace Mary.
+
+"Oh, let your maid put mine away too," Beth answered casually.
+
+"But, my dear child, you must learn," Aunt Grace Mary insisted,
+picking up Beth's things and putting them in a drawer as she spoke.
+"Who puts your things away at home?"
+
+"Mamma," Beth answered laconically. "She says it's less trouble to do
+things herself."
+
+"Oh, but you must save your mother the trouble, dear," said Aunt Grace
+Mary in a shocked tone.
+
+"Well, I will next time--if I remember," Beth rejoined. "Come and burn
+lavender."
+
+For the next few days, which happened to be very fine, Beth revelled
+out of doors. Everything was a wonder and a joy to her in this fertile
+land, the trees especially, after the bleak, wild wastes to which she
+had been accustomed in the one stormy corner of Ireland she knew.
+Leaves and blossoms were just bursting out, and one day, wandering
+alone in the grounds, she happened unawares upon an orchard in full
+bloom, and fairly gasped, utterly overcome by the first shock of its
+beauty. For a while she stood and gazed in silent awe at the white
+froth of flowers on the pear-trees, the tinted almond blossom, and the
+pink-tipped apple. She had never dreamed of such heavenly loveliness.
+But enthusiasm succeeded to awe at last, and, in a wild burst of
+delight, she suddenly threw her arms around a gnarled tree-trunk and
+clasped it close.
+
+There was a large piece of artificial water in the grounds, in which
+were three green islands covered with trees and shrubs. Beth was
+standing on the bank one morning in a contemplative mood, admiring the
+water, and yearning for a boat to get to the islands, when round one
+of them, unexpectedly, a white wonder of a swan came gliding towards
+her in the sunshine.
+
+"Oh, oh! Mildred! Mildred! Oh, the beautiful, beautiful thing!" she
+cried. Mildred came running up.
+
+"Why, Beth, you idiot," she exclaimed in derision, "it's only a swan.
+I really thought it _was_ something."
+
+"Is that a swan?" Beth said slowly; then, after a moment, she added,
+in sorrowful reproach: "O Mildred! you had seen it and you never told
+me."
+
+Alas, poor Mildred! she had not seen it, and never would see it, in
+Beth's sense of the word.
+
+On wet days, when they had to be indoors, Aunt Grace Mary waylaid Beth
+continually, and trotted her off somewhere out of Uncle James's way.
+She would take her to her own room sometimes, a large, bright
+apartment, spick-and-span like the rest of the house; and show her the
+pictures--pastels and water-colours chiefly--with which it was stiffly
+decorated.
+
+"That was your uncle when he was a little boy," she said, pointing to
+a pretty pastel.
+
+"Why, he was quite a nice little boy," Beth exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, nice and plump," Aunt Grace Mary rattled off breathlessly. "And
+your grandmamma did those water-colours and those screens. That lovely
+printing too; can you guess how she did it? With a camel's hair brush.
+She did indeed. And she used to compose music. She was a very clever
+woman. You are very like her."
+
+"But I am not very clever," said Beth.
+
+"No, dear; no, dear," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined, pulling herself up
+hurriedly from this indiscretion. "But in the face. You are very like
+her in appearance. And you must try. You must try to improve yourself.
+Your uncle is always trying to improve himself. He reads 'Doctor
+Syntax' aloud to us. In the evening it is our custom to read aloud and
+converse."
+
+An occasional phrase of Uncle James's would flow from Aunt Grace Mary
+in this way, with incongruous effect.
+
+"Do you try to improve yourself?" Beth asked.
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Oh, well--that reminds me. I must write a letter. You shall stay and
+see me if you like. But you mustn't move or speak."
+
+Beth, deeply interested, watched her aunt, who began by locking the
+door. Then she slipped a pair of spectacles out of her pocket, and put
+them on, after glancing round apprehensively as if she were going to
+do something wrong. Then she sat down at a small bureau, unlocked a
+drawer, and took out a little dictionary, unlocked another drawer and
+took out a sheet of notepaper, in which she inserted a page of black
+lines. Then she proceeded to write a letter in lead-pencil, stopping
+often to consult the dictionary. When she had done, she took out
+another sheet of a better quality, put the lines in it, and proceeded
+to copy the letter in ink. She blotted the first attempt, but the next
+she finished. She destroyed several envelopes also before she was
+satisfied. But at last the letter was folded and sealed, and then she
+carefully burnt every scrap of paper she had spoiled.
+
+"I was educated in a convent in France," she said to Beth. "If you
+were older you would know that by my handwriting. It is called an
+Italian hand, but I learnt it in France. I was there five years."
+
+"What else did you learn?" said Beth.
+
+"Oh--reading. No--I could read before I went. But music, you know, and
+French."
+
+"Say some French," said Beth.
+
+"Oh, I can't," Aunt Grace Mary answered. "But I can read it a little,
+you know."
+
+"I should like to hear you play," said Beth.
+
+"But I don't play," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined.
+
+"I thought you said you learnt music."
+
+"Oh yes. I had to learn music; and I practised for hours every day;
+but I never played."
+
+Aunt Grace Mary smiled complacently as she spoke, took off her
+spectacles, and locked up her writing materials--Beth, the while,
+thoughtfully observing her. Aunt Grace Mary's hair was a wonderful
+colour, neither red, yellow, brown, nor white, but a mixture of all
+four. It was parted straight in the middle, where it was thin, and
+brought down in two large rolls over her ears. She wore a black velvet
+band across her head like a coronet, which ended in a large black
+velvet bow at the back. Long heavy gold ear-rings pulled down the
+lobes of her ears. All her dresses were of rustling silk, and she had
+a variety of deep lace-collars, each one of which she fastened with a
+different brooch at the throat. She also wore a heavy gold watch-chain
+round her neck, the watch being concealed in her bosom; and jet
+bracelets by day, but gold ones in the evening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beth was deeply interested in her own family history, and
+intelligently pieced together such fragments of it as she could
+collect from the conversations of the people about her. She was
+sitting in one of the deep window-seats in the drawing-room looking
+out one day, concealed by a curtain, when her mother and Great-Aunt
+Victoria Bench came into the room, and settled themselves to chat and
+sew without observing her.
+
+"Where is Grace Mary?" Aunt Victoria asked.
+
+"Locked up in her own room writing a letter, I believe," Mrs. Caldwell
+replied, "a long and mysterious proceeding. We shall not see her again
+this morning, I suppose."
+
+"Ah, well," said Aunt Victoria considerately, "she writes a very
+beautiful hand."
+
+"James thought he was doing so well for himself, too!" Mrs. Caldwell
+interjected. "He'd better have married the mother."
+
+"There was the making of a fine woman in Grace Mary if she had had a
+chance," Aunt Victoria answered, pursing up her mouth judicially. "It
+was the mother made the match. When he came across them in
+Switzerland, Lady Benyon got hold of him, and flattered him, made him
+believe Grace Mary was only thirty-eight, not too old for a
+son-and-heir, but much too old for a large family. She was really
+about fifty; but he never thought of looking up her age until after
+they were married. However, James got one thing he likes, and more
+than he deserved; for Grace Mary is amiable if she's ignorant; and I
+should say had tact, though some people might call it cunning. But, at
+any rate, she's the daughter of one baronet and the sister of
+another."
+
+"What's a baronet?" Beth demanded, tumbling off the window-seat on to
+the floor with a crash as she spoke, having lost her balance in
+peering round the curtain.
+
+Both ladies jumped, quite contrary to their principles.
+
+"You naughty child, how dare you?" Mrs. Caldwell began.
+
+Beth picked herself up. "I want to know," she interrupted.
+
+"You've been listening."
+
+"No, I've not. I was here first, and you came and talked. But that
+doesn't matter. I shan't tell. What's a baronet?"
+
+Aunt Victoria explained, and then turned her out of the room. Uncle
+James was crossing the hall at the moment; he had a large bunch of
+keys in his hand, and went through the double-doors which led to the
+kitchen and offices. Beth followed him into the kitchen. The cook, an
+old servant, came forward curtseying. The remains of yesterday's
+dinner, cold roast beef, tongue, chicken, and plum-pudding, were
+spread out on the table. Uncle James inspected everything.
+
+"For luncheon," he said, "the beef can remain cold on the sideboard,
+also the tongue. The chicken you will grill for one hot dish, and do
+not forget to garnish with rolls of bacon. The pudding you can cut
+into slices, fry, and sprinkle with a little sifted sugar. Mind, I say
+a little; for, as the pudding is sweet enough already, the sugar is
+merely an ornament to make it agreeable to the eye. For the rest, as
+usual."
+
+"Yes, sir. And dinner, sir?"
+
+"Here is the _menu_." He handed her a paper. "I will give you out what
+is necessary."
+
+He led the way down a stone passage to the store-room door, which he
+unlocked.
+
+"I am out of sifted sugar, sir," the cook said nervously.
+
+"What, again?" Uncle James sternly demanded. "This is only Thursday,
+and I gave you some out on Saturday."
+
+"Yes, sir, but only a quarter of a pound, sir, and I had to use it for
+the top of the rice-pudding, and the pancakes, and the Charlotte
+Russe, and the plum-pudding----"
+
+"How?" said Uncle James--"the plum-pudding, which is not yet fried?"
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. I'm all confused. But, however," she added
+desperately, "the sugar is done."
+
+"Well, I suppose I must give you some more this time. But do not let
+it occur again. You may weigh out a quarter of a pound."
+
+When that was done, Uncle James consulted a huge cookery-book which
+lay on a shelf in the window. "We shall require another cake for tea,"
+he said, and then proceeded to read the recipe aloud, keeping an
+observant eye upon the cook as she weighed out the various
+ingredients.
+
+"And the kitchen meals, sir?" she asked, as he locked up the
+store-room.
+
+"Make what you have do," he said, "make what you have do."
+
+"But there is hardly meat enough to go round once, sir."
+
+"You must make it do. People are much healthier and happier when they
+do not eat too much."
+
+This ceremony over, he went to the poultry-yard, followed by Beth (who
+carefully kept in the background), the yard-boy, and the poultry-maid
+who carried some corn in a sieve, which she handed to her master when
+he stopped. Uncle James scattered a little corn on the ground, calling
+"chuck! chuck! chuck!" at the same time, in a dignified manner.
+Chickens, ducks, turkeys and guinea-fowl collected about him, and he
+stood gazing at them with large light prominent eyes, blandly, as if
+he loved them--as indeed he did when they appeared like ladies at
+table, dressed to perfection.
+
+"That guinea-fowl!" he decided, after due consideration.
+
+The yard-boy caught it and gave it to the poultry-maid, who held it
+while Uncle James carefully felt its breast.
+
+"That will do," he said. "Quite a beauty."
+
+The yard-boy took it from the poultry-maid, tied its legs together,
+cut its throat, and hung it on a nail.
+
+"That drake!" Uncle James proceeded. The same ceremony followed, Uncle
+James bearing his part in it without any relaxation of his grand
+manner.
+
+When a turkey-poult had also been executed, he requested the yard-boy
+to fetch him his gun from the harness-room.
+
+"We must have a pigeon-pie," he observed as he took it.
+
+Beth, in great excitement, stalked him to the orchard, where there was
+a big pigeon-house covered with ivy. In front of it the pigeons had a
+good run, enclosed with wire netting when they were shut in; but they
+were often let out to feed in the fields. The yard-boy now reached up
+and opened a little door in the side of the house. As he did so he
+glanced at Uncle James somewhat apprehensively. Uncle James, with a
+benign countenance, suddenly lifted his gun and fired. The yard-boy
+dropped.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Uncle James.
+
+The yard-boy gathered himself up with a very red face. "I thought you
+meant to shoot me, sir."
+
+Uncle James smiled gently. "May I ask when it became customary for
+gentlemen to shoot yard-boys?" he said.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," the boy rejoined sheepishly. "There's accidents
+sometimes."
+
+The pigeons were wary after the shot, and would not come out, so the
+yard-boy had to go into the house and drive them. There was a shelf in
+front of the little door, on which they generally rested a moment,
+bewildered, before they flew. Uncle James knew them all by sight, and
+let several go, as being too old for his purpose. Then, standing
+pretty close, he shot two, one after the other, as they stood
+hesitating to take flight. While loading again, he discovered Beth;
+but as he liked an audience when he was performing an exploit, he was
+quite gracious.
+
+"Nothing distinguishes a gentleman more certainly than a love of
+sport," he observed blandly, as he shot another pigeon sitting.
+
+This entertainment over, he looked at his watch. He had the whole day
+divided into hours and half-hours, each with its separate occupation
+or recreation; and nothing short of a visit from some personage of
+importance was ever allowed to interrupt him in any of his pursuits.
+For recreation he sometimes did a little knitting or a piece of Berlin
+woolwork, because, he said, a gentleman should learn to do everything,
+so as not to be at a loss if he were ever wrecked on a desert island.
+For the same reason, he had also trained himself to sleep at odd
+times, and in all sorts of odd places, choosing by preference some
+corner where Aunt Grace Mary and the maids would least expect to find
+him, the consequence being wild shrieks and shocks to their nerves,
+such as, to use his own bland explanation, might be expected from
+undisciplined females. Beth found him one day spread out on a large
+oak chest in the main corridor upstairs, with two great china vases,
+one at his head and one at his feet, filled with reeds and bulrushes,
+which appeared to be waving over him, and looking in his sleep, with
+his cadaverous countenance, like a self-satisfied corpse. She had been
+on her way downstairs to dispose of the core of an apple she had
+eaten; but, as Uncle James's mouth was open, she left it there.
+
+Uncle James was wont to deliver little lectures to the children, for
+the improvement of their minds, during luncheon, which was their
+dinner-hour.
+
+"With regularity and practice you may accomplish great things," he
+said on one occasion. "I myself always practise 'Hamilton's Exercises'
+on the pianoforte for one hour every day, from half-past ten till
+eleven, and from half-past three till four. I have done so now for
+many years."
+
+Beth sat with her spoon suspended half-way up to her mouth, drinking
+in these words of wisdom. "And when will you be able to play?" she
+asked.
+
+Uncle James fixed his large, light, ineffectual eyes upon her; but, as
+usual, this gaze direct only excited Beth's interest, and she returned
+it unabashed in simple expectation of what was to follow. So Uncle
+James gave in, and to cover his retreat he said: "Culture. Cultivate
+the mind. There is nothing that elevates the mind like general
+cultivation. It is cultivation that makes us great, good, and
+generous."
+
+"Then, I suppose, when your mind is cultivated, Uncle James, you will
+give mamma more money," Beth burst out hopefully.
+
+Uncle James blinked his eyes several times running, rapidly, as if
+something had gone wrong with them.
+
+"Beth, you are talking too much; go to your room _at once_, and stay
+there for a punishment," her mother exclaimed nervously.
+
+Beth, innocent of any intent to offend, looked surprised, put down her
+spoon deliberately, got off her chair, took up her plate of pudding,
+and was making off with it. As she was passing Uncle James, however,
+he stretched out his big hand suddenly, and snatched the plate from
+her; but Beth in an instant doubled her little fist, and struck the
+plate from underneath, the concussion scattering the pudding all over
+the front of Uncle James.
+
+In the confusion which followed, Beth made her escape to the kitchen,
+where she was already popular.
+
+"I say, cook," she coaxed, "give me something good to eat. My
+pudding's got upset all over Uncle James."
+
+The cook sat down suddenly, and twinkled a glance of intelligence at
+Horner, the old coachman, who happened to be in the kitchen.
+
+"Give me a cheesecake--I won't tell," Beth pleaded.
+
+"That's doubtful, I should think," Horner said aside to the cook.
+
+"Oh, bless you, she never do, not she!" cook answered, and then she
+fetched Beth a big cheesecake from a secret store. Beth took it
+smiling, and retired to the brown bedroom, where she was left in
+solitary confinement until Uncle James drove out with mamma in Aunt
+Grace Mary's pony-carriage to pay a call in the afternoon. When they
+had gone, Aunt Grace Mary peeped in at Beth, and said, with an
+unconvincing affectation of anger: "Beth, you are a naughty little
+girl, and deserve to be punished. Say you're sorry. Then you shall
+come to my room, and see me write a letter."
+
+"All right," Beth answered, and Aunt Grace Mary took her off without
+more ado.
+
+It was a great encouragement to Beth to find that Aunt Grace Mary was
+obliged to take pains with her writing. All the other grown-up people
+Beth knew, seemed to do everything with such ease, it was quite
+disheartening. Beth was allowed a pencil, a sheet of paper, and some
+lines herself now, and Aunt Grace Mary was taking great pains to teach
+her to write an Italian hand. Beth was also trying to learn: "because
+there are such lots of things I want to write down," she explained;
+"and I want to do it small like you, because it won't take so much
+paper, you know."
+
+"What kind of things do you want to write down, Beth?" Aunt Grace Mary
+asked. Beth treated her quite as an equal, so they chatted the whole
+time they were together, unconstrainedly.
+
+"Oh, you know--things like--well, the day we came here there were
+great grey clouds with crimson caps hanging over the sea, and you
+could see them in the water."
+
+"See their reflection, you mean, I suppose."
+
+Beth looked puzzled. "When you think of things, isn't that
+reflection?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; and when you see yourself in the looking-glass, that's your
+reflection too," Aunt Grace Mary answered.
+
+"Oh, then I suppose it was the sea's thought of the sky I saw in the
+water--that makes it nicer than I had it before," Beth said, trying to
+turn the phrase as a young bird practises to round its notes in the
+spring. "The sea shows its thoughts, the thought of the sea is the
+sky--no, that isn't right. It never does come right all at once, you
+know. But that's the kind of thing."
+
+"What kind of thing?" Aunt Grace Mary asked, bewildered.
+
+"The kind of thing I am always wanting to write down. You generally
+forget what we're talking about, don't you?--I say, don't you want to
+drive your own ponies yourself sometimes?"
+
+"No, not when your dear uncle wants them."
+
+"Dear uncle wants them almost always, doesn't he? Horner ses as
+'ow----"
+
+"Beth, don't speak like that!"
+
+"That's Horner, not me," Beth snapped, impatient of the interruption.
+"How am I to tell you what he said if I don't say what he said? Horner
+ses as 'ow, when Lady Benyon gev them there white ponies to 'er darter
+fur 'er own use, squire 'e sells two on 'is 'orses, an' 'as used them
+ponies ever since. Squire's a near un, my word!" Beth perceived that
+Aunt Grace Mary looked very funny in the face. "You're frightened to
+death of Uncle James, arn't you?" she asked, after sucking her pencil
+meditatively for a little.
+
+"No, dear, of course not. I am not afraid of any one but the dear
+Lord."
+
+"But Uncle James _is_ the lord."
+
+"Nonsense, child."
+
+"Mildred says so. She says he's lord of the manor. Mildred says it's
+fine to be lord of the manor. But it doesn't make me care a button
+about Uncle James."
+
+"Don't speak like that, Beth. It's disrespectful. It was the Lord in
+heaven I alluded to," said Aunt Grace Mary in her breathless way.
+
+"Ah, that _is_ different," Beth allowed. "But I'm not afraid of Him
+either. I don't think I'm afraid of any one really, not even of mamma,
+though she does beat me. I'd rather she didn't, you know. But one gets
+used to it. The worst of it is," Beth added, after sucking the point
+of her pencil a little--"The worst of it is, you never know what will
+make her waxy. To-day, at luncheon, you know--now, what did I say?"
+
+"Oh," said Aunt Grace Mary vaguely; "you oughtn't to have said it, you
+know."
+
+"Now, that's just like mamma! She says 'Don't!' and 'How dare you!'
+and 'Naughty girl!' at the top of her voice, and half the time I don't
+know what she's talking about. When I grow up, I shall explain to
+children. Do you know, sometimes I quite want to be good"--this with a
+sigh. "But when I'm bad without having a notion what I've done, why,
+it's difficult. Aunt Grace Mary, do you know what Neptune would say if
+the sea dried up?" Aunt Grace Mary smiled and shook her head. "I
+haven't an ocean," Beth proceeded. "You don't see it? Well, I didn't
+at first. You see _an ocean_ and _a notion_ sound the same if you say
+them sharp. Now, do you see? They call that a pun."
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"A gentleman in the train."
+
+Beth put her pencil in her mouth, and gazed up at the sky. "I don't
+suppose he'd be such a black-hearted villain as to break his word,"
+she said at last.
+
+"Who?" Aunt Grace Mary asked, in a startled tone.
+
+"Uncle James--about leaving Jim the place, you know. Why, don't you
+know? Mamma is the eldest, and ought to have had Fairholm, but she was
+away in Ireland, busy having me, when grandpapa died, and couldn't
+come; so Uncle James frightened the old man into leaving the place to
+him, and mamma only got fifty pounds a year, which wasn't fair."
+
+"Who told you this, Beth?"
+
+"Mildred. Mamma told her. And Horner said the other day to cook--I'll
+have to say it the way Horner says it. If I said it my way, you know,
+then it wouldn't be Horner--Horner said to cook as 'ow Captain
+Caldwell 'ud 'a' gone to law about it, but squire 'e swore if 'e'd let
+the matter drop, 'e'd make 'is nevee, Master Jim, as is also 'is
+godson, 'is heir, an' so square it; and Captain Caldwell, as was a
+real gen'lmon, an' fond of the ladies, tuk 'im at 'is word, an'
+furgiv' 'im. But, lardie! don't us know the worth o' Mr. James
+Patten's word!"
+
+Aunt Grace Mary had turned very pale.
+
+"Beth," she gasped, "promise me you will never, never, _never_ say a
+word about this to your uncle."
+
+"Not likely," said Beth.
+
+"How do you remember these things you hear?"
+
+"Oh, I just think them over again when I go to bed, and then they
+stay," Beth answered. "I wouldn't tell you half I hear, though--only
+things everybody knows. If you tell secrets, you know, you're a
+tell-pie. And I'm not a tell-pie. Now, Bernadine is. She's a regular
+tell-pie. It seems as if she couldn't help it; but then she's young,"
+Beth added tolerantly.
+
+"Were you ever young, I wonder?" Aunt Grace Mary muttered to herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Meanwhile the English spring advanced in the beautiful gardens of
+Fairholm, and was a joy to Beth. Blossoms showered from the
+fruit-trees, green leaves unfurled, the birds were in full song, and
+the swans curved their long necks in the sunshine, and breasted the
+waters of the lake, as if their own grace were a pleasure to them.
+Beth was enchanted. Every day she discovered some new wonder--nests in
+the hedgerows, lambs in the fields, a foal and its mother in the
+paddock, a calf in the byre--more living interests in one week than
+she had dreamt of in the whole of her little life. For a happy
+interval the scenes which had oppressed her--the desolation, the
+sombre colours of the great melancholy mountains, the incessant sound
+of the turbulent sea, the shock and roar of angry breakers warring
+with the rocks, which had kept her little being all a-throb, braced to
+the expectation of calamity--lapsed now into the background of her
+recollection, and under the benign influence of these lovelier
+surroundings her mind began to expand in the most extraordinary way,
+while her further faculty awoke, and gave her glimpses of more
+delights than mortal mind could have shown her. "Such nice things," as
+she expressed it, "keep coming into my head, and I want to write them
+down." Books she flung away impatiently; but the woods and streams,
+and the wild flowers, the rooks returning to roost in the trees at
+sunset, the horses playing in the paddocks, the cows dawdling back
+from their pastures, all sweet country scents and cheerful country
+sounds she became alive to and began to love. There would be trouble
+enough in Beth herself at times, wherever she was; it was hard that
+she could not have been kept in some such paradise always, to ease the
+burden of her being.
+
+One morning her mother told her that Uncle James was extremely
+displeased with her because he had seen her pelting the swans.
+
+"He didn't see me pelting the swans," Beth asseverated. "I was feeding
+them with crusts. And how did he see me, any way? He wasn't there."
+
+"He sees everything that's going on," Mrs. Caldwell assured her.
+
+"He's only pretending," Beth argued, "or else he must be God."
+
+But she kept her eyes about her the next time she was in the grounds,
+and at last she discovered him, sitting in the little window of his
+dressing-room with a book before him, and completely blocking the
+aperture. She had never noticed him there before, because the panes
+were small and bright, and the shine on them made it difficult to see
+through them from below. After this discovery she always felt that his
+eyes were upon her wherever she went within range of that window. Not
+that that would have deterred her had she wanted to do anything
+particularly; but even a child feels it intolerable to be spied upon;
+and as for a spy! Beth scorned the creature.
+
+That day at luncheon Uncle James made an announcement.
+
+"Lady Benyon is going to honour us with a visit," he began in his most
+impressive manner. There is no snob so inveterate as your snob of good
+birth; and Uncle James said "Lady" as if it were a privilege just to
+pronounce the word. "She will arrive this afternoon at a quarter to
+four."
+
+"But you will be practising," Beth exclaimed.
+
+"The rites of hospitality must be observed," he condescended to inform
+her.
+
+"Lady Benyon is my mother, Beth," Aunt Grace Mary put in irrelevantly.
+
+"I know," Beth answered. "Your papa was a baronet; Uncle James loves
+baronets; that was why he married you." Having thus disposed of Aunt
+Grace Mary, Beth turned to the other end of the table, and resumed:
+"But you went on practising when _we_ arrived, Uncle James."
+
+Uncle James gazed at her blandly, then looked at his sister with an
+agreeable smile. "Lady Benyon will probably like to see the children.
+You do not dress them in the latest fashion, I observe."
+
+"They _are_ shabby," Mrs. Caldwell acknowledged with a sigh,
+apologetically.
+
+Beth shovelled some spoonfuls of pudding into her mouth very quickly.
+"That's the money bother again," she said, and then she sang out at
+the top of her voice--
+
+    "Bryan O'Lynn had no breeches to wear,
+     He bought a sheepskin for to make him a pair,
+     With the skinny side out, and the woolly side in,
+     'They're warm in the winter,' said Bryan O'Lynn."
+
+"I suppose it would be quite impossible to suppress this child?" Uncle
+James lisped with deceptive mildness. "I observe that she joins in the
+conversation always, with great intelligence and her mouth full. It
+might be better, perhaps, if she emptied her mouth. However, I suppose
+it would be impossible to teach her."
+
+"Not at all," Beth answered for herself, cheerfully. "I'm not too
+stupid to empty my mouth! Only just you tell me what it is you want.
+Don't bottle things up. I expect I've been speaking with my mouth full
+ever since I came, and you've been hating me for it; but you never
+told me."
+
+"May I ask," said Uncle James politely, "by whom you were informed
+that I 'bottled things up'?"
+
+"Ah, that would be telling," said Beth, and recommenced gobbling her
+pudding, to the intense relief of some of the party.
+
+Great-Aunt Victoria Bench, sitting upright opposite, looked across the
+table at the child, and a faint smile flickered over her wrinkled
+rose-leaf cheek.
+
+Beth finished her pudding, dropped her spoon on her plate with a
+clatter, leant back in her chair, and sighed with satisfaction. She
+possessed a horrid fascination for Uncle James. Almost everything she
+did was an offence to him, yet he could not keep his eyes off her or
+let her alone.
+
+"Pudding seems to be a weakness of hers," he now observed. "I hope her
+voracity is satisfied. I should say that it resembles the voracity of
+the caterpillar."
+
+"What's voracity, Aunt Victoria?" Beth asked.
+
+"Greediness," Aunt Victoria rejoined sententiously.
+
+"He means I'm greedy for pudding? I just _am_! I'd like to be a
+caterpillar for pudding. Caterpillars eat all day. But then God's good
+to them. He puts them on a tree with lots of leaves. I wish He'd put
+me in a pantry with lots of puddings! My vorass--vor--what is it? Any
+way, it's satisfied now, Uncle James, and if you'll let me go, I'll
+wash myself, and get ready for Lady Benyon."
+
+Rather than let her go when she wanted to, however, Uncle James sat
+some time longer at table than he had intended. It was he who always
+gave the signal to rise; before he did so on this occasion, he
+formally requested his sister to request Beth to be silent during Lady
+Benyon's visit.
+
+Lady Benyon was a shrewd, active little old woman, with four dark
+curls laid horizontally on either side of her forehead. She had bright
+black sparkling eyes that glanced about quickly and seemed to see
+everything. Before she arrived, Uncle James assembled his family in
+the drawing-room, and set the scene, as it were, for her reception.
+
+"Sit here, facing the window, Caroline," he said. "It will interest
+Lady Benyon to see how you have aged. And, Aunt Victoria, this
+Chippendale chair, so stiff and straight, is just like you, I think;
+so oblige me by sitting on it. Grace Mary, take this easy lounge; it
+suits your yielding nature. Elizabeth"--Beth, who was perched on the
+piano-stool, looked up calmly at the clouds through the window
+opposite. "Elizabeth," he repeated sharply. Beth made no sign.
+
+"Beth, answer your uncle directly," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
+
+"He has not yet addressed me," Beth rejoined, in the manner of Uncle
+James.
+
+"Don't call your uncle 'he,' you naughty girl. You know your name is
+Elizabeth."
+
+"Yes, and I know I said I wouldn't answer to it, and I'm not going to
+break me oath."
+
+"Me oath!" Uncle James ejaculated.
+
+Beth looked disconcerted. It irked her horribly to be jeered at for
+making a mistake in speaking, and Uncle James, seeing she was hurt,
+rested satisfied for the moment, and arranged Mildred and Bernadine
+together in a group, leaving Beth huddled up on the piano-stool,
+frowning.
+
+When Lady Benyon's carriage stopped at the door, Uncle James stood
+bareheaded on the steps, ready to receive her.
+
+"So glad to see you, mamma," he lisped, as he handed her out. "_Do_
+take my arm."
+
+But the little old lady waved him aside unceremoniously, and hobbled
+in with the brisk stiffness of age.
+
+"Gracious!" she exclaimed when she saw the party arranged in the
+drawing-room. "You all look as if you were having your likeness
+taken--all except Puck there, on the piano-stool."
+
+When Uncle James had manoeuvred Lady Benyon into the seat of honour
+he intended her to take in order to complete the picture, she frankly
+inspected each member of the group, ending with Beth.
+
+"And who may you be?" she asked.
+
+Beth smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Why don't you speak?"
+
+Beth made another gesture.
+
+"Goodness!" Lady Benyon cried; "is the child an idiot?"
+
+"Beth, answer Lady Benyon directly," Mrs. Caldwell angrily commanded.
+
+"Uncle James requested mamma to request me not to speak when you were
+present," Beth explained suavely.
+
+The old lady burst out laughing. "Well, that's droll," she
+said--"requested mamma to request me--why, it's James Patten all over.
+And who may you be, you monkey?"
+
+"I am Elizabeth Caldwell, but I only answer to Beth. Papa called me
+Beth."
+
+"Good!" said the little old lady. "And what's Ireland like?"
+
+"Great dark mountains," Beth rattled off, with big eyes dilated and
+fixed on space, as if she saw what she described. "Long, long, long,
+black bogs; all the poor people starving; and the sea rough--just like
+hell, you know, but without the fire."
+
+"Oh, now, this _is_ delightful!" the old lady chuckled. "I'm to enjoy
+myself to-day, it seems. You didn't prepare me for this treat, James
+Patten!"
+
+Uncle James simpered, as though taking to himself the credit of the
+whole entertainment.
+
+"So you hate Ireland?" said Lady Benyon.
+
+"No, I love it," said Beth. "It's me native country; and they don't
+give you little bits of cake there the size of sixpence. What they
+have you're welcome to. Long live Ireland!"
+
+"Good!" Lady Benyon ejaculated; then turned to Mildred. "And are you
+another naughty little patriot?" she asked.
+
+"No, _I'm_ not naughty," Mildred answered piously.
+
+"Beth's naughty," said Bernadine.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know _what_ Beth is not," the old lady declared,
+turning to Beth again.
+
+"Riley said I was one of the little girls the devil put out when he
+gave up housekeeping," Beth remarked casually.
+
+"Beth!" Mrs. Caldwell remonstrated.
+
+"He did, mamma. He said it the day that perjured villain Pat Murphy
+killed my magpie. And Riley's a good man. You said so yourself."
+
+"You can hear that the young lady has been in Ireland, I suppose,
+mamma," Uncle James observed.
+
+"I hear she can imitate the Irish," Lady Benyon rejoined bluntly; "and
+not the Irish only," she added with a chuckle.
+
+Beth was still sitting on the music-stool opposite the window, and
+presently she saw some one cross the lawn. "Oh, do look at the lovely
+lady," she cried enthusiastically. "She's just like the Princess
+Blue-eyes-and-golden-hair."
+
+Lady Benyon glanced over her shoulder. "Why, it's my maid," she said.
+
+Beth's countenance dropped, then cleared again. Even a maid might be a
+princess in disguise.
+
+Lady Benyon was going to stay all night, and at her special request
+Mildred and Beth were allowed to sit up to late dinner and prayers.
+She expected Beth to amuse her, but Beth was busy the whole time
+weaving a romance about the lovely lady's-maid, and scarcely spoke a
+word. When the servants came in to prayers, she sat and gazed at her
+heroine, and forgot to stand or kneel. She noticed, however, that
+Uncle James read the evening prayers with peculiar fervour.
+
+When Beth went to bed, she found Bernadine, who slept with her, fast
+asleep. Beth was not at all sleepy. Her intellect had been on the
+alert all day, and would not let her rest now; she must do something
+to keep up the excitement. She pulled the blind aside, and, looking
+out of the window, discovered an enchanted land, all soft shadow and
+silver sheen, and above it an exquisite moon, in an empty sky, floated
+serenely. "Oh, to be out in the moonlight!" she sighed to herself.
+"The fairy-folk--the fairy-folk." For a little her mind was a blank as
+she gazed; then words came tripping a measure--
+
+    "The fairy-folk are calling me,
+     Are calling me, are calling me;
+     They come across the stormy sea,
+     To play with me, to play with me."
+
+Beth's vague longing crisped itself into a resolution. She looked at
+the big four-post bed. The curtains were drawn on one side of it.
+Should she draw them on the other, on the chance of her mother not
+looking in? No, she must wait, because of Mildred. Mildred was
+undressing, and would say her prayers presently. Beth waited until she
+knelt down, then slipped her night-dress on over her clothes, and got
+into bed, without disturbing Bernadine. Now she must wait for her
+mother; but Mrs. Caldwell came up very soon, Uncle James having
+hurried every one off to bed unusually early that evening. Mrs.
+Caldwell was a long time undressing, as it seemed to Beth; but in the
+meantime Mildred had fallen asleep, and very soon after her mother got
+into bed she too began to breathe with reassuring regularity.
+
+Then Beth got up, opened the door very gently, and slipped out into
+the dark passage.
+
+    "The fairy-folk are calling me,
+     Are calling me, are calling me;
+     They come across the stormy sea,
+     To play with me, to play with me."
+
+The words set themselves to a merry tune, and carried Beth on with
+them.
+
+All was dark in the hall. The front door was locked and bolted, and
+the shutters were up in all the rooms; how was she to get out? She
+felt for the green baize double-door which shut off the kitchen from
+the other parts of the house, opened it, and groped her way down the
+passage. As she did so, she saw a faint glimmer of light at the far
+end--not candlelight, moonlight--and at the same moment she became
+aware of some one else moving. At the end of the passage she was in,
+there was a little door leading out into a garden. If that were open
+all would be easy. She had stopped to listen. Certainly some one else
+was moving quite close to her. What was she near? Oh, the store-room.
+Something grated like a key in a lock--a door was opened, a match
+struck, a candle lighted; and there was Mrs. Cook in the store-room
+itself, hurriedly filling paper-bags with tea, sugar, raisins,
+currants, and other groceries from Uncle James's carefully guarded
+treasure, and packing them into a small hamper with a lid. When the
+hamper was full she blew out the candle, came out of the store-room,
+locked the door after her, and went into the kitchen, without
+discovering Beth. She left the kitchen door open; the blind was up;
+and Beth could see a man, whom she recognised as the cook's son,
+standing in the moonlight.
+
+"Is there much this time, mother?" he asked.
+
+"A goodish bit," cook replied, handing him the hamper.
+
+"'E 'asn't 'ad 'is eyes about 'im much o' late, then?"
+
+"Oh, 'e allus 'as 'is eyes about 'im, but 'e doan't see much. You'll
+get me what ye can?"
+
+"I will so," her son replied, and kissed cook as she let him out of
+the back-door, which she fastened after him. Then she went off herself
+up the back-stairs to bed.
+
+When all was quiet again, Beth thought of the garden-door at the end
+of the passage. To her relief she found it ajar; the gleam of light
+she had seen in that direction was the moonlight streaming through the
+crevice. She slipped out cautiously; but the moment she found herself
+in the garden she became a wild creature, revelling in her freedom.
+She ran, jumped, waved her arms about, threw herself down on the
+ground, and rolled over and over for yards, walked on all fours,
+turned head over heels, embraced the trunks of trees, and hailed them
+with the Eastern invocation, "O tree, give me of thy strength!"
+
+For a good hour she rioted about the place in this way, working off
+her superfluous energy. By that time she had come to the stackyard.
+There, among the great stacks, she played hide-and-seek with the
+fairy-folk for a little. Very cautiously she would steal round in the
+black shadows, stalking her imaginary play-fellows, and then would go
+flying out into the moonlight, pursued by them in turn; and looking
+herself, with her white night-dress over her clothes, and her tousled
+hair, the weirdest little elfin figure in the world. Finally, to
+escape capture, she ran up a ladder that had been left against a
+haystack. Blocks of hay had been cut out, leaving a square shelf half
+way down the stack, on to which Beth scrambled from the ladder. There
+was room enough for her to lie at her ease up there and recover her
+breath. The hay and the night-air smelt deliciously sweet. The stack
+she was on was one of the outer row. Beneath was the road along which
+the waggons brought their loads in harvest time; and this was flanked
+by a low wall, on the other side of which was a meadow, bordered with
+elms. Beth pulled up the hay about her, covered herself with it, and
+nestled amongst it luxuriously. The moon shone full upon her, but she
+had quite concealed herself, and would probably have fallen asleep
+after her exertions had it not been that just when drowsiness was
+coming upon her she was startled by the sound of a hurried footstep,
+and a girl in a light dress, with a shawl about her shoulders, came
+round the stack, and stood still, looking about her, as if she
+expected some one. Beth recognised her as Harriet Elvidge, the
+kitchen-maid; and presently Russell, one of the grooms, came hurrying
+to meet her from the other direction. They rushed into each other's
+arms.
+
+"Thou'st laate," the girl grumbled.
+
+"Ah bin waatin' ower yon'er this good bit," he answered, putting his
+arm round her, and drawing her to the wall, on which they sat, leaning
+against each other, and whispering happily. The moon was low, and her
+great golden disk illumined the sky, against which the two dark
+figures stood out, silhouetted distinctly. The effect gave Beth a
+sensation of pleasure, and she racked her brains for words in which to
+express it. Presently the lovers rose and strolled away together. Then
+for a little it was lonely, and Beth thought of getting down; but
+before she had made up her mind, two other people appeared, strolling
+in the moonlight, whom Beth instantly recognised as Uncle James and
+the beautiful princess Blue-eyes-and-golden-hair. The princess had
+both her hands clasped round Uncle James's arm, and every now and then
+she nestled her face against his shoulder lovingly.
+
+"What will Jimmie-wimmie give his Jenny-penny?" she was saying as they
+approached.
+
+"First what will Jenny-penny give her Jimmie-wimmie?" Uncle James
+cooed.
+
+"First, a nice--sweet--kiss!"
+
+"Duckie-dearie!" Jimmie-wimmie gurgled ecstatically, taking the kiss
+with the playful grace of an elephant gambolling.
+
+Beth on the haystack writhed with suppressed merriment until her sides
+ached.
+
+But Jimmie-wimmie and Jenny-penny passed out of sight like Harriet and
+Russell before them. The moon was sinking rapidly. A sudden gust of
+air blew chill upon Beth. She was extremely sensitive to sudden
+changes of temperature, and as the night grew dull and heavy, so did
+her mood, and she began to be as anxious to be indoors again as she
+had been to come out. The fairy-folk had all vanished now, and ghosts
+and goblins would come in their stead, and pounce upon her as she
+passed, if she were not quick. Beth scrambled down from the haystack,
+and made for the side-door in hot haste, and was half-way upstairs,
+when it suddenly occurred to her that if she locked the door,
+Jimmie-wimmie and Jenny-penny would not be able to get in. So she
+retraced her steps, accomplished her purpose, slipped back to bed, and
+slept until she was roused in the morning by a shrill cry from
+Bernadine--"See, mummy! see, mummy! lazy Beth is in bed with all her
+clothes on!"
+
+Beth sat up, and slapped Bernadine promptly; whereupon Mrs. Caldwell
+slapped Beth.
+
+"Such is life," said Beth, in imitation of Aunt Grace Mary; and Mrs.
+Caldwell smiled in spite of herself.
+
+Later in the day Beth complained to Mildred of a bad cold in her head.
+
+"Oh dear!" Mildred exclaimed, "I expect Uncle James will talk at that
+cold as long as it lasts."
+
+"I know," Beth said. "Grace Mary, dear--or Aunt Victoria--have you
+observed that children always have colds and never have
+pocket-handkerchiefs?"
+
+Uncle James, however, had a bad cold himself that morning, and
+described himself as very much indisposed.
+
+"I went out of doors last night before retiring," he explained at
+luncheon, "tempted by the glorious moonlight and the balmy air; but
+before I returned the night had changed and become chilly, and
+unfortunately the side-door had shut itself, and every one was in bed,
+so I could not get in. I threw pebbles up at Grace Mary's window, but
+failed to rouse her, she being somewhat deaf. I also knocked and rang,
+but no one answered, so I was obliged to shelter in the barn. Harriet,
+however, appeared finally. She--er--gets the men's breakfasts,
+and--er--the kitchen-window--" But here Uncle James was seized with a
+sudden fit of sneezing, and the connection between the men's
+breakfasts and the kitchen-window was never explained. "She is an
+extremely good girl, is Harriet," he proceeded as soon as he could
+speak; "up at four o'clock every morning."
+
+"I wish to goodness _my_ trollop was," said Lady Benyon. "She gets
+later every day. Where did you go last night?"
+
+"Oh--I had been loitering among the tombs, so to speak," he answered
+largely.
+
+Beth was eating cold beef stolidly, but without much appetite because
+of her cold, and also because there was hot chicken, and Uncle James
+had not given her her choice. Uncle James kept looking at her. He
+found it hard to let her alone, but she gave him no cause of offence
+for some time. Her little nose was troublesome, however, and at last
+she sniffed. Uncle James looked at Lady Benyon.
+
+"Have you observed," he said, "that when a child has a cold she never
+has a pocket-handkerchief?"
+
+Beth produced a clean one with a flourish, and burst out laughing.
+
+"What's the matter, Puck?" Lady Benyon asked, beaming already in
+anticipation.
+
+"Oh, nothing. Only I said Uncle James would say that if I sniffed.
+Didn't I, Mildred?"
+
+But Mildred, too wary to support her, looked down demurely.
+
+"Puck," said Lady Benyon, "you're a character."
+
+"There are good characters and there are bad characters," Uncle James
+moralised.
+
+"Arrah, thin, it isn't a bad character you'd be afther givin' your own
+niece," Beth blarneyed; and then she turned up her naughty eyes to the
+ceiling and chanted softly: "What will Jimmie-wimmie give his
+duckie-dearie to be good? A nice--sweet--kiss!"
+
+Uncle James's big white face became suddenly empurpled.
+
+"Gracious! he's swallowed wrong," Lady Benyon exclaimed in alarm.
+"Drink something. You really should be careful, a great fat man like
+you."
+
+Uncle James coughed hard behind his handkerchief, then began to
+recover himself. Beth's eyes were fixed on his face. Her chaunt had
+been a sudden inspiration, and its effect upon the huge man had
+somewhat startled her; but clearly Uncle James was afraid she was
+going to tell.
+
+"How funny!" she ejaculated.
+
+Uncle James gasped again.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Puck?" Lady Benyon asked.
+
+"Oh, I was just thinking--thinking I would ask Uncle James to give
+Mildred some chicken."
+
+"Why, of course, my dear child!" Uncle James exclaimed, to everybody's
+astonishment. "And have some yourself, Beth?"
+
+"No, thank you," Beth answered. "I'm full."
+
+"Beth!" her mother was beginning, when she perceived that Uncle James
+was laughing.
+
+"Now, that child is really amusing," he said--"_really_ amusing."
+
+No one else thought this last enormity a happy specimen of her wit,
+and they looked at Uncle James, who continued to laugh, in amazement.
+
+"Beth," he said, "when luncheon is over I shall give you a
+picture-book."
+
+Beth accordingly had to stay behind with him after the others had left
+the dining-room.
+
+"Beth," he began in a terrible voice, as soon as they were alone
+together, trying to frighten her; "Beth, what were you doing last
+night?"
+
+"I was meditating among the tombs," she answered glibly; "but I never
+heard them called by that name before."
+
+"You bad child, I shall tell your mamma."
+
+"Oh for shame!" said Beth. "Tell-tale! And if you tell I shall. I saw
+you kissing Jenny-penny."
+
+Uncle James collapsed. He had been prepared to explain to Beth that he
+had met the poor girl with some rustic lover, and was lecturing her
+kindly for her good, and making her go in, which would have made a
+plausible story had it not been for that accursed kissing. Of course
+he could insist that Beth was lying; the child was known to be
+imaginative; but then against that was the emotion he had shown. Lady
+Benyon had no very high opinion of him, he knew, and once she obtained
+a clue she would soon unravel the truth. No, the only thing was to
+silence Beth.
+
+"Beth," he said, "I quite agree with you, my dear child. I was only
+joking when I said I would tell your mamma. Nothing would induce me to
+tell tales out of school."
+
+Beth smiled up at him frankly: "Nor me neither. I don't believe you're
+such a bad old boy after all."
+
+Uncle James winced. How he would have liked to throttle her! He
+controlled himself, however, and even managed to make a smile as he
+got up to leave the room.
+
+"I say, though," Beth exclaimed, seeing him about to depart, "where's
+that picture-book?"
+
+"Oh!" he ejaculated. "I had forgotten. But no, Beth, it would never
+do. If I give it to you now, it would look like a bribe; and I'm sure
+you would never accept a bribe."
+
+"I should think not," said Beth.
+
+And it was long years before she understood the mean adroitness of
+this last evasion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+There are those who maintain that a man can do everything better than
+a woman can do it. This is certainly true of nagging. When a man nags,
+he shows his thoroughness, his continuity, and that love of sport
+which is the special pride and attribute of his sex. When a man nags,
+he puts his whole heart into the effort; a woman only nags, as a rule,
+because the heart has been taken out of her. The nagging woman is an
+over-tasked creature with jarred nerves, whose plaint is an expression
+of pain, a cry for help; in any interval of ease which lasts long
+enough to relax the tension, she feels remorse, and becomes amiably
+anxious to atone. With the male nag it is different. He is usually
+sleek and smiling, a joyous creature, fond of good living, whose
+self-satisfaction bubbles over in artistic attempts to make everybody
+else uncomfortable. This was the kind of creature Uncle James Patten
+was. He loved to shock and jar and startle people, especially if they
+were powerless to retaliate. Of two ways of saying a thing he
+invariably chose the more disagreeable; and when he had bad news to
+break, it added to his interest in it if the victim felt it deeply and
+showed signs of suffering.
+
+One morning at breakfast it might have been suspected that there was
+something unpleasant toward. Uncle James had read prayers with such
+happy unction, and showed such pleased importance as he took his seat.
+
+"Aunt Victoria," he lisped, "I have just observed in yesterday's paper
+that money matters are in a bad way. There has been a crisis in the
+city, and your investments have sunk so low that your income will be
+practically nil."
+
+"What!" said Aunt Victoria incredulously, "the shares you advised me
+to buy?"
+
+"Those are the ones, yes," he answered.
+
+"But, then--I fear you have lost money too," she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh no, thank you," he assured her, in a tone which implied reproach,
+"_I_ never speculate."
+
+"James Patten," said Aunt Victoria quietly, "am I to understand that
+you advised me to buy stock in which you yourself did not venture to
+speculate?"
+
+"Well--er--you see," he answered with composure, "as speculation was
+against my principles, I could not take advantage of the opportunity
+myself, but that seemed to me no reason why you should not try to
+double your income. It may have been an error of judgment on my part;
+I am far from infallible--far from infallible. But I think I may claim
+to be disinterested. I did not hope to benefit myself----"
+
+"During my lifetime," Aunt Victoria suggested, in the same tone of
+quiet self-restraint. "I see. My modest fortune would not have been
+much in itself to a man of your means; but it would have been a
+considerable sum if doubled."
+
+"Yes, doubles or quits, doubles or quits," said Uncle James, beaming
+on Aunt Victoria as if he were saying something reassuring. "Alas! the
+family failing!"
+
+"It is a new departure, however, for the family--to gamble at other
+people's expense," said Aunt Victoria.
+
+"Alas! poor human nature," Uncle James philosophised, shaking his
+head. "You never know--you never know."
+
+Aunt Victoria looked him straight in the eyes, but made no further
+show of emotion, except that she sat more rigidly upright than usual
+perhaps, and the rose-tint faded from her delicate face, leaving it
+waxen-white beneath her auburn front.
+
+Uncle James ate an egg, with a pious air of thankfulness for the
+mercies vouchsafed him.
+
+"And where will you live now, Aunt Victoria?" he asked at last, with
+an affectation of as much concern as he could get into his fat voice.
+For many years he had insisted that Fairholm was the proper place for
+his mother's sister, but then she had had money to leave. "Do not
+desert us altogether," he pursued. "You must come and see us as often
+as your altered circumstances will admit."
+
+Great-Aunt Victoria Bench bowed expressively. Aunt Grace Mary grew
+very red in the face. Mrs. Caldwell seemed to be controlling herself
+with difficulty.
+
+"There will be a spare room in my cottage, Aunt Victoria," she said.
+"I hope you will consider it your own, and make your home with me."
+
+"Thank you kindly, Caroline," the old lady answered; "but I must
+consider."
+
+"It would be a most proper arrangement," Uncle James genially decided;
+"and you would have our dear little Beth, of whom you approve, you
+know, for an interest in life."
+
+Beth left her seat impulsively, and, going round to the old lady,
+nestled up to her, slipped her little hand through her arm, and glared
+at Uncle James defiantly.
+
+The old lady's face quivered for a moment, and she patted the child's
+hand.
+
+But no more was said on the subject in Beth's hearing; only, later,
+she found that Aunt Victoria was going to live with them.
+
+Uncle James had suddenly become quite anxious that Mrs. Caldwell
+should be settled in her own little house; he said it would be so much
+more comfortable for her. The little house was Aunt Grace Mary's
+property, by the way--rent, ten pounds a year; but as it had not been
+let for a long time, and it did houses no good to stand empty, Uncle
+James had graciously lent it to his sister. When she was so settled in
+it that it would be a great inconvenience to move, he asked for the
+rent.
+
+During the next week he drove every day to the station in Aunt Grace
+Mary's pony-carriage, to see if Mrs. Caldwell's furniture had arrived
+from Ireland; and when at last it came, he sent every available
+servant he had to set the house in order, so that it might be ready
+for immediate occupation. He also persuaded Harriet Elvidge, his
+invaluable kitchen-maid, to enter Mrs. Caldwell's service as
+maid-of-all-work. There is reason to believe that this arrangement was
+the outcome of Uncle James's peculiar sense of humour; but Mrs.
+Caldwell never suspected it.
+
+"It will be nice for you to have some one I know all about," Uncle
+James insisted, "and with a knowledge of cooking besides. And how glad
+you will be to sleep under your own roof to-night!" he added in a tone
+of kindly congratulation.
+
+"And how glad you will be to get rid of us," said Beth, thus early
+giving voice to what other people were only daring to think.
+
+As soon as they were settled in the little bow-windowed house, it
+became obvious that there would be differences of opinion between
+mamma and Great-Aunt Victoria Bench. They differed about the cooking,
+about religion, and about the education of children. Aunt Victoria
+thought that if you cooked meat a second time it took all the goodness
+out of it. Mrs. Caldwell liked stews, and she said if the joints were
+under-done at first, as they should be, re-cooking did _not_ take the
+goodness out of the meat; but Aunt Victoria abominated under-done
+joints more than anything.
+
+The education of the children was a more serious matter, however--a
+matter of principle, in fact, as opposed to a matter of taste. Mrs.
+Caldwell had determined to give her boys a good start in life. In
+order to do this on her very limited income, she was obliged to
+exercise the utmost self-denial, and even with that, there would be
+little or nothing left to spend on the girls. This, however, did not
+seem to Mrs. Caldwell to be a matter of much importance. It is
+customary to sacrifice the girls of a family to the boys; to give them
+no educational advantages, and then to jeer at them for their
+ignorance and silliness. Mrs. Caldwell's own education had been of
+the most desultory character, but such as it was, she was content with
+it. "The method has answered in my case," she complacently maintained,
+without the slightest suspicion that the assertion proved nothing but
+extreme self-satisfaction. Accordingly, as she could not afford to
+send her daughters to school as well as the boys, she decided to
+educate them herself. Everybody who could read, write, and cipher was
+supposed to be able to teach in those days, and Mrs. Caldwell
+undertook the task without a doubt of her own capacity. But Aunt
+Victoria was not so sanguine.
+
+"I hope religious instruction will be a part of their education," she
+said, when the subject was first discussed.
+
+"They shall read the Bible from beginning to end," Mrs. Caldwell
+answered shortly.
+
+"That, I should think, would be hardly desirable," Aunt Victoria
+deprecated gently.
+
+"And I shall teach them their Catechism, and take them to church,"
+Mrs. Caldwell proceeded. "That is the way in which _I_ was taught."
+
+"_We_ were instructed in doctrine, and taught to order our conduct on
+certain fixed principles, which were explained to us," Aunt Victoria
+ventured.
+
+"Indeed, yes, I dare say," Mrs. Caldwell observed politely; so there
+the subject had to drop.
+
+But Aunt Victoria was far from satisfied. She shook her head sadly
+over her niece's spiritual state, and determined to save the souls of
+her great-nieces by instructing them herself as occasion should offer.
+
+"What is education, mamma?" Beth asked.
+
+"Why, learning things, of course," Mrs. Caldwell replied, with a smile
+at the child's simplicity.
+
+"I know that," Beth snapped, irritated by her mother's manner.
+
+"Then why did you ask?" Mrs. Caldwell wished to know.
+
+"The child has probably heard that that is not all," said Aunt
+Victoria. "'Learning things' is but one item of education--if you mean
+by that the mere acquisition of knowledge. A well-ordered day, for
+instance, is an essential part of education. Education is a question
+of discipline, of regular hours for everything, from the getting up in
+the morning to the going to bed at night. No mind can be properly
+developed without routine. Teach a child how to order its time, and
+its talents will do the rest."
+
+"Get out your books, children," said Mrs. Caldwell, and Aunt Victoria
+hurriedly withdrew.
+
+Beth put a large Bible, Colenso's arithmetic, a French grammar, and
+Pinnock (an old-fashioned compilation of questions and answers), on
+the table, and looked at them despondently. Then she took a slate, set
+herself the easiest addition sum she could find in Colenso, and did it
+wrong. Her mother told her to correct it.
+
+"I wish you would show me how, mamma," Beth pleaded.
+
+"You must find out for yourself," her mother answered.
+
+This was her favourite formula. She had no idea of making the lessons
+either easy or interesting to the children. Teaching was a duty she
+detested, a time of trial both to herself and to her pupils, to be got
+over as soon as possible. The whole proceeding only occupied two or
+three dreadful hours of the morning, and then the children were free
+for the rest of the day, and so was she.
+
+After lessons they all went out together to the north cliffs, where
+Aunt Victoria and Mrs. Caldwell walked to and fro on a sheltered
+terrace, while the children played on the sands below. It was a still
+day when Beth first saw the sands, and the lonely level and the
+tranquil sea delighted her. On her left, white cliffs curved round the
+bay like an arm; on her right was the grey and solid old stone pile,
+and behind her the mellow red brick houses of the little town
+scrambled up an incline from the shore irregularly. Silver sparkles
+brightened the hard smooth surface of the sand in the sunshine. The
+tide was coming in, and tiny waves advanced in irregular curves, and
+broke with a merry murmur. Joy got hold of Beth as she gazed about
+her, feeling the beauty of the scene. With the infinite charity of
+childhood, she forgave her mother her trespasses against her for that
+day, and her little soul was filled with the peace of the newly
+shriven. She flourished a little wooden spade that Aunt Victoria had
+given her, but did not dig. The surface of the sand was all unbroken;
+no disfiguring foot of man had trodden the long expanse, and Beth
+hesitated to be the first to spoil its exquisite serenity. Her heart
+expanded, however, and she shouted aloud in a great, uncontrollable
+burst of exultation.
+
+A man with a brown beard and moustache, short, crisp, curly hair, and
+deep-set, glittering dark grey eyes, came up to her from behind. He
+wore a blue pilot-coat, blue trousers, and a peaked cap, the dress of
+a merchant-skipper.
+
+"Don't desecrate this heavenly solitude with discordant cries," he
+exclaimed.
+
+Beth had not heard him approach, and she turned round, startled, when
+he spoke.
+
+"I thought I was singing!" she rejoined.
+
+"Don't dig and disfigure the beautiful bare brown bosom of the shore,"
+he pursued.
+
+"I did not mean to dig," Beth said, looking up in his face; and then
+looking round about her in perfect comprehension of his mood--"The
+beautiful bare brown bosom of the shore," she slowly repeated,
+delighting in the phrase. "It's the kind of thing you can sing, you
+know."
+
+"Yes," said the man, suddenly smiling; "it is pure poetry, and I make
+you a present of the copyright."
+
+"But," Beth objected, "the shore is _not_ brown. I've been thinking
+and thinking what to call it. It's the colour--the colour of--the
+colour of tarnished silver," she burst out at last triumphantly.
+
+"Well observed," he said.
+
+"Then I make you a present of the copyright," Beth answered readily.
+
+"Thank you," he said; "but it will not scan."
+
+"What is scan?"
+
+"It won't fit into the verse, you know."
+
+"The beautiful bare colour-of-tarnished-silver bosom of the shore,"
+she sang out glibly; then agreed, with a wise shake of her head, that
+the phrase was impossible; and recurred to another point of interest,
+as was her wont--"What is copyright?"
+
+Before he could answer, however, Mrs. Caldwell had swooped down upon
+them. She had seen him from the cliff talking to Beth, and hastened
+down the steps in her hot-tempered way, determined to rebuke the man
+for his familiarity, and heedless of Aunt Victoria, who had made an
+effort to stop her.
+
+"May I ask why you are interfering with my child, sir?" she demanded.
+
+The man in the sailor-suit raised his hat and bowed low.
+
+"Excuse me, madam," he said. "I could not possibly have supposed that
+she was your child."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell coloured angrily as at an insult, although the words
+seemed innocent enough. When he had spoken, he turned to Beth, with
+his hat still in his hand, and added--"Good-bye, little lady. We must
+meet again, you and I--on the beautiful bare brown bosom of the
+shore."
+
+Beth's sympathy shone out in a smile, and she waved her hand
+confidingly to him as he turned away. Mrs. Caldwell seized her arm and
+hurried her up the steps to Aunt Victoria, who stood on the edge of
+the cliff blinking calmly.
+
+"Imagine Beth scraping acquaintance with such a common-looking
+person!" Mrs. Caldwell cried. "You must never speak to him or look at
+him again--do you hear? I wonder what taste you will develop next!"
+
+"It is a pity that you are so impetuous, Caroline," Aunt Victoria
+observed quietly. "That gentleman is the Count Gustav Bartahlinsky,
+who may perhaps be considered eccentric here, where noblemen of great
+attainments and wealth are certainly not numerous; but is hardly to be
+called common-looking."
+
+Beth saw her mother's countenance drop.
+
+"Then I _may_ speak to him," she decided for herself. "What's a
+copyright, mamma?"
+
+"Oh, don't bother, Beth!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed irritably.
+
+When they went home, Bernadine clamoured for food, and her mother gave
+her a piece of bread. They were to have dinner at four o'clock, but no
+luncheon, for economy's sake. Beth was hungry too, but she would not
+confess it. What she had heard of their poverty had made a deep
+impression on her, and she was determined to eat as little as
+possible. Aunt Victoria glanced at Bernadine and the bread as she went
+up to her room, and Beth fancied she heard her sigh. Was the old lady
+hungry too, she wondered, and her little heart sank.
+
+This was Beth's first exercise in self-denial, but she had plenty of
+practice, for the scene was repeated day after day.
+
+The children being free, had to amuse themselves as best they could,
+and went out to play in the little garden at the back of the house.
+Mrs. Caldwell's own freedom was merely freedom for thought. Most of
+the day she spent beside the dining-room table, making and mending,
+her only distraction being an occasional glance through the window at
+the boughs of the apple-trees which showed above the wall opposite, or
+at the people passing. Even when teaching the children she made,
+mended, and pursued her own thoughts, mapping out careers for her
+boys, making brilliant matches for Mildred and Bernadine, and even
+building a castle for Beth now and then. She made and mended as badly
+as might be expected of a woman whose proud boast it was that when she
+was married she could not hem a pocket-handkerchief; and she did it
+all herself. She had no notion of utilising the motive-power at hand
+in the children. As her own energy had been wasted in her childhood,
+so she wasted theirs, letting it expend itself to no purpose instead
+of teaching them to apply it. She was essentially a creature of habit.
+All that she had been taught in her youth, she taught them; but any
+accomplishment she had acquired in later life, she seemed to think
+that they also should wait to acquire. She had always dressed for
+dinner; so now, at half-past three every day, she put away her work,
+went into the kitchen for some hot water, which she carried upstairs
+herself, called the children, and proceeded to brush her own hair
+carefully, and change her dress. She expected the children to follow
+her example, but did not pay much attention to their proceedings, and
+they, childlike, constantly and consistently shirked as much of the
+ceremony as possible. If their mother caught them with unwashed hands
+and half-brushed hair, she thumped them on the back, and made them
+wash and brush; but she was generally thinking about something else,
+and did not catch them. The rite, however, being regularly although
+imperfectly performed, resulted in a good habit.
+
+There was another thing too for which Beth had good reason to be
+grateful to her mother. During winter, when the days were short, or
+when bad weather made it impossible to go out on summer evenings, Mrs.
+Caldwell always read aloud to the children after tea till bed-time.
+Most mothers would have made the children read; but there was a great
+deal of laxity mixed with Mrs. Caldwell's harshness. She found it
+easier to do things herself than to make the children do them for her.
+They objected to read, and liked to be read to, so she read to them;
+and as, fortunately, she had no money to buy children's books, she
+read what there were in the house. Beth's ear was still quicker than
+her eye, and she would not read to herself if she could help it; but
+before she was fourteen, thanks to her mother, she knew much of Scott,
+Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton, and even some of
+Shakespeare, well; besides such books as "The Woman in White," "The
+Dead Secret," "Loyal Heart; or, The Trappers," "The Scalp Hunters,"
+and many more, all of which helped greatly to develop her
+intelligence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+During the next two years, Beth continued to look on at life, with
+eyes wide open, deeply interested. Her mind at this time, acting
+without conscious effort, was a mere photographic apparatus for the
+registration of impressions on the brain. Every incident stored and
+docketed itself somewhere in her consciousness for future use, and it
+was upon this hoard that she drew eventually with such astonishing
+effect.
+
+Rousseau in "Emile" chose a common capacity to educate, because, he
+said, genius will educate itself; but even genius would find its
+labours lightened by having been taught the use of some few tools,
+such as are supplied by the rudiments of a conventional education.
+Beth was never taught anything thoroughly; very few girls were in her
+day. A woman was expected at that time to earn her livelihood by
+marrying a man and bringing up a family; and, so long as her face was
+attractive, the fact that she was ignorant, foolish, and trivial did
+not, in the estimation of the average man, at all disqualify her for
+the task. Beth's education, at this most impressionable period of her
+life, consisted in the acquisition of a few facts which were not made
+to interest her, and neither influenced her conduct nor helped to form
+her character. She might learn in the morning, for instance, that
+William the Conqueror arrived 1066, but the information did not
+prevent her being as naughty as possible in the afternoon. One cannot
+help speculating on how much she lost or gained by the haphazard of
+her early training; but one thing is certain, had the development of
+her genius depended upon a careful acquisition of such knowledge as is
+to be had at school, it must have remained latent for ever.
+
+As it was, however, being forced out into the life-school of the
+world, she there matriculated on her own account, and so, perhaps,
+saved her further faculty from destruction. For theoretical knowledge
+would have dulled the keenness of her insight probably, confused her
+point of view, and brought in accepted commonplaces to spoil the
+originality of her conclusions. It was from practical experience of
+life rather than from books that she learnt her work; she saw for
+herself before she came under the influence of other people's
+observations; and this was doubtless the secret of her success; but it
+involved the cruel necessity of a hard and strange apprenticeship.
+From the time of their arrival in Rainharbour she lived three lives a
+day--the life of lessons and coercion which was forced upon her, an
+altogether artificial and unsatisfactory life; the life she took up
+the moment she was free to act for herself; and a life of endless
+dreams, which mingled with the other two unwholesomely. For the rich
+soil of her mind, left uncultivated, was bound to bring forth
+something, and because there was so little seed sown in it, the crop
+was mostly weeds.
+
+When we review the march of events which come crowding into a life,
+seeing how few it is possible to describe, no one can wonder that
+there is talk of the difficulty of selection. Who, for instance, could
+have supposed that a good striped jacket Jim had outgrown, and Mrs.
+Caldwell's love of grey, would have had much effect upon Beth's
+career? And yet these trifles were epoch-making. Mrs. Caldwell thought
+grey a ladylike colour, and therefore bought Beth a carmelite dress of
+a delicate shade for the summer. For the first few weeks the dress was
+a joy to Beth, but after that it began to be stained by one thing and
+another, and every spot upon it was a source of misery, not only
+because she was punished for messing the dress, but also because she
+had messed it; for she was beginning to be fastidious about her
+clothes; and every time she went out she was conscious of those
+unsightly stains, and fancied everybody was looking at them. She had
+to wear the frock, however, for want of another; and in the autumn,
+when the days began to be chilly, a cast-off jacket of Jim's was
+added to the affliction. Mrs. Caldwell caught her trying it on one
+day, and after shaking her for doing so, she noticed that the jacket
+fitted her, and the bright idea of making Beth wear it out, so that it
+might not be wasted, occurred to her. To do her justice, Mrs. Caldwell
+had no idea of the torture she was inflicting upon Beth by forcing her
+to appear in her soiled frock and a boy's jacket. The poor lady was in
+great straits at the time, and had nothing to spend on her daughters,
+because her sons were growing up, and beginning to clamour for
+pocket-money. Their mother considered it right that they should have
+it too; and so the tender, delicate, sensitive little girl had to go
+dirty and ashamed in order that her brothers might have the
+wherewithal to swing a cane, smoke, drink beer, play billiards, and do
+all else that makes boys men in their own estimation at an early age.
+
+Rainharbour was little more than a fishing village in those days,
+though it became a fashionable watering-place in a very few years.
+When Mrs. Caldwell first settled there, a whole codfish was sold for
+sixpence, fowls were one-and-ninepence a pair, eggs were almost given
+away, and the manners of the people were in keeping with the low
+prices. The natives had no idea of concealing their feelings, and were
+in the habit of expressing their opinions of each other and things in
+general at the top of their voices in the open street. They were as
+conservative as the Chinese too, and thought anything new and strange
+ridiculous. Consequently, when a little girl appeared amongst them in
+a boy's jacket, they let her know that they resented the innovation.
+
+"She's getten a lad's jacket on! oh! oh! she's getten a lad's jacket
+on!" the children called aloud after her in the street, while their
+mothers came to the cottage-doors, wiping soap-suds from their arms,
+and stood staring as at a show; and even the big bland sailors
+lounging on the quay expanded into broad grins or solemnly winked at
+one another. Beth flushed with shame, but her courageous little heart
+was instantly full of fight. "What ignorant people these are!" she
+exclaimed haughtily, turning to Bernadine, who had dropped behind out
+of the obloquy. "What ignorant people these are! they know nothing of
+the fashions." The insinuation stung her persecutors, but that only
+made them the more offensive, and wherever she went she was jeered
+at--openly if there were no grown-up person with her, covertly if
+there were, but always so that she understood. After that first
+explosion she used to march along with an air of calm indifference as
+if she heard nothing, but she had to put great constraint upon herself
+in order to seem superior while feeling deeply humiliated; and all the
+time she suffered so acutely that at last she could hardly be induced
+to go out at all.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell, who never noticed the "common people" enough to be
+aware of their criticism, would not listen to anything Beth had to say
+on the subject, and considered that her objection to go out in the
+jacket was merely another instance of her tiresome obstinacy.
+Punishments ensued, and Beth had the daily choice whether she should
+be scolded and beaten for refusing to go out, or be publicly jeered at
+for wearing a "lad's jacket."
+
+Sometimes she preferred the chance of public derision to the certainty
+of private chastisement; but oftener she took the chastisement. This
+state of things could not last much longer, however. Hitherto her
+mother had ruled her by physical force, but now their wills were
+coming into collision, and it was inevitable that the more determined
+should carry her point.
+
+"Go and put your things on directly, you naughty, obstinate child,"
+her mother screamed at her one day. Beth did not move.
+
+"Do you hear me?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
+
+Beth made no sign. And suddenly Mrs. Caldwell realised that if Beth
+would not go out, she could not make her. She never thought of trying
+to persuade her. All that occurred to her was that Beth was too big to
+be carried or pulled or pushed; that she might be hurt, but could not
+be frightened; and that there was nothing for it, therefore, but to
+let her have her own way.
+
+"Very well, then," said Mrs. Caldwell, "I shall go without you. But
+you'll be punished for your wickedness some day, you'll see, and then
+you'll be sorry."
+
+Mildred had gone to be educated by a rich sister of her father's by
+this time, Aunt Victoria and Bernadine usually went out with Mrs.
+Caldwell, so it came to pass that Beth began to be left pretty much to
+her own resources, of which Harriet Elvidge in the kitchen was one,
+and a considerable one.
+
+Harriet was a woman of well-marked individuality and brilliant
+imagination. She could never separate fact from fiction in any form of
+narrative, and narrative was her speciality. She was always recounting
+something. Beth used to follow her from room to room, as she went
+about her work, listening with absolute faith and the deepest interest
+to the stream of narrative which flowed on without interruption, no
+matter what Harriet was doing. Sometimes, when she was dusting the
+drawing-room mantelpiece, she would pause with a china cup in one hand
+and her duster in the other, to emphasise a thrilling incident, or
+make a speech impressive with suitable gesticulation; and sometimes,
+for the same purpose, she would stop with her hand on the yellowstone
+with which she was rubbing the kitchen-hearth, and her head in the
+grate almost. Often, too, Beth in her eager sympathy would say, "Let
+me do that!" and Harriet would sit in an arm-chair if they were in the
+drawing-room, and resign the duster--or the dishcloth, if they were in
+the kitchen--and continue the recital, while Beth showed her
+appreciation, and encouraged her to proceed, by doing the greater part
+of her work for her. Mrs. Caldwell never could make out why Beth's
+hands were in such a state. "They are all cracked and begrimed," she
+would exclaim, "as if the child had to do dirty work like a servant!"
+And it was a good thing for Beth that she did it, for otherwise she
+would have had no physical training at all, and would have suffered as
+her sister Mildred did for want of it. Mildred, unlike Beth, held her
+head high, and never forgot that she was a young lady by right of
+descent, with an hereditary aptitude for keeping her inferiors in
+their proper place. She only went into the kitchen of necessity, and
+would never have dreamed of dusting, sweeping, bed-making, or laying
+the table, to help the servant, however much she might have been
+over-tasked; neither would Harriet have dared to approach her with the
+familiar pleading: "I say, miss, 'elp uz, I'm that done," to which
+Beth so readily responded. Mildred was studious; she had profited by
+the good teaching she had had while her father was alive, and was able
+to "make things out" for herself; but she cultivated her mind at the
+expense of her body. She was one of those delicate, nervous, sensitive
+girls, whose busy brains require the rest of regular manual exercise;
+and for want of it, she lived upon books, and very literally died of
+them eventually. She was naturally, so to speak, an artificial product
+of conventional ideas; Beth, on the contrary, was altogether a little
+human being, but one of those who answer to expectation with fatal
+versatility. She liked blacking grates, and did them well, because
+Harriet told her she could; she hated writing copies, and did them
+disgracefully, because her mother beat her for a blot, and said she
+would never improve. For the same reason, long before she could read
+aloud to her mother intelligibly, she had learnt all that Harriet
+could teach her, not only of the house-work, but of the cooking, from
+cleaning a fish and trussing a fowl to making barley-broth and
+puff-pastry. Harriet was a good cook if she had the things, as she
+said herself, having picked up a great deal when she was kitchen-maid
+in Uncle James's household.
+
+Harriet was the daughter of a labourer. Her people lived at a village
+some miles away, and every Saturday morning a carrier with a covered
+cart brought her a letter from home, and a little parcel containing a
+cheesecake or some other dainty. Beth took a lively interest both in
+the cheesecake and the letter. "What's the news from home to-day?" she
+would ask. "How's Annie, and what has mother sent?" Whereupon Harriet
+would share the cheesecake with her, and read the letter aloud, work
+being suspended as long as possible for the purpose.
+
+Harriet was about twenty-five at this time. She had very black silky
+hair, straight and heavy, parted in the middle, drawn down over her
+ears, and gathered up in a knot behind. Her face was oval, forehead
+high, eyebrows arched and delicate, nose straight, and she had large
+expressive dark grey eyes, rather deeply set, with long black lashes,
+and a mouth that would have been handsome of the sensual full-lipped
+kind, had it not been distorted by a burn, which had disfigured her
+throat and chin as well. She had set her pinafore on fire when she was
+a child, and it had blazed up under her chin, causing irreparable
+injury before the flames could be extinguished. But for that accident
+she would have been a singularly good-looking woman of a type which
+was common in books of beauty at the beginning of this reign.
+
+She could read and write after a fashion, and was intelligent, but
+ignorant, deceitful, superstitious, and hysterical. Mrs. Caldwell
+continually lectured Beth about going into the kitchen so much; but
+she only lectured on principle really. Young ladies could not be
+allowed to associate with servants as a rule, but an exception might
+be made in the case of a good, steady, sober sort of person, such as
+Mrs. Caldwell believed Harriet to be, who would keep the troublesome
+child out of mischief, and do her no harm. Harriet, as it happened,
+delighted in mischief, and was often the instigator; but Mrs. Caldwell
+might be excused for not suspecting this, as she only saw her on her
+best behaviour. When the children were safe in bed, and Miss Victoria
+Bench, who was an early person, had also retired, Harriet would put on
+a clean apron, and appear before Mrs. Caldwell in the character of a
+respectable, vigilant domestic, more anxious about her mistress's
+interests than her own; and she would then make a report in which Beth
+figured as a fiend of a child who could not be trusted alone for a
+moment, and Harriet herself as a conscientious custodian, but for whom
+nobody knows what might have happened.
+
+When Harriet had no particular incident to report at these secret
+conferences, she would tell Mrs. Caldwell her dreams, and describe
+signs and portents of coming events which she had observed during the
+day; and Mrs. Caldwell would listen with interest. Superstition is a
+subject on which the most class-proud will consult with the lowest and
+the wickedest; it is a mighty leveller downwards. But the poor lady
+had a lonely life. It was not Mrs. Caldwell's fault, but the fault of
+her day, that she was not a noble woman. She belonged to early
+Victorian times, when every effort was made to mould the characters of
+women as the homes of the period were built, on lines of ghastly
+uniformity. The education of a girl in those days was eminently
+calculated to cloud her intelligence and strengthen every failing
+developed in her sex by ages of suppression. Mrs. Caldwell was a
+plastic person, and her mind had been successfully compressed into the
+accustomed groove until her husband came and helped it to escape a
+little in one or two directions--with the effect, however, of spoiling
+its conventional symmetry without restoring its natural beauty. If the
+mind be tight-laced long enough, it is ruined as a model, just as the
+body is; and throwing off the stays which restrained it, merely
+exposes its deformities without remedying them; so that there is
+nothing for the old generation but to remain in stays. Mrs. Caldwell,
+with all her deformities, was just as heroic as she knew how to be.
+She lived for her children to the extent of denying herself the bare
+necessaries of life for them; and bore poverty and obscurity of a
+galling kind without a murmur. She scarcely ever saw a soul to speak
+to. Uncle James Patten and the Benyon family did not associate much
+with the townspeople, and were not popular in the county; so that Mrs.
+Caldwell had very few visitors. Of course it was an advantage to be
+known as a relation of the great people of the place, although the
+great people had a bad name; but then she was evidently a poor
+relation, which made it almost a virtue to neglect her in a community
+of Christians who only professed to love the Lord Himself for what
+they could get. "You must worship God because He can give you
+everything," was what they taught their children. Even the vicar of
+the parish would not call on anybody with less than five hundred a
+year. He kept a school for boys, which paid him more than cent. per
+cent., but did nothing for his parishioners except preach sermons an
+hour long on Sundays. Self-denial and morality were his favourite
+subjects. He had had three wives himself, and was getting through a
+fourth as fast as one baby a year would do it.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell, left to herself, found her evenings especially long and
+dreary. It was her habit to write her letters then, and read,
+particularly in French and Italian, which, she had some vague notion,
+helped to improve her mind. But she often wearied for a word, and
+began to hear voices herself in the howling winter winds, and to brood
+upon the possible meaning of her own dreams, and to wonder why a
+solitary rook flew over her house in particular, and cawed twice as it
+passed. Little things naturally become of great importance in such a
+life, and Harriet kept up the supply; she being the connecting link
+between Mrs. Caldwell and the outer world. She knew all that was
+happening in the place, and she claimed to know all that was going to
+happen; and by degrees the mistress as well as the maid fell into the
+way of comparing events with the forebodings which had preceded them,
+and often established a satisfactory connection between the two.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell always made coffee in the kitchen for breakfast in the
+morning, and while she was so engaged, Harriet, busy making toast,
+would begin--"Did you 'ear a noise last night, m'em?"
+
+"No, Harriet--at least--was it about ten o'clock?"
+
+"Yes, m'em, just about--a sort of scraping rattling noise, like a lot
+of people walking over gravel."
+
+"I did hear something of the kind. I wonder what it was," Mrs.
+Caldwell would rejoin.
+
+"Well, m'em, I think it means there are people coming to the 'ouse,
+for I remember it 'appened the night before your brother come, m'em,
+unexpected, and the lawyer."
+
+If nobody came during the day, the token would be supposed to refer to
+some future period; and so, by degrees, signs and portents took the
+place of more substantial interests in Mrs. Caldwell's dreary life.
+Such things were in the air, for the little seaside place was quite
+out of the world at the time, and the people still had more faith in
+an incantation than a doctor's dose. If an accident happened, or a
+storm decimated the fishing-fleet, signs innumerable were always
+remembered which had preceded the event. If you asked why nobody had
+profited by the warning, people would shake their heads and tell you
+it was to be; and if you asked what was the use of the warning then,
+they would say to break the blow--in which idea there seemed to be
+some sense.
+
+"When they told Tom's wife 'e was drownded, she'd 'a' dropped down
+dead 'erself and left the children, if she 'adn't 'a' knowed it all
+along," Harriet explained to Beth. "Eh! lass, you mark my words,
+warnin's comes for one thing, and warnin's comes for another, but they
+always comes for good, an' you're forced to take notice an' act on 'em
+or you're forced to leave 'em alone, just as is right, an' ye can't
+'elp it yerself, choose 'ow. There's Mrs. Pettinger, she dreamed one
+night 'er husband's boat was lost, an' next mornin' 'e was to go out
+fishin', but she wouldn't let 'im. 'No, 'Enery John,' she ses, 'you'll
+not go, not if ah 'as to 'old you,' ses she, an' 'e was that mad 'e
+struck 'er an' knocked 'er down an' broke 'er arm, an' then, needs
+must, 'e 'ad to fetch the doctor to set it, an' by the time that was
+done, the boat 'ad gone wi'out 'im. The other men thought 'e was
+drunk--'e often was--an' they wouldn't wait. Well, that boat never
+came back."
+
+"And did he beat his wife again?" Beth asked.
+
+"Oh, as to that, 'ow could it make any difference?" Harriet answered.
+
+Beth was fascinated by the folk-lore of the place, and soon surpassed
+Harriet herself in the interpretation of dreams and the reading of
+signs and tokens. She began to invent methods of divination for
+herself too, such as, "If the boards don't creak when I walk across
+the room I shall get through my lessons without trouble this morning,"
+a trick which soon became a confirmed habit into which she was apt to
+lapse at any time; and so persistent are these early impressions that
+to the end of her days she would always rather have seen two rooks
+together than one alone, rooks being the birds of omen in a land where
+magpies were scarce. Mrs. Caldwell knew nothing of Beth's proficiency
+in the black arts. She would never have discussed such a subject
+before the children, and took it for granted that Harriet was equally
+discreet; while Beth on her part, with her curious quick sense of what
+was right and proper, believed her mother to be above such things.
+
+Harriet was a person of varied interests, all of which she discussed
+with Beth impartially. She had many lovers, according to her own
+account, and was stern and unyielding with them all, and so particular
+that she would dismiss them at any moment for nothing almost. If she
+went out at night she had always much to tell the next morning, and
+Beth would hurry over her lessons, watch her mother out of the way,
+and slip into the kitchen or upstairs after Harriet, and question her
+about what she had said, and he had said, and if she had let him kiss
+her even once.
+
+"Well, last night," Harriet said on one occasion, in a tone of apology
+for her own weakness and good-nature. "Last night I couldn't 'elp it.
+'E just put 'is arm round me, and, well, there! I was sorry for 'im."
+
+"Why don't you say _he_ and _him_ and _his_, Harriet?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"No, you don't. You say 'e and 'im and 'is."
+
+"Well, that's what you say."
+
+Beth shouted the aspirates at her for answer, but in vain; with all
+the will in the world to "talk fine," as she called it, Harriet could
+never acquire the art, for want of an ear to hear. She could not
+perceive the slightest difference between him and 'im.
+
+Even at this age Beth had her own point of view in social matters, and
+frequently disconcerted Harriet by a word or look or inflection of the
+voice which expressed disapproval of her conduct. Harriet had been at
+home on one occasion for a week's holiday, a charwoman having done her
+work in her absence, and on her return she had much to relate of
+Charles Russell, the groom at Fairholm, who continued to be an ardent
+admirer of hers, but not an honourable one, because he did not realise
+what a very superior person Harriet was. He thought she was no better
+than other girls, and when they were sitting up one night together in
+her mother's cottage, the rest of the family having gone to bed, he
+made her a proposal which Harriet indignantly rejected.
+
+"And ah _ses_ to 'im, 'Charles _Russell_,' ah ses to 'im, 'not was it
+ever so,' ah ses to 'im"--she was proceeding emphatically when Beth
+interrupted her.
+
+"Did you say you sat up with him alone all night?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, there's no 'arm, you know," Harriet answered on the defensive,
+without precisely knowing why.
+
+"Well, what did he say?" Beth rejoined without comment.
+
+But Harriet, put out of countenance, omitted the details, and brought
+the story to an abrupt conclusion.
+
+Another of Harriet's interests in life was the _Family Herald_, which
+she took regularly, and as regularly read aloud to Beth, to the best
+of her ability--from the verses to "Violet," or "My own Love," on the
+first page, to the "Random Readings" on the last. They laughed at the
+jokes, tried to guess the riddles, were impressed with the historical
+anecdotes and words of wisdom, and became so hungry over the recipes
+for good dishes that they frequently fried eggs and potatoes, or a
+slice stolen from the joint roasting at the fire, and feasted
+surreptitiously.
+
+Beth tried in after years to remember what the stories in the _Family
+Herald_ had been about, but all she could recall was a vague incident
+of a falling scaffold, of a heroine called Margaret taking refuge in
+the dark behind a hoarding, and of a fascinating hero whom Harriet
+called Ug Miller. Long afterwards it dawned upon Beth that his name
+was Hugh.
+
+When Mildred went to her aunt, Beth and Bernadine became of necessity
+constant companions, and it was a curious kind of companionship, for
+their natures were antagonistic. Like rival chieftains whose
+territories adjoin, they professed no love for each other, and were
+often at war, but were intimate nevertheless, and would have missed
+each other, because there was no one else with whom they could so
+conveniently quarrel. Harriet took the liveliest interest in their
+squabbles, which, under her able direction, rapidly developed from the
+usual little girls' scrimmages into regular stand-up fights.
+
+One day Beth pulled Bernadine's hair passionately, and Bernadine
+retaliated by clawing Beth's face, and then howled as a further relief
+to her feelings. Mrs. Caldwell rushed to see what accident had
+happened to the dear child, and Harriet came to see the sport.
+
+"Mamma, Beth pulled my hair," Bernadine whined.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell immediately thumped Beth, who seldom said a word in her
+own defence. Harriet was neutral till her mistress had disappeared,
+and then she supported Beth.
+
+"Just you wait till after dinner," she said. "Come into the kitchen
+when your ma's asleep, and fight it out. Don't you be put upon by
+tell-pie-tits."
+
+"What's the use of my going into the kitchen?" Beth rejoined;
+"Bernadine doesn't fight fair. She's a horrid, low little coward."
+
+"Am I!" Bernadine howled. "Just you wait till after dinner! I'm as
+brave as you are, and as strong, though you _are_ the biggest." Which
+was true. Bernadine was sallow, thin, wiry, and muscular; Beth was
+soft, and round, and white. She had height, age, and weight on her
+side; Bernadine had strength, agility, and cunning.
+
+"Phew--w--w!" Beth jeered, mimicking her whine. "You'd 'tell mamma' if
+you got a scratch."
+
+"I won't, Beth, if you'll fight," Bernadine protested.
+
+"We'll see after dinner," Harriet put in significantly, and then
+returned to her work.
+
+After the four o'clock dinner, during the dark winter months, Mrs.
+Caldwell dozed for half-an-hour in her chair by the fire. This was the
+children's opportunity. They were supposed to sit still and amuse
+themselves quietly while their mother slept; and, until she slept,
+they would sit motionless, watching her, the greater their anxiety to
+get away the more absolute their silence. Mrs. Caldwell looked as if
+she were being mesmerised to sleep by the two pairs of bright eyes so
+resolutely and patiently fixed upon her. The moment her breathing
+showed she was sound asleep, the children stole to the kitchen,
+shutting the doors after them softly, and instantly set to work.
+
+It was a gruesome sight, those two children, with teeth set and
+clenched fists, battering each other in deadly earnest, but with no
+noise save the fizzle of feet on the brick floor, an occasional thump
+up against a piece of furniture, or the thud when they fell. They were
+afraid to utter a sound lest Aunt Victoria, up in her room, should
+hear them, and come down interfering; or their mother should wake, and
+come out and catch them. They bruised and blackened and scratched each
+other, and were seldom without what they considered the honourable
+scars of these battles. Sometimes, when Bernadine was badly mauled,
+she lost her temper, and threatened to tell mamma. But Beth could
+always punish her, and did so, by refusing to fight next time,
+although, without that recreation, life were a blank.
+
+Harriet always cleared away obstacles to give them room, and then sat
+down to eat her dinner, and watch the fight. She had the tastes, and
+some of the habits, of a Roman empress, and encouraged them with the
+keenest interest for a long time, but when she had finished her dinner
+she usually wearied of the entertainment, and would then stop it.
+
+"I say, yer _ma's_ comin'! I can 'ear 'er!" she would exclaim. "'Elp
+us to wash up, or I shan't be done for the reading."
+
+When Harriet wanted help, Bernadine usually slipped away, helping
+anybody not being much in her line; but Beth set to work with a will.
+
+Beth, always sociable, had persuaded her mother to let Harriet come to
+the reading; and Harriet accordingly, in a clean cap and apron, with a
+piece of sewing, was added to the party.
+
+So long as she sat on a high chair, at a respectful distance, and
+remembered that she was a servant, her being there rather gratified
+Mrs. Caldwell than otherwise, once she had yielded to Beth's
+persuasion, and saw the practical working of the experiment; it made
+her feel as if she were doing something to improve the lower classes.
+It was a pity she did not try to improve Beth and Bernadine by finding
+some sewing for their idle hands to do. During the reading, dear
+little Bernadine, "so good and affectionate always," would sit on the
+floor beside her mother, whose pocket she often picked of a penny or
+sixpence to vary the monotony when she did not understand the book.
+Beth also sat idle, listening intently, and watching her sister. If
+the reading had been harrowing or exciting, she would fight Bernadine
+for the sixpence when they went to bed. There were lively scenes
+during the readings. They all wept at the pathetic parts, laughed
+loudly when amused, and disputed about passages and incidents at the
+top of their voices. Mrs. Caldwell forgot that Harriet was a servant,
+Harriet forgot herself, and the children, unaccustomed to wordy
+warfare, forgot their fear of their mother, and flew at each other's
+throats.
+
+When the story was very interesting, Mrs. Caldwell read until she was
+hoarse, and then went on to herself--"dipping," the children called
+it. It was a point of honour with them not to dip, and they would
+remonstrate with their mother loudly when they caught her at it. Their
+feeling on the subject was so strong that she was ashamed to be seen
+dipping at last. She used to put the book away until they were safe in
+bed, and then gratify her curiosity; but they suspected her, because
+once or twice they noticed that she was unaffected by an exciting
+part; so one night they came down in their night-dresses and caught
+her, and after that the poor lady had to be careful. She might thump
+the children for coming downstairs, but she could not alter the low
+opinion they had of a person who dipped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Beth's brain began to be extraordinarily busy. She recorded nothing,
+but her daily doings were so many works of her imagination. She was
+generally somebody else in these days, seldom herself; and people who
+did not understand this might have supposed that she was an
+exceedingly mendacious little girl, when she was merely speaking
+consistently in the character which she happened to be impersonating.
+She would spend hours of the afternoon alone in the drawing-room,
+standing in the window looking out while she wove her fancies; and she
+soon began to go out also, by the back-door, when the mood was upon
+her, without asking anybody's leave. She had wandered off in this way
+on one occasion to the south side, whither her people rarely went. At
+the top of the cliff, where the winding road began which led down to
+the harbour, a paralysed sailor was sitting in a wickerwork wheeled
+chair, looking over the sea. Beth knew the man by sight. He had been a
+yachtsman in the service of one of her great-uncles, and she had heard
+hints of extraordinary adventures they had had together. It filled her
+with compassion to see him sitting there so lonely and helpless, and
+as she approached she resolved herself into a beneficent being, able
+and willing to help. She had a book under her arm, a costly volume
+which Mrs. Caldwell had borrowed to read to the children. Beth had
+been looking at the pictures when the desire to go out suddenly seized
+upon her, and had carried the book off inadvertently.
+
+"How are you to-day, Tom?" she said, going up to the invalid
+confidently. "I'm glad to see you out. We shall soon have you about
+again as well as ever. I knew a man in Ireland much worse than you
+are. He couldn't move his hands and arms. Legs are bad enough, but
+when it's hands and arms as well, you know, it's worse. Well, now you
+couldn't tell there'd ever been anything the matter with him."
+
+"And what cured 'im?" Tom asked with interest.
+
+"Oh, he just _thought_ he'd get well, you know. You've got to set
+yourself that way, don't you see? If mountains can be moved by faith,
+you can surely move your own legs!"
+
+"That sounds reasonable any way," Tom ejaculated.
+
+"Do you like reading?" said Beth.
+
+"Yes, I read a bit at times."
+
+"Well, I've brought you a book," Beth proceeded, handing him the
+borrowed volume. "You'll find it interesting, I'm sure. It's a great
+favourite of mine."
+
+"You're mighty good," the sailor said.
+
+"Oh, not at all," Beth answered largely. Then she wished him good-bye.
+But she often visited him again in the same character, and the stories
+she told that unhappy invalid for his comfort and encouragement were
+amazing. When the book was missed, and her mother bothered about it,
+she listened serenely, and even helped to look for it.
+
+Beth strolled homewards when she left her protege, and on the way she
+became Norna of the Fitful Head. She tried Minna and Brenda first, but
+these characters were too insipid for her taste. Norna was different.
+She did things, you know, and made charms, and talked poetry, and
+people were afraid of her. Beth believed in her thoroughly. She'd be
+Norna, and make charms. But she had no lead. Norna looked about her.
+She knew by magic that Cleveland was coming to consult her, and she
+had no lead. There was a border of lead, however, over the attic
+window outside. All she had to do was to steal upstairs, climb out of
+the window on to the roof, and cut a piece of the lead off. It was now
+the mystic moment to obtain lead, but she must be wary. She strolled
+through the kitchen in a casual way. Harriet was busy about the grate,
+and paid no attention to her; so she secured the carving-knife without
+difficulty, went up to the attic, and opened the window. She was now
+on the dangerous pinnacle of a temple, risking her life in order to
+obtain the materials for a charm which would give her priceless power.
+
+On the other side of the street, there lived in the Orchard House
+another widow-woman with three daughters. She let lodgings, and was
+bringing up her children to honest industry in that state of life. She
+and Mrs. Caldwell took a kindly interest in each other's affairs. Mrs.
+Davy happened to be changing the curtains in front that afternoon when
+Beth crept out of the attic window on to the roof, and she was
+paralysed with horror for a moment, expecting to see the child roll
+off into the street. She was a sensible woman, however, and quickly
+recovering herself, she ran across the road, with her spectacles on,
+and rapped at Mrs. Caldwell's door. Beth, hacking away at the lead
+with the carving-knife, did not heed the rap. Presently, however, she
+heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, and climbed back into the attic
+incontinently, putting her spoils in her pocket. When Mrs. Davy, her
+mother, and Harriet, all agitated, burst open the door, she was
+standing at the window looking out tranquilly.
+
+"What were you doing on the roof, Beth?" her mother demanded.
+
+"Nothing," Beth answered.
+
+"Mrs. Davy says she saw you get out of the window."
+
+Beth was silent.
+
+"You're a bad girl, giving your mother so much trouble," Mrs. Davy
+exclaimed, looking at her under her spectacles sternly. "If you was my
+child I'd whack you, I would."
+
+Beth was instantly a lady, sneering at this common woman who was
+taking a liberty which she knew her mother would resent as much as she
+did.
+
+"And what were you doing with the carving-knife, Miss Beth?" cried
+Harriet, spying it on the floor, and picking it up. Criminals are only
+clever up to a certain point; Beth had forgotten to conceal the
+carving-knife. "Oh dear! oh dear! If you 'aven't 'acked it all the way
+along!"
+
+"Oh dear! oh dear!" Mrs. Caldwell echoed. It was her best
+carving-knife, and Beth would certainly have been beaten if Mrs. Davy
+had not suggested it. As it was, however, Mrs. Caldwell controlled her
+temper, and merely ordered her to go downstairs immediately. In the
+management of her children she would not be dictated to by anybody.
+
+This was Beth's first public appearance as a disturber of the peace,
+and the beginning of the bad name she earned for herself in certain
+circles eventually. But she was let off lightly for it. Mrs.
+Caldwell's punishments were never retrospective. She was thunder and
+lightning in her wrath; a flash and then a bang, and it was all over.
+If she missed the first movement, the culprit escaped. She could no
+more have punished one of her children in cold blood than she could
+have cut its throat.
+
+Beth ran down to the acting-room, so called because the boys had
+brought home the idea of acting in the holidays, and they had got up
+charades there on a stage made of boxes, with an old counterpane for a
+curtain, and farthing candles for footlights. It was a long, narrow
+room over the kitchen, with a sloping roof. Three steps led down into
+it. There was a window at one end, a small lattice with an iron bar
+nailed to the outside vertically. Beth swung herself out round the
+bar, dropped on to the back-kitchen roof, crept across the tiles to
+the chimney at the far corner, stepped thence on to the top of the old
+wooden pump, and from the top to the spout, from the spout to the
+stone trough, and so into the garden. Then she ran round to the
+kitchen, and got a candle, a canister, and some water in a pail, all
+of which she took up to the acting-room by way of the back-kitchen
+roof. The canister happened to contain allspice, but this was not to
+be considered when she wanted the canister, so she emptied it from the
+roof on to Harriet's head as she happened to be passing, and so got
+some good out of it, for Harriet displayed strong feeling on the
+subject both at the moment and afterwards, when she was trying to get
+the stuff out of her hair; which interested Beth, who in some such way
+often surprised people into the natural expression of emotions which
+she might never otherwise have discovered. Bernadine had been playing
+alone peaceably in the garden, but Beth persuaded her to come
+upstairs. She found Beth robed in the old counterpane, with her hair
+dishevelled, and the room darkened. Beth was Norna now in her cell on
+the Fitful Head, and Bernadine was the shrinking but resolute Minna
+come to consult her. Beth made her sit down, drew a magic circle round
+her with a piece of chalk, and, in a deep tragic voice, warned her not
+to move if she valued her life, for there were evil spirits in the
+room. The pail stood on a box draped with an old black shawl, and
+round this she also drew a circle. Then she put some lead in the
+canister, melted it over the candle, dropped it into the water, and
+muttered--
+
+    "Like snakes the molten metal hisses,
+     Curses come instead of kisses."
+
+She plunged her hand into the water--
+
+    "I search a harp for harmony,
+     But daggers only do I see;
+     I search a heart for love and hope,
+     But find a ghastly hangman's rope.
+              Woe! Woe!"
+
+Three times round the pail she went, moaning, groaning, writhing her
+body, and wringing her hands--
+
+           "Woe! Woe!
+    Thy courage will be sorely tried,
+    Thou shalt not be the pirate's bride."
+
+At this Bernadine, whose nerves were completely shaken, set up such a
+howl that Harriet came running to see what was the matter. She soon
+let light into the acting-room. Mrs. Caldwell and Aunt Victoria had
+gone to see Aunt Grace Mary, so Harriet was in charge of the children,
+and to save herself further trouble, she took them up to a black-hole
+there was without a window at the top of the house, and locked them
+in. The place was quite empty, so that they could do no harm, and they
+did not seem to mind being locked up. Harriet intended to give them a
+little fright and then let them out; but, being busy, she forgot them,
+and when at last she remembered, it was so dark she had to take a
+candle; and great was her horror, on opening the door, to see both
+children stretched out on the bare boards side by side, apparently
+quite dead. One glance at their ghastly faces was enough for Harriet.
+She just looked and then fled, shrieking, with the candle alight in
+her hand, right out into the street. Several people who happened to be
+passing at the time stopped to see what was the matter. Harriet's
+talent for fiction furnished her with a self-saving story on the
+instant. She said the children had shut themselves up and got
+smothered.
+
+"We'd better go and see if there's nothing can be done," a respectable
+workman suggested.
+
+Harriet led the way, about a dozen people following, all awe-stricken
+and silent. When they came to the door, they peeped in over each
+other's shoulders at the two poor children, stretched out stiff and
+stark, the colour of death, their jaws dropped, their glazed eyes
+shining between the half-closed lids, a piteous spectacle.
+
+"Just let's see the candle a moment," the workman said. He took it
+from Harriet, and entered stooping--the place was a mere closet just
+under the roof, and he could not stand upright in it. He peered into
+the children's faces, then knelt down beside them, and felt their arms
+and chests. Suddenly he burst out laughing.
+
+"You little devils," he said, "what 'a' ye done this for?"
+
+Beth sat up. "Harriet locked us in to give us a fright, so we thought
+we'd frighten Harriet," she said.
+
+The walls were whitewashed, and the children had made themselves
+ghastly by rubbing their faces all over with the whitening.
+
+"You've getten yer 'ands full wi' them two, I'm thinkin', missis," the
+workman remarked to Harriet as he went off chuckling.
+
+"Did you hear, Beth?" Bernadine complained; "he called us little
+devils."
+
+"All right," Beth answered casually. But Bernadine was disgusted. She
+was one of those pious children who like to stand high in the
+estimation of the grown-up people; and she disapproved of Beth's
+conduct when it got her into trouble. She was like the kind of man who
+enjoys being vicious so long as he is not found out by any one who
+will think the less of him for it; when he is found out he excuses
+himself, and blames his associates. Bernadine never resisted Beth's
+eloquent persuasions, nor the luring fascination of her schemes; but
+when she had had her full share of the pleasures of naughtiness, and
+was tired and cross, her conscience smote her, and then she told
+mamma. This did her good, and got Beth punished, which made Bernadine
+feel that she had expiated her own naughtiness and been forgiven, and
+also made her feel sorry for Beth--a nice kind feeling, which she
+always enjoyed.
+
+Beth despised her for her conscientious treachery, and retaliated by
+tempting her afresh. One day she lured her out on to the tiles through
+an attic window in the roof, at the back of the house. It would be
+such fun to sit astride on the roof-ridge, and look right down into
+the street, she said, and across Mrs. Davy's orchard to the fields on
+that side, and out to sea on the other.
+
+"And things will come into our minds up there--such lovely things,"
+she proceeded, beguiling Bernadine to distract her attention as she
+helped her up. When they were securely seated, Bernadine began to
+grumble.
+
+"Things don't come into my mind," she whined.
+
+"Don't they? Why, I was just thinking if we were to fall we should
+certainly be killed," Beth answered cheerfully. "We should come down
+thump, and that would crack our skulls, and our brains would roll out
+on the pavement. Ough! wouldn't they look nasty, just like a sheep's!
+And mamma and Aunt Victoria would rush out, and Harriet and Mrs. Davy,
+and they'd have to hold mamma up by the arms. Then they'd pick us up,
+and carry us in, and lay us out on a bed, and say they were beautiful
+in their lives, and in death they were not divided; and when they shut
+the house up at night and it was all still, mamma would cry. She'd be
+always crying, especially for you, Bernadine, because you're not such
+a trouble as I am. And when you were buried, and the worms were eating
+you, she would give all the world to have you here again."
+
+This sad prospect was too much for the sensitive Bernadine. "Don't,
+Beth," she whimpered. "You frighten me."
+
+"Oh, you mustn't be frightened," said Beth encouragingly. "When people
+up on a height like this get frightened, they always roll off. Do you
+feel as if the roof were moving?" she exclaimed, suddenly clutching
+hold.
+
+Bernadine fell down flat on her face with a dismal howl.
+
+"Let's be cats now," said Beth. "I'll say miew-ow-ow, and you
+oo-oo-owl-hiss-ss-ss."
+
+"Don't, Beth. I want to go back."
+
+"Come along then," said Beth.
+
+"I can't. I daren't move."
+
+"Oh, nonsense," said Beth; "just follow me. I shall go and leave you
+if you don't. You shouldn't have come up if you were afraid."
+
+"You made me," Bernadine whimpered with her eyes shut.
+
+"Of course it was me!" said Beth, on her way back to the skylight.
+"You haven't a will of your own, I suppose!"
+
+"You aren't leaving me, Beth!" Bernadine cried in an agony. "Don't go!
+I'm frightened! Help me down! I'll tell mamma!"
+
+"Then there you'll sit, tell-pie-tit," Beth chanted, as she let
+herself down through the skylight.
+
+Presently she appeared on the other side of the street, and performed
+a war-dance of delight as she looked up at her sister, prone upon the
+roof-ridge.
+
+"You do look so funny, Bernadine," she cried. "Your petticoats are
+nohow; and you seem to have only one leg, and it is so long and thin!"
+
+Bernadine howled aloud. Mrs. Caldwell was not at home; but the cry
+brought Mrs. Davy out in her spectacles. When she saw the child's
+dangerous predicament, she seized Beth and shook her emphatically.
+
+"Oh, thank you," said Beth.
+
+"What 'a' you bin doin' now, you bad girl?" said Mrs. Davy. "Hold on,
+missy," she called up to Bernadine. "We'll soon 'ave ye down. You're
+all right! You'll not take no 'arm."
+
+Harriet now came running out, wringing her hands, and uttering
+hysterical exclamations.
+
+"Shut up, you fool," said Mrs. Davy.
+
+Doors opened all the way down the street, and a considerable crowd had
+soon collected. Beth, quite detached from herself, leant against the
+orchard-wall and watched the people with interest.
+
+How to get the child down was the difficulty, as there was no ladder
+at hand long enough to reach up to the roof.
+
+"I'll go and fetch her down if you like," said Beth.
+
+"I should think so! and then there'd be two of you," said Mrs. Davy.
+
+"I don't see how you'll manage it then," said Beth. "There isn't
+foothold for a man to get out of the attic-window." Having spoken, she
+strolled off with an air of indifference, and disappeared. She was a
+heroine of romance now, going to do a great deed; and before she was
+missed, the horrified spectators saw her climbing out of the front
+attic-window smiling serenely. The people held their breath as they
+watched her go up the roof on the slippery tiles at a reckless rate to
+her sister.
+
+"Come along, Bernadine," she whispered. "Such fun! There's a whole
+crowd down there watching us. Just let them see you're not afraid."
+
+Bernadine peeped. It was gratifying to be an object of such interest.
+
+"Come along, don't be an idiot," said Beth. "Just follow me, and don't
+look at anything but the tiles. That's the way _I_ learnt to do it."
+
+Bernadine's courage revived. Slowly she slid from the roof-ridge, Beth
+helping her carefully. It looked fearfully dangerous, and the people
+below dared not utter a sound. When they got to the attic-window,
+Beth, herself on the edge of the roof, guided her sister past her, and
+helped her in. She was following herself, when some tiles gave way
+beneath her, and fell with a crash into the street. Fortunately she
+had hold of the sill, but for a moment her legs hung over; then she
+pulled herself through, and, falling head first on to the floor,
+disappeared from sight. The people below relieved their feelings with
+a faint cheer.
+
+"Eh, but she's a _bad_ un," said Mrs. Davy, who was trembling all
+over.
+
+"Well, she's a rare plucky un, at any rate," said a man in the crowd,
+admiringly.
+
+Crowds constantly collected at the little house in Orchard Street in
+those days. When Mrs. Caldwell had to go out alone she was always
+anxious, not knowing what might be happening in her absence. Coming
+home from Lady Benyon's one summer evening, she found the whole street
+blocked with people, and the roadway in front of her own house packed
+so tight she could not get past. Beth had dressed herself up in a mask
+and a Russian sheepskin cloak which had belonged to her father, and
+sat motionless in the drawing-room window on a throne made of an
+arm-chair set on a box; while Bernadine played Scotch airs on the
+piano. A couple of children passing had stopped to see what on earth
+the thing was, then a man and woman had come along and stopped too,
+then several girls, some sailors, the bellman, and many more, until
+the street was full. Harriet was enjoying the commotion in the
+background, but when Mrs. Caldwell appeared, she gave the signal, the
+piano stopped, and the strange beast roared loudly and fled.
+
+But Beth had her human moments. They generally came on in wet weather,
+which depressed her. She would then stand in the drawing-room window
+by the hour together, looking out at the miserable street, thinking of
+the poor people, all cold and wet and hungry. She longed to do
+something for them, and one day she stopped a little girl who was
+going with a jug for some beer to the "Shining Star," a quiet little
+public-house on the same side of the street.
+
+"I suppose you are a very ignorant little girl," said Beth severely.
+
+"Aw?"
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Emily Bean."
+
+"Do you learn lessons?"
+
+"Naw."
+
+"Dear me, how dreadful!" said Beth. "You ought to be taught, you know.
+Would you like to be taught?"
+
+"Ah should."
+
+"Well, you come here every afternoon at two o'clock, and I'll teach
+you."
+
+"Ah mon jest ass mother first," said Emily.
+
+"Yes--I'd forgotten that," Beth rejoined. "Well, you come if she lets
+you."
+
+Emily nodded, and was going on her errand, but stopped. "Did you ass
+yer own mother if you might?" she wanted to know.
+
+"No, I didn't think of that either," Beth rejoined. "But I will."
+
+"Will she let you?"
+
+"I don't know"--rather doubtfully.
+
+"I expect she will if you wait until she's in a good humour," the
+child of the people sagely suggested.
+
+"All right. You come at any rate," Beth answered boldly.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell consented. She came of a long line of lady patronesses,
+and thought it natural and becoming that her child should wish to
+improve the "common people." Punctually to the moment Emily arrived
+next day, and Beth sat down with her in the kitchen, and taught her a,
+b, ab, and b, a, d, bad. Then she repeated a piece of poetry to her,
+and read her a little story. Harriet was busy in the back kitchen, and
+Bernadine was out with her mother and Aunt Victoria, so Beth and her
+pupil had the kitchen to themselves. The next day, however, Harriet
+wanted to clean the kitchen, so they had to retire to the acting-room.
+This was Beth's first attempt to apply such knowledge as she
+possessed, and in her anxiety to improve the child of the people, she
+improved herself in several respects. She began to read better, became
+less afraid of writing and spelling, mastered the multiplication
+table, and found she could "make out" how to do easy sums from the
+book. This gave her the first real interest she had ever had in
+school-work, and inspired her with some slight confidence in herself.
+She felt the dignity of the position of teacher too, and the
+responsibility. She never betrayed her own ignorance, nor did anything
+to shake Emily's touching belief in her superiority; and she never
+shook Emily. She knew she could have done better herself if there had
+been less thumping and shaking, and she had the wisdom to profit by
+her mother's errors of judgment already--not that Emily ever provoked
+her. The child was apt and docile, and the lessons were a sort of
+improving game.
+
+How to impart religious instruction was the thing that troubled Beth
+most: she used to lie awake at night thinking out the problem. She
+found that Emily had learnt many texts and hymns in the Sunday-school
+to which she went regularly, and Beth made her repeat them, and soon
+knew them all by heart herself; but she did not think that she taught
+Emily enough. One day in church, however, she thought of a way to
+extend her teaching. Bernadine had joined her class for fun, and was
+playing at learning too; and now Beth proposed that they should fit up
+a chapel in the acting-room, and resolve themselves occasionally into
+a clergyman and congregation. A chair with the bottom knocked out was
+the pulpit, and a long narrow box stood on end was the reading-desk.
+Beth was the parson, of course, in a white sheet filched from the
+soiled-clothes bag, and changed for a black shawl for the sermon. She
+read portions of Scripture standing, she read prayers on her knees,
+she led a hymn; and then she got into the black shawl and preached.
+What these discourses were about, she could not remember in after
+years; but they must have been fascinating, for the congregation
+listened unwearied so long as she chose to go on.
+
+Emily was a disappointment in one way: she had no imagination. Beth
+pretended to take her photograph one day, after the manner of the
+photographers on the sands.
+
+"Now, this is the picture," she said, showing her a piece of glass.
+
+"But there isn't no picture on it," said Emily, staring hard at the
+glass.
+
+"How stupid you are," said Beth, disgusted. "Look again."
+
+"There isn't," Emily protested. "Just you show it to Bernadine."
+
+"You should say _Miss_ Bernadine," that young lady admonished her.
+
+A few minutes afterwards Emily corrected Bernadine for not saying miss
+to Beth and herself. Beth tried to explain, but Emily could not see
+why she should say miss to them if they did not say miss to her and to
+each other.
+
+Poor Mrs. Caldwell was in great straits for want of money at this
+time. She had scarcely enough to pay for their meagre fare, and her
+own clothes and the children's were almost beyond patching and
+darning. Beth surprised her several times sitting beside the
+dining-table with the everlasting mending on her lap, fretting
+silently, and the child's heart was wrung. There was some legal
+difficulty, and letters which added to her mother's trouble came to
+the house continually.
+
+The same faculty made Beth either the naughtiest or the best of
+children; the difference depended on her heart: if that were touched,
+she was all sympathy; but if no appeal was made to her feelings, her
+daily doings were the outcome of so many erratic impulses acted on
+without consideration, merely to vary the disastrous monotony of those
+long idle afternoons.
+
+The day after she had surprised her mother fretting over her letters,
+another packet arrived. Beth happened to be early up that morning, and
+opened the door to the postman. She would like to have given the
+packet back to him, but that being impossible, she carried it up to
+the acting-room and hid it in the roof. When her mother came down,
+however, she found to her consternation that the fact of there being
+no letter at all that morning was a greater trouble if anything than
+the arrival of the one the day before; so she boldly brought it down
+and delivered it, quite expecting to be whipped. But for once Mrs.
+Caldwell asked for an explanation, and the child's motive was so
+evident that even her mother was more affected by her sympathy than
+enraged by the inconvenient expression of it.
+
+The next day she was playing on the pier with Bernadine. Her mother and
+Aunt Victoria were walking up and down, not paying much attention to the
+children. First they swung on a chain that was stretched from post to
+post down the middle of the pier to keep people from being washed off in
+stormy weather; but Bernadine tumbled over backwards and hurt her head,
+and was jeered at besides by some rude little street children, who could
+not understand why the little Caldwells, who were as shabby as
+themselves, should look down on them, and refuse to associate with them.
+It was not Beth's nature to be exclusive. She had no notion of
+differences of degree. Any pleasant person was her equal. She was as
+much gratified by friendly notice from the milkman, the fishwoman, and
+the sweep as from Lady Benyon or Count Bartahlinsky; and very early
+thought it contemptible to jeer at people for want of means and defects
+of education. She never talked of the "common people," after she found
+that Harriet was hurt by the phrase; and she would have been on good
+terms with all the street children had it not been for what Mrs.
+Caldwell called "Bernadine's superior self-respect." Bernadine told if
+Beth spoke to one of them, and as Beth had no friends amongst them as
+yet, she did not feel that their acquaintance was worth fighting for.
+But the street children resented the attitude of the two shabby little
+ladies, and were always watching for opportunities to annoy them.
+Accordingly, when Bernadine tumbled off the chain head-over-heels
+backwards, there was a howl of derision. "Oh my! Ain't she getten thin
+legs!" "Ah say, Julia, did you see that big 'ole i' her stockin'?" "Naw,
+but ah seed the patch on 'er petticoat!" "Eh--an' she's on'y getten one
+on, an' it isn't flannel." "An' them's ladies!"
+
+Bernadine's pride came to her rescue on these occasions. At home she
+howled when she was hurt, but now she affected to laugh, and both
+sisters strolled off with their little heads up, and an exasperating
+air of indifference to the enemy. The tide was out, and they went down
+into the harbour and found a large oyster among the piles of the
+wooden jetty. When they got home, the difficulty was how to open it;
+but they managed to make it open itself by holding it over the kitchen
+fire on the shovel. When it began to lift its lid, Beth sent Bernadine
+for a fork, and while she was getting it Beth ate the oyster. But
+Bernadine could not see the joke, and her rage was not to be appeased
+even by the oyster-shell, which Beth said she might have the whole of.
+
+The battle came off after dinner that evening. But it was a day of
+disaster. Harriet was out of temper; and Mrs. Caldwell appeared
+mysteriously, just as Beth knocked Bernadine down and sat on her
+stomach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were reading a story of French life at that time, and something
+came into it about snail-broth as a cure for consumption, and
+snail-oil as a remedy for rheumatism. The next day there was a most
+extraordinary smell all over the house. Mrs. Caldwell, Aunt Victoria,
+Harriet, and Bernadine went sniffing about, but could find nothing to
+account for it. Beth sat at the dining-table with a book before her,
+taking no notice. At last Harriet had occasion to open the oven door,
+and just as she did so there was a loud explosion, and the kitchen
+wall opposite was bespattered with boiling animal matter. Beth had got
+up early, and collected snails enough in the garden to fill a
+blacking-bottle, corked them up tight, and put them into the darkest
+corner of the oven, her idea being to render them into oil, as Harriet
+rendered suet into fat, and go and rub rheumatic people with it. As
+usual, however, her motive was ignored, while a great deal was made of
+the mess on the kitchen wall--which disheartened her, especially as
+several other philanthropic enterprises happened to fail about the
+same time.
+
+Emily appeared with a bad toothache one day, and finding a remedy for
+it gave Beth a momentary interest in life. She told Emily she had a
+cure for toothache, and Emily, never doubting, let her put some soft
+substance into the tooth with the end of a match.
+
+"It won't taste very nice," said Beth; "but you mustn't mind that. You
+just go home, and you'll find it won't ache any more."
+
+When Emily returned next day she gratefully proclaimed herself cured,
+and her mother wanted to know "whatever the stuff was."
+
+"Soap," said Beth.
+
+"Oh, you mucky thing!" Emily exclaimed. She resented the application
+of such a substance to the inside of her person. Her plebeian mind was
+too narrow to conceive a second legitimate use for soap, and from that
+day Beth's influence declined. Emily's attendance became irregular,
+then gradually ceased altogether; not, however, before Beth's own
+interest in the lessons was over, and her mind much occupied with
+other things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+The dower-house of the Benyon family stood in a street which was
+merely an extension of Orchard Street, and could be seen from Mrs.
+Caldwell's windows. Lady Benyon, having produced a huge family, and
+buried her husband, had done her day's work in the world, as it were,
+and now had full leisure to live as she liked; so she "lived well";
+and in the intervals of living, otherwise eating, she sat in the big
+bow-window of her sitting-room, digesting, and watching her
+neighbours. From her large old-fashioned house she commanded a fine
+view down the wide irregular front street to the sea, with a diagonal
+glimpse down two other streets which ran parallel with the front
+street; while on the left she could see up Orchard Street as far as
+the church; so that everybody came under her observation sooner or
+later, and, to Beth, it always seemed that she dominated the whole
+place. Most of the day her head could be seen above the wire-blind;
+but, as she seldom went out, her acute old face and the four dark
+sausage-shaped curls, laid horizontally on either side of it, were
+almost all of her that was known to the inhabitants.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell went regularly to see Lady Benyon, and sometimes took
+the children with her. On one occasion when she had done so, Lady
+Benyon made her take a seat in the window where she was sitting
+herself, so that they could both look out. Beth and Bernadine sat in
+the background with a picture-book, in which they seemed so absorbed
+that the conversation flowed on before them with very little
+constraint. Beth's ears were open, however, as usual.
+
+"After twenty-two children," Lady Benyon remarked, "one cannot expect
+to be as active as one was."
+
+"No, indeed," Mrs. Caldwell answered cheerfully. "_I_ have only had as
+good as fourteen, and I'm quite a wreck. I don't know what it is to
+pass a day free from pain. But, however, it is so ordered, and I don't
+complain. If only they turn out well when they do come, that's
+everything."
+
+"Ah, you're right there," Lady Benyon answered.
+
+"You know _my_ trial," Mrs. Caldwell pursued--Beth's face instantly
+became a blank. "I am afraid she cares for no one but herself. It
+shows what spoiling a child does. Her father could never make enough
+of her."
+
+"Well, I suppose she's naughty," Lady Benyon rejoined with a laugh;
+"but she's promising all the same--and not only in appearance. The
+things she says, you know!"
+
+"Oh, well, yes," Mrs. Caldwell allowed. "She certainly says things
+sometimes, but that's not much comfort when you never know what she'll
+be doing. Now Mildred has never given me a moment's anxiety in her
+life, except on account of her delicate health, poor little body; and
+Bernadine is a dear, sweet little thing. _She_ is the only one who is
+thoroughly unruly and selfish."
+
+Beth's blood boiled at the accusation.
+
+"How does the old aunt get on?" Lady Benyon asked presently.
+
+"Oh, she seems to be very well."
+
+"Don't you find it rather a trial to have her about always?"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell shrugged her shoulders with an air of resignation. "Oh,
+you know, she means well," she replied, "and there really was nothing
+else for it. But I must say I have no patience with cant."
+
+Beth, in opposition, still smarting from her mother's accusation of
+selfishness, determined at once to inquire into Aunt Victoria's
+religious tenets, with a view to approving of them.
+
+"Well, James Patten played a mean part in that business," Lady Benyon
+observed. "But I always say, beware of a man who does his own
+housekeeping. When they keep the money in their own hands, and pay the
+bills themselves, don't trust them. That sort of man is a cur at
+heart, you may be sure. And as for a man who takes possession of his
+wife's money, and doles it out to her a little at a time--! I know one
+such--without a penny of his own, mind you! He gives his wife a cheque
+for five pounds a month; the rest goes on other women, and she never
+suspects it! He's one of those plausible gentlemen who's always
+looking for a post that will pay him, and never gets it--you know the
+kind of thing." Here the old lady caught Beth's eye. "You take my
+advice," she said. "Don't ever marry a man who does his own
+housekeeping. He's a crowing hen, that sort of man, you may be sure. I
+warn you against the man who does a woman's work."
+
+"And if a woman does a man's work?" said the intelligent Beth.
+
+"It is often a very great help," Mrs. Caldwell put in, with a quick
+mental survey of the reams of official letters she had written for her
+husband.
+
+Lady Benyon pursed up her mouth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aunt Victoria was one of those forlorn old ladies who have nobody
+actually their own to care for them, although they may have numbers of
+relations, and acquire odd habits from living much alone. She was a
+great source of interest to Beth, who would sit silently watching her
+by the hour together, her bright eyes steady and her countenance a
+blank. The intentness of her gaze fidgeted the old lady, who would
+look up suddenly every now and then and ask her what she was staring
+at. "Nothing, Aunt Victoria; I was only thinking," Beth always
+answered; and then she affected to occupy herself until the old lady
+returned to her work or her book, when Beth would resume her
+interrupted study. But she liked Aunt Victoria. The old lady was sharp
+with her sometimes, but she meant to be kind, and was always just; and
+Beth respected her. She had more faith in her, too, than she had in
+her mother, and secretly became her partisan on all occasions. She had
+instantly detected the tone of detraction in the allusions Lady Benyon
+and her mother had made to Aunt Victoria that afternoon, and stolidly
+resented it.
+
+When they went home, she ran upstairs and knocked at Aunt Victoria's
+door. It was immediately opened, and Beth, seeing what she took for an
+old gentleman in a short black petticoat and loose red jacket, with
+short, thick, stubbly white hair standing up all over his head,
+started back. But it was only Aunt Victoria without her cap and front.
+When she saw Beth's consternation, the old lady put her hand up to her
+head. "I had forgotten," she muttered; then she added severely, "But
+you should never show surprise, Beth, at anything in anybody's
+appearance. It is very ill-bred."
+
+"I don't think I shall ever be surprised again," Beth answered
+quaintly. "But I want you to tell me, Aunt Victoria. What do you
+believe in?"
+
+"What do you mean, child?"
+
+"Oh, you know, about God, and the Bible, and cant, and that sort of
+thing," Beth answered evenly.
+
+"Come in and sit down," said Aunt Victoria.
+
+Beth sat on a classical piece of furniture that stood in the window, a
+sort of stool or throne, with ends like a sofa and no back. It had
+belonged to Aunt Victoria's father, and she valued it very much.
+Beth's feet, as she sat on it, did not touch the ground. Aunt Victoria
+stood for a moment in the middle of the room reflecting, and, as she
+did so, she looked, with her short, thick, stubbly white hair, more
+like a thin old gentleman in a black petticoat and loose red jacket
+than ever.
+
+"I believe, Beth," she said solemnly, "I believe in God the Father
+Almighty. I believe that if we do His holy will here on earth, we
+shall, when we die, be received by Him into bliss everlasting; but if
+we do not do His holy will, then He will condemn us to the bad place,
+where we shall burn for ever."
+
+"But what _is_ His holy will?" Beth asked.
+
+"It is His holy will that we should do right, and that we should not
+do wrong. But this is a big subject, Beth, and I can only unfold it to
+you bit by bit."
+
+"But will you unfold it?"
+
+"I will, as best I can, if you will listen earnestly."
+
+"I am always in earnest," Beth answered sincerely.
+
+"No one can teach you God," Aunt Victoria pursued. "He must come to
+you. '_Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright
+of heart. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament
+showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto
+night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their
+voice is not heard. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted
+up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is
+the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty._'"
+
+Beth, in a burst of enthusiasm, jumped down from her perch, clasped
+her hands to her chest, and cried--"O Aunt Victoria! that is--that
+is"--she tore at her hair--"I want a word--I want a word!"
+
+"It is _grand_, Beth!"
+
+"Grand! grand!" Beth shouted. "Yes, it is grand."
+
+"Beth," said Aunt Victoria emphatically, "remember that you are a
+Christian child, and not a dancing-dervish. If you do not instantly
+calm yourself, I shall shake you. And if I ever see you give way to
+such wild excitement again, I _shall_ shake you, for your own good.
+Calm is one of the first attributes of a gentlewoman."
+
+Teachers of religion do not always practise what they preach. Up to
+this moment, although Beth had done her best to teach Emily, she had
+had no idea of being religious herself; but now, on a sudden, there
+came upon her that great yearning tenderness towards God, and desire
+for goodness, which some sects call conversion, and hold to be the
+essential beginning of a religious life. This was the opportunity Aunt
+Victoria had prayed for, and from that time forward she began to
+instruct Beth systematically in religious matters. The subject
+fascinated Beth, and she would make opportunities to be alone with her
+aunt, and go to her room willingly whenever she asked her, for the
+pleasure of hearing her. Aunt Victoria often moved about the room, and
+dressed as she talked, and Beth, while listening, did not fail to
+observe the difficulty of keeping stockings up on skinny legs when you
+wore woollen garters below the knee; and also that it looked funny to
+have to tuck up your dress to get your purse out of a pocket in your
+petticoat at the back. But when Aunt Victoria sat down and read the
+Bible aloud, Beth became absorbed, and would even read whole chapters
+again to herself in order to remember how to declaim the more poetical
+passages as Aunt Victoria did--all of which she relished with the
+keenest enthusiasm. Unfortunately for Beth, however, Aunt Victoria was
+strongly Calvinistic, and dwelt too much on death and the judgment for
+her mental health. The old lady, deeply as she sympathised with Beth,
+and loved her, did not realise how morbidly sensitive she was; and
+accordingly worked on her feelings until the fear of God got hold of
+her. Just at this time, too, Mrs. Caldwell chose "The Pilgrim's
+Progress" for a "Sunday book," and read it aloud to the children; and
+this, together with Aunt Victoria's views, operated only too actively
+on the child's vivid imagination. A great dread seized upon her--not
+on her own account, strange to say; she never thought of herself, but
+of her friends, and of the world at large. She was in mortal dread
+lest they should be called to judgment and consigned to the flames.
+While the sun was out such thoughts did not trouble her; but as the
+day declined, and twilight sombrely succeeded the sunset, her heart
+sank, and her little being was racked with one great petition, offered
+up to the Lord in anguish, that He would spare them all.
+
+The season was beginning, the little place was already full of
+visitors, and Beth used to stand at the dining-room window while Mrs.
+Caldwell was reading aloud on Sunday evenings, and watch the
+congregation stream out of the church at the end of the road, and
+suffer agonies because of the torments that awaited them all,
+including her mother, brothers and sisters, Harriet in the kitchen,
+and Mrs. Davy at Orchard House opposite--everybody, indeed, except
+Aunt Victoria--in a future state. Out on the cliffs in the summer
+evenings, when great dark masses of cloud tinged with crimson were
+piled to the zenith at sundown, and coldly reflected in the dark
+waters of the bay, she saw the destination of the world; she heard
+cries of torment, too, in the plash of breaking waves and the
+unceasing roar of the sea; and as she watched the visitors lounging
+about in bright dresses, laughing and talking, careless of their doom,
+she could hardly restrain her tears. Night after night when she went
+to bed, she put her head under the clothes that Bernadine might not
+hear, and her chest was torn with sobs until she fell asleep.
+
+At that time she devised no more tricks, she took no interest in
+games, and would not fight even. Bernadine did not know what to make
+of her. All day she was recovering from the lassitude caused by the
+mental anguish of the previous evening, but regularly at sunset it
+began again; and the more she suffered, the less able was she to speak
+on the subject. At first she had tried to discuss eternal punishment
+with Harriet, Bernadine, and Aunt Victoria, and each had responded
+characteristically. Harriet's imagination dwelt on the particular
+torments reserved for certain people she knew, which she described
+graphically. Bernadine listened to Beth's remarks with interest, then
+accused Beth of trying to frighten her, and said she would tell mamma.
+Aunt Victoria discoursed earnestly on the wages of sin, the sufferings
+of sinners, the glories of salvation, the peace on earth from knowing
+you are saved, and the pleasures of the world to come; but the more
+Beth heard of the joys of heaven, the more she dreaded the horrors of
+hell. Still, however, she was too shy to say anything about her own
+acute mental misery, and no one suspected that anything was wrong,
+until one day something dejected in the child's attitude happened to
+catch Aunt Victoria's attention.
+
+Beth was sitting on an African stool, her elbow on her knee, her chin
+resting on her little hand, her grey eyes looking up through the
+window at the summer sky. What could the child be thinking of, Aunt
+Victoria wondered, and surely she was looking thin and pale--quite
+haggard.
+
+"Why don't you get something to do, Beth?" the old lady asked. "It's
+bad for little girls to idle about all day."
+
+"I wish I had something to do," Beth answered. "I'm so tired."
+
+"Does your head ache, child?" Aunt Victoria asked, speaking sharply
+because her mind was disturbed.
+
+"No."
+
+"You should answer politely, and say 'No, thank you.'"
+
+"No, thank you, Aunt Victoria," was the docile rejoinder.
+
+Aunt Victoria resolved to speak to Mrs. Caldwell, and resumed her
+knitting. She was one of those people who can keep what they have to
+say till a suitable occasion offers. Her mind was never so full of any
+one subject as to overflow and make a mess of it. She would wait a
+week watching her opportunity if necessary; and she did not,
+therefore, although she saw Mrs. Caldwell frequently during the day,
+speak to her about Beth until the children had gone to bed in the
+evening, when she was sure of her effect.
+
+Then she began abruptly.
+
+"Caroline, that child Beth is ill."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell was startled. It was very inconsiderate of Aunt
+Victoria. She knew she was nervous about her children; how could she
+be so unfeeling? What made her think Beth ill?
+
+"Look at her!" said Aunt Victoria. "She eats nothing. She has wasted
+to a skeleton, she has no blood in her face at all, and her eyes look
+as if she never slept."
+
+"I am sure she sleeps well enough," Mrs. Caldwell answered, inclined
+to bridle.
+
+"I feel quite sure, Caroline," Aunt Victoria said solemnly, "that if
+you take a candle, and go upstairs this minute, you will find that
+child wide awake."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell felt that she was being found fault with, and was
+indignant. She went upstairs at once, with her head held high,
+expecting to find Beth in a healthy sleep. The relief, however, of
+finding that the child was well, would not have been so great at the
+moment as the satisfaction of proving Aunt Victoria in the wrong.
+
+But Beth was wide awake, petitioning God in an agony to spare her
+friends. When Mrs. Caldwell entered she started up.
+
+"O mamma!" she exclaimed, "I'm so glad you've come; I've been so
+frightened about you."
+
+"What is the matter with you, Beth?" Mrs. Caldwell asked, not
+over-gently. "What are you frightened about?"
+
+"Nothing," Beth faltered, shrinking back into herself.
+
+"Oh, that's nonsense," her mother answered. "It's silly to be
+frightened at nothing, and cowardly to be frightened at all. Lie down
+and go to sleep, like a good child. Come, turn your face to the wall,
+and I'll tuck you in."
+
+Beth obeyed, and her mother left her to her fears, and returned to
+Aunt Victoria in the drawing-room.
+
+"Well?" Aunt Victoria asked anxiously.
+
+"She was awake," Mrs. Caldwell acknowledged. "She said she was
+frightened, but didn't know what of. I expect she'd been dreaming. And
+I'm sure there is nothing the matter with her. She's been subject to
+queer fits of alarm at night ever since she was a baby. It's the dark,
+I think. It makes her nervous. At one time the doctor made us have a
+night-light for her, which was great nonsense, _I_ always said; but
+her father insisted. When it suits her to play in the dark, she's
+never afraid."
+
+It was at this time that Rainharbour set up a band of its own. Beth
+was always peculiarly susceptible to music. Her ear was defective; she
+rarely knew if any one sang flat; but the poorest instrument would lay
+hold of her, and set high chords of emotion vibrating, beyond the
+reach of words. The first time she heard the band, she was completely
+carried away. It was on the pier, and she happened to be close beside
+it when it began to play, and stood still in astonishment at the crash
+of the opening bars. Her mother, after vainly calling to her to come
+on, snatched impatiently at her arm to drag her away; and Beth, in her
+excitement, set her teeth and slapped at her mother's hand--or rather
+at what seemed to her the importunate thing that was trying to end her
+ecstasy.
+
+Of course Mrs. Caldwell would not stand that, so Beth, victim of brute
+force, was hustled off to the end of the pier, and then slapped,
+shaken, and reviled, for the enormity of her offence, until, in an
+acute nervous crisis, she wrenched herself out of her mother's
+clutches, and sprang over into the harbour. It was high-water happily,
+and Count Gustav Bartahlinsky, who was just going out in his yacht,
+saw her drop, and fished her out with a boat-hook.
+
+"Look here, young woman," he said, "what do you mean by tumbling about
+like this? I shall have the trouble of turning back and putting you on
+shore."
+
+"No, don't; no, don't," Beth pleaded. "Take me along with you."
+
+He looked at her an instant, considering, then went to the side of the
+yacht, and called up to her frantic mother: "She's all right. I'll
+have her dried, and bring her back this afternoon,"--with which
+assurance Mrs. Caldwell was obliged to content herself, for the yacht
+sailed on; not that she would have objected. Beth and Count Gustav
+were sworn allies by this time, and Mrs. Caldwell knew that Beth could
+not be in better hands. Beth had seen Count Gustav passing their
+window a few days after their first meeting, and had completed her
+conquest of him by tearing out, and running down Orchard Street after
+him with nothing on her head, to ask what copyright was; and since
+then they had often met, and sometimes spent delightful hours
+together, sitting on the cliffs or strolling along by the sea. He had
+discovered her talent for verse-making, and given her a book on the
+subject, full of examples, which was a great joy to her. When the
+yacht was clear of the harbour, he took her down to the saloon, and
+got out a silk shirt. "I'm going to leave you," he said, "and when I'm
+gone, you must take off all your things, and put this shirt on. Then
+tumble into that berth between the blankets, and I'll come back and
+talk to you." Beth promptly obeyed. She was an ill-used heroine now,
+in the hands of her knightly deliverer, and thoroughly happy.
+
+When Count Gustav returned, he was followed by Gard, a tall, dark,
+handsome sailor, a descendant of black Dane settlers on the coast, and
+for that reason commonly called Black Gard. He brought sandwiches,
+cakes, and hot tea on a tray for Beth. She had propped herself up with
+pillows in the berth, and was looking out of an open port-hole
+opposite, listening enraptured to the strains of the band, which,
+mellowed by distance, floated out over the water.
+
+"What a radiant little face!" the Count thought, as he handed her the
+tea and sandwiches.
+
+Beth took them voraciously.
+
+"Did you have any breakfast?" the Count asked, smiling.
+
+"Yes," Beth answered.
+
+"What did you have?"
+
+"Milk and hot water and dry toast. I made the toast myself."
+
+"No butter?"
+
+"No. The butter's running short, so I wouldn't take any."
+
+"When do you lunch?"
+
+"Oh, we don't lunch. Can't afford it, you know. The boys have got to
+be educated, and Uncle James Patten won't help, though Jim's his
+heir."
+
+Count Gustav looked at her little delicate hand lying on the coverlet,
+and then at the worn little face.
+
+"You've been crying," he said.
+
+"Ah, that was only last night after I went to bed," Beth answered. "It
+makes you cry when people aren't saved, doesn't it? Are you saved? If
+you're not it will be awful for me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"'Cos it would hurt so here to think of you burning in hell"--Beth
+clasped her chest. "It always begins to ache here--in the evening--for
+the people who aren't saved, and when I go to bed it makes me cry."
+
+"Who told you about being saved, and that?"
+
+"Aunt Victoria. She lives with us, you know. She's going away now to
+pay a visit, because the boys are coming home, and Mildred, for the
+holidays, and there wouldn't be room for her. I'm dreadfully sorry;
+but I shall go to church, and read the Bible just the same when she's
+away."
+
+Count Gustav sat down on the end of the saloon-table and reflected a
+little; then he said--"I wouldn't read anything, if I were you, while
+Aunt Victoria's away. Just play about with Mildred and the boys, and
+come out fishing with me sometimes. God doesn't want _you_ to save
+people. He does that Himself. I expect He's very angry because you cry
+at night. He thinks you don't trust Him. All He wants you to do is to
+love Him, and trust Him, and be happy. That's the creed for a little
+girl."
+
+"Do you think so?" Beth gasped. Then she began to reflect, and her big
+grey eyes slowly dilated, while at the same time a look of intense
+relief relaxed the muscles of her pinched little face. "Do you think
+so?" she repeated. Then suddenly she burst into tears.
+
+Count Gustav, somewhat disconcerted, hurriedly handed her a
+handkerchief.
+
+Another gentleman came into the saloon at the moment, and raised
+inquiring eyebrows.
+
+"Only a little martyr, momentarily released from suffering, enjoying
+the reaction," Count Gustav observed. "Come on deck, and let her
+sleep. Do you hear, little lady, go to sleep."
+
+Beth, docile to a fault when gently handled, nestled down among the
+blankets, shut her eyes, and prepared to obey. The sound of the water
+rippling off the sides of the yacht as it glided on smoothly over the
+summer-sea both soothed and cheered her. Heavenly thoughts came
+crowding into her mind; then sleep surprised her, with the tears she
+had been shedding for the sufferings of others still wet upon her
+cheek. When she awoke, her clothes were beside her, ready to put on.
+She jumped up instantly, dressed, and went on deck. The yacht was
+almost stationary, and the two gentlemen, attended by the black Dane,
+Gard, were fishing. Away to starboard, the land lay like a silver mist
+in the heat of the afternoon. Beth turned her sorrowful little face
+towards it.
+
+"Are you homesick, Beth?" Count Gustav asked.
+
+"No, sick of home," Beth answered; "but I suppose I shall have to go
+back."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Mamma will punish me for jumping into the harbour, I expect."
+
+"_Jumping_ in!" he ejaculated, and then a great gravity settled upon
+him, and he cogitated for some time. "Why did you jump in?" he said at
+last.
+
+"Because mamma--because mamma--" her chest heaved. She was ashamed to
+say.
+
+Count Gustav exchanged glances with the other gentleman, and said no
+more. But he took her home himself in the evening, and had a long talk
+with mamma and Aunt Victoria; and after he had gone they were both
+particularly nice to Beth, but very solemn. That night, too, Aunt
+Victoria did not mention death and the judgment, but talked of heaven
+and the mercy of God until Beth's brow cleared, and she was filled
+with hope.
+
+It was the next day that Aunt Victoria left them to make room for
+Mildred and the boys. Beth went with her mother to see the old lady
+off at the station. On account of their connections the little party
+attracted attention, and Mrs. Caldwell, feeling her importance,
+expected the officials to be obsequious, which they were; and, in
+return, she also expected Aunt Victoria to make proper acknowledgment
+of their attentions. She considered that sixpence at least was
+necessary to uphold the dignity of the family on such occasions; but,
+to her horror, when the moment came, Aunt Victoria, after an exciting
+fumble, drew from her reticule a tract entitled "The Man on the
+Slant," and, in the face of everybody, handed it to the expectant
+porter.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell assured Lady Benyon afterwards that she should never
+forget that moment. Beth used to wonder why.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The end of the holidays found Beth in a very different mood. Jim had
+come with the ideas of his adolescence, and Mildred had brought new
+music, and these together had helped to take her completely out of
+herself. The rest from lessons, too--from her mother's method of
+making education a martyrdom, and many more hours of each day than
+usual spent in the open air, had also helped greatly to ease her mind
+and strengthen her body, so that, even in the time, which was only a
+few weeks, she had recovered her colour, shot up, and expanded.
+
+Most of the time she had spent with Jim, whom she had studied with
+absorbing interest, his point of view was so wholly unexpected. And even
+in these early days she showed a trait of character for which she
+afterwards became remarkable; that is to say, she learned the whole of
+the facts of a case before she formed an opinion on its merits--listened
+and observed uncritically, without prejudice and without personal
+feeling, until she was fully informed. Life unfolded itself to her like
+the rules of arithmetic. She could not conjecture what the answer would
+be in any single example from a figure or two, but had to take them all
+down in order to work the sum. And her object was always, not to prove
+herself right in any guess she might have made, but to arrive at the
+truth. She was eleven years old at this time, but looked fourteen.
+
+It was when she went out shooting with Jim that they used to have
+their most interesting discussions. Jim used to take her to carry
+things, but never offered her a shot, because she was a girl. She did
+not care about that, however, because she had made up her mind to take
+the gun when he was gone, and go out shooting on her own account; and
+she abstracted a certain amount of powder and shot from his flasks
+each day to pay herself for her present trouble, and also to be ready
+for the future. Uncle James had given Jim leave to shoot, provided he
+sent the game he killed to Fairholm; and sometimes they spent the day
+wandering through the woods after birds, and sometimes they sat on the
+cliffs, which skirted the property, potting rabbits. Jim expected Beth
+to act as a keeper for him, and also to retrieve like a well-trained
+dog; and when on one occasion she disappointed him, he had a good deal
+to say about the uselessness of sisters and the inferiority of the sex
+generally. Women, he always maintained, were only fit to sew on
+buttons and mend socks.
+
+"But is it contemptible to sew on buttons and mend socks?" Beth
+asked, one day when they were sitting in a sandy hollow waiting for
+rabbits.
+
+"It's not a man's work," said Jim, a trifle disconcerted.
+
+Beth looked about her. The great sea, the vast tract of sand, and the
+blue sky so high above them, made her suffer for her own insignificance,
+and feel for the moment that nothing was worth while; but in the hollow
+where they sat it was cosy and the grass was green. Miniature cliffs
+overhung the rabbit-holes, and the dry soil was silvered by sun and wind
+and rain. There was a stiff breeze blowing, but it did not touch them in
+their sheltered nook. They could hear it making its moan, however, as if
+it were vainly trying to get at them; and there also ascended from below
+the ceaseless sound of the sea. Beth turned her back on the wild
+prospect, and watched the rabbit-holes.
+
+"There's one on the right," she said at last, softly.
+
+Jim raised his gun, aimed, and fired. The rabbit rolled over on its
+back, and Beth rose in a leisurely way, fetched it, carrying it by its
+legs, and threw it down on the bag.
+
+"And when all the buttons are sewed on and all the socks mended, what
+is a girl to do with her time?" she asked dispassionately, when she
+had reseated herself. "The things only come home from the wash once a
+week, you see."
+
+"Oh, there's lots to be done," Jim answered vaguely. "There's the
+cooking. A man's life isn't worth having if the cooking's bad."
+
+"But a gentleman keeps a cook," Beth observed.
+
+"Oh yes, of course," Jim answered irritably. "You would see what I
+mean if you weren't a girl. Girls have no brains. They scream at a
+mouse."
+
+"_We_ never scream at mice," Beth protested in surprise. "Bernadine
+catches them in her hands."
+
+"Ah, but then you've had brothers, you see," said Jim. "It makes all
+the difference if you're taught not to be silly."
+
+"Then why aren't all girls taught, and why aren't we taught more
+things?"
+
+"Because you've got no brains, I tell you."
+
+"But if we can be taught one thing, why can't we be taught another?
+How can you tell we've no brains if you never try to teach us?"
+
+"Now look here, Miss Beth," said brother Jim in a tone of
+exasperation, "I know what you'll be when you grow up, if you don't
+mind. You'll be just the sort of long-tongued shrew, always arguing,
+that men hate."
+
+"Do you say 'that men hate' or 'whom men hate'?" Beth interrupted.
+
+"There you are!" said Jim; "devilish sharp at a nag. That's just what
+I'm telling you. Now, you take my advice, and hold your tongue. Then
+perhaps you'll get a husband; and if you do, make things comfortable
+for him. Men can't abide women who don't make things comfortable."
+
+"Well," said Beth temperately, "I don't think I could 'abide' a man
+who didn't make things comfortable."
+
+Jim grunted, as though that point of view were a different thing
+altogether.
+
+By degrees Beth discovered that sisters did not hold at all the same
+sort of place in Jim's estimation as "the girls." The girls were other
+people's sisters, to whom Jim was polite, and whom he even fawned on
+and flattered while they were present, but made most disparaging
+remarks about and ridiculed behind their backs; to his own sisters, on
+the contrary, he was habitually rude, but he always spoke of them
+nicely in their absence, and even boasted about their accomplishments.
+
+"Your brother Jim says you can act anything," Charlotte Hardy, the
+doctor's daughter, told Beth. "And you recite wonderfully, although
+you've never heard any one recite; and you talk like a grown-up
+person."
+
+Beth flushed with surprise and pleasure at this; but her heart had
+hardly time to expand before she observed the puzzling discrepancy
+between what Jim said to her and what he had been saying to other
+people, and found it impossible to reconcile the two, so as to have
+any confidence in Jim's sincerity.
+
+Before the end of the holidays she had learned to enjoy Jim's
+companionship, but she had no respect for his opinions at all. He had
+taught her a good deal, however. He had taught her, for one thing, the
+futility of discussion with people of his capacity. The small
+intellect should be treated like the small child--with tenderest
+consideration. It must not hear too much of anything at a time, and
+there are certain things that it must never be told at all. Simple
+familiar facts, with obvious little morals, are the right food for it,
+and constant repetition of what it knows is safe; but such heavy
+things as theories, opinions, and arguments must be kept carefully
+concealed from it, for fear of causing congestion or paralysis, or,
+worse still, that parlous condition which betrays itself in
+distressing symptoms such as one sees daily in society, or sits and
+shudders at in one's own friends, when the victim, swelling with
+importance, makes confident mis-statements, draws erroneous
+conclusions, sums up and gives advice so fatuous that you blush to be
+a biped of the same species.
+
+There was an hotel in Rainharbour called the "United Kingdom," where
+Jim spent much of his time playing billiards, drinking beer, and
+smoking pipes. He had to coax money out of his mother continually for
+these pursuits.
+
+"It's the kind of thing a fellow must do, you know, mamma," he said.
+"You can't expect him to stick at home like a girl. He must see life,
+or he'll be a muff instead of a man of the world. How shall I get on
+at Fairholm, when I come in for the property, if I'm not up to
+things?"
+
+This was said at breakfast one morning, and Mrs. Caldwell, sitting
+opposite the window, raised her worn face and looked up at the sky,
+considering what else there was that she could do without.
+
+"Do you learn how to manage estates at the 'United Kingdom'?" Beth put
+in innocently.
+
+"Now, look here, Beth, just you shut up," said Jim. "You're always
+putting your oar in, and its deuced impertinent of a child like you,
+when I'm talking to my mother. _She_ knows what I'm talking about, and
+you don't; but you'll be teaching her next, I expect. You're far too
+cheeky."
+
+"I only wanted to know," Beth protested.
+
+"That will do," said Mrs. Caldwell impatiently. She was put out by
+Jim's demand for money, which she had not got to spare, and found it a
+relief to expend some of her irritation on Beth. "Jim is quite right,
+and I won't have you hanging about always, listening to things you
+don't understand, and rudely interrupting."
+
+"I thought we were at breakfast," Beth exclaimed, furious at being
+unjustly accused of hanging about.
+
+"Be good enough to leave the table," said Mrs. Caldwell; "and you
+shall have nothing but bread and water for the rest of the day."
+
+"It will be a dinner of herbs with contentment, then, if I have it
+alone," said Beth; for which impertinence she was condemned to be
+present at every meal.
+
+Having extracted the money from his mother, Jim went off to the
+"United Kingdom," and came back in the afternoon, somewhat the worse
+for beer; but Mrs. Caldwell did not perceive it. He complained of the
+poor dinner, the cooking, and Beth's shabby appearance.
+
+"How can you go out with me like that?" he said. "Why can't you dress
+properly? Look at my things! I'm decent."
+
+"So should I be," said Beth, without malice, her eyes shining with
+mortification. "So should I be if anybody bought me decent clothes."
+
+She did not think it unfair, however, that she should go shabby so
+that Jim might be well dressed. Nor did she feel it wrong, when the
+holidays were over, and the boys had gone, that she should be left
+idly drumming on the window-pane; that they should have every
+advantage while she had none, and no prospect but the uncertain chance
+of securing a husband if she held herself well and did as she was
+told--a husband whom she would be expected to obey whatever he might
+lack in the way of capacity to order. It is suffering which makes
+these things plain to a generous woman; but usually by the time she
+has suffered enough to be able to blame those whom it has been her
+habit to love and respect, and to judge of the wrong they have done
+her, it is too late to remedy it. Even if her faculties have not
+atrophied for want of use, all that should have been cultivated lies
+latent in her; she has nothing to fall back upon, and her life is
+spoilt.
+
+Beth stood idly drumming on the window-pane for long hours after the
+boys had gone. Then she got her battered old hat, walked out to
+Fairholm, and wandered over the ground where she had been wont to
+retrieve for Jim. When she came to the warren, the rabbits were out
+feeding, and she amused herself by throwing stones at them with her
+left hand. She had the use of both hands, and would not have noticed
+if her knife had been put where her fork should have been at table;
+but she threw stones, bowled, batted, played croquet, and also tennis
+in after years, with her left hand by preference, and she always held
+out her left hand to be handed from a carriage.
+
+She succeeded in killing a rabbit with a stone, to her own surprise
+and delight, and carried it off home, where it formed a welcome
+addition to the meagre fare. She skinned and cleaned it herself,
+boiled it, carved it carefully so that it might not look like a cat on
+the dish, covered it with good onion-sauce, and garnished it with
+little rolls of fried bacon, and sent it to table, where the only
+other dish was cold beef-bones with very little meat on them.
+
+"Where did it come from?" Mrs. Caldwell asked, looking pleased.
+
+"From Fairholm," Beth answered.
+
+"I must thank your uncle," said Mrs. Caldwell.
+
+"It was not my uncle," Beth answered, laughing; "and you're not to
+send any thanks."
+
+"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Caldwell, still more pleased, for she
+supposed it was a surreptitious kindness of Aunt Grace Mary's. She ate
+the rabbit with appetite, and Beth, as she watched her, determined to
+go hunting again, and see what she could get for her. Beth would not
+have touched a penny of Uncle James's, but from that time forward she
+did not scruple to poach on his estate, and bring home anything she
+could catch. She had often prayed to the Lord to show her how to do
+something to help her mother in her dire poverty, and when this idea
+occurred to her, she accepted it as a direct answer to her prayer.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell and the three girls slept in the largest bedroom in the
+house. It was at the back, looking into the little garden, and out to
+the east. The early morning sun, making black bars of the window-frame
+on the white blind, often awoke Beth, and she would lie and count the
+white spaces between the bars, where the window-panes were,--three,
+six, nine, twelve; or two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve. One morning
+after Jim left she was lying awake counting the window-panes when
+Harriet knocked at the door with the hot water. Mildred had not yet
+gone back to her aunt, and was sleeping with Beth, Bernadine being
+with her mother.
+
+"Come, get up, children," said Mrs. Caldwell, as she got out of bed
+herself.
+
+"Mamma, mayn't I have breakfast in bed?" said Bernadine in a wheedling
+tone.
+
+"No, no, my little body," Mrs. Caldwell answered.
+
+"But, mamma," whined the little body, "I've got such a headache!" She
+very often had when she ought to have been getting up.
+
+"Cry, baby, cry," sang out Beth. "Mamma, give me my stockings."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell picked them up off the floor, and gave them to her. Beth
+began to put them on in bed, and diverted herself as she did so by
+making diabolical grimaces at the malingering imp opposite.
+
+"Mamma," Bernadine whined again, "Beth's teasing me."
+
+"Beth, how often am I to tell you that I will not allow you to tease
+the child?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
+
+Beth solemnly gartered her stockings. Then she gave Mildred a dig in
+the ribs with her heel, and growled, "Get up!"
+
+"Mamma, Beth is teasing _me_, now," said Mildred promptly.
+
+"Well, I don't see why I should be obliged to do all the getting up
+for the family," said Beth.
+
+Her mother turned from the looking-glass with her hair-brush in her
+hand, and gazed at her sternly. Beth hummed a tune, but kept at a safe
+distance until she was dressed, then made her escape, going straight
+to the kitchen, where Harriet was cutting bread to toast. "That's all
+the bread there is," she said, "and it won't be enough for breakfast
+if you eat any."
+
+"All right, then; I haven't any appetite," Beth answered casually.
+"What did you dream last night?"
+
+"I dreamt about crocodiles," Harriet averred.
+
+"A crocodile's a reptile," said Beth, "and a reptile is trouble and an
+enemy. You always dream nasty things; I expect it's your inside."
+
+"What's that to do wi' it?" said Harriet.
+
+"Everything," said Beth. "Don't you know the stuff that dreams are
+made of? Pickles, pork, and plum-cake."
+
+"Dreams is sent for our guidance," Harriet answered portentously,
+shaking her head at Beth's flippancy.
+
+"Well, I'm glad of it," said Beth, "for I dreamt I was catching Uncle
+James's trout in a most unsportsmanlike way, and I guess the dream was
+sent to show me how to do it. When I have that kind of dream, I notice
+it nearly always comes true. But where's the 'Dream Book'?"
+
+"'Ook it," said Harriet. "'Ere's your ma."
+
+As the other little bodies had their breakfasts in bed, Beth had to
+face her lessons alone that morning, and Mrs. Caldwell was not in an
+amiable mood; but she was absent as well as irritable, so Beth did
+some old work over again, and as she knew it thoroughly, she got on
+well until the music began.
+
+Beth had a great talent as well as a great love for music. When they
+were at Fairholm, Aunt Grace Mary gave her Uncle James's "Instruction
+Book for Beginners" one wet day to keep her quiet, and she learnt her
+notes in the afternoon, and began at once to apply them practically on
+the piano. She soon knew all the early exercises and little tunes, and
+was only too eager to do more; but her mother hated the music-lesson
+more than any of the others, and was so harsh that Beth became
+nervous, and only ventured on the simplest things for fear of the
+consequences. When her mother went out, however, she tried what she
+liked, and, if she had heard the piece before, she could generally
+make something satisfactory to herself out of it. One day Aunt
+Victoria found her sitting on the music-stool, solemnly pulling at her
+fingers, one after the other, as though to stretch them.
+
+"What _are_ you doing, child?" she said.
+
+"O Aunt Victoria," Beth answered in a despairing way, "here's such a
+_lovely_ thing, and my head will play it, only my fingers are not long
+enough."
+
+Mildred had brought a quantity of new music home with her these
+holidays. She promised to play well also, and her aunt was having her
+properly taught. Beth listened to her enraptured when she first
+arrived, and then, to Mildred's surprise and admiration, tried the
+pieces herself, and in a few weeks knew all that it had taken Mildred
+six months to learn.
+
+That morning, as ill-luck would have it, when she was waiting at the
+piano for her mother to come and give her her lesson, Beth began to
+try a piece with a passage in it that she could not play.
+
+"Do show me how to do this," she said when Mrs. Caldwell came.
+
+"Oh, you can't do that," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. "It is far too
+difficult for you."
+
+"But I do so want to learn it," Beth ventured.
+
+"Oh, very well," her mother answered. "But I warn you!"
+
+Beth began, and got on pretty well till she came to the passage she
+did not understand, and there she stumbled.
+
+"What are you doing?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
+
+Beth tried again nervously.
+
+"That's not right," her mother cried. "What does that sign mean? Now,
+what is it? Just think!"
+
+Beth, with a flushed face, was thinking hard, but nothing came of it.
+
+"Will you speak?" her mother said angrily. "You are the most obstinate
+child that ever lived. Now, say something."
+
+"It's not a shake," Beth ventured.
+
+"A shake!" her mother exclaimed, giving her a hard thump on the back
+with her clenched fist. "Now, no more obstinacy. Tell me what it is at
+once."
+
+"I don't know that sign," Beth faltered in desperation.
+
+"Oh, you don't know it!" her mother said, now fairly fuming, and
+accompanying every word by a hard thump of her clenched fist. "Then
+I'll teach you. I've a great mind to beat you as long as I can stand
+over you."
+
+Beth was a piteous little figure, crouched on the piano-stool, her
+back bent beneath her mother's blows, and every fibre of her sensitive
+frame shrinking from her violence; but she made no resistance, and
+Mrs. Caldwell carried out her threat. When she could beat Beth no
+longer, she told her to sit there until she knew that sign, and then
+she left her. Beth clenched her teeth, and an ugly look came into her
+face. There had been dignity in her endurance--the dignity of
+self-control; for there was the force in her to resist, had she
+thought it right to resist. What she was thinking while her mother
+beat her was: "I hope I shall not strike you back."
+
+Harriet had heard the scolding, and when Mrs. Caldwell had gone she
+came and peeped in at the door.
+
+"She's bin' thumpin' you again, 'as she?" she said with a grin. "Wot
+'a ye bin' doin' now?"
+
+"What business is that of yours?" said Beth defiantly. It was bad
+enough to be beaten, but it was much worse to have Harriet peeping in
+to gloat over her humiliation. Harriet was not to be snubbed, however.
+She went up to the piano and looked at the music.
+
+"It's precious hard, I should think," she remarked.
+
+"It's _not_ hard," Beth answered positively, "if anybody tells you
+what you don't know and can't make out for yourself. I always remember
+when I'm told or shown how to do it; but what's the use of staring at
+a sign you've never seen before? Just you look at that! Can you make
+anything out of it?" Harriet approached, and, after staring at the
+sign curiously for some time, shook her head. "Of course not," said
+Beth, snatching up her music, and throwing it on the floor; "and
+neither can anybody else. It isn't fair."
+
+Bernadine had begun her lessons by this time in the next room, and
+Mrs. Caldwell suddenly began to scold again. "Oh, that awful voice!"
+Beth groaned aloud, her racked nerves betraying her.
+
+"She's catchin' it now!" said Harriet, after listening with interest.
+She seemed to derive some sort of gratification from the children's
+troubles. "But don't you bother any more, Miss Beth.--Your ma'll 'ave
+forgotten all about it by goin'-out time--or she'll pertend she 'as to
+save 'erself trouble. Come and 'elp us wi' the beds."
+
+Beth rose slowly from the piano-stool, and followed Harriet upstairs
+to the bedroom at the back of the house. She was at once attracted to
+the open window by an uproar of voices--"the voices of children in
+happy play." There was a girls' day-school next door kept by the
+Misses Granger. Miss Granger had called on Mrs. Caldwell as soon as
+she was settled in her house, to beg for the honour of being allowed
+to educate her three little girls, and Beth had assisted at the
+interview with serious attention. It would have been the best thing in
+the world for her had she been allowed to romp and learn with that
+careless, happy, healthy-minded crew of respectable little plebeians;
+but Mrs. Caldwell would never have dreamt of sending any of her own
+superior brood to associate with such people, even if she could have
+afforded it. She politely explained to Miss Granger that she was
+educating her children herself for the present; and it was then, with
+a sickening sense of disappointment, that Beth rejected her mother's
+social standard, with its "vulgar exclusiveness," once for all.
+
+She hung out of the window now, heedless of Harriet's appeals to be
+"'elped wi' the beds," and watched the games going on in the next
+garden with pathetic gravity. The girls were playing rounders among
+the old fruit-trees on the grass-plot, with a loud accompaniment of
+shrieks and shouts of laughter. They tumbled up against the trees
+continually, and shook showers of autumn leaves down upon themselves;
+and then, tiring of the game, they began to pelt each other with the
+leaves, and laughed and shrieked still louder. Some of them looked up
+and made faces at Beth, but she did not acknowledge the discourtesy.
+She knew that they were not ladies, but did not feel, as her mother
+did, that this was a fault for which they should be punished, but a
+misfortune, rather, for which she pitied them, and she would have
+liked to have made it up to them by knowing them. Suddenly she
+remembered that Aunt Victoria was coming back that day, which was
+something to look forward to. She took Harriet's duster, and went to
+see if the old lady's room was all in order for her, and arranged as
+she liked it. Then she returned to the drawing-room, and sat down on
+the piano-stool, and rage and rebellion uprose in her heart. The piece
+of music still lay on the floor, and she stamped her foot on it. As
+she did so, her mother came into the room.
+
+"Do you know your lesson?" she demanded.
+
+"No, I do not," said Beth, and then she doubled her fist, and brought
+it down bang on the keyboard.
+
+"How dare you!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, startled by the vehemence of
+the blow, and jarred by the discordant cry of the poor piano.
+
+"I felt I _must_--I felt I must make something suffer," said Beth, in
+a deep chest-voice and with knitted brows, twisting her fingers and
+rising to face her mother as she spoke; "and if I had not struck the
+piano, I should have struck _you_."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell could not have been more taken aback if Beth had struck
+her. The colour left her face, a chill succeeded the heat of temper,
+and her right mind returned as to a drunken man suddenly sobered. She
+noticed that Beth's eyes were almost on a level with her own, and once
+again she realised that if Beth chose to rebel, she would be powerless
+to control her. For some seconds they looked at each other without a
+word. Then Beth stooped, picked up the piece of music, smoothed it
+out, and put it on the stand; and then she shut up the piano
+deliberately, but remained standing in front of it with her back to
+her mother. Mrs. Caldwell watched her for a little in silence.
+
+"It's your own fault, Beth," she said at last. "You are so conceited;
+you try to play things that are too difficult for you, and then you
+get into trouble. It is no pleasure to me to punish you."
+
+Beth remained with her back turned, immovable, and her mother looked
+at her helplessly a little longer, and then left the room. When she
+had gone, Beth sat down on the piano-stool. Her shabby shoes had holes
+in them, her dress was worn thread-bare, and her sleeves were too
+short for her. She had no collar or cuffs, and her thin hands and long
+wrists looked hideous to her as they lay in her lap. Great tears
+gathered in her eyes. So conceited indeed! What had she to be
+conceited about? Every one despised her, and she despised herself.
+Here the tears overflowed, and Beth began to cry at last, and cried
+and cried for a long time very bitterly.
+
+That afternoon, after Aunt Victoria had arrived, Lady Benyon and Aunt
+Grace Mary called. Mrs. Caldwell had recovered her good-humour by that
+time, and was all smiles to everybody, including Beth, when she came
+sauntering in, languid and heavy-eyed, with half a sheet of notepaper
+in her hand.
+
+"What have you there, Puck?" said Lady Benyon, catching sight of some
+hieroglyph drawn on the paper. Beth gave it to her, and she turned it
+this way and that, but could make nothing of it.
+
+"Mamma will tell us what it is," said Beth, taking it to her mother.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell, still smiling, looked at the drawing. "It's an
+astronomical sign, surely," she ventured.
+
+"No, it is not," Beth said.
+
+"Then I don't know what it is," her mother rejoined.
+
+"Oh, but you must know, mamma," said Beth. "Look again."
+
+"But I don't know, Beth," Mrs. Caldwell insisted.
+
+"Couldn't you make it out if Aunt Victoria beat you?" Beth suggested.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell changed countenance.
+
+"That is what you expect me to do, at all events," Beth pursued. "Now,
+you see, you can't do it yourself; and I ask you, was it fair to
+expect me to make out a strange sign by staring at it?" She set her
+mouth hard when she had spoken, and looked her mother straight in the
+face. Mrs. Caldwell winced.
+
+"What's the difficulty, Puck?" Lady Benyon asked.
+
+"The difficulty is between me and mamma," Beth answered with dignity,
+and then she left the room, sauntering out as she had come in, with an
+utterly dispirited air.
+
+The next morning she went to practice as usual, but Mrs. Caldwell did
+not come to give her her music-lesson. Beth thought she had forgotten
+it, and went to remind her.
+
+"No, Beth, I have not forgotten," said Mrs. Caldwell; "but after your
+conduct yesterday, I do not know how you can expect me to give you
+another music-lesson."
+
+"Are you not going to give me any more?" Beth exclaimed.
+
+"No, certainly not," her mother answered.
+
+Beth's heart sank. She stood for some little time in the doorway
+looking at her mother, who sat beside the table sewing, and pointedly
+ignored her; then Beth turned, and went back to the drawing-room
+slowly, and carefully practised the usual time, with great tears
+trickling down her cheeks. It did not seem to make much difference
+what happened, whether she was on her best behaviour or her worst, the
+tears were bound to come. But Beth had a will of her own, and she
+determined to learn music. She said no more on the subject to her
+mother, however, but from that day forward she practised regularly and
+hard, and studied her instruction books, and listened to other people
+playing when she had a chance, and asked to have passages explained to
+her, until at last she knew more than her mother could have taught
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+But well-springs, mortal and immortal, were beginning to bubble up
+brightly in Beth, despite the hard conditions of her life. She
+sharpened her wits involuntarily on the people about her, she gathered
+knowledge where she listed; her further faculty flashed forth fine
+rays at unexpected intervals to cheer her, and her hungry heart also
+began to seek satisfaction. For Beth was by nature well-balanced;
+there was to be no atrophy of one side of her being in order that the
+other might be abnormally developed. Her chest was not to be flattened
+because her skull bulged with the big brain beneath. Rather the
+contrary. For mind and body acted and reacted on each other
+favourably, in so far as the conditions of her life were favourable.
+Such congenial intellectual pursuits as she was able to follow, by
+tranquillising her, helped the development of her physique, while the
+healthy condition of her body stimulated her to renewed intellectual
+effort--and it was all a pleasure to her.
+
+At this time she had a new experience, an experience for which she was
+totally unprepared, but one which helped her a great deal, and
+delighted as much as it surprised her.
+
+There were high oak pews in the little church at the end of the road
+which the Caldwells attended on Sunday; in the rows on either side of
+the main aisle the pews came together in twos, so that when Beth sat
+at the end of theirs, as she always did, the person in the next pew
+sat beside her with only the wooden partition between. One Sunday,
+when she was on her knees, drowsing through the Litany with her cheek
+on her prayer-book, she became aware of a boy in the next pew with his
+face turned to her in exactly the same attitude. He had bright fair
+hair curling crisply, a ruddy fair fat face, and round blue eyes,
+clear as glass marbles. Beth was pleased with him, and smiled
+involuntarily. He instantly responded to the smile; and then they both
+got very red; and, in their delicious shyness, they turned their heads
+on their prayer-books, and looked in opposite directions. This did not
+last long, however. The desire for another look seized them
+simultaneously, and they turned their faces to each other, and smiled
+again the moment their eyes met. All through the service they kept
+looking at each other, and looking away again; and Beth felt a strange
+glad glow begin in her chest and spread gradually all over her. It
+continued with her the whole day; she was conscious of it throughout
+the night; and directly she awoke next morning there it was again; and
+she could think of nothing but the apple-cheeked boy, with bright blue
+eyes and curly fair hair; and as she dwelt upon his image she smiled
+to herself, and kept on smiling. There came upon her also a great
+desire to please, with sudden energy which made all effort easy to
+her, so that, instead of being tiresome at her lessons, she did them
+in a way that astonished her mother--such a wonderful incentive is a
+little joy in life. She would not go out when lessons were over,
+however, but stood in the drawing-room window watching the people
+pass. Harriet came and worried her to help with the dusting.
+
+"Go away, you chattering idiot," said Beth. She had found Harriet out
+in many meannesses by this time, and had lost all respect for her.
+"Don't you see I'm thinking? If you don't bother me now I'll help you
+by-and-by, perhaps."
+
+On the other side of the road, in the same row as the Benyon
+dower-house, but well within sight of the window, was the
+Mansion-House Collegiate Day and Boarding School for the Sons of
+Gentlemen. Beth kept looking in that direction, and presently the boys
+came pouring out in their mortar-boards, and, among them, she soon
+discovered the one she was thinking of. She discovered him less by
+sight than by a strange sensation in herself, a pleasure which shot
+through her from top to toe. For no reason, she stepped back from the
+window, and looked in the opposite direction towards the church; but
+she could see him when he came bounding past with his satchel of books
+under his arm, and she also knew that he saw her. He ran on, however,
+and going round the corner, where Orchard Row turned off at an angle
+out of Orchard Street, was out of sight in a moment.
+
+But Beth was satisfied. Indeed she was more than satisfied. She ran into
+the kitchen, and astonished Harriet by a burst of hilarious spirits, and
+a wild demand for food, for a duster, for a scrubbing-brush. She wanted
+to do a lot, and she was hungry.
+
+"You're fond, ah think," said Harriet dryly.
+
+"You're fond, too," Beth cried. "We're all fond! The fonder the
+better! And I must have something to eat."
+
+"Well, there's nothing for you but bread."
+
+"I must have meat," said Beth. "Rob the joint, and I'll not take any
+at dinner."
+
+"Ah'd tak' it w'eniver ah could get it, if ah was you," Harriet
+advised.
+
+"If you was or were me, you'd do as I do," said Beth; "and _I_ won't
+cheat. If I say I won't take it, I won't. I'm entitled to meat once a
+day, and I'll take my share now, please; but I won't take more than my
+share."
+
+"You'll be 'ungry again by dinner-time."
+
+"I know," said Beth. "But that won't make any difference."
+
+She got out the sirloin of beef which was to be roasted for dinner,
+deftly cut some slices off it, fried them with some cold potatoes, and
+ate them ravenously, helped by Harriet. When dinner-time came Beth was
+ravenous again, but she was faithful to her vow, and ate no meat.
+Harriet scoffed at her for her scrupulousness.
+
+The next day, at the same time, Beth was again in the window, waiting
+for her boy to come out of the Mansion-House School. When he appeared,
+the most delightful thrill shot through her. Her first impulse was to
+fly, but she conquered that and waited, watching him. He made straight
+for the window, and stopped in a business-like way; and then they
+laughed and looked into each other's faces.
+
+"What are you doing there?" he asked, as if he were accustomed to see
+her somewhere else.
+
+"I live here," she said.
+
+"I live in Orchard Row, last house," he rejoined.
+
+"Old Lee's?" Beth inquired.
+
+"Yes, he's my grandfather. I'm Sammy Lee."
+
+"He's a licensed victualler, retired," Beth repeated, drawing upon her
+excellent verbal memory.
+
+"Yes," said Sammy. "What's yours?"
+
+"I haven't one."
+
+"What's your father?"
+
+"He's dead too."
+
+"What was he?"
+
+"He was a gentleman."
+
+"A retired gentleman?"
+
+"No," said Beth, "an officer and a gentleman."
+
+"Oh," said Sammy. "My father's dead too. He was a retired gentleman."
+
+"What's a retired gentleman?" Beth asked.
+
+"Don't you know?" Sammy exclaimed. "I thought everybody knew that!
+When you make a fortune you retire from business. Then you're a
+retired gentleman."
+
+"But gentlemen don't go into business," Beth objected.
+
+"What do they do then?" Sammy retorted.
+
+"They have professions or property."
+
+"It's all the same," said Sammy.
+
+"It isn't," Beth contradicted.
+
+"Yah! _you_ don't know," said Sammy, laughing; and then he ran on,
+being late for his dinner.
+
+The discussion had been carried on with broad smiles, and when he left
+her, Beth hugged herself, and glowed again, and was glad in the
+thought of him. But it was not his conversation so much as his
+appearance that she dwelt upon--his round blue eyes, his bright fair
+curly hair, his rosy cheeks. "He is beautiful! he is beautiful!" she
+exclaimed; then added upon reflection, "_And I never thought a boy
+beautiful before._"
+
+The next day she was making rhymes about him in the acting-room, and
+forgot the time, so that she missed him in the morning; but when he
+left school in the afternoon she was at the window, and she saw him
+trotting up the street as hard as his little legs could carry him.
+
+"Where were you at dinner-time?" he said.
+
+"How funny!" she exclaimed in surprise and delight.
+
+"What's funny?" he demanded, looking about him vaguely.
+
+"You were wanting to see me."
+
+"Who told you so?" Sammy asked suspiciously.
+
+"You did yourself just now," Beth answered, her eyes dancing.
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"You _did_, Sammy."
+
+"You're a liar!" said Sammy Lee.
+
+"Sammy, that's rude," she exclaimed. "And it's not the way to speak to
+a young lady, and I won't have it."
+
+"Well, but I did _not_ tell you I wanted to see you at dinner-time,"
+Sammy retorted positively.
+
+"Yes, you did, stupid," said Beth. "You asked where I was at
+dinner-time, and then I knew you had missed me, and you wouldn't have
+missed me if you hadn't wanted to see me."
+
+"But," Sammy repeated with sulky obstinacy, unable to comprehend the
+delicate subtilty of Beth's perception,--"But I did not tell you."
+
+"Didn't you want to see me, then?" Beth said coaxingly, waiving the
+other point with tact.
+
+But Sammy, feeling shy at the question and vaguely aggrieved, looked
+up and down the street and kicked the pavement with his heel instead
+of answering.
+
+"I shall go, then," said Beth, after waiting for a little.
+
+"No, don't," he exclaimed, his countenance clearing. "I want to ask
+you--only you put it out of my head--gels do talk so."
+
+"Gels!" Beth exclaimed derisively. "I happen to be a girl."
+
+Sammy looked at her with a puzzled expression, and forgot what he was
+going to say. She diverted his attention, however, by asking him how
+old he was.
+
+"Eleven," Sammy answered promptly.
+
+"So am I. When were you eleven?"
+
+"The twentieth of February."
+
+"Oh, then you're older than me--March, April, May, June--four months.
+My birthday's in June. What do you do at school? Let's see your books.
+I wish _I_ went to school!"
+
+"Shu!" said Sammy. "What's the use of sending a gel to school? Gels
+can't learn."
+
+"So Jim says," Beth rejoined with an absence of conviction that roused
+Sammy.
+
+"All boys say so," he declared.
+
+"All boys are silly," said Beth. "What's the use of saying things?
+That doesn't make them true. You're as bad as Jim."
+
+"Who's Jim?" Sammy interrupted jealously.
+
+"Jim's my brother."
+
+Sammy, relieved, kicked his heel on the pavement.
+
+"Which is tallest?" he asked presently, "you or me?"
+
+"I'm tallest, I think," Beth answered; "but never mind. You're the
+fattest. I've grown long, and you've grown broad."
+
+"You're mighty sharp," said Sammy.
+
+"You're mighty blunt," said Beth. "And you'll be mighty late for tea,
+too. Look at the church-clock!"
+
+Sammy glanced up, then fled precipitately; and Beth, turning to leave
+the window, discovered Harriet standing in the background, grinning.
+
+"So you've getten a sweetheart!" she exclaimed. "There's nothing like
+beginning early."
+
+"So you've been listening again," Beth answered hotly. "Bad luck to
+you!"
+
+A few days later Mrs. Caldwell was sitting with Lady Benyon, who was
+in the bow-window as usual, looking out.
+
+"If I am not mistaken," said Lady Benyon suddenly, "there is a crowd
+collecting at your house."
+
+"What! again?" Mrs. Caldwell groaned, jumping up.
+
+"If I'm not mistaken," Lady Benyon repeated.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell hurried off without even waiting to shake hands. On
+getting into the street, however, she was relieved to find that Lady
+Benyon had been mistaken. There was no crowd collecting in Orchard
+Street, but, as she approached her own house, she became aware of a
+small boy at the drawing-room window talking to some one within, whom
+she presently discovered to be Beth.
+
+"What are you doing there, Beth?" she demanded severely. "Who is this
+boy?"
+
+Beth started. "Sammy Lee," she gasped. "Mr. Lee's grandson at the end
+of Orchard Row."
+
+"Why are you talking to him?" her mother asked harshly. "I won't have
+you talking to him. Who will you scrape acquaintance with next?" Then
+she turned to Sammy, who stood shaking in his shoes, with all the rosy
+colour faded from his fair fat cheeks, too frightened to stir. "Go
+away," said Mrs. Caldwell, "you've no business here talking to my
+daughter, and I won't allow it."
+
+Sammy sidled off, not daring to turn his back full till he was at a
+safe distance, lest he should be seized from behind and shaken. He was
+not a heroic figure in retreat, but Beth, in her indignation, noted
+nothing but the insult that had been offered him. For several days,
+when her mother was out, she watched and waited for him, anxious to
+atone; but Sammy kept to the other side of the road, and only cast
+furtive smiles at her as he ran by. It never occurred to Beth that he
+was less valiant than she was, or less willing to brave danger for her
+sake than she was for his. She thought he was keeping away for fear of
+getting her into trouble; and she beckoned to him again and again in
+order to explain that she did not care; but he only fled the faster.
+Then Beth wrote him a note. It was the first she had ever written
+voluntarily, and she shut herself up in the acting-room to compose it,
+in imitation of Aunt Grace Mary, whose beautiful delicate handwriting
+she always did her best to copy--with very indifferent success,
+however, for the connection between her hand and her head was
+imperfect. She could compose verses and phrases long before she could
+commit them to paper intelligibly; and it was not the composition of
+her note to Sammy that troubled her, but her bad writing. She made a
+religious ceremony of the effort, praying fervently, "Lord, let me
+write it well." Every day she presented a miscellaneous collection of
+petitions to the Lord, offering them up as the necessity arose, being
+in constant communication with Him. When she wanted to go out, she
+asked for fine weather; when she did not want to go out, she prayed
+that it might rain. She begged that she might not be found out when
+she went poaching on Uncle James's fields; that she might be allowed
+to catch something; that new clothes might be sent her from somewhere,
+she felt so ashamed in her dirty old shabby ones. She asked for boots
+and shoes and gloves, and for help with her lessons; and, when she had
+no special petition to offer, she would ejaculate at intervals, "Lord,
+send me good luck!" But, however great the variety of her daily wants,
+one prayer went up with the others always, "Lord, let me write well!"
+meaning, let me write a good hand; yet her writing did not improve,
+and she was much disheartened about it. She took the Lord into her
+confidence on the subject very frankly. When she had been naughty, and
+was not found out and punished, she thanked Him for His goodness; but
+why would He not let her write well? She asked Him the question again
+and again, lifting her grey eyes to the grey sky pathetically; and all
+the time, though she never suspected it, she was learning to write
+more than well, but in a very different sense of the word.
+
+Her note to Sammy was as follows:--
+
+     DEAR SAMMY,--Come and talk to me. Do not be afrade. I do
+     not mind rows, being always in them. And she can't do
+     anything to you. I miss you. I want to tell you things.
+     Such nice things keep coming to me. They make me feel all
+     comfortable inside. I looked out of the window in the
+     dark last night. There was a frost. The sky was dark dark
+     blue like sailor's suits only bright and the stars looked
+     like holes bored in the floor of heaven to let the light
+     through. It was so white and bright it must have been the
+     light of heaven. I never saw such light on earth.
+     Sunshine is more buffy. Do come Sammy I want you so Beth.
+     P.S. I can't stop right yet; but I'm trying. It seems
+     rather difficult to stop: but nobody can write without
+     stops. I always look at stops in books when I read but
+     sometimes you put a coma and sometimes a semicollon. I
+     expect you know but I don't so you must teach me. Its so
+     nice writing things down. Come to the back gait tonight.
+
+When the letter was written in queer, crabbed characters, on one side
+of a half-sheet of paper, then folded so that she could write the
+address on the other side, because she had no envelope--she wondered
+how she should get it delivered. There was a coolness between her and
+Harriet. Beth resented the coarse insinuation about having a
+sweetheart, and shrank from hearing any more remarks of a like nature
+on the subject. And she couldn't send the letter by post because she
+had no stamp. Should she lay it on his doorstep. No, somebody else
+might get it. How then? She was standing on her own doorstep with the
+letter in her pocket when she asked herself the question, and just at
+the moment Sammy himself appeared, coming back from school. Quick as
+thought, Beth ran across the road, whipped out the letter and gave it
+to him. Sammy stood still in astonishment with his mouth open, gazing
+at it when he found it in his hand, as if he could not imagine how it
+got there.
+
+As soon as it was dark, Beth stationed herself at the back gate, which
+looked out into Orchard Street, and waited and waited, but Sammy did
+not come. He had not been able to get out; that was it--she was sure
+of it; yet still she waited, although the evening was very cold. Her
+mother and Aunt Victoria had gone to dine with Lady Benyon. She did
+not know what Harriet was doing, but she had disposed of Bernadine
+for some time to come by lending her her best picture-book to daub
+with paint; so it was pretty safe to wait; and at first the hope of
+seeing Sammy come running round the corner was pleasure enough. As the
+time went on, however, she became impatient, and at last she ventured
+a little way up the street, then a little farther, and then she ran on
+boldly into Orchard Row. As she approached the Lees' back-gate, she
+became aware of a round thing that looked like a cannon-ball glued to
+the top, and her fond heart swelled, for she knew it must be Sammy's
+head.
+
+"O Sammy! why didn't you come?" she cried.
+
+"I didn't like," said Sammy.
+
+"I've been waiting for hours," Beth expostulated with gentle reproach.
+
+"So have I, and it's cold," said Sammy disconsolately.
+
+"Come now. She's out," Beth coaxed.
+
+"So she was the other day," Sammy reminded her.
+
+"But we'll go into the garden. She can't catch us there. It's too
+dark."
+
+Sammy, half persuaded, ventured out from the gateway, then hesitated.
+
+"But is it _very_ dark?" he said.
+
+"Not so very, when you're used to it," Beth answered. "But it's nice
+when it's dark. You can fancy you see things. Come! run!" She seized
+his hand as she spoke, and set off, and Sammy, overborne by the
+stronger will, kept pace with her.
+
+"But I don't want to see things," he protested, trying to hold back
+when they came to the dark passage which led into the garden.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Sammy," said Beth, dragging him on. "I believe
+you're a girl."
+
+"I'm not," said Sammy indignantly.
+
+"Then come and sit on the see-saw."
+
+"Oh, have you a see-saw?" he asked, immediately diverted.
+
+"Yes--this way--under the pear-tree. It's a swing, you know, tied to
+the branch, and I put this board across it. I pulled the board up out
+of the floor of the wood-house. Do you like see-sawing?"
+
+"Yes," said Sammy with animation.
+
+"Catch hold, then," said Beth, tipping up the board at her end. "What
+are you doing, butter-fingers?" she cried, as Sammy failed to catch
+hold. "I'm sorry I said you were a girl. You're much too clumsy."
+
+She held the board until Sammy got astride of it at one end, then she
+bestrode it herself at the other, and started it with a vigorous kick
+on the ground. Up and down they went, shaking showers of leaves from
+the old tree, and an occasional winter pear, which fell with a thud,
+being hard and heavy.
+
+"Golly! this is fine!" Sammy burst out. "I say, Beth, what a jolly
+sort of a girl you are!"
+
+"Do you think so?" said Beth, amply rewarded for all her trouble.
+
+"Yes. And you _can_ write a letter! My! What a time it must 'a' took
+you! But, I say, it's all rot about stops, you know. Stops is things
+in books. _You'd_ never learn stops."
+
+"How do you know?" Beth demanded, bridling.
+
+"Men write books," said Sammy, proud of his sex, "not women, let alone
+gels!"
+
+"That's all you know about it, then!" cried Beth, better informed.
+"Women _do_ write books, and girls too. Jane Austen wrote books, and
+Maria Edgeworth wrote books, and Fanny Burney wrote a book when she
+was only seventeen, called 'Evelina' and all the great men read it."
+
+"Oh!" said Sammy, jeering, "so you're as clever as they are, I
+suppose!"
+
+Sammy was up in the air as he spoke; the next moment he came down bump
+on the ground.
+
+"There," said Beth, "that'll teach you. You be rude again if you
+dare."
+
+"I'll not come near you again, spit-cat," cried Sammy, picking himself
+up.
+
+"I know you won't," Beth rejoined. "You daren't. You're afraid."
+
+"Who's afraid?" said Sammy, blustering.
+
+"Sammy Lee," said Beth. "Oh, Sammy Lee's afraid of me, riding the
+see-saw under the tree."
+
+"I say, Beth," said Sammy, much impressed, "did you make that
+yourself?"
+
+"Make what myself? Make you afraid? Yes, I did."
+
+"No, you didn't," said Sammy, plucking up spirit. "I'm not afraid."
+
+"Then don't be a fool," said Beth.
+
+"Fool yourself," Sammy muttered, but not very valiantly.
+
+The church-clock struck nine. They were standing about, Beth not
+knowing what to do next, and Sammy waiting for her to suggest
+something; and in the meantime the night became colder and the
+darkness more intense.
+
+"I think I'd better take you home," Beth said at last. "Here, give me
+your hand."
+
+She dragged him out of the garden in her impetuous way, and they
+scampered off together to Orchard Row, and when they reached the
+Lees' house they were so warmed and cheered by the exercise that they
+parted from each other in high good-humour.
+
+"I'll come again," said Sammy.
+
+"Do!" said Beth, giving him a great push that sent him sprawling up
+the passage. This was the kind of attention he understood, so he went
+to bed satisfied.
+
+There was only one great interest in life for the people at
+Rainharbour. Their religion gave them but cold comfort; their labour
+was arduous and paid them poorly; they had no books, no intellectual
+pursuits, no games to take them out of themselves, nothing to expand
+their hearts as a community. There were the races, the fair, and the
+hirings for excitement, but of pleasure such as satisfies because it
+is soul-sustaining and continuous enough to be part of their lives,
+they knew nothing. The upper classes were idle, self-satisfied,
+selfish, and sensual; the lower were industrious enough, but ignorant,
+superstitious, and depressed. The gentry gave themselves airs of
+superiority, really as if their characters were as good as their
+manners; but they did not impose upon the people, who despised them
+for their veneer. Each class displayed its contempt for the other
+openly when it could safely do so, but was ready to cringe when it
+suited its own convenience, the workers for employment, and the gentry
+for political purposes. But human beings are too dependent on each
+other for such differences to exist without detriment to the whole
+community. Society must cohere if it is to prosper; individuals help
+themselves most, in the long run, when they consider each other's
+interests. At Rainharbour nothing was done to promote general good
+fellowship; the kind of Christianity that was preached there made no
+mention of the matter, and society was disintegrated, and would have
+gone to pieces altogether but for the one great interest in life--the
+great primitive interest which consists in the attraction of sex to
+sex. The subject of sweethearts was always in the air. The minds of
+boys and girls, youths and maidens, men and women were all full of it;
+but it was not often openly discussed as a pleasant topic--in fact,
+not much mentioned at all except for fault-finding purposes; for it
+was the custom to be censorious on the subject, and naturally those
+were most so who knew most about it, like the vicar, who had married
+four times. He was so rabid that he almost went the length of
+denouncing men and maidens by name from the pulpit if he caught them
+strolling about together in pairs. His mind was so constituted that he
+could not believe their dalliance to be innocent, and yet he did not
+try to introduce any other interest or pleasure into their lives to
+divert them from the incessant pursuit of each other.
+
+It was the grown-up people who were so nasty on the subject of
+sweethearts; the boys and girls never could understand why. Their own
+inclination was to go about together openly in the most public places;
+that was how they understood sweethearting; part of the pleasure of it
+consisted in other people seeing them, and knowing that they were
+sweethearts, and smiling upon them sympathetically. This, however, the
+grown-up people never did; on the contrary, they frowned and jeered;
+and so the boys and girls kept out of their way, and sought secret
+sympathy from each other.
+
+Any little boy at the Mansion-House School who secured a sweetheart
+enjoyed a proud distinction, and Sammy soon found that his
+acquaintance with Beth placed him in quite an enviable position. He
+therefore let his fear of Mrs. Caldwell lapse, and did his best to be
+seen with Beth as much as possible. And to her it was a surprise as
+well as a joy to find him hanging about, waiting to have a word with
+her. Her mother's treatment of her had so damaged her self-respect
+that she had never expected anybody to care for her particularly, and
+Sammy's attentions, therefore, were peculiarly sweet. She did not
+consider the position at all, however. There are subjects about which
+we think, and subjects upon which we feel, and the two are quite
+distinct and different. Beth felt on the subject of Sammy. The fact of
+his having a cherubic face made her feel nice inside her chest--set up
+a glow there which warmed and brightened her whole existence--a glow
+which never flickered day or night, except in Sammy's presence, when
+it went out altogether more often than not; only to revive, however,
+when the real Sammy had gone and the ideal Sammy returned to his place
+in her bosom. For Sammy adored at a distance and Sammy within range of
+criticism were two very different people. Sammy adored at a distance
+was all-ready response to Beth's fine flights of imagination; but
+Sammy on the spot was dull. He was seldom on the spot, however, so
+that Beth had ample leisure to live on her love undisturbed, and her
+mind became extraordinarily active. Verse came to her like a
+recollection. On half-holidays they sometimes went for a walk together
+over the wild wide waste of sand when the tide was out, and she would
+rhyme to herself the whole time; but she seldom said anything to
+Sammy. So long as he was silent he was a source of inspiration--that
+is to say, her feeling for him was inspiring; but when she tried to
+get anything out of him, they generally squabbled.
+
+Beth lived her own life at this time almost entirely. Since that
+startling threat of rebellion, her mother had been afraid to beat her
+lest she should strike back; scolding only made her voluble, and Mrs.
+Caldwell never thought of trying to manage her in the only way
+possible, by reasoning with her and appealing to her better nature.
+There was, therefore, but one thing for her mother to do in order to
+preserve her own dignity, and that was to ignore Beth. Accordingly,
+when the perfunctory lessons were over in the morning, Beth had her
+day to herself. She began it generally by practising for at least an
+hour by the church-clock, and after that she had a variety of pursuits
+which she preferred to follow alone if Sammy were at school, because
+then there was no one to interrupt her thoughts. When the larder was
+empty, she became Loyal Heart the Trapper, and would wander off to
+Fairholm to set snares or catapult anything she could get near. The
+gun she had found impracticable, because she was certain to have been
+seen out with it; her snares, if they were found, were supposed to
+have been set by poachers. She herself was known to every one on the
+estate, and was therefore sure of respect, no matter who saw her; even
+Uncle James himself would have let her alone had they met, as he was
+of her mother's opinion, that it was safer to ignore her than to
+attempt to control her. The snares, although of the most primitive
+kind, answered the purpose. The great difficulty was how to get the
+game home; but that she also managed successfully, generally by
+returning after dark. Her mother, concluding that she owed whatever
+came to Aunt Grace Mary's surreptitious kindness, said nothing on the
+subject except to Beth, whom she supposed to be Aunt Grace Mary's
+agent; but she very much enjoyed every addition to her monotonous
+diet, especially when Beth did the cooking. In fact, had it not been
+for Loyal Heart, the family would have pretty nearly starved that
+winter, because of Jim, who had contracted debts like a man, which his
+mother had to pay.
+
+With regard to Beth's cooking, it is remarkable that, although Mrs.
+Caldwell herself had suffered all through her married life for want of
+proper training in household matters, she never attempted to have her
+own daughters better taught. On the contrary, she had forbidden Beth
+to do servant's work, and objected most strongly to her cooking, until
+she found how good it was, and even then she thought it due to her
+position only to countenance it under protest. The extraordinary
+inefficiency of the good-old-fashioned-womanly woman as a wife on a
+small income, the silly pretences which showed her want of proper
+self-respect, and the ill-adjusted balance of her undeveloped mind
+which betrayed itself in petty inconsistencies, fill us with pity and
+surprise us, yet encourage us too by proving how right and wise we
+were to try our own experiments. If we had listened to advice and done
+as we were told, the woman's-sphere-is-home would have been as ugly
+and comfortless a place for us to-day as it used to be when Beth was
+forced by the needs of her nature to poach for diversion, cook for
+kindness, and clean, and fight, and pray, and lie, and love, in her
+brave struggle against the hard and stupid conditions of her
+life--conditions which were not only retarding the development, but
+threatening utterly to distort, if not actually to destroy, all that
+was best, most beautiful, and most wonderful in her character.
+
+Beth rather expected to get into difficulties eventually about the
+game, but she calculated that she would have a certain time to run
+before her head was snapped off, and during that time her mother would
+enjoy her good dinners and be the better for them, and she herself
+would enjoy the sport--facts which no amount of anger afterwards could
+alter. Since Mrs. Caldwell had washed her hands of Beth, they were
+beginning to be quite good friends. Sometimes her mother talked to her
+just as she would to anybody else; that is to say, with civility. She
+would say, "And what are you going to do to-day, Beth?" quite
+pleasantly, as though speaking to another grown-up person; and Beth
+would answer politely, and tell the truth if possible, instead of
+making some sulky evasion, as she had begun to do when there was no
+other way of keeping the peace. She was fearlessly honest by nature,
+but as she approached maturity, she lost her nerve for a time, and
+during that time she lied, on occasion, to escape a harrowing scene.
+She always despised herself for it, however, and therefore, as she
+grew stronger, she became her natural straightforward self again,
+only, if anything, all the more scrupulously accurate for the
+degrading experience. For she soon perceived that there is nothing
+that damages the character like the habit of untruth; the man or woman
+who makes a false excuse has already begun to deteriorate. If a census
+could be taken to establish the grounds upon which people are
+considered noble or ignoble, we should find it was in exact proportion
+to the amount of confidence that can be placed first of all in their
+sincerity, and then in their accuracy. Sincerity claims respect for
+character, accuracy estimation for ability; no high-minded person was
+ever insincere, and no fool was ever accurate.
+
+When the close season began, Beth left the plantations, and took to
+fishing in the sea. She would sit at the end of the pier in fine
+weather, baiting her hooks with great fat lob-worms she had dug up out
+of the sands at low tide, and watching her lines all by herself; or,
+if it were rough, she would fish in the harbour from the steps up
+against the wooden jetty, where the sailors hung about all day long
+with their hands in their pockets when the boats were in. Some of them
+would sit with her, all in a row, fishing too, and they would exchange
+bait with her, and give her good advice, while others stood behind
+looking on and listening. And as of old in Ireland she had fascinated
+the folk, so here again these great simple bearded men listened with
+wondering interest to her talk, and never answered at all as if they
+were speaking to a child. Beth heard some queer things, sitting down
+there by the old wooden jetty, fishing for anything she could catch,
+and she said some queer things too when the mood was upon her.
+
+Sometimes, when she wanted to be alone and think, she would go off to
+the rocks that appeared at low-water down behind the south pier, and
+fish there. She loved this spot; it was near to nature, yet not remote
+from the haunts of man. She sat there one afternoon, holding her line,
+and dreamily watching the fishing boats streaming across the bay, with
+their brown sails set to catch the fitful breeze which she could see
+making cat's-paws on the water far out, but could not feel, being
+sheltered from it by the old stone pier. The sea was glassy smooth,
+and lapped up the rocks, heaving regularly like the breast of a
+tranquil sleeper. Beth gazed at it until she was seized with a great
+yearning to lie back on its shining surface and be gently borne away
+to some bright eternity, where Sammy would be, and all her other
+friends. The longing became imperative. She rose from the rock she was
+sitting on, she raised her arms, her eyes were fixed. Then it was as
+if she had suddenly awakened. The impulse had passed, but she was all
+shaken by it, and shivered as if she were cold.
+
+Fortunately the fish were biting well that day. She caught two big
+dabs, four whitings, a small plaice, and a fine fat sole. The sole was
+a prize, indeed, and mamma and Aunt Victoria should have it for
+dinner. As she walked home, carrying the fish on a string, she met
+Sammy.
+
+"Where did you get those fish?" he asked.
+
+"Caught them," she answered laconically.
+
+"What! all by yourself? No! I don't believe it."
+
+"I did, all the same," she answered; "and now I'm going to cook
+them--some of them at least."
+
+"Yourself? Cook them yourself? No!" he cried in admiration. Cooking
+was an accomplishment he honoured.
+
+"If you'll come out after your tea, I'll leave the back-gate ajar, and
+you can slip into the wood-house; and I'll bring you a whiting on
+toast, all hot and brown."
+
+With such an inducement, Sammy was in good time. Beth found him
+sitting contentedly on a heap of sticks, waiting for the feast. She
+had brought the whiting out with a cover over it, hot and brown, as
+she had promised; and Sammy's mouth watered when he saw it.
+
+"What a jolly girl you are, Beth!" he exclaimed.
+
+But Beth was not so much gratified by the praise as she might have
+been. The vision and the dream were upon her that evening, her nerves
+were overwrought, and she was yearning for an outlet for ideas that
+oppressed her. She stood leaning against the door-post, biting a twig;
+restless, dissatisfied; but not knowing what she wanted.
+
+When Sammy had finished the whiting, he remembered Beth, and asked
+what she was thinking about.
+
+"I'm not thinking exactly," she answered, frowning intently in the
+effort to find expression for what she had in her consciousness.
+"Things come into my mind, but I don't think them, and I can't say
+them. They don't come in words. It's more like seeing them, you know,
+only you don't see them with your eyes, but with something inside
+yourself. Do you know what it is when you are fishing off the rocks,
+and there is no breaking of waves, only a rising and falling of the
+water; and it comes swelling up about you with a sort of sob that
+brings with it a whiff of fresh air every time, and makes you take in
+your breath with a sort of sob too, every time--and at last you seem
+to be the sea, or the sea seems to be you--it's all one; but you don't
+think it."
+
+Sammy looked at her in a blank, bewildered way. "I like it best when
+you tell stories, Beth," he said, under the impression that all this
+incomprehensible stuff was merely a display for his entertainment.
+"Come and sit down beside me and tell stories."
+
+"Stories don't come to me to-night," said Beth, with a tragic face.
+"Do you remember the last time we were on the sands--oh! I keep
+feeling--it was all so--_peaceful_, that was it. I've been wondering
+ever since what it was, and that was it--peaceful;
+
+    The quiet people,
+    The old church steeple;
+    The sandy reaches
+    Of wreck-strewn beaches--"
+
+"Who made that up?" said Sammy suspiciously.
+
+"I did," Beth answered offhand. "At least I didn't make it up, it just
+came to me. When I make it up it'll most likely be quite different.
+It's like the stuff for a dress, you know, when you buy it. You get it
+made up, and it's the same stuff, and it's quite different, too, in a
+way. You've got it put into shape, and it's good for something."
+
+"I don't believe you made it up," said Sammy doggedly. "You're
+stuffing me, Beth. You're always trying to stuff me."
+
+Beth, still leaning against the door-post, clasped her hands behind
+her head and looked up at the sky. "Things keep coming to me faster
+than I can say them to-night," she proceeded, paying no heed to his
+remark; "not things about you, though, because nothing goes with Sammy
+but jammy, clammy, mammy, and those aren't nice. I want things to
+come about you, but they won't. I tried last night in bed, and what do
+you think came again and again?
+
+        Yes, yes, that was his cry,
+        While the great clouds went sailing by;
+        Flashes of crimson on colder sky;
+        Like the thoughts of a summer's day,
+    Colour'd by love in a life which else were grey.
+
+But that isn't you, you know, Sammy. Then when I stopped trying for
+something about you, there came such a singing! What was it? It seems
+to have gone--and yet it's here, you know, it's all here," she
+insisted, with one hand on the top of her head, and the other on her
+chest, and her eyes straining; "and yet I can't get it."
+
+"Beth, don't get on like that," Sammy remonstrated. "You make me feel
+all horrid."
+
+"Make you feel," Beth cried in a deep voice, clenching her fists and
+shaking them at him, exasperated because the verses continued to elude
+her. "Don't you know what I'm here for? I'm here to make you feel. If
+you don't feel what I feel, then you _shall_ feel horrid, if I have to
+kill you."
+
+"Shut up!" said Sammy, beginning to be frightened. "I shall go away if
+you don't."
+
+"Go away, then," said Beth. "You're just an idiot boy, and I'm tired
+of you."
+
+Sammy's blue eyes filled with tears. He got down from the heap of
+sticks, intent on making his escape; but Beth changed her mind when
+she felt her audience melting away.
+
+"Where are you going?" she demanded.
+
+"I'm going home," he said deprecatingly. "I can't stay if you go on in
+that fool-fashion."
+
+"It isn't a fool-fashion," Beth rejoined vehemently. "It's you that's
+a fool. I told you so before."
+
+"If you wasn't a girl, I'd punch your 'ead," said Sammy, half afraid.
+
+"I believe you!" Beth jeered. "But you're not a girl, anyway." She
+flew at him as she spoke, caught him by the collar, kicked his shins,
+slapped his face, and drubbed him on the back.
+
+Sammy, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught, made no effort to defend
+himself, but just wriggled out of her grasp, and ran home, with great
+tears streaming down his round red cheeks, and sobs convulsing him.
+
+Beth's exasperation subsided the moment she was left alone in the
+wood-house. She sat down on the sticks, and looked straight before
+her, filled with remorse.
+
+"What shall I do? What shall I do?" she kept saying to herself. "Oh
+dear! oh dear! Sammy! Sammy! He's gone. I've lost him. _This is the
+most dreadful grief I have ever had in my life._"
+
+The moment she had articulated this full-blown phrase, she became
+aware of its importance. She repeated it to herself, reflected upon
+it, and was so impressed by it, that she got up, and went indoors to
+write it down. By the time she had found pencil and paper, she was the
+sad central figure of a great romance, full of the most melancholy
+incidents; in which troubled atmosphere she sat and suffered for the
+rest of the evening; but she did not think of Sammy again till she
+went to bed. Then, however, she was seized anew with the dread of
+losing him for ever, and cried helplessly until she fell asleep.
+
+For days she mourned for him without daring to go to the window, lest
+she should see him pass by on the other side of the road with scorn
+and contempt flashing forth from his innocent blue eyes. In the
+evening, however, she opened the back-gate, as usual, and waited in
+the wood-house; but he never came. And at first she was in despair.
+Then she became defiant--she didn't care, not she! Then she grew
+determined. He'd have to come back if she chose, she'd make him. But
+how? Oh, she knew! She'd just sit still till something came.
+
+She was sitting on a heap of beech branches opposite the doorway,
+picking off the bronze buds and biting them. The blanched skeleton of
+Sammy's whiting, sad relic of happier moments, grinned up at her from
+the earthen floor. Outside, the old pear-tree on the left, leafless
+now and motionless, showed distinctly in silhouette against the
+night-sky. Its bare branches made black bars on the face of the bright
+white moon which was rising behind it. What a strange thing time is!
+day and night, day and night, week and month, spring, summer, autumn,
+winter, always coming and going again, while we only come once, go,
+and return no more. It was getting on for Christmas now. Another year
+had nearly gone. The years slip away steadily--day by day--winter,
+spring. Winter so cold and wet; March all clouds and dust--comes in
+like a lion, goes out like a lamb; then April is bright.
+
+The year slips away steadily; slips round the steady year; days come
+and go--no, no! Days dawn and disappear, winters and springs--springs,
+rings, sings? No, leave that. Winter with cold and rain--pain? March
+storms and clouds and pain, till April once again light with it
+brings.
+
+Beth jumped down from the beech boughs, ran round to the old wooden
+pump, clambered up by it on to the back-kitchen roof, and made for the
+acting-room window. It was open, and she screwed herself in round the
+bar and fastened the door. It was quite dark under the sloping roof,
+but she found the end of a tallow candle, smuggled up there for the
+purpose, lighted it, and stuck it on to the top of the rough deal box
+which formed her writing-table. She had a pencil, sundry old envelopes
+carefully cut open so as to save as much of the clean space inside as
+possible, margins of newspapers, precious but rare half-sheets, and
+any other scrap of paper on which she could write, all carefully
+concealed in a hole in the roof, from which she tore the whole
+treasure now in her haste.
+
+"Winter, summer, Sammy," she kept saying to herself. "Autumn,
+autumn-tinted woods--my king--_Ministering Children_--ministering--king.
+Moon, noon. Story, glory. Ever, never, endeavour. Oh, I can do it! I
+can! I can! Slips round the steady year--"
+
+It took her some days to do it to her satisfaction, but they were days
+of delight, for the whole time she felt exactly as she had done when
+first she found Sammy. She had the same warm glow in her chest, the
+same sort of yearning, half anxious, half pleasant, wholly desirable.
+
+It was late in the evening when she finished, and she had to put her
+work away in a hurry, because her mother sent Harriet to tell her she
+must go to bed; but all night long she lay only half asleep, and all
+the time conscious of joy to come in the morning.
+
+She was up early, but had too much self-restraint to go to the
+acting-room till lessons were over. She was afraid of being disturbed
+and so having her pleasure spoilt. As soon as she could safely lock
+herself up, however, she took her treasure out. It was written on the
+precious half-sheets in queer little crabbed characters, very
+distinctly:--
+
+            Slips round the steady year,
+            Days dawn and disappear,
+              Winters and springs;
+            March storms and clouds and rain,
+            Till April once again
+              Light with it brings.
+
+            Then comes the summer song,
+            Birds in the woods prolong
+              Day into night.
+            Hot after tepid showers
+            Beats down this sun of ours,
+            Upward the radiant flowers
+              Look their delight.
+
+            O summer scents at noon!
+            O summer nights and moon!
+              Season of story.
+            Labour and love for ever
+            Strengthen each hard endeavour,
+            Now climb we up or never,
+              Upward to glory!
+
+            Winter and summer past,
+            Autumn has come at last,
+              Hope in its keeping.
+            Beauty of tinted wood,
+            Beauty of tranquil mood,
+            Harvest of earned good
+              Ripe for the reaping.
+
+            Thus on a torrid day
+            Slipped my fond thoughts away,
+              Book from thy pages.
+            Seasons of which I sing,
+            Are they not like, my king,
+            Thine own life's minist'ring
+              In all its stages?
+
+            First in the spring, I ween,
+            Were all thy powers foreseen--
+              Storms sowed renown.
+            Then came thy summer climb,
+            Then came thy golden-prime,
+            Then came thy harvest-time,
+              Bringing thy crown.
+
+When Beth had read these lines, she doubled the half sheets on which
+they were written, and put them in her pocket deliberately. She was
+sitting on the acting-room floor at the moment, near the window.
+
+"Now," she exclaimed, folding her delicate nervous hands on her lap,
+and looking up at the strip of sky above her, "now I shall be
+forgiven!"
+
+It was dark at this time when the boys left school in the evening, and
+Beth stood at the back-gate waiting to waylay Sammy. He came trotting
+along by himself, and saw her as he approached, but did not attempt to
+escape. On the contrary, he stopped, but he had nothing to say; the
+relief of finding her friendly again was too great for words. Had she
+looked out, she might have seen him any day since the event,
+bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked as usual, prowling about, anxious to
+obtain a reassuring smile from her on his way to and from school. It
+was not likely that he would lose the credit of being Beth Caldwell's
+sweetheart if he could help it, just because she beat him. Already he
+had suffered somewhat in prestige because he had not been seen with
+her so often lately; and he had been quite as miserable in his own
+way, under the impression that she meant to cast him off, as she had
+in hers.
+
+"Come in, Sammy," she cried, catching hold of his hand. "Come in, I've
+something to show you; but it's too cold to sit in the wood-house, and
+we can't have a light there either. Come up by the pump to the
+acting-room. I've fastened the door inside, and nobody can get in.
+Come! I'll show you the way."
+
+Sammy followed her obediently and in silence, although somewhat
+suspiciously as usual; but she piloted him safely, and, once in the
+acting-room, with the candle lighted, he owned that it was jolly.
+
+"Sammy, I _have_ been sorry," Beth began. "I've been quite miserable
+about--you know what. It was horrid of me."
+
+"I told you scratch-cats were horrid," said Sammy solemnly.
+
+"But I've done something to atone," Beth proceeded. "Something came to
+me all about you. You shall have it, Sammy, to keep. Just listen, and
+I'll read it."
+
+Sammy listened with his mouth and eyes open, but when she had done he
+shook his head. "You didn't make that up yourself," he said decidedly.
+
+"O Sammy! yes, I did," Beth protested, taken aback and much pained.
+
+"No, I don't believe you," said Sammy. "You got it out of a book.
+You're always trying to stuff me up."
+
+"I'm not stuffing you, Sammy," said Beth, suddenly flaming. "I made it
+myself, every word of it. I tell you it came to me. It's my own.
+_You've got to believe it._"
+
+Sammy looked about him. There was no escape by the door, because that
+led into the house, and Beth was between him and the window, with her
+brown hair dishevelled, and her big eyes burning.
+
+"Well," he said, a politic desire to conciliate struggling with an
+imperative objection to be stuffed, "of course you made it yourself if
+you say so. But it's all rot anyway."
+
+The words slipped out unawares, and the moment he uttered them he
+ducked his head: but nothing happened. Then he looked up at Beth, and
+found her gazing hard at him, and as she did so the colour gradually
+left her cheeks and the light went out of her eyes. Slowly she
+gathered up her papers and put them into the hole in the roof. Then
+she sat on one of the steps which led down into the room, but she said
+nothing.
+
+Sammy sat still in a tremor until the silence became too oppressive to
+be borne; then he fidgeted, then he got up, and looked longingly
+towards the window.
+
+"I shall be late," he ventured.
+
+Beth made no sign.
+
+"When shall I see you again?" he recommenced, deprecatingly. "Will you
+be at the back-gate to-morrow?"
+
+"No," she said shortly. "It's too cold to wait for you."
+
+"Then how shall I see you?" he asked, with a blank expression.
+
+Beth reflected. "Oh, just whistle as you pass," she said at last, in
+an offhand way, "and I'll come out if I feel inclined."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next evening Mrs. Caldwell was taking her accustomed nap after
+dinner in her arm-chair by the fire in the dining-room, and Beth was
+sitting at the table dreaming, when she was suddenly startled by a
+long, loud, shrill whistle. Another and another of the most piercing
+quality followed in quick succession. Swiftly but cautiously she
+jumped up, and slipped into the drawing-room, which was all in
+darkness. There were outside shutters to the lower windows, but the
+drawing-room ones were not closed, so she looked out, and there was
+Sammy, standing with his innocent fat face as close to the dining-room
+shutters as he could hold it, with his fingers in his mouth, uttering
+shrill whistles loud and long and hard and fast enough to rouse the
+whole neighbourhood. Beth, impatient of such stupidity, returned to
+the dining-room and sat down again, leaving Sammy to his fate.
+
+Presently Mrs. Caldwell started wide awake.
+
+"What _is_ that noise, Beth?" she exclaimed.
+
+"It seems to be somebody whistling outside," Beth answered in deep
+disgust. Then her exasperation got the better of her self-control, and
+she jumped up, and ran out to the kitchen.
+
+"Harriet," she said between her clenched teeth, "go out and send that
+silly fool away."
+
+Harriet hastened to obey; but at the opening of the front door, Sammy
+bolted.
+
+The next evening he began again, however, as emphatically as before;
+but Beth could not stand such imbecility a second time, so she ran out
+of the back-gate, and seized Sammy.
+
+"What are you doing there?" she cried, shaking him.
+
+"Why, you told me to whistle," Sammy remonstrated, much aggrieved.
+
+"Did I tell you to whistle like a railway engine?" Beth demanded
+scornfully. "You've no sense at all, Sammy. Go away!"
+
+"Oh, do let's come in, Beth," Sammy pleaded. "I've something to tell
+you."
+
+"What is it?" said Beth ungraciously.
+
+"I'll tell you if you'll let me come in."
+
+"Well, come then," Beth answered impatiently, and led the way up over
+the roof to the acting-room. "What is it?" she again demanded, when
+she had lighted a scrap of candle and seated herself on the steps. "I
+don't believe it's anything."
+
+"Yes, it is, so there!" said Sammy triumphantly. "But I'll lay you
+won't guess what it is. Mrs. Barnes has got a baby."
+
+Mrs. Barnes was the wife of the head-master of the Mansion-House
+School, and all the little boys, feeling that there was more in the
+event than had been explained to them, were vaguely disgusted.
+
+"I don't call that anything," Beth answered contemptuously. "Lots of
+people have babies."
+
+"Well," said Sammy, "I wouldn't have thought it of him."
+
+"Thought what of whom?" Beth snapped in a tone which silenced Sammy.
+He ventured to laugh, however.
+
+"Don't laugh in that gigantic way, Sammy," she exclaimed, still more
+irritated. "When you throw back your head and open your mouth so wide,
+I can see you have no wisdom-teeth."
+
+"You're always nasty now, Beth," Sammy complained.
+
+Which was true. Love waning becomes critical. Beth's own feeling for
+Sammy had been a strong mental stimulant at first, and, in her
+enjoyment of it, she had overlooked all his shortcomings. There was
+nothing in him, however, to keep that feeling alive, and it had
+gradually died of inanition. His slowness and want of imagination
+first puzzled and then provoked her; and, little-boy-like, he had not
+even been able to respond to such tenderness as she showed him--not
+that she had ever showed him much tenderness, for they were just like
+boys together. She had kissed him, however, once or twice, after a
+quarrel, to make it up; but she did not like kissing him: little boys
+are rank. His pretty colouring was all that he had had to attract her,
+and that, alas! had lost its charm by this time. For a little longer
+she looked out for him and troubled about him, then let him go
+gradually--so gradually, that she never knew when exactly he lapsed
+from her life altogether.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+For two years after Beth was outlawed by her mother, Great-Aunt
+Victoria Bench was her one link with the civilised world. The intimacy
+had lapsed a little while Sammy was the prevailing human interest in
+Beth's life, but gradually as he ceased to be satisfactory, she
+returned to the old lady, and hovered about her, seeking the
+sustenance for which her poor little heart ached on always, and for
+want of which her busy brain ran riot; and the old lady, who had not
+complained of Beth's desertion, welcomed her back in a way which
+showed that she had felt it.
+
+For Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was lonely in the days of her poverty
+and obscurity. Since the loss of her money, there had been a great
+change in the attitude of most of her friends towards her, and such
+attentions as she received were of a very different kind from those to
+which she had been accustomed. Mrs. Caldwell had been the most
+generous to her, for at the time that she had offered Aunt Victoria a
+home in her house, she had not known that the old lady would be able
+to pay her way at all. Fortunately Aunt Victoria had enough left for
+that, but still her position in Mrs. Caldwell's house was not what it
+would have been had she not lost most of her means. Mrs. Caldwell was
+not aware of the fact, but her manner had insensibly adjusted itself
+to Aunt Victoria's altered circumstances, her care and consideration
+for her being as much reduced in amount as her income; and Aunt
+Victoria felt the difference, but said nothing. Slowly and painfully
+she learnt to realise that it was for what she had had to bestow, and
+not for what she was, that people used to care; they had served her as
+they served their God, in the hope of reaping a rich reward. Like many
+other people with certain fine qualities of their own, Aunt Victoria
+knew that there was wickedness in the outside world, but never
+suspected that her own immediate circle, the nice people with whom she
+talked pleasantly every day, could be tainted; and the awakening to
+find that her friends cared less disinterestedly for her than she did
+for them was a cruel disillusion. Her first inclination was to fly far
+from them all, and spend the rest of her days amongst strangers who
+could not disappoint her because she would have nothing to expect of
+them, and who might perhaps come to care for her really. Long hours
+she sat and suffered, shut up in her room, considering the matter,
+yearning to go, but restrained by the fear that, as an old woman, she
+would be unwelcome everywhere. In Aunt Victoria's day old people were
+only too apt to be selfish, tyrannical, narrow, and ignorant, a terror
+to their friends; and they were nearly always ill, the old men from
+lives of self-indulgence, and the old women from unwholesome restraint
+of every kind. Now we are beginning to ask what becomes of the
+decrepit old women, there are so few to be seen. This is the age of
+youthful grandmothers, capable of enjoying a week of their lives more
+than their own grandmothers were able to enjoy the whole of their
+declining years; their vitality is so much greater, their appearance
+so much better preserved; their knowledge so much more extensive,
+their interests so much more varied, and their hearts so much larger.
+Aunt Victoria nowadays would have struck out for herself in a new
+direction. She would have gone to London, joined a progressive
+women's club, made acquaintance with work of some kind or another, and
+never known a dull moment; for she would have been a capable woman had
+any one of her faculties been cultivated to some useful purpose; but
+as it was, she had nothing to fall back upon. She was just like a
+domestic animal, like a dog that has become a member of the family,
+and is tolerated from habit even after it grows old, and because
+remarks would be made if it were put out of the way before its time;
+and she had been content with the position so long as much was made of
+her. Now, however, all too late, a great yearning had seized upon her
+for an object in life, for some pursuit, some interest that would
+remain to her when everything else was lost; and she prayed to God
+earnestly that He would show her where to go and what to do, or give
+her something--something which at last resolved itself into something
+to live for.
+
+Then one day there came a little resolute tap at the door, and Beth
+walked in without waiting to be asked, and seeing in a moment with
+that further faculty of hers into the old lady's heart that it was
+sad, she went to her impulsively, and laid her unkempt brown head
+against her arm in an awkward caress, which touched the old lady to
+tears. Beth was lonely too, thought Aunt Victoria, a strange, lonely
+little being, neglected, ill-used, and misunderstood, and the question
+flashed through the old lady's mind, if she left the child, what would
+become of her? The tangled brown head, warm against her arm, nestled
+nearer, and Aunt Victoria patted it protectingly.
+
+"Do you want anything, Beth?" she asked.
+
+"No, Aunt Victoria. I just wanted to see you. I was lying on the
+see-saw board, looking up through the leaves, and I suddenly got a
+fancy that you were here all by yourself, and that you didn't like
+being all by yourself. _I_ feel like that sometimes. So I came to see
+you."
+
+"Thank you, Beth," said Aunt Victoria, with her hand still on Beth's
+head as if she were blessing her; and when she had spoken she looked
+up through the window, and silently thanked the Lord. This was the
+sign. He had committed Beth to her care and affection, and she was not
+to think of herself, but of the child, whose need was certainly the
+greater of the two.
+
+"Have you nothing to do, Beth?" she said after a pause.
+
+"No, Aunt Victoria," Beth answered drearily--"at least there are
+plenty of things I could do, but everything I think of makes me
+shudder. I feel so sometimes. Do you? There isn't a single thing I
+want to do to-day. I've tried one thing after the other, but I can't
+think about what I'm doing. Sometimes I like to sit still and do
+nothing; but to-day I don't even like that. I think I should like to
+be asked to do something. If I could do something for you
+now--something to help you----"
+
+"Well, you can, Beth," Aunt Victoria answered, after sitting rigidly
+upright for a moment, blinking rapidly. "Help me to unpick an old
+gown. I am going to make another like it, and want it unpicked for a
+pattern."
+
+"Can you make a gown?" Beth asked in surprise.
+
+Aunt Victoria smiled. Then she took down an old black gown that was
+hanging behind the door, and handed it to Beth with a pair of sharp
+scissors.
+
+"I'll undo the body part," Beth said, "and that will save your eyes. I
+don't think this gown owes you much."
+
+"I do not understand that expression, Beth," said Aunt Victoria.
+
+"Don't you," said Beth, working away with the scissors cheerfully.
+"Harriet always says that, when she's got all the good there is to be
+got out of anything--the dusters, you know, or the dishcloth. I once
+did a piece of unpicking like this for mamma, and she didn't explain
+properly, or something--at all events, I took out a great deal too
+much, so she----"
+
+"Don't call your mamma 'she.' 'She' is the cat."
+
+"Mamma, then. Mamma beat me."
+
+"Don't say she beat you."
+
+"I said mamma."
+
+"Well, don't talk about your mamma beating you. That is not a nice
+thing to talk about."
+
+"It's not a nice thing to do either," said Beth judicially. "And I
+never used to talk about it; didn't like to, you know. But now
+she--mamma--doesn't beat me any more--at least only sometimes when she
+forgets."
+
+"Ah, then, you have been a better girl."
+
+"No, not better--bigger. You see if I struck her back again she
+wouldn't like it."
+
+"Beth! Beth! strike your mother!"
+
+"That was the danger," said Beth, in her slow, distinct, imperturbable
+way. "One day she made me so angry I very nearly struck her, and I
+told her so. That made her look queer, I can tell you. And she's never
+struck me since--except in a half-hearted sort of way, or when she
+forgot, and that didn't count, of course. But I think I know now how
+it was she used to beat me. I did just the same thing myself one day.
+I beat Sammy----"
+
+"Who is Sammy?" said Aunt Victoria, looking over her spectacles.
+
+"Sammy Lee, you know."
+
+Aunt Victoria recollected, and felt she should improve the occasion,
+but was at a loss for a moment what to say. She was anxious above
+everything that Beth should talk to her freely, for how could she help
+the child if she did not know all she had in her mind? It is upon the
+things they are never allowed to mention that children brood
+unwholesomely.
+
+"I thought that you were not allowed to know Sammy Lee," she finally
+observed.
+
+"No more I was," Beth answered casually.
+
+"Yet you knew him all the same?" Aunt Victoria ventured reproachfully.
+
+"Aunt Victoria," said Beth, "did the Lord die for Sammy?"
+
+"Ye--yes," said Aunt Victoria, hesitating, not because she doubted the
+fact, but because she did not know what use Beth would make of it.
+
+"Then why can't _I_ know him?" Beth asked.
+
+"Oh, be--because Sammy does not live as if he were grateful to the
+Lord."
+
+"If he did, would he be a gentleman?" Beth asked.
+
+"Yes," Aunt Victoria answered decidedly.
+
+Beth stopped snipping, and looked at her as if she were looking right
+through her, and out into the world beyond. Then she pursed up her
+mouth and shook her head.
+
+"That won't hold water," she said. "If a man must live like the Lord
+to be a gentleman, what is Uncle James? And if living like the Lord
+makes a man a gentleman, why don't we call on old Job Fisher?"
+
+Aunt Victoria began to fear that the task she had undertaken would
+prove too much for her. "It is hard, very hard," she muttered.
+
+"Well, never mind," said Beth, resuming her work. "When I grow up I
+mean to write about things like that. But what were we talking about?
+Oh, beating Sammy. I did feel bad after I beat him, and I vowed I'd
+never do it again however tiresome he was, and I never did. It makes
+it easier if you vow. It's just as if your hands were tied then. I'd
+like to tell mamma to try it, only she'd be sure to get waxy. You tell
+her, Aunt Victoria."
+
+Aunt Victoria made some reply which was lost in the noise of vehicles
+passing in the street, followed by the tramp of many feet and a great
+chattering. An excursion train had just arrived, and the people were
+pouring into the place. Beth ran to the window and watched them.
+
+"More confounded trippers," she ejaculated. "They spoil the summer,
+swarming everywhere."
+
+"Beth, I wish, to please me, you would make another vow. Don't say
+'confounded trippers.'"
+
+"All right, Aunt Victoria. Jim says it. But I know all the bad words in
+the language were made for the men. I suppose because they have all the
+bad thoughts, and do all the bad things. I shall say 'objectionable
+excursionists' in future." She went to the door. "I'm just going to get
+something," she said. "You won't go away now, will you? I shall be a
+minute or two, but I want you to be here when I come back. I shall be
+wild if you're not."
+
+She banged the door after her and ran downstairs.
+
+Aunt Victoria looked round the room; it no longer seemed the same
+place to her. Beth's cheerful chatter had already driven away the evil
+spirit of dejection, and taken the old lady out of herself. Untidy
+child! She had left her work on the floor, her scissors on the bed,
+disarranged the window-curtain, and upset a chair. If she would not do
+any more unpicking when she returned, she must be made to put things
+straight. There was one little easy-chair in the room. Aunt Victoria
+sat down in it, a great piece of self-indulgence for her at that time
+of day, folded her hands, and closed her weary old eyes just to give
+them a rest, while a nice little look of content came into her face,
+which it was good to see there.
+
+When she opened her eyes again, Beth was setting a tray on a tiny
+table beside her.
+
+"I think you've been having a nap, Miss Great-Aunt Victoria Bench,"
+she said. "Now, have some tea! and buttered toast!!"
+
+"O Beth!" cried the old lady, beaming. "How could you--at this time of
+day? Well, to please you. It is quite delicious. So refreshing. What,
+another piece of toast! Must I take another?"
+
+"You must take it all," said Beth. "I made it for you. I do like doing
+things for you, Aunt Victoria. It makes me feel nice all over. I'll
+just unpick a little more. Then I'll tidy up."
+
+"You're a good child to think of that," said Aunt Victoria. "I did not
+think you would."
+
+"Didn't you?" said Beth. "How funny! But I like things tidy. I often
+tidy up."
+
+"I--I suppose Harriet says tidy up," the old lady observed gently, not
+liking to be censorious at this happy moment of relaxation, but still
+anxious to do her duty. Beth understood her perfectly and smiled.
+
+"I like you to tell me when I say things wrong," she said; "and I like
+to know how Harriet talks too. You can't write if you don't know how
+every one talks."
+
+"What are you going to write?" Aunt Victoria asked, taking up another
+piece of buttered toast.
+
+"Oh, books," Beth answered casually.
+
+"Write something soul-sustaining then, Beth," said Aunt Victoria. "Try
+to make all you say soul-sustaining. And never use a word you would be
+ashamed to hear read aloud."
+
+"You mean like those things they read in church?" said Beth. "I don't
+think I ever could use such words. When Mr. Richardson comes close to
+them, I get hot all over and hate him. But I promise you, Aunt
+Victoria, I will never write anything worse than there is in the
+Bible. There's a man called Ruskin who writes very well, they say, and
+he learnt how to do it from reading the Bible. His mother taught him
+when he was a little boy, just as you taught me. I always read the
+Bible--search the Scriptures--every day. You say it's a sacred book,
+don't you, Aunt Victoria? Harriet says it's smutty."
+
+"Says _what_?" Aunt Victoria exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in her
+horror. "What does she mean by such an expression?"
+
+"Oh, she just means stories like Joseph and Potiphar's wife, David and
+Bathsheba, Susanna and the elders."
+
+"My _dear_ child!" Aunt Victoria gasped.
+
+"Well, Aunt Victoria, they're all in the Bible, at least Susanna and
+the elders isn't. That's in the Apocrypha."
+
+Aunt Victoria sat silent a considerable time. At last she said
+solemnly: "Beth, I want you to promise me one thing solemnly, and that
+is that all your life long, whatever may be before you, whatever it
+may be your lot to learn, you will pray to God to preserve your
+purity."
+
+"What is purity?" said Beth.
+
+Aunt Victoria hesitated: "It's a condition of the mind which keeps us
+from ever doing or saying anything we should be ashamed of," she
+finally decided.
+
+"But what kind of things?" Beth asked.
+
+Unfortunately Aunt Victoria was not equal to the occasion. She blinked
+her eyes very hard, sipped some tea, and left Beth to find out for
+herself, according to custom.
+
+"We must only talk about nice things," she said.
+
+"Well, I shouldn't care to talk nastily about people as Lady Benyon
+does sometimes," Beth rejoined.
+
+"But, my dear child, that is not a nice thing to say about Lady
+Benyon."
+
+"Isn't it?" said Beth, then added: "Oh dear, how funny things are!"
+meaning how complicated.
+
+"Where did you get this tea, Beth?" said Aunt Victoria. "It is very
+good, and I feel so much the better for it."
+
+"I thought you wanted something," said Beth. "Your face went all
+queer. That means people want something. I got the tea out of the
+store-cupboard. It has a rotten lock. If you shake it, it comes
+open."
+
+"But what does your mamma say?"
+
+"Oh, she never notices. Or, if she does, she thinks she left it open
+herself. Harriet has a little sometimes. She takes it because she says
+mamma should allow her a quarter of a pound of dry tea a week, so it
+isn't stealing. And I took it for you because you pay to live here, so
+you're entitled to the tea. I don't take it for myself, of course. But
+I'm afraid I oughtn't to have told you about Harriet. I'm so sorry. It
+slipped out. It wasn't sneaking. But I trust to your honour, Aunt
+Victoria. If you sneaked on Harriet, I could never trust you again,
+now could I?" She got up as she spoke, folded her work, picked up the
+chair, arranged the window-curtain, moved the tray, and put the table
+back in its place, at the same time remarking: "I shall take these
+things downstairs now, and go for a run."
+
+She left Aunt Victoria with much to reflect upon. The glimpse she had
+accidentally given the old lady of Harriet's turpitude had startled
+her considerably. Mrs. Caldwell had always congratulated herself on
+having such a quiet respectable person in the house as Harriet to look
+after Beth, and now it appeared that the woman was disreputable both
+in her habits and her conversation, the very last person whom a girl,
+even of such strongly marked individuality as Beth, should have been
+allowed to associate with intimately. But what ought Miss Victoria to
+do? If she spoke to Mrs. Caldwell, Beth would never forgive her, and
+the important thing was not to lose Beth's confidence; but if she did
+not speak to Mrs. Caldwell, would she be doing right? Of course, if
+Mrs. Caldwell had been a different sort of person, her duty would have
+been clear and easy; but as it was, Aunt Victoria decided to wait.
+
+The next day Beth returned of her own accord to finish the unpicking.
+She wanted to know what "soul-sustaining" meant; and in ten minutes
+she had cross-questioned Aunt Victoria into such a state of confusion
+that the old lady could only sit silently praying to Heaven for
+guidance. At last she got up, and took a little packet out of one of
+her trunks. She had to live in her boxes because there was no closet
+or wardrobe or chest of drawers in the room.
+
+"See, Beth," she said, "here is some tea and sugar. I don't think it
+nice of you to go to your mother's cupboard without her leave. That's
+rather a servant's trick, you know, and not honest; so give it up,
+like a dear child, and let us have tea together, you and I, up here,
+when we want it. I very much enjoy a good cup of tea, it is so
+refreshing, and you make it beautifully."
+
+Beth changed colour and countenance while Aunt Victoria was speaking,
+and she sat for some time afterwards looking fixedly at the empty
+grate; then she said, "You always tell me things nicely, Aunt
+Victoria; that's what I like about you. I'll not touch the cupboard
+again, I vow; and if you catch me at any other 'servant's tricks' just
+you let me know."
+
+The old lady's heart glowed. The Lord was showing her how to help the
+child.
+
+But the holidays were coming on; she would have to go away to make
+room for the boys; and she dreaded to leave Beth at this critical
+time, lest she should relapse, just as she was beginning to form nice
+feminine habits. For Beth had taken kindly to the sewing and
+tea-drinking and long quiet chats; it was a delight to her to have
+some one to wait on, and help, and talk to. "I'm so fond of you, Aunt
+Victoria," she said one day; "I even like you to snap at me; and if we
+lived quite alone together, you and I, I should do everything for
+you."
+
+"Would you like to come away with me these holidays?" said Aunt
+Victoria, seized suddenly with a bright idea.
+
+"Oh, wouldn't I!" said Beth. "But then, the expense!"
+
+"I think I can manage it, if your mamma has no objection," said Aunt
+Victoria, nodding and blinking, and nodding again, as she calculated.
+
+"I should think mamma would be only too glad to get rid of me," said
+Beth hopefully.
+
+And she was not mistaken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+The next few weeks, in their effect upon Beth's character, were among
+the most important of her life. She did not know until the day before
+where she was to go with Aunt Victoria. It was the habit of the family
+to conceal all such arrangements from the children, and indeed from
+each other as much as possible. Aunt Victoria observed that Caroline
+was singularly reticent, and Mrs. Caldwell complained that Aunt
+Victoria made a mystery of everything. It was a hard habit, which
+robbed Beth of what would have been so much to her, something to look
+forward to. Since she knew that she was to go somewhere, however, she
+had lived upon the idea; her imagination had been busy trying to
+picture the unknown place, and her mind full of plans for the comfort
+of Aunt Victoria.
+
+It was after breakfast one day, while her mother and Aunt Victoria
+were still at table, that the announcement was made. "You need not do
+any lessons this morning, children," Mrs. Caldwell said. "Beth is
+going to Harrowgate with Aunt Victoria to-morrow, and I must see to
+her things and get them packed."
+
+Aunt Victoria looked round at Beth with a carefully restrained smile,
+expecting some demonstration of joy. Beth was standing in the window
+looking out, and turned with a frown of intentness on her face when
+her mother mentioned Harrowgate, as if she were trying to recall
+something.
+
+"Harrowgate!" she said slowly. "_Harrowgate!_"
+
+"Beth, do not frown so," Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed irritably. "You'll be
+all wrinkled before you're twenty."
+
+Beth gazed at her solemnly without seeing her, then fixed her eyes
+upon the ground as if she were perusing it, and began to walk slowly
+up and down with her head bent, her hands clasped behind her, her
+curly brown hair falling forward over her cheeks, and her lips moving.
+
+"What is it you're muttering, child?" Aunt Victoria asked.
+
+"I'm trying to think," Beth rejoined.
+
+    "''Twas in the prime of summer time,
+        An evening calm and cool....
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "'Two sudden blows with a ragged stick,
+         And one with a heavy stone....
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "'And yet I feared him all the more,
+         For lying there so still....
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "'I took the dreary body up.'...
+
+"Ah, I know--I have it!" she exclaimed joyfully, and with a look of
+relief; "Harrowgate--Knaresboro'--the cave there----
+
+    "'Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn,
+       Through the cold and heavy mist;
+      And Eugene Aram walked between,
+       With gyves upon his wrist.'"
+
+"My dear child," said Aunt Victoria sternly, "what is it you are
+trying to say? and how often are you to be told not to work yourself
+up into such a state of excitement about nothing?"
+
+"Don't you know about Eugene Aram, Aunt Victoria?" Beth rejoined with
+concern, as if not to know about Eugene Aram were indeed to have
+missed one of the great interests of life. Then she sat down at the
+table with her elbows resting on it, and her delicate oval face framed
+in her slender hands, and gave Aunt Victoria a graphic sketch of the
+story from Bulwer Lytton.
+
+"Dear me, Caroline," said Aunt Victoria, greatly horrified, "is it
+possible that you allow your children to read such books?"
+
+"I read such books to my children myself when I see fit," Mrs.
+Caldwell rejoined. "I may be allowed to judge what is good for them, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Good for them!" Aunt Victoria ejaculated. "Accounts of murder, theft,
+and executions!"
+
+"But why not, Aunt Victoria?" Beth put in. "Why not read about Eugene
+Aram as well as about Barabbas?"
+
+Aunt Victoria looked so shocked, however, at the mention of Barabbas
+in this connection, that Beth broke off and hastened to add for the
+relief of the old lady's feelings--"Only of course Barabbas was a
+sacred sort of thief, and that is different."
+
+On the journey next day a casual remark let fall by a stranger made a
+curious impression upon Beth. They were travelling second-class, and
+Aunt Victoria, talking to another lady in the carriage, happened to
+mention that Beth was twelve years old. A gentleman, the only other
+passenger, who was sitting opposite to Beth, looked up at her over his
+newspaper when her age was mentioned, and remarked--"Are you only
+twelve? I should have thought you were older. Rather nice-looking too,
+only freckled."
+
+Beth felt her face flush hotly, and then she laughed. "Nice-looking!
+Nice-looking!" She repeated the words to herself again and again, and
+every time they recurred to her, she lost countenance in spite of
+herself, and laughed and flushed, being strangely surprised and
+pleased.
+
+It was that remark that first brought home to Beth the fact that she
+had a personal appearance at all. Hitherto she had thought very little
+of herself. The world without had been, and always would be, much more
+to her than the world within. She was not to be one of those narrow,
+self-centred, morbid beings whose days are spent in introspection, and
+whose powers are wasted in futile efforts to set their own little
+peculiarities forth in such a way as to make them seem of consequence.
+She never at any time studied her own nature, except as a part of
+human nature, and in the hope of finding in herself some clue which
+would help her to a sympathetic understanding of other people.
+
+Great-Aunt Victoria Bench, in these days of her poverty, lodged with
+an old servant of the family, who gave her for ten shillings a week a
+bedroom at the top of the house, and a little sunny sitting-room on
+the ground-floor at the back, looking out into an old-fashioned
+garden, full of flowers such as knights in olden times culled for
+their ladies. The little sitting-room was furnished with Chippendale
+chairs, and a little Chippendale sideboard with drawers, and a
+bookcase with glass doors above and a cupboard below, in which Aunt
+Victoria used to keep her stores of tea, coffee, sugar, and currants
+in mustard-tins. Beth heard with surprise that the hearthrug was one
+which Aunt Victoria had worked herself as a present for Prentice when
+she married. Prentice was now Mrs. Pearce, but Aunt Victoria always
+called her Prentice. The hearthrug was like a Turkey carpet, only
+softer, deeper, and richer. Aunt Victoria had sat on Chippendale
+chairs in her youth, and she was happy amongst them. When she sat down
+on one she drew herself up, disdaining the stiff back and smiled and
+felt young again, while her memory slipped away to pleasant days gone
+by; and Mrs. Pearce would come and talk to her, standing respectfully,
+and reminding her of little things which Aunt Victoria had forgotten,
+or alluding with mysterious nods and shakings of the head to other
+things which Beth was not to hear about. When this happened Beth
+always withdrew. She was becoming shy of intruding now, and delicate
+about overhearing anything that was not intended for her; and when she
+had gone on these occasions, the two old ladies would nod and smile to
+each other, Prentice in respectful approval, and Aunt Victoria in
+kindly acknowledgment. Prentice wore a cap and front like Aunt
+Victoria, but of a subdued brown colour, as became her humble station.
+
+Beth took charge of the housekeeping as soon as they arrived, made
+tea, arranged the groceries in the cupboard, and put the key in her
+pocket; and Aunt Victoria, who was sitting upright on a high
+Chippendale chair, knitting, and enjoying the dignity of the old
+attitude after her journey, looked on over her spectacles in pleased
+approval. Before they went to bed, they read the evening psalms and
+lessons together in the sitting-room, and Aunt Victoria read prayers.
+When they went upstairs they said their private prayers, kneeling
+beside the bed, and Aunt Victoria made Beth wash herself in hot water,
+and brush her hair for half-an-hour. Aunt Victoria attributed her own
+slender, youthful figure and the delicate texture of her skin to this
+discipline. She said she had preserved her figure by never relaxing
+into languid attitudes, and her complexion by washing her face in hot
+water with fine white soap every night, and in cold water without soap
+every morning. She did not take her fastidious appetite into
+consideration, nor her simple, regular life, nor the fact that she
+never touched alcohol in any shape or form, nor wore a tight or heavy
+garment, nor lost her self-control for more than a moment whatever
+happened, but Beth discovered for herself, as she grew older, that
+these and that elevated attitude of mind which is religion, whatever
+the form preferred to express it, are essential parts of the
+discipline necessary for the preservation of beauty.
+
+In the morning Beth made breakfast, and when it was over, if crusts
+had accumulated in the cupboard, she steeped them in hot milk in a
+pie-dish, beat them up with an egg, a little butter, sugar, currants,
+and candied peel, and some nutmeg grated, for a bread-pudding, which
+Prentice took out to bake for dinner, remarking regularly that little
+miss promised to be helpful, to which Aunt Victoria as regularly
+responded Yes, she hoped Miss Beth would become a capable woman some
+day.
+
+After breakfast they read the psalms and lessons together, verse by
+verse, and had some "good talk," as Beth called it. Then Aunt Victoria
+got out an old French grammar and phrase-book, a copy of "Telemaque,"
+and a pocket-dictionary, treasured possessions which she always
+carried about with her, and had a kind of pride in. French had been
+her speciality, but these were the only French books she had, and she
+certainly never spoke the language. She would have shrunk modestly
+from any attempt to do so, thinking such a display almost as
+objectionable as singing in a loud professional way instead of
+quietly, like a well-bred amateur, and showing a lack of that
+dignified reserve and general self-effacement which she considered
+essential in a gentlewoman.
+
+But she was anxious that Beth should be educated, and therefore the
+books were produced every morning. Mrs. Caldwell had tried in vain to
+teach Beth anything by rule, such as grammar. Beth's memory was always
+tricky. Anything she cared about she recollected accurately; but
+grammar, which had been presented to her not as a means to an end but
+as an end in itself, failed to interest her, and if she remembered a
+rule she forgot to apply it, until Aunt Victoria set her down to the
+old French books, when, simply because the old lady looked pleased if
+she knew her lesson and disturbed if she did not, she began at the
+beginning of her own accord, and worked with a will--toilsomely at
+first, but by degrees with pleasure as she proceeded, and felt for the
+first time the joy of mastering a strange tongue.
+
+"You learnt out of this book when you were a little girl, Aunt
+Victoria, didn't you?" she said, looking up on the day of the first
+lesson. She was sitting on a high-backed chair at one end of the
+table, trying to hold herself as upright as Aunt Victoria, who sat at
+the other and opposite end to her, pondering over her knitting. "I
+suppose you hated it."
+
+"No, I did not, Beth," Aunt Victoria answered severely. "I esteemed it
+a privilege to be well educated. Our mother could not afford to have
+us all instructed in the same accomplishments, and so she allowed us
+to choose French, or music, or drawing and painting. _I_ chose
+French."
+
+"Then how was it grandmamma learned drawing and painting, and playing,
+and everything?" Beth asked. "Mamma knows tunes she composed."
+
+"Your dear grandmamma was an exceedingly clever girl," Aunt Victoria
+answered stiffly, as if Beth had taken a liberty when she asked the
+question; "and she was the youngest, and desired to learn all we knew,
+so we each did our best to impart our special knowledge to her. _I_
+taught her French."
+
+"How strange," said Beth; "and out of this very book? And she is dead.
+And now you are teaching _me_."
+
+The feeling in the child's voice, and the humble emphasis on the
+pronoun _me_, touched the old lady; something familiar too in the tone
+caused her to look up quickly and kindly over her spectacles, and it
+seemed to her for a moment as if the little, long-lost sister sat
+opposite to her--great grey eyes, delicate skin, bright brown hair,
+expression of vivid interest, and all.
+
+"Strange! strange!" she muttered to herself several times.
+
+"I am supposed to be like grandmamma, am I not?" said Beth, as if she
+read her thoughts.
+
+"You _are_ like her," Aunt Victoria rejoined.
+
+"But you can be a plain likeness of a good-looking person, I suppose?"
+Beth said tentatively.
+
+"Certainly you can," Miss Victoria answered with decision; and the
+spark of pleasure in her own personal appearance, which had recently
+been kindled in Beth, instantly flickered and went out.
+
+Their little sitting-room had a bow-window down to the ground, the
+front part of which formed two doors with glass in the upper part and
+wood below, leading out into the garden. On fine days they always
+stood wide open, and the warm summer air scented with roses streamed
+in. Both Beth and Aunt Victoria loved to look out into the garden.
+From where Beth sat to do her French at the end of the table, she
+could see the soft green turf, a bright flower-border, and an old
+brick wall, mellowed in tone by age, behind it; and a little to the
+left, a high, thick screen of tall shrubs of many varieties, set so
+close that all the different shades of green melted into each other.
+The irregular roof of a large house, standing on lower ground than the
+garden, with quaint gables and old chimneys, rose above the belt of
+shrubs; the tiles on it lay in layers that made Beth think of a wasp's
+nest, only that they were dark-red instead of grey; but she loved the
+colour as it appeared all amongst the green trees and up against the
+blue sky. She often wondered what was going on under that roof, and
+used to invent stories about it. She did not write anything in these
+days, however, but stored up impressions which were afterwards of
+inestimable value to her. The smooth grey boles of the beeches, the
+green down on the larches, the dark, blue-green crown which the Scotch
+fir held up, as if to accentuate the light blue of the sky, and the
+wonderful ruddy-gold tones that shone on its trunk as the day
+declined; these things she felt and absorbed rather than saw and
+noted, but because she felt them they fired her soul, and resolved
+themselves into poetic expression eventually.
+
+They dined early, and on the hot afternoons they sat and worked
+together after dinner, Beth sewing and Aunt Victoria knitting, until
+it was cool enough to go out. Aunt Victoria was teaching Beth how to
+make some new underclothing for herself, to Beth's great delight. All
+of her old things that were not rags were patches, and the shame of
+having them so was a continual source of discomfort to her; but Aunt
+Victoria, when she discovered the state of Beth's wardrobe, bought
+some calico out of her own scanty means, and set her to work. During
+these long afternoons, they had many a conversation that Beth
+recollected with pleasure and profit. She often amused and interested
+the old lady; and sometimes she drew from her a serious reprimand or a
+solemn lecture, for both of which she was much the better. Aunt
+Victoria was severe, but she was sympathetic, and she was just; she
+seldom praised, but she showed that she was satisfied, and that was
+enough for Beth; and she never scolded or punished, only spoke
+seriously when she was displeased, and then Beth was overwhelmed.
+
+One very hot day when they were working together, Aunt Victoria
+sitting on a high-backed chair with her back to the open doors because
+the light was too much for her eyes, and Beth sitting beside her on a
+lower seat, but so that she could look up at her, and also out into
+the garden, it occurred to her that once on a time, long ago, Aunt
+Victoria must have been young, and she tried artfully to find out
+first, if Aunt Victoria remembered the fact, and secondly, what little
+girls were like at that remote period.
+
+"Was your mamma like mine, Aunt Victoria?" she asked.
+
+Aunt Victoria had just made a mistake in her knitting, and answered
+shortly: "No, child."
+
+"When you were all children," Beth pursued, "did you play together?"
+
+"Not much," Aunt Victoria answered grimly.
+
+"Did you quarrel?"
+
+"My dear child! what could put such a notion into your head?"
+
+"What did you do then?" said Beth. "You couldn't have been all the
+time learning to sit upright on a high-backed chair; and I am trying
+so hard to think what your home was like. I wish you would tell me."
+
+"It was not at all like yours," Aunt Victoria replied with emphasis.
+"We were most carefully brought up children. Our mother was an
+admirable person. She lived by rule. If one of her children was born
+at night, it was kept in the house until the morning, and then sent
+out to nurse until it was two years old. If it was born by day, it was
+sent away at once."
+
+"And didn't great-grandmamma ever go to see it?"
+
+"Yes, of course; twice a year."
+
+"I think," said Beth, reflecting, "I should like to keep my babies at
+home. I should want to put their little soft faces against mine, and
+kiss them, you know."
+
+"Your great-grandmamma did her duty," said Aunt Victoria with grim
+approval. "She never let any of us loll as you are doing now, Beth.
+She made us all sit up, as _I_ always do, and as I am always telling
+you to do; and the consequence was our backs grew strong and never
+ached."
+
+"And were you happy?" Beth said solemnly.
+
+Aunt Victoria gazed at her vaguely. She had never asked herself the
+question. Then Beth sat with her work on her lap for a little, looking
+up at the summer sky. It was an exquisite deep blue just then, with
+filmy white clouds drawn up over it like gauze to veil its brightness.
+The red roofs and gables and chimneys of the old house below, the
+shrubs, the dark Scotch fir, the copper-beech, the limes and the
+chestnut stood out clearly silhouetted against it; and Beth felt the
+forms and tints and tones of them all, although she was thinking of
+something else.
+
+"Mamma's back is always aching," she observed at last, returning to
+her work.
+
+"Yes, that is because she was not so well brought up as we were," Aunt
+Victoria rejoined.
+
+"_She_ says it is because she had such a lot of children," said Beth.
+"Did you ever have any children, Aunt Victoria?"
+
+Miss Victoria Bench let her knitting fall on her
+lap--"My--dear--child!" she gasped, holding up both her hands in
+horror.
+
+"Oh, I forgot," said Beth. "Only married ladies have children.
+Servants have them, though, sometimes before they are married, Harriet
+says, and then they call them bad girls. Grandmamma wasn't as wise as
+great-grandmamma, I suppose, but perhaps great-grandmamma had a good
+husband. Grandpapa was an awful old rip, you know."
+
+Aunt Victoria stared at her aghast.
+
+"He used to drink," Beth proceeded, lowering her voice, and glancing
+round mysteriously as the old servants at Fairholm did when they
+discussed these things; "and grandmamma couldn't bear his ways or his
+language, and used to shut herself up in her own room more and more,
+and they never agreed, and at last she went quite mad, so the saying
+came true. Did you never hear the saying? Why, you know her father's
+crest was a raven, and grandpapa's crest was a bee, and for
+generations the families had lived near each other and never been
+friends; and it was said, if the blood of the bees and the ravens were
+ever put in the same bowl it wouldn't mingle. Do you say 'if it were,'
+or 'if it was,' Aunt Victoria? Mamma says 'if it were.'"
+
+"_We_ were taught to say 'if it was,'" Aunt Victoria answered stiffly;
+"but your mamma may know better."
+
+Beth thought about this for a minute, then set it aside for further
+inquiry, and dispassionately resumed. "That was a mean trick of Uncle
+James's, but it was rather clever too; I should never have thought of
+it. I mean with the fly, you know. When grandpapa died, Uncle James
+got his will and altered it, so that mamma mightn't have any money;
+and he put a fly in grandpapa's mouth, and swore that the will was
+signed by his hand while there was life in him."
+
+"My dear child," said Aunt Victoria sharply, "who told you such a
+preposterous story?"
+
+"Oh, I heard it about the place," Beth answered casually; "everybody
+knows it." She took another needleful of thread, and sewed on steadily
+for a little, and Aunt Victoria kept glancing at her meanwhile, with a
+very puzzled expression.
+
+"But what I want to know is _why_ did grandmamma stay with grandpapa
+if he were, or was, such a very bad man?" Beth said suddenly.
+
+"Because it was her duty," said Aunt Victoria.
+
+"And what was his duty?"
+
+"I think, Beth," said the old lady, "you have done sewing enough for
+this afternoon. Run out into the garden."
+
+Beth knew that this was only an excuse not to answer her, but she
+folded her work up obediently, observing as she did so, however, with
+decision, "If _I_ ever have a bad husband, I shall _not_ stay with
+him, for I can't see what good comes of it."
+
+"Your grandmamma had her children to think of," said Aunt Victoria.
+
+"But what good did she do them?" Beth wanted to know. "She devoted
+herself to Uncle James, but she didn't make much of a man of him! And
+she had no influence whatever with mamma. Mamma was her father's
+favourite, and he taught her to despise grandmamma because she
+couldn't hunt, and shrieked if she saw things killed. I think that's
+silly myself, but it's better than being hard. Of course mamma is
+worth a dozen of Uncle James, but--" Beth shrugged her shoulders, then
+added temperately, "You know mamma has her faults, Aunt Victoria, it's
+no use denying it. So what good did grandmamma do by staying? She just
+went mad and died! If she'd gone away, and lived as you do, she might
+have been alive and well now."
+
+"Ah, my dear child," said the old lady sorrowfully, "that never could
+have been; for I have observed that no woman who marries and becomes a
+mother can ever again live happily like a single woman. She has
+entered upon a different phase of being, and there is no return for
+her. There is a weight of meaning in that expression: 'the ties of
+home.' It is 'the ties of home' that restrain a loving woman, however
+much she suffers; there are the little daily duties that no one but
+herself can see to; and there is always some one who would be worse
+off if she went. There is habit too; and there are those small
+possessions, each one with an association of its own perhaps, that
+makes it almost a sacred thing; but above all, there is hope--the hope
+that matters may mend; and fear--the fear that once she deserts her
+post things will go from bad to worse, and she be to blame. In your
+grandmamma's day such a thing would never have been thought of by a
+good woman; and even now, when there are women who actually go away
+and work for themselves, if their homes are unhappy--" Aunt Victoria
+pursed up her lips, and shook her head. "It may be respectable, of
+course," she concluded magnanimously; "but I cannot believe it is
+either right or wise, and certainly it is not loyal."
+
+"Loyal!" Beth echoed; "that was my father's word to me: 'Be loyal.'
+We've got to be loyal to others; but he also said that we must be
+loyal to ourselves."
+
+Aunt Victoria had folded up her knitting, and now rose stiffly, and
+went out into the garden with an old parasol, and sat meditating in
+the sun on the trunk of a tree that had been cut down. She often sat
+so under her parasol, and Beth used to watch her, and wonder what it
+felt like to be able to look such a long, long way back, and have so
+many things to remember.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Aunt Victoria was surprised herself to find how kindly Beth took to a
+regular life, how exact she was in the performance of her little
+housekeeping duties, and how punctual in everything; she had never
+suspected that Beth's whole leaning was towards law and order, nor
+observed that even in her most lawless ways there was a certain
+system; that she fished, and poached, and prowled, fought Bernadine,
+and helped Harriet, as regularly as she dined, and went to bed.
+Habits, good or bad, may be formed in an incredibly short time if they
+are congenial; the saints by nature will pray, and the sinners sin,
+as soon as the example is set them; and Beth, accordingly, fell into
+Aunt Victoria's dainty fastidious ways, which were the ways of a
+gentlewoman, at once and without effort; and ever afterwards was only
+happy in her domestic life when she could live by the same rule in an
+atmosphere of equal refinement--an honest atmosphere where everything
+was done thoroughly, and every word spoken was perfectly sincere. Of
+course she relapsed many times--it was her nature to experiment, to
+wander before she settled, to see for herself; but it was by intimacy
+with lower natures that she learned fully to appreciate the higher; by
+the effect of bad books upon her that she learned the value of good
+ones; by the lowering of her whole tone which came of countenancing
+laxity in others, and by the discomfort and degradation which follow
+on disorder, that she was eventually confirmed in her principles. The
+taste for the higher life, once implanted, is not to be eradicated;
+and those who have been uplifted by the glory of it once will strive
+to attain to it again, inevitably.
+
+It was through the influence of this time that the most charming
+traits in Beth's character were finally developed--traits which, but
+for the tender discipline of the dear old aunt, might have remained
+latent for ever.
+
+It would be misleading, however, to let it be supposed that Beth's
+conduct was altogether satisfactory during this visit. On the
+contrary, she gave Miss Victoria many an anxious moment; for although
+she did all that the old lady required of her, she did many other
+things besides, things required of her by her own temperament only.
+She had to climb the great tree at the end of the lawn, for instance,
+in order to peep into the nest near the top, and also to see into the
+demesne beyond the belt of shrubs, where the red-roofed house stood,
+peopled now by friends of her fancy. This would not have been so bad
+if she had come down safely; but a branch broke, and she fell and hurt
+herself, which alarmed Miss Victoria very much. Then Miss Victoria
+used to send her on errands to develop her intelligence; but Beth
+invariably lost herself at first; if she only had to turn the corner,
+she could not find her way back. Aunt Victoria tried to teach her to
+note little landmarks in her own mind as she went along, such as the
+red pillar-box at the corner of the street where she was to turn, and
+the green shutters on the house where she was to cross; and Beth
+noticed these and many more things carefully as she went, and could
+describe their position accurately afterwards; but, by the time she
+turned, the vision and the dream would be upon her as a rule, and she
+would walk in a world of fancy, utterly oblivious of red pillar-boxes,
+green shutters, or anything else on earth, until she was brought up
+wondering by a lamp-post, tree, or some unoffending person with whom
+she had collided in her abstraction; then she would have to ask her
+way; but she was slow to find it by direction; and all the time she
+was wandering about, Aunt Victoria would be worrying herself with
+fears for her safety until she was quite upset.
+
+Beth was rebellious, too, about some things. There was a grocery shop
+at one end of the street, kept by a respectable woman, but Beth
+refused to go to it because the respectable woman had a fussy little
+Pomeranian dog, and allowed it to lick her hands and face all over,
+which so disgusted Beth that she could not eat anything the woman
+touched. It was in this shop that Beth picked up the moribund black
+beetle that kicked out suddenly, and set up the horror of crawling
+things from which she ever afterwards suffered. This was another
+reason for not going back to the shop, but Aunt Victoria could not
+understand it, and insisted on sending her. Beth was firmly naughty in
+the matter, however, and would not go, greatly to the old lady's
+discomposure.
+
+One means of torture, unconsciously devised by Aunt Victoria, tried
+Beth extremely. Aunt Victoria used to send her to church alone on
+Sunday afternoons to hear a certain eloquent preacher, and required
+her to repeat the text, and tell her what the whole sermon was about
+on her return. Beth did her best, but if she managed to remember the
+text by repeating it all the time, she could not attend to the sermon,
+and if she attended to the sermon, she invariably forgot the text. It
+was another instance of the trickishness of her memory; she could have
+remembered both the text and sermon without an effort had she not been
+afraid of forgetting them.
+
+But the thing that gave her aunt most trouble of mind was Beth's habit
+of making acquaintance with all kinds of people. It was vain to warn
+her, and worse than vain, for the reasons Aunt Victoria gave her for
+not knowing people only excited her interest in them, and she would
+wait about, watching, to see for herself, studying their habits with
+the patient pertinacity of a naturalist. The drawing-room floor was
+let to a lady whose husband was at sea, a Mrs. Crome. She was very
+intimate with a gentleman who also lodged in the house, a friend of
+her husband's, she said, who had promised to look after her during his
+absence. Their bedrooms adjoined, and Beth used to see their boots
+outside their doors every morning when she went down to breakfast, and
+wonder why they got up so late.
+
+"Out again together nearly all last night," Prentice remarked to Aunt
+Victoria one morning; and then they shook their heads, but agreed that
+there was nothing to be done. From this and other remarks, however,
+Beth gathered that Mrs. Crome was going to perdition; and from that
+time she had a horrid fascination for Beth, who would gaze at her
+whenever she had an opportunity, with great solemn eyes dilated, as if
+she were learning her by heart--as, indeed, she was--involuntarily,
+for future reference; for Mrs. Crome was one of a pronounced type, as
+Beth learnt eventually, when she knew the world better, an example
+which helped her to recognise other specimens of the kind whenever she
+met them.
+
+She scraped acquaintance with Mrs. Crome on the stairs, at last, and
+was surprised to find her as kind as could be, and was inclined to
+argue from this that Prentice and Aunt Victoria must be mistaken about
+her. But one evening Mrs. Crome tempted her into the drawing-room. The
+gentleman was there, smoking a cigar and drinking whisky-and-water;
+and there was something in the whole aspect and atmosphere of the room
+that made Beth feel exceedingly uncomfortable, and wish she was out of
+it immediately.
+
+"Aren't you very dull with that old lady?" said Mrs. Crome. "I suppose
+she never takes you to the theatre or anything."
+
+"No," said Beth; "she does not approve of theatres."
+
+"Then I suppose she doesn't approve of me?" Mrs. Crome observed
+good-naturedly.
+
+"No," said Beth solemnly; "she does not."
+
+Mrs. Crome burst out laughing, and so did the gentleman.
+
+"This is rich, really," he said. "What a quaint little person!"
+
+"Oh, but she's sweet!" said Mrs. Crome; and then she kissed Beth, and
+Beth noticed that she had been eating onions, and for long afterwards
+she associated the smell with theatres, frivolous talk, and a
+fair-haired woman smiling fatuously on the brink of perdition.
+
+Aunt Victoria retired early to perform her evening ablutions, and on
+this occasion she had gone up just as usual, with a little bell, which
+she rang when she was ready for Beth to come. In the midst of the talk
+and laughter in the drawing-room the little bell suddenly sounded
+emphatically, and Beth fled. She found Aunt Victoria out on the
+landing in her petticoat and dressing-jacket, and without her auburn
+front, a sign of great perturbation. She had heard Beth's voice in the
+drawing-room, and proceeded to admonish her severely. But Beth heard
+not a word; for the sight of the old lady's stubbly white hair had
+plunged her into a reverie, and already, when the vision and the dream
+were upon her, no Indian devotee, absorbed in contemplation, could be
+less sensitive to outward impressions than Beth was. Aunt Victoria had
+to shake her to rouse her.
+
+"What are you thinking of, child?" she demanded.
+
+"Riding to the rescue," Beth answered dreamily.
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," said Aunt Victoria. Beth gazed at her with a
+blank look. She was saving souls just then, and could attend to
+nothing else.
+
+Beth's terror of the Judgment never returned; but after she had been
+away from home a few weeks she began to have another serious trouble
+which disturbed her towards evening in the same way. The first symptom
+was a curious lapse of memory which worried her a good deal. She could
+not remember how much of the garden was to be seen from her mother's
+bedroom window at home, and she longed to fly back and settle the
+question. Then she became conscious of being surrounded by the country
+on every side, and it oppressed her to think of it. She was a
+sea-child, living inland for the first time, and there came upon her a
+great yearning for the sight and sound of moving waters. She sniffed
+the land-breeze, and found it sweet but insipid in her nostrils after
+the tonic freshness of the sea-air. She heard the voice of her beloved
+in the sough of the wind among the trees, and it made her
+inexpressibly melancholy. Her energy began to ebb. She did not care to
+move about much, but would sit silently sewing by the hour together,
+outwardly calm, inwardly all an ache to go back to the sea. She used
+to wonder whether the tide was coming in or going out; wonder if the
+fish were biting, how the sands looked, and who was on the pier. She
+devoured every scrap of news that came from home in the hope of
+finding something to satisfy her longing. Bernadine wrote her an
+elaborate letter in large hand, which Beth thought very wonderful;
+Harriet sent her a letter also, chiefly composed of moral sentiments
+copied from the _Family Herald_, with a view to producing a favourable
+impression on Miss Victoria; and Mrs. Caldwell wrote regularly once a
+week, a formal duty-letter, but a joy to Beth, to whom letters of any
+kind were a new and surprising experience. She had never expected that
+any one would write to her; and in the first flush of her gratitude
+she responded with enthusiasm, sending her mother, in particular, long
+descriptions of her life and surroundings, which Mrs. Caldwell thought
+so good she showed them to everybody. In replying to Beth, however,
+she expressed no approval or pleasure; on the contrary, she put Beth
+to shame by the way she dwelt on her mistakes in spelling, which
+effectually checked the outpourings, and shut Beth up in herself
+again, so that she mourned the more. During the day she kept up pretty
+well, but towards twilight, always her time of trial, the yearning for
+home, for mamma, for Harriet, for Bernadine, began again; the most
+gloomy fears of what might be happening to them in her absence
+possessed her, and she had great difficulty in keeping back her tears.
+Aunt Victoria noticed her depression, but mistook it for fatigue, and
+sent her to bed early, which Beth was glad of, because she wanted to
+be alone and cry. But one evening, when she was looking particularly
+sad, the old lady asked if she did not feel well.
+
+"Yes, I feel quite well, thank you, Aunt Victoria," Beth answered with
+a great sigh; "but I know now what you meant about home-ties. They do
+pull strong."
+
+"Ah!" said Aunt Victoria, enlightened; "you are homesick, are you?"
+
+And from that day forward, when she saw Beth moping, she took her out
+of herself by making her discuss the subject, and so relieved her; but
+Beth continued to suffer, although less acutely, until her return.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Rainharbour was not yet deserted by summer visitors, although it was
+late in the autumn when Beth and Aunt Victoria returned. It had been
+such a lovely season that the holiday people lingered, loath to leave
+the freshness of the sea and the freedom of the shore for the stuffy
+indoor duties and the conventional restrictions of their town lives.
+
+On the day of their arrival, Beth looked about her in amaze. She had
+experienced such a world of change in herself since she went away,
+that she was surprised to find the streets unaltered; and yet,
+although they were unaltered, they did not look the same. It was as if
+the focus of her eyes had been readjusted so as to make familiar
+objects seem strange, and change the perspective of everything; which
+gave the place a different air, a look of having been swept and
+garnished and set in order like a toy-town. But the people they passed
+were altogether unchanged, and this seemed stranger still to Beth.
+There they had been all the time, walking about as usual, wearing the
+same clothes, thinking the same thoughts; they had had no new
+experiences, and, what was worse, they were not only unconscious of
+any that she might have had, but were profoundly indifferent; and to
+Beth, on the threshold of life, all eager interest in everything,
+caring greatly to know, and ready to sympathise, this vision of the
+self-centred with shrivelled hearts was terrible; it gave her the
+sensation of being the one living thing that could feel in a world of
+automata moved by machinery.
+
+Bernadine and her mother had met them at the station, but Beth was so
+busy looking about her, collecting impressions, she had hardly a word
+to say to either of them. Mrs. Caldwell set this down as another sign
+of want of proper affection, but Aunt Victoria grumped that it was
+nothing but natural excitement.
+
+The first thing Beth did after greeting Harriet, who stood smiling at
+the door, was to run upstairs to her mother's bedroom to settle the
+question of how much of the garden was visible from the window; and
+then she rushed on up to the attic, dragged a big box under the
+skylight in hot haste, and climbed up on it to look at the sea. It was
+the one glimpse of it to be had from the house, just a corner, where
+the water washed up against the white cliffs that curved round an
+angle of the bay. Beth flung the skylight open, and gazed, then drew
+in her breath with a great sigh of satisfaction. The sea! The sea!
+Even that glimpse of it was refreshing as a long cool drink to one
+exhausted by heat and cruelly athirst.
+
+While she was away, Beth had made many good resolutions about behaving
+herself on her return. Aunt Victoria had talked to her seriously on
+the subject. Beth could be good enough when she liked: she did all
+that her aunt expected of her; why could she not do all that her
+mother expected? Beth promised she would; and was beginning already to
+keep her promise faithfully by being as troublesome as possible, which
+was all that her mother ever expected of her. Whether or not thoughts
+are things which have power to produce effects, there are certainly
+people who answer to expectation with fatal facility, and Beth was one
+of them. Eventually she resisted with all her own individuality, but
+at this time she acted like an instrument played upon by other
+people's minds. This peculiar sensitiveness she turned to account in
+after life, using it as a key to character; she had merely to make
+herself passive, when she found herself reflecting the people with
+whom she conversed involuntarily; and not as they appeared on the
+surface, but as they actually were in their inmost selves. In her
+childhood she unconsciously illustrated the thoughts people had in
+their minds about her. Aunt Victoria believed in her and trusted her,
+and when they were alone together, Beth responded to her good opinion;
+Mrs. Caldwell expected her to be nothing but a worry, and was not
+disappointed. When Beth was in the same house with both aunt and
+mother, she varied, answering to the expectation that happened to be
+strongest at the moment. That afternoon Aunt Victoria was tired after
+her journey, and did not think of Beth at all; but Mrs. Caldwell was
+busy in her own mind anticipating all the trouble she would have now
+Beth was back; and Beth, standing on the box under the attic skylight,
+with her head out, straining her eyes to seaward, was seized with a
+sudden impulse which answered to her mother's expectation. That first
+day she ought to have stayed in, unpacked her box, exhibited her
+beautiful needlework, got ready for dinner in good time, and proved
+her affection for her mother and sister by making herself agreeable to
+them; but instead of that, she stole downstairs, slipped out by the
+back-gate, and did not return until long after dinner was over.
+
+She did not enjoy the scamper, however. Her home-sickness was gone,
+but her depression returned nevertheless, as the day declined, only in
+another form. She had still that curious sensation of being the only
+living thing in a world of figures moved by mechanism. She stood at
+the top of the steps which led down on to the pier, where the sailors
+loitered at idle times, and was greeted by those she knew with slow
+smiles of recognition; but she had nothing to say to any of them.
+
+The tide was going out, and had left some of the ships in the harbour
+all canted to one side; cobles and pleasure-boats rested in the mud; a
+cockle-gatherer was wading about in it with his trousers turned up
+over his knees, and his bare legs so thickly coated, it looked as if
+he had black leggings on. Beth went to the edge of the pier, and stood
+for a few minutes looking down at him. She was facing west, but the
+sun was already too low to hurt her eyes. On her right the red-roofed
+houses crowded down to the quay irregularly. Fishing-nets were hanging
+out of some of the windows. Here and there, down in the harbour, the
+rich brown sails had been hoisted on some of the cobles to dry. There
+were some yachts at anchor, and Beth looked at them eagerly, hoping to
+find Count Bartahlinsky's _Seagull_ amongst them. It was not there;
+but presently she became conscious of some one standing beside her,
+and on looking up she recognised Black Gard, the Count's confidential
+man. He was dressed like the fishermen in drab trousers and a dark
+blue jersey, but wore a blue cloth cap, with the name of the yacht on
+it, instead of a sou'wester.
+
+"Has your master returned?" she said.
+
+"No, miss," he answered. "He's still abroad. He'll be back for the
+hunting, though."
+
+"I doubt it," said Beth, resentful of that vague "abroad," which
+absorbed him into itself the greater part of the year. When she had
+spoken, she turned her back on Gard and the sunset, and wandered off
+up the cliffs. She had noticed a sickly smell coming up from the mud
+in the harbour, and wanted to escape from it, but somehow it seemed to
+accompany her. It reminded her of something--no, that was not it. What
+she was searching about in her mind for was some way, not to name it,
+but to express it. She felt there was a formula for it within reach,
+but for some time she could not recover it. Then she gave up the
+attempt, and immediately afterwards she suddenly said to herself--
+
+            "... the smell of death
+    Came reeking from those spicy bowers,
+    And man, the sacrifice of man,
+    Mingled his taint with every breath
+    Upwafted from the innocent flowers."
+
+She did not search for any occult meaning in the lines, nor did they
+convey anything special to her; but they remained with her for the
+rest of the day, haunting her, in among her other thoughts, and
+forcing themselves upon her attention with the irritating persistency
+of a catchy tune.
+
+On the cliffs she paused to look about her. It was a desolate scene.
+The tide was so far out by this time it looked as if there were more
+sand than sea in the bay. The water was the cloudy grey colour of
+flint, with white rims where the waves broke on the shore. The sky was
+low, level, and dark; where it met the water there was a heavy bank of
+cloud, from which an occasional flash of summer lightning, dimmed by
+daylight, shot along the horizon. The air was peculiarly clear, so
+that distant objects seemed nearer than was natural. The sheltering
+headland on the left, which formed the bay, stood out bright white
+with a crown of vivid green against the sombre sea and sky; while, on
+the right, the old grey pier, which shut in the view in that
+direction, and the red-roofed houses of the town crowding down to it,
+showed details of design and masonry not generally visible to the
+naked eye from where Beth stood. There were neither ships nor boats in
+the bay; but a few cobles, with their red-brown sails flapping limp
+against their masts, rocked lazily at the harbour-mouth waiting for
+the tide to rise and float them in. Beth heard the men on them
+shouting an occasional remark to one another, and now and then one of
+them would sing an uncouth snatch of song, but the effort was
+spiritless, and did not last.
+
+Leaving the harbour behind, Beth walked on towards the headland.
+Presently she noticed in front of her the dignified and pathetic
+figure of an old man, a Roman Catholic priest, Canon Hunter, who,
+sacrificing all worldly ease or chance of advancement, had come to
+minister to the neglected fisherfolk on the coast, most of whom were
+Roman Catholics. He led the life of a saint amongst them, living in
+dire poverty, his congregation being all of the poorest, with the
+exception of one lady in the neighbourhood, married to a man whose
+vices were too expensive to leave him much to spare for his wife's
+charities. She managed, however, to raise enough money for the rent of
+the top room in the public hall, which they used as a chapel, and so
+kept the flickering flame of the old religion alight in the place; but
+it was a severe struggle. It was whispered, indeed, that more of the
+gentry in the neighbourhood sympathised with the Catholics than was
+supposed, and would have helped them but for the discredit--did help
+them, in fact, when they dared; but no one outside the communion knew
+how true this report might be, and the fisherfolk loyally held their
+peace.
+
+It was natural that Beth as she grew up should be attracted by the
+mystery that surrounded the Roman Catholics, and anxious to comprehend
+the horror that Protestants had of them. She knew more of them herself
+than any of the people whom she heard pass uncharitable strictures
+upon them, and knew nothing for which they could justly be blamed. For
+the old priest himself she had a great reverence. She had never spoken
+to him, but had always felt strongly drawn towards him; and now, when
+she overtook him, her impulse was to slip her hand into his, less on
+her own account, however, than to show sympathy with him, he seemed so
+solitary and so suffering, with his slow step and bent back; and so
+good, with his beautiful calm face.
+
+As she approached, lost in her own thoughts, she gazed up at him
+intently.
+
+"What is it, my child?" he asked, with a kindly smile. "Can I do
+anything for you?"
+
+"I was thinking of the beauty of holiness," Beth answered, and passed
+on.
+
+The old man looked after her, too surprised for the moment to speak,
+and by the time he had recovered himself, she had turned a corner and
+was out of sight.
+
+After Beth went home that evening, and had been duly reproached by her
+mother for her selfish conduct, she stole upstairs to Aunt Victoria's
+room, and found the old lady sitting with her big Bible on her knee,
+looking very sad and serious.
+
+"Beth," she said severely, "have you had any food? It is long past
+your dinner-time, and it does not do for young girls to fast too
+long."
+
+"I'll go and get something to eat, Aunt Victoria," Beth answered
+meekly, overcome by her kindness. "I forgot."
+
+She went down to the pantry, and found some cold pie, which she took
+into the kitchen and ate without appetite.
+
+The heat was oppressive. All the doors and windows stood wide open,
+but there was no air, and wherever Beth went she was haunted by the
+sickly smell which she had first perceived coming up from the mud in
+the harbour, and by the lines which seemed somehow to account for
+it:--
+
+            "... the smell of death
+    Came reeking from those spicy bowers,
+    And man, the sacrifice of man,
+    Mingled his taint with every breath
+    Upwafted from the innocent flowers."
+
+When she had eaten all she could, she went back to Aunt Victoria.
+
+"Shall we read the psalms?" she said.
+
+"Yes, dear," the old lady answered. "I have been waiting for you a
+long time, Beth."
+
+"Aunt Victoria, I am very sorry," Beth protested. "I didn't think."
+
+"Ah, Beth," the old lady said sorrowfully, "how often is that to be
+your excuse? You are always thinking, but it is only your own wild
+fancies that occupy you. When will you learn to think of others?"
+
+"I try always," Beth answered sincerely; "but what am I to do when
+'wild fancies' come crowding in spite of me, and all I ought to
+remember slips away?"
+
+"Pray," Aunt Victoria answered austerely. "Prayer shapes a life; and
+those lives are the most beautiful which have been shaped by prayer.
+Prayer is creative; it transposes intention into action, and makes it
+inevitable for us to be and to do more than would be possible by any
+other means."
+
+There was a short silence, and then Miss Victoria began the psalm. It
+was a joy to Beth to hear her read, she read so beautifully; and it
+was from her that Beth herself acquired the accomplishment, for which
+she was afterwards noted. Verse by verse they read the psalms together
+as a rule, and Beth was usually attentive; but that evening, before
+the end, her attention became distracted by a loud ticking; and the
+last word was scarcely pronounced before she exclaimed, looking about
+her--"Aunt Victoria, what is that ticking? I see no clock."
+
+The old lady looked up calmly, but she was very pale. "You do hear it
+then?" she replied. "It has been going on all day."
+
+Beth's heart stood still an instant, and, in spite of the heat, her
+skin crisped as if the surface of her body had been suddenly sprayed
+with cold water. "The Death Watch!" she ejaculated.
+
+The ticking stopped a moment as if in answer to the words, and then
+began again. A horrible foreboding seized upon Beth.
+
+"Oh, no--no, not that!" she exclaimed, shuddering; and then, all at
+once, she threw herself upon her knees beside Aunt Victoria, clasped
+her arms round her, and burst into a tempest of tears and sobs.
+
+"Beth, Beth, my dear child," the old lady cried in dismay, "control
+yourself. It is only a little insect in the wood. It may mean
+nothing."
+
+"It does mean something," Beth interrupted vehemently; "I know--I
+always know. The smell of death has been about me all the afternoon,
+but I did not understand, although the words were in my mouth. When
+things mean nothing, they don't make you feel queer--they don't
+impress you. Nine times running you may see a solitary crow, or spill
+the salt, or sit down thirteen to table, and laugh at all
+superstitious nonsense; then the sign was not for you; but the tenth
+time, something will come over you, and you won't laugh; then be
+warned and beware! I sometimes feel as if I were listening, but not
+with my ears, and waiting for things to happen that I know about, but
+not with my head; and I try always to understand when I find myself
+listening, but not with my ears, and something surely comes; and so
+also when I am waiting for things to happen that I know about, but not
+with my head; they do happen. Only most of the time I know that
+something is coming, but I cannot tell what it is. In order to be able
+to tell exactly, I have to hold myself in a certain attitude--not my
+body, you know, _myself_--hold myself in suspense, as it were, or
+suspend something in myself, stop something, push something aside--I
+can't get it into words; I can't always do it; but when I can, then I
+know."
+
+"Who taught you this?" Aunt Victoria asked, as if she were startled.
+
+"Oh, no one taught me," Beth answered. "I just found myself doing it.
+Then I tried to notice how it was done. I wanted to be able to do it
+myself when I liked. And it was just as if there were two doors, and
+one had to be shut before I could look out of the other--the one that
+is my nose and eyes and ears; when that is shut, then I know; I look
+out of the other. Do things come to you so, Aunt Victoria?"
+
+The old lady had taken Beth's hand, and was stroking it and looking at
+her very seriously. "No," she said, shaking her head, "no, things do
+not come to me like that. But although I have only one set of
+faculties myself, my outlook is not so limited by them that I cannot
+comprehend the possibility of something beyond. There are written
+records of people in olden times who must have possessed some such
+power--some further faculty such as you describe. It may be that it
+lies latent in the whole race, awaiting favourable conditions to
+develop itself, and some few rare beings have come into possession of
+it already. We are complex creatures--body, soul, and spirit, says the
+saint; and there is spiritual power. Beth, lay hold of that which you
+perceive in yourself, cherish it, cultivate it, live the life
+necessary to develop it; for be sure it is a great gift--it may be a
+divine one."
+
+When the old lady stopped, Beth raised her head and looked about her,
+as if she had just awakened from sleep. "What were we talking about
+before that?" she said. "Oh, I know--the Death Watch. It has stopped."
+
+The equinoctial gales set in early that year, and severely. Great seas
+washed away the silver sands which had been the delight of the summer
+visitors, leaving miles of clay exposed at low water to add to the
+desolation of the scene. The bay was full of storm-stayed vessels, all
+headed to the wind, close reefed, and straining at their anchors.
+There were days when the steamers had to steam full speed ahead in
+order to keep at their berths; and then the big sailing ships would
+drag their anchors and come drifting, drifting helplessly towards the
+shore, and have to fly before the gale if they could, or take their
+chance of stranding if the water were low, or being battered to bits
+against the cliffs if the tide were in. Many a time Beth stood among
+the fishermen watching, waiting, praying; her whole being centred on
+some hapless crew, making for the harbour, but almost certain to be
+carried past. There was a chain down the middle of the pier in the
+winter to prevent people from being washed off, and she had stood
+clinging to this, and seen a great ship, with one ragged sail
+fluttering from a broken mast, carried before the wind right on to the
+pier-head, which it struck with a crash that displaced great blocks of
+granite as if they had been sponge-cakes; and when it struck, the
+doomed sailors on its decks sent up an awful shriek, to which those on
+the pier responded. Then there was a pause. Beth held her breath and
+heard nothing; but she saw the ship slip back, back--down amongst the
+mountainous waves, which sported with it once or twice, tossed it up,
+and sucked it down, tossed it again, then suddenly engulfed it. On the
+water afterwards there were ropes and spars, and dark things bobbing
+like corks, but she knew they were men in mortal agony; and she found
+herself shouting encouragement, telling them to hold on bravely, help
+was coming--the lifeboat! the lifeboat! She joined in the sob of
+excitement too, and the cheers of relief when it returned with its
+crew complete, and five poor wretches rescued--only five out of
+fifteen, but still----
+
+"Blessed be God," said the old priest, "for those whom He has received
+into glory; and blessed be His holy name for those whom He deigns to
+let live."
+
+Beth, standing beside him, heard the words, and wonderingly contrasted
+him with Parson Richardson, who remained shut up with his fourth wife
+in his fat living, making cent. per cent. out of his school, and
+heedless of the parish, while one so old and feeble as Canon Hunter
+stood by his people at all times, careless of himself, enduring
+hardship, braving danger, a man among men in spite of age and
+weakness, by reason of great love.
+
+The pinch of poverty was severely felt again that winter in the
+Caldwell household. Beth, who was growing rapidly, became torpid from
+excessive self-denial; she tried to do without enough, to make it as
+if there were one mouth less to feed, and the privation told upon her;
+her energy flagged; when she went out, she found it difficult to drag
+herself home, and the exuberant spirit of daring, which found
+expression in naughty enterprises, suddenly subsided. She poached on
+principle still for the benefit of the family; but the cool confidence
+born of a sort of inward certainty, which is a premonition of
+success, if it is not the power that compels it, was wanting; and it
+was as if her own doubts when she set the snares released the
+creatures from the fascination that should have lured them, so that
+she caught but little. The weather, too, was very severe; every one in
+the house, including Beth, was more or less ill from colds and coughs,
+and Aunt Victoria suffered especially; but none of them complained,
+not even to themselves; they just endured. They felt for each other,
+however.
+
+"Mamma, don't you think Aunt Victoria should have a fire in her room?"
+Beth said one day.
+
+"I do, my dear child," Mrs. Caldwell answered tartly; "but _I_ can't
+afford the fuel, and she can't afford it either."
+
+"I wish I had known that," said Beth. "I wouldn't have let her afford
+to take me away in the summer, spending all her money for nothing."
+
+"What a grateful and gracious child you are!" her mother exclaimed.
+
+Beth went frowning from the room.
+
+The snow was several feet deep on the ground already, and was still
+falling heavily. Beth put on her things and stole out, her idea being
+to gather sticks to make a fire for the old lady; but after a weary
+trudge she was obliged to return empty-handed, wet, weary, and
+disheartened. The sticks were deep down under the snow; there were
+none to be seen.
+
+"O God!" Beth prayed as she stumbled home, raising her pinched face to
+the sombre sky, "O God, save Aunt Victoria all suffering. Don't let
+her feel the cold, dear Lord, don't let her feel it."
+
+Aunt Victoria herself was stoical. She came down to breakfast every
+morning, and sat up stiffly at the end of the table away from the
+fire, her usual seat, eating little, and saying little, but listening
+with interest when the others spoke. Beth watched her, waited on her,
+and lay awake at night fretting because there was nothing more to be
+done for her.
+
+One stormy night in particular, Beth could not sleep. There was a
+great gale blowing. It came in terrific gusts that shook the house,
+rattled the windows, and made the woodwork creak; then died away, and
+was followed by an interval of comparative quiet, broken by strange,
+mysterious sounds, to which Beth listened with strained attention,
+unable to account for them. One moment it was as if trailing garments
+swept down the narrow stairs, heavy woollen garments that made a soft
+sort of muffled sound, but there was no footfall, as of some one
+walking. Then there came stifled voices, whisperings, as of people
+talking eagerly yet cautiously. Then there were heavy steps, distinct
+yet slow, followed, after an interval, by the tramp of shuffling feet,
+like those of people carrying an awkward burden, and stumbling under
+it. But always, before Beth could think what the noise meant, the gust
+came again, racking her nerves, rattling the windows, making the doors
+creak; then dying away, to be followed by more mysterious sounds, but
+of another character.
+
+"If only there were time--if only they would last long enough, I
+should know--I should understand," Beth thought, full of foreboding.
+She was not frightened, only greatly excited. Something was coming,
+something was going to happen, and these were the warnings, of that
+she was certain. It was as if she were sensitive to some atmosphere
+that surrounds an event and becomes perceptible to those whom it
+concerns if they are of the right temperament to receive the
+impression.
+
+When the blast struck the house, blotting out the strange sounds which
+puzzled Beth, it released her strained attention, and had the effect
+of silence upon her after noise. In one of these pauses, she wondered
+if her mother and Bernadine, in the next bed, were asleep.
+
+"Mamma," she said softly, "mamma!" There was no response. The gale
+dropped. Then Beth heard some one coughing hard.
+
+"Mamma," she said again, "mamma!"
+
+"What's the matter?" Mrs. Caldwell answered, awaking with a start.
+
+"Aunt Victoria is coughing."
+
+"Well, my dear child, I'm very sorry, but I can't help it; and it is
+hardly enough to wake me for," Mrs. Caldwell answered. She settled
+herself to sleep again, and the gale raged without; but Beth remained,
+resting on her elbow, not listening so much as straining her attention
+out into the darkness in an effort to perceive with her further
+faculty what was beyond the range of her limited senses.
+
+"Mamma!" she exclaimed once more, "Aunt Victoria is moaning."
+
+"Nonsense, Beth," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You couldn't possibly hear
+her if she were."
+
+There was another little interval, then Beth jumped out of bed, crying
+as she did so, "Mamma, Aunt Victoria is calling me."
+
+"Beth," Mrs. Caldwell said, rousing herself, and speaking sternly,
+"get into bed again directly, and lie down and go to sleep. It is the
+gale that is making you so nervous. Put the bed-clothes over your
+head, and then you won't hear it."
+
+Beth had been huddling on the first thing she laid hold of in the
+dark, a thick woollen dressing-gown of her mother's, while she was
+speaking. "I shall go and see for myself," she replied.
+
+"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Caldwell. "It wouldn't be you if you didn't
+upset the whole house for your fancies. When you have awakened your
+aunt, and spoilt her night for nothing, as you have spoilt mine,
+you'll be satisfied."
+
+Beth opened the door, and stepped down into darkness, unrelieved by
+the slightest glimmer of light. She had to descend some steps and go
+up some others to get to Aunt Victoria's room; and, after the first
+step, she felt as if she were floating in some new element, not moving
+of her own accord, but borne along confidently, without seeing and
+without feeling her way; and, as she went, she found that the long
+thick garment she wore was making the same soft muffled sound she had
+already heard, and also that there was no footstep audible.
+
+She went into Aunt Victoria's room without knocking. It struck Beth as
+being intensely cold. A candle was burning on the little table beside
+the bed. The old lady was sitting, propped up uncomfortably with two
+thin pillows and a hassock. She was breathing with difficulty, and
+showed no surprise when she saw Beth enter. Her lips were moving, and
+Beth could see she was mumbling something, but she could distinguish
+no word until she went quite close, when she heard her say, "Comfort
+ye, comfort ye My people," several times.
+
+"Aunt Victoria, are you ill?" Beth said. The old lady looked at her
+with dim eyes, then stretched out her hand to her. Beth clasped it. It
+was deadly cold.
+
+"I shall light the fire," Beth said with determination, "and I shall
+make you some tea to ease your cough. You won't mind if I take the
+candle a moment to go downstairs and get the things?"
+
+Beth was practical enough now. The vision and the dream had passed,
+and she was wide awake again, using her eyes, and requiring a candle.
+Before she went downstairs she fetched extra pillows from the spare
+room, and propped Aunt Victoria up more comfortably. Then she set to
+work to light the fire, and soon had the kettle boiling. As the room
+began to warm, Aunt Victoria revived a little, and smiled on Beth for
+the first time with perfect recognition. Beth had made her some tea,
+and was giving it to her in spoonfuls.
+
+"Is that nice?" she said.
+
+"Delicious," the old lady answered.
+
+The gale was all on the other side of the house, so that here in front
+it was comparatively quiet; besides, the wind was dying away as the
+day approached. Beth put the teacup down when Aunt Victoria had taken
+the little she could, and sat on the side of the bed, holding the old
+lady's hand, and gazing at her intently; and, as she watched, she saw
+a strange change come over her. The darkness was fading from the sky
+and the light from Aunt Victoria's face. Beth had seen nothing like
+this before, and yet she had no doubt of what was coming. She had
+known it for days and days; she seemed to have known it always.
+
+"Shall I go for mamma?" she asked at last.
+
+The old lady shook her head.
+
+Beth felt strangely benumbed. She thought of rousing Harriet to fetch
+the doctor, but she could not move. All feeling was suspended except
+the sensation of waiting. This lasted awhile, then a lump began to
+mount in her throat, and she had to gulp it down several times.
+
+"Poor little girl," Aunt Victoria muttered, looking at her in her
+kindly way. Beth melted. "Oh, what shall I do?" she whimpered, "you
+have been so very good to me. You've taught me all the good I know,
+and I have done nothing for you--nothing but bother you. But I love
+you, Aunt Victoria; stay, do stay. I want to do everything you would
+like."
+
+The old lady faintly pressed her hand, then made a last great effort
+to speak. "Bless you, Beth, my dear child," she managed to say with
+great difficulty. "Be comforted; you have helped me more than you
+know. In my sore need, I was not left comfortless. Neither will you
+be. May the Lord bless you, and keep you always. Amen."
+
+Her head sank upon her breast. She seemed to settle down in the bed as
+if her weight had suddenly grown greater.
+
+The sombre dawn had broken by this time, and by its light Beth saw the
+shadow of death come creeping over the delicate patient face.
+
+"Aunt Victoria," she gasped breathlessly, like one in haste to deliver
+a message before it is too late, "shall I say '_Lift up your heads, O
+ye gates?_' That was the first thing you taught me."
+
+The old lady spoke no more, but Beth saw that she understood. The
+faint flicker of a smile, a pleased expression, came into her face and
+settled there. Beth, feeling the full solemnity of the moment, got
+down from the bed, and stood beside it, holding fast still to the kind
+old hand that would nevermore caress or help her, as if she could keep
+the dear one near her by clinging to her.
+
+"_Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in
+His holy place?_" she began, with a strange vibration in her voice.
+"_He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up
+his soul to vanity; nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the
+blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his
+salvation. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye
+everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in._" Beth's
+voice broke here, but with a great effort she began again fervently:
+"_Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting
+doors----_"
+
+There she stopped, for at the words the dear good kind old lady, with
+a gentle sigh, as of relief, passed from the scene of her sufferings,
+out of this interval of time, into the measureless eternity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Aunt Victoria Bench died of failure of the heart, the medical man
+decided; and, he might have added, if the feelings of the family had
+not had to be considered, that the disease was accelerated by
+privation and cold.
+
+For days after the event, Beth was not to be roused. She would sit in
+the tenantless room by the hour together, with the dear old aunt's
+great Bible on her knee open at some favourite passage, thinking of
+all that ought to have been done to save her, and suffering the ache
+and rage of the helpless who would certainly have done all that could
+have been done had they had their way. Again and again her mother
+fetched her down to the dining-room where there was a fire, and tried
+to reason with her, or scolded her for her persistent grief when
+reasoning produced no effect.
+
+"You must begin your lessons again, Beth," she said to her at last one
+morning in despair. "Giving you a holiday is doing you no good at
+all."
+
+Beth went upstairs without a word, and brought down the old aunt's
+French books, and sat at the dining-table with one of them open before
+her; but the sight of it recalled the happy summer days in the bright
+little parlour looking out on the trees and flowers, and the dear old
+lady with her delicate face sitting at the end of the table placidly
+knitting while Beth prepared her lesson, and the tears welled up in
+her eyes once more, and fell on the yellow pages.
+
+"Beth," said her mother emphatically, "you must not go on like this.
+Why are you so selfish? Don't _I_ feel it too? Yet I control myself."
+
+"You don't feel it as I do," Beth answered doggedly. "She was not so
+much to you when she was here, how can you miss her so much now she
+has gone?"
+
+"But you have others to love," Mrs. Caldwell remonstrated. "She was
+not your nearest relation."
+
+"No, but she was the dearest," Beth replied. "I may have others to
+love, but she was the one who loved me. She never said I had no
+affection for any one; she never said I was selfish and thought of
+nothing but my own interests. If she had to find fault with me, she
+did it so that she made me want to be better. She was never unkind,
+she was never unjust, and now I've lost her, I have no one."
+
+"It is your own fault then," said Mrs. Caldwell, apt as usual to say
+the kind of thing with which fatuous parents torment the genius-child.
+"You are so determined not to be like other people that nobody can
+stand you."
+
+"I am not determined to be unlike other people," Beth exclaimed,
+turning crimson with rage and pain. "I want to be like everybody else,
+and I _am_ like everybody else. And I am always ready to care for
+people too, if they will let me. It isn't my fault if they don't like
+me."
+
+"It _is_ your fault," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. "You have an unhappy
+knack of separating yourself from every one. Look at your Uncle James.
+He can hardly tolerate you."
+
+"He's a fool, so that doesn't matter," said Beth, who always dealt
+summarily with Uncle James. "I can't tolerate him. But you can't say I
+separate myself from Aunt Grace Mary. She likes me, and she's kind;
+but she's silly, and when I'm with her any time it makes me yawn. Is
+_that_ my fault? And did I separate myself from Kitty? Did I separate
+myself from papa? Do I separate myself from Count Bartahlinsky? Have I
+separated myself from Aunt Victoria?--and who else is there?"
+
+"You gave Aunt Victoria plenty of trouble while she was here," Mrs.
+Caldwell rejoined drily.
+
+"Well, that is true, at all events," Beth answered in a broken voice;
+and then she bowed her head on the old French grammar, and sobbed as
+if her heart would break.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell looked up from her work at her from time to time
+frowning, but she was too much ruffled by some of Beth's remarks to
+say anything consoling; and Beth, absorbed in her grief, lost all
+consciousness of everything outside herself.
+
+At last, however, a kindly hand was laid on her head, and some one
+stroked her hair.
+
+"That is the way she goes on, and I don't know what to do with her,"
+Mrs. Caldwell was saying. "Come, Beth, rouse yourself," she added
+sharply.
+
+Beth looked up, and found that it was Aunt Grace Mary who was stroking
+her hair.
+
+"Poor little body!" said Aunt Grace Mary as if she were speaking to an
+infant, then added in a sprightly tone: "Come, dear! Come, dear! Wipe
+your eyes. Mamma will be here directly--my mamma--and Uncle James, and
+Mr. Watson."
+
+"What are they coming for?" said Beth.
+
+"Oh, _your_ mamma knows," Aunt Grace Mary answered archly. "Mr. Watson
+was poor dear Aunt Victoria's lawyer, and he has brought her will, and
+is going to read it to us."
+
+"Am I to be sent out of the room?" Beth asked.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Caldwell. "It isn't a matter for you at all."
+
+"Everything is a matter for me that concerned Aunt Victoria," Beth
+rejoined, "and if Lady Benyon is to be here, _I_ shall stay."
+
+Before Mrs. Caldwell could reply, Lady Benyon herself was ushered into
+the little room with great deference by Uncle James. They were
+followed by a little old gentleman dressed in black, with spectacles,
+and a pair of badly-fitting black kid gloves. He shook hands with Mrs.
+Caldwell, and then with Beth, whom he looked at over his spectacles
+shrewdly. Uncle James also shook hands, and kissed his sister. "This
+is a solemn occasion," he said, with emotion in his voice. Then he
+looked at Beth, and added, "Had she not better go?"
+
+Beth sat down beside Aunt Grace Mary, with her mouth obstinately set;
+and Mrs. Caldwell, afraid of a scene, merely shrugged her shoulders
+helplessly. Meanwhile the lawyer was blowing his nose, wiping his
+spectacles, taking papers out of a pocket at the back of his
+frock-coat, and settling himself at the table.
+
+"You would like this young lady to retire, I suppose," said Uncle
+James blandly.
+
+"By no means," the little old gentleman answered, looking up at him
+over his spectacles, and then at Beth. "By no means; let the young
+lady remain."
+
+Aunt Grace Mary put her arm round Beth. The lawyer broke the seal,
+unfolded the will, and remarked by way of preface: "The document is in
+the handwriting of the deceased. Ahem!"
+
+Instantly into every face there came the expression that people wear
+in church. Mr. Watson proceeded to read; but in a dry, distinct,
+matter-of-fact tone, devoid of all emotion. A lawyer reading a will
+aloud is sure of the interest of his audience, and, on this occasion,
+it was evident that each member of the little group listened with
+strained attention, but with very different feelings. What they
+gathered was that Miss Victoria Bench, spinster, being of sound mind,
+did will and bequeath everything of which she might die possessed to
+her beloved great-niece, Elizabeth Caldwell, commonly called Beth.
+Should Beth marry, the money was to be settled upon her for her
+exclusive use. The present income from the property, about fifty
+pounds a year, was to be devoted to the education of the said
+Elizabeth Caldwell, commonly called Beth.
+
+Uncle James's jaw dropped during the reading. "But," he stammered when
+it was over, "if the investments recover?"
+
+"Then Miss Elizabeth Caldwell, commonly called Beth, will have an
+income of between six and seven hundred a year, _at least_," said the
+lawyer, smiling.
+
+Aunt Grace Mary clasped Beth close in a spasm of congratulation. Mrs.
+Caldwell burst into tears. Beth herself, with an unmoved countenance,
+perceived the disgust of Uncle James, her mother's emotion, and
+something like amusement in Lady Benyon's face; and she also
+perceived, but at a great distance as it were, that there was a dim
+prospect of some change for the better in her life.
+
+"Poor little body!" said Aunt Grace Mary, caressing her.
+
+"Rich little body!" said Lady Benyon. "Come and kiss me, Puck, and let
+me congratulate you."
+
+"It is very nice for you, Beth, I am sure," said Mrs. Caldwell
+plaintively, holding out her hand to Beth as she passed. Beth accepted
+this also as a congratulation, and stooped and kissed her mother. Then
+the lawyer got up and shook hands with her, and thereupon Uncle James,
+feeling forced for decency's sake to do something, observed pointedly:
+"I suppose Miss Victoria Bench was quite sane when she made this
+bequest?"
+
+"I should say that your supposition was correct," said the lawyer.
+"Miss Victoria Bench always seemed to me to be an eminently sane
+person."
+
+There was no allusion whatever to Uncle James in Aunt Victoria's will.
+She thanked her niece, Caroline Caldwell, kindly for the shelter she
+had given her in her misfortune, and hoped that by providing for Beth
+she would relieve her mother's mind of all anxiety about the child, to
+whom, she proceeded to state, she left all she had in proof of the
+tender affection she felt for the child, and in return for the
+disinterested love and duty she had received from Beth. Aunt Victoria
+wished Beth to have her room when she was gone, in order that Beth
+might, as she grew up, have proper privacy in her life, with
+undisturbed leisure for study, reflection, and prayer. She added that
+she considered Beth a child of exceptional temperament, that peculiar
+care and kindness would be necessary to develop her character; but
+Miss Victoria hoped, prayed, and believed that, with the help of the
+excellent abilities with which she had been endowed, Beth would not
+only work out her own salvation eventually, but do something notable
+to the glory of God and for the good of mankind.
+
+Beth's heart glowed when she heard this passage, and ever afterwards,
+when she recalled it, she felt strangely stimulated.
+
+After the last solemn words of the will had been read, and the little
+scene of congratulation had been enacted, there was a pause in the
+proceedings, then Uncle James remarked in his happiest manner: "The
+importance which old ladies attach to their little bequests is only to
+be equalled by the strength of their sentiments, and the grandeur of
+the language in which they are expressed. One would think a
+principality was being bequeathed to a princess, instead of a few
+pounds to an obscure little girl, to judge by the tone of the whole
+document. Well, well!"
+
+Beth looked at him, then drew down the corners of her mouth
+impertinently. "There is one thing I can console you with, Uncle
+James," she said. "You may be quite sure that when I do come into my
+kingdom, I shall carefully conceal the fact that I am any relation of
+yours."
+
+Later in the day, Beth found her mother sitting in her accustomed
+place by the dining-table, rocking herself sideways over her work, and
+with a worried expression of countenance, as if she were uneasy in her
+mind.
+
+"Aren't you pleased, mamma," said Beth, "that I should be left the
+money?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course, my dear child," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined. Her tone
+to Beth had altered very much since the morning. Even in a few short
+hours Beth had been made to feel that mere money was making her a
+person of more importance than she had ever before been considered.
+
+Her mother had stopped short, but Beth waited, and Mrs. Caldwell
+recommenced: "I am delighted on your account. Only, I was just
+thinking. The money is of no use to you just now, and it would have
+made all the difference to Jim. He ought to be making friends now who
+will last him his life and help him on in his career; but he can do
+nothing without an allowance, and I cannot make him one. There is no
+hurry for your education. In fact, I think it would be better for your
+health if you were not taught too much at present. But you shall have
+your aunt's room, Beth, to study in if you like. You may even sleep
+there, although I shall feel it when you leave mine. It will be
+breaking up the family. That remark in the will about proper privacy
+seems to me great nonsense, and you know I am not legally bound to
+give you a room to yourself. However, it was the dear old lady's last
+request to me, and that makes it sacred, so it shall be carried out to
+the letter. The room is yours, and I hope you will enjoy your
+privacy."
+
+"Oh, I _shall_," Beth exclaimed with uncomplimentary fervour.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell sighed and sewed on in silence for a little.
+
+"The dear old lady left you the money because she believed you would
+do some good with it," she resumed. "'For the good of mankind.' Those
+are her own words. And I do think that is rather your line, Beth; and
+what greater good can you do to begin with than help your brother on
+in the world? To spend the money on him instead of on yourself would
+really be a fine, unselfish thing to do."
+
+Beth's great grey eyes dilated; the prospect was alluring. "I suppose there
+would not be enough for both of us?" she ventured tentatively--"enough
+for me to be taught some _few_ things properly, you know--English,
+music, French."
+
+"On fifty pounds a year, my dear child!" her mother exclaimed
+sorrowfully. "Fifty pounds goes no way at all." Beth sighed.
+"Besides," Mrs. Caldwell pursued, "_I_ can teach you all these things.
+You've got beyond your childish tiresomeness now, and have only to
+ask, and then I will tell you all you don't know. It would be a
+pleasure and an occupation for me, and indeed, Beth, I have very
+little pleasure in life. The days are long and lonely." Beth looked up
+with sudden sympathy. "But if you will let me give you the lessons,
+and earn the money, I could send it to Jim, and that would comfort me
+greatly, and add also to _your_ happiness, I should think."
+
+It was not in Beth to resist such an appeal. She always forgot herself
+at the first symptom of sorrow or suffering in another, and never
+considered her own interests if she could help somebody else by
+sacrificing them.
+
+"It _would_ add to my happiness," she answered brightly. "And if you
+will just explain to me, mamma, when I don't understand things, I
+shall remember all right, and not be a bother to you. Will you be kind
+to me, and not scold me, and jeer at me, and make my life a burden to
+me? When you do that, I hate you."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell stopped short with her needle up in the air, in the act
+of drawing the thread through her work. She was inexpressibly shocked.
+
+"Hate your mother, Beth!" she gasped.
+
+"I know it's abominable," said Beth, filled with compunction; "but I
+can't help it. It's the devil, I suppose. He gets hold of us both, and
+makes you torment me, and makes me--not like you for it."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell quietly resumed her sewing. She was too much startled by
+this glimpse of herself from Beth's point of view to say another word
+on the subject; and a long silence ensued, during which she saw
+herself as a sadly misunderstood mother. She determined, however, to
+try and manage Beth on a new principle.
+
+"I should like to help you to make the best of yourself, Beth," she
+burst out again abruptly; "and I think I can. You are a tall girl for
+your age, and are beginning to hold yourself well already. Your poor
+dear aunt was very particular to teach you that. And you have the
+complexion of the Bench family, if you will take care of it. You
+should wash your face in buttermilk at night after being out in the
+sun. I'll get you some, and I'll get you a parasol for the summer.
+Your hands are not nearly so coarse as they used to be, and they would
+really be quite nice if you attended to them properly. All your
+father's people had good hands and feet. I must see to your gloves and
+boots. I don't know what your waist is going to be, but you shall have
+some good stays. A fine shape goes a long way. With your prospects you
+really ought to make a good match, so do not slouch about any more as
+if you had no self-respect at all. You can really do a great deal to
+make yourself attractive in appearance. Your Uncle William Caldwell
+had a very ugly nose, but he pinched it, and pinched it every day to
+get it into shape, until at last he made it quite a good one."
+
+Bernadine came into the room in time to hear this story, and was so
+impressed by it that she tried the same experiment on her own nose
+without asking if it were ugly or not, and pinched it and rubbed it so
+diligently that by the time it was formed she had thickened it and
+changed it from a good ordinary nose into something quite original.
+
+This was the kind of thing that happened to ladies in the days when
+true womanliness consisted in knowing nothing accurately, and always
+taking advice. Efforts to improve themselves in some such way were
+common enough among marriageable maidens, and their mothers helped
+them to the best of their ability with equally happy hints. Because
+small feet were a beauty, therefore feet already in perfect proportion
+must be squeezed to reduce their size till they were all deformed; and
+because slenderness was considered elegant, therefore naturally
+well-formed women must compress their bodies till they looked like
+cylinders or hour-glasses, and lace till their noses swelled and their
+hair fell out. Never having heard of proportion, all their ambition
+was to reduce themselves to something less than they were designed to
+be. Those were the days when women had "no nonsense about them, sir, I
+tell you," none of those new-fangled ideas about education and that.
+
+It was a new notion to Beth that she could do anything to make herself
+attractive, and she took a solemn interest in it. She listened with
+absolute faith to all that her mother said on the subject, and
+determined to be high-principled and make the most of herself. When
+her mother talked to her in this genial friendly way, instead of
+carping at her or ignoring her, Beth's heart expanded and she was
+ready to do anything to please her. Lessons on the new method went on
+without friction. Beth never suspected that her mother was unequal to
+the task of educating her in any true sense of the word; her mother
+never suspected it, neither did anybody else; and Beth had it all her
+own way. If she were idle, her mother excused her; if she brought a
+lesson only half-learnt, her mother prompted her all through; if she
+asked questions, her mother answered them pleasantly; so that they got
+on very well together, and everybody was satisfied--especially Jim,
+who was benefiting by Aunt Victoria's bequest to the extent of being
+able to keep up with the best of his bar-loafing acquaintances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+When she did what Aunt Victoria approved, Beth felt that she was
+making Aunt Victoria happy. Her dead were never far from her, never
+beyond recall. She conquered her pride for Aunt Victoria's sake, and
+began to go out again with her mother for the morning walk that winter
+unasked; but Mrs. Caldwell seemed indifferent to the attention. She
+let Beth walk beside her day after day, but remained absorbed in her
+own reflections, and made no effort to talk to Beth and take her out
+of herself; so that Beth very soon found the duty intolerably irksome.
+It irritated her, too, when she caught her mother smiling to herself,
+and on asking what was amusing her, Mrs. Caldwell replied, still
+smiling, "Never _you_ mind." With Beth's temperament it was not
+possible that the sense of duty would long survive such snubs.
+Gradually she began to wander off by herself again, leaving her mother
+pacing up and down the particular sheltered terrace overlooking the
+sea on which she always walked at that hour, and Bernadine playing
+about the cliffs or the desolate shore.
+
+The whole place was desolate and melancholy at that time of the year.
+The wind-swept streets were generally deserted, and the few people who
+ventured out looked cold and miserable in their winter wraps. When a
+gleam of sunshine enlivened the sky, the sailors would stand at the
+top of the steps that led down on to the pier, with their hands in
+their trousers-pockets, chewing tobacco, and straining their eyes out
+seaward as if they were watching for something special; and Beth would
+stand there among them, and look out too--out, far beyond the range of
+their mental vision, eastwards, to summer lands whence the swallows
+came, where the soft air was perfumed with flowers, and there was
+brightness and warmth and ease, and the sea itself, so full of
+complaint down below there, raged no more, neither lamented, but
+sang. And there Aunt Victoria would be, sitting somewhere out of doors
+under the trees, with good things, books and work and fruit and
+flowers, piled up on a little table beside her, and every wish of her
+heart gratified, looking serenely happy, and smiling and nodding and
+beckoning to Beth. But following fast upon the vision, Aunt Victoria
+would be beside her in the bitter wind, wearing her old brown dress
+with white spots that was far too thin, and making believe that she
+did not shiver; then they had returned from the morning walk, and Aunt
+Victoria was pausing a moment at the bottom of the stairs to look up,
+as if measuring her strength and the distance, before she took hold of
+the bannister and began to mount wearily, but never once trusting
+herself to glance towards Bernadine and the bread, lest something
+should be seen in her face which she chose to conceal. From that
+vision Beth would fly down the steps to the sands, and escape it in a
+healthy race with the turgid waves that came cresting in and broke on
+the barren shore.
+
+Then one day, suddenly, as it seemed, a bird sang. The winter was
+over, spring was upon the land again, and Beth looked up and smiled.
+The old pear-tree in the little garden at the back was a white wonder
+of blossom, and, in front, in the orchard opposite, the apple-trees
+blushed with a tinge of pink. Beth, seeing them one morning very early
+from her bed in Aunt Victoria's room, arose at once, rejoicing, and
+threw the window wide open. Beth might have used the same word to
+express the good and the beautiful, as the Greeks did, so inseparably
+were the two associated in her mind. At this stage of her development
+she felt very literally--
+
+    "The heavens are telling the glory of God,
+     The wonder of His works displays the firmament."
+
+"O Lord, how wondrous are Thy works," she chanted to herself softly,
+as she gazed, awe-stricken, at the loveliness of the rose-tinged foam
+on the fruit-trees, and her whole being was thrilled with gratitude
+for the beauty of earth. She took deep draughts of the sweet morning
+air, and, like the Indian devotee, she breathed a sacred word with
+every breath. But passive ecstasy was not enough for Beth. Her fine
+feelings strove for expression always in some fine act, and as she
+stood at the window she made good resolutions. Her life should be
+ordered to worthy purposes from morning till night. She would in
+future begin the day by getting up to greet the dawn in an ecstasy of
+devotion. Not a minute later than daybreak would do for her. All
+Beth's efforts aimed at an extreme.
+
+She idled most of that day away in contemplation of her project, and
+she was as dilatory and troublesome as she could be, doing nothing
+she ought to have done, because her mind was so full of all the things
+she was going to do. What she feared was that she would never be able
+to wake herself in time, and she went to bed at a preposterously early
+hour, and sat long in her night-dress, thinking how to manage it. At
+last it occurred to her that if she tied her great toe to the bed-post
+with a piece of string, it would give her a jerk when she moved, and
+so awake her.
+
+The contrivance answered only too well. She could not sleep for a long
+time, and when at last she dropped off, she was almost immediately
+awakened by a pitiless jerk from the string. She had Aunt Victoria's
+old watch under her pillow, and lighted a match to see the time. It
+was only twelve. When would the day break? She turned, and tossed, and
+fidgeted. The string on her toe was very uncomfortable, but nothing
+would have induced her to be so weak as to take it off. One, two,
+three, she heard the church-clock strike, but it was still pitch dark.
+Then she dozed off again, but in a minute, as it seemed to her, she
+was re-aroused by the string. She gave a great weary sigh and opened
+her eyes. It was all grey daylight in the room.
+
+Beth was out of bed as soon as she could get the string off her toe.
+The water was very cold, and she shivered and yawned and stretched
+over it, but washed herself with exaggerated conscientiousness all the
+same, then huddled on her clothes, and stood awhile, not knowing quite
+what to do next. She had slept with the window open, and now she drew
+up the blind. Under the leaden sky the apple-trees showed no tinge of
+colour, and it was as if white sheets had been spread out over them
+for the night. Beth thought of curl-papers and rooms all covered up
+from the dust when Harriet was sweeping, and felt no enthusiasm. She
+was on the west side of the house, and could not therefore see the sun
+rise; but she must see the sunrise--sunrise--sunrise. She had never
+seen the sunrise. The sea was east. It would rise over the sea. The
+sea at sunrise! The very thought of it took her breath away. She put
+on her things and slipped into the acting-room. Her mother took the
+front-door key up to her room with her when she went to bed at night,
+so that the only way out was by the acting-room window. Beth swung
+herself round the bar, crept cautiously down the tiles to the pump,
+jumped to the ground, then ran up the entry, and let herself out by
+the back-gate into the street. There she was seized upon by a great
+feeling of freedom. She threw up her arms, filled her lungs with a
+deep breath, and ran. There was not a soul to be seen. The town was
+hers!
+
+She made for a lonely spot on the cliff, where a stream fell in a
+cataract on to the sand, and there was a rustic seat with a lovely
+view of the bay. Beth dropped on to the seat out of breath and looked
+curiously about her. The tide was high. The water, smooth, sullen,
+swollen and weary, broke on the shore in waves so small that it seemed
+as if the sea, tired of its endless task, were doing dispiritedly as
+little as it dared, and murmuring at that. The curving cliffs on the
+left looked like white curtains, closely drawn. The low grey sky was
+unbroken by cloud or rift except low down on the horizon, where it had
+risen like a blind drawn up a little to admit the light. It was a
+melancholy prospect, and Beth shivered and sighed in sympathy. Then a
+sparrow cheeped somewhere behind her, and another bird in the hedge
+softly fluted a little roulade. Beth looked round to see what it was,
+and at that moment the light brightened as if it had been suddenly
+turned up. She looked at the sea again. The rift in the leaden sky had
+lengthened and widened, and the first pale primrose of the dawn showed
+beyond. A faint flush followed, and then it seemed as if the night sky
+slowly rolled itself up and was put away, leaving a floor of silver,
+deepening to lilac, for the first bright beam to disport itself upon.
+Then the sea smiled, and the weariness of it, back and forth, back and
+forth, passed into animation. Its smooth surface became diapered with
+light airs, and moved with a gentle roll. The sullen murmur rose to a
+morning song, and a boat with bare mast at anchor in the bay, the only
+one in sight, rocked to the tune. A great sea-bird sailed by, gazing
+down into the depths with piercing eyes, and a grey gull flew so close
+to the water, it seemed as if his wings must dip at every flap. The
+sky by this time was all a riot of colour, at which Beth gazed in
+admiration, but without rapture. Her intellect acknowledged its
+loveliness, but did not delight in it--heart and soul were untouched.
+The spirit of the dawn refused to speak to her. She had exhausted
+herself in her effort to induce the intoxication of devotion which had
+come to her spontaneously the day before. The great spirit does not
+want martyrs. Joy in beauty and goodness comes of a pure and tranquil
+mind, not of a tortured body. The faces of the holy ones are calm and
+their souls serene.
+
+A little farm-house stood back from the road just behind the seat
+where Beth was sitting, and a tall gaunt elderly man, with a beard on
+his chin, came out presently and stood staring grimly at the sunrise.
+Then he crossed the road deliberately, sat down at the other end of
+the seat, and stared at Beth.
+
+"You're early out," he said at last.
+
+Beth detected something hostile in the tone, and fixed her big
+fearless grey eyes upon him defiantly. "It's a free country," she
+said.
+
+"Free or not," he answered drily, "it isn't fit fur no young gell to
+be out alone at sechun a time. Ye should be indoors gettin' the
+breakfast."
+
+"Thank you," said Beth, "I've no need to get the breakfast."
+
+"Well, it makes it all the worse," he rejoined; "fur if ye're by way
+o' bein' a lady, it not on'y means that ye're out wi' no one to tak'
+care of ye, but that ye've niver been taught to tak' care o' yerself.
+Lady!" he ejaculated. "Pride and patches! Tak' my advice, _lady_, go
+back to yer bed, get yer meed o' sleep, wak' up refreshed, and set to
+work."
+
+He spat on the grass in a self-satisfied way when he had spoken, and
+contemplated the sunrise like a man who has done his duty and earned
+the right to repose.
+
+Beth got up and walked home despondently. She climbed in at the
+acting-room window, and went to her own room. The sun was shining on
+the apple-blossom in the orchard opposite, and she looked for the
+charm of yesterday, but finding only the garish commonplace of
+fruit-trees in flower with the sun on them, she drew down the blind.
+Then she took off her hat and jacket, threw herself on her bed, and
+fell into a heavy sleep, with her brow puckered and the corners of her
+mouth drooping discontentedly.
+
+The next night she determined to take her meed of sleep, and did not
+tie the string to her toe. It had been a long lonely day, filled with
+great dissatisfaction and vague yearnings for companionship; but when
+she fell asleep she had a happy dream, so vivid that it seemed more
+real than anything she had seen in her morning ramble. It was eight
+o'clock in the evening, she dreamt, and there was some one waiting for
+her under the pear-tree in the garden. The night air was fresh and
+fragrant. The moonlight shone on the white blossoms overhead, which
+clustered so close that no ray penetrated to the ground beneath, so
+that there all was shadowy, but still she could see that there was
+some one standing in the shade, and she knew that he was waiting for
+her. She had never seen him before, yet she knew him well and hurried
+to meet him; and he took her in his arms and kissed her, and his
+kisses thrilled her with a thrill that remained with her for many a
+day.
+
+She got up the moment she awoke, and looked about her in a kind of
+amaze, for everything she saw was transfigured. It was in herself,
+however, that the light burned which made the world so radiant. As the
+old apple-trees, warmed by the sun, suddenly blossomed into bridal
+beauty in the spring, so, in the silent night, between sundown and
+day-dawn, while she slept, yet another petal of her own manifold
+nature had unfolded, and in the glow of its loveliness there was
+nothing of commonplace aspect; for a new joy in life was hers which
+helped her to discover in all things a hitherto unsuspected charm.
+
+Beth's little life had been full of childish irregularities, the
+little duties being continually slurred and neglected that the little
+pleasures might be indulged in the sooner. She was apt to regard
+bathing, hair-brushing, dressing, and lessons as mere hindrances to
+some of the particular great businesses of life which specially
+occupied her--verse-making, for instance, piano-playing, poaching, or
+praying, whichever happened to be the predominant interest of the
+moment. But now, on a sudden, the care of her person became of
+extraordinary importance. All the hints, good and bad, she had had on
+the subject recurred to her, and she began to put them into practice
+systematically. She threw the clothes back from her bed to air it the
+moment she got up, that it might be fresh and sweet to sleep in. Her
+little bath had hitherto been used somewhat irregularly, but now she
+fetched hot and cold water for herself, and bathed every day. She
+brushed her hair glossy, and tightened her stays to make her waist
+small, and she was sorely dissatisfied because her boots did not pinch
+her feet. She began to take great care of her hands too, and would do
+no dusting without gloves on, or dirty work of any kind that was
+calculated to injure them. She used a parasol when she could, and if
+she got sunburnt bathing or boating, she washed her face in buttermilk
+at night, fetched from Fairholm regularly for the purpose. The minds
+and habits of the young are apt to form themselves in this way out of
+suggestions let fall by all kinds of people, the worst and most
+foolish as well as the wisest and best.
+
+Beth longed that morning for something new and smart to wear. Her old
+black things looked so rusty in the spring sunshine, she could not
+satisfy herself with anything she had. All Aunt Victoria's possessions
+were hers, and she examined her boxes, looking for something to
+enliven her own sombre dress, and found some lace which she turned
+into a collar and cuffs and sewed on. When she saw herself in the
+glass with this becoming addition to her dress, her face brightened at
+the effect. She knew that Aunt Victoria would have been pleased to see
+her look like that--she was always pleased when Beth looked well; and
+now, when Beth recollected her sympathy, all the great fountain of
+love in her brimmed over, and streamed away in happy little waves, to
+break about the dear old aunt somewhere on the foreshore of eternity,
+and to add, perhaps, who knows how or what to her bliss.
+
+When Beth went down to breakfast, she was very hungry, but there was
+only one little bloater, which must be left for mamma to divide with
+Bernadine. There was not much butter either, so Beth took her toast
+nearly dry, and her thin coffee with very little milk and no sugar in
+it, also for economical reasons; but the coffee was hot, and she was
+happy. Her happiness bubbled up in bright little remarks, which
+brightened her mother too.
+
+"Mamma," said Beth, taking advantage of her mood, "it's a poor heart
+that never rejoices. Let's have a holiday, you and I, to celebrate the
+summer."
+
+"But the summer hasn't come," Mrs. Caldwell objected, smiling.
+
+"But summer is coming, is coming," Beth chanted, "and I want to make a
+song about it."
+
+"_You_ make a song!" Bernadine exclaimed. "Why, you can't spell
+summer."
+
+Beth made a face at her. "I know you want a holiday, mamma," she
+resumed. "Come, confess! I work you to death. And there's church
+to-day at eleven, and I want to go."
+
+"Well, if you want to go to church," said Mrs. Caldwell, relieved.
+
+Beth did not wait to hear the end of the sentence.
+
+She went to the drawing-room first, and sat down at the little
+rosewood piano with a volume of Moore's "Lalla Rookh" open before her.
+
+    "From the mountain's warbling fount I come,"
+
+she chanted, with her eyes fixed on the words, but she played as if
+she were reading notes. She wove all the poems she loved to music in
+this way, and played and sang them softly to herself by the hour
+together.
+
+The Lenten service in the church at the end of the road was but poorly
+attended. There were not more than a dozen people present; but Beth,
+seated beside the door, enjoyed it. She was all fervour now, and every
+emotional exercise was a pleasure.
+
+After the service she strolled down the quaintly irregular front
+street, which was all red brick houses with small window-panes, three
+to the width of the window, except where an aspiring tradesman had
+introduced plate-glass and a vulgar disguise of stucco, which
+converted the warm-toned bricks into commonplace colourless greyness.
+It was on one side of this street that the principal shops were, and
+Beth stood for some time gazing at a print in a stationer's window--a
+lovely little composition of waves lapping in gently towards a
+sheltered nook on a sandy beach. Beth, wafted there instantly, heard
+the dreamy murmur and felt the delicious freshness of the sea, yet the
+picture did not satisfy her.
+
+"I should want somebody," she broke out in herself. "I should want
+somebody--somebody to lay my head against. Ah, dear Lord, how I hate
+to be alone!"
+
+Old Lady Benyon, at her post of observation in the big bow-window at
+the top of the street, saw Beth standing there, and speculated.
+"Gracious, how that child grows!" she exclaimed. "She'll be a woman
+directly."
+
+As Beth went on down the street, she began to suffer from that dull
+irresolute feeling which comes of a want of purpose. She wanted a
+companion and she wanted an object. Presently she met a young man who
+looked at her intently as they approached each other, and as he looked
+his face brightened. Beth's pulse quickened pleasurably and her colour
+rose. Her steps became buoyant. She held up her head and glowed with
+animation, but was unaware of the source of this sudden happy
+stimulant, nor did she try to discover it. She was living her
+experiences then, by-and-by she would reflect upon them, then
+inevitably she would reproduce them, and all without intention. As the
+sun rises, as the birds build, so would she work when the right time
+came. Talent may manufacture to order, but works of genius are the
+outcome of an irresistible impulse, a craving to express something for
+its own sake and the pleasure of expressing it, with no thought of
+anything beyond. It is talent that thinks first of all of applause and
+profits, and only works to secure them--works for the result, for the
+end in view--never for love of the work.
+
+Beth's heart had no satisfaction at home; she had no friend of her own
+sex to fill it as most girls have, and a nature like hers, rich in
+every healthy possibility, was bound to crave for love early. It was
+all very well for her mother and society as it is constituted to
+ignore the needs of nature; by Beth herself they would not be ignored.
+In most people, whether the senses or the intellect will have the
+upper-hand is very much a matter of early training.
+
+Because she was a girl, Beth's intellect had been left to stagnate for
+want of proper occupation or to run riot in any vain pursuit she might
+happen upon by accident, while her senses were allowed to have their
+way, unrestrained by any but the vaguest principles. Thanks to her
+free roving outdoor habits, her life was healthy if it were not happy,
+and she promised to mature early. Youth and sex already began to hang
+out their signals--clear skin, slim figure, light step, white teeth,
+thick hair, bright eyes. She was approaching her blossoming time, the
+end of her wintry childhood, the beginning of a promising spring. It
+was natural and right that her pulses should quicken and her spirits
+rise when a young man met her with a friendly glance. Her whole being
+was suffused with the glory of love, and her mind held the vision; but
+it was of an abstract kind as yet, not inspired by man. It was in
+herself that the emotion arose, in happy exuberance, and bubbled over,
+expending itself in various forms of energy until it should find one
+object to concentrate itself upon. There comes a time to all healthy
+young people when Nature says: "Mate, my children, and be happy." If
+the impulse come prematurely, it is not the young people, but the old
+ones that are to blame; they should have seen to it that the
+intellect, which acts as a curb on the senses when properly trained
+and occupied, developed first. Beth was just at the age when the
+half-educated girl has nothing to distract her but her own emotions.
+Her religion, and the young men who are beginning to make eyes at her,
+interest her then about equally, and in much the same way; she owes to
+each a pleasurable sensation. If she can combine the two under one
+roof, as in church, they suffice and her happiness is complete. It
+cannot be said, however, that the senses awoke before the intellect in
+Beth; but because of the irregularities of her training, the want of
+discipline and order, they took possession of her first.
+
+Passing a shop-window, Beth caught a reflection of herself in the
+polished pane, and saw that her skirt hung badly: it dipped too much
+behind. She stopped to gauge the length, that she might alter it when
+she went in, and then she noticed the pretty light summer things
+displayed in the window, and ached to possess some. She was miserably
+conscious of her old ill-cut skirt, more especially of the invisible
+dirt on it, and she did so yearn for something new and sweet and
+clean. Her mother had a bill at that shop--should she--should she just
+go in and ask about prices? No, she could not in that horrid old
+frock; the shopman would not respect her. She had intended to go down
+to the sands and sit by the sea, and wait for things to come to her,
+by which she meant ideas; but the discomfort of mind set up by that
+glimpse of her uncouth clothes, and the horrible sense of their want
+of freshness, gained upon her, and drove her in hurriedly. Beth would
+have expressed the dainty refinement of her mind in her dress had she
+had the means; but it is difficult to be dainty on nothing a year.
+
+The rest of the day she spent in her room sewing. She found that one
+of Aunt Victoria's summer silks would fit her with very little
+alteration, and set to work to make a Sunday frock of it. As she
+worked she thought of the dear old lady, and of the hours they had sat
+there together sewing, and of their teas and talks. She would not have
+known how to alter that dress but for Aunt Victoria; it made her both
+sad and glad to remember how much she owed her.
+
+Later in the day, after dinner, when the sun had set and the darkness
+was beginning to gather, Beth became aware of a curious sensation. It
+was as if she were expecting something delightful to happen, and yet,
+at the same time, was all aching with anxiety. Then suddenly she
+remembered her dream. The old pear-tree was a pyramid of blossom.
+Should she go and see the white foam-flowers by moonlight? The moon
+had risen.
+
+She stole out into the garden, anxious above everything to go alone.
+Her heart throbbed curiously; what did she expect? The young moon hung
+in an indigo sky, and there were some white stars. The air was fresh
+and fragrant as it had been in her dream, but there was less light.
+She had to peer into the shade beneath the pear-tree to see--to see
+what? If there were any one there? Of course there was no one there!
+How could there be? She did not trust herself closer, however, until
+she was quite sure that there was nothing to encounter but the trunk
+of the tree. Then she went bravely, and reclined on the see-saw board,
+looking up through the black branches to the clustering blossoms that
+shone so white on the topmost twigs in the moonlight. And presently
+she began to glow with a great feeling of exultation. It began in her
+chest, and spread, as from a centre, all over her. The details of her
+dream recurred to her, the close clasp, the tender kiss, and she
+thrilled again at the recollection.
+
+But, for the present, the recollection was enough.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+On Sunday morning Beth went down to breakfast dressed in Aunt
+Victoria's light lavender silk, remodelled to suit her; and very
+becoming she had made it. But Mrs. Caldwell called it an absurd
+costume for a girl of her age, and said she looked ridiculously
+over-dressed; so Beth went back to her room disheartened, and
+reappeared at church-time, with drooping mouth, in the old black frock
+she usually wore on Sundays.
+
+Vainly she tried to rouse herself to any fervour of worship during the
+first part of the service. She felt ill-dressed, uncomfortable,
+dissatisfied, and would have been glad to quarrel with anybody. Then
+suddenly, during the singing of a hymn, she ceased to be self-conscious.
+All the trouble left her, and was succeeded by that curious thrill of
+happy expectation which came to her continually at this time. She looked
+about her and saw friendly faces where before she had seen nothing but
+criticism and disdain of her shabby clothes.
+
+Those were the days of pew-letting. The nearer you sat to the pulpit,
+the higher the price of the pew, and the better your social position.
+Mrs. Caldwell was obliged to content herself with a cheap seat in one
+of the side aisles near the door, so the vicar had never called on
+her. He only called on a few front rows. His own pew was high in the
+chancel, where all the parish could gaze at his exhausted wife and her
+increasing family. His pupils used to sit in the pew opposite; but the
+bishop, having received complaints from the neglected parish, had
+lately interfered and stopped the school; and henceforth Mr.
+Richardson was only to be allowed to have one pupil. Mr. Richardson
+determined to make him profitable.
+
+From where she sat Beth could see the vicar's pew in the chancel, and
+she had noticed a tall slender youth sitting at the far end, near the
+vestry door, but he did not interest her at first; now, however, she
+looked at him again, and wondered who he was, and presently she found
+that he was gazing at her intently. Then their eyes met, and it was as
+if a spark of fire had kindled a glow in her chest, high up near the
+throat, where the breath catches. She looked down at her book, but had
+no thought on the subject at all--she was all one sensation. Light had
+come to her, a wondrous flood of amber light, that blotted out the
+common congregation and all besides, but him and her. Yet she could
+hardly sit through the service, and the moment it was over she fled.
+Her great desire was to be alone, if that could be called solitude
+which contained all the satisfaction of the closest companionship. All
+the time that she was flying, however, she felt that she was being
+pursued, and there was the strangest excitement and delight in the
+sensation. But she never looked behind. She did not dare to.
+
+She made for the cliffs on the Fairholm estate, and when she came to
+them her intention was to hide herself. There was a nook she knew,
+some distance on, a grassy space on the cliff side, not visible either
+from above or below. She climbed down to it, and there ensconced
+herself. Beneath was a little cove sheltered from the north and south
+by the jutting cliffs, and floored with the firmest sand just then,
+for the tide was out. Beth was lying in the shadow of the cliff, but,
+beyond, the sun shone, the water sparkled, the sonorous sea-voice
+sounded from afar, while little laughing waves broke out into merry
+music all along the shore. Beth, lying on her face with her arms
+folded in front of her and her cheek resting on them, looked out,
+lithe, young, strong, bursting with exultation, but motionless as a
+manifestation of inanimate nature. That was a beautiful pause in her
+troublous day. Never mind if it only endured for an hour, there was
+certainty in it, a happy certainty. From the moment their eyes had met
+she was sure, she knew he would come.
+
+The little waves rang out their laughing carillons, light grace notes
+to the deep solemn melody of earth and air and sea; and Beth, watching
+with dilated pupils and set countenance, listened intently. And
+presently, below, on her left, round the headland some one came
+striding. Beth's bright eyes flashed with a vivid interest, but she
+shrank back, flattening herself down on the rank grass, as though
+thereby she made herself the more invisible.
+
+The young man stopped, took off his hat and wiped his forehead,
+glanced this way and that round the cove and out to sea, like one
+bewildered, who has expected to find something which is not there, and
+begins to look for it in the most unlikely places. Hesitating,
+disappointed, uncertain, he moved a little on in one direction, a
+little back in the other, then, drawn by a sudden impulse, that most
+familiar manifestation of the ruling force which disposes of us all,
+we know not how, he walked up the cove with swift, strong, buoyant
+steps, as if with a purpose, swinging his hat in his hand as he came,
+and threw himself full length on the smooth, hard, shining sand, and
+sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction, as though he knew himself within
+reach of what he sought. In certain states of ecstatic feeling a
+faculty is released which takes cognisance of things beyond the ken of
+our beclouded intellects, and although in the language of mind he did
+not know, it may be that from the region of pure spirit there had come
+to him a subtle perception, not to be defined, which made it more
+desirable to be there on that spot alone than anywhere else in the
+world with no matter whom.
+
+He was a young man of seventeen or eighteen, slenderly built, with
+well-shaped feet, and long, delicate, nervous hands. His face was
+shaved clean of the down of his adolescence, so that his somewhat
+sallow complexion looked smooth to effeminacy. His features were
+regular and refined, and his fine brown curly hair was a shade lighter
+in colour than his skin--which produced a noticeable effect. His pale
+china-blue eyes, too, showed the same peculiarity, which Beth, looking
+down on him through the fringe of long rank grass in front of her,
+remarked, but uncritically, for every inch of him was a joy to her.
+
+She was passive. But the young man soon grew restless on his sandy
+couch. He changed his position a dozen times, then suddenly got on his
+knees, and heaped up a mound of sand, which, having patted it and
+pressed it down as hard as it would set, he began to model. Beth held
+her breath and became rigid with interest as she saw the shapeless
+mass gradually transformed into some semblance of a human figure,
+conventional as an Egyptian statue. When the young man had finished,
+he sat beside the figure for some time, looking fixedly out to sea.
+Then he turned to his work once more, and, after surveying it
+critically, he began to make alterations, trying to improve upon what
+he had done; but the result did not please him, and in a fit of
+exasperation he fell upon the figure and demolished it. This seemed
+such a wanton outrage to Beth that she uttered a low cry of
+remonstrance involuntarily, but the exclamation mingled with the
+murmur of wind and wave, and was lost in it. The young man looked
+disconcerted himself and ashamed, too, as a child does when it has
+broken something in a rage and repents; and presently he began to heap
+the mound once more. When it was done, he stretched himself on the
+sand and shut his eyes, and for a long time Beth lay still, looking
+down upon him.
+
+All at once, however, the noise of the water became importunate. She
+had not been aware of it at all since the young man appeared, but now
+it came into her consciousness with the distinctness of a sudden and
+unexpected sound, and she looked in that direction. The last time she
+had noticed the tide it was far out; but now, where all had been sand
+beyond the sheltered cove, all was water. The silver line stretched
+from headland to headland, and was still advancing. Already there was
+no way of escape by the sands, and the cove itself would be a bay in a
+little while--a bay without a boat! If he did not wake and bestir
+himself, the callous waves would come and cover him. Should she call?
+She was shy of taking the initiative even to save his life, and
+hesitated a moment, and in that moment there came a crash. The
+treacherous clay cliff crumbled, and the great mass of it on which she
+was lying slid down bodily on to the shining sand. The young man
+started up, roused by the rumbling. Had he been a few feet nearer to
+the cliff he must have been buried alive. He and Beth stared at each
+other stupidly, neither realising what had happened for the first few
+minutes. He was the first to recover himself.
+
+"Are you hurt?" he asked with concern, going forward to help her.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, staggering to her feet. "No, I think
+not," she added. "I'm a little shaken. I'll sit down."
+
+The sitting would have been a tumble had he not caught her in his arms
+and held her up. Beth felt deadly sick for an instant, then she found
+herself reclining on the sand, with the young man bending over her,
+looking anxiously into her face.
+
+"You're faint," he said.
+
+"Is that faint?" she answered. "What a ghastly sensation! But there is
+something I want to remember." She shut her eyes, then opened them,
+and looked up at him with a puzzled expression. "It's very odd, I
+can't remember," she complained.
+
+The young man could not help her. He looked up at the cliff. "What
+were you doing up there?" he asked.
+
+"What were you doing down there?" she rejoined.
+
+"I followed you," he answered simply. "I saw you come this way, then I
+lost sight of you; but I thought you would be somewhere on the sands,
+because the cliffs are private property."
+
+"The owner is an uncle of mine," said Beth. "I come when I like."
+
+Then they looked into each other's faces shyly, and looked away again,
+smiling but confused.
+
+"Why did you follow me?" said Beth. "You did not know me."
+
+"No, but I wanted to," he answered readily. "Where were you?"
+
+"Lying on a shelf where that scar is now, looking down on you."
+
+"Then you saw me model that figure?"
+
+"And the cliff fell," Beth put in irrelevantly to cover a blush. "It
+often falls. We're always having landslips here. And I think we'd
+better move away from it now," she added, rising. "People are killed
+sometimes."
+
+"But tell me," he said, detaining her. "Didn't you know I was
+following you?"
+
+Beth became embarrassed.
+
+"You did," he persisted, "and you ran away. Why did you run away?"
+
+"I couldn't help it," Beth confessed; then she uttered an exclamation.
+"Look! look! the tide! What shall we do?"
+
+He turned and saw their danger for the first time.
+
+"Our only way of escape is by the cliffs," Beth said, "unless a boat
+comes by."
+
+"And the cliffs are perpendicular just here," he rejoined, after
+carefully surveying them.
+
+They looked into each other's faces blankly.
+
+"I can't swim--can you?" he asked.
+
+Beth shook her head.
+
+"What is to be done?" he exclaimed.
+
+"There is nothing to be done, I think," she answered quietly. "We may
+see a boat, but hardly anybody ever comes along the cliffs. We might
+shout, though."
+
+They did so until they were hoarse, but there was no response, and the
+tide came creeping up over the sand.
+
+"How calm it is!" Beth observed.
+
+He looked at her curiously. "I don't believe you're a bit afraid," he
+said. "_I_'m in a desperate funk."
+
+"I don't believe we're going to be drowned, and I always know what's
+coming," she answered. Then after a little she asked him his name.
+
+"Alfred," he answered; "and yours?"
+
+"Beth--Beth Caldwell. Alfred!--I like Alfred."
+
+"I like Beth. It's queer, but I like it all the better for that. It's
+like you."
+
+"Do you think me queer?" Beth asked, prepared to resent the
+imputation.
+
+"I think you uncommon," he replied.
+
+Beth reflected for a little. "What is your full name?" she asked
+finally.
+
+"Alfred Cayley Pounce," he replied. "My father gave me the name of
+Alfred that I might always remember I was _A_ Cayley Pounce. But my
+ambition is to be _The_ Cayley Pounce," he added with a nervous little
+laugh.
+
+Beth compressed her lips, and looked at the rising tide. The next wave
+broke at their feet, and both involuntarily stepped back. Behind them
+was the mass of earth that had fallen from the cliff. It had descended
+in a solid wedge without scattering. Alfred climbed on to it, and
+helped Beth up. "We shall be a little higher here, at all events," he
+said.
+
+Beth looked along the cliff; the high-water mark was still above their
+heads. "It's getting exciting, isn't it?" she observed. "But I don't
+feel nasty. Having you here makes--makes a difference, you know."
+
+"If you have to die with me, how shall you feel?" he asked.
+
+"I shall feel till my last gasp that I would much rather have lived
+with you," she answered emphatically.
+
+A wavelet splashed up against the clay on which they were standing. He
+turned to the cliff and tore at it in a sort of exasperation, trying
+to scoop out footholes with his hands by which they might climb up;
+but the effort was futile, the soft shale crumbled as he scooped, and
+there was no hold to be had on it. His face had grown grey in the last
+few minutes, and his eyes were strained and anxious.
+
+"I wonder how you feel," Beth said. "I think I resent the fate that
+threatens us more than I fear it. If my life must end now, it will be
+so unfinished."
+
+He made no reply, and she stood looking out to sea thoughtfully. "It's
+Sunday," she observed at last. "There won't be many boats about
+to-day."
+
+The water had begun to creep up on to their last refuge; it washed
+over her feet as she spoke, and she shrank back. Alfred put his arm
+round her protectingly.
+
+"Do you still believe we shall not be drowned?" he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "But, even if we were, it wouldn't be the end of
+us. We have been here in this world before, you and I, and we shall
+come again."
+
+"What makes you think such queer things?" he asked.
+
+"I don't think them," she answered. "I know them. The things I think
+are generally all wrong; but the things I know about--that come to me
+like this--are right. Only I can't command them. One comes to me now
+and again like a flash, as that one did down there just now when I
+said we should not be drowned; but if I put a question to myself, I
+can get no answer."
+
+The water had crept up over their feet while they were speaking. It
+was coming in at a great rate, but there were no waves to splash them,
+only a sort of gentle heave and ripple that brought it on insensibly,
+so that it had lapped up to the cliff behind them before they
+suspected it. Beth shivered as it rose around her.
+
+"It's a good thing I changed my dress," she said suddenly. "That
+summer silk would certainly have been spoilt."
+
+Alfred held her tight, and looked down into her face, but said
+nothing.
+
+"I'm thinking so many things," Beth broke out again. "I'm glad it's a
+still day for one thing, and not freezing cold. The cold would have
+numbed us, and we should have been swept off our feet if there had
+been any waves. I want to ask you so many things. Why did you make
+that figure on the sand?"
+
+"I want to be a sculptor," he said; "but my people object, and they
+won't let me have the proper materials to model in, so I model in
+anything."
+
+The water was almost up to Beth's waist. She had to turn and cling to
+him to keep her footing. She hid her face on his shoulder, and they
+stood so some time. The water rose above her waist. Alfred was head
+and shoulders taller than she was. He realised that she would be
+covered first.
+
+"I must hold her up somehow," he muttered.
+
+Beth raised her head. "Alfred," she began, "we're neither of us
+cowards, are we? You are hating to die, I can see, but you're not
+going to make an exhibition of yourself to the elements; and I'm
+hating it, too--I'm horribly anxious--and the cold makes me sob in my
+breath as the water comes up. It is like dying by inches from the feet
+up; but while my head is alive, I defy death to make me whimper."
+
+"Do you despair, then?" he exclaimed, as if there had been some
+safeguard in her certainty.
+
+"I have no knowledge at this moment," she answered. "I am in suspense.
+But that is nothing. The things that have come to me like that on a
+sudden positively have always been true, however much I might doubt
+and question beforehand. I did know at that moment that we should not
+be drowned; but I don't know it now. My spirit can't grasp the idea,
+though, of being here in this comfortable body talking to you one
+moment, and the next being turned out of house and home into eternity
+alone."
+
+"Not alone," he interrupted, clasping her closer. "I'll hold you tight
+through all eternity."
+
+Beth looked up at him, and then they kissed each other frankly, and
+forgot their danger for a blissful interval.
+
+They were keeping their foothold with difficulty now. The last heave
+of the tide came up to Beth's shoulder, and took her breath away. Had
+it not been for the support of the cliff behind them, they could not
+have kept their position many minutes. But the cliff itself was a
+danger, for the sea was eating into it, and might bring down another
+mass of it at any moment. The agony of death, the last struggle with
+the water, had begun.
+
+"I hate it," Beth gasped, "but I'm not afraid."
+
+The steady gentle heave of the sea was like the breathing of a placid
+sleeper. It rose round them once more, up, up, over Beth's head. They
+clung closer to each other and to the cliff, staggering and fighting
+for their foothold. Then it sank back from them, then slowly came
+again, rising in an irregular wavy line all along the face of the
+cliffs with a sobbing sound as if in its great heart it shrank from
+the cruel deed it was doing--rose and fell, rose and fell again.
+
+Alfred's face was grey and distorted. He groaned aloud.
+
+"Are you suffering?" Beth exclaimed. "Oh, I wish it was over."
+
+She had really the more to suffer of the two, for every wave nearly
+covered her; but her nerve and physique were better than his, and her
+will was of iron. The only thing that disturbed her fortitude were the
+signs of distress from him.
+
+Gently, gently the water came creeping up and up again. It had swelled
+so high the last time that Beth was all but gone; and now she held her
+breath, expecting for certain to be overwhelmed. But, after a pause,
+it went down once more, then rose again, and again subsided.
+
+Alfred stood with shut eyes and clenched teeth, blindly resisting.
+Beth kept her wits about her.
+
+"Alfred!" she cried on a sudden, "I was right! I was not deceived!
+Stand fast! The tide is on the turn."
+
+He opened his eyes and stared about him in a bewildered way. His face
+was haggard and drawn from the strain, his strength all but exhausted;
+he did not seem to understand.
+
+"Hold on!" Beth cried again. "You'll be a big sculptor yet. The tide
+has turned. It's going out, Alfred, it's going out. It washed an inch
+lower last time. Keep up! Keep up! O Lord, help me to hold him! help
+me to hold him! It's funny," she went on, changing with one of her
+sudden strange transitions from the part of actor to that of
+spectator, as it were. "It's funny we neither of us prayed. People in
+danger do, as a rule, they say in the books; but I never even thought
+of it."
+
+The tide had seemed to come in galloping like a racehorse, but now it
+crawled out like a snail; and they were both so utterly worn, that
+when at last the water was shallow enough, they just sank down and sat
+in it, leaning against each other, and yearning for what seemed to
+them the most desirable thing on earth at that moment--a dry spot on
+which to stretch themselves out and go to sleep.
+
+"I know now what exhaustion is," said Beth, with her head on Alfred's
+shoulder.
+
+"Do you know, Beth," he rejoined with a wan smile, "you've been
+picking up information ever since you fell acquainted with me here. I
+can count a dozen new experiences you've mentioned already. If you go
+on like this always, you'll know everything in time."
+
+"I hope so!" Beth muttered. "Fell acquainted with you, isn't bad; but
+I wonder if _tumbled_ wouldn't have been better----"
+
+She dozed off uncomfortably before she could finish the sentence. He
+had settled himself with his head against the uncertain cliff, which
+beetled above them ominously; but they were both beyond thinking or
+caring about it. Vaguely conscious of each other, and of the sea-voice
+that gradually grew distant and more distant as the water went out
+beyond the headland, leaving them stranded in the empty cove, they
+rested and slept uneasily, yet heavily enough to know little of the
+weary while they had to wait before they could make their escape.
+
+For it was not until the sun had set and the moon hung high above the
+sea in a sombre sky, that at last they were able to go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+It was dark night when Beth got back to the little house in Orchard
+Street. She had hoped to slip in unobserved, but her mother was
+looking out for her.
+
+"Where have you been?" she demanded angrily.
+
+Beth had come in prepared to tell the whole exciting story, but this
+reception irritated her, and she answered her mother in exactly the
+same tone: "I've been at Fairholm."
+
+"What have you been doing there?" Mrs. Caldwell snapped.
+
+"Getting myself into a mess, as any one might see who looked at me,"
+Beth rejoined. "I must go and change."
+
+"You can go to bed," said her mother.
+
+"Thank you," said Beth, and went off straight away.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell would have liked to have followed her, and given her a
+good beating, as in the old days, had she dared. Her harshness,
+however, had much the same effect upon Beth that a beating used to
+have; it shut her up in herself, and deprived her of the power to take
+her mother into her confidence.
+
+Harriet followed her to her room. "Whativer 'ave you been doin'?" she
+exclaimed. "You're draggled from top to toe, and your Sunday dress
+too!"
+
+"I got caught by the tide," said Beth; "and I'm done."
+
+"Just you get into bed, then," said Harriet; "and I'll fetch you up
+some tea when she goes out. She's off in a moment to Lady Benyon's."
+
+"Bless you, Harriet!" Beth exclaimed. "I read in a book once that
+there is no crime but has some time been a virtue, and I am sure it
+will be a virtue to steal me some tea on this occasion, if it ever
+is."
+
+"Oh, all's fair in love and war," Harriet answered cheerfully, as she
+helped Beth off with her boots; "and you and yer ma's at war again, I
+guess."
+
+"Seems like it," Beth sighed. "But stay, though. No, you mustn't steal
+the tea. I promised Aunt Victoria. And that reminds me. There's some
+still left in her little canister. Here, take it and make it, and have
+some yourself as a reward for the trouble. Hot tea and toast, an you
+love me, Harriet, and to save my life. I've had nothing but salt water
+since breakfast."
+
+When Beth went downstairs next morning, her mother scowled at her.
+"What did you mean by telling me you had been at Fairholm yesterday?"
+she asked.
+
+"I meant to tell you where I had been," Beth answered impertinently.
+
+"I saw your Aunt Grace Mary last night, and she told me she had not
+seen you."
+
+"Well, Aunt Grace Mary is a good size," Beth rejoined, "but she
+doesn't cover the whole estate."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell flushed angrily. "You're an ill-conditioned girl, and
+will come to a bad end, or I'm much mistaken," she exclaimed.
+
+"With the help of my relations, it's likely," Beth retorted.
+
+Her mother said no more until breakfast was over, and then she ordered
+her peremptorily to get out her lessons.
+
+"Oh, lessons!" Beth grumbled. "What's the use of the kind of lessons
+_I_ do? I'm none the better for knowing that Henry VIII. had six
+wives, nor the happier, nor the richer; and my wit and wisdom
+certainly don't increase, nor my manners improve, if you speak the
+truth."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell changed countenance. If Beth rebelled against the
+home-teaching, what would happen about the money that Jim was
+enjoying? Upon reflection, her mother saw she was making a mistake.
+
+"I think," she began in a conciliatory tone, "you are right perhaps.
+You had better not do any lessons this morning, for I am sure you
+cannot be well, Beth, or you would never speak to your mother in such
+a way."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry, mamma," Beth rejoined in a mollified tone. "But you
+know I cannot stand these everlasting naggings and scoldings. They
+make me horrid. I'm pugnacious when I'm rubbed the wrong way; I can't
+help it."
+
+"There, there, then; that will do," Mrs. Caldwell replied. "Run out
+and amuse yourself, or have a rest. You take too much exercise, and
+tire yourself to death; and then you are _so_ cross there is no
+speaking to you. Go away, like a good child, and amuse yourself until
+you feel better."
+
+Beth went back to her own room at once, only too glad to escape and be
+alone. She was not well. Every bone in her body ached, and her head
+was thumping so she had to lie down on her bed at last, and keep still
+for the rest of the day. But her mind was active the whole time, and
+it was a happy day. She expected nothing, yet she was pleasurably
+satisfied, perfectly content.
+
+The next morning at eleven there was service in the church at the end
+of the road. Beth and her mother had been having the usual morning
+misery at lessons, and both were exhausted when the bell began to
+ring. Beth's countenance was set sullen, and Mrs. Caldwell's showed
+suppressed irritation. The bell was a relief to them.
+
+"Can I go to church?" Beth asked.
+
+Her mother's first impulse was to say no, out of pure contrariness;
+but the chance of getting rid of Beth on any honourable pretext was
+too much of a temptation even for her to withstand. "Yes, if you
+like," she answered ungraciously, after a moment's hesitation; "and
+get some good out of it if you can," she added sarcastically.
+
+Beth went with honest intention. There was a glow in her chest which
+added fervency to her devotions, and when Alfred entered from the
+vestry and took his seat in the chancel pew, happiness, tingling in
+every nerve, suffused her. His first glance was for her, and Beth knew
+it, but bent her head. Her soul did magnify the Lord, however, and her
+spirit did rejoice in God her Saviour, with unlimited love and trust.
+He had saved them, He would hear them. He would help them, He would
+make them both--_both_ good and great--great after a pause, as being
+perhaps not a worthy aspiration.
+
+She did not look at Alfred a second time, but she sat and stood and
+knelt, all conscious of him, and it seemed as if the service lasted
+but a moment.
+
+Directly it was over, she fled, taking the narrow path by the side of
+the church to the fields; but before she was half way across the first
+field, she heard a quick step following her. Beth felt she must stop
+short--or run; she began to run.
+
+"Beth! Beth! wait for me," he called.
+
+Beth stopped, then turned to greet him shyly; but when he came close,
+and put his arm round her, she looked up smiling. They gazed into each
+other's eyes a moment, and then kissed awkwardly, like children.
+
+"Were you any the worse for our adventure?" he asked. "I've been
+longing to know."
+
+"I had a headache yesterday," said Beth. "How were you?"
+
+"All stiff and aching," he replied, "or I should have been to ask
+after you."
+
+"I'm glad you didn't come," Beth ejaculated.
+
+"Why? I ought to know your people, you know. Why don't the Richardsons
+know them?"
+
+"Because we're poor," Beth answered bluntly; "and Mr. Richardson
+neglects his poor parishioners."
+
+"All the more reason that I should call," Alfred Cayley Pounce
+persisted. "You are people of good family like ourselves, and old Rich
+is a nobody."
+
+"Yes," said Beth; "but my mother would not let me know you. She and I
+are always--always--we never agree, you know. I don't think we can
+help it; we certainly don't do it on purpose--at least _I_ don't; but
+there's something in us that makes us jar about everything. I was
+going to tell her all about you on Sunday night; but when I got in I
+couldn't. She began by being angry because I was late, without waiting
+to know if I were to blame, and that--that shut me up, and I never
+told her; and now I don't think I could."
+
+"But what objection can she have to me?" he asked loftily. "I really
+must make her acquaintance."
+
+"Not through me, then," said Beth. "Do you know the Benyons?"
+
+"No, I don't know anybody in the neighbourhood as yet. I'm here with
+old Rich to be crammed. My people are trying to force me into the bar
+or the church or something, because I want to be a sculptor."
+
+"Don't be forced," said Beth with spirit. "Follow your own bent. I
+mean to follow mine."
+
+"I didn't know girls had any bent," he answered dubiously.
+
+There was a recoil in Beth. "How is it people never expect a girl to
+do anything?" she exclaimed, firing up.
+
+"I don't see what a girl can do," he rejoined, "except marry and look
+after her husband and children."
+
+"That's all right at the proper time," Beth said. "But meanwhile, and
+if she doesn't marry, is she to do nothing?"
+
+"Oh, there are always lots of little things a woman can do," he
+answered airily.
+
+"But supposing little things don't satisfy her, and she has power to
+follow some big pursuit?"
+
+"Oh, well, in that case," he began, somewhat superciliously. "But it's
+too rare to be taken into account--talent in women."
+
+"How do you know?" Beth said. "Robbing women of the means to develop
+their talents doesn't prove they haven't any. The best horseman in the
+world could never have ridden if he hadn't had a horse. I certainly
+think a woman should see to the ordering of her household; but if she
+has it in her to do more why shouldn't she? _I_ shall want to do more,
+I know. I shall want to be something; and I shall never believe that I
+cannot be that something until I have tried the experiment. If you
+have it in you to be a sculptor, be a sculptor. _I_ certainly should,
+girl and all as I am. I couldn't help it."
+
+"You're very valiant!" he said drily; "but you don't know what it is
+to have your whole family against you."
+
+"Don't I?" said Beth, laughing. "I've known that all my life; but I've
+known something besides. I've known what it is to be myself. If you
+know yourself, and yourself is a sculptor, you're bound to be a
+sculptor in spite of your family."
+
+He looked at her admiringly. "When you talk like that, I feel I could
+be anything or do anything that you like, I love you so," he ventured,
+flipping the grass with his stick to cover his boyish embarrassment.
+"I am thinking of you always, all day long."
+
+"Isn't it strange!" Beth answered softly. "And only two days ago we
+had never met!"
+
+"But now we shall never part," he said. "Only I don't want you to be
+anything, or to care to be anything, but just my wife."
+
+The word wife came upon Beth with the shock of a sweet surprise. She
+had not realised that she would ever be asked to be any one's wife;
+that seemed something reserved for the honour of beings above her,
+beautiful beings in books; and the hot flush of joy that suffused her
+at the word rendered her oblivious to the condition attached. She
+looked up in the young man's face with eyes full of love and
+gratitude, her transparent skin bright with a delicate blush, and her
+lips just parted in a smile.
+
+"You _are_ sweet, Beth!" he exclaimed. "How sweet you are!"
+
+For the next few weeks they saw each other every day, if it were only
+for a few minutes; but even when they contrived to spend long hours
+together it was not enough. Beth scarcely ate or slept at that time;
+the glow and spring and flood of feeling that coursed through her
+whole being sustained her.
+
+"When we are married we shall always be together," Alfred would
+whisper when they had to separate; and then their eyes would dilate
+with joy at the heavenly prospect; each was covered the while with
+smiles and confusion neither of which they could control. They made
+each other no formal vows. It was all taken for granted between them.
+Now they were engaged; but when they were old enough, and had an
+income, they were to be married.
+
+Alfred had given up the idea of making Mrs. Caldwell's acquaintance
+before it was absolutely necessary. For the present, it delighted them
+to think that their secret was all their own, and no one suspected it,
+except Dicksie, the vicar's hunchback son, whom Alfred had taken into
+his confidence. Dicksie was as old as Alfred, but his deformity had
+stunted his growth, and the young lovers, looking down into his
+pathetic face, were filled with compassion, and eagerly anxious to
+make atonement to him for his misfortune by sharing as much of their
+happiness with him as might be. They encouraged him to accompany them
+in their walks when he could, which was a joy to him, for he was
+content to live upon the fringe of their romance unselfishly. When
+they separated, Beth and Alfred kissed each other frankly, and then
+Beth would stoop and kiss Dicksie also, in pure affection.
+
+Neither of the three troubled themselves about other people in those
+days, and they never suspected that their own doings could be of
+consequence to anybody. They therefore remained serenely unaware of
+the fact that the whole place was talking about them, their own
+relations being the only people who did not know of the intimacy; and,
+worse still, everybody objected to it. All the forces of Nature
+combined, and the vast scheme of the universe itself had been ordered
+so as to unite those two young things; but, on the other hand, the
+whole machinery of civilisation was set in readiness to keep them
+apart. And the first intimation they had of this fact took them by
+surprise.
+
+The whole happy summer had passed, and autumn was with them, mellow,
+warm, and still. The days were shorter then, and the young people
+delighted to slip out at dusk, and wander about the fields, all three
+together. A gate opened from the vicarage grounds into the field-path
+beside the church, and there Alfred and Dicksie waited till Beth
+appeared, and often waited in vain, for Beth could not always get out.
+Her mother told Lady Benyon that Beth was tiresome rather than naughty
+in those days. She seemed to have no idea of time. She would stay out
+so late that her mother became quite fidgety about her, not knowing
+what had become of her; and when Beth came in at last in a casual way,
+beaming blandly at every one, it was certainly provoking. Beth thought
+her mother unreasonable to object to her late rambles. She was not
+giving her any trouble; and she could not understand why her mother
+was not content to let her be happy in her own way.
+
+Beth's lessons became more perfunctory than ever that summer. Mrs.
+Caldwell salved her own conscience on the subject by arguing that it
+is not wise to teach a girl too much when she is growing so fast, and
+Lady Benyon agreed. Lady Benyon had no patience with people who
+over-educate girls--with boys it was different; but let a girl grow up
+strong and healthy, and get her married as soon as possible, was what
+she advised. Had any one asked what was to become of a girl brought up
+for that purpose solely, if no one were found to marry her, Lady
+Benyon would have disposed of the question with a shrug of the
+shoulders. She laid down the principle, and if it did not act,
+somebody must be to blame. The principle itself was good, she was sure
+of that. So Beth was kept without intellectual discipline to curb her
+senses at this critical period, and the consequence was that her
+energy took the form of sensuous rather than intellectual pursuits.
+Her time was devoted not to practising, but to playing; to poetry, and
+to dreamy musings. She wove words to music at the piano by the hour
+together, lolled about in languorous attitudes, was more painfully
+concerned than ever about her personal adornment, delighted in scents
+and in luxurious imaginings, and altogether fed her feelings to such
+excess, that if her moral nature were not actually weakened, it was
+certainly endangered.
+
+Fortunately she had an admirable companion in Alfred. The boy is not
+naturally like a beast, unable to restrain his passions, a bit more
+than the girl. To men as to women the power to control themselves
+comes of the determination. There are cases of natural depravity, of
+course, but they are not peculiar to either sex; and as the girl may
+inherit the father's vices, so may the boy have his mother to thank
+for his virtues. Depravity is oftener acquired than inherited. As a
+rule, the girl's surroundings safeguard her from the acquisition; but
+when they do not, she becomes as bad as the boy. The boy, on the
+contrary, especially if he is sent to a public school, is
+systematically trained to be vicious. He learns the Latin grammar from
+his masters, and from the habitual conversation of the other boys,
+the books secretly circulated by them, and their traditional code of
+vice, he becomes familiarised with the most hoggish habits. He may
+escape the practical initiation by a miracle at the time; but it is
+from the mind familiar with ideas of vice that the vicious impulse
+eventually springs; and the seed of corruption once sown in it, bears
+fruit almost inevitably.
+
+Alfred had escaped this contamination by being kept at home at a
+day-school, and when Beth knew him he was as refined and high-minded
+as he was virile for his age, and as self-restrained as she was
+impetuous. She wanted to hurry on, and shape their lives; but he was
+content to let things come about. She lived in the future, he in the
+present; and he was teaching her to do the same, which was an
+excellent thing for her. Often when she was making plans he would
+check her by saying, "Aren't you satisfied? I can't imagine myself
+happier than I am at this moment."
+
+One thing neither of them ever anticipated, and that was interference.
+They expected those happy days to last without interruption until the
+happier ones came, when they should be independent, and could do as
+they liked.
+
+"When I am king, diddle, diddle, you shall be queen," Alfred used to
+sing to Beth; "and Dicksie shall be prime minister."
+
+One night they were out in the fields together. Beth was sitting on a
+rail, with her arm round Dicksie's neck, as he stood on one side of
+her; Alfred being on the other, with his arm round her, supporting
+her. They were talking about flowers. Alfred was great on growing
+flowers. The vicar had given him a piece of the vicarage garden for
+his own, and he was going to build a little green-house to keep Beth
+well supplied with bouquets. They were deeply engrossed in the
+subject, and the night was exceedingly dark, so that they did not
+notice a sailor creep stealthily up the field behind them on the other
+side of the hedge, and crouch down near enough to hear all that they
+said. Certainly that sailor was never more at sea in his life than he
+was while he listened to their innocent prattle.
+
+When at last Beth said it was time to go home, and they strolled away
+arm in arm, Alfred and Dicksie discovered that they were late, and
+Beth insisted on parting from them at the field-gate into the vicarage
+grounds instead of letting them see her safe into the street. When
+they left her, she hurried on down the path beside the church alone,
+and she had not taken many steps before she was suddenly confronted by
+a tall dark man, who made as if he would not let her pass. She stopped
+startled, and then went straight up to him boldly and peered into his
+face.
+
+"Is that you, Gard?" she exclaimed. "How dare you!"
+
+"How dare you!" he rejoined impudently. "I've had my eye on you for
+some time. I saw you out there just now in the field. I was determined
+to know what you were up to. There's mighty little happens here that I
+don't know."
+
+"Oh," said Beth, "so you're the town spy, are you? Well, you're not
+going to spy upon me, so I warn you, Mr. Gard. The next time I come
+here, I'll come armed, and if I catch you dogging me about again, I'll
+shoot you as dead as my father's pistols can do it. And as it is, you
+shall pay for this, I promise you. Just step aside now, you cowardly
+black devil, and let me pass. Do you think that it's milk I've got in
+my veins that you come out on a fool's errand to frighten me?"
+
+Without a word the man stepped aside, and Beth walked on down the path
+with her head in the air, and deliberately, to let him see how little
+she feared him.
+
+The next morning, directly after breakfast, she went down to the pier.
+Count Bartahlinsky's yacht was alongside, and Gard was on deck. He
+changed countenance when Beth appeared. She ran down the ladder.
+
+"I want to see your master," she said.
+
+"He can't see you, miss. He's given orders that he's not to be
+disturbed for no one whatsoever," Gard answered with excess of
+deference; "and it's as much as my billet is worth to go near him;
+he's very much occupied this morning."
+
+"Don't tell lies," said Beth. "I'm going to see him."
+
+She went forward to the skylight as she spoke, and called down, "Below
+there, Count Gustav!"
+
+"Hello!" a voice replied. "Is that you, Beth? You know you're too big
+to be on the yacht now without a chaperon."
+
+"Rot!" said Beth.
+
+"Don't be coarse, Beth," Count Gustav remonstrated from below in
+rather a precious tone. "You know how I dislike hoyden English."
+
+"Well, then, _nonsense_! if that's any better," Beth rejoined. "You've
+got to see me--this once at all events, or there'll be a tragedy."
+
+"Oh, in that case," was the resigned reply, "I'll come on deck."
+
+Beth walked aft and waited for him, enthroned on the bulwark, with a
+coil of rope for her footstool.
+
+When Count Gustav appeared, he looked at her quizzically. "What is the
+matter, Beth?" he asked. "What are you boiling with indignation about
+now?"
+
+"About that man Gard," Beth replied. "What do you think he was doing
+last night? and not for the first time, by his own account. Spying!"
+
+"Spying!" said Bartahlinsky. "Gard, come here."
+
+Gard, who had been anxiously watching them from amidships, approached.
+
+"Now, Beth, what do you mean?" said the Count.
+
+"I mean that I was out sitting on a rail in the church-fields last
+night with Alfred Cayley Pounce and Dicksie Richardson talking, and
+this man came and listened; and then when I left them, he met me on
+the path beside the church, and spoke impudently to me, and would not
+let me pass. I know what you thought," she broke out, turning upon
+Gard. "You thought I was doing something that I was ashamed of, and
+you'd find it out, and have me in your power. But I'll have you know
+that I do nothing I'm ashamed of--nothing I should be ashamed to tell
+your master about, so you may save yourself the trouble of spying upon
+me, Black Gard, as they well call you."
+
+Gard was about to say something, but Count Gustav stopped him
+peremptorily. "You can go," he said. "I'll hear what you have to say
+later."
+
+Then he sat down beside Beth, and talked to her long and earnestly. He
+advised her to give up her rambles with Alfred and Dicksie; but she
+assured him that that was impossible.
+
+"Who else have I?" she asked pathetically. "And what am I to do with
+my days if they never come into them again?"
+
+"You ought to have been sent to school, Beth, long ago, and I told
+your mother so," Count Gustav answered, frowning. "And, by Jove, I'll
+tell her again," he thought, "before it's too late."
+
+The encounter with Gard added excitement to the charm of Beth's next
+meeting with the boys. It made them all feel rather important. They
+discussed it incessantly, speculating as to what the man's object
+could have been. Alfred said vulgar curiosity; but Beth suspected that
+there was more than that in the manoeuvre; and when Dicksie
+suggested acutely that Gard had intended to blackmail them, she and
+Alfred both exclaimed that that was it!
+
+They had gone about together all this time in the most open way; now
+they began to talk about caution and concealment, like the persecuted
+lovers of old romance, who had powerful enemies, and were obliged to
+manage their meetings so that they should not be suspected. They
+decided not to speak to each other in public, and, consequently, when
+they met in the street, they passed with such an elaborate parade of
+ignoring each other, and yet with such evident enjoyment of the
+position, that people began to wonder what on earth they were up to.
+Disguises would have delighted them; but the fashions of the day did
+not lend themselves much to disguise, unfortunately. There were no
+masks, no sombreros, no cloaks; and all they could think of was false
+whiskers for Alfred; but when he tried them, they altered him so
+effectually that Dicksie said he could not bear him, and Beth would
+not kiss him.
+
+One evening after dinner, when Mrs. Caldwell was reading aloud to Beth
+and Bernadine, there came a thundering knock at the front door, which
+startled them all. The weather had been bad all day, and now the
+shutters were closed, the rain beat against them with a chilly,
+depressing effect, inexpressibly dreary. Instead of attending to the
+reading, Beth had been listening to the footsteps of people passing in
+the street, in the forlorn hope that among them she might distinguish
+Alfred's. When the knock came they thought it was a runaway, but
+Harriet opened the door all the same, and presently returned, smiling
+archly, and holding aloft a beautiful bouquet.
+
+"What's that?" said Mrs. Caldwell. "Give it to me."
+
+Beth's heart stood still.
+
+There was a card attached to the flowers, and Mrs. Caldwell read
+aloud, "_Miss Caldwell, with respectful compliments._"
+
+"Who brought this, Harriet?" she asked.
+
+"No one, ma'am," Harriet replied. "It was 'itched on till the
+knocker."
+
+"Very strange," Mrs. Caldwell muttered suspiciously. "Beth, do you
+know anything about it?"
+
+"Is there no name on the card?" Beth asked diplomatically; and Mrs.
+Caldwell looked at the card instead of into Beth's face, and
+discovered nothing.
+
+Raindrops sparkled on the flowers, their fragrance filled the room,
+and their colours and forms and freshness were a joy to behold. "How
+beautiful they are!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
+
+"May I have them, mamma?" Beth put in quickly.
+
+"Well, yes, I suppose you may," Mrs. Caldwell decided; "although I
+must say I do not understand their being left in this way at all. Who
+could have sent you flowers?"
+
+"There's the gardener at Fairholm," Beth ventured to suggest.
+
+"Oh, ah, yes," said Mrs. Caldwell, handing the flowers to Beth without
+further demur. The gift appeared less lovely, somehow, when she began
+to associate it with the gardener's respectful compliments.
+
+Beth took the flowers, and hid her burning face with them. This was
+her first bouquet, the most exquisite thing that had ever happened to
+her. She carried it off to her room, and put it in water; and when she
+went to bed she kept the candle burning that she might lie and look at
+it.
+
+The following week a menagerie came to the place. Alfred and Dicksie
+went to it, and their description filled Beth with a wild desire to
+see the creatures, especially the chimpanzee. The boys were quite
+ready to take her, but how was it to be managed? The menagerie was
+only to be there that one night more, but it would be open late, and
+they would be allowed to go because animals are improving. Could she
+get out too? Beth considered intently.
+
+"I can go to bed early," she said at last, "and get out by the
+acting-room window."
+
+"But suppose you were missed?" Alfred deprecated.
+
+"Then I should be found out," said Beth; "but you would not."
+
+"How about being recognised in the menagerie, though?" said Dicksie.
+"You see there'll be lots of people, and it's all lighted up."
+
+"I can disguise myself to look like an old woman," Beth rejoined,
+thinking of Aunt Victoria's auburn front and some of her old things.
+
+"Oh no, Beth!" Alfred protested. "That would be worse than the
+whiskers."
+
+"Can't you come as a boy?" said Dicksie.
+
+"I believe I can," Beth exclaimed. "There's an old suit of Jim's
+somewhere that would be the very thing--one he grew out of. I believe
+it's about my size, and I think I know where it is. What a splendid
+idea, Dicksie! I can cut my hair off."
+
+"Oh no! Your pretty hair!" Alfred exclaimed.
+
+"Is it pretty?" said Beth, surprised and pleased.
+
+"_Is_ it pretty!" he ejaculated, lifting it with both hands, and
+bathing his face in it; "the brightest, brownest, curliest, softest,
+sweetest hair on earth! Turn it up under your cap. These little curls
+on your neck will look like short hair."
+
+They were all so delighted with this romantic plan, that they danced
+about, and hugged each other promiscuously. But this last piece of
+cleverness was their undoing, for Beth was promptly recognised at the
+menagerie by some one with a sense of humour, who told Lady Benyon,
+who told Mrs. Caldwell.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell came hurrying home from Lady Benyon's a few nights later
+with the queerest expression of countenance Beth had ever seen; it was
+something between laughing and crying.
+
+"Beth," she began in an agitated manner, "I am told that you went with
+two of Mr. Richardson's sons to the menagerie on Tuesday night,
+dressed as a boy."
+
+"_One_ of his sons," said Beth, correcting her; "the other boy was his
+pupil."
+
+"And you were walking about looking at the animals in that public
+place with your arm round the girl from the shoe-shop?"
+
+Beth burst out laughing. "All the boys had their arms round girls,"
+she explained. "I couldn't be singular."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell dropped into a chair, and sat gazing at Beth as if she
+had never seen anything like her before, as indeed she never had.
+
+"Who is this pupil of Mr. Richardson's?" she asked at last, "and how
+did you make his acquaintance?"
+
+"His name is Alfred Cayley Pounce," Beth answered. "We were caught by
+the tide and nearly drowned together on the sands, and I've known him
+ever since."
+
+"And do you mean to say that you have been meeting this young man in a
+clandestine manner--that you hadn't the proper pride to refuse to
+associate with him unless he were known to your family and you could
+meet him as an equal?"
+
+"He did wish to make your acquaintance, but I wouldn't let him," Beth
+said.
+
+"Why?" Mrs. Caldwell asked in amazement.
+
+"Oh, because I was afraid you would be horrid to him," Beth answered.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell was thunderstruck. The whole affair had overwhelmed her
+as a calamity which could not be met by any ordinary means. Scolding
+was out of the question, for she was not able to utter another word,
+but just sat there with such a miserable face, she might have been the
+culprit herself, especially as she ended by bursting into tears.
+
+Beth's heart smote her, and she watched her mother for some time,
+yearning to say something to comfort her.
+
+"I don't think you need be so distressed, mamma," she ventured at last
+"What have I done, after all? I've committed no crime."
+
+"You've done just about as bad a thing as you could do," Mrs. Caldwell
+rejoined. "You've made the whole place talk about you. You must have
+known you were doing wrong. But I think you can have no conscience at
+all."
+
+"I think I have a conscience, only it doesn't always act," Beth
+answered disconsolately. "Very often, when I am doing a wrong thing,
+it doesn't accuse me; when it does, I stop and repent."
+
+She was sitting beside the dining-table, balancing a pencil on her
+finger as she spoke.
+
+"Look at you now, Beth," her mother ejaculated, "utterly callous!"
+
+Beth sighed, and put the pencil down. She despaired of ever making her
+mother understand anything, and determined not to try again.
+
+"Beth, I don't know what to do with you," Mrs. Caldwell recommenced
+after a long silence. "I've been warned again and again that I should
+have trouble with you, and Heaven knows I have. You've done a
+monstrous thing, and, instead of being terrified when you're found
+out, you sit there coolly discussing it, as if you were a grown-up
+person. And then you're so queer. You ought to be a child, but you're
+not. Lady Benyon likes you; but even she says you're not a child, and
+never were. You say things no sane child would ever think of, and very
+few grown-up people. You are _not_ like other people, there's no
+denying it."
+
+Beth's eyes filled with tears. To be thought unlike other people was
+the one thing that made her quail.
+
+"Well, mamma, what am I to do?" she said. "I hate to vex you, goodness
+knows; but I must be doing something. The days are long and dreary."
+She wiped her eyes. "When people warned you that you would have
+trouble with me, they always said unless you sent me to school."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell rocked herself on her chair forlornly. "School would do
+you no good," she declared at last. "No, Beth, you are my cross, and I
+must bear it. If I forgive you again this time, will you be a better
+girl in future?"
+
+"I don't believe it's my fault that I ever annoy you," Beth answered
+drily.
+
+"Whose fault is it, then?" her mother demanded.
+
+Beth shrugged her shoulders and began to balance the pencil on her
+fingers once more.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell got up and stood looking at her for a little with a
+gathering expression of dislike on her face which it was not good to
+see; then she went towards the door.
+
+"You are incorrigible," she ejaculated as she opened it, making the
+remark to cover her retreat.
+
+Beth sighed heavily, then resolved herself into a Christian martyr,
+cruelly misjudged--an idea which she pursued with much satisfaction to
+herself for the rest of the day.
+
+In consequence of that conversation with her mother, when the evening
+came her conscience accused her, and she made no attempt to go out.
+She was to meet Alfred and Dicksie on Saturday, their next
+half-holiday, and she would wait till then. That was Wednesday.
+
+During the interval, however, a strange chill came over her feelings.
+The thought of Alfred was as incessant as ever, but it came without
+the glow of delight; something was wrong.
+
+They were to meet on the rocks behind the far pier at low water on
+Saturday. Few people came to the far pier, and, when they did, it was
+seldom that they looked over; and they could not have seen much if
+they had, for the rocks were brown with seaweed, and dark figures
+wandering about on them became indistinguishable. Beth went long
+before the time. It was a beautiful still grey day, such as she loved,
+and she longed to be alone with the sea. The tide was going out, and
+she had a fancy for following it from rock to rock as it went. Some
+of the bigger rocks were flat-topped islands, separated from the last
+halting-place of the tide by narrow straits, across which she sprang;
+and on these she would lie her length, peering down into the clear
+depths on the farther side, where the healthy happy sea-creatures
+disported themselves, and seaweeds of wondrous colours waved in
+fantastic forms. The water lapped up and up and up the rocks, rising
+with a sobbing sound, and bringing fresh airs with it that fanned her
+face, and caused her to draw in her breath involuntarily, and inhale
+long deep draughts with delight. As the water went out, bright runnels
+were left where rivers had been, and miniature bays became sheltered
+coves, paved with polished pebbles or purple mussels, and every little
+sandy space was ribbed with solid waves where the busy lob-worms soon
+began to send up their ropy castings. Beyond the break of the water
+the silver sea sloped up to the horizon, and on it, rocking gently,
+far out, a few cobles were scattered, with rich red sails all set
+ready, waiting for a breeze. It was an exquisite scene, remote from
+all wail of human feeling, and strangely tranquillising. Gradually it
+gained upon Beth. Her bosom heaved with the heaving water
+rhythmically, and she lost herself in contemplation of sea and sky
+scape. Before she had been many minutes prone upon the farthest rock,
+the vision and the dream were upon her. That other self of hers
+unfurled its wings, and she floated off, revelling in an ecstasy of
+gentle motion. Beyond the sea-line were palaces with terraced gardens,
+white palaces against which grass and trees showed glossy green; and
+there she wandered among the flowers, and waited. She was waiting for
+something that did not happen, for some one who did not come.
+
+Suddenly she sat up on her rock. The sun was sinking behind her, the
+silver sea shone iridescent, the tide had turned. But where were the
+boys? She looked about her. Out on the sands beyond the rocks on her
+right, a man was wading in the water with a net, shrimping. Close at
+hand another was gathering mussels for bait, and a gentleman was
+walking towards her over the slippery rocks, balancing himself as
+though he found it difficult to keep his feet; but these were the only
+people in sight. The gentleman was a stranger. He wore a dark-blue
+suit, with a shirt of wonderful whiteness, and Beth could not help
+noticing how altogether well-dressed he was--too well-dressed for
+climbing on the rocks. She noticed his dress particularly, because
+well-dressed men were rare in Rainharbour. He was tall, with glossy
+black hair inclining to curl, slight whiskers and moustache, blue
+eyes, and a bright complexion. A woman with as much colour would have
+been accused of painting; in him it gave to some people the idea of
+superabundant health, to others it suggested a phthisical tendency.
+Beth looked at him as he approached as she looked at everybody and
+everything with interest--nothing escaped her; but he made no great
+impression upon her. She thought of him principally as a man with a
+watch; and when he was near enough she asked him what time it was. He
+told her, looking hard at her, and smiling pleasantly as he returned
+his watch to his pocket. She noticed that his teeth were good, but too
+far apart, a defect which struck her as unpleasant.
+
+"Why, it is quite late!" she exclaimed, forgetting to thank him in her
+surprise.
+
+"Are you all alone here?" he asked.
+
+"I was waiting for some friends," she answered, "but they have not
+come. They must have been detained."
+
+She began to walk back as she spoke, and the gentleman turned too
+perforce, for the tide was close upon them.
+
+"Let me help you," he said, holding out his hand, which was noticeably
+white and well-shaped; "the rocks are rough and slippery."
+
+"I can manage, thank you," Beth answered. "I am accustomed to them."
+
+Beth involuntarily resolved herself into a young lady the moment she
+addressed this man, and spoke now with the self-possession of one
+accustomed to courtesies. Even at that age her soft cultivated voice
+and easy assurance of manner, and above all her laugh, which was not
+the silvery laugh of fiction, but the soundless laugh of good society,
+marked the class to which she belonged; and as he stumbled along
+beside her, her new acquaintance wondered how it happened that she was
+at once so well-bred and so shabbily dressed. He began to question her
+guardedly.
+
+"Do you know Rainharbour well?" he asked.
+
+"I live here," Beth answered.
+
+"Then I suppose you know every one in the place," he pursued.
+
+"Oh, no," she rejoined. "I know very few people, except my own, of
+course."
+
+"Which is considered the principal family here?" he asked.
+
+"The Benyon family is the biggest and the wickedest, I should think,"
+she answered casually.
+
+"But I meant the most important," he explained, smiling.
+
+"I don't know," she said. "Uncle James Patten thinks that next to
+himself the Benyons are. He married one of them. He's an awful snob."
+
+"And what is his position?"
+
+"I don't know--he's a landowner; that's his estate over there," and
+she nodded towards Fairholm.
+
+"Indeed! How far does it extend?"
+
+"From the sea right up to the hills there, and a little way beyond."
+
+They had left the rocks by this time, and were toiling up the steep
+road into the town. When they reached the top, Beth exclaimed
+abruptly, "I am late! I must fly!" and leaving her companion without
+further ceremony, turned down a side street and ran home.
+
+When she got in, she wondered what had become of Alfred and Dicksie,
+and she was conscious of a curious sort of suspense, which, however,
+did not amount to anxiety. It was as if she were waiting and listening
+for something she expected to hear, which would explain in words what
+she held already inarticulate in some secret recess of her being--held
+in suspense and felt, but had not yet apprehended in the region of
+thought. There are people who collect and hold in themselves some
+knowledge of contemporary events as the air collects and holds
+moisture; it may be that we all do, but only one here and there
+becomes aware of the fact. As the impalpable moisture in the air
+changes to palpable rain so does this vague cognisance become a
+comprehensible revelation by being resolved into a shower of words on
+occasion by some process psychically analogous to the condensation of
+moisture in the air. It is a natural phenomenon known to babes like
+Beth, but ill-observed, and not at all explained, because man has gone
+such a little way beyond the bogey of the supernatural in psychical
+matters that he is still befogged, and makes up opinions on the
+subject like a divine when miracles are in question, instead of
+searching for information like an honest philosopher, whose glory it
+is, not to prove himself right, but to discover the truth.
+
+Beth did not sleep much that night. She recalled the sigh and sob and
+freshness of the sea, and caught her breath again as if the cool water
+were still washing up and up and up towards her. She saw the silver
+surface, too, stretching on to those shining palaces, where grass and
+tree showed vivid green against white walls, and flowers stood still
+on airless terraces, shedding strange perfumes. And she also saw her
+new acquaintance coming towards her, balancing himself on the
+slippery, wrack-grown rocks, in boots and things that were much too
+good for the purpose; but Alfred and Dicksie never appeared, and were
+not to be found of her imagination. They were nowhere.
+
+She expected to see them in church next day--at least, so she assured
+herself, and then was surprised to find that there was no sort of
+certainty in herself behind the assurance, although they had always
+hitherto been in church. "Something is different, somehow," she
+thought, and the phrase became a kind of accompaniment to all her
+thoughts.
+
+Dicksie was the first person she saw when she entered the church, but
+Alfred was not there, and he did not come. She went up the field-path
+after the service, and waited about for Dicksie. When Alfred was
+detained himself, Dicksie usually came to explain; but that day he did
+not appear, and they were neither of them at the evening service. Beth
+could not understand it, but she was more puzzled than perturbed.
+
+She was reading French to her mother next morning by way of a lesson,
+when they both happened to look up and see Mrs. Richardson, the
+vicar's worn-out wife, passing the window. The next moment there was a
+knock at the door.
+
+"Can she be coming here?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
+
+"What should she come here for?" Beth rejoined, her heart palpitating.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear! this is just what I expected!" Mrs. Caldwell
+declared. "And if only she had come last week, I should have known
+nothing about it."
+
+"You don't know much as it is," Beth observed, without, however,
+seeing why that should make any difference.
+
+The next moment the vicar's wife was ushered in with a wink by
+Harriet. Mrs. Caldwell and Beth both rose to receive her haughtily.
+She had entered with assurance, but that left her the moment she faced
+them, and she became exceedingly nervous. She was surprised at the
+ease and grace of these shabbily-dressed ladies, and the refinement of
+their surroundings--the design of the furniture, the colour of
+curtains and carpet, the china, the books, the pictures, all of which
+bespoke tastes and habits not common in the parish.
+
+"I must apologise for this intrusion," she began nervously. "I have a
+most unpleasant task to perform. My husband requested me to come----"
+
+"Why didn't he come himself?" Beth asked blandly. "Why does he make
+you do the disagreeable part of his duties?"
+
+The vicar's wife raised her meek eyes and gazed at Beth. She had not
+anticipated this sort of reception from poor parishioners, and was
+completely nonplussed. She was startled, too, by Beth's last question,
+for she belonged to the days of brave unhonoured endurance, when
+women, meekly allowing themselves to be classed with children and
+idiots, exacted no respect, and received none--no woman, decent or
+otherwise, being safe from insult in the public streets; when they
+were expected to do difficult and dirty work for their husbands, such
+as canvassing at elections, without acknowledgment, their wit and
+capacity being traded upon without scruple to obtain from men the
+votes which they were not deemed wise and worthy enough to have
+themselves; the days when they gave all and received nothing in
+return, save doles of bread and contempt, varied by such caresses as a
+good dog gets when his master is in the mood. That was the day before
+woman began to question the wisdom and goodness of man, his justice
+and generosity, his right to make a virtue of wallowing when he chose
+to wallow, and his disinterestedness and discretion when he also
+arrogated to himself the power to order all things. Mrs. Richardson
+had no more thought of questioning the beauty of her husband's
+decisions than she had thought of questioning the logic and mercy of
+her God, and this first flash of the new spirit of inquiry from Beth's
+bright wit came upon her with a shock at first--one of those shocks to
+the mind which is as the strength of wine to the exhausted body, that
+checks the breath a moment, then rouses and stimulates.
+
+"May I sit down?" she gasped, then dropped into a chair. "He might
+have come himself, to be sure," she muttered. "I have more than enough
+to do that is disagreeable in my own womanly sphere without being
+required to meddle in parish matters."
+
+Yet when her husband had said to her: "It is a very disagreeable
+business indeed this. I think I'll get you to go. You'll manage it
+with so much more tact than a man," the poor lady, unaccustomed to
+compliments, was gratified. Now, however, thanks to Beth, she had been
+nearer to making an acute observation than she had ever been in her
+life before; she all but perceived that the woman's sphere is never
+home exclusively when man can make use of her for his own purposes
+elsewhere. The sphere is the stable he ties her up in when he does not
+want her, and takes her from again to drag him out of a difficulty, or
+up to some distinction, just as it suits himself.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell and Beth waited for Mrs. Richardson to commit herself,
+but gave her no further help.
+
+"The truth is," she recommenced desperately, "we have lost an
+excellent pupil. His people have been informed that he was carrying on
+an intrigue with a girl in this place, and have taken him away at a
+moment's notice."
+
+"And what has that to do with us?" Mrs. Caldwell asked politely.
+
+"The girl is said to be your daughter."
+
+"This is my eldest daughter at home," Mrs. Caldwell answered. "She is
+not yet fourteen."
+
+"But she's a very big girl," Mrs. Richardson faltered.
+
+"Who is this person, this pupil you allude to?" Mrs. Caldwell asked
+superciliously.
+
+"He is the son of wealthy Nottingham people."
+
+"Ah! lace manufacturers, I suppose," Mrs. Caldwell rejoined.
+
+"Yes--s," Mrs. Richardson acknowledged with reluctance. She
+associated, as she was expected to do, with gentlemen who debauched
+themselves freely, but would have scorned the acquaintance of a
+shopman of saintly life.
+
+"Then certainly not a proper acquaintance for my daughter," Mrs.
+Caldwell decided, with the manner of a county lady speaking to a
+person whom she knows to be nobody by birth. "Beth, will you be good
+enough to tell us what you know of this youth?"
+
+"I was caught by the tide on the sands one day, and he was there, and
+helped me; and I always spoke to him afterwards. I thought I ought,
+for politeness' sake," Beth answered easily.
+
+"May I ask how that strikes you?" Mrs. Caldwell, turning to Mrs.
+Richardson, requested to know, but did not wait for a reply. "It
+strikes me," she proceeded, "that your husband's parish must be in an
+appalling state of neglect and disorder when slander is so rife that
+he loses a good pupil because an act of common politeness, a service
+rendered by a youth on the one hand, and acknowledged by a young lady
+on the other, is described as an intrigue. But I still fail to see,"
+she pursued haughtily, "why you should have come to spread this
+scandal here in my house."
+
+"Oh," the little woman faltered, "I was to ask if there had been
+any--any presents. But," she added hastily, to save herself from the
+wrath which she saw gathering on Mrs. Caldwell's face, "I am sure
+there were not. I'm sure you would never bring a breach of promise
+case--I'm sure it has all been a dreadful mistake. If Mr. Richardson
+wants anything of this kind done in future, he must do it himself. I
+apologise."
+
+She uttered the last word with a gasp.
+
+"Let me show you out," said Beth, and the discomforted lady found
+herself ushered into the street without further ceremony.
+
+When Beth returned she found her mother smiling blandly at the result
+of her diplomacy. It was probably the first effort of the kind the
+poor lady had ever made, and she was so elated by her success that she
+took Beth into her confidence, and forgave her outright in order to
+hob-nob with her on the subject.
+
+"I think I fenced with her pretty well," she said several times. "A
+woman of her class, a country attorney's daughter or something of that
+kind, is no match for a woman of mine. I hope, Beth, this will be a
+lesson to you, and will teach you to appreciate the superior tact and
+discretion of the upper classes."
+
+Beth could not find it in her heart to say a word to check her
+mother's jubilation; besides, she had played up to her, answering to
+expectation, as she was apt to do, with fatal versatility. But she did
+not feel that they had come out of the business well. It was as if
+their honesty had been bedraggled somehow, and she could not respect
+her mother for her triumph; on the contrary, she pitied her. That kind
+of diplomacy or tact, the means by which people who have had every
+advantage impose upon those who have had no advantages to speak of,
+did not appeal to Beth as pleasant, even at fourteen.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell put her work away at once, and hurried off to describe
+the encounter to Lady Benyon.
+
+"They had not heard of the menagerie affair, I suppose," the old lady
+observed, twinkling. "Thanks to yourself, I think you may consider
+Miss Beth is well out of _that_ scrape. But take my advice. Get that
+girl married the first chance you have. _I_ know girls, and she's one
+of the marrying kind. Once she's married, let her mutiny or do
+anything she likes. _You'll_ be shut of the responsibility."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+From that time forward it was as if Alfred had vanished into space.
+Whether he ever attempted to communicate with her, Beth could not
+tell; but she received no letter or message. She expected to hear from
+him through Dicksie, but it soon became apparent that Dicksie had
+deserted her. He came to none of their old haunts, and never looked
+her way in church or in the street when they met. She was ashamed to
+believe it of him at first, lest some defect in her own nature should
+have given rise to the horrid suspicion; but when she could no longer
+doubt it, she shrugged her shoulders as at something contemptible, and
+dismissed him from her mind. About Alfred she could not be sure. He
+might have sent letters and messages that never reached her, and
+therefore she would not blame him; but as the thought of him became an
+ache, she resolutely set it aside, so that, in a very short time, in
+that part of her consciousness where his image had been, there was a
+blank. Thus the whole incident ended like a light extinguished, as
+Beth acknowledged to herself at last. "It is curious, though," she
+thought, "but I certainly knew it in myself all along from the moment
+the change came, _if only I could have got at the knowledge_."
+
+As a direct result of her separation from Alfred, Beth entered upon a
+bad phase. The simple satisfaction of her heart in his company had
+kept her sane and healthy. With such a will as hers, it had not been
+hard to cast him out of her anticipations; but with him, there went
+from her life that wholesome companionship of boy and girl which
+contains all the happiness necessary for their immaturity, and also
+stimulates their growth in every way by holding out the alluring
+prospect of the fulfilment of those hopes of their being towards which
+their youth should aspire from the first, insensibly, but without
+pause. Having once known this companionship, Beth did not thrive
+without it. She had no other interest in its place to take her out of
+herself, and the time hung heavy on her hands. With her temperament,
+however, more than a momentary pause was impossible. Her active mind,
+being bare of all expectation, soon began to sate itself upon vain
+imaginings. For the rational plans and pursuits she had been
+accustomed to make and to carry out with the boys, she had nothing to
+substitute but dreams; and on these she lived, finding an idle
+distraction in them, until the habit grew disproportionate, and began
+to threaten the fine balance of her other faculties: her reason, her
+power of accurate observation and of assimilating every scrap of
+knowledge that came in her way. To fill up her empty days, she
+surrounded herself with a story, among the crowding incidents of which
+she lived, whatever she might be doing. She had a lover who frequented
+a wonderful dwelling on the other side of the headland that bounded
+Rainharbour bay on the north. He was rich, dark, handsome, a
+mysterious man, with horses and a yacht. She was his one thought, but
+they did not meet often because of their enemies. He was engaged upon
+some difficult and dangerous work for the good of mankind, and she had
+many a midnight ride to warn him to beware, and many a wild adventure
+in an open boat, going out in the dark for news. But there were happy
+times too, when they lived together in that handsome house hidden
+among the flowers behind the headland, and at night she always slept
+with her head on his shoulder. He had a confidential agent, a doctor,
+whom he sent to her with letters and messages, because it was not safe
+for him to appear in the public streets himself. This man was just
+like the one she had met on the rocks, and his clothes were always too
+good for the occasion. His name was Angus Ambrose Cleveland.
+
+Just at this time, Charlotte Hardy, the daughter of a doctor who lived
+next door to the Benyon Dower House, fell in love with Beth, and began
+to make much of her. Beth had never had a girl companion before, and
+although she rather looked down on Charlotte, she enjoyed the novelty.
+They were about the same age, but Charlotte was smaller than Beth,
+less precocious, and better educated. She knew things accurately that
+Beth had only an idea of; but Beth could make more use of a hint than
+Charlotte could of the fullest information. Beth respected her
+knowledge, however, and suffered pangs of humiliation when she
+compared it to her own ignorance; and it was by way of having
+something to show of equal importance that she gradually fell into the
+habit of confiding her romance to Charlotte, who listened in perfect
+good faith to the fascinating details which Beth poured forth from day
+to day. Beth did not at first intend to impose on her credulity; but
+when she found that Charlotte in her simplicity believed the whole
+story, she adapted her into it, and made her as much a part of it as
+Hector the hero, and Dr. Angus Ambrose Cleveland, the confidential
+agent on whom their safety depended. Charlotte was Beth's confidante
+now, a post which had hitherto been vacant; so the whole machinery of
+the romance was complete, and in excellent order.
+
+"It's queer I never see the doctor about," Charlotte said one day,
+when they were out on the cliffs together.
+
+Beth happened to look up at that moment and saw her acquaintance of
+the rocks coming towards them.
+
+"Your curiosity will be gratified," she said, "for there he is."
+
+"Where?" Charlotte demanded in an excited undertone.
+
+"Approaching," Beth answered calmly.
+
+"Will he speak?" Charlotte asked in a breathless whisper.
+
+"He will doubtless make me a sign," Beth replied.
+
+When he was near enough, the gentleman recognised Beth, and smiled as
+they passed each other.
+
+"Oughtn't he to have taken off his hat?" Charlotte asked.
+
+"He means no disrespect," Beth answered with dignity. "It is safer so.
+In fact, if you had not been my confidante, he would not have dared to
+make any sign at all."
+
+"Oh, then he knows that I am your confidante!" Charlotte exclaimed,
+much gratified.
+
+"Of course," said Beth. "I have to keep them informed of all that
+concerns me. I brought you here to-day on purpose. I shall doubtless
+have to ask you to take letters, and you could not deliver them if you
+did not know the doctor by sight. There is the yacht," she added, as a
+beautiful white-winged vessel swept round the headland into the bay.
+
+"O Beth! aren't you excited?" Charlotte cried.
+
+"No," Beth answered quietly. "You see I am used to these things."
+
+"Beth, what a strange creature you are," said Charlotte, with respect.
+"One can see that there's something extraordinary about you, but one
+can't tell what it is. You're not pretty--at least _I_ don't think so.
+I asked papa what he thought, and he said you had your points, and a
+something beyond, which is irresistible. He couldn't explain it,
+though; but I know what he meant. I always feel it when you talk to
+me; and I believe I could die for you. There's Mrs. Warner Benyon out
+again," she broke off to observe. "Papa was called in to see her the
+other day. He isn't their doctor, but she was taken ill suddenly, so
+they sent for him because he was at hand; and he says her shoulders
+are like alabaster."
+
+Beth pursed up her mouth at this, but made no answer. When she got
+home, however, she repeated the observation to her mother in order to
+ask her what alabaster was exactly. Mrs. Caldwell flushed indignantly
+at the story. "If Dr. Hardy speaks in that way of his patients to his
+family, he won't succeed in his profession," she declared. "A man who
+talks about his patients may be a clever doctor, but he's sure not to
+be a nice man--not high-minded, you know--and certainly not a wise
+one. Remember that, Beth, and take my advice: don't have anything to
+do with a 'talking doctor'"--a recommendation which Beth remembered
+afterwards, but only to note the futility of warnings.
+
+Matters became very complicated in the story as it proceeded. It was
+all due to some Spanish imbroglio, Beth said. Hector ran extraordinary
+risks, and she was not too safe herself if things went wrong. There
+were implicating documents, and emissaries of the Jesuits were on the
+look-out.
+
+One day, Charlotte's mother being away from home, Beth asked her
+mysteriously if she could conceal some one in her room at night
+unknown to her father.
+
+"Easily," Charlotte answered. "He never comes up to my room."
+
+"Then you must come and ask mamma to let me spend the day and night
+with you to-morrow," Beth said. "I shall have business which will keep
+me away all day, but I shall return at dusk, and then you must smuggle
+me up to your room. We shall be obliged to sit up all night. I don't
+know what is going to happen. Are the servants safe? If I should be
+betrayed----"
+
+"Safe not to tell you are there," said Charlotte, "and that is all
+they will know. They won't tell on me. I never tell on them."
+
+The next morning early, Charlotte arrived in Orchard Street with a
+face full of grave importance, and obtained Mrs. Caldwell's consent to
+take Beth back with her; but instead of having to go home to spend the
+day alone waiting for Beth, as she had expected, she was sent out some
+distance along the cliffs to a high hill, which she climbed by Beth's
+direction. She was to hide herself among the fir-trees at the top, and
+watch for a solitary rider on a big brown horse, who would pass on the
+road below between noon and sunset, if all went well, going towards
+the headland.
+
+"_I_ shall be that rider," Beth said solemnly. "And the moment you see
+me, take this blue missive, and place it on the Flat Rock, with a
+stone on it to keep it from blowing away; then go home. If I do not
+appear before sunset, here is a red missive to place on the Flat Rock
+instead of the blue one, which must then be destroyed by fire. If I
+return, I return; if not, never breathe a word of these things to a
+living soul as you value your life."
+
+"I would rather die than divulge anything," Charlotte protested
+solemnly, and her choice of the word divulge seemed to add
+considerably to the dignity of the proceedings.
+
+They separated with a casual nod, that people might not suspect them
+of anything important, and each proceeded to act her part in a
+delightful state of excitement; but what was thrilling earnest to
+Charlotte, calling for courage and endurance, was merely an
+exhilarating play of the fancy put into practice to Beth.
+
+By the time Charlotte arrived at the top of the hill, and had settled
+herself among the firs overlooking the road below, she was very tired.
+Beth had given her a bag, one of Aunt Victoria's many reticules, with
+orders not to open it before her watch began. The bag had been a
+burden to carry, but Charlotte was repaid for the trouble, for she
+found it full of good things to eat, and a bottle of cold coffee and
+cream to drink, with lumps of sugar and all complete. Beth had really
+displayed the most thoughtful kindness in packing that bag. The
+contents she had procured on a sudden impulse from a pastry-cook in
+the town, by promising to pay the next time she passed.
+
+After having very much enjoyed a solid Melton Mowbray pie, a sausage
+in puff-pastry, a sponge-cake, a lemon cheesecake, and two crisp
+brandy snaps, and slowly sipped the coffee, Charlotte felt that this
+was the only life worth living, and formally vowed to dedicate herself
+for ever to the Secret Service of Humanity--Beth's name for these
+enterprises. She kept a careful eye on the road below all this time,
+and there ran through her head the while fragments of a ballad Beth
+had written, which added very much to the charm of the occasion.
+
+    "The fir-trees whisper overhead,
+     Between the living and the dead,
+     I watch the livelong day.
+     I watch upon the mountain-side
+     For one of courage true and tried,
+     Who should ride by this way,"
+
+it began. When she first heard that Beth had written that ballad,
+Charlotte was astonished. It was the only assertion of Beth's she had
+ever doubted; but Beth assured her that any one could write verses,
+and convinced her by "making some up" there and then on a subject
+which she got Charlotte to choose for her.
+
+Many things passed on the road below--teams of waggons, drawn by
+beautiful big cart-horses with glossy coats, well cared for, tossing
+their headland rattling the polished brasses of their harness proudly,
+signs of successful farming and affluence; smart carriages with what
+Beth called "silly-fool ladies, good for nothing," in them; a
+carrier's cart, pedestrians innumerable, and then--then, at last, a
+solitary big brown horse, ridden at a steady canter by a slender girl
+in a brown habit (worn by her mother in her youth, and borrowed from
+her wardrobe without permission for the occasion). The horse was a
+broken-down racer with some spirit left, which Beth had hired, as she
+had procured the provisions, on a promise to pay. In passing, she
+waved a white handkerchief carelessly, as if she were flicking flies
+from the horse, but _without relenting her speed_. This was the signal
+agreed upon. Charlotte, glowing with excitement, and greatly relieved,
+watched the adventurous rider out of sight; then trudged off bravely
+to the Flat Rock, miles away behind the far pier, where she loyally
+deposited the blue missive. The red one she destroyed by fire
+according to orders.
+
+Beth had warned her that she would be tired to death when she got in,
+and had better snatch some repose in preparation for the night.
+
+"But if I oversleep myself and am not on the look-out for you when you
+come, what will you do?" Charlotte objected.
+
+"Leave that to me," said Beth.
+
+And Charlotte did accordingly with perfect confidence.
+
+When she awoke the room was dark, but there was a motionless figure
+sitting in the window, clearly silhouetted against the sky. Charlotte,
+who expected surprises, was pleasantly startled.
+
+"Is all safe in the west, sister?" she said softly, raising herself on
+her elbow.
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "but clouds are gathering in the north. Our hope
+is in the east. Let us pray for the sunrise. You left the letter?"
+
+"Yes. As fast as I could fly I went."
+
+"Ah! then it will be gone by this time!" Beth ejaculated with
+conviction. The Flat Rock was only uncovered at low water, and now the
+tide was high. "Can you get me some food, little one, for I am
+famished?" she proceeded. "I have had nothing since the morning, and
+have ridden far, and have done much."
+
+"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Charlotte. "And you got me such good things!"
+
+"Ah! that was different," Beth rejoined.
+
+Charlotte stole downstairs. Her father had been out seeing his
+patients all day, and had not troubled about her.
+
+She returned with chicken and ham, cold apple-tart and cream, and a
+little jug of cider.
+
+Poor Beth, accustomed to the most uninteresting food, and not enough
+of that, was so exhausted by her long fast and arduous labours, that
+she found it difficult to restrain her tears at the sight of such good
+things. She ate and drank with seemly self-restraint, however; it
+would have lowered her much in her own estimation if she had showed
+any sign of the voracity she felt.
+
+Then the watch began. Having wrapped themselves up in their walking
+things to be ready for any emergency, they locked the door and opened
+the window softly. They were in a room at the top of the house, which,
+being next door to the Benyons, commanded the same extensive view down
+the front street and a bit of Rock Street and the back street, and up
+Orchard Street on the left to the church. They were watching for a
+sailor in a smart yachting suit, a man-of-war's man with bare feet,
+and a priest in a heavy black cloak. Beth, greatly refreshed and
+stimulated by her supper and the cider, fell into her most fascinating
+mood; and Charlotte listened enthralled to wonderful descriptions of
+places she had visited with Hector, sights she had seen, and events
+she had taken part in.
+
+"But how is it you are not missed from home when you go away like
+that?" said Charlotte.
+
+"How is it I am not missed to-night?" Beth answered. "When you are
+fully initiated into the Secret Service of Humanity you will find that
+things happen in a way you would never suspect."
+
+"I suppose it is all right and proper being so much alone with single
+gentlemen," Charlotte just ventured.
+
+"All things are right and proper so long as you do nothing wrong,"
+Beth answered sententiously.
+
+Lights began to move from room to room in the houses about them,
+gigantic shadows of people appeared on white window blinds in
+fantastic poses, and there was much moving to and fro as they prepared
+for bed. Then one by one the lights went out, and in the little
+old-fashioned window-panes the dark brightness of the sky and the
+crystal stars alone were reflected. It was a fine clear night, the gas
+burnt brightly in the quiet streets, there was not a soul stirring.
+
+"Isn't it exquisite?" said Beth, sniffing the sweet air. "I am glad I
+was born, if it is only for the sake of being alive at night."
+
+After this they were silent. Then by degrees the desire for sleep
+became imperative, and they both suffered acutely in their efforts to
+resist it. Finally Charlotte was vanquished, and Beth made her lie
+down on the bed. As she dropped off she saw Beth sitting rigidly at
+the open window; when she awoke it was bright daylight, and Beth was
+still there in exactly the same attitude.
+
+"Beth," she exclaimed, "you are superhuman!"
+
+"Ah!" said Beth, with a mysterious smile, "when you have learnt to
+listen to the whispers of the night, and know what they signify as I
+do, you will not wonder. Marvellous things have been happening while
+you slept."
+
+"O Beth!" said Charlotte reproachfully, "why didn't you wake me?"
+
+"I was forbidden," Beth answered sadly. "But now watch for me. It is
+your turn, and I must sleep. A yachtsman or a man-of-war's man with
+bare feet, remember."
+
+Beth curled herself up on the bed, and Charlotte, very weary and
+aching all over, but sternly determined to do her duty, took her place
+in the window. She had her reward, however, and when Beth awoke she
+found her all on the alert, for she had seen the yachtsman. He came up
+the street and hung about a little, pretending to look at the shops,
+then walked away briskly, which showed Charlotte that the plot was
+thickening, and greatly excited her. Beth smiled and nodded as though
+well satisfied when she heard the news, but preserved an enigmatical
+silence.
+
+Then Charlotte went downstairs and smuggled her up such a good
+breakfast--fried ham, boiled eggs, hot rolls with plenty of butter,
+and delicious coffee--that the famishing Beth was fain to exclaim with
+genuine enthusiasm--
+
+"In spite of all the difficulty, danger, and privation we have to
+endure in the Secret Service of Humanity, Charlotte, is there anything
+to equal the delight of it?"
+
+And Charlotte solemnly asseverated that there was not.
+
+Much stimulated by her breakfast, Beth took leave of Charlotte. She
+must be alone, she said, she had much to think about. She went to the
+farther shore to be away from everybody. She wanted to hear what the
+little waves were saying to the sand as they rippled over it. It was
+another grey day, close and still, and the murmur of the calm sea
+threw her at once into a dreamy state, full of pleasurable excitement.
+She hid herself in a spot most soothing from its apparent remoteness,
+a sandy cove from which, because of the projecting cliffs on either
+hand, neither town nor coast could be seen, but only the sea and sky.
+Although the grey was uniform enough to make it impossible to tell
+where cloud met water on the horizon, it was not dull, but luminous
+with the sunshine it enfolded, and full of colour in fine gradations
+as Beth beheld it. She sat a long time on the warm dry sand, with her
+chin resting on her knees, and her hands clasped round them, not
+gazing with seeing eyes nor listening with open ears, but
+apprehending through her further faculty the great harmony of Nature
+of which she herself was one of the triumphant notes. At that moment
+she tasted life at its best and fullest--life all ease and grace and
+beauty, without regret or longing--perfect life in that she wanted
+nothing more. But she rose at last, and, still gazing at the sea,
+slowly unclasped her waistbelt, and let it fall on the sand at her
+feet; then she took her hat off, her dress, her boots and stockings,
+everything, and stood, ivory-white, with bright brown wavy hair,
+against the lilac greyness under the tall dark cliffs. The little
+waves had called her, coming up closer and closer, and fascinating
+her, until, yielding to their allurements, she went in amongst them,
+and floated on them, or lay her length in the shallows, letting them
+ripple over her, and make merry about her, the gladdest girl alive,
+yet with the wrapt impassive face of a devotee whose ecstasy is apart
+from all that acts on mere flesh and makes expression. All through
+life Beth had her moments, and they were generally such as this, when
+her higher self was near upon release from its fetters, and she arose
+an interval towards oneness with the Eternal.
+
+But on this occasion she was surprised in her happy solitude. A troop
+of what Mrs. Caldwell called "common girls" came suddenly round the
+cliff into her sheltered nook, with shouts of laughter, also bent on
+bathing. Beth plunged in deeper to cover herself the moment they
+appeared; but they did not expect her to have anything on, and her
+modesty was lost upon them.
+
+"How's the water?" they shouted.
+
+"Delicious," she answered, glad to find them friendly.
+
+They undressed as they came along, and were very soon, all of them,
+playing about her, ducking and splashing each other, and Beth also,
+including her sociably in their game. And Beth, as was her wont,
+responded so cordially that she was very soon heading the
+manoeuvres.
+
+"We shall all be ill if we stay in any longer," she said at last. "I
+shall take one more dip and go and dress. Let's all take hands and dip
+in a row."
+
+They did so, and then, still hand in hand, scampered up on to the
+beach.
+
+"My!" one of them exclaimed, when they came to their clothes and had
+broken the line,--"My! ain't _she_ nice!"
+
+Then all the other girls stood and stared at Beth, whose fine limbs
+and satin-smooth white skin, so different in colour and texture from
+their own, drew from them the most candid expressions of admiration.
+
+Beth, covered with confusion, hurried on a garment all wet as she was,
+for she had no towel; and then, in order to distract their attention
+from her body, she began to display her mind.
+
+"Eh, I have had a good time!" one of the girls exclaimed. "Let's come
+again often."
+
+"Let us form a secret society," said Beth, "and I will be your leader,
+and we'll have a watchword and a sign; and when the water is right,
+I'll send the word round, and then we'll start out unobserved, and
+meet here, and bathe in secret."
+
+"My! that would be fine!" the girls agreed.
+
+"But that's not all," said Beth, standing with her chemise only half
+on, oblivious of everything now but her subject. "It would be much
+better than that. There would be much more in it. We could meet in the
+fields by moonlight, and I would drill you, and show you a great many
+things, all for the Secret Service of Humanity. You don't know what
+we're doing! We're going to make the world just like heaven, and
+everybody will be good and beautiful, and have enough of everything,
+and we shall all be happy, because nobody will care to be happy unless
+everybody else has been made so. But it will be very hard work to
+bring it about. The wicked people are doing all they can to prevent
+us, and the devil himself is fighting against us. We shall conquer,
+however; and those who are first in the fight will be first for the
+glory!"
+
+The girls, some standing, some sitting, most of them with nothing on,
+remained motionless while she spoke, not understanding much, yet so
+moved by the power of her personality, that when she exclaimed, "Well,
+what do you say, girls? will you join?" they all exclaimed with
+enthusiasm, "We will! we will!"
+
+And then they made haste to dress as if the millennium could be
+hurried here by the rate at which they put on their clothes. Beth then
+and there composed a terrible oath, binding them to secrecy and
+obedience, and swore them all in solemnly; then she chose one for her
+orderly, who was to take round the word on occasion; and they were all
+to meet again in the fields behind the church on Saturday at eight
+o'clock.
+
+But in the meantime, not a word!
+
+Beth made Charlotte captain of the band; and drills, bathing rites,
+and other mysteries were regularly conducted, the girls being bound
+together more securely by the fascination of Beth's discourses, and
+the continual interest she managed to inspire, than by any respect
+they had for an oath. Beth's interest in them extended to the smallest
+detail of their lives. She knew which would be absent from drill
+because it was washing-day, and which was weak for want of food; and
+she resumed her poaching habits--only on Uncle James Patten's estate,
+of course--and, having beguiled a gunsmith into letting her have an
+air-gun on credit, she managed to snare and shoot birds enough to
+relieve their necessities to an appreciable extent. She never let any
+one into the secret of those supplies, and the mystery added greatly
+to her credit with the girls.
+
+That season some friends of the Benyons brought their boys to stay at
+Rainharbour for the holidays, and Beth varied her other pursuits by
+rambling about with them, Lady Benyon having seen to it that she made
+their acquaintance legitimately, for the old lady shrewdly suspected
+that Beth was already beginning to attract attention. From her post of
+observation in the window she had seen young men turn in the street
+and look back at the slender girl, in spite of her short petticoats,
+with more interest than many a maturer figure aroused; and she had
+heard that Beth Caldwell was already much discussed. Beth's brother
+Jim, when he came home that summer, also began to introduce her to his
+young men friends in the neighbourhood, so that very soon Beth had
+quite a little court about her on the pier when the band played. She
+liked the boys, and the young men she found an absorbing study; but
+not one of them touched her heart. Her acquaintance with Alfred had
+made her fastidious. He had had sense enough to respect her, and his
+companionship had given her a fine foretaste of the love that is
+ennobling, the love that makes for high ideals of character and
+conduct, for fine purpose, spiritual power, and intellectual
+development, the one kind worth cultivating. In these more
+sophisticated youths she found nothing soul-sustaining. She
+philandered with some of them up to the point where comparisons become
+inevitable, and, so long as they met her in a spirit of frank
+camaraderie, it was agreeable enough; but when, with their commonplace
+minds, they presumed to be sentimental, they became intolerable. Still
+the glow was there in her breast often and often, and would be
+momentarily directed towards one and another; but the brightness of it
+only showed the defects in each; and so she remained in love with love
+alone, and the power of passion in her, thwarted, was transmuted into
+mental energy.
+
+But Beth learnt a good deal from her young men that summer--learnt her
+own power, for one thing, when she found that she could twist the
+whole lot of them round her little finger if she chose. The thing
+about them that interested her most, however, was their point of view.
+She found one trait common to all of them when they talked to her, and
+that was a certain assumption of superiority which impressed her very
+much at first, so that she was prepared to accept their opinions as
+confidently as they gave them; and they always had one ready to give
+on no matter what subject. Beth, perceiving that this superiority was
+not innate, tried to discover how it was acquired that she might
+cultivate it. Gathering from their attitude towards her ignorance that
+this superiority rested somehow on a knowledge of the Latin grammar,
+she hunted up an old one of her brother's and opened it with awe, so
+much seemed to depend on it. Verbs and declensions came easily enough
+to her, however. The construction of the language was puzzling at the
+outset; but, with a little help, she soon discovered that even in that
+there was nothing occult. Any industrious, persevering person could
+learn a language, she decided; and then she made more observations.
+She discovered that, in the estimation of men, feminine attributes are
+all inferior to masculine attributes. Any evidence of reasoning
+capacity in a woman they held to be abnormal, and they denied that
+women were ever logical. They had to allow that women's intuition was
+often accurate, but it was inferior, nevertheless, they maintained, to
+man's uncertain reason; and such qualities as were undeniable they
+managed to discount, as, for instance, in the matter of endurance. If
+women were long enduring, they said, it was not because their
+fortitude was greater, but because they were less sensitive to
+suffering, and so, in point of fact, suffered less than men would
+under the circumstances.
+
+This persistent endeavour to exalt themselves by lowering women struck
+Beth as mean, and made her thoughtful. She began by respecting their
+masculine minds as much as they did themselves; but then came a doubt
+if they were any larger and more capable than the minds of women would
+be if they were properly trained and developed; and she began to dip
+into the books they prided themselves on having read, to see if they
+were past her comprehension. She studied Pope's translation of the
+Iliad and Odyssey indoors, and she also took the little volume out
+under her arm; but this was a pose, for she could not read out of
+doors, there were always so many other interests to occupy her
+attention--birds and beasts, men and women, trees and flowers, land
+and water; all much more entrancing than the Iliad or Odyssey. Long
+years afterwards she returned to these old-world works with keen
+appreciation, and wondered at her early self; but when she read them
+first, she took their meanings too literally, and soon wearied of
+warlike heroes, however great a number of their fellow-creatures they
+might slay at a time, and of chattel heroines, however beautiful,
+which was all that Homer conveyed to her; not did she find herself
+elated by her knowledge of their exploits. She noticed, however, that
+the acquisition of such knowledge imposed upon the boys, and gained
+her a reputation for cleverness which made the young university prigs
+think it worth their while to talk to her. They had failed to discover
+her natural powers because there was no one to tell them she had any,
+and they only thought what they were told to think about people and
+things, and admired what they were told to admire. In this Beth
+differed from them widely, for she began by having tastes of her own.
+She did not believe that they enjoyed Homer a bit more than she did;
+but the right pose was to pretend that they did; so they posed and
+pretended, according to order, and Beth posed and pretended too, just
+to see what would come of it.
+
+It was a young tutor in charge of a reading-party who helped Beth with
+the Latin grammar. He managed to ingratiate himself with Mrs.
+Caldwell, and came often to the house; and finally he began to teach
+Beth Latin at her own request, and with the consent of her mother. The
+lessons had not gone on very long, however, before he tried to
+insinuate into his teaching some of the kind of sophistries which
+another tutor had imposed by way of moral philosophy on Rousseau's
+Madame de Warens in her girlhood, to her undoing. This was all new to
+Beth, and she listened with great interest; but she failed utterly to
+see why not believing in a God should make it right and proper for her
+to embrace the tutor: so the lessons ended abruptly. Beth profited
+largely by the acquaintance, however,--not so much at the time,
+perhaps, as afterwards, when she was older, and had gained knowledge
+enough of men of various kinds to enable her to compare and reflect.
+It was her first introduction to the commonplace cleverness of the
+academic mind, the mere acquisitive faculty which lives on pillage,
+originates nothing itself, and, as a rule, fails to understand, let
+alone appreciate, originality in others. The young tutor's ambition
+was to be one of a shining literary clique of extraordinary cheapness
+which had just then begun to be formed. The taint of a flippant wit
+was common to all its members, and their assurance was unbounded. They
+undertook to extinguish anybody with a few fine phrases; and, in their
+conceited irreverence, they even attacked eternal principles, the
+sources of the best inspiration of all ages, and pronounced sentence
+upon them. Repute of a kind they gained, but it was by glib
+falsifications of all that is noble in sentiment, thought, and action,
+all that is good and true. It was the contraction of her own heart,
+the chill and dulness that settled upon her when she was with this
+man, as compared to the glow and expansion, the release of her finer
+faculties, which she had always experienced when under the influence
+of Aunt Victoria's simple goodness, that first put Beth in the way of
+observing how inferior in force and charm mere intellect is to
+spiritual power, and how soon it bores, even when brilliant, if
+unaccompanied by other endowments, qualities of heart and soul, such
+as constancy, loyalty, truthfulness, and that scrupulous honesty of
+action which answers to what is expected as well as to what is known
+of us.
+
+Beth played very diligently at learning during this experiment, but
+only played for a time. The mind in process of forming itself
+involuntarily rejects all that is unnecessary, and that kind of
+knowledge was not for her. It opened up no prospect of pleasure in
+itself. All she cared to know was what it felt like to have mastered
+it; and that she arrived at by resolving herself into a lady of great
+attainments, who talked altogether about things she had learnt, but
+had nothing in her mind besides. A mind with nothing else in it, in
+Beth's sense of the word, was to Beth what plainness is to beauty; so,
+while many of her contemporaries were stultifying themselves with
+Greek and Latin ingenuities, she pursued the cultivation of that in
+herself which is beyond our ordinary apprehension, that which is more
+potent than knowledge, more fertilising to the mind--that by which
+knowledge is converted from a fallow field into a fruitful garden.
+Altogether, apart from her special subject, she learnt only enough of
+anything to express herself; but it was extraordinary how aptly she
+utilised all that was necessary for her purpose, and how invariably
+she found what she wanted--if found be the right word; for it was
+rather as if information were flashed into her mind from some outside
+agency at critical times when she could not possibly have done without
+it.
+
+One sad consequence of her separation from Alfred, and the strange
+things she did and dreamed for distraction in the unrest of her mind,
+was a change in her constitution. Her first fine flush of health was
+over, the equability of her temper was disturbed, and she became
+subject to hysterical outbursts of garrulity, to fits of moody
+silence, to apparently causeless paroxysms of laughter or tears; and
+she was always anxious. She had real cause for anxiety, however, for,
+in her efforts to realise her romance to Charlotte's satisfaction, she
+had run up little bills all over the place. What would happen when
+they were presented, as they certainly would be sooner or later, she
+dared not think; but the dread of the moment preyed upon her mind to
+such an extent that, whenever she heard a knock at the door, she
+entreated God to grant that it might not be a bill. And even when
+there were no knocks, she went on entreating to be spared, and worked
+herself into such a chronic fever of worry that she was worn to a
+shadow, and developed a racking cough which gave her no peace.
+
+Just at this time, too, the whole place began to be scandalised by her
+vagaries, her mysterious expeditions on the big brown horse, and her
+constant appearance in public with a coterie of young men about her.
+At a time when anything unconventional in a girl was clear evidence of
+vice to all the men and most of the women who knew of it, Beth's
+reputation was bound to suffer, and it became so bad at last that Dr.
+Hardy forbade Charlotte to associate with her. Charlotte told her with
+tears, and begged to be allowed to meet her in the Secret Service of
+Humanity as usual; but Beth refused. She said it was too dangerous
+just then, they must wait; the truth being that she was sick of the
+Secret Service of Humanity, of Charlotte, of everything and everybody
+that prevented her hearing when there was a knock at the door, and
+praying to the Lord that it might not be a bill.
+
+The secret society was practically dissolved by this time, and very
+soon afterwards the catastrophe Beth had been dreading occurred, and
+wrought a great change in her life. It happened one day when she was
+not at home. Aunt Grace Mary was so alarmed by her cough and the
+delicacy of her appearance that she had braved Uncle James and carried
+her off to stay with her at Fairholm for a change. Once she was away
+from the sound of the knocks, Beth suffered less, and began to revive
+and be herself again to the extent of taking Aunt Grace Mary into her
+confidence boldly.
+
+"Beth, Beth, Beth!" said that poor good lady tenderly, "you naughty
+girl, how could you! Running in debt with nothing to pay; why, it
+isn't honest!"
+
+"So _I_ think," said Beth in cordial agreement, taking herself aside
+from her own acts, as it were, and considering them impartially. "Help
+me out of this scrape, Aunt Grace Mary, and I'll never get into such
+another."
+
+"But how much do you owe, Beth dear?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," Beth answered. "Pounds for Tom Briggs alone."
+
+"Who's _he_?" was Aunt Grace Mary's horrified exclamation.
+
+"Oh, only the horse--a dark bay with black points. I rode him a lot,
+and oh! it _was_ nice! It was like poetry, like living it, you know,
+like being a poem one's self. And I'm glad I did it. If I should die
+for it, I couldn't regret it. And I shouldn't wonder if I did die, for
+I feel as if those knocks had fairly knocked me to bits."
+
+"Nonsense, Beth, you silly child, don't talk like that," said Aunt
+Grace Mary. "What else do you owe?"
+
+"Oh, then there's Mrs. Andrews, the confectioner's, bill."
+
+"Confectioner's!" Aunt Grace Mary exclaimed. "O Beth! I never thought
+you were greedy."
+
+"Well, I don't think I am," Beth answered temperately. "I've been very
+hungry, though. But I never touched any of those good things myself. I
+only got them for Charlotte when she had heavy work to do for the
+Secret Service of Humanity."
+
+"The _what_?" Aunt Grace Mary demanded.
+
+"The game we played. Then there's the hairdresser's bill, that must be
+pretty big. I had to get curls and plaits and combs and things,
+besides having my hair dressed for entertainments to which I was
+obliged to go----"
+
+"Beth! _are_ you mad?" Aunt Grace Mary interrupted. "You've never been
+to an entertainment in your life."
+
+"No," Beth answered casually, "but I've played at going to no end of a
+lot."
+
+"Well, this is the most extraordinary game I ever heard of!"
+
+"But it was such an exciting game," Beth pleaded with a sigh.
+
+"But, my dear child, such a reckless, unprincipled game!"
+
+"But you don't think of that at the time," Beth assured her. "It's all
+real and right then. We----"
+
+But here the colloquy was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Caldwell
+in a state of distraction with the hairdresser's bill in her hand.
+Aunt Grace Mary made her sit down, and patted her shoulder soothingly.
+Uncle James was out. Beth, greatly relieved, looked on with interest.
+She knew that the worst was over.
+
+"Never mind, Caroline," Aunt Grace Mary said cheerfully. "Beth has
+just been telling me all about it. Confession is good for the saints,
+you know, or the soul, or something; so that's cheering. She has been
+very naughty, very naughty indeed, but she is very sorry. She
+sincerely regrets. Hairdresser, did you say? Oh, give it to me! Now,
+do give it to me, _there's_ a dear! And we won't have another word
+about it. Beth, you bad girl, be good, and say you repent."
+
+"Say it!" Beth ejaculated, coughing. "Look at me, and you'll see it,
+Aunt Grace Mary. I've been repenting myself to pieces for months."
+
+"Well, dear; well, dear," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined, beaming blandly,
+"that will do; that's enough, I'm sure. Mamma forgives you, so we'll
+have no more about it."
+
+The hairdresser's bill was the only one Mrs. Caldwell ever heard of,
+for Aunt Grace Mary got the use of her pony carriage next day, by
+telling Uncle James her mamma had sent Caroline to say she
+particularly wished her to take Beth to see her. Uncle James, to whom
+any whim of Lady Benyon's was wisdom, ordered the carriage for them
+himself; and, as they drove off together, Aunt Grace Mary remarked to
+Beth, "I think I managed that very cleverly; don't you?" Naturally
+estimable women are forced into habits of dissimulation by the
+unreason of the tyrant in authority in many families; and Aunt Grace
+Mary was one of the victims. She had been obliged to resort to these
+small deceits for so many years, that all she felt about them now was
+a sort of mild triumph when they were successful. "I mean to go and
+see mamma, you know, so it won't be any story," she added.
+
+She went with Beth first, however, to the various shops where Beth
+owed money, and paid her debts; and Beth was so overcome by her
+generosity, and so anxious to prove her repentance, that she borrowed
+sixpence more from her, and went straightway to the hairdresser's, and
+had all her pretty hair cropped off close like a boy's, by way of
+atonement. When she appeared, Lady Benyon burst out laughing; but her
+mother was even more seriously annoyed than she had been by the
+hairdresser's bill. Beth's hair had added considerably to her market
+value in Mrs. Caldwell's estimation. She would not have put it so
+coarsely, but that was what her feeling on the subject amounted to.
+
+"What is to be done with such a child?" she exclaimed in despair.
+
+"Send her to school," Aunt Grace Mary gasped.
+
+"She would be expelled in a month," Mrs. Caldwell averred.
+
+"Possibly; but it would be worth the trial," Aunt Grace Mary rejoined
+in her breathless way.
+
+"Yes," Lady Benyon agreed. "She has been at home far too long, running
+wild, and it's the only thing to be done. But let it be a strict
+school."
+
+"How am I to afford it?" Mrs. Caldwell wailed, rocking herself on her
+chair.
+
+"Well, there's the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters; you
+can get her in there for next to nothing, and it's strict enough,"
+Lady Benyon suggested.
+
+And finally, after the loss of some more precious time, and with much
+reluctance, Mrs. Caldwell yielded to public opinion, and decided to
+deprive Jim of Beth's little income, and send Beth to school, some new
+enormities of Beth's having helped considerably to hasten her mother's
+decision.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Mrs. Caldwell's married life had been one long sacrifice of herself,
+her health, her comfort, her every pleasure, to what she conceived to
+be right and dutiful. Duty and right were the only two words
+approaching to a religious significance that she was not ashamed to
+use; to her all the other words savoured of cant, and even these two
+she pronounced without emphasis or solemnity, lest the sense in which
+she used them might be mistaken for a piece of religiosity. Of the joy
+and gladness of religion the poor lady had no conception.
+
+Nevertheless, as has already been said, Mrs. Caldwell was an admirable
+person, according to the light of her time. To us she appears to have
+been a good woman marred, first of all, by the narrow outlook, the
+ignorance and prejudices which were the result of the mental
+restrictions imposed upon her sex; secondly, by having no conception
+of her duty to herself; and finally, by those mistaken notions of her
+duty to others which were so long inflicted upon women, to be their
+own curse and the misfortune of all whom they were designed to
+benefit. She had sacrificed her health in her early married life to
+what she believed to be her duty as a wife, and so had left herself
+neither nerve nor strength enough for the never-ending tasks of the
+mistress of a household and mother of a family on a small income, the
+consequence of which was that shortness of temper and querulousness
+which spoilt her husband's life and made her own a burden to her. She
+was highly intelligent, but had carefully preserved her ignorance of
+life, because it was not considered womanly to have any practical
+knowledge of the world; and she had neglected the general cultivation
+of her mind partly because intellectual pursuits were a pleasure, and
+she did not feel sufficiently self-denying if she allowed herself any
+but exceptional pleasures, but also because there was a good deal of
+her husband's work in the way of letters and official documents that
+she could do for him, and these left her no time for anything but the
+inevitable making and mending. Busy men take a sensible amount of rest
+and relaxation, of food and fresh air, and make good speed; but busy
+women look upon outdoor exercise as a luxury, talk about wasting time
+on meals, and toil on incessantly yet with ever-diminishing strength,
+because they take no time to recoup; therefore they recede rather than
+advance; all the extra effort but makes for leeway.
+
+The consequence of Mrs. Caldwell's ridiculous education was that her
+judgment was no more developed in most respects than it had been in her
+girlhood, so that when she lost her husband and had to act for her
+children, she had nothing better to rely on for her guidance than
+time-honoured conventions, which she accepted with unquestioning faith
+in their efficacy, even when applied to emergencies such as were never
+known in the earlier ages of human evolution to which they belonged. She
+had starved herself and her daughters in mind and body in order to
+scrape together the wherewithal to send her sons out into the world, but
+she had let them go without making any attempt to help them to form
+sound principles, or to teach them rules of conduct such as should keep
+them clean-hearted and make them worthy members of society; so that all
+her privation had been worse than vain, it had been mischievous; for the
+boys, unaided by any scheme or comprehensive view of life, any
+knowledge of the meaning of it to show them what was worth aiming at,
+and also unprotected by positive principles, had drifted along the
+commonest course of self-seeking and self-indulgence, and were neither a
+comfort nor a credit to her. However, she was satisfied that she had
+done her best for them, and therefore, being of the days when the
+woman's sphere was home exclusively, and home meant, for the most part,
+the nursery and the kitchen, she sat inactive and suffered, as was the
+wont of old-world women, while her sons were sinning all the sins which
+she especially should have taught them to abhor; and, with regard to her
+girls, she was equally satisfied that she had done the right thing by
+them under the circumstances. She could not have been made to comprehend
+that Beth, a girl, was the one member of the family who deserved a good
+chance, the only one for whom it would have repaid her to procure extra
+advantages; but having at last been convinced that there was nothing for
+it but to send Beth to school, she set to work to prepare her to the
+best of her ability. Her own clothes were in the last stage of
+shabbiness, but what money she had she spent on getting new ones for
+Beth, and that, too, in order that she might continue the allowance to
+Jim as long as possible. She made a mighty effort also to teach Beth all
+that was necessary for the entrance examination into the school, and
+sewed day and night to get the things ready--in all of which, be it
+said, Beth helped to the best of her ability, but without pride or
+pleasure, because she had been made to feel that she was robbing Jim,
+and that her mother was treating her better than she deserved, and the
+feeling depressed her, so that the much-longed-for chance, when it came,
+found her with less spirit than she had ever had to take advantage of
+it.
+
+"Ah, Beth!" her mother said to her, seeing her so subdued, "I thought
+you would repent when it was too late. You won't find it so easy and
+delightful to have your own way as you suppose. When it comes to
+leaving home and going away among strangers who don't care a bit about
+you, you will not be very jubilant, I expect. You know what it is when
+Mildred leaves home, how she cries!"
+
+"Summer showers, soft, warm, and refreshing," Beth snapped, irritated
+by the I-told-you-so tone of superiority, which, when her mother
+assumed it, always broke down her best resolutions, and threw her into
+a state of opposition. "Mildred the Satisfactory has the right thing
+ready for all occasions."
+
+The result of this encounter was an elaborate pose. In dread of her
+mother's comments, should she betray the feeling expected of her, she
+set herself to maintain an unruffled calm of demeanour, whatever
+happened.
+
+Autumn was tinting the woods when Beth packed up. The day before her
+departure she paid a round of visits, not to people, but to places,
+which shows how much more real the life of her musings was to her at
+that time than the life of the world. She got up at daybreak and went
+and sat on the rustic seat at the edge of the cliff where the stream
+fell over on to the sand, and thought of the first sunrise she had
+ever seen, and of the puritan farmer who had come out and reprimanded
+her ruggedly for being there alone at that unseemly hour. Poor man!
+His little house behind her was shut up and deserted, the garden he
+had kept so trim was all bedraggled, neglect ruled ruin all over his
+small demesne, and he himself was where the worthy rest till their
+return. The thought, however, at that hour and in that heavenly
+solitude, where there was no sound but the sea-voice which filled
+every pause in an undertone with the great song of eternity it sings
+on always, did not sadden Beth, but, on the contrary, stimulated her
+with some singular vague perception of the meaning of it all. The dawn
+was breaking, and the spirit of the dawn all about her possessed and
+drew her till she revelled in an ecstasy of yearning towards its
+crowning glory--Rise, Great Sun! When she first sat down, the hollow
+of the sky was one dark dome, only relieved by a star or two; but the
+darkness parted more rapidly than her eyes could appreciate, and was
+succeeded, in the hollow it had held, by rolling clouds monotonously
+grey, which, in turn, ranged themselves in long low downs, irregularly
+ribbed, and all unbroken, but gradually drawing apart until at length
+they were gently riven, and the first triumphant tinge of topaz
+colour, pale pink, warm and clear, like the faint flush that shyly
+betrays some delicate emotion on a young cheek, touched the soft
+gradations of the greyness to warmth and brightness, then mounted up
+and up in shafts to the zenith, while behind it was breathed in the
+tenderest tinge of turquoise blue, which shaded to green, which shaded
+to primrose low down on the horizon, where all was shining silver.
+Then, as the grey, so was the colour riven, and rays of light shot up,
+crimson flashes of flame, which, while Beth held her breath, were fast
+followed from the sea by the sun, that rose enwrapt in their
+splendour, while the water below caught the fine flush, and heaved and
+heaved like a breast expanding with delight into long deep sighs.
+
+Beth cried aloud: "O Lord of Loveliness! how mighty are Thy
+manifestations!"
+
+Later in the day she climbed to the top of the hill where Charlotte
+had kept her faithful watch for the dark-brown horse, and there,
+beneath the firs, she sat looking out, with large eyes straining far
+into the vague distance where Hector had been.
+
+The ground was padded with pine-needles, briony berries shone in the
+hedgerows below, and hips and haws and rowans also rioted in red.
+Brambles were heavy with blue-black berries, and the bracken was
+battered and brown on the steep hill-side. Down in the road a team of
+four horses, dappled bays with black points and coats as glossy as
+satin, drawing a waggon of wheat, curved their necks and tossed their
+heads till the burnished brasses of their harness rang, and pacing
+with pride, as if they rejoiced to carry the harvest home. On the top
+of the wheat two women in coloured cotton frocks rested and sang--sang
+quite blithely.
+
+Beth watched the waggon out of sight, then rose, and turning, faced
+the sea. As she descended the hill she left that dream behind her.
+Hector, like Sammy and Arthur, passed to the background of her
+recollections, where her lovers ceased from troubling, and the Secret
+Service of Humanity, superseded, was no more a living interest.
+
+Beth went also to the farther sands to visit the spot where she had
+been surprised in the water by the girls, and had become the white
+priestess of their bathing rites, and taught that girls had a strength
+as great as the strength of boys, but different, if only they would do
+things. Mere mental and physical strength were what Beth was thinking
+of; she knew nothing of spiritual force, although she was using it
+herself at the time, and doing with it what all the boys in the
+diocese, taken together, could not have done. She had heard of works
+of the Spirit, and that she should pray to be imbued with it; but that
+she herself was pure spirit, only waiting to be released from her case
+of clay, had never been hinted to her.
+
+The next day she travelled with her mother from the north to the
+south, and during the whole long journey there was no break in the
+unruffled calm of her demeanour. Her mother wondered at her, and was
+irritated, and fussed about the luggage, and fumed about trains she
+feared to miss; but Beth kept calm. She sat in her corner of the
+carriage looking out of the window, and the world was a varied
+landscape, to every beauty of which she was keenly alive, yet she gave
+no expression to her enthusiasm, nor to the discomfort she suffered
+from the August sun, which streamed in on her through the blindless
+window, burning her face for hours, nor to her hunger and fatigue; and
+when at last they came to the great house by the river, and her
+mother, having handed her over to Miss Clifford, the lady principal,
+said, somewhat tearfully, "Good-bye, Beth! I hope you will be happy
+here. But be a good girl." Beth answered, "Thank you. I shall try,
+mamma," and kissed her as coolly as if it were her usual good-night.
+
+"We do not often have young ladies part from their mothers so
+placidly," Miss Clifford commented.
+
+"I suppose not," Mrs. Caldwell said, sighing.
+
+Beth felt that she was behaving horridly. There was a lump in her
+throat, and she would liked to have shown more feeling, but she could
+not. Now, when she would have laid aside the mask of calmness which
+she had voluntarily assumed, she found herself forced to wear it.
+Falsifications of our better selves are easily entered upon, but hard
+to shake off. They are evil things that lurk about us, ready but
+powerless to come till we call them; but, having been called, they
+hold us in their grip, and their power upon us to compel us becomes
+greater than ours upon them.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell felt sore at heart when she had gone, and Beth was not
+less sore. Each had been a failure in her relation to the other. Mrs.
+Caldwell blamed Beth, and Beth, in her own mind, did not defend
+herself. She forbore to judge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+St. Catherine's Mansion, the Royal Service School for Officers'
+Daughters, had not been built for the purpose, but bought, otherwise
+it would have been as ugly to look at as it was dreary to live in. As
+it was, however, the house was beautiful, and so also were the grounds
+about it, and the views of the river, the bridge with its many arches,
+and the grey town climbing up from it to the height above.
+
+Beth was still standing at the top of the steps under the great
+portico, where her mother had left her, contemplating the river, which
+was the first that had flowed into her experience.
+
+"Come, come, my dear, come in!" some one behind her exclaimed
+impatiently. "You're not allowed to stand there."
+
+Beth turned and saw a thin, dry, middle-aged woman, with keen dark
+eyes and a sharp manner, standing in the doorway behind her, with a
+gentler-looking lady, who said, "It is a new girl, Miss Bey. I expect
+she is all bewildered."
+
+"No, I am not at all bewildered, thank you," Beth answered in her easy
+way. As she spoke she saw two grown-up girls in the hall exchange
+glances and smile, and wondered what unusual thing she had done.
+
+"Then you had better come at once," Miss Bey rejoined drily, "and let
+me see what you can do. Please to remember in future that the girls
+are not allowed to come to this door."
+
+She led the way as she spoke, and Beth followed her across the hall,
+up a broad flight of steps opposite the entrance, down a wide corridor
+to the right, and then to the right again, into a narrow class-room,
+and through that again into another inner room.
+
+"These are the fifth and sixth rooms," Miss Bey remarked,--"fifth and
+sixth classes."
+
+They were furnished with long bare tables, forms, hard wooden chairs,
+a cupboard, and a set of pigeon-holes. Miss Bey sat down at the end of
+the table in the "sixth," with her back to the window, and made Beth
+sit on her left. There were some books, a large slate, a slate pencil,
+and damp sponge on the table.
+
+"What arithmetic have you done?" Miss Bey began.
+
+"I've scrambled through the first four rules," Beth answered.
+
+"Set yourself a sum in each, and do it," Miss Bey said sharply, taking
+a piece of knitting from a bag she held on her arm, and beginning to
+knit in a determined manner, as if she were working against time.
+
+Beth took up the slate and pencil, and began; but the sharp
+click-click of the needles worried her, and her brain was so busy
+studying Miss Bey she could not concentrate her mind upon the sums.
+
+Miss Bey waited without a word, but Beth was conscious of her keen
+eyes fixed upon her from time to time, and knew what she meant.
+
+"I'm hurrying all I can," she said at last.
+
+"You'll have to hurry more than you can, then, in class," Miss Bey
+remarked, "if this is your ordinary rate of work."
+
+When the sums were done, she took the slate and glanced over them.
+"They are every one wrong," she said; "but I see you know how to work
+them. Now clean the slate, and do some dictation."
+
+She took up a book when Beth was ready, and began to read aloud from
+it. Beth became so interested in the subject that she forgot the
+dictation, and burst out at last, "Well, I never knew that before."
+
+"You are doing dictation now," Miss Bey observed severely.
+
+"All right, go on," Beth cheerfully rejoined.
+
+Miss Bey did not go on, however, and on looking up to see what was the
+matter, Beth found her gazing at her with bent brows.
+
+"May I ask what your name is?" Miss Bey inquired.
+
+"Beth Caldwell."
+
+"Then allow me to inform you, Miss Beth Caldwell, that 'all right, go
+on,' is not the proper way to address the head-mistress of the Royal
+Service School for Officers' Daughters."
+
+"Thank you for telling me," Beth answered. "You see I don't know these
+things. I always say that to mamma."
+
+"Have you ever been to school before?" Miss Bey asked.
+
+"No," Beth answered.
+
+"Oh!" Miss Bey ejaculated, with peculiar meaning. "Then you will have
+a great deal to learn."
+
+"I suppose so," Beth rejoined. "But that's what I came for, you
+know--to learn. It's high time I began!"
+
+She fixed her big eyes on the blank wall opposite, and there was a
+sorrowful expression in them. Miss Bey noted the expression, and
+nodded her head several times, but there was no relaxation of her
+peremptory manner when she spoke again.
+
+"Go on, my dear," she said. "If I give as much time to the others as
+you are taking, I shall not get through the new girls to-night."
+
+Beth finished her dictation.
+
+"What a hand!" Miss Bey exclaimed. "Wherever did you learn to write
+like that?"
+
+"I taught myself to write small on purpose," Beth replied. "You can
+get so much more on to the paper."
+
+"You had better have taught yourself to spell, then," Miss Bey
+rejoined. "There are four mistakes in this one passage."
+
+Beth balanced her pencil on her finger with an air of indifference.
+She was wondering how it was that the head-mistress of the Royal
+Service School for Officers' Daughters used the word "wherever" as the
+vulgar do.
+
+The examination concluded with some questions in history and
+geography, which Beth answered more or less incorrectly.
+
+"I shall put you here in the sixth," Miss Bey informed her; "but
+rather for your size than for your acquirements. There is a delicate
+girl, much smaller than you are, in the first."
+
+"Then I'd rather be myself, tall and strong, in the sixth," Beth
+rejoined. "If I don't catch her up, at all events I shall have more
+pleasure in life, and that's something."
+
+Again Miss Bey gazed at her; but she was too much taken aback by
+Beth's readiness to correct her on the instant, although it was an
+unaccustomed and a monstrous thing for a girl to address a mistress in
+an easy conversational way, let alone differ from her.
+
+She took Beth to the great class-room where the seventh and eighth
+worked, and the fifth and sixth joined them for recreation and
+preparation, and where also the Bible lessons were given by Miss
+Clifford to the whole school.
+
+There were a good many girls of various ages in the room, who all
+looked up.
+
+"This is a new girl," Miss Bey said, addressing them generally,--"Miss
+Beth Caldwell. Please to show her where to go and what to do."
+
+She glanced round keenly as she spoke, then left the room; and at the
+same time a thin, sharp-looking little girl with short hair rose from
+the table at which she was sitting and went up to Beth.
+
+"I'm head of the fifth," she said. "Has Bey been examining you? What
+class did she put you in?"
+
+"The sixth," Beth said.
+
+"I should have thought you'd have been in the third at least," the
+head of the fifth piped, "you're so big. Here are some sixth
+girls--Jessie Baker, Ina Formby, Rosa Bird."
+
+The sixth girls were sitting at a round table, with their little desks
+before them, writing letters. One of them pulled out a chair for Beth.
+They had just returned from the holidays, and were in various stages
+of home-sickness--some of them crying, and the rest depressed; but
+they welcomed Beth kindly, as one of themselves, and inspected her
+with interest.
+
+"You can write a private letter to-day, you know," Rosa Bird said to
+Beth.
+
+"What is a private letter?" Beth asked.
+
+"One to your mother, you know, that isn't read. You seal it up
+yourself. Public letters have to be sent in open to Miss Clifford. One
+week you write a public letter, and the next a private one. Hello!
+here's Amy Wynne!"
+
+A dark girl of about eighteen had entered by a door at the farther end
+of the room, and was received with acclamation, being evidently
+popular. Beth, who was still in her mask of calm indifference, looked
+coldly on, but in herself she determined to be received like that some
+day.
+
+Most of the girls in the room jumped up, and Amy Wynne kissed one
+after the other, and then shook hands with Beth.
+
+"Are all my children back?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know," Rosa Bird rejoined, glancing round. "They are not all
+here."
+
+"That's one of the mothers," Rosa explained to Beth when Amy Wynne had
+gone again. "The first-class girls are mothers to us. You walk with
+your mother in the garden, and sit with her on half-holidays, and
+she's awfully good to you. I advise you to be one of Amy Wynne's
+children if you can." She was interrupted by the loud ringing of a
+bell in the hall. "That's for tea," Rosa added. "Come, and I'll show
+you the way."
+
+The big dining-room was downstairs in the basement, next the kitchen.
+Miss Clifford dined in the next room attended by her maids of honour
+(the two girls at the top of the first class for the time being) and
+the rest of the class except the girls at the bottom, who were
+degraded to the second-class table in the big dining-room. Here each
+two classes had a separate table, at either end of which a teacher sat
+on a Windsor chair. The girls had nothing but hard benches without
+backs to sit on. Miss Bey, the housekeeper Miss Winch, and the head
+music-mistress, irreverently called Old Tom by the girls, sat at a
+separate table, where, at dinner-time, they did all the carving, and
+snatched what little dinner they could get in the intervals, patiently
+and foolishly regardless of their own digestions. For tea there were
+great dishes of thick bread and butter on all the tables, which the
+girls began to hand round as soon as grace had been said. Each class
+had a big basin of brown sugar to put in the tea, which gave it a
+coarse flavour. The first cup was not so bad, but the second was
+nothing but hot water poured through the teapot. It was not etiquette
+to take more than two. When the girls were ready for a second, they
+put pieces of bread in their saucers that they might know their own
+again, and passed the cups up to the teacher who poured out tea. If
+any girl suspected that the cup returned to her was not her own, she
+would not touch the tea. When the meal was over, one of the girls took
+the sugar-basin, beat down the sugar in it flat and hard with the
+spoon, did a design on the top, and put it away.
+
+"What's that for?" Beth asked.
+
+"That's so that we shall know our own again," Rosa answered. "But it
+never lasts the proper time."
+
+"What do you do when it's done?" said Beth.
+
+"Do without," was the laconic rejoinder.
+
+All the girls were talking at once.
+
+"What a racket!" Beth exclaimed.
+
+"It'll be quiet enough to-morrow," Rosa replied. "The first class
+talks at table in Miss Clifford's room, but we are not allowed to
+speak a word here, except to the teachers, nor in the bedrooms either,
+once work begins. Do you see that great fat old thing at the
+mistress's table? That's Old Tom, the head music-mistress. She is a
+greedy old cat! She likes eating! You can see it by the way she gloats
+over things, and she's quite put out if she doesn't get exactly what
+she wants. Fancy caring! It's just like a man; and that's why she's
+called Old Tom."
+
+"Not that she's fastidious!" said Agnes Stewart, a tall slender girl
+with short crisp black hair and grey-green eyes, who was sitting
+opposite to Beth. "I believe she likes mutton."
+
+"Oh, she's horrid enough for anything!" the girl next her exclaimed
+with an expression of disgust.
+
+Some of the girls ate their thick bread and butter unconcernedly,
+others were choked with tears, and could not touch it. Most of the
+tearful ones were new girls, and the old ones were kind to them; the
+teachers, too, were sympathetic, and did their best to cheer them.
+
+After tea they all returned to their class-rooms. Beth went and stood
+in one of the great windows looking out on to the grounds, the river,
+the old arched bridge, and the grey houses of the town climbing up the
+hill among the autumn-tinted trees. All the windows were shut, and she
+began to feel suffocated for want of fresh air, and bewildered by the
+clatter of voices. If only she could get out into the garden! The door
+at the end of the room, which led into the first and second, was open.
+She went through. But before she was half across the room, one of the
+elder girls exclaimed roughly, "Hello! what are you doing here?"
+
+"It's a new girl, Inkie," another put in.
+
+"Well, the sooner she learns she has no business here the better,"
+Inkie rejoined.
+
+Beth thought her exceedingly rude, and passed on into the vestibule
+unconcernedly.
+
+"Well, that's cool cheek!" Inkie exclaimed.
+
+"Hie--you--new girl! come back here directly, and go round the other
+way, just to teach you manners."
+
+Beth turned back with flaming cheeks, looked at her hard a moment.
+
+"That for _your_ manners!" she said, snapping her fingers at her.
+
+Amy Wynne rose from her seat and went up to Beth. "You must learn at
+once, Miss Caldwell," she said, "that you will not be allowed to speak
+to the elder girls like that."
+
+"Then the elder girls had better learn at once," said Beth defiantly,
+"that they will not be allowed to speak to me as your Inkie-person did
+just now. You'll not teach me manners by being rude to me; and if any
+girl in the school is ever rude to me again, I'll box her ears. Now, I
+apologise for coming through your room, but you should keep the door
+shut."
+
+When she had spoken, she returned to the big class-room deliberately,
+and crossed it to the other door. As she did so, she noticed that a
+strange hush had fallen upon the girls, and they were all looking at
+her curiously. She went into the hall, and was passing the vestibule
+door, when Miss Bey, who was sitting just inside knitting, stopped
+her.
+
+"Where are you going, Miss Caldwell?" she asked in her sharp way.
+
+"Upstairs," Beth answered.
+
+"You speak shortly, Miss Caldwell. It would have been more polite to
+have mentioned my name."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss Bey," Beth rejoined.
+
+Miss Bey bowed with a severe smile in acknowledgment of the apology.
+"What do you want upstairs?" she asked.
+
+"To be alone," Beth answered. "I can't stand the noise."
+
+"You must stand the noise," said Miss Bey. "Girls are not allowed to
+go upstairs without some very good reason; and they must always ask
+permission--politely--from the teacher on duty. I am the teacher on
+duty at this moment. If you had gone upstairs without permission, I
+should have given you a bad mark."
+
+Beth looked longingly at the hall door, which had glass panels in the
+upper part, through which she could see the river and the trees. "What
+a prison this is!" she exclaimed.
+
+Miss Bey had had great experience of girls, and her sharp manner,
+which was mainly acquired in the effort to maintain discipline,
+somewhat belied her kindly nature.
+
+"You can bring a chair from the hall, and sit here beside me, if you
+like," she said to Beth.
+
+"Thank you," Beth answered. "This _is_ better," she said when she was
+seated. "May I talk to you?"
+
+"Yes, certainly," said Miss Bey.
+
+There was a great conservatory behind them as they sat looking into
+the hall; on their left was the third and fourth class-room, on their
+right the first and second; the doors of both stood open.
+
+"Did you hear the row I had in there just now?" Beth asked, nodding
+towards the first and second.
+
+"I did," said Miss Bey. "But you mustn't say 'row,' it is vulgar."
+
+"Difficulty, then," Beth rejoined. "But what did you think of it?"
+
+Miss Bey reflected. The question as Beth put it was not easy to
+answer. "I thought you were both very much in the wrong," she said at
+last.
+
+"Well, that is fair, at all events," Beth observed with approval. "I
+don't mean to break any of your rules when I know what they are, and I
+bet you I won't have a bad mark, if there's any way to help it, the
+whole time I am at school; but I'm not going to be sat upon by
+anybody."
+
+Miss Bey pursed up her mouth and knitted emphatically. She was
+accustomed to naughty girls, but the most troublesome stood in awe of
+the teachers.
+
+"My dear," she said, after a little pause, "I honour your good
+resolutions; but I must request you not to say 'I'll bet,' or talk
+about 'being sat upon.' Both expressions are distinctly unladylike. I
+must also tell you that at school the teachers are not on the same
+level as the girls; they are in authority, you see."
+
+"I see," said Beth. "I spoke to you as one lady might speak to
+another. I won't again, Miss Bey."
+
+Miss Bey paused once more, with bent brows, to reflect upon this
+ambiguous announcement; but not being able to make anything of it, she
+proceeded: "It is a matter of discipline. Without strict discipline an
+establishment of this size would be in a state of chaos. The girls
+must respect the teachers, and the younger girls must respect the
+elder ones. All become elder ones in turn, and are respected."
+
+"Well, _I_ mean to be respected all through," Beth declared, and set
+her mouth hard on the determination.
+
+At eight o'clock Miss Bey rang a big handbell for prayers, and the
+whole household, including the servants, came trooping into the hall.
+The girls sat together in their classes, and, when all were in their
+places, Miss Clifford came in attended by her maids-of-honour, mounted
+the reading-desk, and read the little service in a beautiful voice
+devoutly. Beth softened as she listened, and joined in with all her
+heart towards the end.
+
+When prayers were over, and the servants had gone downstairs, one of
+the maids-of-honour set a chair under the domed ceiling in front of
+the vestibule for Miss Clifford, who went to it from the reading-desk,
+and sat there. Then the first-class girls rose and left their seats in
+single file, and each as she passed walked up to Miss Clifford, took
+the hand which she held out, and curtsied good-night to her. The other
+classes followed in the same order. Miss Clifford said a word or two
+to some of the girls, and had a smile for all. When Beth's turn came,
+she made an awkward curtsey in imitation of the others. Miss Clifford
+held her hand a moment, and looked up into her face keenly; then
+smiled, and let her go. Beth felt that there was some special thought
+behind that smile, and wondered what it was. Miss Clifford made it her
+duty to know the character, temper, constitution, and capacity of
+every one of the eighty girls under her, and watched carefully for
+every change in them. This good-night, which was a dignified and
+impressive ceremony, gave her an opportunity of inspecting each girl
+separately every day, and very little escaped her. If a girl looked
+unhappy, run down, overworked, or otherwise out of sorts, Miss
+Clifford sent for her next morning to find out what was the matter;
+and she was scolded, comforted, put on extras, had a tonic to take, or
+was allowed another hour in bed in the morning, according to the
+necessities of her case.
+
+The girls who were in certain bedrooms sat up an hour after prayers,
+and had dry bread and water for supper; they turned to the left and
+went back to their class-rooms when they had made their curtseys. The
+others turned to the right and went upstairs. Beth was one of these.
+She was in No. 6. There were several beds in the room, and beside each
+bed was a washstand, and a box for clothes. The floor was carpetless.
+There were white curtains hung on iron rods to be drawn round the beds
+and the space beside them, so that each girl had perfect privacy to
+dress and undress. The curtains were all drawn back for air when the
+girls were ready, but no girl drew her curtain without the permission
+of the girl next to her. When a bell rang, they all knelt down, and
+had ten minutes for private prayers night and morning, the bell being
+rung again when the time was up. The girls had to turn down their beds
+to air them before they left their rooms in the morning. They had an
+hour's lessons before breakfast, then prayers. After prayers the
+monitresses rose from their seats below the reading-desk, and, as they
+filed out, each in turn reported if any one had spoken or not spoken
+in the bedrooms. Breakfast consisted of thick bread and butter and tea
+for the girls, with the addition of an insufficient quantity of fried
+bacon for the teachers. After breakfast the girls went upstairs again
+and made their beds in a given time; then all but a few, who were kept
+in for music, went out into the garden for half-an-hour. Beth had to
+go out that first morning. The sun was shining, bright drops sparkled
+on grass and trees, the air was heavy with autumn odours, but fresh
+and sweet, and the birds chirped blithely. Beth felt like a free
+creature once more directly she got out, and, throwing up her arms
+with a great exclamation of relief after the restraint indoors, she
+ran out on to the wide grass-plot in front of the house at the top of
+her speed.
+
+"Come back, come back, new girl!" cried the head French mistress,
+Mademoiselle Duval, the teacher on duty. "You are not allowed to go on
+the grass, nor must you run in that unseemly way."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Beth. "I didn't know."
+
+She moved off on to the path which overlooked the river, and began to
+walk soberly up and down, gazing at the water.
+
+"Mademoiselle!" the French mistress screamed again shrilly, "come away
+from there! The girls are not allowed to walk on that path."
+
+"Oh dear!" said Beth. "Where may I go?"
+
+"Just go where you see the other girls go," Mademoiselle rejoined
+sharply.
+
+Not being a favourite, the French mistress was left to wander about
+alone. Popular teachers always had some girls hanging on to their arms
+out in the garden, and sitting with them when they were on duty
+indoors; but Mademoiselle seldom had a satellite, and never one who
+was respected. The girls thought her deceitful, and deceit was one of
+the things not tolerated in the school. Miss Bey was believed to be
+above deceit of any kind, and was liked and respected accordingly in
+spite of her angular appearance, sharp manner, the certainty that she
+was not a lady by birth, and the suspicion that her father kept a
+shop. The girls had certain simple tests of character and station.
+They attend more to each other's manners in the matter of nicety at
+girls' schools than at boys', more's the pity for those who have to
+live with the boys afterwards. If a new girl drank with her mouth
+full, ate audibly, took things from the end instead of the side of a
+spoon, or bit her bread instead of breaking it at dinner, she was set
+down as nothing much at home, which meant that her people were
+socially of no importance, not to say common; and if she were not
+perfectly frank and honest, or if she ever said coarse or indelicate
+things, she was spoken of contemptuously as a dockyard girl, which
+meant one of low mind and objectionable manners, who was in a bad set
+at home and made herself cheap after the manner of a garrison hack,
+the terms being nearly equivalent. There was no pretence of impossible
+innocence among the elder girls, but neither was there any impropriety
+of language or immodesty of conduct. Certain subjects were avoided,
+and if a girl made any allusion to them by chance, she was promptly
+silenced; if she recurred to them persistently, she was set down at
+once as a dockyard girl and an outsider. The consequence of this high
+standard was an extremely good tone all through the school.
+
+Beth turned into the lime-tree avenue, where she met several sets of
+girls all walking in rows with their arms round each other. None of
+them took any notice of her, until she got out on to the drive, where
+she met Amy Wynne with her children. Amy let go the two she had her
+arms round, sent them all on, and stopped to speak to Beth.
+
+"Have you no mother?" she asked.
+
+"I have one at home," Beth answered coldly in spite of herself.
+
+"But you know our custom here," Amy rejoined. "The elder girls are
+mothers to the young ones."
+
+"I know," said Beth, "but I don't want a mother. I should hate to have
+my thoughts interrupted by a lot of little girls in a row, all
+cackling together."
+
+"I was going to offer," Amy began, "but, of course, if you are so
+self-reliant, it would only be an impertinence."
+
+"Oh no!" said Beth, sincerely regretting her own ungraciousness. "It
+is kind of you, and if it were you alone, I should be glad, but I
+could not stand the others."
+
+"Well, I hope you won't be lonely," Amy answered, and hurried on after
+her children.
+
+"Lonely I must be," Beth muttered to herself with sudden foreboding.
+
+When the girls went in, Beth was summoned to the big music-room. "Old
+Tom" was there with Dr. Centry, who came twice a week to hear the
+girls play. There were twelve pianos in the room, ten upright and two
+grand, besides Old Tom's own private grand, all old, hard, and
+metallic; and twelve girls hammered away on them, all together, at the
+same piece; but if one made a mistake, Old Tom instantly detected it,
+and knew which it was.
+
+"Do ye know any music?" she asked Beth in a gruff voice with a rough
+Scotch accent.
+
+"A little," Beth answered.
+
+"What, for instance?" Old Tom pursued, looking at Beth as if she were
+a culprit up for judgment.
+
+"Some of Chopin," Beth replied. "I like him best."
+
+Old Tom raised her eyebrows incredulously. "Sit down here and play one
+of his compositions, if you please--here, at my piano," she said,
+opening the instrument.
+
+But Beth felt intimidated for once, partly by the offensive manners of
+the formidable-looking old woman, her bulk and gruffness, but also
+because Old Tom's doubt of her powers, which she perceived, was
+shaking her confidence. She sat down at the piano, however, and struck
+a few notes; then her nerve forsook her.
+
+"I can't play," she said. "I'm nervous."
+
+"Humph!" snarled Old Tom. "I thought that 'ud be your Chopin! Go and
+learn exercises with the children in Miss Tait's class-room."
+
+Miss Tait, acting on Old Tom's report, put Beth into one of her lower
+classes, and left her to practise with the beginners. When she had
+gone, Beth glanced at the exercises, and then began to rattle them off
+at such a rate that no one in the class could keep up with her. Miss
+Tait came hurrying back.
+
+"Who is that playing so fast?" she said. "Was it you, Miss Caldwell?"
+
+"Yes," Beth answered.
+
+"Then you must go into a higher class," said Miss Tait.
+
+But the same thing happened in every class until at last Beth had run
+up through them all, as up a flight of stairs, into Old Tom's first.
+Her piano in the first, when the whole class was present and she had
+no choice, was a hard old instrument, usually avoided because it was
+the nearest to the table at which Old Tom sat (when she did not walk
+about) during a lesson. The first time Beth took her place at it, the
+other girls were only beginning to assemble, and Old Tom was not in
+the room. A great teasing of instruments, as Old Tom called it, was
+going on. A new piece was to be taken that morning, and each girl
+began to try it as soon as she sat down, so that they were all at
+different passages. They stopped, however, and looked up when Beth
+appeared.
+
+"That's your piano," the head girl said.
+
+"I hope you'll like it!" one of the others added sarcastically.
+
+"Oh, but I'm glad to be here!" said Beth, striking a few firm chords.
+"Now I feel like Chopin," and she burst out into one of his most
+brilliant waltzes triumphantly.
+
+Old Tom had come in while she was speaking, but Beth did not see her.
+Old Tom waited till she had done.
+
+"Oh, so now ye feel like Chopin, Miss Caldwell," she jeered. "And it
+appears ye are not above shamming nervous when it suits ye to mak'
+yerself interesting. I shall remember that."
+
+Old Tom taught by a series of jeers and insults. If a girl were poor,
+she never failed to remind her of the fact. "But, indeed, ye're
+beggars all," was her favourite summing up when they stumbled at
+troublesome passages. Most of the girls cowered under her insults, but
+Beth looked her straight in the face at this second encounter, and at
+the third her spirit rose and she argued the point. Old Tom tried to
+shout her down, but Beth left her seat, and suggested that they should
+go and get Miss Clifford to decide between them. Then Old Tom
+subsided, and from that time she and Beth were on amicable terms.
+
+Beth had an excellent musical memory when she went to school, but she
+lost it entirely whilst she was there, and the delicacy of her touch
+as well; both being destroyed, as she supposed, by the system of
+practising with so many others at a time, which made it impossible for
+her to feel what she was playing or put any individuality of
+expression into it.
+
+On that opening day, Beth had to go from the music-room to her first
+English lesson in the sixth. All the girls sat round the long narrow
+table, Miss Smallwood, the mistress, being at the end, with her back
+to the window. The lesson was "Guy," a collection of questions and
+answers, used also by the first-class girls, only that they were
+farther on in the book. Who was William the Conqueror? When did he
+arrive? What did he do on landing? and so on. Beth, at the bottom of
+the class on Miss Smallwood's right, was in a good position to ask
+questions herself. She could have told the whole history of William
+the Conqueror in her own language after once reading it over; but the
+answers to the questions had to be learnt by heart and repeated in the
+exact language of the book, and in the struggle to be word-perfect
+enough to keep up with the class, the significance of what she was
+saying was lost upon her. It was her mother's system exactly, and Beth
+was disappointed, having hoped for something different These pillules
+of knowledge only exasperated her; she wanted enough to enable her to
+grasp the whole situation.
+
+"What is the use of learning these little bits by heart about William
+the Conqueror and the battle of Hastings, and all that, Miss
+Smallwood?" she exclaimed one day.
+
+"It is a part of your education, Beth," Miss Smallwood answered
+precisely.
+
+"I know," Beth grumbled, "but couldn't one read about it, and get on a
+little quicker? I want to know what he did when he got here."
+
+"Why, my dear child, how can you be so stupid? You have just said he
+fought the battle of Hastings."
+
+"Yes, but what did the battle of Hastings do?" Beth persisted, making
+a hard but ineffectual effort to express herself.
+
+"Oh, now, Beth, you are silly!" Miss Smallwood rejoined impatiently,
+and all the girls grinned in agreement. But it was not Beth who was
+silly. Miss Smallwood had had nothing herself but the trumpery
+education provided everywhere at that time for girls by the part of
+humanity which laid undisputed claim to a superior sense of justice,
+and it had not carried her far enough to enable her to grasp any more
+comprehensive result of the battle of Hastings than was given in the
+simple philosophy of Guy. Most of the girls at the Royal Service
+School would have to work for themselves, and teaching was almost the
+only occupation open to them, yet such education as they received,
+consisting as it did of mere rudiments, was an insult to the high
+average of intelligence that obtained amongst them. They were not
+taught one thing thoroughly, not even their own language, and remained
+handicapped to the end of their lives for want of a grounding in
+grammar. When you find a woman's diction at fault, never gird at her
+for want of intelligence, but at those in authority over her in her
+youth, who thought anything in the way of education good enough for a
+girl. Even the teachers at St. Catherine's, some of them, wrote in
+reply to invitations, "I shall have much pleasure in accepting." The
+girls might be there eight years, but were never taught French enough
+in the time either to read or speak it correctly. Their music was an
+offence to the ear, and their drawings to the eye. History was given
+to them in outlines only, which isolated kings and their ministers,
+showing little or nothing of their influence on the times they lived
+in, and ignoring the condition of the people, who were merely
+introduced as a background to some telling incident in the career of a
+picturesque personage; and everything else was taught in the same
+superficial way--except religion. But the fact that the religious
+education was good in Beth's time was an accident due to Miss
+Clifford's character and capacity, and therefore no credit to the
+governors of the school, who did not know that she was specially
+qualified in that respect when they made her Lady Principal. She was
+a high-minded woman, Low Church, of great force of character and
+exemplary piety, and her spirit pervaded the whole school. She gave
+the Bible lessons herself in the form of lectures which dealt largely
+with the conduct of life; and as she had the power to make her subject
+interesting, and the faith which carries conviction, both girls and
+mistresses profited greatly by her teaching. Many of them became
+deeply religious under her, and most of them had phases of piety;
+whilst there were very few who did not leave the school with yearnings
+at least towards honour and uprightness, which were formed by time and
+experience into steady principles.
+
+Beth persisted in roaming the garden alone. She loved to hover about a
+large fountain there, with a deep wide basin round it, in which
+gold-fish swam and water-lilies grew. She used to go and hang over it,
+peering into the water, or, when the fountain played, she would loiter
+near, delighting in the sound of it, the splash and murmur.
+
+One of the windows of Miss Clifford's sitting-room overlooked this
+part of the garden, and Beth noticed the old lady once or twice
+standing in the window, but it did not occur to her that she was
+watching her. One day, however, Miss Clifford sent a maid-of-honour to
+fetch her; and Beth went in, wondering what she had done, but asked no
+questions; calm indifference was still her pose.
+
+Miss Clifford dismissed the maid-of-honour. She was sitting in her own
+special easy-chair, and Beth stood before her.
+
+"My dear child," she said to Beth, "why are you always alone? Are the
+girls not kind to you?"
+
+"Oh yes, thank you," Beth answered, "they are quite kind."
+
+"Then why are you always alone?"
+
+"I like it best."
+
+"Are you sure," said Miss Clifford, "that the others do not shun you
+for some reason or other?"
+
+"One of them wished to be my mother," Beth rejoined, "but I did not
+care about it."
+
+"But you cannot be happy always alone like that," Miss Clifford
+observed.
+
+Beth was silent.
+
+Miss Clifford looked at her earnestly for a little, then she shook her
+head.
+
+"I tell you what I will do if you like, Miss Clifford," Beth said upon
+reflection. "I will form a family of my own."
+
+Miss Clifford smiled. "Ah! I see you are ambitious," she said, "but,
+my dear child, a sixth girl can't expect to have that kind of
+influence."
+
+"It is not ambition," Beth answered, "for I shall feel it no
+distinction, only a great bother. Nevertheless, I will do it to show
+you that I am not shunned; and to please you, as you do not like me to
+wander alone."
+
+A week or two later Beth appeared in the garden with six of the worst
+girls in the school clinging to her, fascinated by her marvellous
+talk.
+
+Miss Clifford sent for her again. "I am sorry to see you in such
+company," she said. "Those girls are all older than you are, and they
+will lead you into mischief."
+
+"On the contrary, Miss Clifford," Beth replied, "I shall keep them out
+of mischief. Not one of them has had a bad mark this week."
+
+Then Miss Clifford sent for Miss Smallwood, the mistress of the sixth.
+"What do you make of Beth Caldwell?" she asked.
+
+"I can't make anything of her," Miss Smallwood answered. "I think she
+tries, but she does not seem able to keep up with the other girls at
+all. She seldom knows a lesson or does a sum correctly. I sometimes
+think she ought to be in the eighth. But then occasionally she shows a
+knowledge far beyond her years; not a knowledge of school work, but of
+books and life."
+
+"How about her themes?"
+
+"I don't know what to think of them; they are too good. But she
+declares emphatically that she does them all out of her own head."
+
+"What sort of temper has she?"
+
+"Queer, like everything else about her. Not unamiable, you know, but
+irritable at times, and she has days of deep depression, and moments
+of extreme elation."
+
+"Ah!" Miss Clifford ejaculated, and then reflected a little. "Well, be
+patient with her," she said at last. "If she hasn't exceptional
+ability of some kind, I am no judge of girls; but she is evidently
+unaccustomed to school work, and is suffering from the routine and
+restraint, after being allowed to run wild. She should have been sent
+here years ago."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+From the foregoing it will be seen that Beth made her mark upon the
+school from the day of her arrival in the way of getting herself
+observed and talked about. She was set down as queer to begin with,
+and when lessons began both girls and mistresses decided that she was
+stupid; and queer she remained to the end in the estimation of those
+who had no better word to express it, but with regard to her
+stupidity there soon began to be differences of opinion.
+
+At preparation one evening she talked instead of doing her work, and
+gradually all the girls about her had stopped to listen.
+
+"Gracious!" Beth exclaimed at last, "the bell will go directly, and
+I've not done a sum. Show me how to work them, Rosa."
+
+"Oh, bother!" Rosa rejoined. "Find out for yourself! My theme was
+turned, and I've got to do it again."
+
+"Look here," said Beth, "if you'll do my sums, I'll do your theme now,
+and your thorough bass on Thursday."
+
+"I wish to goodness you wouldn't talk, Beth!" Agnes Stewart exclaimed.
+"We shall all get bad marks to-morrow."
+
+"Then why do you listen?" Beth retorted.
+
+"I can't help it," Agnes grumbled. "You fascinate me. I should have
+thought you were clever if I had only heard you talk, and not known
+what a duffer you are at your lessons."
+
+"Well, she's not a duffer at thorough bass anyway," Rosa put in. "She
+only began this term, and she's a long way ahead even of some of the
+first. Old Tom's given her a little book to herself."
+
+"I began thorough bass with the rest of you," Beth observed. "It's the
+only thing we started fair in. You are years ahead of me in all the
+other work."
+
+The girls reflected upon this for a little.
+
+"And you can write themes," Rosa finally asseverated.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," Beth protested. "Themes are easy enough. I could
+write them for the whole school."
+
+"Well, that's no reason why you should put your nose in your cup every
+time you drink," Lucy Black, the sharpest shrimp of a girl in the
+class, said, grinning.
+
+"I never did such a thing in my life," Beth exclaimed, turning
+crimson. "You'll say I eat audibly next."
+
+"No, you don't do that," Rosa said solemnly; "but you do put your nose
+in your cup."
+
+The colour flickered on Beth's sensitive cheek, and she shrank into
+herself.
+
+"There, don't tease her!" Mary Wright, the eldest, stupidest, and most
+motherly girl in the school, exclaimed. "How can you drink without
+putting your nose in your cup, stupid?"
+
+Then Beth saw it and smiled, greatly relieved. This venerable
+pleasantry was a sign that she had been taken once for all into the
+good graces of her schoolmates. The girls who were liked were usually
+nicknamed and always chaffed; the rest were treated with different
+degrees of politeness, the dockyard girls, as the lowest of all, being
+called miss, even by the teachers.
+
+On Thursday evenings the girls in the fifth and sixth were allowed to
+do fancy work for an hour while a story-book was read aloud to them,
+either by Miss Smallwood or one of themselves when her voice was
+tired. The book was always either childish or dull, generally both,
+and Beth, who had been accustomed to Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray,
+grew restive under the infliction. One evening when she had twice been
+reprimanded for yawning aggressively, she exclaimed, "Well, Miss
+Smallwood, it is such silly stuff! Why, I could tell you a better
+story myself, and make it up as I go on."
+
+"Then begin at once and tell it," said Miss Smallwood, glancing round
+at the girls, who smiled derisively, thinking that Beth would have to
+excuse herself and thereby tacitly acknowledge that she had been
+boasting. To their surprise, however, Beth took the request seriously,
+settled herself in her chair, folded her hands, and, with her eyes
+roaming about the room as if she were picking up the details from the
+walls, the floor, the ceiling, and all it contained, started without
+hesitation. It was the romantic story of a haunted house on a great
+rocky promontory, and the freshness and sound of the sea pervaded it.
+The girls went on with their work for a little, but by degrees first
+one and then another stopped, and just sat staring at Beth, while
+gravity settled on every face as the interest deepened.
+
+Suddenly the bell rang, and the story was not finished.
+
+"Oh dear!" Miss Smallwood exclaimed, "it is very fascinating, Beth;
+but I really am afraid I ought not to have allowed you to tell it. I
+had no idea--I must speak to Miss Clifford."
+
+The fame of this wonderful story spread through the school, and the
+next half-holiday the first-class girls sent to ask Beth to go to
+their room and repeat it; but Beth was not in the mood, and answered
+their messenger tragically:--
+
+    "'Twas not for this I left my father's home!
+      Go, tell your class, that Vashti will not come."
+
+"Vashti's a little beast, I think," the head girl observed when the
+message was delivered.
+
+Miss Clifford also sent for Beth, and requested her to repeat the
+story, that she might judge for herself if she should be allowed to go
+on with it; and Beth repeated it, being constrained; but the recital
+was so wearisome that Miss Clifford dismissed her before she was
+half-way through, with leave to finish it if anybody cared to hear it.
+When Thursday came, the girls and Miss Smallwood cared very much to
+hear it, and Beth, stimulated by their clamours, went on without a
+break for the whole hour, and ended with a description of a shipwreck,
+which was so vivid that the whole class was shaken with awe, and sat
+silent for a perceptible time after she stopped.
+
+Beth could rarely be persuaded to repeat this performance; but from
+that time her standing was unique, both with girls and mistresses, a
+fact, however, of which she herself was totally unaware. She felt her
+backwardness in school work and nothing else, and petitioned God
+incessantly to help her with her lessons, and get her put up; and put
+up she was regularly until she reached the third, when she was among
+the elder girls. She was never able to do the work properly of any
+class she was in, however, and her class mistresses were always
+against her being put up, but Miss Clifford insisted on it.
+
+Beth was never anything but miserable at school. The dull routine of
+the place pressed heavily upon her, and everything she had to do was
+irksome. The other girls accommodated themselves more or less
+successfully to the circumstances of their lives; but Beth in herself
+was always at war with her surroundings, and her busy brain teemed
+with ingenious devices to vary the monotony. The confinement, want of
+relaxation, and of proper physical training, very soon told upon her
+health and spirits, as indeed they did upon the greater number of the
+girls, who suffered unnecessarily in various ways. Beth very soon had
+to have an extra hour in bed in the morning, a cup of soup at eleven
+o'clock, a tonic three times a day, and a slice of thick bread and
+butter with a glass of stout on going to bed; such things were not
+stinted during Miss Clifford's administration; but it was a case of
+treating effects which all the time were being renewed by causes that
+might and ought to have been removed, but were let alone.
+
+St. Catherine's Mansion was regulated on a system of exemplary
+dulness. There is a certain dowager still extant who considers it
+absurd to provide amusement for people of inferior station. All people
+who earn their living are people of inferior station to her; she has
+never heard of such a thing as the dignity of labour. Because many of
+the girls at St. Catherine's were orphans without means, and would
+therefore have to earn their own living as governesses when their
+education was finished, the dowager-persons who interested themselves
+in the management of the school had used their influence strenuously
+to make the life there as much of a punishment as possible. "You
+cannot be too strict with girls in their position," was what they
+continually averred, their own position by birth being in no way
+better, and in some instances not so good, as that of the girls whom
+they were depriving of every innocent pleasure natural to their age
+and necessary for the good of their health and spirits. They were not
+allowed to learn dancing; they had no outdoor games at all, not even
+croquet--nothing whatever to exhilarate them and develop them
+physically except an hour's "deportment," the very mildest kind of
+calisthenics, in the big class-room once a fortnight, and the daily
+making of their little beds. For the rest, monotonous walks up and
+down the garden-paths in small parties, or about the dreary roads two
+and two in long lines, was their only exercise, and even in this they
+were restricted to such a severe propriety of demeanour that it almost
+seemed as if the object were to teach them to move without betraying
+the fact that they had legs. The consequence of all this restraint was
+a low state of vitality among the girls, and the outbreak of morbid
+phases that sometimes went right through the school. Beth, as might
+have been expected, was one of the first to be caught by anything of
+this kind; and she arrived, by way of her own emotions, at the cause
+of a great deal that was a mystery to older people, and also thought
+out the cure eventually; but she suffered a great deal in the process
+of acquiring her special knowledge of the subject. She was especially
+troubled by her old malady--depression of spirits. Sometimes, on a
+summer evening, when all the classes were at preparation, and the
+whole great house was still, a mistress would begin to practise in one
+of the music-rooms, and Beth would be carried away by the music, so
+that work was impossible. One evening, when this happened, she sat,
+with a very sad face, looking out on the river. Pleasure-boats were
+gliding up and down; a gay party went by, dancing on the deck of a
+luxurious barge to the music of a string-band; a young man skimmed the
+surface in a skiff, another punted two girls along; and people walked
+on the banks or sat about under the trees, and children played--and
+they were all free! Suddenly Beth burst into tears. Miss Smallwood
+questioned her. Was she ill? had she any pain? had any one been unkind
+to her? No? What was the matter then? Nothing; she was just miserable!
+
+"Beth, don't be so silly," Miss Smallwood remonstrated. "A great girl
+like you, crying for nothing! It is positively childish."
+
+The other girls stole glances at her and looked grave. At the
+beginning of the term they would not have sympathised perhaps; but
+this was the middle, and many of them were in much the same mood
+themselves.
+
+When the bell rang, and the recreation hour began, they got out their
+little bits of fancy-work, and such dull childish books as they were
+allowed, and broke up into groups. Beth was soon surrounded by the
+cleverer girls in the class.
+
+"I sympathise with you, Beth," said Janey North, a red-haired Irish
+girl, "for I felt like it myself, I did indeed."
+
+"Will the holidays never be here?" sighed Rosa Bird.
+
+"I can't think why I stay at all," said Beth. "I hate it--I hate it
+all the time."
+
+"But how could one get away?" said Janey.
+
+"Only by being ill," Agnes Stewart answered darkly. She was a delicate
+girl, and from that time she starved herself resolutely, until she was
+so wasted that Miss Clifford in despair sent her home. Another girl
+was seized with total deafness suddenly, and had also to go; the
+change brought her hearing back in a very short time; and some of the
+dockyard girls received urgent summonses from dying relations, and
+were allowed to go to them. They always returned the brighter for the
+experience.
+
+One day, after the weather became cold, a girl appeared in class
+wrapped up in a shawl, and with her head all drawn down to one side.
+Her neck was stiff, and she could not straighten it. She was sent to
+the infirmary. The girls thought her lucky. For it was warm there, and
+nurse was kind, and sang delightful songs. She would be able to do
+fancy-work, too, and read as much as she liked, and would not have to
+get up till she had had her breakfast and the fire was lighted, and
+need not trouble about lessons at all--a stiff neck was a very small
+drawback to the delights of such a change.
+
+Next day another girl's neck was stiff. Miss Smallwood searched for a
+draught, but did not succeed in finding one. That evening at prayers
+one of the girls in the first appeared in a shawl with her head on one
+side and a white worn face; and next day there was another case from
+the third and fourth. So it was evident that there was something like
+an epidemic going through the school; but the doctor had never seen
+one of the kind before, and was at a loss to account for it. The cases
+were all exactly alike: stiff neck, with the head drawn down to one
+side, accompanied by feverishness, and followed by severe prostration.
+
+Beth sat with a stolid countenance, and stared solemnly at every girl
+that was attacked, as if she were studying her case. Then, one
+morning, she came down in a shawl herself, with her head on one side
+and a very white face. Nurse marched her off at once to the infirmary,
+and put her in a bed beside the fire, and Beth, as she coiled herself
+up, and realised that she need not worry about lessons, or rush off to
+practise when the bell rang, or go out to walk up and down in the
+garden till she hated every pebble on the path, heaved a great sigh of
+relief and fell asleep. When she awoke the doctor was feeling her
+pulse.
+
+"She's very low," he said. "Is she a delicate girl naturally?"
+
+"She looked strong enough when she came to school," nurse answered;
+"but she soon went off, as so many of them do."
+
+"The loss of vitality amongst them is really extraordinary," the
+doctor observed. "Give her port wine and beef-tea. Don't keep her in
+bed too much, but don't hurry her up. Rest and relief from lessons is
+the great thing."
+
+Some healthy pleasure to vary the monotonous routine, some liberty of
+action and something to look forward to, would have been better; but
+nobody thought of that.
+
+How many of those necks were really stiff beyond the will of the
+sufferer to move it, no one will ever know; but when it occurred to
+Beth to straighten her own one day, she found no difficulty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+When Beth was moved into the upper school, she came under the direct
+influence of Miss Crow, the English mistress of the third and fourth,
+who had been educated at St. Catherine's herself, and was an ardent
+disciple of Miss Clifford's. Beth, although predisposed to pietism,
+had not been sensibly influenced by Miss Clifford's teaching
+heretofore; now, however, she attached herself to Miss Crow, who began
+at once to take a special interest in her spiritual welfare. She
+encouraged Beth to sit and walk with her when she was on duty, and
+invited her to her room during recreation in order to talk to her
+earnestly on the subject of salvation, or to read to her and expound
+portions of Scripture, fine passages from religious books, and
+beautiful hymns. Some of the hymns she took the trouble to copy out
+for Beth's help and comfort when they were specially appropriate to
+the needs of her nature, such as "Calm me, my God, and keep me calm,"
+or specially suited to her case, like "Call me! and I will answer,
+gladly singing!" Beth responded readily to her kindness, and very soon
+became a convert to her views; but she did not stop there, for it was
+not in Beth's nature to rest content with her own conversion while
+there were so many others still sitting in darkness who might be
+brought to the light. No sooner was she convinced herself than she
+began to proselytise among the other girls, and in a short time her
+eloquence and force of character attracted a following from all parts
+of the school. Miss Crow told Miss Clifford that she spoke like one
+inspired, and high hopes were entertained of the work which they
+somewhat prematurely concluded she was destined to do. Unfortunately
+Beth's fervent faith received a check at a critical time when it was
+highly important to have kept it well nourished--that is to say, when
+she was being prepared for confirmation. It happened when Miss Crow
+was hearing the girls their Scripture lesson one morning, the subject
+being the escape of the children of Israel from Egypt, and the
+destruction of Pharaoh's hosts in the Red Sea.
+
+"I know a man who says the whole of that account has been garbled,"
+Beth remarked in a dreamy way, meaning Count Gustav Bartahlinsky, but
+not thinking much of what she was saying.
+
+Miss Crow nearly dropped the Bible, so greatly was she startled and
+shocked by the announcement.
+
+"Beth!" she exclaimed, directly the class was over and she could speak
+to Beth privately, "how could you be so wicked as to say that anything
+in Holy Scripture is a garbled account?"
+
+"I said I knew a man who said so," Beth answered, surprised that so
+simple a remark should have created such consternation.
+
+But Miss Crow saw in her attitude a dangerous tendency to scepticism,
+and expressed strong condemnation of any one who presumed to do other
+than accept Holy Writ in blind unquestioning faith. She talked to Beth
+with horror about the ungodly men who cast doubt on the unity of the
+Bible, called its geology in question, and even ventured to correct
+its chronology by the light of vain modern scientific discoveries; and
+Beth shocked her again by the questions she asked, and the intelligent
+interest she showed in the subject. She told Miss Crow that Count
+Gustav had also said that the Old Testament was bad religion and worse
+history, but she did not know that other people had thought so too.
+Whereupon Miss Crow went to Miss Clifford and reported Beth's attitude
+as something too serious for her to deal with alone, and Miss Clifford
+sent for Beth and talked to her long and earnestly. She told her that
+it was absurd for a girl of her age to call in question the teaching
+of the best and greatest men that ever lived, which somehow reminded
+Beth of the many mistakes made by the best and greatest men that ever
+lived, of their differences of opinion and undignified squabbles, the
+instances of one man discovering and suffering for a truth which the
+rest refused to accept, and the constant modification, alteration, and
+rejection by one generation of teaching which had been upheld by
+another with brutality and bloodshed,--instances of all of which were
+notorious enough even to be known at a girls' school. Beth said very
+little, however; but she determined to read the Bible through from
+beginning to end, and see for herself if she could detect any grounds
+for the mischief-making doubts and controversies she had been hearing
+about. She began in full faith, but was brought up short at the very
+outset by the discrepancy between the first and second chapters of
+Genesis, which she perceived for the first time. She went steadily on,
+however, until she had finished the Book of Job, and then she paused
+in revolt. She could not reconcile the dreadful experiment which had
+entailed unspeakable suffering and loss irreparable upon a good man
+with any attribute she had been accustomed to revere in her deity.
+There might be some explanation to excuse this game of god and devil,
+but until she knew the excuse she would vow no adhesion to a power
+whose conduct on that occasion seemed contrary to every canon of
+justice and mercy. She did not belong to the servile age when men,
+forgetting their manhood, fawned on patrons for what they could get,
+and cringingly accepted favours from the dirtiest hands. Even her God
+must be worthy to help her, worthy to be loved, good as well as great.
+The God who connived at the torment of Job could not be the God of her
+salvation.
+
+Beth had spoken casually in class. She had never questioned her
+religion, and would not have done so now if the remark had been
+allowed to pass; but the fuss that was made about it, and the severity
+with which she was rebuked, by putting her mind into a critical
+attitude, had the effect of concentrating her attention on the
+subject; so that it was the very precautions which were taken to check
+her supposed scepticism that first made her sceptical. The immediate
+consequence was that she gave up preaching and refused to be
+confirmed. Miss Clifford, Miss Crow, and the chaplain argued,
+expostulated, and punished in vain. It was the first case of the kind
+that had occurred in the school, and Beth was treated as a criminal;
+but she felt more like a martyr, and was not to be moved. She did not
+try to make partisans for herself, however; on the contrary, she
+deserted her family as well as her congregation, and took to wandering
+about alone again; but she was not unhappy. Her old faith had gone, it
+is true, but it had left the way prepared for a new one. She did not
+believe in the God of Job--because she was sure that there must be a
+better God--that was all.
+
+From this time, however, her imagination rode rampant once more over
+everything. The vision and the dream were upon her. All wholesome
+interest in her work was over. There was an old piano in the
+reception-room which the girls were allowed to use for their amusement
+on half-holidays, and she often went there; but even when she
+practised, she moved her fingers mechanically, her mind busy with
+vivid scenes and moving dramatic incidents; so that her beloved music
+was gradually converted from an object in itself into an aid to
+thought.
+
+It was only six weeks to the holidays, but oh! how the days dragged!
+She struggled to be conscientious, to be good, to please Miss Crow, to
+escape bad marks; but everything was irksome. Getting up, lessons,
+breakfast, making her bed, practising, lessons again, dressing, going
+out, dinner--the whole round of regular life was an effort. Her face
+grew thin and pale, she began to cough, and was put upon extras again.
+"We can't let you go home looking like that, you know," nurse said.
+Beth looked up at her out of her dream absently and smiled. She was
+enjoying a visionary walk at the moment with a vague being who loved
+her. They were out on a white cliff overlooking the sea in a wild warm
+region. The turf they trod on was vivid green, and short and springy;
+the water below was green and bright and clear, sea-birds skimmed the
+surface, and the air was sweet. But presently the road was barred by a
+rail, so they had to stop, and he put his arm round her, and she laid
+her head on his shoulder; and the murmur of wind and water was in her
+ears, and she became as the lark that sang above them, the curlew that
+piped, the quiet cattle, and all inanimate things--untroubled,
+natural, complete. All intellectual interest being suspended, she had
+begun to yearn for a companion, a mate. Her delicate mind refused to
+account for the tender sensation; but it was love, or rather the mood
+for love she had fallen into--the passive mood, which can be converted
+into the active in an ordinary young girl by almost any man of average
+attractions, provided she is not already yearning happily for some one
+in particular. It is not until much later that she learns to
+discriminate. There were girls at the school who saw in every man they
+met a possible lover, and were ready to accept any man who offered
+himself; but they were of coarser fibre than Beth, more susceptible to
+the physical than to the ideal demands of love, and fickle because the
+man who was present had more power to please than the one who was
+merely a recollection. The actual presence was enough for them, they
+had no ideals. With Beth it was different. Her present was apt to be
+but a poor faded substitute for the future with the infinite range of
+possibilities she had the power to perceive in it, or even for the
+past as she glorified it.
+
+While she was in this mood she was particularly provoking to those in
+authority over her.
+
+"Beth," said Miss Crow one day severely, "you are to go to Miss
+Clifford directly." Beth went.
+
+"I hear," said Miss Clifford in her severest tone, "that you have not
+made your bed this morning."
+
+"I went up to make it," Beth answered, trying dreamily to recollect
+what had happened after that.
+
+"I must give you a bad mark," Miss Clifford said, and then paused; and
+Beth, who had not been attending, becoming conscious that something
+had been bestowed upon her, answered politely, "Thank you."
+
+"Beth, you are impertinent," Miss Clifford exclaimed, "and I must
+punish you severely. Stay in the whole of your half-holiday and do
+arithmetic."
+
+Then Beth awoke with a start, and realising what she had done,
+struggled to explain; but the moment she became herself again, an
+agony of dumbness came upon her, and she left the room without a word.
+
+She spent the long bright afternoon cowering over her arithmetic, and
+crying at intervals, being in the lowest spirits, so that by
+prayer-time she was pretty well exhausted. She tried to attend to the
+psalms, but in the middle of them she became a poor girl suffering
+from a cruel sense of injustice. All her friends misunderstood her and
+were unkind to her, in consequence of which she pined away, and one
+day, in the midst of a large party, she dropped down dead.
+
+And at this point she actually did fall fainting with a thud on the
+floor. Miss Clifford, who was giving out the hymn, stopped startled,
+and some of the girls shrieked. Miss Crow and one of the other
+teachers carried Beth out by the nearest door.
+
+"Poor little thing!" said Miss Crow, looking pityingly at her drawn
+white face and purple eyelids. "I'm afraid she's very delicate."
+
+Miss Clifford came also, when prayers were over, and said kind things;
+and from that time forward Beth received a great deal of sympathetic
+attention, which did her good, but in no way reconciled her to her
+imprisonment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following term, Beth watched the spring come in at school with
+infinite yearning. To be out--to be free to sit under the apple-trees
+and look up through the boughs at the faintly flushed blossom, till
+the vision and the dream came upon her, and she passed from conscious
+thought into a higher phase of being--just to do that was her one
+desire till the petals fell. Then pleasure-boats began to be rowed on
+the river, rowed or steered by girls no older than herself, in summer
+dresses delicately fresh; and she, seeing them, became aware of the
+staleness of her own shabby clothing, and writhed under the rules
+which would not allow her even to walk on the path overlooking the
+river, and gaze her fill at it. The creamy white flowers of the great
+magnolia on the lawn came out, and once she slipped across the grass
+to peer into them and smell them. She got a bad mark for that, the
+second she had had.
+
+At preparation that evening she sat so that she could see the river,
+and watched it idly instead of working; and presently there floated
+into her mind the rhyme she made when she was a little child at
+Fairholm--
+
+    "The fairy folk are calling me."
+
+Suddenly she caught her breath, her cheeks flushed, her eyes
+sparkled, her whole aspect changed from apathy to animation, and she
+laughed.
+
+"What has happened to please you, Beth; you look quite bright?" Miss
+Bey said, meeting her in the vestibule when preparation was over. Miss
+Bey was said to favour Beth by some; Beth was said to toady Bey by
+others; the truth being that they had taken to each other from the
+first, and continued friends.
+
+"I've got a sort of singing at my heart," Beth answered, sparkling.
+"The fairy folk are calling me."
+
+Beth slept in No. 5 then, and had the bed nearest to the window. There
+was a moon that night, and she lay long watching the light of it upon
+the blind--long after the gas was put out and the teachers had gone to
+their rooms. Wondering at last if the girls in the room were asleep,
+she sat up in bed, the better to be able to hear; and judged that they
+were. Then she got out of bed, walked quietly down the room in her
+night-dress and bare feet, opened the door cautiously, and found
+herself out in the carpetless passage. It was dark there, but she
+walked on confidently to the head of the grand staircase, which the
+girls were only allowed to use on special occasions. "This _is_ a
+special occasion," Beth said to herself with a grin. "The fairy folk
+are calling me, and I must go out and dance on the grass in that
+lovely moonlight."
+
+But how to get out was the difficulty. The hall door was bolted and
+barred. She went into the first and second. There were two large
+windows in the room which looked into the great conservatory, and one
+of them was open a crack. She pushed it up higher, and got through
+into the conservatory. There she found a large side window on the left
+of the first and second also open a little. The shelf in front of the
+window had flower-pots on it, which she moved aside, then got up
+herself, and with a tug, managed to raise the heavy sash. Then she sat
+on the sill and looked down. It was too far to jump, but a sort of
+dado of ornamental stonework came right up to the window, and by the
+help of this she managed to descend to the ground, and found herself
+free. For a moment she stood stretching herself like one just released
+from a cramped position, drawing in deep draughts of the delicious
+night air the while; then she bounded off over the dewy grass, and
+ran, and jumped, and waved her arms, every muscle of her rejoicing in
+an ecstasy of liberty. She ran round to the front of the house,
+regardless of the chance of some one seeing her from one of the
+windows, and danced round and round the magnolia, and buried her face
+in the big white flowers one after the other, and bathed it in the dew
+on their petals. Then she went to the path by the river and hung over
+the railing, and after that she visited the orchard, and every other
+forbidden place in the grounds. In the orchard she found some
+half-ripe fruit under the trees, and gathered it; and finding that she
+could not climb into the conservatory again with the fruit in her
+hands, she amused herself by throwing it through the open window.
+
+It was harder to climb up than it had been to get down, but she
+accomplished the feat at last with sundry abrasions, shut the window,
+replaced the flower pots, got into the first and second, and went back
+to bed. Her night-dress was wet with dew, and her feet were scratched
+and dirty; but she was too much exhilarated by the exercise and
+adventure to feel any discomfort. She was sitting up in bed, hungrily
+munching some of her spoils, when Janey North, the girl in the next
+bed, awoke.
+
+"What are you eating, Beth?" she asked in a cautious voice,
+whispering, fearful of awaking a monitress and being reported for
+talking.
+
+"Apples," Beth answered. "Have some?"
+
+"All right! but where did you get them?" Janey asked.
+
+"Never you mind!" said Beth.
+
+Janey did not mind at the moment, and ate the greater number, but next
+day she went treacherously and told, in order to ingratiate herself
+with one of the mistresses, and the matter was reported to Miss
+Clifford, who sent for Beth. Janey North was also sent for.
+
+"What is this I hear about your having apples in your bedroom last
+night, Beth?" Miss Clifford said.
+
+"A story, I should think," Beth answered readily. "Who told you?"
+
+Janey North looked disconcerted.
+
+"What have you to say, Miss North?" Miss Clifford asked.
+
+"You _were_ eating apples," Janey said to Beth.
+
+"How do you know?" Beth asked suavely.
+
+"I saw you."
+
+"What, in the middle of the night when the gas was out?"
+
+"Ye-yes," Janey faltered.
+
+Beth shrugged her shoulders and looked at Miss Clifford, who said
+severely: "I think, Miss North, you have either dreamt this story or
+invented it."
+
+Janey was barred in the school after that, the girls deciding that,
+whether the story were true or not, she was a dockyard girl for
+telling it. It was Beth's sporting instinct that had made her evade
+the question. When she had won the game, and the excitement was over,
+she felt she had been guilty of duplicity, and determined to confess
+when Miss Clifford sent for her next and gave her a good opportunity.
+She would have gone at once but for the dread of losing the precious
+liberty that was life to her. All through the weeks that followed she
+kept herself sane and healthy by midnight exercises in the moonlight.
+Her appetite had failed her till she took to this diversion, but after
+her second ramble she was so hungry that she went down to the kitchen
+boldly to forage in the hope of finding a crust. The fire was still
+burning brightly, and by its light she discovered on the table the
+thick bread and butter for the next morning's breakfast, all cut
+ready, and piled up under covers on the dishes. There was half a jug
+of beer besides, doubtless left from the servants' supper. It was
+rather flat, but she thought it and the new bread and butter
+delicious. She had a bad cold after the first ramble, but that was the
+only one, strange to relate, for she always went out in her
+night-dress, and bare-footed.
+
+During this time her imagination was exceedingly active and her health
+improved, but her work was a greater trouble than ever. She had just
+been put into the third, but Miss Clifford threatened to put her down
+again if she did not do better, and one day she sent for Beth, who
+went trembling, under the impression that that was what the summons
+was for. She found Miss Clifford and Miss Bey discussing a letter, and
+both looking very serious.
+
+"Beth," Miss Clifford began, "a gentleman whom I know well has written
+to tell me that he was walking home by the river-path at two o'clock
+on Monday morning, and saw a girl here at St. Catherine's with only
+her night-dress on, hanging over the railing looking into the river;
+and I am sure from the description it was you."
+
+"Yes," said Beth, "I saw him."
+
+Miss Clifford let the letter fall on her lap, and Miss Bey dropped
+into a chair. Beth looked on with interest, and wondered about that
+accurate description of herself; she would have given anything to see
+it.
+
+"What were you doing there?" Miss Clifford asked; and Beth noticed
+that she was treating the matter just as her mother had treated the
+menagerie business.
+
+"Just looking at the water," Beth said.
+
+"At two o'clock in the morning! How did you get out?"
+
+"By the conservatory window."
+
+"Had you been out before?"
+
+"Oh yes, often."
+
+"Do any of the other girls go out?"
+
+"Not that I know of," said Beth, then added, "No, I'm sure they
+don't."
+
+"Thank Heaven for that, at all events!" Miss Clifford ejaculated. Then
+she made Beth sit down beside her, and took her hand, and gazed at her
+long and sorrowfully.
+
+"Was it such a very dreadful thing to do?" Beth asked at last.
+
+"You have been a great disappointment to me, Beth," Miss Clifford
+answered indirectly, "and to Miss Bey. We expected more of you than of
+any other girl now in the school--you promised so well in many ways at
+one time."
+
+"_Did I?_" said Beth, looking from one to the other in consternation.
+"Oh, why didn't you tell me? I thought you all fancied I should never
+do anything well, and that disheartened me. If I had known----" She
+burst into tears.
+
+Late that night Miss Clifford and Miss Bey sat together discussing
+Beth.
+
+"I feel more than ever convinced there is something exceptional about
+the child," Miss Clifford declared. "I hope it is not insanity; but,
+at all events, it is not sin, and I won't have her punished. I say now
+what I said at first, she should have been sent here early, or not at
+all. And now she must go."
+
+"What, expel her!" Miss Bey ejaculated.
+
+"No. Didn't I say I would not have her punished? There is some
+explanation of her wild escapade besides mere naughtiness, I feel
+sure, and she shall have every chance that I can give her. There is no
+vice in her of any kind that I can discover, and she is fearlessly
+honest. If she were grown-up we should call her eccentric, and be
+interested and amused by her vagaries; and I do not see why she should
+not be allowed the same excuse as it is, only St. Catherine's is not
+the place for her. Here all must move in the common orbit, to save
+confusion. So I shall write to her mother, and get her to take her
+from the school at the end of the term in the regular way."
+
+"But in the meantime?" Miss Bey asked.
+
+"Beth has given me her word that she will be good, and do nothing I
+should disapprove of, and she will keep it."
+
+So Beth's credit was saved by the good judgment of this kind, wise
+woman, and her career at St Catherine's ended honourably, if somewhat
+abruptly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+When it was rumoured amongst the mistresses that Beth was to leave
+that term, Old Tom put her on to play first piano in the first-class
+solo, and to lead the treble in the second-class duet at the
+examination.
+
+"For I rather like ye, Miss Beth Caldwell," she said. "You're not a
+sycophant, whatever else ye are. They've not been able to do much wi'
+ye in regard to yer work in the rest of the school, but ye've done
+well under me, and I'll let ye have yer chance to distinguish yerself
+before ye go."
+
+"Oh, but do you think I can do it?" Beth exclaimed.
+
+"Ye can do anything ye set yerself to do, Beth Caldwell," Old Tom
+shouted at her.
+
+Beth set herself accordingly, and when the day came she led the solo
+and duet with the precision of a musical box, but with such an
+expenditure of nerve-power that she was prostrated by the effort. She
+was considered quite a musician at St. Catherine's, but by this time
+the dire method of teaching had had its effect. Her confidence and her
+memory for music were gone, the beauty of her touch spoilt, and the
+further development of her talent effectually checked.
+
+She did not go home for the holidays. Miss Clifford had advised, Lady
+Benyon approved, and Mrs. Caldwell decided, that she should be sent
+direct to a finishing school in London, and when St. Catherine's broke
+up, Miss Bey, who happened to be going that way, good-naturedly
+undertook to see Beth safely to her destination.
+
+Miss Clifford held Beth's hand long, and gazed into her face earnestly
+when she took leave of her. "I shall hear of you again," she said,
+"and I pray God it may be good news; but it depends upon yourself,
+Beth. We are free agents. Good-bye, my dear child, and God bless you."
+
+Beth had been eighteen intolerable months at the school, and had been
+exceedingly miserable most of the time, yet she left it with tears in
+her eyes, melted and surprised by the kindest farewells from every
+one. It had never dawned upon her until that moment that she was
+really very much liked.
+
+Her new school was a large house in a long wide street of houses, all
+exactly alike. When she arrived with Miss Bey, they were shown into a
+deliciously cool shady drawing-room, charmingly furnished, and the
+effect upon Beth, after the graceless bareness of St. Catherine's, was
+altogether reassuring.
+
+In front of the fireplace, which was hidden by ferns and flowering
+plants, a slender girl, with thick dark hair down her back, was lying
+on the white woolly hearthrug, reading. She got up to greet the
+visitors without embarrassment, still holding her book in her hand.
+
+"Miss Blackburne will be here directly," she said. "Will you sit
+down?" Then there was a little pause, which Miss Bey broke by asking
+in her magisterial way, "What is that you are reading, my dear?"
+
+"The Idylls of the King," the girl answered.
+
+Miss Bey's nostrils flapped.
+
+"Is it not rather advanced for you, my dear?" she said. "We do not
+allow it at all, even to our first-class girls."
+
+"Oh, Miss Blackburne likes us to read it," was the easy answer. "She
+says that Tennyson and all the good modern writers are a part of our
+education."
+
+"Thank goodness!" Beth ejaculated fervently. "At St. Catherine's our
+minds were starved on books suited to the capacity of infants and
+imbeciles."
+
+"I should think, Beth, you are hardly old enough or educated enough to
+be a judge of literature as yet," Miss Bey said severely.
+
+"Nor do I pretend to be a judge. How can I know anything of literature
+when literature is unknown at St. Catherine's? But I should think
+babes and sucklings would be wise enough to object to the silly trash
+we had instead of literature."
+
+Beth spoke emphatically, shaking herself free of the restrictions of
+the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters once for all.
+
+Miss Blackburne came in while she was speaking, and smiled.
+
+"I like to hear a girl express an opinion," she said. "She may be
+quite wrong, but she must have some mind if she attempts to think for
+herself at all; and mind is material to work upon."
+
+"I'm afraid _I_ haven't much mind," Beth said, sighing, "or manner
+either."
+
+Miss Blackburne smiled again, and looked at Miss Bey; but Miss Bey
+supported Beth in her self-depreciation by preserving an ominous
+silence.
+
+"This is one of your new school-fellows," Miss Blackburne said to
+Beth; "let me introduce you to each other. Clara Herring, Beth
+Caldwell."
+
+When Miss Bey took her leave, Miss Blackburne left the room with her,
+and immediately afterwards another girl came in, clapping her hands.
+
+"Oh, I say!" she exclaimed, "Signor Caponi _is_ a dear! He has the
+nicest chocolate eyes, and he says my Italian is wonderful! Now I've
+done all my work for to-day."
+
+"Have you?" said Beth. "Why, it isn't five o'clock yet!"
+
+"Miss Blackburne won't let us work long hours," the girl rejoined.
+"She says it destroys our freshness. But let us know each other's
+names. I am Geraldine Tressillion. Good name for a novel, isn't it?"
+and she clapped her little white hands and laughed again.
+
+"That's just what you're made to be--the heroine of a novel," Clara
+Herring observed, looking at her admiringly. "I always think of you
+when I come across a gay one, with golden hair and blue eyes."
+
+"I have my good points, I know," Geraldine rejoined. "But how about my
+hips? Too high, alas!"
+
+"Oh, that won't show much while you're slight," said Clara, looking at
+her critically.
+
+"Well, I'll make haste and marry me before I'm afflicted with flesh,
+as I'm sure to become. For I deny myself nothing--I live to eat,"
+Geraldine rattled on cheerfully. "One can't get very fat before one
+comes out; and I hate a thin dowager. I'm engaged already, you know,
+but I don't like the man much--don't like him at all, in fact; and my
+sister says I can do better. She's been married a year, and has a
+baby. She told me all about it. Mamma imagines we're all innocent. A
+lady implored her to tell my sister things before she married, but she
+said she really could not speak to an innocent girl on such a subject.
+I don't believe she was ever so innocent herself. A grown girl can't
+be innocent unless she's a fool; but anyway, it's the right pose to
+pretend. You've got to play the silly fool to please a man; then he
+feels superior."
+
+"But it's hypocritical," said Beth.
+
+"Yes, my dear. But you must be hypocritical if you want to be a man's
+ideal of a woman. You must know nothing, do nothing, see nothing, but
+just what suits his pleasure and convenience; and in order to answer
+to his requirements you must be either a hypocrite, or a blind worm
+without eyes or intelligence. Men don't like innocence because it's
+holy, but because it whets their appetites, my sister says, and if
+they're deceived it serves them right. They work the world for their
+own pleasure, not ours; and we must look out for ourselves. If we want
+money, liberty, devotion, admiration, and any other luxury, we must
+pretend. Don't you see?"
+
+"I don't know," Beth rejoined. "But, personally, I shall never pretend
+anything."
+
+"Then you will suffer for your sincerity," Geraldine rejoined.
+
+Beth shrugged her shoulders. The turn the conversation had taken was
+distasteful to her, and she would not pursue it.
+
+There was a pause, then Clara observed sententiously:
+
+"Innocence is not impossible, Geraldine. Surely Adelaide is innocent
+enough."
+
+"I said innocence and intelligence were incompatible," Geraldine
+answered. "You don't call Adelaide intelligent, do you?"
+
+"Who is Adelaide?" Beth asked.
+
+"The daughter of a Roman Catholic peer," Geraldine replied. "She is
+eighteen, and her mind is absolutely undeveloped. We think she's in
+training for a convent, and that's why they don't let her learn much.
+Miss Ella Blackburne is a Roman Catholic, and so also is Adelaide's
+maid; They trot her round to all the observances of her Church
+regularly, and in the intervals she plays with the kitten. I don't
+know why she should have been sent here at all, for this is a regular
+forcing-house for the marriage market. Miss Blackburne expects all her
+girls to marry well, and they generally do. I should think, Miss Beth,
+she will be able to make something of you with those eyes!"
+
+"Look at its neck and shoulders, too, and the way its head is set on
+them!" Clara exclaimed.
+
+"Not to mention its hands and its complexion!" Geraldine supplemented.
+"But its voice alone--_soft, gentle, and low_--would get it into the
+peerage!"
+
+Beth, unused to be appraised in this way, blushed and smiled, rather
+pleased, but confused.
+
+"How many girls are there here?" she asked, to change the subject.
+
+"Six boarders till you came, but now we are seven," Clara answered.
+"There are some day-girls too, but they are children, and don't count.
+The greatest pickle in the school is the daughter of an Archbishop--at
+least, she has been the greatest pickle so far--we don't know you as
+yet, however. But we have heard things!"
+
+"Come and see my room," Geraldine interrupted. "And perhaps you'd like
+to see your own. It's next to mine."
+
+"Are you allowed to go up and down stairs just as you like?" Beth
+asked in surprise.
+
+"Why, of course!" Geraldine cried. "You can go where you like and sit
+where you like when you've done your work. We're not in prison!"
+
+Beth had a dainty little room, hung with white curtains, all to
+herself. Her heart expanded when she saw it. The delightful appearance
+of her new surroundings had already begun to have the happiest effect
+upon her mind.
+
+When Geraldine took her into her own room she drew a yellow book from
+under a quantity of linen in a drawer. "It's a French novel," she
+said. "Miss Blackburne wouldn't let me read it for worlds if she knew,
+so you mustn't tell. I'll lend it to you if you like."
+
+"I couldn't read it if I would; I don't know enough," Beth said.
+
+"Oh, you'll soon learn; and I'll tell you all there is in it. I say,
+what size is your waist? Mine is only seventeen inches; but I laced
+till I got shingles to reduce it to that. I know a doctor who says
+small waists are neither healthy nor beautiful; but then they're the
+fashion, and men are such awful fools about fashion. They sneer at a
+healthy figure, and saddle themselves every day with ailing wives, all
+deformed, because they're accustomed to see women so; and then they
+call _us_ silly! My husband won't think _me_ silly once I get command
+of his money, whatever else he may think me. Till then--!" she made a
+pretty gesture with her hands and laughed--Beth observing her the
+while with deep attention as a new specimen.
+
+She found eventually that Geraldine was not at all a bad girl, or in
+the least inclined to be vicious, her conversation notwithstanding;
+she was merely a shrewd one learning how to protect herself in that
+state of life to which she was destined. If a woman is to make her way
+in society and keep straight, she must have wits and knowledge of a
+special kind. There is probably no more delightful, high-minded,
+charming-mannered, honourable and trustworthy woman in the world than
+a well-bred Englishwoman; but, on the other hand, there can be nothing
+more vulgar-minded, coarse, and despicable than women of fashion tend
+to become. There is no meanness nor shabbiness, not to mention fraud,
+that they will not stoop to when it suits themselves, from tricking a
+tradesman and sweating a servant, to neglecting their children,
+deceiving their husbands, and slandering their friends. They are sheep
+running hither and thither in servile imitation of each other, without
+an original thought amongst them; the froth of society, with the
+natural tendency of froth to rise to the surface and thence be swept
+aside; mere bubbles, that shine a moment and then burst. It is fashion
+that unsexes women and unmakes men. To be in the world of fashion and
+of it, is to degenerate; but to be in it and not of it, to know it and
+remain untainted, despising all it has to give, makes towards solid
+advance. There are some ugly stages to be gone through, however,
+before the advancement is pronounced.
+
+The six girls at Miss Blackburne's were all daughters of people of
+position, all enjoying the same advantages and under the same
+influences; but three of them were already shaping themselves into
+women of fashion, while the other three were tending as inevitably to
+develop into women of fine character and cultivated mind. Beth was
+attracted to all such women, and recognised their worth, often long
+before they appreciated her at all. She was seventh among the girls,
+her place being in the middle, as it were, with three on either side
+of her, teaching her all they could, as was inevitable. In association
+with the budding women of fashion, she lost the first fine delicacy of
+maiden modesty of mind; but the example of the young gentlewomen, on
+the other hand, confirmed her taste and settled her convictions. The
+ladies who kept the school were high-minded themselves and exemplary
+in every possible way, and if they did not make all their pupils
+equally so, it was because factors go to the formation of character
+with which, for want of knowledge, no one can reckon at present. The
+influence of these ladies upon Beth was altogether benign. She was in
+a new world with them--a world of ease and refinement, of polished
+manners, of kindly consideration, where, instead of being harried by
+nagging rules, stultified by every kind of restraint, and lowered in
+her own estimation for want of proper respect and encouragement, she
+was allowed as much liberty as she would have had in a well-ordered
+home, and found herself and her abilities of special interest to each
+of her teachers. Instead of being an item, a part of a huge piece of
+machinery to be strictly kept in the particular place assigned to her,
+whether it were adapted to the needs of her nature or not, for fear of
+putting the whole mechanism out of order, her present and future being
+less considered than the smooth working of the machine--she was a girl
+again with some character of her own to be formed and developed. Here,
+too, she was put upon her honour to do all that was expected of her,
+and the immediate consequence of this in her case was the most
+scrupulous exactness. She attached herself to Miss Ella, attracted
+first of all by the fact that she was a Roman Catholic. How she could
+be one was a mystery Beth longed to solve; but Miss Ella did not
+consider it loyal to Protestant parents to influence their daughters
+at school, and would give her no help in this. In every other respect,
+however, Beth found her exceedingly kind and sympathetic, a serene,
+strong woman, who began to curb the exuberance of Beth's naughtiness
+from the first, and to direct the energy of which it was the outcome
+into profitable channels.
+
+There was no monotony in Miss Blackburne's establishment. The girls
+were taken in turns to operas, concerts, picture-galleries, and every
+kind of exhibition that might help to cultivate their minds. To be
+able to discuss such things was a part of their education. They were
+expected to describe all they saw, fluently and pleasantly, but
+without criticism enough to require thought and provoke argument,
+which is apt to be tedious; and thus was formed the habit of chatting
+in the genial light frothy way which does duty for conversation in
+society. Geraldine had not exaggerated when she called Miss
+Blackburne's school a forcing house for the marriage market. At that
+time marriage was the only career open to a gentlewoman, and the
+object of her education was to make her attractive. The theory then
+was that solid acquirements were beyond the physical strength of
+girls, besides being unnecessary. Showy accomplishments, therefore,
+were all that was aimed at; but they had to be thorough. Music,
+singing, drawing, dancing, French, German, Italian--whatever it might
+be; the girl who was learning it had the greatest attention from her
+master or mistress during the lesson; she was made to do it as much by
+the will of the teacher as by her own intelligence. This was the first
+experience of thorough teaching Beth had ever had, and she enjoyed
+it, and would have worked harder to profit by it than Miss Blackburne
+would allow. As it was, she made great progress with her work, while
+all the time the more informal but most valuable part of her
+education, which was directed to the strengthening of every womanly
+attribute, went on steadily under the influence of Miss Ella.
+
+It would have been well for Beth if she had been left at Miss
+Blackburne's for the next three years; but just when the rebellious
+beating of her wings against the bars had ceased, and they had folded
+themselves contentedly behind her for awhile; just when the wild
+flights of her imagination were giving way to wholesome habits of
+thought, and her own vain dreams were being dissipated by the honest
+ambition to accomplish something actual--she was summoned away. Her
+sister Mildred had died suddenly of meningitis, and the immediate
+effect of the shock on Mrs. Caldwell, who had dearly loved her eldest
+daughter, was a kindlier feeling for Beth, and a wish to have her at
+home--for a time at all events. And Beth went willingly under the
+circumstances. She sympathised deeply with her mother, and was full of
+grief herself for her sister, to whom she had been tenderly attached
+although they had seen so little of each other. Beth was not yet
+sixteen, and this was the third blow that death had dealt her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Beth had a natural love of order, and at school she had learnt the
+necessity for it. She did not mean to give up work when she went home;
+on the contrary, she determined to do more than ever. Miss Ella had
+taught her to be deliberate, neither to haste nor to rest, but
+steadily to pursue. She insisted that things to be well done must be
+done regularly, and Beth, in accordance with this precept, mapped out
+her day so as to make the most of it. She got up at seven, opened her
+window wider, threw the clothes back from her bed to air it, had her
+bath, brushed her hair; left nothing untidy lying about her room; did
+her good reading, the psalms and lessons; breakfasted, made her bed,
+studied French, went out for exercise, sewed, and read so much, all in
+the same order every day. She paid particular attention to her
+personal appearance, too, that being the one of her mother's
+principles which had also been most particularly enjoined by Miss
+Blackburne. At both of her schools marriage was the great ambition of
+most of the girls. At St Catherine's it meant a means of escape from
+many hardships; to Miss Blackburne's girls it offered the chance of a
+better position, and more money and luxury. There was a nicer tone
+among the Royal Service girls, and more reticence in their discussions
+of the subject than at Miss Blackburne's, where the girls were not at
+all high-minded, and talked of their chances with the utmost
+frankness, not to say coarseness; but good looks were held to be the
+best, if not the only means to the end in both sets. Money and
+accomplishments might help, but personal appearance was the great
+certainty; and Beth was naturally impressed with this idea like the
+rest. Marriage, however, was far from being the distinct object of her
+life; in fact, she had no distinct object at all as yet. She had
+always meant to do something, or rather to be something; but further
+than that she had not got.
+
+Miss Blackburne had paid particular attention to the cultivation of
+the speaking voice, and it was from her that Beth had learnt how to
+round hers to richness, and modulate it so that its natural sweetness
+and charm were greatly enhanced. There was considerable difference of
+opinion about her looks. She was always striking in appearance, but
+dress, for one thing, altered her very much, and the state of her mind
+still more. People who met her on one occasion admired her
+exceedingly, and on the next wondered why they had thought her
+good-looking at all. She had the mesmeric quality which makes it
+impossible to escape observation, and her personality never failed to
+interest the intelligent whether it pleased them or not; but she was
+only at her best in mind, manner, and appearance when her fitful
+further faculty was active; then indeed she shone with a strange
+loveliness, a light to be felt rather than seen, and not to be
+described at all. At such times the mere physical beauty of other
+women went out in her immediate neighbourhood, and was no more thought
+of. It was not until she was quite mature, however, that her manner
+permanently acquired that subtle indefinable quality called charm,
+which is the outcome of a large tolerant nature and kindness of heart.
+It was as if she did not come into full possession of her true self
+until she had experienced numberless other phases of being common to
+the race. Hence the apparently incongruous mixture she presented in
+the earlier stages of her youth, her sluggish indifference at times,
+her excesses of energy and zeal, her variations of taste.
+
+At first, after she left school, as was inevitable, her
+self-discipline was irksome enough at times, and some of the details
+she shirked; but not for long, because the time which accustomed
+duties should have occupied hung heavy on her hands, and she felt
+dissatisfied with herself rather than relieved when she neglected
+them. So by degrees her habits were formed, and in after life she
+found them a very present help in time of trouble, anchors which kept
+her from drifting to leeward, as she must have done but for their hold
+upon her. Some of her erratic tricks were not to be cured, but they
+came to be part of the day's work rather than a hindrance to it. She
+saw many a sunrise, for instance, and revelled with uplifted spirit in
+the beauty and wonder of the hour; but the soul that sang responsive
+to the glories of the summer dawn, the colour, the freshness, the
+perfume, was steeped at noon with equal energy in the book she was
+studying, so that, instead of losing anything, she gained that day one
+sunrise more.
+
+When she left school Beth was fastidiously refined. She hurried over
+all the hateful words and passages in the Bible, Shakespeare, or any
+other book she might be reading. The words she would not even
+pronounce to herself, so strongly did her delicate mind revolt from a
+vile idea, and sicken at the expression of it. But, nevertheless, she
+pored patiently over every book she could get that had a great
+reputation, and in this way she read many not usually given to girls,
+and became familiarised with certain facts of life not generally
+supposed to be of soul-making material. But she took no harm. The soul
+that is shaping itself to noble purpose, the growing soul, tries more
+than is proper for its nourishment in its search for sustenance, but
+rejects all that is unnecessary or injurious, as water creatures
+without intelligence reject any unsuitable substance they collect with
+their food.
+
+Before she had been many days at home, Beth found that her mother had
+made a new acquaintance, who came to the house often in a casual way
+like an intimate friend. He came in on the day of her arrival after
+dinner, and was introduced to Beth by her mother as "the doctor." Beth
+broke into smiles, for she recognised her long-ago acquaintance of the
+rocks, the doctor of her Hector-romance. And it seemed he really was a
+doctor; now that was a singular coincidence! In their little
+drawing-room she discovered him to be a bigger man than she had
+supposed, but otherwise he was like her first impression of him,
+striking because of his colouring; the red and white of his
+complexion, which was unusually clear for a man, and the lightness of
+his grey-green eyes being in peculiar contrast to the blackness of his
+hair. She noticed again, too, that the expression of his face when he
+smiled was not altogether agreeable, because his teeth were too far
+apart; and she also thought his finely-formed hands would have looked
+better had they not been so obtrusively white.
+
+"But we have met before," he exclaimed when Beth acknowledged the
+introduction. "You are the young lady I helped on the rocks one day,
+quite a long time ago now, when you were a little girl."
+
+"I remember," Beth said, noticing that he claimed to have helped her
+on that occasion, and remembering also that she had declined his help.
+
+"You never told me, Beth," her mother said reproachfully.
+
+"There was really nothing to tell," he answered, coming to the rescue.
+
+"What a day that was!" Beth observed. "Did you notice the sea? It was
+the sort of sea that might make one long to be a crab to live in it.
+Though a crab is not the animal that I should specially choose to be.
+I long to be a cat sometimes. To be able to fluff out my fur and spit
+would be such a satisfaction. There are feelings that can be expressed
+in no other way. And then to be able to purr! Purring is the one sound
+in nature that expresses perfect comfort and content, I think."
+
+"Beth, don't talk nonsense," her mother said impatiently.
+
+"Oh, it's not nonsense altogether," the doctor interposed. "It is just
+cheery chatter, and that is good. Miss Beth will raise your spirits in
+no time, or I'm much mistaken." He had watched Beth with gravity while
+she was speaking, as one sees people watch an actress critically,
+obviously marking her points, but betraying no emotion.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell sighed heavily. "The doctor has been so good, Beth," she
+said. "He has come here continually, and done more to cheer me than
+anybody."
+
+"Oh now, Mrs. Caldwell, you exaggerate," he remonstrated with a smile.
+"But it's my principle, you know, to be cheery. I always say be cheery
+whatever happens. It's no use crying over spilt milk!"
+
+    "A merry heart goes all the day,
+     Your sad tires in a mile-a,"
+
+Beth rattled off glibly, and again the doctor considered her.
+
+"Now that's good," he said, just as if he had never heard it before;
+"and it's my meaning exactly. Don't let your spirits go down----"
+
+    "For there's many a girl, as I know well,
+     A-looking for you in the town,"
+
+Beth concluded, her spirits rising uproariously.
+
+"Beth!" her mother remonstrated, but with a smile.
+
+"The worst of it is, the ones on the look-out are not the ones with
+the good looks," the doctor observed, also smiling.
+
+"But they are the ones with the money," Beth rejoined. "I wonder how
+it is that plain girls so often have money. I suppose the
+money-grubbing spirit comes out in ugliness in the female branch."
+
+Tea was brought in, but Beth refused to take any. The doctor tried to
+persuade her.
+
+"You had better change your mind," he said. "Ladies are privileged to
+change their minds."
+
+"I know," said Beth. "Ladies are privileged to be foolish. It is
+almost the only privilege men allow them. I scorn it myself. At school
+we were warned to be firm when once we had said 'No, thank you.' Miss
+Ella used to say that people who allowed themselves to be
+over-persuaded and changed their minds lost self-control and became
+self-indulgent eventually."
+
+"Ah, that makes me think of my poor dear mother," said the doctor. "A
+better and more consistent woman never lived. Once she said a thing,
+you couldn't move her. She was a good mother to me! I was always her
+favourite son. But, like other young fellows, I'm afraid I didn't half
+appreciate her till I had lost her."
+
+"All the same, I am sure you were all that a good son should be," Mrs.
+Caldwell observed sincerely.
+
+The doctor's eyes shone with emotion.
+
+When he had gone, Mrs. Caldwell began to discuss him.
+
+"He really _is_ cheery," she said, "he always raises my spirits; and I
+am sure he is good and kind. Did you see how his eyes filled with
+tears when he mentioned his mother? He is handsome, too, don't you
+think so? Such a colour! And always so well dressed. Lady Benyon
+admires him very much. But he gets on with every one, even Uncle
+James! What do you think of him, Beth?"
+
+"I think he looks neat to the point of nattiness, which is finical in
+a man," Beth answered.
+
+"Ah, that is because you are not accustomed to well-dressed men," her
+mother assured her. "Here in Rainharbour you don't often see one."
+
+"I have been in London lately," Beth observed.
+
+"Beth," her mother began emphatically, "that is so like you! Will you
+never get out of the habit of answering so? You are always in
+opposition, and it is too conceited of you at your age. I did hope
+they would have cured you of the trick at school; but no sooner do you
+get home, than you begin again as bad as ever."
+
+"Well, rather than displease you, mamma, I'll do my best to hold my
+tongue for the future when I can't say what you want me to say," Beth
+answered cheerfully. "I came home to be a comfort to you, and if I
+can't be a comfort to you and express myself as well, why, I must go
+unexpressed."
+
+"Now, there you are again, Beth," Mrs. Caldwell cried peevishly. "Is
+that a nice thing to say?"
+
+Beth looked at her mother and smiled enigmatically. Then she
+reflected. Then her countenance cleared.
+
+"Mamma," she said, "your hair is much whiter than it was; but I don't
+think I ever saw you look so nice. You have such a pretty complexion,
+and so few wrinkles, and such even teeth! What a handsome girl you
+must have been!"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell smiled complacently, and went to bed in high good
+humour. She told Bernadine, as they undressed, that she thought Beth
+greatly improved.
+
+But Beth herself lay long awake that night; tossing and troubled,
+feeling far from satisfied either with herself or anybody else.
+
+The next morning she rose early and drew up her plan of life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+As that first day at home wore on, Beth was seized with an importunate
+yearning to go out, and it was with difficulty that she got through
+her self-appointed tasks. She thought of the sea, the shore, the
+silence and solitude, which were apt to be so soothing to her dull
+senses that she ceased to perceive with them, and so passed into the
+possession of her farther faculty for blissful moments. She fancied
+the sea was as she best loved to have it, her favourite sea, with tiny
+wavelets bringing the tide in imperceptibly over the rocks, and the
+long stretch of water beyond heaving gently up to the horizon, with
+smooth unruffled surface shining in the sun. When she had done her
+work she fared forth to the sea, to sit by it, and feel the healthy
+happy freshness of it all about her, and in herself as well. She went
+to the rocks. The tide was coming in. The water, however, was not
+molten silver-grey, as she had imagined it, but bright dark sapphire
+blue, with crisp white crests to the waves, which were merry and
+tumbled. It was the sea for an active, not for a meditative mood; its
+voice called to play, rather than to that prayer of the whole being
+which comes of the contemplation of its calmness; it exhilarated
+instead of soothing, and made her joyous as she had not been since she
+went to school. She stood long on the rocks by the water's edge,
+retreating as the tide advanced, watching wave after wave curve and
+hollow itself and break, and curve and hollow itself and break again.
+The sweet sea-breeze sang in her ears, and braced her with its
+freshness, while the continuous sound of wind and water went from her
+consciousness and came again with the ebb and flow of her thoughts.
+But the strength and swirl of the water, its tireless force, its
+incessant voices choiring on a chorus of numberless notes, invited
+her, fascinated her, filled her with longing--longing to trust herself
+to the waves, to lie still and let them rock her, to be borne out by
+them a little way and brought back again, passive yet in ecstatic
+enjoyment of the dreamy motion. The longing became an impulse. She put
+her hand to her throat to undo her dress--but she did not undo it--she
+never knew why. Had she yielded to the attraction, she must have been
+drowned, for she could swim but little, and the water was deeper than
+she knew, and the current strong; and she might have yielded just as
+she resisted, for no reason that rendered itself into intelligible
+thought.
+
+She turned from the scene of her strange impulse, and began to wander
+back over the rocks, suffering the while from that dull drop of the
+spirit which sets in at the reaction after moments of special
+intensity; and in this mood she came upon "the doctor," also climbing
+the rocks.
+
+"Now, it is a singular coincidence that I should meet you here again,"
+he said.
+
+Beth smiled. "I am afraid those nice boots of yours will suffer on
+these sharp rocks," she remarked by way of saying something. "We
+natives keep our old ones for the purpose."
+
+"Ah," he said, "I don't keep old ones for any purpose. I have an
+objection to everything old, old people included."
+
+Beth had a book under her arm, and he coolly took it from her as he
+spoke, and read the title: "Dryden's Poetical Works." "Ah! So you
+carry the means of improving your mind at odd moments about with you.
+Well, I'm not surprised, for I heard you were clever."
+
+Beth smiled, more pleased than if he had called her beautiful; but she
+wondered if Dryden could properly be called improving.
+
+"It is absurd to keep a girl at school who has got as far as this kind
+of thing," he added, tapping the old brown book; "but it seems to me
+they don't understand you much at home, little lady."
+
+"What makes you think so?" Beth asked shrewdly.
+
+"Oh," he answered, somewhat disconcerted, "I judge from--from things I
+hear and see."
+
+This implied sympathy, and again Beth was pleased.
+
+It was late when she got in, and she expected her mother to be
+annoyed; but Mrs. Caldwell was all smiles.
+
+"I suppose the doctor found you?" she said. "He asked where you were,
+and I said on the rocks probably."
+
+"That accounts for the singular coincidence," Beth observed; but,
+girl-like, she thought less at the moment of the little insincerity
+than of the compliment his following her implied.
+
+They dined that evening with Lady Benyon. It was a quiet little family
+party, including Uncle James and Aunt Grace Mary. The doctor was the
+only stranger present. He looked very well in evening dress.
+
+"Striking, isn't he?" Aunt Grace Mary whispered to Beth. "Such
+colouring!"
+
+"And how are you, Dan?" was Uncle James's greeting, uttered with an
+affectation of cordiality in his unexpected little voice that
+interested Beth. She wondered what was toward. She noticed, too, that
+she herself was an object of special attention, and her heart expanded
+with gratification. Very little kindness went a long way with Beth.
+
+Dr. Dan took her in to dinner.
+
+"By the way," he said, looking across the table at Uncle James, "I
+went to see that old Mrs. Prince, your keeper's mother, as I promised.
+She's a wonderful old woman for eighty-five. I shouldn't be surprised
+if she lived to a hundred."
+
+"Dear! dear!" Uncle James ejaculated with something like
+consternation.
+
+"I seem to have put my foot in it somehow," Dr. Dan remarked to Beth
+confidentially.
+
+"If you do anything to keep her alive you will," Beth answered. "Uncle
+James always speaks bitterly about elderly women;--about old ones he
+is perfectly rabid. He seems to think they rob worthy men of part of
+their time by living so long."
+
+It was arranged before the party broke up that the doctor should drive
+Beth to Fairholm in the Benyon dogcart to lunch next day. Beth was
+surprised and delighted to find herself the object of so much
+consideration. Dr. Dan, as they all called him, began to be associated
+in her mind with happy days.
+
+"Have you come to live here?" she asked as they drove along.
+
+"No," he answered. "I am only putting in the time until I can settle
+down to a practice of my own. I have just heard of one which I shall
+buy if I can get an appointment I am trying for in the same place."
+
+"What is the appointment?" Beth asked.
+
+"It's a hospital I want to be put in charge of," he answered
+casually,--"a small affair, but I should get a regular income from it,
+and that would make my rent, and all that sort of thing, secure. A
+doctor has to set up with a show of affluence."
+
+"It is a terrible profession to me, the medical profession," Beth
+said. "The responsibilities must be so great and so various."
+
+"Oh, I never think of that," he answered easily.
+
+"_I_ should," Beth rejoined.
+
+"Yes, _you_ would, of course," he said; "and that shows what folly it
+is for women to go in for medicine. They worry about this and that,
+things that are the patient's look-out, not the doctor's, and make no
+end of mischief; besides always losing their heads in a difficulty."
+
+Just then the horse, which had been very fidgety all the way, bolted.
+The blood rushed into the doctor's face. "Sit tight! sit tight!" he
+exclaimed. "Don't now,--now don't move and make a fuss. Keep cool."
+
+"Keep cool yourself," said Beth dryly. "_I_'m all right."
+
+Dr. Dan glanced at her sideways, and saw that she was laughing.
+
+When they arrived at Fairholm, he made much of the incident. "If I
+hadn't had my wits about me, there would have been a smash," he vowed.
+"But I happened to be on the spot myself, and Miss Beth behaved
+admirably. Most girls would have shrieked, you know, but she behaved
+heroically."
+
+This was all rather gushing, but it did not offend Beth, because she
+associated gush with Aunt Grace Mary, who had always been kind to her.
+Gushing people are usually weak and amiable, gush being the ill-judged
+outcome of a desire to please; but at that happy age it was the
+amiable intention that Beth took into account. Her desire to be
+pleased, which had so seldom been gratified, had become a danger to
+her judgment by this time; it made her apt to respond to any attempt
+to please her without considering means and motives which should have
+discounted her appreciation. Everybody was trying to please her now,
+and all her being answered only too readily. She spent a delightful
+day at Fairholm, and went home in extravagantly high spirits.
+
+Dr. Dan called early the next morning, and found her with her hat on,
+just going out.
+
+"How are you this misty cold grey day?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, very bright," she answered. "I feel as if I were the sun, and I'm
+just going to shine out on the world to enliven it."
+
+"May I accompany you?" he asked.
+
+"The sun, alas! is a solitary luminary," she answered, shaking her
+head.
+
+"Then I shall hope for better luck next time," he said, and let her go
+alone.
+
+In the evening he came in again to have a game of cribbage with Mrs.
+Caldwell. Beth was sleepy and had gone to bed early. In the pauses of
+the game they talked about her, and the responsibilities of a family.
+
+"A girl wants some one to look after her," the doctor said,
+"especially if she has money."
+
+"Yes, indeed," Mrs. Caldwell replied, "girls are a great anxiety. Now
+a boy you can put into a profession and have done with it. But it is
+not so easy to find a suitable husband for a girl."
+
+"But, of course, if she has a little money it makes a difference," he
+observed. "Only she should have some one to advise her in the spending
+of it. Now, Miss Beth, for instance, will be as much a child at
+twenty-one in money matters as she is now."
+
+"I hope we shall find the right man for her before then," Mrs.
+Caldwell answered archly; "not that I think her aunt's fortune will
+cause her much anxiety." She alluded to the smallness of the sum.
+
+"She gets some of the interest, I suppose, to go on with," he said.
+
+"Just enough to dress on."
+
+Beth saw a great deal of Dr. Dan after that. She was not in the least
+in love with him, but they became intimate all the sooner on that
+account. A girl shrinks more shyly from a man she loves than from one
+for whom she has only a liking; in the one case every womanly instinct
+is on the alert, in the other her feeling is not strong enough to seem
+worth curbing. Beth was fond of men's companionship, and Dr. Dan's
+assiduous attentions enlivened her, made her brain active, and brought
+the vision and the dream within reach; so that she moved in a happy
+light, but considered the source of it no more than she would have
+considered the stick that held the candle by which she read an
+entrancing book.
+
+There are idyllic gleams in all interesting lives; but life as we live
+it from day to day is not idyllic. In Beth's case there was the
+inevitable friction, the shocks and jars of difficulties and
+disagreements with her mother. These had been suspended for a time
+after her return, but began to break out again, fomented very often by
+Bernadine, who was always her mother's favourite, but was never a
+pleasant child. Dr. Dan came one very wet day, and found Beth sitting
+in the drawing-room alone, looking miserable. She had done all her
+little self-imposed tasks honestly, but had reaped no reward. On the
+contrary, there had come upon her a dreadful vision of herself doing
+that sort of thing on always into old age, as Aunt Victoria did her
+French, with no object, and to no purpose; and for the first time she
+formulated a feeling that had gradually been growing up in her of
+late: "I must have more of a life than this." What could she do,
+however, tied to that stupid place, without a suspicion as yet that
+she had it in her to do anything special, and without friends to help
+her, with no one to advise. As she reflected, the hopelessness of it
+all wrung from her some of the bitterest tears she ever shed. If her
+mother would only send her back to Miss Blackburne she would be
+learning something, at all events; but, although Mrs. Caldwell had
+said nothing definite on the subject, Beth was pretty certain by this
+time that she did not mean to let her return to school.
+
+Beth was in the middle of this misery when Dr. Dan arrived.
+
+"How's this?" he said, "Down? You should have the window open. It's
+not cold to-day, though it's wet; and the room is quite stuffy. Never
+be afraid of fresh air, you know."
+
+"I'm not," Beth said. "I didn't know the window was shut. Open it as
+wide as you like--the wider the better for me."
+
+"That's better," he said, as the fresh air flowed in. "It's singular
+how women will shut themselves up. No wonder they get out of spirits!
+Now, I never let myself run down. When one thing goes wrong, I just
+take up another, and don't bother. You'd think I wasn't having much of
+a time here; but I'm as happy as the day is long, and I want to see
+you the same." He sat down beside her on the old-fashioned sofa, took
+her hand, and began to stroke it gently. "Cheer up, little girl," he
+added. "I believe you've been crying. Aren't they kind to you?"
+
+"Oh yes, they're kind enough," Beth answered, soothed by the caress;
+"at least they mean to be. The misery is in myself. I feel all
+dissatisfied."
+
+"Not when I'm with you, do you?" he asked reproachfully.
+
+"No, I don't bother about myself when I have you to talk to," Beth
+answered. "You come in fresh, and give me something else to think
+about."
+
+"Then, look here, Beth," he said, putting his arm round her. "I don't
+think I can do better than take you away with me. You've a head on
+your shoulders, and an original way with you that would be sure to
+bring people about the house, and you're well connected and look
+it;--all of which would be good for my practice. Besides, a young
+doctor must marry. I'm over thirty, though you might not think it.
+Come, what do you say? You'd have a very good time of it as my wife, I
+can tell you. All your own way, and no nagging. You know what _I_ am,
+a cheery fellow, never put out by anything. Now, what do you say?"
+
+"Are you asking me to marry you?" said Beth, breaking into a smile.
+The position struck her as comical rather than serious.
+
+"Why, what else?" he replied, smiling also. "I see you are recovering
+your spirits. You'll be as happy as the day is long when we're
+married. You'd never get on with anybody else as you'd do with me. I
+don't think anybody else would understand you."
+
+Beth laughed. She liked him, and she liked to be caressed. Why not
+marry him and be independent of every one? She hadn't the slightest
+objection at the moment; far from it, for she saw in the offer the one
+means of escape she was likely to have from the long dull dreary
+days, and the loneliness, which was all the life she could have to
+look forward to when he had gone. And he was good-looking, too, and
+nice--everybody said so. Besides, they would all be pleased if she
+accepted him, her mother especially so. Now that she came to think of
+it, she perceived that this was what they had been suggesting to her
+ever since her return.
+
+"It is settled then?" he said, stooping forward to look into her face.
+
+She looked at him shyly and laughed again. For the life of her she
+could not keep her countenance, although she felt she was behaving in
+the silly, giggling-girl sort of way she so much despised.
+
+"That's all right," he exclaimed, looking extremely well pleased; and
+at that moment Mrs. Caldwell walked into the room, just in time to
+witness a lover-like caress. Beth jumped up, covered with confusion.
+Mrs. Caldwell looked from one to the other, and waited for an
+explanation.
+
+"We've just come to the conclusion that we cannot live apart," Dan
+said deliberately, rising at the same time and taking Beth's hand.
+
+"My dear child!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, embracing Beth with happy
+tears in her eyes. "This _is_ a joy! I _do_ congratulate you."
+
+Beth became suddenly serious. The aspect of the affair had changed. It
+was no longer a game of the moment, but a settled business, already
+irrevocable. She wanted to explain that she had not actually pledged
+herself, that she must take time to consider; but her heart failed her
+in view of her mother's delight. It was Beth's great weakness that, as
+a rule, she could neither spoil pleasure nor give pain to save herself
+in an emergency.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+When Dan came to see her the next morning, he found her in a mixed
+mood. Half-a-dozen times during the night she had declined to marry
+him in a painful scene, but just as often her imagination would run on
+into the unknown life she would have to lead with him. She saw herself
+in white satin and lace and pearls, a slender figure at the head of a
+long dining-table, interesting to everybody, and Dan was at the foot,
+looking quite distinguished in evening dress, with his glossy black
+hair and wonderful clear skin. She had gathered the nicest people in
+the neighbourhood about her, and on her right there was a shadowy
+person, a man of mark, and knightly, who delighted in her
+conversation.
+
+When she came downstairs to receive Dan she was coughing, and he
+showed his devotion by being greatly concerned about her health. He
+said she must have port wine and a tonic, and be out in the air as
+much as possible, and suggested that they should go for a walk at once
+as it was a lovely day, though still wet under foot.
+
+"I would not ask you to walk if I had a carriage to offer you," he
+said, "for I hate to see a delicate lady on foot in the mud. But you
+shall have your carriage yet, please God, all in good time!"
+
+"Where shall we go?" said Beth when they left the house.
+
+"Oh, anywhere," he answered. "Take me to one of your own favourite
+haunts."
+
+She thought of the Fairholm cliffs for a moment, but felt that they
+were sacred to many recollections with which she would not care to
+associate this new experience. "I'll show you the chalybeate spring,"
+she said.
+
+They turned out of Orchard Street, and went down the hill to the Beck,
+a broad, clear, shallow rivulet, that came round a sharp green curve
+between high banks, well wooded with old trees, all in their heavy,
+dark-green, summer foliage. As they crossed the rustic wooden bridge
+Beth paused a little to look up at the trees and love them, and down
+into the clear water at the scarlet sticklebacks heading up stream.
+Her companion looked at her in surprise when she stopped, and then
+followed the direction of her eyes. All he saw, however, was a shallow
+stream, a green bank, and some trees.
+
+"This is not very interesting," he observed.
+
+Beth made no reply, but led the way up the hill on the other side,
+and, to the right, passed a row of cottages with long gardens at the
+back running down to the brow of the bank that overhung the Beck. In
+most of these cottages she was an object of suspicion because of her
+uncanny words and ways, and she knew it, and the thought of it was a
+grief to her. She wanted the people to like her as she would have
+liked them had they let her. The wish to win them fired her
+imagination. She looked on ahead into futurity, and was a beautiful
+lady, driving a pair of ponies down a wooded lane, with a carriage
+full of good things for the cottagers, and they all loved her, and
+were very glad to see her.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" Dan asked.
+
+"How nice it would be to be rich," she replied.
+
+"But you will be well off when you're twenty-one, I am told."
+
+"I suppose there's a chance of it," she answered dreamily.
+
+(The ponies had arrived at the village by this time, and she was
+looking up at an old grey church with a red roof.)
+
+"Do you know what your aunt's income was?" he asked.
+
+"Seven or eight hundred a year," she answered absently.
+
+(The sexton's little house stood by the gate leading into the
+churchyard. His wife came out when the carriage stopped, wiping
+soap-suds from her bare arms with her apron. Beth leaned forward and
+held out her hand to her, and the woman smiled a cordial welcome. She
+had a round flat face and fair hair. Then Beth handed her a mysterious
+package from the carriage, which she received half in delight and half
+in inquiry.)
+
+But Beth's imagination stopped there, for she perceived that she had
+passed the gate of the garden in which was the chalybeate spring.
+There was a cottage in the garden, and Beth turned back, and went up
+to the door, where a woman was standing holding a plump child, whose
+little fat thigh, indented by the pressure, bulged over her bare arm.
+
+"May we have a drink, please?" Beth asked.
+
+"Yes, and welcome," the woman answered. "I'll fetch you a glass."
+
+"Let me hold the baby," said Beth.
+
+The woman smiled, and handed him to her. Beth took him awkwardly, and
+squeezed him up in her arms as a child holds a kitten.
+
+"Isn't he nice?" she said.
+
+"That's a matter of taste," Dan answered. "I don't like 'em
+fat-bottomed myself."
+
+Beth froze at the expression. When the woman returned, she handed the
+child back to her carefully, but without a smile, took the glass, and
+went down to the spring by a narrow winding path which took them out
+of sight of the cottage directly. Here it was old trees again, and
+green banks, with the Beck below. When they were under the trees Beth
+looked up at a big elm, and her companion noticed her lips move.
+
+"What are you saying to yourself?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing to myself," she answered. "I'm saying, 'Oh, tree, give me of
+thy strength!' the Eastern invocation."
+
+He laughed, and wanted to know what rot that was; and again Beth was
+jarred.
+
+"You'll have no luck if you don't respect the big trees," she said.
+
+"Oh, by Jove, if we wait for the big trees to make our luck, we shan't
+have much!" he rejoined, picking up a pebble and firing it into the
+Beck below.
+
+They were on a narrow path now, about half-way down the bank, and
+here, in a hollow, the chalybeate spring bubbled out, and was gathered
+by a wooden spout into a slender stream, which fell on the ground,
+where, in the course of time, it had made a basin for itself that was
+always partly full. The water was icy cold, and somewhat the colour of
+light on steel. Beth held the glass to the spout, rinsed it first,
+then filled it, and offered it to Dan, but he dryly declined to take
+it "Not for me, thank you," he said; "I never touch any medicinal
+beastliness."
+
+For the third time Beth was jarred. She threw the water on the ground,
+refilled the glass, and drank. Dan saw he had made a mistake.
+
+"I'll change my mind and have some too," he said, anxious to mollify
+her.
+
+Beth filled the glass again, and handed it to him in silence, but no
+after-thought could atone for the discourtesy of his first refusal,
+and she looked in another direction, not even troubling herself to see
+whether he tried the water or not.
+
+There was a rustic seat in the hollow of the bank, and he suggested
+that they should sit there a while before they returned. Beth
+acquiesced; and soon the sputter of the little spring bubbling into
+its basin, the chitter of birds in the branches above, the sunbeams
+filtering from behind through the leaves, the glint of the Beck below
+slipping between its banks, soundless, to the sea, enthralled her.
+
+"Isn't this lovely?" she ejaculated.
+
+"Yes, it's very jolly--with you," he said.
+
+"You wouldn't like it so well without me?" Beth asked.
+
+"No, I should think not," he rejoined. "And you wouldn't like it as
+well without me, I hope."
+
+"No," Beth responded. "It makes it nicer having some one to share it."
+
+"Now that's not quite kind," he answered in an injured tone. "Some one
+is any one; and _I_ shouldn't be satisfied with anybody but you."
+
+"Well, but I am satisfied with you," Beth answered dispassionately.
+
+He took her hand, laid it in his own palm, and looked at it. It was a
+child's hand as yet, delicately pink and white.
+
+"What a pretty thing!" he said. "Oh, you smile at that." He reached up
+to put a lock of her brown hair back from her cheek, and then he put
+his arm round her.
+
+Next day he was obliged to go away--Beth never thought of inquiring
+why or wherefore; but she heard her mother and Lady Benyon talking
+about the very eligible appointment he was hoping to get. He took an
+affectionate leave of her. When he had gone she went off to the sands,
+and was surprised to find how glad she was to be alone again. The tide
+was far out, and there were miles and miles of the hard buff sand, a
+great, open space, not empty to Beth, but teeming with thought and
+full of feeling. Some distance on in front of her there was a
+solitary figure, a man walking with bent head and hands folded behind
+him, holding a stick--Count Gustav Bartahlinsky's favourite attitude
+when deep in meditation. Beth hurried on, and soon overtook him.
+
+"Would you rather be alone, Count Gustav?" she said.
+
+He turned to look at her, then smiled, and they walked on together.
+
+"So they are going to marry you off," he said abruptly.
+
+"Yes," Beth answered laconically.
+
+"Do you wish to be married?"
+
+"No, I do not."
+
+"Then why do you consent?"
+
+"Because I'm weak; I can't help it," she said.
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"I can't," she repeated. "I'm firm enough about some things, but in
+this I vacillate. When I am alone I know I am making a mistake, but
+when I am with other people who think differently, my objection
+vanishes."
+
+"What is your objection?" he asked.
+
+"That is the difficulty," she said. "I can't define it. Do you know
+Dr. Dan?"
+
+"I can't say I know him," he answered. "I have met him and talked to
+him. He expresses the most unexceptional opinions; but it is premature
+to respect a man for the opinions he expresses--wait and see what he
+does. Words and acts don't necessarily agree. Sometimes, however, a
+chance remark which has very little significance for the person who
+makes it, is like an aperture that lets in light on the whole
+character." He cogitated a little, then added, "Don't let them hurry
+you. Take time to know your man, and if you are not satisfied
+yourself, if there is anything that jars upon _you_, never mind what
+other people think, have nothing to do with him."
+
+When Beth went home, she found her mother sitting by the drawing-room
+window placidly knitting and looking out. "I am afraid I am very
+late," Beth said. "I have been on the sands with Count Gustav."
+
+"Ah, that was nice, I should think," Mrs. Caldwell observed
+graciously. "And what were you talking about?"
+
+"Being married, principally," Beth answered.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell beamed above her knitting. "And what did he say?"
+
+"He strongly advised me not to marry if I didn't want to."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell changed countenance. "Did he indeed?" she observed with
+a sniff. Then she reflected. "And what had you been saying to draw
+such a remark from him?"
+
+"I said I didn't want to be married," Beth blurted out with an effort.
+
+"How could you tell Count Gustav such a story, Beth?" Mrs. Caldwell
+asked, shaking her head reproachfully.
+
+"It was no story, mamma."
+
+"Nonsense, Beth," her mother rejoined. "It is nothing but perverseness
+that makes you say such things. You feel more interesting, I believe,
+when you are in opposition. If I had refused to allow you to be
+married, you would have been ready to run away. _I_ know girls! They
+all want to be married, and they all pretend they don't. Why, when I
+was a girl I thought of nothing else; but I didn't talk about it."
+
+"Perhaps you had nothing else to think about," Beth ventured.
+
+"And what have you to think about, pray?"
+
+Beth clasped her hands, and her grey eyes dilated.
+
+"Beth, don't look like that," her mother remonstrated. "You are always
+acting, and it _is_ such a pity--as you will find when you go out into
+the world, I am afraid, and people avoid you."
+
+"I didn't know I was doing anything peculiar," Beth said; "and how am
+I to help it if I don't know?"
+
+"Just help it by only doing as you are told until you are able to
+judge for yourself. Look at the silly way you have been talking this
+afternoon! What must Count Gustav have thought of you? Never be so
+silly again. You _must_ be married now, you know. When a girl lets a
+man kiss her, she _has_ to marry him."
+
+Beth had been watching her mother's fingers as she knitted until she
+was half mesmerised by the bright glint of the needles; but now she
+woke up and burst out laughing. "If that be the case," she said, "he
+is not the only one that I shall have to marry."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell's hands dropped on her lap, and she looked up at Beth in
+dismay. "What do you mean?" she said.
+
+"Just that," Beth answered.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you have allowed men to kiss you?" Mrs.
+Caldwell cried.
+
+Beth looked up as if trying to keep her countenance.
+
+"You wicked girl, how dare you?"
+
+"Well, mamma, if it were wicked, why didn't you warn me?" Beth said.
+"How was I to know?"
+
+"Your womanly instincts ought to have taught you better."
+
+Unfortunately for this theory, all Beth's womanly instincts set in the
+opposite direction. Her father's ardent temperament warred in her with
+Aunt Victoria's Puritan principles, and there was no telling as yet
+which would prevail.
+
+Beth made no reply to that last assertion of her mother's, but
+remained half sitting on the table, with her feet stretched out in
+front of her, and her hands supporting her on either side, which
+brought her shoulders up to her ears. It was a most inelegant
+attitude, and peculiarly exasperating to Mrs. Caldwell.
+
+"Oh, you wicked--you bad--you _abandoned_ girl!" she exclaimed, losing
+her temper altogether. "My heart is _broken_ with you. Go to your
+room, and stay there. I feel as if I could never endure the sight of
+you again."
+
+Beth gathered herself together slowly, and strolled away with an air
+of indifference; but as soon as she found herself alone in her own
+room with the door shut, she dropped on her knees and lifted her
+clasped hands to heaven in an agony of remorse for having tormented
+her mother, and in despair about that wretched engagement. "O Lord,
+what am I to do?" she said; "what am I to do?" If she could make up
+her mind once for all either way, she would be satisfied; it was this
+miserable state of indecision that was unendurable.
+
+Presently in the room below, she thought she heard her mother sob aloud.
+She listened, breathless. Her mother was sobbing. Beth jumped up and
+opened her door. What should she do? Her unhappy mother--heart-broken,
+indeed. What a life hers was--a life of hard privation, of suffering
+most patiently borne, of the utmost self-denial for her children's sake,
+of loss, of loneliness, of bitter disappointment! First her husband
+taken, then her dearest child; her ungrateful boys not over-kind to her;
+and now this last blow dealt her by Beth, just when the prospect of
+getting her well married was bringing a gleam of happiness into her
+mother's life. The piteous sobs continued. Beth stole downstairs, bent
+on atoning in her own person by any sacrifice for all the sorrows, no
+matter by whom occasioned, which she felt were culminating in this final
+outburst of grief. She found her mother standing beside the high
+old-fashioned mantelpiece, leaning her poor head against it.
+
+"Mamma," Beth cried, "do forgive me. I never meant to--I never meant
+to hurt you so. I will do anything to please you. I was only teasing
+you about kissing men. I haven't been in the habit of kissing any one.
+And of course I'll marry Dan as soon as you like. And we'll all be
+happy--there!"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell held out her arms, and Beth sprang into them, and hugged
+her tight and burst into tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+That autumn Beth was married to Daniel Maclure, M.D., &c., &c. At the
+time of her marriage she hardly knew what his full name was. She had
+always heard him called "the doctor" or "Dr. Dan," and had never
+thought of him as anything else, nor did she know anything else about
+him--his past, his family, or his prospects, which, considering her
+age, is not surprising; but what did surprise her in after years, when
+she discovered it, was to find that her friends who made the match
+knew no more about him than she did. He had scraped acquaintance with
+her brother Jim in a public billiard-room in Rainharbour, and been
+introduced by him to the other members of her family, who, because his
+address was good and his appearance attractive, had taken it for
+granted that everything else concerning him was equally satisfactory.
+
+Beth decided to keep her surname for her father's sake, and also
+because she could not see why she should lose her identity because she
+had married. Everybody said it was absurd of her; but she was
+determined, and from the time of her marriage she signed herself
+Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure.
+
+Dan confided to Mrs. Caldwell that he was troubled by some few small
+debts which he was most anxious to pay in order that he might start
+his married life clear, and the poor lady generously reduced her
+slender income by selling some shares to raise the money for him. When
+he accepted it, his eyes filled with tears, as was usual with him in
+moments of emotion.
+
+"O mamma!" Beth exclaimed when she heard of the sacrifice, "how could
+you? I do not deserve such generosity, for I have never been any
+comfort to you; and I shall always be miserable about it, thinking how
+badly you want the money."
+
+"There will be one mouth less to feed when you have gone, you know,
+Beth," Mrs. Caldwell answered bravely, "and I shall be the happier for
+thinking that you start clear. Debt crushed us our whole married life.
+I shall be the easier if I know you haven't that burden to bear.
+Besides, Dan will repay me as soon as he can. He is a thoroughly good
+fellow."
+
+"You shall be repaid, mamma, in more ways than one, if I live," Beth
+vowed.
+
+Uncle James Patten doled out a five-pound-note to Beth by way of a
+wedding present from the long rent-roll her mother should have
+inherited.
+
+"This is to help with your trousseau, but do not be extravagant," he
+said in his pleasant way. "As the wife of a professional man, you
+will descend from my class to the class below, the middle class, and
+you should dress according to your station. But you are doing as well
+as we could expect you to do, considering your character and conduct.
+Some doubted if you would ever receive an offer of marriage, or have
+the sense to accept it if one were made you; but I always said you
+would have the doctor if he would have you."
+
+Beth's impulse was to throw the note at him, but she restrained
+herself on her brother Jim's account. It was suspected that Uncle
+James was only waiting for a plausible excuse to disinherit Jim; and
+he found it the next time Jim stayed at Fairholm. They were in the
+drawing-room together one day, and a maid was mending the fire. Uncle
+James was sitting at a writing-table with a mirror in front of him,
+and he declared that in that mirror he distinctly saw his nephew chuck
+the maid-servant under the chin, which was conduct such as Mr. James
+Patten could not be expected to tolerate in his heir; so he altered
+his will, and after that all communication ceased between the two
+families, except such as Aunt Grace Mary managed to keep up
+surreptitiously.
+
+Aunt Grace Mary was very generous to Beth, and so also was old Lady
+Benyon. Had it not been for these two, Beth would have left home
+ill-provided for. Thanks to them, however, she was spared that
+humiliation, and went with an ample outfit.
+
+In the days preceding her marriage, Beth sometimes thought of
+Charlotte, and of the long fiction of that wonderful time when they
+were friends. Her busy brain had created many another story since
+then, but none that had the fascination of that first sustained
+effort. Hector's mysterious establishment on the other side of the
+headland, the troubles in Spain, the wicked machinations of their
+enemies, the Secret Service of Humanity, the horses, yacht, and useful
+doctor--who had not held a high place in their estimation, being
+merely looked upon as a trustworthy tool of Hector's; yet it was he
+whom Beth was to marry. She wondered what Charlotte would think of her
+when she heard it, and of Hector and the whole story; but she never
+knew, for Charlotte was at school in France during this period, and
+never came into Beth's life again.
+
+During the early days of her married life a sort of content settled
+upon Beth; a happy sense of well-being, of rest and satisfaction, came
+to her, and that strange vague yearning ache, the presence of which
+made all things incomplete, was laid. The atmosphere in which she now
+lived was sensuous, not spiritual, and although she was unaware of
+this, she felt its influence. Dan made much of her, and she liked
+that; but the vision and the dream had ceased. Her intellectual
+activity was stimulated, however, and it was not long before she
+began to think for herself more clearly and connectedly than she had
+ever done before.
+
+They spent the first few weeks in London in a whirl of excitement,
+living at sumptuous restaurants, and going to places of amusement
+every night, where Beth would sit entranced with music, singing,
+dancing, and acting, never taking her eyes from the stage, and
+yearning in her enthusiasm to do the same things herself--not doubting
+but that she could either, so perfectly had she the power to identify
+herself with the performers, and realise, as from within, what their
+sensations must be.
+
+When she had been in London as a girl at school, she had seen nothing
+but the bright side of life, the wholesome, happy, young side. A poor
+beggar to be helped, or a glimpse in the street of a sorrowful face
+that saddened her for a moment, was the worst she knew of the great
+wicked city; but now, with Dan for a companion, the realities of vice
+and crime were brought home to her; she learnt to read signs of
+depravity in the faces of men and women, and to associate certain
+places with evil-doers as their especial haunts. Her husband's
+interest in the subject was inexhaustible; he seemed to think of
+little else. He would point out people in places of public amusement,
+and describe in detail the loathsome lives they led. Every
+well-dressed woman he saw he suspected. He would pick out one because
+she had yellow hair, and another because her two little children were
+precocious and pretty, and declare them to be "kept women." That a
+handsome woman could be anything but vicious had apparently never
+occurred to him. He was very high-minded on the subject of sin if the
+sinner were a woman, and thought no degradation sufficient for her. In
+speaking of such women he used epithets from which Beth recoiled. She
+allowed them to pass, however, in consideration of the moral
+exasperation that inspired them, and the personal rectitude his
+attitude implied. The subject had a horrible kind of fascination for
+her; she hated it, yet she could not help listening, although her
+heart ached and her soul sickened. She listened in silence, however,
+neither questioning nor discussing, but simply attending; collecting
+material for which she had no use at the moment, and storing it
+without design--material which she would find herself forced to turn
+to account eventually, but in what way and to what purpose there was
+no knowing as yet.
+
+They were to live at Slane, an inland town near Morningquest, where
+modern manufactures had competed successfully with ancient
+agricultural interests, and altered the attitude of the landed gentry
+towards trade, and towards the townspeople, beguiling them to be less
+exclusive because there was money in the town, self-interest weighing
+with them all at once in regard to the neighbours whom Christian
+precept had vainly urged them to recognise.
+
+Dr. Maclure had taken an old-fashioned house in a somewhat solitary
+position on the outskirts of Slane, but near enough to the town to
+secure paying patients, as he hoped, while far enough out of it to
+invite county callers. It stood just on the highroad, from which it
+was only divided by a few evergreen shrubs and an iron railing; but it
+was picturesque, nevertheless, with creepers--magnolia, wisteria, and
+ivy--clustering on the dark red bricks. At the back there was a good
+garden, and in front, across the road, were green meadows with
+hedgerows--a tangle of holly, hawthorn, and bramble--and old trees,
+surviving giants of a forest long uprooted and forgotten. It was a
+rich and placid scene, infinitely soothing to one fresh from the
+turmoil of the city, and weary of the tireless motion, the incessant
+sound and tumult of the sea. When Beth looked out upon the meadows
+first, she sighed and said to herself, "Surely, surely one should be
+happy here!"
+
+The house was inconveniently arranged inside, and had less
+accommodation than its outside pretensions promised; but Beth was
+delighted with it all, and took possession of her keys with pride. She
+was determined to be a good manager, and make her housekeeping money
+go a long way. Her dream was to save out of it, and have something
+over to surprise Dan with when the bills were paid. To her chagrin,
+however, she found that she was not to have any housekeeping money at
+all.
+
+"You are too young to have the care of managing money," said Dan.
+"Just give the orders, and I'll see about paying the bills."
+
+But the system did not answer. Beth had no idea what she ought to be
+spending, and either the bills were too high or the diet was too low,
+and Dan grumbled perpetually. If the housekeeping were at all frugal,
+he was anything but cheery during meals; but if she ordered him all he
+wanted, there were sure to be scenes on the day of reckoning. He
+blamed her bad management, and she said nothing; but she knew she
+could have managed on any reasonable sum to which he might have
+limited her. She had too much self-respect to ask for money, however,
+if he did not choose to give it to her.
+
+It surprised her to find that what he had to eat was a matter of great
+importance to him. He fairly gloated over things he liked, and in
+order to indulge him, and keep the bills down besides, she went
+without herself; and he never noticed her self-denial. He was apt to
+take too much of his favourite dishes, and was constantly regretting
+it. "I wish I had not eaten so much of that cursed _vol au vent_; it
+never agrees with me," he would say; but he would eat as much as ever
+next time. Beth could not help observing such traits. She did not set
+them down to his personal discredit, however, but to the discredit of
+his sex at large. She had always heard that men were self-indulgent,
+and Dan was a man; that was the nearest she came to blaming him at
+first. Being her husband had made a difference in her feeling for him;
+before their marriage she was not so tolerant.
+
+Her housekeeping duties by no means filled her day. An hour or so in
+the morning was all they occupied at most, and the time must have hung
+heavy on her hands had she had no other pursuit to beguile her.
+Fortunately she had no intention of allowing her plans for the
+improvement of her mind to lapse simply because she had married. On
+the contrary, she felt the defects of her education more keenly than
+ever, and expected Dan to sympathise with her in her efforts to remedy
+them. He came in one day soon after they were settled, and found her
+sitting at the end of the dining-room table with her back to the
+window and a number of books spread out about her.
+
+"This looks learned," he said. "What are you doing?"
+
+"I am looking for something to study," she answered. "What writers
+have helped you most?"
+
+"Helped me most!--how do you mean?"
+
+"Well, helped you to be upright, you know, to make good resolutions
+and keep straight."
+
+"Thank you," he said; "I have not felt the need of good resolutions,
+and this is the first hint I have had that I require any. If you will
+inquire among my friends, I fancy you will find that I have the credit
+of going pretty straight as it is."
+
+"O Dan!" Beth exclaimed, "you quite misunderstand me. I never meant to
+insinuate that you are not straight. I was only thinking of the way in
+which we all fall short of our ideals."
+
+"Ideals be hanged!" said Dan. "If a man does his duty, that's ideal
+enough, isn't it?"
+
+"I should think so," Beth said pacifically.
+
+Dan went to the mantelpiece, and stood there, studying himself with
+interest in the glass. "A lady told me the other day I looked like a
+military man," he said, smoothing his glossy black hair and twisting
+the ends of his long moustache.
+
+"Well, I think you look much more military than medical," Beth
+replied, considering him.
+
+"I'm glad of that," he said, smiling at himself complacently.
+
+"Are you?" Beth exclaimed in surprise. "Why? A medical man has a finer
+career than a military man, and should have a finer presence if
+ability, purpose, and character count for anything towards
+appearance. Personally I think I should wish to look like what I am,
+if I could choose."
+
+"So you do," he rejoined, adjusting his hat with precision as he
+spoke, and craning his neck to see himself sideways in the glass. "You
+look like a silly little idiot. But never mind. That's all a girl need
+be if she's pretty; and if she isn't pretty, she's of no account, so
+it doesn't matter what she is."
+
+When he had gone, Beth sat for a long time thinking; but she did no
+more reading that day, nor did she ever again consult Dan about the
+choice of books, or expect him to sympathise with her in her work.
+
+For the first few months of her married life, she had no pocket-money
+at all. Aunt Grace Mary slipped two sovereigns into her hand when they
+parted, but these Beth kept, she hardly knew why, as she had her
+half-year's dividend to look forward to. About the time that her money
+was due, Dan began to talk incessantly of money difficulties. Bills
+were pressing, and he did not know where on earth to look for a
+five-pound-note. He did not think Beth too young to be worried
+morning, noon, and night on the subject, although she took it very
+seriously. One morning after he had made her look anxious, he suddenly
+remembered a letter he had for her, and handed it to her. It was from
+her lawyer, and contained a cheque for twenty-five pounds, the
+long-looked-forward-to pocket money.
+
+"Will this be of any use to you?" Beth asked, handing him the cheque.
+
+His countenance cleared. "Of use to me? I should think it would!" he
+exclaimed. "It will just make all the difference. You must sign it,
+though."
+
+When she had signed it, he put it in his pocket-book, and his spirits
+went up to the cheery point. He adjusted his hat at the glass over the
+dining-room mantelpiece, lit a shilling cigar, and went off to his
+hospital jauntily. Beth was glad to have relieved him of his anxiety.
+She half hoped he might give her something out of the cheque, if it
+were only a pound or two, she wanted some little things so badly; but
+he never offered her a penny. She thought of Aunt Grace Mary's two
+sovereigns, but the dread of having nothing in case of an emergency
+kept her from spending them.
+
+There was one thing Dan did which Beth resented. He opened her
+letters.
+
+"Husband and wife are one," he said. "They should have no secrets from
+each other. I should like you to open my letters, too, but they
+contain professional secrets, you see, and that wouldn't do."
+
+He spoke in what he called his cheery way, but Beth had begun to feel
+that there was another word which would express his manner better, and
+now it occurred to her.
+
+"You have no right to open my letters," she said; "and being facetious
+on the subject does not give you any."
+
+"But if I chose to?" he asked.
+
+"It will be a breach of good taste and good feeling," she answered.
+
+No more was said on the subject, and Dan did not open her letters for
+a little, but then he began again. He had always some excuse,
+however--either he hadn't looked at the address, or he had been
+impatient to see if there were any message for himself, and so on; but
+Beth was not mollified although she said nothing, and her annoyance
+made her secretive. She would watch for the postman, and take the
+letters from him herself, and conceal her own, so that Dan might not
+even know that she had received any.
+
+She had a difficulty with him about another matter too. His lover-like
+caresses while they were engaged had not been distasteful to her; but
+after their marriage he kept up an incessant billing and cooing, and
+of a coarser kind, which soon satiated her. She was a nicely balanced
+creature, with many interests in life, and love could be but one among
+the number in any case; but Dan almost seemed to expect it to be the
+only one.
+
+"Oh dear! must I be embraced again?" she exclaimed one day, with quite
+comical dismay on being interrupted in the middle of a book that was
+interesting her at the moment.
+
+Dan looked disconcerted. In his cheerful masculine egotism it had not
+occurred to him that Beth might find incessant demonstrations of
+affection monotonous. He would smile at pictures of the waning of the
+honeymoon, where the husband returns to his book and his dog, and the
+wife sits apart sad and neglected; it was inevitable that the man
+should tire, he had other things to think of; but that the wife should
+be the first to be bored was incredible, and worse: it was unwomanly.
+
+Dan went to the mantelpiece, and stood looking down into the fire, and
+his grey-green eyes became suffused.
+
+"Have I hurt you, Dan?" Beth exclaimed, jumping up and going to him.
+
+"Hurt me!" he said, taking out his pocket-handkerchief, "that is not
+the word for it. You have made me very unhappy."
+
+"Oh!" said Beth, her own inclinations disregarded at once, "I _am_
+sorry!"
+
+But he had satiated her once for all, and she never recovered any zest
+for his caresses. She found no charm or freshness in them, especially
+after she perceived that they were for his own gratification,
+irrespective of hers. The privileges of love are not to be wrested
+from us with impunity. Habits of dutiful submission destroy the power
+to respond, and all that they leave to survive of the warm reality of
+love at last is a cold pretence. By degrees, as Beth felt forced to be
+dutiful, she ceased to be affectionate.
+
+Although Dan dressed to go out with scrupulous care, he took no
+trouble to make himself nice in the house. Care in dress was not in
+him a necessary part and expression of a refined nature, but an
+attempt to win consideration. He never dressed for dinner when they
+were alone together. It was a trouble rather than a refreshment to him
+to get rid of the dust of the day and the associations of his
+walking-dress. This was a twofold disappointment to Beth. She had
+expected him to have the common politeness to dress for her benefit,
+and she was not pleased to find that the punctiliousness he displayed
+in the matter on occasion was merely veneer. It was a defect of
+breeding that struck her unpleasantly. They had been poor enough at
+home, but Beth had been accustomed all her life to have delicate china
+about her, and pictures and books, to walk on soft carpets and sit in
+easy-chairs; possessions of a superior class which, in her case, were
+symbols bespeaking refinement of taste and habits from which her soul
+had derived satisfaction even while her poor little fragile body
+starved. She dressed regularly and daintily herself, and Dan at the
+bottom of the table in his morning coat was an offence to her. She
+said nothing at first, however, so his manners still further
+deteriorated, until one night, after she had gone to her room, he
+walked in with his hat on, smoking a cigar. It was this last
+discourtesy that roused her to rebel.
+
+"This is my bedroom," she said significantly.
+
+"I know," he answered.
+
+"You know--yet you keep your hat on, and you are smoking," she
+proceeded.
+
+"Why," he rejoined, "and if I do, what then? I know ladies who let
+their husbands smoke in bed."
+
+"Probably," she said. "I have heard of more singularly coarse things
+than that even. But I am accustomed to pure air in my room, and I must
+have it."
+
+"And suppose I should choose to stay here and smoke?" he said.
+
+"Of course I could not prevent you," she answered; "but I should go
+and sleep in another room."
+
+"H'm," he grunted. "You're mighty particular."
+
+But he went away all the same, and did not appear there again either
+with his hat on or smoking a cigar.
+
+Beth suffered miserably from the want of proper privacy in her life.
+She had none whatever now. It had been her habit to read and reflect
+when she went to bed, to prepare for a tranquil night by setting aside
+the troubles of the day, and purifying her mind systematically even as
+she washed her body; but all that was impossible if her husband were
+at home. He would break in upon her reading with idle gossip, fidget
+about the room when she wished to meditate, and leave her no decent
+time of privacy for anything. He had his own dressing-room, where he
+was secure from interruption, but never had the delicacy to comprehend
+that his presence could be any inconvenience to Beth. And it was worse
+than an inconvenience. It was a positive hardship--never to be sure of
+a moment alone.
+
+One afternoon, when she had locked herself in her bedroom, he came and
+turned the handle of the door noisily.
+
+"Open the door," he said.
+
+"Do you want anything?" she asked.
+
+"Open the door," he repeated.
+
+She obeyed, and he came in, and glanced round suspiciously.
+
+"What were you doing?" he asked.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, "this is intolerable!"
+
+"What is intolerable?" he demanded.
+
+"This intrusion," she replied. "I want to be alone for a little; can't
+you understand that?"
+
+"No, I cannot understand a wife locking her husband out of her room,
+and what's more, you've no business to do it. I've a legal right to
+come here whenever I choose."
+
+Then Beth began to realise what the law of man was with regard to her
+person.
+
+"I never intrude upon you when you shut yourself up," she
+remonstrated.
+
+"Oh, that is different," he answered arrogantly. "I may have brainwork
+to do, or something important to think about There is no comparison."
+
+Beth went to her dressing-table, sat down in front of it, folded her
+hands, and waited doggedly.
+
+He looked at her for a little; then he said, "I don't understand your
+treatment of me at all, Beth. But there's no understanding women." He
+spoke as if it were the women's fault, and to their discredit, that he
+couldn't understand them.
+
+Beth made no answer, and he finally took himself off, slamming the
+door after him.
+
+"Thank goodness!" Beth exclaimed. "One would think he had bought me."
+
+Then she sat wondering what she should do. She must have some corner
+where she would be safe from intrusion. He had his consulting-room, a
+room called his laboratory, a surgery, and a dressing-room, where no
+one would dream of following him if he shut the door; she had
+literally not a corner. She left her bedroom, and walked through the
+other rooms on the same floor as she considered the matter; then she
+went up to the next floor, where the servants slept. Above that again
+there was an attic used as a box-room, and she went up there too. It
+was a barn of a place, supported by pillars, and extending apparently
+over the whole of the storey below. The roof sloped to the floor on
+either side, and the whole place was but ill-lighted by two small
+windows looking to the north. Dr. Maclure had taken over the house as
+it stood, furniture and all, from the last occupants, by whom this
+great attic had evidently been used as a lumber-room. There were
+various pieces of furniture in it--tables, chairs, and drawers, some
+broken, some in fair condition. At the farther end, opposite to the
+door, there was a pile of packing-cases and travelling-trunks. Beth
+had always thought that they stood up against the wall, but on going
+over to them now, she discovered that there was a space behind. The
+pile was too high for her to see over it, but by going down on her
+hands and knees where the sloping roof was too low for her to stoop,
+she found she could creep round it. It was the kind of thing a child
+would have done, but what was Beth but a child? On the other side of
+the pile it was almost dark. She could see something, however, when
+she stood up, which looked like a mark on the whitewash, and on
+running her hand over it she discovered it to be a narrow door flush
+with the wall. There was no handle or latch to it, but there was a key
+which had rusted in the keyhole and was not to be turned. The door was
+not locked, however, and Beth pushed it open, and found herself in a
+charming little room with a fireplace at one end of it, and opposite,
+at the other end, a large bow window. Beth was puzzled to understand
+how there came to be a room there at all. Then she recollected a sort
+of tower there was at the side of the house, which formed a deep
+embrasure in the drawing-room, a dressing-room to the visitor's room,
+and a bath-room on the floor above. The window looked out on the
+garden at the back of the house. A light iron balcony ran round it,
+the rail of which was so thickly covered with ivy that very little of
+the window was visible from below. Beth had noticed it, however, only
+she thought it was a dummy, and so also did Dan. The little room
+looked bright and cosy with the afternoon sun streaming in. It seemed
+to have been occupied at one time by some person of fastidious taste,
+judging by what furniture remained--a square Chippendale table with
+slender legs, two high-backed chairs covered with old-fashioned
+tapestry, and a huge mahogany bookcase of the same period, with glass
+doors above and cupboards below. The high white mantelpiece, adorned
+with vases and festoons of flowers, was of Adam's design, and so also
+was the dado and the cornice. The walls were painted a pale warm pink.
+A high brass fender, pierced, surrounded the fireplace, and there were
+a poker, tongs, and shovel to match, and a small brass scuttle still
+full of coals. There were ashes in the grate, too, as if the room had
+only lately been occupied. The boards were bare, but white and
+well-fitting, and in one corner of the room there was a piece of
+carpet rolled up.
+
+Beth dropped on to one of the dusty chairs, and looked round.
+Everything about her was curiously familiar, and her first impression
+was that she had been there before. On the other hand, she could
+hardly believe in the reality of what she saw, she thought she must be
+dreaming, for here was exactly what she had been pining for most in
+the whole wide world of late, a secret spot, sacred to herself, where
+she would be safe from intrusion.
+
+She went downstairs for some oil for the lock, and patiently worked at
+it until at last she succeeded in turning the key. Then, as it was too
+late to do anything more that day, she locked the door, and carried
+the key off in her pocket triumphantly.
+
+Half the night she lay awake thinking of her secret chamber; and as
+soon as Dan had gone out next morning, and she had done her
+housekeeping, she stole upstairs with duster and brush, and began to
+set it in order. All her treasures were contained in some old trunks
+of Aunt Victoria's which were in the attic, but had not been unpacked
+because she had no place to put the things. Dan had seen some of these
+treasures at Rainharbour, and considered them old rubbish, and, not
+thinking it likely that there would be anything else in the boxes, he
+had taken no further interest in them. He would have liked to have
+left them behind altogether, and even tried to laugh Beth out of what
+he called her sentimental attachment to odds and ends; but as most of
+the things had belonged to Aunt Victoria, she took his ridicule so ill
+that he wisely let the subject drop. He had been somewhat hasty in his
+estimation of the value of the contents of the boxes, however, for
+there were some handsome curios, a few miniatures and pictures of
+great artistic merit, some rare editions of books, besides laces,
+jewels, brocades, and other stuffs in them.
+
+When Beth had swept and dusted, she put down the carpet. Then she
+began to unpack. Among the first things she found were the old French
+books, a quarto Bible with the Apocrypha in it, Shakespeare in several
+volumes, and her school-books and note-books; some ornaments, some
+beautiful old curtains, and a large deep rug, like a Turkey carpet, in
+crimson and green and purple and gold, worked by Aunt Victoria. This
+she spread before the fireplace. The doorway she covered with a
+curtain, and two more she hung on either side of the window, so that
+they could not be seen from below. Her books of reference, desk,
+note-books, and writing materials she put on the table, arranged the
+ornaments on the mantelpiece, and hung the miniatures and pictures on
+the walls. Then she sat down and looked about her, well pleased with
+the whole effect. "Now," she exclaimed, "I am at home, thank God! I
+shall be able to study, to read and write, think and pray at last,
+undisturbed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+As Dan sympathised with none of Beth's tastes or interests, and seemed
+to have none of his own with which she could sympathise, their stock
+of conversation was soon exhausted, and there was nothing like
+companionship in their intercourse. If Beth had had no resources in
+herself, she would have had but a sorry time of it in those days,
+especially as she received no kindness from any one in Slane. Some of
+the other medical men's wives called when she first arrived, and she
+returned their calls punctually, but their courtesy went no farther.
+Mrs. Carne, the wife of the leading medical practitioner, asked her to
+lunch, and Mrs. Jeffreys, a surgeon's wife, asked her to afternoon
+tea; but as these invitations did not include her husband, she refused
+them. She invited these ladies and their husbands in return, however,
+but they both pleaded previous engagements.
+
+After the Maclures had been some little time at Slane, Lady Benyon
+bethought her of an old friend of hers, one Lady Beg, who lived in the
+neighbourhood, and asked her to call upon Beth, which she did
+forthwith, for she was one of those delightful old ladies who like
+nothing better than to be doing a kindness. She came immediately,
+bringing an invitation to lunch on the following Sunday, already
+written in case she should find no one at home.
+
+Dan was delighted, "We shall meet nothing but county people there," he
+said, "and that's the proper set for us. They always do the right
+thing, you see. They're the only people worth knowing."
+
+"But Beg is miles away from here," Beth said; "how shall we go?"
+
+"We'll go in the dogcart, of course," Dan answered.
+
+He had set up a dogcart on their arrival, but this was the first time
+he had proposed to take Beth out in it.
+
+As they drove along on Sunday morning in the bright sunshine, Dan's
+spirits overflowed in a characteristic way at the prospect of meeting
+"somebody decent," as he expressed it, and he made remarks about the
+faces and figures of all the women they passed on the road,
+criticising them as if they were cattle to be sold at so much a point.
+
+"That little girl there," he said of one, whom he beamed upon and
+ogled as they passed, "reminds me of a fair-haired little devil I
+picked up one night in Paris. Gad! she _was_ a bad un! up to more
+tricks than any other I ever knew. She used to--" (here followed a
+description of some of her peculiar practices).
+
+"I wish you would not tell me these things," Beth remonstrated.
+
+But he only laughed. "You know you're amused," he said. "It's just
+your conventional affectation that makes you pretend to object. That's
+the way women drive their husbands elsewhere for amusement; they won't
+take a proper intelligent interest in life, so there's nothing to talk
+to them about. I agree with the advanced party. They're always
+preaching that women should know the world. Women who _do_ know the
+world have no nonsense about them, and are a jolly sight better
+company than your starched Puritans who pretend to know nothing. It's
+the most interesting side of life after all, and the most instructive;
+and I wonder at your want of intelligence, Beth. You shouldn't be
+afraid to know the natural history of humanity."
+
+"Nor am I," Beth answered quietly; "nor the natural--or
+unnatural--depravity either, which is what you really mean, I believe.
+But knowing it, and delighting in it as a subject of conversation, are
+two very different things. Jesting about that side of life affects me
+like mud on a clean coat. I resent being splashed with it, and try to
+get rid of it, but unfortunately it sticks and stains."
+
+"Oh, you're quite right," Dan answered unctuously. "It's just shocking
+the stories that are told--" and for the rest of the way he discoursed
+about morals, illustrating his meaning as he proceeded with anecdotes
+of the choicest description.
+
+When they arrived at Beg House, they found the company more mixed than
+Dan had anticipated. Dr. and Mrs. Carne were there, Mr. and Mrs.
+Jeffreys, and Mr., Mrs., and Miss Petterick. Mr. Petterick was a
+solicitor of bumptious manners and doubtful reputation, whom the whole
+county hated, but tolerated because of his wealth and shrewdness,
+either of which they liked to be in a position to draw upon if
+necessary. But besides these townspeople, there were Sir George and
+Lady Galbraith, Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe, and Mrs. Orton
+Beg, a widowed daughter-in-law of Lady Beg's.
+
+Dr. Maclure immediately made up to Sir George Galbraith, who was also
+a medical man, and of great repute in his own line. He was a county
+magnate besides, and a man of wealth and importance by reason of a
+baronetcy somewhat unexpectedly inherited, and a beautiful
+country-seat. He continued to practise, however, for love of his
+profession, but used it as a means of doing good rather than as a
+source of income. In appearance he was a tall, rather awkward man,
+with a fine head and a strong, plain face. He spoke in that deliberate
+Scotch way which has a ring of sincerity in it and inspires
+confidence, and the contrast between his manner and Dan's struck Beth
+unpleasantly. She wished Dan would be less effusive; it was almost as
+if he were cringing; and she thought he should have waited for Sir
+George Galbraith, who was the older man, to have made the first
+advance.
+
+Beth herself was at her ease as soon as she came among these people.
+It was the social atmosphere to which she had been accustomed. Mrs.
+Carne, Mrs. Jeffreys, and Mrs. Petterick were on their best behaviour,
+but Beth had only to be natural. The county people were all nice to
+her, and the other town ladies, who had hitherto slighted her, looked
+on and wondered to see her so well received. At luncheon, as there
+were not gentlemen enough to go round, she sat between Sir George
+Galbraith and Mrs. Orton Beg. Mrs. Kilroy sat opposite. Sir George had
+known Mrs. Kilroy all her life. It was he, in fact, who nicknamed her
+and her brother "The Heavenly Twins" in the days when, as children,
+they used to be the delight of their grandfather, the old Duke of
+Morningquest, and the terror of their parents, Mr. and Lady Adeline
+Hamilton-Wells.
+
+As soon as they were seated, Mrs. Kilroy attacked Sir George on some
+subject which they had previously discussed, and there ensued a little
+playful war of words.
+
+"Oh, you're just a phrase-maker," Mrs. Kilroy exclaimed at last,
+finding herself worsted; "and phrases prove nothing."
+
+"What is a phrase-maker?" he asked with a twinkle.
+
+"Why, a phrase-maker is a person who recklessly launches a saying,
+winged by wit, and of superior brevity and distinctness, but not
+necessarily true--a saying which flies direct to the mind, and, being
+of a cutting nature, carves an indelible impression there," said Mrs.
+Kilroy--"an impression which numbs the intellect and prevents us
+reasoning for ourselves. Opinion is formed for the most part of
+phrases, not of knowledge and observation. The things people say
+smartly are quoted, not because they are true, but because they are
+smart. A lie well put will carry conviction to the average mind more
+surely than a good reason if ill-expressed, because most people have
+an aesthetic sense that is satisfied by a happy play upon words, but
+few have reason enough to discriminate when the brilliant ingenuity
+of the phrase-maker is pitted against a plain statement of the bald
+truth."
+
+"As, for instance?" asked Sir George.
+
+    "Man's love is of his life a thing apart,
+    'Tis woman's whole existence,"
+
+Mrs. Kilroy responded glibly. "That is quoted everywhere, and I have
+never heard it questioned, yet it is a flagrant case of confounding
+smartness with accuracy. Love of the kind that Byron meant is quite as
+much a thing apart from woman's life as from man's; more men, in fact,
+make the pursuit of it their whole existence than women do."
+
+"You are right," said Sir George thoughtfully. "Love is certainly not
+a modern woman's whole existence, and she never dies of it. She feels
+it strongly, but it does not swamp her. In a bad attack, she may go to
+bed young one night and rise next day with grey hairs in her head, and
+write a book about it; but then she recovers: and I think you are
+right about phrases, too. 'Syllables govern the world,' John Selden
+said; but 'phrases' would have been the better word. Phrases are the
+keynotes to life; they set the tune to which men insensibly shape
+their course, and so rule us for good and ill. This is a time of talk,
+and formidable is the force of phrases. Catch-words are creative; they
+do not prove that a thing is--they cause it to be."
+
+"Then an unscrupulous phrase-maker may be a danger to the community,"
+Beth observed.
+
+"Yes," said Sir George; "but on the other hand, one who is scrupulous
+would be a philanthropist of extraordinary power."
+
+"Now, isn't that like his craft and subtlety, Evadne?" said Mrs.
+Kilroy to Lady Galbraith. "He has been gradually working up to that in
+order to make Mrs. Maclure suppose I intended to pay him a compliment
+when I called him a phrase-maker."
+
+"You are taking a mean advantage of an honest attempt on my part to
+arrive at the truth," said Sir George.
+
+"I believe you blundered into that without seeing in the least where
+you were going," Beth observed naively.
+
+Everybody smiled, except Dan, who told her on the way home she had
+made a great mistake to say such a thing, and she must be careful in
+future, or she would give offence and make enemies for him.
+
+"No fear with people like that," said Beth. "They all understood me."
+
+"Which is as much as to say that your husband does not," said Dan,
+assuming his hurt expression. "Very well. Go your own way. But you'll
+be sorry for it."
+
+"What a delightful person Mrs. Orton Beg is," Beth observed, to make a
+diversion; "and so nice-looking too!"
+
+"You are easily pleased! Why, she's forty if she's a day!" Dan
+ejaculated, speaking as if that were to her discredit, and must
+deprive her of any consideration from him.
+
+The next excitement was a military ball. Dan determined to go, and
+Beth was ready enough; she had never been to a ball.
+
+"But how about a dress?" she said. "There has been such a sudden
+change in the fashion since mine were made, I'm afraid I have nothing
+that will do."
+
+"Then get a new one," Dan said.
+
+"What! and add to the bills?" Beth objected.
+
+"Oh, bother the bills!" he answered in the tone he called cheery.
+"I've had them coming in all my life and I'm still here. Get a thing
+when you want it, and pay for it when you can--that's my motto. Why,
+my tailor's bill alone is up in the hundreds.
+
+"But that was the bill mamma gave you the money to settle," Beth
+exclaimed.
+
+"I know," he answered casually. "I got the money out of her for that,
+but I had to spend it on your amusement in town, my dear."
+
+"Oh!" Beth ejaculated--"how could you?"
+
+"How could I?" he answered coolly. "Well, I couldn't of course if I
+hadn't been clever; but I can always get anything I like out of old
+ladies. They dote on me. You've only got to amuse them, you know, and
+pour in a little sentiment on occasion. Let them understand you've
+been rather a naughty man, but you know what's right--that always
+fetches them. Your mother would have sold out all she had to help me
+when she found I meant to repent and settle. But of course I wouldn't
+take anything that was not absolutely necessary," he added
+magnanimously.
+
+Beth compressed her lips and frowned. "Do you mean to say you obtained
+money from a poor woman like my mother for a special purpose which she
+approved, and spent that money on something else?" she asked.
+
+Dan changed countenance. "I got the money from your mother to pay my
+tailor's bill; but the circumstance of your spending more money in
+town than I could afford compelled me to use it for another purpose,"
+he answered in rather a blustering tone.
+
+"I spent no money in town," Beth said.
+
+"I had to spend it on you then," he rejoined, "and a nice lament you
+would have made if I hadn't! But it's all the same. Husband and wife
+are one; and I maintain that the money was given to me to pay a just
+debt, and I paid a just debt with it. Now, what have you to say
+against that to the disparagement of your husband?"
+
+He looked Beth straight in the face as he spoke, as if the nature of
+the transaction would be changed by staring her out of countenance,
+and she returned his gaze unflinchingly; but not another word would
+she say on the subject. There is a sad majority of wives whose
+attitude towards their husbands must be one of contemptuous
+toleration--toleration of their past depravity and of their present
+deceits, whatever form they may take. Such a wife looks upon her
+husband as a hopeless incurable, because she knows that he has not the
+sense, even if he had the strength of character, to mend his moral
+defects. Beth fully realised her husband's turpitude with regard to
+the money, and also realised the futility of trying to make him see
+his own conduct in the matter in any light not flattering to himself,
+and she was deeply pained. She had taken it for granted that Dan would
+pay interest on the money, but had not troubled herself to find out if
+he were doing so, as she now thought that she ought to have done, for
+clearly she should have paid it herself if he did not. True, she never
+had any money; but that was no excuse, for there were honest ways of
+making money, and make it she would. She was on her way upstairs to
+her secret chamber to think the matter out undisturbed when she came
+to this determination; and as soon as she had shut herself in, she
+sank upon her knees, and vowed to God solemnly to pay back every
+farthing, and the interest in full, if she had to work her fingers to
+the bone. Curiously enough, it was with her fingers she first thought
+of working, not with her brain. She had seen an advertisement in a
+daily paper of several depots for the sale of "ladies' work" in London
+and other places, and she determined at once to try that method of
+making money. Work of all kinds came easily to her, and happily she
+still had her two sovereigns, which would be enough to lay in a stock
+of materials to begin with. Her pin-money Dan regularly appropriated
+as soon as it arrived, with the facetious remark that it would just
+pay for her keep; and so far Beth had let him have it without a
+murmur, yielding in that as in all else, however much against her own
+inclinations, for gentleness, and also with a vague notion of making
+up to him in some sort for his own shortcomings, which she could not
+help fancying must be as great a trouble to him as they were to her.
+She had grown to have a very real affection for Dan, as indeed she
+would have had for any one who was passably kind to her; but her
+estimate of his character, as she gradually became acquainted with it,
+was never influenced by her affection, except in so far as she pitied
+him for traits which would have made her despise another man.
+
+Since her marriage she had given up her free, wild, wandering habits.
+She would go into the town to order things at the shops in the
+morning, and take a solitary walk out into the country in the
+afternoon perhaps, but without any keen enjoyment. Her natural zest
+for the woods and fields was suspended. She had lost touch with
+nature. Instead of looking about her observantly, as had been her
+wont, she walked now, as a rule, with her eyes fixed on the ground,
+thinking deeply. She was losing vitality too; her gait was less
+buoyant, and she was becoming subject to aches and pains she had never
+felt before. Dan said they were neuralgic, and showed that she wanted
+a tonic, but troubled himself no more about them. He always seemed to
+think she should be satisfied when he found a name for her complaint.
+She had also become much thinner, which made her figure childishly
+young; but in the face she looked old for her age--five-and-twenty at
+least--although she was not yet eighteen.
+
+There was one particularly strong and happy point in Beth's character:
+she wasted little or no time in repining for the thing that was done.
+All her thought was how to remedy the evil and make amends; so now,
+when she had recovered from the first shock of her husband's
+revelation, she put the thought of it aside, pulled herself together
+quickly, and found relief in setting to work with a will. The exertion
+alone was inspiriting, and re-aroused the faculty which had been
+dormant in her of late. She went at once to get materials for her
+work, and stepped out more briskly than she had done for many a day.
+She perceived that the morning air was fresh and sweet, and she
+inhaled deep draughts of it, and rejoiced in the sunshine. Just
+opposite their house, across the road, on the other side of a wooden
+paling, the park-like meadow was intensely green; old horse-chestnuts
+dotted about it made refreshing intervals of shade; in the hedgerows
+the tall elms stood out clear against the sky, and the gnarled oaks
+cast fantastic shadows on the grass; while beyond it, at the farther
+side of the meadow by the brook, the row of Canadian poplars which
+bordered it kept up a continuous whispering, as was their wont, even
+on the stillest days. When Beth first heard them, they spoke a
+language to her which she comprehended but could not translate; but
+the immediate effect of her life with Dan had been to deaden her
+perception, so that she could not comprehend. Then the whispering
+became a mere rustle of leaves, appealing to nothing but her sense of
+hearing, and her delight in their murmur lapsed when its significance
+was lost to her spirit.
+
+But that morning Nature spoke to her again and her eyes were opened.
+She saw the grey-green poplars, the gnarled oaks, the dark crests of
+the elms upraised against the radiant blue of the sky, and felt a
+thrill like triumph as she watched the great masses of cloud,
+dazzlingly white, floating in infinite space majestically. The life
+about her, too--the twittering of birds in the hedgerows; an Alderney
+cow with its calf in the fields; a young colt careering wildly,
+startled by a passing train; a big dog that saluted her with friendly
+nose as he trotted by--all these said something to her which made her
+feel that, let what might happen, it was good to be alive.
+
+On her way into town she thought out a piece of work, something more
+original and effective than the things usually sold in fancy-work
+shops, which did not often please her. When she had bought all the
+materials that she required, there was very little of her two pounds
+left, but she returned in high spirits, carrying the rather large
+parcel herself, lest, if it were sent, it should arrive when Dan was
+at home and excite his curiosity. He always appeared if he heard the
+door-bell ring, and insisted on knowing who or what had come, an
+inquisitive trick that irritated Beth into baffling him whenever she
+could.
+
+She carried her precious packet up to her secret chamber, and set to
+work at once. Dan, when he came in to lunch, was surprised to find her
+unusually cheerful. After the temper she had displayed at breakfast,
+he had expected to have anything but a pleasant time of it for a
+little. Seeing her in good spirits put him also into a genial mood,
+and he began at once to talk about himself--his favourite topic.
+
+"Well, I've had a rattling hard day," he observed. "You'd be surprised
+at the amount I've done in the time. I don't believe any other man
+here could have done it. I was at that confounded hospital a couple of
+hours, and after that I had a round! People are beginning to send for
+me now as the last from school. They think I'm up to the latest
+dodges. The old men won't like it! I had to go out to the Pettericks
+to see that girl Bertha again. Their family doctor could make nothing
+of her case, but it's simple enough. The girl's hysterical, that's
+what she is; and I know what I'd like to prescribe for her, and that's
+a husband. Hee-hee! Soon cure her hysterics! As to the old girl, her
+mother, she's got"--then followed a minute description of her
+ailments, told in the baldest language. Of two words Dan always chose
+the coarsest in talking to Beth, now that they were married, which had
+made her writhe at first; but when she had remonstrated, he assumed an
+injured air, after which she silently endured the infliction for fear
+of wounding him. And it was the same with regard to his patients. The
+first time he described the ailment of a lady patient, and made gross
+comments about her, Beth had exclaimed--
+
+"O Dan! what would she think of you if she knew you had told me?
+Surely it is a breach of confidence!"
+
+"Well," he exclaimed, trying to wither her with a look, "you _have_ a
+nice opinion of your husband! Is it possible that I cannot speak to my
+own wife without bringing such an accusation upon myself! Well, well!
+And I'm slaving for you morning, noon, and night, to keep you in some
+sort of decency and comfort; and when I come home, and do my best to
+be cheery and amuse you, instead of being morose after the strain of
+the day, as most men are, all the thanks I get is a speech like that!
+O holy matrimony!"
+
+"I did not mean to annoy you, Dan; I'm sorry," Beth protested.
+
+"So you should be!" he said; "so you should be! It's mighty hard for
+me to feel that my own wife hasn't confidence enough in me to be sure
+that I should never say a word either to her or anybody else about any
+of my patients to which they'd object."
+
+"People feel differently on the subject, perhaps," Beth ventured. "I
+only know that if I had a doctor who talked to his wife about my
+complaints, I should"--despise him, was what she was going to say, but
+she changed the phrase--"I should not like it. But you should know
+what your own patients feel about it better than I do."
+
+Even as she spoke, however, her mother's remark of long ago about a
+"talking doctor" recurred to her, and she felt lowered in her own
+estimation by the kind of concession she was making to him. The
+tragedy of such a marriage consists in the effect of the man's mind
+upon the woman's, shut up with him in the closest intimacy day and
+night, and all the time imbibing his poisoned thoughts. Beth's womanly
+grace pleaded with her continually not to hurt her husband since he
+meant no offence, not to damp his spirits even when they took a form
+so distasteful to her. To check him was to offend him and provoke a
+scene for nothing, since his taste was not to be improved; and she
+would have to have checked him perpetually, and made a mere nag of
+herself; for to talk in this way to her, to tell her objectionable
+stories, and harp on depravity of all kinds, was his one idea of
+pleasurable conversation. It was seldom, therefore, that she
+remonstrated--especially in those early days when she had not as yet
+perceived that by tacitly acquiescing she was lending herself to
+inevitable corruption.
+
+Just at that time, too, she did not trouble herself much about
+anything. She was entirely absorbed in her new object in life--to get
+the work done, to make the money, to pay her mother with interest;
+there was continual exaltation of spirit in the endeavour. Every
+moment that she could safely secure, she spent in her secret chamber,
+hard at work. Her outlook was on the sky above, for ever changing; on
+the gay garden below, whence light airs wafted the fragrance of
+flowers from time to time, to her delight; and on a gentle green
+ascent, covered and crowned with trees, which shut out the world
+beyond. Here there was a colony of rooks, where the birds were busy
+all day long sometimes, and from which they were sometimes absent from
+early morning till sundown, when they came back cawing by ones and
+twos and threes, a long straggling procession of them, their dark
+iridescent forms with broad black wings outspread, distinct and
+decorative, against the happy blue. Beth loved the birds, and even as
+she worked she watched them, their housekeepings and comings and
+goings; and heard their talk; and often as she worked she looked out
+at the fair prospect and up at the sky hopefully, and vowed again to
+accomplish one act of justice at all events. She stopped her regular
+studies at this time, because she conceived them to be for her own
+mere personal benefit, while the task which she had set herself was
+for a better purpose. But, although she did not study as had been her
+wont, while she sewed she occupied her mind in a way that was much
+more beneficial to it than the purposeless acquisition of facts, the
+solving of mathematical problems, or conning of parts of speech.
+Beside her was always an open book, it might be a passage of
+Scripture, a scene from Shakespeare, a poem or paragraph rich in the
+wisdom and beauty of some great mind; and as she sewed she dwelt upon
+it, repeating it to herself until she was word-perfect in it, then
+making it even more her own by earnest contemplation. These passages
+became the texts of many observations; and in them was also the light
+which showed her life as it is, and as it should be lived. In
+meditating upon them she taught herself to meditate; and in following
+up the clues they gave her in the endeavour to discriminate and to
+judge fairly, by slow degrees she acquired the precious habit of clear
+thought. This lifted her at once above herself as she had been; and
+what she had lost of insight and spiritual perception since her
+marriage, she began to recover in another and more perfect form.
+Wholesome consideration of the realities of life now took the place of
+fanciful dreams. Her mind, wonderfully fertilised, teemed again--not
+with vain imaginings, however, as heretofore, but with something more
+substantial. Purposeful thought was where the mere froth of sensuous
+seeing had been; and it was thought that now clamoured for expression
+instead of the verses and stories--fireworks of the brain, pleasant,
+transient, futile distractions with nothing more nourishing in them
+than the interest and entertainment of the moment--which had occupied
+her chiefly from of old. It was natural to Beth to be open, to discuss
+all that concerned herself with her friends; but having no one to talk
+to now, she began on a sudden to record her thoughts and impressions
+in writing; and having once begun, she entered upon a new phase of
+existence altogether. She had discovered a recreation which was more
+absorbing than anything she had ever tried before; for her early
+scribbling had been of another kind, not nearly so entrancing. Then it
+had been the idle gossip of life, and the mere pictorial art of
+word-painting, an ingenious exercise, that had occupied her; now it
+was the more soul-stirring themes in the region of philosophy and
+ethics which she pursued, and scenes and phases of life interested her
+only as the raw material from which a goodly moral might be extracted.
+Art for art's sake she despised, but in art for man's sake she already
+discovered noble possibilities. But her very delight in her new
+pursuit made her think it right to limit her indulgence in it. Duty
+she conceived to be a painful effort necessarily, but writing was a
+pleasure; she therefore attended first conscientiously to her
+embroidery, and any other task she thought it right to perform,
+although her eager impatience to get back to her desk made each in
+turn a toil to her. Like many another earnest person, she mistook the
+things of no importance for things that matter because the doing of
+them cost her much; and it was the intellectual exercise, the delicate
+fancy work of her brain, a matter of enormous consequence, that she
+neglected. Not knowing that "_If a man love the labour of any trade,
+apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called
+him_," she made the fitting of herself for the work of her life her
+last exercise at the tired end of the day. She rose early and went to
+bed late in order to gain a little more time to write, but never
+suspected that her delight in the effort to find expression for what
+was in her mind of itself proclaimed her one of the elect.
+
+When she had finished her embroidery, she despatched it secretly to
+the depot in London; but then she found that she would have to pay a
+small subscription before she could have it sold there, and she had no
+money. She wrote boldly to the secretary and told her so, and asked if
+the subscription could not be paid out of the price she got for her
+work. The secretary replied that it was contrary to the rules, but the
+committee thought that such an artistically beautiful design as hers
+was sure to be snapped up directly, and they had therefore decided to
+make an exception in her case.
+
+While these letters were going backwards and forwards, Beth suffered
+agonies of anxiety lest Dan should pounce upon them and discover her
+secret; but he happened to be out always at post-time just then, so
+she managed to secure them safely.
+
+As she had no money, she could not buy any more materials for
+embroidery, so she was obliged to take a holiday, the greater part of
+which she spent in writing. She was deeply engrossed by thoughts on
+progress, which had been suggested by a passage in one of Emerson's
+essays: "_All conservatives are such from natural defects. They have
+been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through
+luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the
+defensive._" Even in her own little life Beth had seen so much of the
+ill effects of conservatism in the class to which she belonged, and
+had suffered so much from it herself already, that the subject
+appealed to her strongly, and she pursued it with enthusiasm--more
+from the social than the political point of view, however. But,
+unfortunately, in all too short a time, her holiday came to an end.
+Her beautiful embroidery had sold for six guineas, and she found
+herself with the money for more materials, and three pounds in hand
+besides, clear profit, towards the debt. She had also received an
+order from the depot for another piece of work at the same price,
+which caused her considerable elation, and set her to work again with
+a will; and it was only when she could no longer ply her needle that
+she allowed herself to take up her pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+Beth had no more zest for the ball after that conversation with Daniel
+about the money her mother had given him. She felt obliged to go to it
+because he insisted that it was necessary for the wives of
+professional men to show themselves on public occasions; but she would
+not get a new dress. She had never worn her white silk trimmed with
+myrtle, and when she came to look at it again, she decided that it was
+not so much out of the fashion after all, and, at any rate, it must
+do.
+
+When she came down to dinner dressed in it on the night of the ball,
+she looked very winsome, and smiled up at Dan in shy expectation of a
+word of approval; but none came. In the early days of their
+acquaintance he had remarked that she was much more easily depressed
+than elated about herself, and would be the better of a little more
+confidence--not to say conceit; but since their marriage he had never
+given her the slightest sympathy or encouragement to cure her of her
+diffidence. If anything were amiss in her dress or appearance, he told
+her of it in the offensive manner of an ill-conditioned under-bred
+man, generally speaking when they were out of doors, or in some house
+where she could do nothing to put herself right, as if it were some
+satisfaction to him to make her feel ill at ease; and if she were
+complimented by any one else about anything, he had usually something
+derogatory to say on the subject afterwards. Now, when he had
+inspected her, he sat down to table without a word.
+
+"Is there anything wrong?" Beth asked anxiously.
+
+"No," he answered. "That stuff on your sleeves might have been
+fresher, that's all."
+
+"This will be my first ball," Beth ventured, breaking a long silence.
+
+"Well, don't go and tell everybody," he rejoined. "They'll think you
+want to make yourself interesting, and it's nothing to boast about.
+Just lay yourself out to be agreeable to people who will further your
+husband's interests, for once."
+
+"But am I not always agreeable?" Beth exclaimed, much mortified.
+
+"It doesn't appear so," he answered drily. "At any rate, you don't
+seem to go down here."
+
+"How do you mean?" Beth asked.
+
+"Why, the ladies in the place all seem to shun you, for some reason or
+other; not one of them ever comes near you in a friendly way."
+
+"They were all very nice to me the other day at Beg," Beth protested,
+her heart sinking at this recurrence of the old reproach; for to be
+shunned, or in any way set apart, seemed even more dreadful to her now
+than it had done when she was a child.
+
+"See that they keep it up then," he answered grimly.
+
+"If it depends upon me, they will," said Beth, setting her sensitive
+mouth in a hard determined line that added ten years to her age and
+did not improve her beauty. And it was with a sad heart, and sorely
+dissatisfied with herself, that she drove to her first ball.
+
+When they entered the ball-room, however, and Dan beamed about him on
+every one in his "thoroughly good fellow" way, her spirits rose. The
+decorations, the handsome uniforms, the brilliant dresses and jewels,
+the flowers and foliage plants, and, above all, the bright dance-music
+and festive faces, delighted her, and she gazed about her with lips
+just parted in a little smile, wondering to find it all so gay.
+
+A young military man was brought up to her and introduced by one of
+the stewards before she had been five minutes in the room. He asked
+for the pleasure of a dance; but, alas! thanks to the scheme of
+education at the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters having
+been designed by the authorities to fit the girls for the next world
+only, Beth could not dance. She had had some lessons at Miss
+Blackburne's, but not enough to give her confidence, so she was
+obliged to decline. Another and another would-be partner, and some
+quite important people, as Dan said, offered, but in vain; and he
+looked furious.
+
+"Well," he exclaimed, "this is nice for me!"
+
+"I am sorry," Beth answered nervously. She was beginning to have a
+painful conviction that a man had to depend almost entirely on his
+wife for his success in life, and the responsibility made her quail.
+
+"I shall have to go and do _my_ duty, at any rate," he proceeded. "I
+must leave you alone."
+
+"Yes, do," said Beth. "Mrs. Kilroy and Mrs. Orton Beg have just come
+in; I will go and join them." She naturally expected Dan to escort
+her, and he probably would have done so had he waited to hear what she
+was saying; but his marital manners were such that he had taken
+himself off while she was speaking, and left her to fend for herself.
+She was too glad, however, to see her charming new acquaintances, who
+had been so kindly, to care much, and she crossed the room to them,
+smiling confidently. As she approached, she saw that they recognised
+her and said something to each other. When she came close, they both
+bowed coldly, and turned their heads in the opposite direction.
+
+Beth stopped short and her heart stood still. The slight was
+unmistakable; but what had she done? She looked about her as if for an
+explanation, and saw Lady Beg close beside her, talking to Mrs. Carne.
+
+"Ah, how do you do? Nice ball, isn't it?" Lady Beg observed, but
+without shaking hands.
+
+"How do you do?" said Mrs. Carne, and then they resumed their
+conversation, taking no further notice of Beth, who would probably
+have turned and fled from the dreadful place incontinently, if Mrs.
+Petterick had not come up at that moment and spoken to her as one
+human being to another, seizing upon Beth as Beth might have seized
+upon her, in despair; for Mrs. Petterick had also been having her
+share of snubs. Oh, those Christians! how they do love one another!
+how tender they are to one another's feelings! how careful to make the
+best of one another! how gentle, good, and kind, and true! How
+singular it is that when the wicked unbeliever comes to live amongst
+them, and sees them as they are, he is not immediately moved by
+admiration to adopt their religion in order that he also may acquire
+the noble attributes so conspicuously displayed by them!
+
+"You're not dancing, my dear," Mrs. Petterick said. "Come along and
+sit with me on that couch against the wall yonder. We shall see all
+that's going on from there."
+
+Beth was only too thankful to go. A waltz was being played, and Dan
+passed them, dancing with Bertha Petterick. They glided over the floor
+together with the gentle voluptuous swing, dreamy eyes, and smiling
+lips of two perfect dancers, conscious of nothing but the sensuous
+delight of interwoven paces and clasping arms.
+
+"My! but they do step well together, him and Bertha!" Mrs. Petterick
+exclaimed. "He's a handsome man, your husband, and a gay one--flirting
+about with all the ladies! I wonder you're not jealous!"
+
+"Jealous!" Beth answered, smiling. "Not I, indeed! Jealousy is a want
+of faith in one's self."
+
+"Well, my dear, if you always looked as well as you do just now, you
+need not want confidence in yourself," Mrs. Petterick observed. "But
+what would you do if your husband gave you cause for jealousy?"
+
+"Despise him," Beth answered promptly.
+
+Mrs. Petterick looked as if she could make nothing of this answer.
+Then she became uneasy. The music had stopped, but Bertha had not
+returned to her. "I must go and look after my daughter," she said,
+rising from her comfortable seat with a sigh. "Gels are a nuisance.
+You've got to keep your eye on them all the time, or you never know
+what they're up to."
+
+Beth stayed where she was, and soon began to feel uncomfortable.
+People stared coldly at her as they passed, and she could not help
+fancying herself the subject of unpleasant remark because she was
+alone. She prayed hard that some one would come and speak to her. Dan
+had disappeared. After a time she recognised Sir George Galbraith
+among the groups of people at the opposite side of the room. He was
+receiving that attention from every one which is so generously
+conferred on a man or woman of consequence, whose acquaintance adds to
+people's own importance, and to whom it is therefore well to be seen
+speaking; but although his manner was courteously attentive he looked
+round as if anxious to make his escape, and finally, to Beth's intense
+relief, he recognised her, and, leaving the group about him
+unceremoniously, came across the room to speak to her.
+
+"Would it be fair to ask you to sit out a dance with me?" he said. "I
+do not dance."
+
+"I would rather sit out a dance with you than dance it with any one
+else I know here," she answered naively; "but, as it happens, I do not
+dance either."
+
+"Indeed! How is that? I should have thought you would like dancing."
+
+"So I should, I am sure, if I could," she replied. "But I can't dance
+at all. They would not let me learn dancing at one school where I was,
+and I was not long enough at the other to learn properly."
+
+"Now, that is a pity," he said, considering Beth, his professional eye
+having been struck by her thinness and languor. "But have some
+lessons. Dancing in moderation is capital exercise, and it
+exhilarates; and anything that exhilarates increases one's vitality.
+Why don't you make your husband teach you? He seems to know all about
+it."
+
+"Yes," Beth answered, smiling; "but I shouldn't think teaching me is
+at all in his line. Why don't you dance yourself?"
+
+"Oh, I am far too clumsy," he said good-naturedly. "My wife says if I
+could even learn to move about a room without getting in the way and
+upsetting things, it would be something."
+
+"Is she here to-night?" Beth asked.
+
+"No, she was not feeling up to it," he answered. "She tired herself in
+the garden this afternoon, helping me to bud roses."
+
+"Oh, can you bud roses?" Beth exclaimed. "I should so like to know how
+it is done."
+
+"I'll show you with pleasure."
+
+"Will you really?" said Beth. "How kind of you."
+
+"Not at all. Let me see, when will you be at home? We mustn't lose any
+time, or it will be too late in the year."
+
+"I'm pretty nearly always at home," Beth said.
+
+"Then if I came to-morrow morning would that be convenient?"
+
+"Quite; and I hope you will stay lunch," Beth answered.
+
+Dan returned to the ball-room just then, and, on seeing who was with
+her, he immediately joined them; but Sir George only stayed long
+enough to exchange greetings politely.
+
+"You seem to get on very well with Galbraith," Dan observed.
+
+"Don't you like him?" Beth asked in surprise, detecting a note of
+enmity in his voice.
+
+"I haven't had much chance," he said bitterly. "He doesn't play the
+agreeable to me as he does to you."
+
+Beth missed the drift of this remark in considering the expression
+"play the agreeable," which was unpleasantly suggestive to her of
+under-bred gentility.
+
+"You will be able to give him an opportunity to-morrow then," she
+said, "if you are in at lunch-time, for he is coming to show me how to
+bud roses, and I have asked him to stay."
+
+"Have you, indeed?" Dan exclaimed, obviously displeased, but why or
+wherefore Beth could not conceive. "I hope to goodness there's
+something to eat in the house," he added upon reflection, fussily.
+
+"There is as much as there always is," Beth placidly rejoined.
+
+"Well, that's not enough then. Just think what a man like that has on
+his own table!"
+
+"A man like that won't expect our table to be like his."
+
+"You'd better make it appear so for once then, or you'll be having our
+hospitality criticised as I heard the Barrack fellows criticise Mrs.
+Jeffery's the other day. A couple of them called about lunch-time, and
+she asked them to stay, and they said there was nothing but beer and
+sherry, and the fragments of a previous feast, and they were blessed
+if they'd go near the old trout again."
+
+"An elegant expression!" said Beth. "It gives the measure of the mind
+it comes from. Please don't introduce the person who uses it to me.
+But as to Sir George Galbraith, you need not be afraid that _he_ will
+accept hospitality and criticise it in that spirit. He will neither
+grumble at a cutlet, nor describe his hostess by a vulgar epithet
+after eating it."
+
+She shut her mouth hard after speaking. Disillusion is a great
+enlightener; our insight is never so clear as when it is turned on the
+character of a person in whom we used to believe; and as Dan gradually
+revealed himself to Beth, trait by trait, a kind of distaste seized
+upon her, a want of respect, which found involuntary expression in
+trenchant comments upon his observations and in smart retorts. She did
+not seek sympathy from him now for the way in which she had been
+slighted at the ball, knowing perfectly well that he was more likely
+to blame her than anybody else. He had, in fact, by this time, so far
+as any confidence she might have reposed in him was concerned, dropped
+out of her life completely, and left her as friendless and as much
+alone as she would have been with the veriest stranger.
+
+That night when she went home she felt world-worn and weary, but next
+morning, out in the garden with Sir George Galbraith budding roses,
+she became young again. Before they had been together half-an-hour she
+was chatting to him with girlish confidence, telling him about her
+attempts to cultivate her mind, her reading and writing, to all of
+which he listened without any of that condescension in his manner
+which Dan displayed when perchance he was in a good-humour and Beth
+had ventured to expand. Sir George was genuinely interested.
+
+Dan came in punctually to lunch, for a wonder. He glanced at Beth's
+animated face sharply when he entered, but took no further notice of
+her. He was one of those husbands who have two manners, a coarse one
+for their families, and another, much more polished, which they assume
+when it is politic to be refined. But Dan's best behaviour sat ill
+upon him, because it was lacking in sincerity, and Beth suffered all
+through lunch because of the obsequious pose he thought it proper to
+assume towards his distinguished guest.
+
+After lunch, when Sir George had gone, he took up his favourite
+position before the mirror over the chimney-piece, and stood there for
+a little, looking at himself and caressing his moustache.
+
+"You talk a great deal too much, Beth," he said at last.
+
+"Do you think so?" she rejoined.
+
+"Yes, I do," he assured her. "Of course Galbraith had to be polite and
+affect to listen, but I could see that he was bored by your chatter.
+He naturally wanted to talk to me about things that interest men."
+
+"Then why on earth didn't he talk to you?" Beth asked.
+
+"How could he when you monopolised the conversation?"
+
+"It was he who kept me talking," she protested.
+
+"Oh yes; I notice you are very animated when anything in the shape of
+a man comes in," Dan sneered.
+
+Beth got up and left the room, less affected by the insinuation,
+however, than by the vulgar expression of it.
+
+The following week Sir George came in one morning with some cuttings,
+and stayed a while in the garden with Beth, showing her how to set
+them; but he would not wait for lunch. Dan showed considerable
+annoyance when he heard of the visit.
+
+"He should come when I am at home," he said. "It is damned bad taste
+his coming when you are alone."
+
+The next time Sir George came Dan happened to be in, to Beth's relief.
+She had brought her writing down that day, and was working at it on
+the dining-room table, not expecting Dan till much later. He was in a
+genial mood, for a wonder.
+
+"What on earth are you scribbling about there?" he asked.
+
+"Just something I was thinking about," Beth answered evasively.
+
+"Going in for authorship, eh?"
+
+"Why not?" said Beth.
+
+Dan laughed. "You are not at all ambitious," he remarked; then added
+patronisingly, "A little of that kind of thing will do you no harm, of
+course; but, my dear child, your head wouldn't contain a book, and if
+you were just a little cleverer you would know that yourself."
+
+Beth bit the end of her pencil and looked at him dispassionately, and
+it was at this moment that Sir George Galbraith was announced.
+
+Dan received him with effusion as usual; and also, as usual, Sir
+George responded with all conventional politeness, but the greeting
+over, he turned his attention to Beth. He had brought her a packet of
+books.
+
+"This looks like work in earnest," he said, glancing at the table. "I
+see you have a good deal of something done. Is it nearly finished?"
+
+"All but," Beth rejoined.
+
+"What are you going to do with it?"
+
+Beth looked at him, and then at her manuscript vaguely. "I don't
+know," she said. "What can I do with it?"
+
+"Publish it, if it is good," he answered.
+
+"But how am I to know?" Beth asked eagerly. "Do you think it possible
+I could do anything fit to publish?"
+
+Before he could reply, Dan chimed in. "I've just been telling her," he
+said, "that little heads like hers can't contain books. It's all very
+well to scribble a little for pastime, and all that, but she mustn't
+seriously imagine she can do that sort of work. She'll only do herself
+harm. Literature is men's work."
+
+"Yet how many women have written, and written well, too," Beth
+observed.
+
+"Oh yes, of course--exceptional women."
+
+"And why mayn't I be an exceptional woman?" Beth asked, smiling.
+
+"Coarse and masculine!" Dan exclaimed. "No, thank you. We don't want
+you to be one of that kind--do we, Galbraith?"
+
+"There is not the slightest fear," Sir George answered dryly.
+"Besides, I don't think any class of women workers--not even the
+pit-brow women--are necessarily coarse and masculine. And I differ
+from you, too, with regard to that head," he added, fixing his keen,
+kindly eyes deliberately on Beth's cranium till she laughed to cover
+her embarrassment, and put up both hands to feel it. "I should say
+there was good promise both of sense and capacity in the size and
+balance of it--not to mention anything else."
+
+"Well, you ought to know if anybody does," said Dan with a facetious
+sort of affectation of agreement, which left no doubt of his
+insincerity.
+
+"I wish," Sir George continued, addressing Beth, "you would let me
+show some of your work to a lady, a friend of mine, whose opinion is
+well worth having."
+
+"I would rather have yours," Beth jerked out.
+
+"Oh, mine is no good," he rejoined. "But if you will let me read what
+you give me to show my lady, I should be greatly interested. We were
+talking about style in prose the other day, and I have ventured to
+bring you these books--some of our own stylists, and some modern
+Frenchmen. You read French, I know."
+
+"There is nothing like the French," Dan chimed in. "We have no
+literature at all now. Look at their work compared to ours, how short,
+crisp, and incisive it is! How true to life! A Frenchman will give you
+more real life in a hundred pages than our men do in all their
+interminable volumes."
+
+"More sexuality, you mean, I suppose," said Galbraith, "Personally I
+find them monotonous, and barren of happy phrases to enrich the mind,
+of noble sentiments to expand the heart, of great thoughts to help the
+soul; without balance, with little of the redeeming side of life, and
+less aspiration towards it. If France is to be judged by the tendency
+of its literature and art at present, one would suppose it to be
+dominated and doomed to destruction by a gang of lascivious authors
+and artists who are sapping the manhood of the country and degrading
+the womanhood by idealising self-indulgence and mean intrigue. The man
+or woman who lives low, or even thinks low, in that sense of the word,
+will tend always to descend still lower in times of trial. Moral
+probity is the backbone of our courage; without it we have nothing to
+support us when a call is made upon our strength."[1]
+
+[1] The truth of this assertion was lately proved in a
+terrible manner at the burning of the Charity Bazaar in the Rue Jean
+Goujon, when the nerves of the luxurious gentlemen present,
+debilitated by close intimacy with the _haute cocotterie_ in and out
+of society, betrayed them, and they displayed the white feather of
+vice by fighting their own way out, not only leaving the ladies to
+their fate, but actually beating them back with their sticks and
+trampling on them in their frantic efforts to save themselves, as many
+a bruised white arm or shoulder afterwards testified. There was
+scarcely a man burnt on the occasion, husbands, lovers, and fathers
+escaped, leaving all the heroic deeds to be done by some few devoted
+men-servants, some workmen who happened to be passing, a stray
+Englishman or American, and mothers who perished in attempting to
+rescue their children.
+
+"I can't stand English authors myself," was Dan's reply. "They're so
+devilish long-winded, don't you know."
+
+"Poverty of mind accounts for the shortness of the book as a rule,"
+said Galbraith. "I like a long book myself when it is rich in thought.
+The characters become companions then, and I miss them when we are
+forced to part."
+
+Beth nodded assent to this. She had been turning over the books that
+Galbraith had brought her, with the tender touch of a true book-lover
+and that evident interest and pleasure which goes far beyond thanks.
+Mere formal thanks she forgot to express, but she had brightened up in
+the most wonderful way since Galbraith appeared, and was all smiles
+when he took his leave.
+
+Not so Dan, however; but Beth was too absorbed in the books to notice
+that.
+
+"How kind he is!" she exclaimed. "Dan, won't it be delightful if I
+really can write? I might make a career for myself."
+
+"Rot!" said Dan.
+
+"Sir George differs from you," Beth rejoined.
+
+"I say that's all rot. What does he know about it? I tell you you're a
+silly fool, and your head wouldn't contain a book. I ought to know!"
+
+"Doctors differ again, then, it seems," Beth said. "But in this case
+the patient is going to decide for herself. What is the use of opinion
+in such matters? One must experiment. I'm going to write, and if at
+first I don't succeed--I shall persevere."
+
+"Oh, of course!" Dan sneered. "You'll take anybody's advice but your
+husband's. However, go your own way, as I know you will. Only, I warn
+you, you'll regret it."
+
+Beth was dipping into one of the books, and took no notice of this.
+Dan's ill-humour augmented.
+
+"Did you know the fellow was coming to-day?" he asked.
+
+"No--if by fellow you mean Sir George Galbraith," she answered
+casually, still intent on the book.
+
+"You know well enough who I mean, and that's just a nag," he retorted.
+"And it looks uncommonly as if you did expect him, and had set all
+that rubbish of writing out to make a display."
+
+Beth bit the end of her pencil, and looked at Dan contemptuously.
+
+"I dare say he'd like to get hold of you to make a tool of you," he
+pursued. "He's in with Lord Dawne and the whole of that advanced
+woman's party at Morne, who are always interfering with everything."
+
+"How?" Beth asked.
+
+"By poking their noses into things that don't concern them," he
+asseverated, "things they wouldn't know anything about if they weren't
+damned nasty-minded. There's that fanatical Lady Fulda Guthrie, and
+Mrs. Orton Beg, and Mrs. Kilroy, besides Madam Ideala--they're all
+busybodies, and if they succeed in what they're at just now, by Jove,
+they'll ruin me! I'll have my revenge, though, if they do! I'll attack
+your distinguished friend. He has established himself as a
+humanitarian, and travels on that reputation; but he has an hospital
+of his own, where I have no doubt some pretty games are played in the
+way of experiments which the public don't suspect. _I_ know the kind
+of thing! Patients mustn't ask questions! The good doctor will do his
+best for them--trust him! He'll try nothing that he doesn't know to
+be for their good; and when they're under chloroform he'll take no
+unfair advantage in the way of cutting a little more for his own
+private information than they've consented to. Oh, I know! Galbraith
+seems to be by way of slighting me, but I'll show him up if it comes
+to that--and, at any rate, I'm on the way to discoveries myself, and I
+bet I'll teach him some things in his profession yet that will make
+him sit up--things he doesn't suspect, clever and all as he is."
+
+Beth knew nothing of the things to which Dan alluded, and therefore
+missed the drift of this tirade; but the whole tone of it was so
+offensive to her that she gathered up her books and papers and left
+the room. Silence and flight were her weapons of defence in those
+days.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+There was a gap of six months between that last visit of Sir George
+Galbraith's and the next, and in the interval Beth had worked hard,
+reading and re-reading the books he had lent her, writing, and perhaps
+most important of all, reflecting, as she sat in her secret chamber,
+busy with the beautiful embroideries which were to pay off that
+dreadful debt. She had made seven pounds by this time, and Aunt Grace
+Mary had sent her five for a present surreptitiously, advising her to
+keep it herself and say nothing about it--Aunt Grace Mary knew what
+husbands were. Beth smiled as she read the letter. She, too, was
+beginning to know what husbands are--husbands of the Uncle James kind.
+She added the five pounds to her secret hoard, and thanked goodness
+that the sum was mounting up, little by little.
+
+But she wished Sir George would return. He was a busy man, and lived
+at the other side of the county, so that she could not expect him to
+come to Slane on her account; but surely something more important
+would bring him eventually, and then she might hope to see him. She
+knew he would not desert her. And she had some manuscript ready to
+confide to him now if he should repeat his offer; but she was too
+diffident to send it to him except at his special request.
+
+She was all energy now that the possibility of making a career for
+herself had been presented to her, but it was the quietly restrained
+energy of a strong nature. She never supposed that she could practise
+a profession without learning it, and she was prepared to serve a long
+apprenticeship to letters if necessary. She meant to write and write
+and write until she acquired power of expression. About what she
+should have to express she never troubled herself. It was the need to
+express what was in her that had set her to work. She would never have
+to sit at a writing-table with a pen in her hand waiting for ideas to
+come. She had discovered by accident that she could have books in
+plenty, and of the kind she required, from the Free Library at Slane.
+Dan never troubled himself to consult her taste in books, but he was
+in the habit of bringing home three-volume novels for himself from the
+library, a form of literature he greatly enjoyed in spite of his
+strictures. He made Beth read them aloud to him in the evening, one
+after the other--an endless succession--while he smoked, and drank
+whiskies-and-sodas. He brought them home himself at first, but soon
+found it a trouble to go for them, and so sent her; and then it was
+she discovered that there were other books in the library. The
+librarian, an educated and intelligent man, helped her often in the
+choice of books. They had long talks together, during which he made
+many suggestions, and gave Beth many a hint and piece of information
+that was of value to her. He was her only congenial friend in Slane,
+and her long conversations with him often took her out of herself and
+raised her spirits. He little suspected what a help he was to the
+lonely little soul. For the most part she took less interest in the
+books themselves than in the people who wrote them; biographies,
+autobiographies, and any scrap of anecdote about authors and their
+methods she eagerly devoured. Life as they had lived it, not as they
+had observed and imagined it, seemed all-important to her; and as she
+read and thought, sitting alone in the charmed solitude of her secret
+chamber, her self-respect grew. Her mind, which had run riot,
+fancy-fed with languorous dreams in the days when it was unoccupied
+and undisciplined, came steadily more and more under control, and grew
+gradually stronger as she exercised it. She ceased to rage and worry
+about her domestic difficulties, ceased to expect her husband to add
+to her happiness in any way, ceased to sorrow for the slights and
+neglects that had so wounded and perplexed her during the first year
+of her life in Slane; and learnt by degrees to possess her soul in
+dignified silence so long as silence was best, feeling in herself
+_that_ something which should bring her up out of all this and set her
+apart eventually in another sphere, among the elect--feeling this
+through her further faculty to her comfort, although unable as yet to
+give it any sort of definite expression. As she read of those who had
+gone before, she felt a strange kindred with them; she entered into
+their sorrows, understood their difficulties, was uplifted by their
+aspirations, and gloried in their successes. Their greatness never
+disheartened her; on the contrary, she was at home with them in all
+their experiences, and at her ease as she never was with the petty
+people about her. It delighted her when she found in them some small
+trait or habit which she herself had already developed or contracted,
+such as she found in the early part of George Sand's _Histoire de ma
+Vie_, and in the lives of the Brontes. Under the influence of
+nourishing books, her mind, sustained and stimulated, became nervously
+active. It had a trick of flashing off from the subject she was
+studying to something wholly irrelevant. She would begin Emerson's
+essay on _Fate_ or _Beauty_ with enthusiasm, and presently, with her
+eyes still following the lines, her thoughts would be busy forming a
+code of literary principles for herself. In those days her mind was
+continually under the influence of any author she cared about,
+particularly if his style were mannered. Involuntarily, while she was
+reading Macaulay, for instance, her own thoughts took a dogmatic turn,
+and jerked along in short, sharp sentences. She caught the
+peculiarities of De Quincey too, of Carlyle, and also some of the
+simple dignity of Ruskin, which was not so easy; and she had written
+things after the manner of each of these authors before she perceived
+the effect they were having upon her. But it was unfortunate for her
+that her attention had been turned from the matter which she had to
+express to the manner in which she should express it. From the time
+she began to think of the style and diction of prose as something to
+be separately acquired, the spontaneous flow of her thoughts was
+checked and hampered, and she expended herself in fashioning her
+tools, as it were, instead of using her tools to fashion her work.
+When, in her reading, she came under the influence of academic minds,
+she lost all natural freshness, and succeeded in being artificial. Her
+English became turgid with Latinities. She took phrases which had
+flowed from her pen, and were telling in their simple eloquence, and
+toiled at them, turning and twisting them until she had laboured all
+the life out of them; and then, mistaking effort for power, and having
+wearied herself, she was satisfied. Being too diffident to suspect
+that she had any natural faculty, she conceived that the more trouble
+she gave herself the better must be the result; and consequently she
+did nothing worth the doing except as an exercise of ingenuity. She
+was serving her apprenticeship, however--making her mistakes.
+
+It was late in the autumn before she saw her good friend Sir George
+Galbraith again. He came on a bright, clear, frosty morning, and found
+her out in the garden, pacing up and down briskly, and looking greatly
+exhilarated by the freshness. When she saw him coming towards her, she
+uttered a little joyful exclamation, and hurried forward to meet him.
+
+"I have been longing to see you," she said in her unaffected way; "but
+I know what the distance is, and how fully your time is occupied. It
+is very good of you to come at all."
+
+"Only the time and distance have prevented me coming sooner," he
+rejoined. "But, tell me, how have you been getting on? And have you
+thought any more of making a career for yourself?"
+
+"I have thought of nothing else," Beth answered brightly; "and I
+wonder I ever thought of anything else, for the idea has been in me, I
+believe, all my life. I must have discussed it, too, at a very early
+age, for I have remembered lately that I was once advised by an old
+aunt of mine, the best and dearest friend I ever had, to write only
+that which is--or aims at being--soul-sustaining."
+
+He nodded his head approvingly. "From such seed a good crop should
+come," he said. "But what line shall you take?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Not novels then, for certain?"
+
+"Nothing for certain--whatever comes and calls for expression."
+
+They were pacing up and down together, and there was a pause.
+
+"Did you expect I should try to write novels, and do you think I
+ought?" Beth asked at last.
+
+"I think I did expect it," he answered; "but as to whether you ought
+or ought not, that is for you to decide. There is much to be said
+against novel reading and writing. I think it was De Quincey who said
+that novels are the opium of the West; and I have myself observed that
+novel-reading is one of those bad habits that grow upon people until
+they are enslaved by it, demoralised by it; and if that is the case
+with the reader, what must the writer suffer?"
+
+Beth bent her brows upon this. "But that is only one side of it, is it
+not?" she asked after a moment's reflection. "I notice in all things a
+curious duality, a right side and a wrong side. Confusion is the wrong
+side of order, misery of happiness, falsehood of truth, evil of good;
+and it seems to me that novel-reading, which can be a vice, I know,
+may also be made a virtue. It depends on the writer."
+
+"And on the taste of the reader," he suggested. "But I believe the
+taste of the intelligent 'general reader' is much better than one
+supposes. The mind craves for nourishment; and the extraordinary
+success of books in which any attempt, however imperfect, is made to
+provide food for thought, as distinguished from those which merely
+offer matter to distract the attention, bears witness, it seems to me,
+to the involuntary effort which is always in progress to procure it. I
+believe myself that good fiction may do more to improve the mind,
+enlarge the sympathies, and develop the judgment than any other form
+of literature--partly because it looks into the hidden springs of
+action, and makes all that is obscure in the way of impulse and motive
+clear to us. Biography, for instance, merely skims the surface of
+life, as a rule; and in history, where man is a puppet moved by
+events, there can be very little human nature."
+
+"I wonder if you read many novels," said Beth. "I have to read them
+aloud to my husband until I am satiated. And I am determined, if I
+ever do try to write one, to avoid all that is conventional. I never
+will have a faultlessly beautiful heroine, for instance. I am sick of
+that creature. When I come to her, especially if she has golden hair
+yards long, a faultless complexion, and eyes of extraordinary
+dimensions, I feel inclined to groan and shut the book. I have met her
+so often in the weary ways of fiction! I know every variety of her so
+well! She consists of nothing but superlatives, and is as conventional
+as the torso of an Egyptian statue, with her everlasting physical
+perfection. I think her as repulsive as a barber's block. I confess
+that a woman who has golden hair and manages to look like a lady, or
+to be like one even in a book, is a wonder, considering all that is
+associated with golden hair in our day; but I should avoid the
+abnormal as much as the conventional. I would not write plotty-plotty
+books either, nor make a pivot of the everlasting love-story, which
+seems to me to show such a want of balance in an author, such an
+absence of any true sense of proportion, as if there was nothing else
+of interest in life but our sexual relations. But, oh!" she broke off,
+"how I do appreciate what the difficulty of selection must be! In
+writing a life, if one could present all sides of it, and not merely
+one phase--the good and the bad of it, the joys and the sorrows, the
+moments of strength and of weakness, of wisdom and of folly, of misery
+and of pure delight--what a picture!"
+
+"Yes; and how utterly beyond the average reader, who never understands
+complexity," he answered. "But I think it a good sign for your chances
+of success that you should have complained of the difficulty of
+selection in the matter of material rather than bemoan your want of
+experience of life. Most young aspirants to literary fame grumble that
+they are handicapped for want of experience. They are seldom content
+with the material they have at hand--the life they know. They want to
+go and live in London, where they seem to think that every one worth
+knowing is to be found."
+
+"That isn't my feeling at all," said Beth. "The best people may be met
+in London, but I don't believe that they are at their best. The
+friction of the crowd rubs out their individuality. In a crowd I feel
+mentally as if I were in a maze of telegraph wires. The thoughts of so
+many people streaming out in all directions about me entangle and
+bewilder me."
+
+"You do not seem to like anything exceptional."
+
+"No, I do not," said Beth. "I like the normal--the everyday. Great
+events are not the most significant, nor are great people the most
+typical. It is the little things that make life livable. The person
+who comes and talks clever is not the person we love, nor the person
+who interests us most. Those we love sympathise with us in the
+ordinary everyday incidents of our lives, and discuss them with us,
+merely touching, if at all, on the thoughts they engender. I don't
+want to know what people think as a rule; I want to know what they
+have experienced. People who talk facts, I like; people who talk
+theories, I fly from. And I think upon the whole that I shall always
+like the kind people better than the clever ones. I believe we owe
+more to them, too, and learn more from them--more human nature, which
+after all is what we want to know."
+
+"But the clever people are kind also sometimes," said Sir George.
+
+"When they are, of course it is perfect," Beth answered. "But judging
+the clever ones of to-day by what they write, I cannot often think
+them so. The works of our smartest modern writers, particularly the
+French, satiate me with their cleverness; but they are vain, hollow,
+cynical, dyspeptic; they appeal to the head, but the heart goes empty
+away. Few of them know or show the one thing needful--that happiness
+is the end of life; and that by trying to live rightly we help each
+other to happiness. That is the one thing well worth understanding in
+this world; but that, with all their ingenuity, they are not
+intelligent enough to see."
+
+"You are an optimist, I perceive," Sir George said, smiling, "and I
+entirely agree with you. So long as we understand that happiness is
+the end of life, and that the best way to secure it for ourselves is
+by helping others to attain to it, we are travelling in the right
+direction. By happiness I do not mean excitement, of course, nor the
+pleasure we owe to others altogether; but that quiet content in
+ourselves, that large toleration and love which should overflow from
+us continually, and make the fact of our existence a source of joy and
+strength to all who know us."
+
+They walked up and down a little in silence, then Sir George asked her
+what she thought of some of the specimens of style and art in
+literature he had lent her to study.
+
+"I don't know yet," Beth said. "My mind is in a state of chaos on the
+subject. I seem to reject 'style' and 'art.' I ask for something more
+or something else, and am never satisfied. But tell me what you think
+of the stylists."
+
+"I think them brilliant," he rejoined, "but their work is as the
+photograph is to the painting, the lifeless accuracy of the machine to
+the nervous fascinating faultiness of the human hand. No, I don't care
+for the writers who are specially praised for their style. I find
+their productions cold and bald as a rule. I want something
+warmer--more full-blooded. Most of the stylists write as if they began
+by acquiring a style and then had to sit and wait for a subject. I
+believe style is the enemy of matter. You compress all the blood out
+of your subject when you make it conform to a studied style, instead
+of letting your style form itself out of the necessity for expression.
+This is rank heresy, I know, and I should not have ventured on it a
+few years ago; but now, I say, give me a style that is the natural
+outcome of your subject, your mind, your character, not an artificial
+but a natural product; and even though it be as full of faults as
+human nature is, faults of every kind, so long as there is no fault of
+the heart in it, that being the one unpardonable fault in an
+author--if you have put your own individuality into your work--I'll
+answer for it that you will arrive sooner and be read longer than the
+most admired stylist of the day. Be prepared to sacrifice form to
+accuracy, to avoid the brilliant and the marvellous for the simple and
+direct. What matters it how the effect is got so that it comes
+honestly? But of course it will be said that this, that, and the other
+person did not get their effects so; they will compare you to the
+greatest to humiliate you."
+
+"Oh, that would be nothing to me so that I produced my own effects,"
+Beth broke in. "That is just where I am at present. I mean to be
+myself. But please do not think that I have too much assurance. If I
+go wrong, I hope I shall find it out in time; and I shall certainly be
+the first to acknowledge it. I do not want to prove myself right; I
+want to arrive at the truth."
+
+"Then you will arrive," he assured her. "But above everything, mind
+that you are not misled by the cant of art if you have anything
+special to say. If a writer would be of use in his day, and not merely
+an amuser of the multitude, he must learn that right thinking, right
+feeling, and knowledge are more important than art. When you address
+the blockhead majority, you must not only give them your text, you
+must tell them also what to think of it, otherwise there will be fine
+misinterpretation. You may be sure of the heart of the multitude if
+you can touch it; but its head, in the present state of its
+development, is an imperfect machine, manoeuvred for the most part
+by foolishness. People can see life for themselves, but they cannot
+always see the meaning of it, the why and wherefore, whence things
+come and whither they are tending, so that the lessons of life are
+lost--or would be but for the efforts of the modern novelist."
+
+Beth reflected a little, then she said: "I am glad you think me an
+optimist. It seems to me that healthy human nature revolts from
+pessimism. The work that lasts is the work that cheers. Give us
+something with hope in it--something that appeals to the best part of
+us--something which, while we read, puts us in touch with fine ideals,
+and makes us feel better than we are."
+
+"That is it precisely," said he. "The school of art-and-style books
+wearies us because there is no aspiration in it, nothing but a deadly
+dull artistic presentment of hopeless levels of life. It is all cold
+polish, as I said before, with never a word to warm the heart or stir
+the better nature."
+
+"That is what I have felt," said Beth; "and I would rather have
+written a simple story, full of the faults of my youth and ignorance,
+but with some one passage in it that would put heart and hope into
+some one person, than all that brilliant barren stuff. And I'm going
+to write for women, not for men. I don't care about amusing men. Let
+them see to their own amusements, they think of nothing else. Men
+entertain each other with intellectual ingenuities and Art and Style,
+while women are busy with the great problems of life, and are striving
+might and main to make it beautiful."
+
+"Now that is young in the opprobrious sense of the word," said Sir
+George. "It is only when we are extremely young that we indulge in
+such sweeping generalisations."
+
+Beth blushed. "I am always afraid my judgment will be warped by my own
+narrow personal experience,--I must guard against that!" she
+exclaimed, conscious that she had had her husband in her mind when she
+spoke.
+
+Sir George nodded his head approvingly, and looked at his watch. "I
+must go," he said, "but I hope there will not be such a long interval
+before I come again. My wife is sorry that she has not been able to
+call. She is not equal to such a long drive. But she desired me to
+explain and apologise; and she has sent you some flowers and fruit
+which she begs you will accept. Have you some of your work ready for
+me this time? I have asked my friend Ideala to give you her opinion,
+which is really worth having, and she says she will with pleasure. You
+must know her. I am sure you would like her extremely."
+
+"But would she like me?" slipped from Beth unawares.
+
+"Now, that is young again," he said, with his kindly smile-indulgent.
+
+"It is the outcome of sad experience," Beth rejoined with a sigh. "No
+woman I have met here so far has shown any inclination to cultivate my
+acquaintance. I think I am being punished for some unknown crime."
+
+Sir George became thoughtful, but said nothing.
+
+As they approached the house, Beth saw Dan peeping at them from behind
+the curtain of an upstairs window. The hall-table was covered with the
+fruit and flowers Sir George had brought. Beth sent a servant for Dan.
+The girl came back and said that the doctor was not in.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Beth. "I saw him at one of the windows just now. If
+you will excuse me, Sir George, I will find him myself."
+
+She called him as she ran upstairs, and Dan made his appearance,
+looking none too well pleased.
+
+He went down to Sir George, and Beth ran on up to her secret chamber
+for her manuscripts and the books Sir George had lent her, which had
+been waiting ready packed for many a day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he had gone, Beth danced round the dining-room, clapping her
+hands.
+
+"I can't contain myself," she exclaimed. "I do feel encouraged,
+strengthened, uplifted."
+
+She caught a glimpse of Dan's face, and stopped short.
+
+"What's the matter?" she said.
+
+"The matter is that I'll have no more of this," he answered in a
+brutal tone.
+
+"No more of what?" Beth demanded.
+
+"No more of this man's philandering after you," he retorted.
+
+"I don't understand you," Beth gasped.
+
+"Oh, you're mighty innocent," he sneered. "You'll be telling me next
+that he comes to see _me_, lends _me_ books, walks up and down by the
+hour together with _me_, brings _me_ fruit and flowers! You think I'm
+blind, I suppose! _You_'re a nice person! and so particular too! and
+so fastidious in your conversation! Oh, trust a prude! But I tell
+you," he bawled, coming up close to her, and shaking his fist in her
+face, "I tell you I won't have it. Now, do you understand that?"
+
+Beth did not wince, but oh, what a drop it was from the heights she
+had just left to this low level! "Be good enough to explain your
+meaning precisely," she said quietly. "I understand that you are
+bringing some accusation against me. It is no use blustering and
+shaking your fist in my face. I am not to be frightened. Just explain
+yourself. And I advise you to weigh your words, for you shall answer
+to me in public for any insult you may offer me in private."
+
+Dr. Maclure was sobered by this unexpected flash of spirit. They had
+been married nearly three years by this time, and Beth's habitual
+docility had deceived him. Hitherto men have been able to insult their
+wives in private with impunity when so minded, and Dan was staggered
+for a moment to find himself face to face with a mere girl who boldly
+refused to suffer the indignity. He was not prepared for such a
+display of self-respect.
+
+"You're very high and mighty!" he jeered at last.
+
+"I am very determined," Beth rejoined, and set her lips.
+
+He tried to subdue her by staring her out of countenance; but Beth
+scornfully returned his gaze. Then suddenly she stamped her foot, and
+brought her clenched fist down on the dining-room table, beside which
+she was standing. "Come, come, sir," she said, "we've had enough of
+this theatrical posing. You are wasting my time, explain yourself."
+
+He took a turn up and down the room.
+
+"Look here, Beth," he began, lowering his tone, "you cannot pretend
+that Galbraith comes to see me."
+
+"Why should I?" she asked.
+
+"Well, it isn't right that he should come to see you, and I won't have
+it," he reiterated.
+
+"Do you mean that I am not to have any friends of my own?" she
+demanded.
+
+"_He_ is not to be one of your friends," Dan answered doggedly.
+
+"And what explanation am I to give him, please?" she asked politely.
+
+"I won't have you giving him any explanation."
+
+"My dear Dan," she rejoined, "when you speak in that way, you show an
+utter want of knowledge of my character. If I will not allow you to
+insult me, and bully me, and bluster at me, it is not likely that I
+will allow you to insult my friends. If Sir George Galbraith's visits
+are to stop, I shall tell him the reason exactly. He at least is a
+gentleman."
+
+"That is as much as to say that I am not," Dan blustered.
+
+"You certainly are not behaving like one now," Beth coolly rejoined.
+"But there! You have my ultimatum. I am not going to waste any more
+time in vulgar scenes with you."
+
+"Ultimatum, indeed!" he jeered. "Well, you _are_, you know! You'll
+write and explain to him, will you, that your husband's jealous of
+him? That shows the terms you are on!"
+
+"It is jealousy then, is it?" said Beth. "Thank you. Now I understand
+you."
+
+Dan's evil mood took another turn. His anger changed to self-pity. "Oh
+dear! oh dear! what am I to do with you?" he exclaimed. "And after all
+I've done for you--to treat me like this." He took out his
+pocket-handkerchief and wiped away the tears which any mention of his
+own goodness and the treatment he received from others always brought
+to his eyes.
+
+Beth watched him contemptuously, yet her heart smote her. He was a
+poor creature, but for that very reason, and because she was strong,
+surely she should be gentle with him.
+
+"Look here, Dan," she said. "I have never knowingly done you any wrong
+in thought, or word, or deed; all you have said to me to-day has been
+ridiculously wrong-headed; but never mind. Stop crying, do, and don't
+let us have any more idiotic jealousy. Why, it was Lady Galbraith who
+sent me the flowers and fruit, with a kind message of apology because
+she has not been able to call. Why should not she be jealous?"
+
+"Oh, she's a fool!" Dan rejoined, recovering himself. "She leads him
+the life of a dog with her fears and fancies, and she won't take any
+part in his philanthropic work, though he wishes it. She's a pretty
+pill!"
+
+The servant came in at this moment to lay the table for lunch, and Dan
+went to the looking-glass with the inconsequence of a child, and
+forgot his grievance in the contemplation of his own beloved image and
+in abusing Lady Galbraith. Abusing somebody was mental relaxation of
+the most agreeable kind to him. Feeling that he had gone too far, he
+was gracious to Beth during lunch, and just before he went out he
+kissed her, and said, "We won't mention that fellow again, Beth. I
+don't believe you'd do anything dishonourable."
+
+"I should think not!" said Beth.
+
+When he had gone, she returned to her secret chamber, the one little
+corner sacred to herself, to her purest, noblest thoughts, her highest
+aspirations; and as she looked round, it seemed as if ages had passed
+since she last entered it, full of happiness and hope. It was as if
+she had been innocent then, and was now corrupted. Her self-control
+did not give way, but she could do nothing, and just sat there, wan
+with horror; and as she sat, every now and then she shivered from head
+to foot. She had known of course in a general way that such things did
+happen, that married women did give their husbands cause for jealousy;
+but to her mind they were a kind of married women who lived in another
+sphere where she was not likely to encounter them. She had never
+expected to be brought near such an enormity, let alone to have it
+brought home to herself in a horrible accusation; and the effect of it
+was a shock to her nervous system--one of those stunning blows which
+are scarcely felt at first, but are agonising in their after effects.
+When the reaction set in, Beth's disgust was so great it took a
+physical form, and ended by making her violently sick. It was days
+before she quite recovered, and in one sense of the word she was never
+the same again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+Dan said no more about Sir George Galbraith; and indeed he had no
+excuse, for Sir George did not come again. There were other men,
+however, who came to the house, Dan's own friends; and now that Beth's
+eyes were opened, she perceived that he watched them all suspiciously
+if they paid her any attention; and if she showed the slightest
+pleasure in the conversation of any of them, he would be sure to make
+some sneering remark about it afterwards. Dan was so radically vicious
+that the notion of any one being virtuous except under compulsion was
+incomprehensible to him.
+
+"Your spirits seem to go up when Mr. Vanrickards is here," he observed
+one day.
+
+"Thank you for warning me," Beth answered, descending to his level in
+spite of herself. "I will be properly depressed the next time he
+comes."
+
+But although she could keep him in check so that he dared not say all
+that he had in his mind, she understood him; and the worst of it was
+that his coarse and brutal jealousy accustomed her to the suspicion,
+and made her contemplate the possibility of such a lapse as he had in
+his mind. She began to believe that he would not have tormented
+himself so if husbands did not ordinarily have good reason to be
+jealous of their wives. She concluded that such treachery of man to
+man as he dreaded must be normal. And then also she realised that it
+was thought possible for a married woman to fall in love, and even
+wondered at last if that would ever be her own case. Dan had, in fact,
+destroyed his own best safeguard. If a man would keep his wife from
+evil, he should not teach her to suspect herself--neither should he
+familiarise her with ideas of vice. Since their marriage Dan's whole
+conversation, and the depravity of his tastes and habits, had tended
+towards the brutalisation of Beth. Married life for her was one long
+initiation into the ways of the vicious.
+
+Dr. Maclure's sordid jealousy made him the laughing-stock of the
+place, though he never suspected it. His conceit was too great to let
+him suppose that any sentiment of his could provoke ridicule. It
+became matter for common gossip, however, and from that time forward
+gentlemen ceased to visit the house. Men of a certain kind came still,
+men who were bound to Dan by kindred tastes, but not such as he cared
+to introduce to Beth. These boon companions generally came in the
+evening, and were entertained in the dining-room, where they spent the
+night together, smoking, drinking, and talking after the manner of
+their kind. Beth could not use her secret chamber after dark for fear
+of the light being seen, so she stayed in the drawing-room alone till
+she went to bed. She found those evenings interminable, and the nights
+more trying still. She could not read or write because of the noise in
+the dining-room, and had to fall back on her sewing for occupation;
+but sewing left her mind open to any obsession, and only too often,
+with the gross laughter from the next room, scraps of the lewd topics
+her husband delighted in came to her recollection. When Dan
+discoursed about such things he was at the high-water mark of
+pleasure, his countenance glowed, and enjoyment of the subject was
+expressed in all his person. Beth's better nature revolted, but alas!
+she had become so familiar with such subjects by this time that,
+although she loathed them, she could not banish them. Life from her
+husband's point of view was a torment to her, yet under the pressure
+of his immediate influence it was forced upon her attention more and
+more--from his point of view.
+
+When she went to bed on his festive nights she suffered from the dread
+of being disturbed. If her husband were called out at night
+professionally, it was a pleasure to her to lie awake so that she
+might be ready to rise the moment he returned, and get him anything he
+wanted. On those occasions she always had a tray ready for him, with
+soup to be heated, or coffee to be made over a spirit-lamp, and any
+little dainty she thought would refresh him. She was fully in sympathy
+with him in his work, and would have spared herself no fatigue to make
+it easier for him, but she despised him for his vices, and refused to
+sacrifice herself in order to make them pleasanter for him. When he
+stayed up smoking and drinking half the night she resented the loss of
+sleep entailed upon her, which meant less energy for her own work the
+next day. The dread of being disturbed made her restless, and the
+futility of it under the circumstances exasperated her. She suffered,
+too, more than can be mentioned, from the smell of alcohol and
+tobacco, of which he reeked, and from which he took no trouble to
+purify himself. Often and often, when she had tossed herself into a
+fever on these dreadful nights, she craved for long hours, with
+infinite yearning, to be safe from disturbance, in purity and peace;
+and thought how happily, how serenely she would have slept until the
+morning, and how strong and fresh she would have arisen for another
+day's work had she been left alone. Only once, however, did she
+complain. Dan was going out in a particularly cheerful mood that
+night.
+
+"Shall you be late?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, probably. Why?"
+
+"I was thinking, if you wouldn't mind, I would have a bed made up for
+you in the spare room. _I_ only sleep in snatches when you are out and
+I am expecting you. Every sound rouses me. I think it is the door
+opening. And then when you do come it disturbs me, and I do not sleep
+again. If you don't mind I should prefer to be alone--on your late
+nights--your late festive nights."
+
+Dr. Maclure stood looking gloomily into the fireplace.
+
+"Have I annoyed you, Dan?" Beth asked at last.
+
+He walked to the door, stood a moment with his back to her, then
+turned and looked at her. "Annoyed is not the word," he said. "You
+have wounded me deeply."
+
+He opened the door as he spoke, and went out. When he had gone Beth
+sat and suffered. She could not bear to hurt him, she was not yet
+sufficiently brutalised for that; so she said no more on the subject,
+but patiently endured the long lonely night watches, and the after
+companionship which had in it all that is most trying and offensive to
+a refined and delicate woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After that first display of jealousy Beth discovered that her husband
+pried upon her continually. He was very high and mighty on the subject
+of women spying upon men, but there seemed no meanness he would not
+compass in order to spy upon a woman. He had duplicate keys to her
+drawers and boxes, and rummaged through all her possessions when she
+went out. One day she came upon him standing before her wardrobe,
+feeling in the pockets of her dresses, and on another occasion she
+discovered him unawares in her bedroom, picking little scraps of paper
+out of the slop-pail and piecing them together to see what she had
+been writing. To Beth, accustomed to the simple, honourable principles
+of her parents, and to the confidence with which her mother had left
+her letters lying about, because she knew that not one of her children
+would dream of looking at them, Dan's turpitude was revolting. On
+those occasions when she caught him, he did not hear her enter the
+room, and she made her escape without disturbing him, and stole up to
+her secret chamber, and sat there, suffering from one of those attacks
+of nausea and shivering which came upon her in moments of deep
+disgust.
+
+After that she had an attack of illness which kept her in bed for a
+week; but even then, feverish and suffering as she was, and yearning
+for the coolness and liberty of a room to herself, she dared not
+suggest such a thing for fear of a scene.
+
+While she was still in bed Dan brought her some letters one morning.
+He made no remark when he gave them to her, but he had opened them as
+usual, and stood watching her curiously while she read them. The first
+she looked at was from her sister Bernadine, and had a black border
+round it; but she took it out of its envelope unsuspiciously, and read
+the words that were uppermost, "_Mamma died this morning_." In a
+moment it flashed upon her that Dan had read the letter, and was
+waiting now to see the effect of the shock upon her. She immediately,
+but involuntarily, set herself to baffle his cruel curiosity. With a
+calm, illegible face she read the letter from beginning to end, folded
+it, and put it back in its envelope deliberately, then took up another
+which had also been opened.
+
+But suppressed feeling finds vent in some form or other, and Beth
+showed temper now instead of showing grief. "I wish you would not open
+my letters," she said irritably. "All the freshness of them is gone
+for me when you open them without my permission and read them first.
+Besides, it is an insult to my correspondents. What they say to me is
+intended for me, and not for you."
+
+"I have a perfect right to open your letters," he retorted.
+
+"I should like to see the Scripture that gives you the right, and I
+should advise you to waive it if you do not wish me to assume the
+right to open yours. Your petty prying keeps me in a continual state
+of irritation. I shall be lowered to retaliate sooner or later. So
+stop it, please, once and for all."
+
+"My petty prying, indeed!" he exclaimed. "Well, that is a nice thing
+to say to your husband! Why, even when I do open your letters, which
+is not often, I never read them without your permission."
+
+"Indeed," said Beth, who had ceased to be stunned by falsehoods. "Then
+be good enough not even to open them in future."
+
+Dan tried to express injury and indignation in a long, hard look; but
+Beth was reading another letter, and took no further notice of him.
+
+He hung about a little watching her.
+
+"Any news," he ventured at last, with an imperfect assumption of
+indifference.
+
+"You know quite well what my news is," she answered bluntly, "and I am
+not going to discuss it with you. I wish you would leave me alone."
+
+"Well, you're a nice pill!" said Dan, discomfited.
+
+Beth looked up at him. "What are you doing with your hat on in my
+bedroom?" she asked sharply. "I thought I had made you understand that
+you must treat me with respect, even if I am your wife."
+
+Dan uttered a coarse oath, and left the room, banging the door after
+him.
+
+"Thank Heaven--at last!" Beth ejaculated. She had been too anxious to
+get rid of him to scruple about the means, but when he had gone a
+reaction set in, and she lay back on her pillows, flushed, excited,
+furious with him, disgusted with herself. She felt she was falling
+away from all her ideals. "As the husband is the wife is"--the words
+flashed through her mind, but she would not believe it inevitable. But
+even if she should degenerate, her own nature was too large, too
+strong, too generous to cast the blame on any one but herself. "No!"
+she exclaimed. "We are what we allow ourselves to be."
+
+Swift following upon that thought came the recollection of a bad fall
+she had had when she was a little child in Ireland, and the way her
+mother had picked her up, and cuddled her, and comforted her. Beth
+burst into a paroxysm of tears. She had understood her mother better
+than her mother had understood her, had felt for her privations, had
+admired and imitated her patient endurance; and now to think that it
+was too late, to think that she had gone, and it would never be in
+Beth's power to brighten her life or lessen the hardship of it! That
+was all she thought of. Every week since her marriage she had sent her
+mother a long, cheerful, amusing letter, full of pleasant details--an
+exercise in that form of composition; but with never a hint of her
+troubles; and Mrs. Caldwell died under the happy delusion that it was
+well with Beth. She never suspected that she had married Beth to a
+low-born man--not low-born in the sense of being a tradesman's son,
+for a tradesman's son may be an honest and upright gentleman, just as
+a peer's son may be a cheat and a snob; but low-born in that he came
+of parents who were capable of fraud and deceit in social relations,
+and had taught him no scheme of life in which honour played a
+conspicuous part. Beth had done her best for her mother, but there was
+no one now to remind her of this for her comfort, poor miserable girl.
+Her courageous toil had gone for nothing--her mother would never even
+know of it; and it seemed to her in that moment of deep disheartenment
+as if everything she tried was to be equally ineffectual.
+
+Hours later, Minna the housemaid found Beth sitting up in bed, sobbing
+hopelessly; and got her tea, and stayed with her, making her put some
+restraint upon herself by the mere fact of her presence; and presently
+Beth, in her human way, began to talk about her mother to the girl,
+which relieved her. Mrs. Caldwell had only been ill a few days, and
+not seriously, as it was supposed; the end had come quite suddenly, so
+that Beth had never been warned.
+
+Dan did not come in till next morning, which was a great relief to
+her. She meant to speak about the news to him when he appeared, but
+somehow, the moment she saw him, her heart hardened, and she could not
+bring herself to utter a word on the subject. The position was awkward
+for him; but he got out of it adroitly by pretending he had seen an
+announcement of the death in the paper.
+
+"I suppose I ought to go to the funeral," he said. "There is doubtless
+a will."
+
+"Doubtless," said Beth, "but you will not benefit by it, if that is
+what you are thinking of. Mamma considered that I was provided for,
+and therefore she left the little she had to Bernadine. She told me
+herself, because she wanted me to understand her reason for making
+such a difference between us; and I think she was quite right. She may
+have left me two or three hundred pounds, but it will not be more than
+that."
+
+"But even that will be something towards the bills," said Dan, his
+countenance, which had dropped considerably, clearing again.
+
+Beth looked at him with a set countenance, but said no more. She had
+begun to observe that the bills only became pressing when her
+allowance was due.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+Some one in Slane gave Sir George Galbraith a hint of Dan's coarse
+jealousy, and he had judged it better for Beth that he should not call
+again; but his interest in her and his desire to help her increased if
+anything. He had read her manuscript carefully himself, and obtained
+Ideala's opinion of it also; but Beth had not done her best by any
+means in the one she had given him. She had written it for the
+purpose, for one thing, which was fatal, for her style had stiffened
+with anxiety to do her best, and her ideas, instead of flowing
+spontaneously, had been forced and formal, as her manner was when she
+was shy. It is one thing to have a fine theory of art and high
+principles (and an excellent thing, too), but it is quite another to
+put them into effect, especially when you're in a hurry to arrive.
+Hurry misplaced is hindrance. If Beth had given Sir George some one of
+the little things which she had written in sheer exuberance of thought
+and feeling, without hampering hopes of doing anything with them, he
+would have been very differently impressed; but, even as it was, what
+she had given him was as full of promise as it was full of faults, and
+he was convinced that he had not been mistaken in her, especially when
+he found that Ideala thought even better of her prospects than he did.
+Ideala, who was an impulsive and generous woman, wrote warmly on the
+subject, and Sir George sent her letter to Beth with a few lines of
+kindly expressed encouragement from himself. He returned her
+manuscript; but when Beth saw it again, she was greatly dissatisfied.
+The faults her friends had pointed out to her she plainly perceived,
+and more also; but she could not see the merits. Praise only made her
+the more fastidious about her work; but in that way it helped her.
+
+Sir George's kindness did not stop at criticism however. He was cut
+off from her himself, and could expect no help from his wife, whose
+nervous system had suffered so much from the shock of unhappy
+circumstances in her youth that she could not now bear even to hear
+of, let alone to be brought in contact with, any form of sorrow or
+suffering; but there were other ladies--Mrs. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe,
+for instance. Sir George had known her all her life, and went
+specially to ask her as a favour to countenance Beth.
+
+"I want you to be kind to Mrs. Maclure, Angelica," he said. "She's far
+too good for that plausible bounder of a barber's block she's
+married."
+
+"Then why did she marry him?" Angelica interrupted, in her vivacious
+way.
+
+"Pitchforked into it at the suggestion of her friends in her infancy,
+I should say, reasoning by induction," he answered. "That's generally
+the explanation in these cases. But, at any rate, she's not going to
+be happy with him. And she's a charming little creature, very sweet
+and docile naturally, and with unusual ability, or I'm much mistaken,
+and plenty of spirit, too, when she's roused, I should anticipate. But
+at present, in her childish ignorance, she's yielding where she should
+resist, and she'll be brutalised if no one comes to the rescue. I
+don't trust that man Maclure. A man who speaks flippantly of things
+that should be respected is not a man who will be scrupulous when his
+own interests are concerned; and such a man has it in his power to
+make the life of a girl a hell upon earth in ways which she will not
+complain of, if she has no knowledge to use in self-defence; and girls
+seldom have."
+
+"As I have learnt, alas! from bitter experience in my work amongst the
+victims of holy matrimony," Angelica interposed bitterly. "Oh, how
+sickening it all is! Sometimes I envy Evadne in that she is able to
+refuse to know."
+
+Sir George was silent for a little, then he said, "This is likely to
+be a more than usually pathetic case, because of the girl's unusual
+character and promise, and also because her brain is too delicately
+poised to stand the kind of shocks and jars that threaten her. You
+will take pity on her, Angelica?"
+
+Mrs. Kilroy shrugged her shoulders. "How can I countenance a woman who
+acquiesces in such a position as her husband holds, and actually lives
+on his degrading work?"
+
+"I don't believe she knows anything about it," he rejoined.
+
+"If I were sure of that," said Angelica, meditating.
+
+"It is easy enough to make sure," he suggested.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Carne, wife of the leading medical man in Slane, conceived it to
+be her duty to patronise Beth to the extent of an occasional formal
+call, as she was the wife of a junior practitioner; and Beth duly
+returned these calls, because she was determined not to make enemies
+for Dan by showing any resentment for the slights she had suffered in
+Slane.
+
+Feeling depressed indoors one dreary afternoon, she set off, alone as
+usual, to pay one of these visits. She rather hoped perhaps to find
+some sort of satisfaction by way of reward for the brave discharge of
+an uncongenial duty.
+
+On the way into town, Dan passed her in his dogcart with a casual nod,
+bespattering her with mud. "You'll have your carriage soon, please
+God! and never have to walk. I hate to see a delicate woman on foot in
+the mud." Beth remembered the words so well, and Dan's pious
+intonation as he uttered them, and she laughed. She had a special
+little laugh for exhibitions of this kind of divergence between Dan's
+precepts and his practices. But even as she laughed her face
+contracted as with a sudden spasm of pain, and she ejaculated--"But I
+shall succeed!"
+
+Mrs. Carne was at home, and Beth was shown into the drawing-room,
+where she found several other lady visitors--Mrs. Kilroy, Mrs. Orton
+Beg, Lady Fulda Guthrie, and Ideala. The last two she had not met
+before.
+
+"Where will you sit?" said Mrs. Carne, who was an effusive little
+person. "What a day! You were brave to come out, though perhaps it
+will do you good. My husband says go out in all weathers and battle
+with the breeze; there's nothing like exercise."
+
+"Battling with the breeze and an umbrella on a wet day is not
+exercise, it is exasperation," Beth answered, and at the sound of her
+peculiarly low, clear, cultivated voice, the conversation stopped
+suddenly, and every one in the room looked at her. She seemed unaware
+of the attention. In fact, she ignored every one present except her
+hostess. This was her habitual manner now, assumed to save herself
+from slights. When she entered, Mrs. Kilroy had half risen from her
+seat, and endeavoured to attract her attention; but Beth passed her
+by, deliberately chose a seat, and sat down. Her demeanour, so
+apparently cold and self-contained, was calculated to command respect,
+but it cost Beth a great deal to maintain it. She felt she was alone
+in an unfriendly atmosphere--a poor little thing, shabbily dressed in
+home-made mourning, and despised for she knew not what offence; and
+she suffered horribly. She had grown very fragile by this time, and
+looked almost childishly young. Her eyes were unnaturally large and
+wistful, her mouth drooped at the corners, and the whole expression of
+her face was pathetic. Mrs. Kilroy looked at her seriously, and
+thought to herself, "That girl is suffering."
+
+Mrs. Carne offered Beth tea, but she refused it. She could not accept
+such inhuman hospitality. She had come to do her duty, not to force a
+welcome. She glanced at the clock. Five minutes more, and she might
+go. The conversation buzzed on about her. She was sitting next to a
+strange lady, a serene and dignified woman, dressed in black velvet
+and sable. Beth glanced at her the first time with indifference, but
+looked again with interest. Mrs. Carne bustled up and spoke to the
+lady in her effusive way.
+
+"You are better, I hope," she said, as she handed her some tea. "It
+really is _sweet_ to see you looking so _much_ yourself again."
+
+"Oh yes, I am quite well again now, thanks to your good husband," the
+lady answered. "But he has given me so many tonics and things lately,
+I always seem to be shaking bottles. I am quite set in that attitude.
+Everything I touch I shake. I found myself shaking my watch instead of
+winding it up the other day."
+
+"Ah, then, you are quite yourself again, I see," Mrs. Carne said
+archly. "But why didn't you come to the Wilmingtons' last night?"
+
+"Oh, you know I never go to those functions if I can help it," the
+lady answered, her gentle rather drawling voice lending a charm to the
+words quite apart from their meaning. "I cannot stand the kind of
+conversation to which one is reduced on such occasions--if you can
+call that conversation which is but the cackle of geese, each
+repeating the utterances of the other. When the Lord loves a woman, I
+think He takes her out of society by some means or other, and keeps
+her out of it for her good."
+
+Beth knew that if she had said such a thing, Mrs. Carne would have
+received it with a stony stare, but now she simpered. "That is so like
+you!" she gushed. "But the Wilmingtons were _dreadfully_
+disappointed."
+
+"They will get over it," the lady answered, glancing round
+indifferently.
+
+"How are you getting on with your new book, Ideala?" Mrs. Kilroy asked
+her across the room. Beth instantly froze to attention. This was her
+friend, then, Sir George's Ideala.
+
+"I have not got into the swing of it yet," Ideala answered. "It is all
+dot-and-go-one--a uniform ruggedness which is not true either to life
+or mind. Our ways in the world are stony enough at times, but they are
+not all stones. There are smooth stretches along which we gallop, and
+sheltered grassy spaces where we rest."
+
+"What _I_ love about _your_ work is the _style_," said Mrs. Carne.
+
+"Do you?" Ideala rejoined, somewhat dryly as it seemed to Beth. "But
+what is style?"
+
+"I am so bad at definitions," said Mrs. Carne, "but I _feel_ it, you
+know."
+
+"As if it were a thing in itself to be adopted or acquired?" Ideala
+asked.
+
+"Yes, quite so," said Mrs. Carne in a tone of relief--as of one who
+has acquitted herself better than she expected and is satisfied.
+
+"I am sure it is not," Beth burst out, forgetting herself and her
+slights all at once in the interest of the subject. "I have been
+reading the lives of authors lately, together with their works, and it
+seems to me, in the case of all who had genius, that their style was
+the outcome of their characters--their principles--the view they took
+of the subject--that is, if they were natural and powerful writers.
+Only the second-rate people have a manufactured style, and force their
+subject to adapt itself to it--the kind of people whose style is
+mentioned quite apart from their matter. In the great ones the style
+is the outcome of the subject. Each emotion has its own form of
+expression. The language of passion is intense; of pleasure jocund,
+easy, abundant; of content calm, of happiness strong but restrained;
+of love warm, tender. The language of artificial feeling is
+artificial; there is no mistaking insincerity when a writer is not
+sincere, and the language of true feeling is equally unmistakable. It
+is simple, easy, unaffected; and it is the same in all ages. The
+artificial styles of yesterday go out of fashion with the dresses
+their authors wear, and become an offence to our taste; but
+Shakespeare's periods appeal to every generation. He wrote from the
+heart as well as the head, and triumphed in the grace of nature."
+
+Beth stopped short and coloured crimson, finding that every one in the
+room was listening to her.
+
+Mrs. Carne stood while she was speaking with a cup of tea in her hand,
+and tried to catch Ideala's eye in order to signal with raised
+eyebrows her contempt for Beth's opinion; but Ideala was listening
+with approval.
+
+"That is exactly what I think," she exclaimed, "only I could not have
+expressed it so. You write yourself doubtless?"
+
+But Beth had become confused, and only gazed at her by way of reply.
+She felt she had done the wrong thing to speak out like that in such
+surroundings, and she regretted every word, and burned with vexation.
+Then suddenly in herself, as before, something seemed to say, or
+rather to flash forth the exclamation for her comfort: "I shall
+succeed! I shall succeed!"
+
+She drew herself up and looked round on them all with a look that
+transformed her. Such an assurance in herself was not to be doubted.
+The day would come when they would be glad enough to see her, when she
+too would be heard with respect and quoted. She, the least considered,
+she in her shabby gloves, neglected, slighted, despised, alone, she
+would arrive, would have done something--more than them all!
+
+She arose with her eyes fixed on futurity, and was half-way home
+before she came to and found herself tearing along through the rain
+with her head forward and her hands clasped across her chest, urged to
+energy by the cry in her heart, "I shall succeed! I shall succeed!"
+
+"Who was that?" said Ideala in a startled voice when Beth jumped up
+and left the room.
+
+"The wife of that Dr. Maclure, you know," Mrs. Carne replied. "Her
+manners seem somewhat abrupt. She forgot to say good-bye. I did not
+know she was by way of being clever."
+
+"By way of being clever!" Ideala ejaculated. "I wish I had known who
+she was. Why didn't you introduce her? By way of being clever, indeed!
+Why, she is just what I have missed being with all my cleverness, or I
+am much mistaken, and that is a genius. And what is more important to
+us, I suspect she is the genius for whom we are waiting. Why, _why_
+didn't you name her? It is the old story. She came unto her own, and
+her own received her not."
+
+"I--I never dreamt you would care to know her--her position, you
+know," Mrs. Carne stammered disconcerted.
+
+"Her position! What is her position to me?" Ideala exclaimed. "It is
+the girl herself I think of. Besides, I daresay she doesn't even know
+what her position is!"
+
+"That is what Sir George says, and he knows her well," Mrs. Kilroy
+interposed.
+
+"But I never suspected that she was in the least interesting," Mrs.
+Carne protested; "and I'm sure she doesn't look attractive--such an
+expression!"
+
+"You are to blame for that, all of you," Ideala rejoined, with
+something in her gentle way of speaking which had the effect of
+strength and vehemence. "I know how it has been. She is sensitive, and
+you have made her feel there is something wrong. You have treated her
+so that she expects no kindness from you, and so, from diffidence and
+restraint of tenderness, her face has set hard into coldness. But that
+is only a mask. How you treat each other, you women! And you are as
+wanting in discernment, too, as you are in kindness and sympathy. She
+has had to put on that mask of coldness to hide what you make her
+suffer, and it will take long loving to melt it now, and make her look
+human again. You misinterpret her silence too. How can you expect her
+to be interesting if you take no interest in her? But look at her
+eyes? Any one with the least kindly discernment might have seen the
+love and living interest there! If she had been in a good position,
+everybody would have found her as singularly interesting as she,
+without caring a rap for our position, has found us. She sees through
+us all with those eyes of hers--ay, and beyond! She sees what we have
+never seen, and never shall in this incarnation; hers are the vision
+and the dream that are denied to us. Were she to come forward as a
+leader to-morrow, I would follow her humbly and do as she told me....
+I read some of her writings the other day, but I thought they were the
+work of a mature woman. Had I known she was such a child I should have
+wondered!"
+
+"Dear me! does she really write?" said Mrs. Carne. "Well, you surprise
+me! I should never have dreamt that she had anything in her!"
+
+"You make me feel ashamed of myself, Ideala," said Mrs. Kilroy with
+contrition. "I ought to have known. But I could think of nothing, see
+nothing in her but that horrible business. I shall certainly do my
+best now, however, when we return from town, to cultivate her
+acquaintance, if she will let me."
+
+"Let you!" Mrs. Carne ejaculated with her insinuating smile. "I should
+think she would be flattered."
+
+"I am not so sure of that," said Ideala.
+
+"Neither am I," said Mrs. Kilroy. "I only wish I were. But she ignored
+us all rather pointedly when she came in."
+
+"To save herself from being ignored, I suppose," said Ideala bitterly.
+"The girl is self-respecting."
+
+"I confess I liked her the first time I saw her," said Mrs. Orton Beg;
+"but afterwards, when I heard what her husband was, I felt forced to
+ignore her. How can you countenance her if she approves?"
+
+"It was a mistake to take her approval for granted," said Mrs. Kilroy.
+"Ideala would have inquired."
+
+"Yes," said Ideala. "I take nothing for granted. If I hear anything
+nice, I believe it; but if I hear anything objectionable about any
+one, I either inquire about it or refuse to believe it point-blank.
+And in a case like this, I should be doubly particular, for, in one of
+its many moods, genius is a young child that gazes hard and sees
+nothing."
+
+"And you really think the little woman is a genius, and will be a
+great writer some day?" Mrs. Carne asked with exaggerated deference to
+Ideala's opinion.
+
+"I don't know about being a writer," said Ideala. "Genius is
+versatile. There are many ways in which she might succeed. It depends
+on herself--on the way she is finally impelled to choose. But great
+she will be in something--if she lives."
+
+"Let us hope that she will be a great benefactor of her own sex then,
+and do great good," said the gentle Lady Fulda.
+
+"Amen!" Ideala ejaculated fervently.
+
+Mrs. Carne tried to put off her agreeable society smile and put on her
+Sunday-in-church expression, but was not in time. When we only assume
+an attitude once a week, be it mental or physical, we do not fall into
+it readily on a sudden.
+
+"Not that working for women as a career is what I should wish her for
+her own comfort," said Ideala after a pause. "Women who work for women
+in the present period of our progress--I mean the women who bring
+about the changes which benefit their sex--must resign themselves to
+martyrdom. Only the martyr spirit will carry them through. Men will
+often help and respect them, but other women, especially the workers
+with methods of their own, will make their lives a burden to them with
+pin-pricks of criticism, and every petty hindrance they can put in
+their way. There is little union between women workers, and less
+tolerance. Each leader thinks her own idea the only good one, and
+disapproves of every other. They seldom see that many must be working
+in many ways to complete the work. And as to the bulk of women, those
+who will benefit by our devotion, they bespatter us with mud, stone
+us, slander us, calumniate us; and even in the very act of taking
+advantage of the changes we have brought about, ignore us, slight us,
+push us under, and step up on our bodies to secure the benefits which
+our endeavours have made it possible for them to enjoy. I know! I have
+worked for women these many years, and could I show you my heart, you
+would find it covered with scars--the scars of the wounds with which
+they reward me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Beth got in that day, she found Dan standing in the hall,
+examining a letter addressed to herself. She took it out of his hand
+without ceremony, and tore it open. "Hurrah!" she exclaimed, "it's
+accepted."
+
+"What's accepted?" he asked.
+
+"An article I sent to _Sunshine_. And the editor says he would like to
+see some more of my work," Beth rejoined, almost dancing with delight.
+
+"I don't suppose that will put much in your pocket," Dan observed. "He
+wouldn't praise you if he meant to pay you."
+
+"But he has sent me a cheque for thirty shillings," said Beth.
+
+Dan's expression changed. "Then you may be sure it's worth double," he
+said. "But you might get some nice notepaper for me out of it, and
+have it stamped with my crest, like a good girl. It's necessary in my
+profession, and I've finished the last you got."
+
+Beth laughed as she had laughed--that same peculiar mirthless little
+laugh--when he drove past her and splashed her with mud on the road.
+"It never seems to occur to you that I may have some little wants of
+my own, Dan," she said; "you are a perfect horseleech's daughter."
+
+Dan gazed at her blankly. He never seemed to understand any such
+allusion. "You've got a grievance, have you?" he snarled. "Do _I_ ever
+prevent you getting anything you like?"
+
+Beth shrugged her shoulders by way of answer, and went into the
+dining-room. He followed her, bent on making a scene; and she,
+perceiving this, set herself down on a chair and folded her hands.
+
+He took a turn up and down the room. "And this is my fine marriage
+into a county family, which was to have done so much for me!" he
+ejaculated at last. "But I might have known better, considering the
+hole I took you out of. You've soon forgotten all I've done for you."
+
+Beth smiled enigmatically.
+
+"Oh yes! it's a laughing matter," he proceeded. "I've just ruined
+myself by marrying you; that's what I've done. Not a soul in the place
+will come to the house because of you. Nobody could ever stand you but
+me; and what have I got by it? Not a halfpenny! It was just a swindle,
+the whole business."
+
+"Be careful!" Beth flashed forth. "If you make such assertions you
+must prove them. The day is past when a man might insult his wife with
+impunity. I have already told you I won't stand it. It would neither
+be good for you nor for me if I did."
+
+"It _was_ a swindle," he bawled. "Where are the seven or eight hundred
+a year I married you for?"
+
+Beth looked at him a moment, then burst out laughing. "Dear Dan," she
+said, offering him the cheque, "you shall have the thirty shillings
+all to yourself. You deserve it for telling the truth for once. I
+consider I have had the best of the bargain, though. Thirty shillings
+is cheap for such valuable information."
+
+"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."
+
+Beth sucked the end of her pencil and looked out of the window,
+wondering inwardly why he never tried to pay them.
+
+"I calculate that they come to just three hundred pounds," he
+proceeded, looking keenly at Beth as he spoke; but she remained
+unmoved. "Don't you think," he ventured, "it would be a good thing to
+expend that three hundred pounds your mother left you on the debts? I
+know I could make money if I once got my head above water."
+
+"That three hundred brings me in fifteen pounds a year," said Beth.
+"It is well invested, and I promised my mother not to touch any of my
+little capital. There is the interest, however, it arrived this
+morning. You can have _that_ if you like."
+
+"Well, that would be a crumb of comfort, at all events," he said,
+pouncing on the lawyer's letter, which was lying beside Beth on the
+table, and gloating on the cheque. "But don't you think, now that you
+have the interest, it would be a good time to sell and get the
+principal? Of course your mother was right and wise to advise you not
+to part with your capital; but this wouldn't be parting with it,
+because I should pay you back in time, you know. It would only be a
+loan, and I'd give you the interest on it regularly too; just think
+what a relief it would be to me to get those bills paid!" He ran his
+fingers up through his hair as he spoke, and gazed at himself in the
+glass tragically.
+
+"Any news?" said Beth, after a little pause.
+
+Dan, baffled, turned and began to walk up and down the room. "No,
+there never is any news in this confounded hole," he answered, venting
+his irritation on the place. "Oh, by the way, though, I am forgetting.
+I was at the Pettericks' to-day. That girl Bertha is not getting on as
+I should like."
+
+"The hysterical one?" said Beth.
+
+"Ye--yes," he answered, hesitating. "The one who threatened to be
+hysterical at one time. But that's all gone off. Now she's just weak,
+and she should have electricity; but I can't be going there every day
+to apply it--takes too much time: so I suggested to her people that
+she should come here for a while, as a paying patient, you know."
+
+"And is she coming?" Beth said, rather in dismay.
+
+"Yes, to-morrow," he replied. "I said you'd be delighted; but you must
+write and say so yourself, just for politeness' sake. It will be a
+good thing for you too, you know. You are too much alone, and she'll
+be a companion for you. She's not half a bad girl."
+
+"Shall I be obliged to give her much of my time?" Beth asked
+lugubriously.
+
+"Oh dear, no! She'll look after herself," Dr. Maclure cheerfully
+assured her. "I'll hire a piano for her. Must launch out a little on
+these occasions, you know. It's setting a sprat to catch a whale."
+
+The piano arrived that afternoon. Beth wished Dan had let her choose
+it; but a piano of any kind was a delight. She had not had one since
+her marriage. Dan had said at first that a piano was a luxury which
+they must not think of when they could not afford the necessaries; and
+a luxury he had considered it ever since.
+
+Bertha Petterick was not the kind of person that Beth would have
+chosen for a companion, and she dreaded her coming; but before Bertha
+had been in the house a week she had so enlivened it that Beth
+wondered she had ever objected to her. Bertha fawned upon Beth from
+the first, and was by way of looking up to her, and admiring her
+intellect. She was four or five years older than Beth, but gave
+herself no airs on that account. She was a dark girl, good looking in
+a common kind of way, with a masculine stride in her walk, a deep
+mannish voice; and not at all intellectual, but very practical: what
+some people consider a fine girl and others a coarse one, according to
+their taste. She was a good shot, could make a dress, cook a dinner,
+ride to hounds, and play any game; and she was what is called
+good-natured, that is to say, ready to do for any one anything that
+could be done on the spur of the moment. Things she might promise to
+do, or things requiring thought, she did not trouble herself about;
+but she would finish a pretty piece of work for Beth, gather flowers
+or buy them and do the table decorations, and keep things tidy in the
+sitting-rooms. She played and sang well, and was ready to do both at
+any time if she were asked, which was a joy to Beth; and her bright
+chatter kept Dan in a good humour, which was a relief. She had plenty
+of money, and spent it lavishly. Every time she went out she bought
+Beth something, a piece of music she had mentioned, a book she longed
+for, materials for work, besides flowers and fruit and sweets in
+unlimited quantities. Beth remonstrated, but Bertha begged Beth not to
+deprive her of the one pleasure she had in life just then, the
+pleasure of pleasing Beth, and of acknowledging what she never could
+repay but dearly appreciated--Beth's sisterly sympathy, her consistent
+kindness! Such sayings were tinged with sadness, which made Beth
+suspect that Bertha had some secret sorrow; but if so, it was most
+carefully concealed, for there was not a trace of it in her habitual
+manner. She showed no physical delicacy either; but then, as she said
+herself, she was picking up in such a wonderful way under the
+treatment, she really began to feel that there was very little the
+matter with her.
+
+Dan managed to be at home a great deal to look after his patient, and
+was most attentive to her. He hired a brougham three times a week to
+do his rounds in, that she might accompany him, and so get the air
+without fatigue or risk of cold; and he would have her to sit with him
+in the dining-room when he was smoking, and rolled cigarettes for her;
+or would spend the evening with her in the drawing-room, listening to
+her playing and singing, or playing bezique with her, and seemingly
+well content, although in private he sometimes said to Beth it was all
+a beastly bore, but he must go through with it as a duty since he had
+undertaken it, it being his way to do a thing thoroughly if he did it
+at all.
+
+"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might," he added
+piously. "If a thing's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well, I
+always think."
+
+That was his formula for the time being, but Beth judged him by his
+demeanour, which was gay, and not by his professions, and did not pity
+him. She was in excellent spirits herself, for her writing was going
+well; and it varied the monotony pleasantly for her to have Bertha to
+talk to, and walk, play, or sew with, after her work. Bertha's
+demonstrations of affection, too, were grateful to Beth, who had had
+so little love either bestowed upon her or required of her.
+
+Bertha had been in the house three months, when one day her mother
+called, and found Beth alone, Dan and Bertha having gone for a drive
+together. Mrs. Petterick had just returned from abroad, where the
+whole family had been living most of the time that Bertha had been
+with the Maclures.
+
+"Really," Mrs. Petterick said, "I don't know how to thank you for your
+kindness to my girl. She's quite a different person I can see by her
+letters, thanks to the good doctor. Before he took her in hand she was
+quite hysterical, and had to lie down two or three times a day,
+because she said she had no strength for anything. But really three
+months is an abuse of hospitality; and I think she should be coming
+home now."
+
+"Oh no, do let her stay a little longer if you can spare her," Beth
+pleaded. "It is so nice to have her here."
+
+"Well, it is good of you to say so," said Mrs. Petterick, "but it must
+be a great expense to you. We weren't well off ourselves at one time.
+Mr. Petterick's a self-made man, and I know that every additional
+mouth makes a difference. But, however, you being proud, I won't
+offend you by offering money in exchange for kindness, which can't be
+repaid, but shan't be forgotten."
+
+When Mrs. Petterick had gone, Beth sat awhile staring into the fire.
+She was somewhat stunned, for Dan had assured her that Bertha was a
+paying patient, and that, it seemed, had been a gratuitous lie. She
+was roused at last by Minna, the parlour-maid. "Please, ma'am, a lady
+wishes to see you," Minna said.
+
+"Show her in," Beth answered listlessly. But the next moment she
+stiffened with astonishment, for the lady who entered was Mrs. Kilroy
+of Ilverthorpe.
+
+"I am afraid I have taken you by surprise," Mrs. Kilroy began rather
+nervously.
+
+"Will you sit down?" Beth said coldly. "You cannot wonder if I am
+surprised to see you. This is the first visit you have paid me,
+although we met directly after I came to Slane some years ago. You
+were kind and cordial on that occasion, but the next time I saw
+you--at that ball--you slighted me; and after that you shunned me
+until I met you the other day at Mrs. Carne's, and then you seemed
+inclined to take me up again. I do not understand such caprices, and I
+do not like them."
+
+"It was not caprice," Mrs. Kilroy assured her. "I liked you very much
+the first time we met, and I should have called immediately; but when
+I asked for your address, I was told that your husband was in charge
+of the Lock Hospital----"
+
+"Yes, the hospital for the diseases of women," Beth said. "But what
+difference does that make?"
+
+"It made me jump to the hasty conclusion that you approved of the
+degradation of your own sex," said Angelica.
+
+"The degradation of my own sex!" said Beth bewildered. "What is a Lock
+Hospital?"
+
+Angelica explained the whole horrible apparatus for the special
+degradation of women.
+
+"Now perhaps you will understand what we felt about you," Angelica
+concluded--"we who are loyal to our own sex, and have a sense of
+justice--when we thought you were content to live on the means your
+husband makes in such a shameful way."
+
+An extraordinary look of relief came into Beth's face. "Then it was
+not my fault--not because I was horrid," she exclaimed. All the
+slights were as nothing the moment she gathered that she had not
+deserved them. Angelica stared at her. But it was not in Beth's nature
+to think long about herself; only the full force of what she had just
+heard as it concerned others did not come to her for some seconds.
+When it did, she was overcome. "How could you suppose that I knew?"
+she gasped at last. "This is the first hint I have had of the
+loathsome business. My husband talks to me about--many things that he
+had better not have mentioned--but about this he has never said a
+word."
+
+"Then he must have suspected that you would disapprove," said Mrs.
+Kilroy.
+
+"Disapprove!" Beth ejaculated. "The whole thing makes me sick. I ought
+to have been told before I married him. I never would have spoken to a
+man in such a position had I known. You did well to avoid me."
+
+"No," said Angelica. "I did ill, and I feel humiliated for my own want
+of penetration--for my hasty conclusion. It was Sir George Galbraith
+who first made me suspect that you knew nothing about it, and I would
+have come at once to make sure, but we were just leaving the
+neighbourhood, and we only returned yesterday. Ideala did not believe
+that you knew it either, and she rated us all for the way we had
+treated you. She has been in America ever since she met you at Mrs.
+Carne's, but she is coming home next week, and has written to entreat
+me to ask you to meet her. Will you? Will you come and stay with me?
+Do! and talk this over with us. I can see that it has been a great
+shock to you."
+
+"I cannot answer you now," said Beth, "I must think--I must think what
+I had better do."
+
+"Yes, think it over," said Angelica, "then write and tell me when you
+will come. Only do come. You will find yourself among friends--congenial
+friends, I venture to prophesy."
+
+When Mrs. Kilroy had gone, Beth went to her bedroom, and waited there
+for Dan. It was the only place where she could be sure of seeing him
+alone. He dressed for dinner now that Miss Petterick was with them.
+
+Dan came in whistling hilariously. He stopped short when he saw Beth's
+face.
+
+"What's up?" he asked.
+
+"Mrs. Kilroy has been here."
+
+"I hope you thanked her for nothing!"
+
+"I'm afraid I forgot to thank her at all," Beth said, "although she
+has put me under an obligation to her."
+
+"May I ask what the obligation is?"
+
+"She told me frankly why no decent woman will associate with us. It is
+not my fault after all, it seems, but yours--you and your Lock
+Hospital. It is against the Anglo-Saxon spirit to admit panders into
+society."
+
+"Oh, she told you about that, did she, the meddling busybody!" he
+answered coolly. "I was afraid they would, some of them, damn them!
+and I knew you would go into hysterics. She didn't tell you the
+necessity for it, I suppose, nor the good it is doing; but I will; so
+just listen to me, then you'll see perhaps that I know more about it
+than these canting sentimentalists."
+
+Beth, sitting in judgment on him, set her mouth and listened in
+silence until he stopped. In his own defence he gave her many
+revolting details couched in the coarsest language.
+
+"But then, in the name of justice," she exclaimed, "what means do you
+take to protect those poor unfortunate women from disease? What do you
+do to the men who spread it? What becomes of diseased men?"
+
+"Oh, they marry, I suppose. Anyhow, that is not my business. Doctors
+can't be expected to preach morals. Sanitation is our business."
+
+"But aren't morals closely connected with sanitation?" Beth said. "And
+why, if sanitation is your business, do you take no radical measures
+with regard to this horrible disease? Why do you not have it reported,
+never mind who gets it, as scarlet fever, smallpox, and other
+diseases--all less disastrous to the general health of the
+community--are reported?"
+
+Dan shrugged his shoulders. "It's a deuced awkward thing for a man to
+be suspected of disease. It's a stigma, and might spoil his prospects.
+Women are so cursedly prying nowadays. They've got wind of its being
+incurable, and many a one won't marry a man if a suspicion of it
+attaches to him."
+
+"I see," said Beth. "The principles of the medical profession with
+regard to sanitation when women are in question seem to be peculiar. I
+wish to Heaven I had known them sooner." She hid her face in her
+hands, and suddenly burst into tears.
+
+Dan scowled. "Well, this is nice!" he exclaimed. "I have had a
+devilish hard day's work, and come in cheery, as usual, to do my best
+to make things pleasant for you, and this is the reception I get!
+You're a nice pill, indeed!" He went off muttering into his
+dressing-room and slammed the door.
+
+When he appeared in the drawing-room, he found Beth and Bertha
+chatting together as usual, and as, during the rest of the evening, he
+could detect no difference in Beth's manner, he congratulated himself
+that she was going to accept the position as inevitable, and say no
+more about it. It was not Beth's way to return to a disagreeable
+subject once it had been discussed, unless she meant to do something
+in the matter, and Dan conceived that there was nothing to be done in
+this instance. He considered that he was not the sort of man it was
+safe for women to interfere with, and he guessed she knew it!
+
+He was mistaken, however, when he supposed that she had let the
+subject drop, and was going to resign herself to an invidious
+position. She was merely letting it lapse until she understood it. It
+was all as new to her as it was horrifying, and she required time to
+study both sides of the question. Her own sense of justice was too
+acute to let her accept at once the accusation that so-called
+civilised men, who boast of their chivalrous protection of the "weaker
+sex," had imposed upon women a special public degradation, while the
+most abandoned and culpable of their own sex were not only allowed to
+go unpunished, but to spread vice and disease where they listed. The
+iniquitous injustice and cruelty of it all made her sick and sorry for
+men, and reluctant to believe it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few days after Mrs. Kilroy's visit, Mrs. Carne called on Beth. Mrs.
+Carne always followed the county people. To her they were a sacred
+set. Her faith in all they did was touching and sincere. The stupidest
+remark of the stupidest county lady impressed her more than the most
+brilliant wit of a professional man's wife. When she stayed at a
+country-house, whatever the tone of it, she felt like a shriven saint,
+so uplifted was she by reverence for rank. On finding, therefore, that
+some of the most influential ladies in the county were diffidently
+anxious to win Beth into their set, rather than prepared to admit her
+with confident patronage, as Mrs. Carne would have expected, it was
+natural that she should revise her own opinion of Beth, and also seek
+to cultivate her acquaintance.
+
+She called in the morning by way of being friendly; but Beth, who was
+hard at work at the time, did not feel grateful for the attention.
+Minna showed Mrs. Carne straight into the dining-room, where Beth
+usually worked now that Bertha was on the premises. Bertha happened to
+be out that morning, and Mrs. Carne surprised Beth sitting alone at a
+table covered with books and papers.
+
+"And so the little woman is going to be a great one!" Mrs. Carne
+exclaimed playfully. "Well, I _was_ surprised to hear it! I know I am
+not flattering to my own discernment when I say so; but there! I
+should never have supposed you were a genius. You are such a quiet
+little mouse, you know, you don't give yourself away much, if you will
+excuse the expression! I always say what I think."
+
+"I hope you will not call me a genius again, Mrs. Carne," Beth said
+stiffly. "All exaggeration is distasteful to me."
+
+"And to me, too, my dear child," Mrs. Carne hastened to assure her
+blandly. "But I always say what I think, you know."
+
+Beth fixed her eyes on the clock absently.
+
+When Dan came in to lunch that day, he seemed pleased to hear that
+Mrs. Carne had been.
+
+"What had she to say for herself?" he asked.
+
+"She said 'I always say what I think,'" Beth replied; "until it
+struck me that 'I always say what I think' is a person who only thinks
+disagreeable things."
+
+"Well, _I_ like her," said Dan; "and I always get on with her. If
+she's going to show up friendly at last, I hope you won't snub her. We
+can't afford to make enemies, according to your own account," he
+concluded significantly. "What do you think of her, Miss Petterick?"
+he added, by way of giving a pleasanter turn to the conversation. He
+and his patient always addressed each other with much formality. Beth
+asked him once in private why he was so stiff with Bertha, and he
+explained that he thought it wiser, as a medical man, not to be at all
+familiar; formality helped to keep up his authority.
+
+"I have had no opportunity of thinking anything about her," Bertha
+rejoined. "She has never spoken to me. I have heard her speak, though,
+and like her voice. It's so cooing. She makes me think of a dove."
+
+"And I shouldn't be surprised to find," said Beth, with cruel insight,
+"that, like the dove, she conceals a villainous disposition and
+murderous proclivities by charms of manner and a winning voice. What
+are you going to do this afternoon, Bertha?"
+
+Bertha glanced at Dan. "I am going to read 'The Moonstone' out in the
+garden the whole afternoon," she replied.
+
+"Then you won't mind if I disappear till tea-time?" said Beth. "I want
+to do some work upstairs."
+
+"No, I would rather be alone," Bertha answered frankly. "That book's
+entrancing."
+
+"I shall go round on foot this afternoon, for exercise," Dan announced
+as he left the room.
+
+Beth saw Bertha settled on a seat in the garden, and then retired to
+her secret chamber. She had not yet come to any conclusion with regard
+to Mrs. Kilroy's invitation, and she felt it was time she decided. She
+took her sewing, her accustomed aid to thought, and sat down on a high
+chair near the window. She always sat on a high chair, that she might
+not be enervated by lolling; that was one of her patient methods of
+self-discipline; and while she meditated, she did quantities of work
+for herself, making, mending, remodelling, that she might get all the
+wear possible out of her clothes, and not add a penny she could help
+to those terrible debts, the thought of which had weighed on her
+youth, and threatened to crush all the spirit out of her ever since
+her marriage. Dan had never considered her too young to be worried.
+
+From where she sat she could see Bertha on a seat just below, with
+"The Moonstone" on her lap, but Bertha could not see her because of
+the curtain of creepers that covered the iron rail which formed a
+little balcony round the window. Besides, it was supposed that that
+was a blank window. It was the only one on that side of the house,
+too, and Bertha had settled herself in that secluded corner of the
+garden precisely because she thought she could not be overlooked.
+
+Beth glanced at her from time to time mechanically, but without
+thinking of her. It struck her at last, however, that Bertha had never
+opened her book, which seemed odd after the special point she had made
+of being left alone to read it undisturbed. Then Beth noticed that she
+seemed to be on the look-out, as if she were expecting something or
+somebody; and presently Dan appeared, walking quickly and with a
+furtive air, as if he were afraid of being seen. Bertha flushed
+crimson and became all smiles as soon as she saw him. Beth's work
+dropped on her lap, she clasped her hands on it, her own face flushed,
+and her breath became laboured. Dan, after carefully satisfying
+himself that there was nobody about, sat down beside Bertha, put his
+arm round her waist, and kissed her. She giggled, and made a feeble
+feint of protesting. Then he took a jewel-case from his pocket, opened
+it, and held it out to her admiring gaze. It contained a handsome gold
+bracelet, which he presently clasped on her arm. She expressed her
+gratitude by lifting up her face to be kissed. Then he put his arm
+round her again, and she sat with her head on his shoulder, and they
+began to talk; but the conversation was interrupted by frequent
+kisses.
+
+Beth had seen enough. She turned her back to the window, and sat quite
+still with her hands clasped before her. It was her first experience
+of that parasite, the girl who fastens herself on a married woman,
+accepts all that she can get from her in the way of hospitality and
+kindness, and treacherously repays her by taking her husband for a
+lover. Beth pitied Bertha, but with royal contempt. It all seemed so
+sordid and despicable. Jealous she was not. "Jealousy is a want of
+faith in one's self," she had said to Bertha's mother once, and now,
+in the face of this provocation, she was of the same mind. She had no
+words to express her scorn for a man who is false to his obligations,
+nor for the petty frauds and deceits which had made the position of
+those two tenable. As for Dan, he was beneath contempt; but--"I shall
+succeed!" The words sprang to her lips triumphantly. "Let him wallow
+with his own kind in congenial mire as much as he likes. No wonder he
+suspects me! But I--I shall succeed!"
+
+Meanwhile down in the garden Dan was gurgling to Bertha: "What should
+I do without you, darling? Life wasn't worth having till I knew you. I
+won't say a word against Beth. She has her good points, as you know,
+and I believe she means well; but she's spoilt my life, and my career
+too. I'm one that requires a lot of sympathy; but she never shows me
+any. She thinks of nobody but herself. Her own mother always said so.
+And after all I've done for her too! If only you knew! But of course I
+can't blow my own trumpet. They're all alike in that family, though.
+Her mother used to keep me playing cards till I was ruined. And Beth
+has no gratitude, and you can't trust her. She comes of a lying lot,
+and I'm of the same mind as my old father, who used to say he'd rather
+have a thief any day than a liar. You can watch a thief, but you can't
+watch a liar."
+
+"Still, Dan," Bertha murmured, "I somehow think you ought to stick to
+her."
+
+"So I would," said Dan. "No one can accuse me of not sticking to my
+duty. I'm an honourable man. It was she who cast me off. I'm nothing
+to her. And I should have been broken-hearted but for you, Bertha, I
+should indeed." Dan's fine eyes filled with tears, which Bertha
+tenderly wiped away.
+
+"Of course it makes a great difference her having cast _you_ off,"
+Bertha conceded, after a little interlude.
+
+"It makes _all_ the difference," Dan rejoined. "She set me at liberty,
+and you are free too; so who have we to consider but ourselves? I admire
+a woman who has the pluck to be free!" he added enthusiastically.
+
+"Then why don't you encourage Beth more to go her own way?" Bertha
+reasonably demanded. "She's always yearning for a career."
+
+Dan hesitated. "Because I've been a fool, I think," he said at last.
+"I'll encourage her now, though. It would be a great blessing to us if
+she could get started as a writer. I see that now. She'd think of
+nothing else. And it would be a blessing to her too," he added
+feelingly.
+
+"That's what I like about you, Dan," Bertha observed. "You always make
+every allowance for her, and consider her interests, although she has
+treated you badly."
+
+Dan pressed her hand to his lips. "I'll do what I can for her, you may
+be sure," he said, quite melted by his own magnanimity. "I wish I
+could do more. But she's been extravagant, and my means are dreadfully
+crippled."
+
+"Then why do you buy me such handsome presents, you naughty man?"
+Bertha playfully demanded, holding up her arm with the bracelet on it.
+
+"I must have a holiday sometimes," he rejoined. "Besides, I happen to
+be expecting a handsome cheque, an unusual occurrence, by any post
+now."
+
+Beth's dividends were due that day.
+
+Just as dinner was announced, Beth swept into the drawing-room in the
+best evening dress she had, a diaphonous black, set off by turquoise
+velvet, a combination which threw the beautiful milk-white of her skin
+into delicate relief. There was a faint flush on her face; on her
+forehead and neck the tendrils of her soft brown hair seemed to have
+taken on an extra crispness of curl, and her eyes were sparkling. She
+had never looked better. Bertha Petterick, in her common handsomeness,
+was as a barmaid accustomed to beer beside a gentlewoman of
+exceptional refinement. She wore the showy bracelet Dan had given her
+that afternoon, and it shone conspicuous in its tawdry newness on her
+arm; her dress was tasteless too, and badly put on, and altogether she
+contrasted unfavourably with Beth, and Dan observed it.
+
+"Are you expecting any one in particular to-night?" he asked.
+
+"No," Beth answered smiling. "I dressed for my own benefit. Nothing
+moves me to self-satisfaction like a nice dress. I have not enjoyed
+the pleasure much since I married. But I am going to begin now, and
+have a good time."
+
+She turned as she spoke and led the way to the dining-room alone. Dr.
+Maclure absently offered his arm to Miss Petterick. He was puzzled to
+know what this sudden fit of self-assertion, combined with an
+unaccountable burst of high spirits on Beth's part, might portend. To
+conceal a certain uneasiness, he became extra facetious, not to say
+coarse. There was a public ball coming off in a few days, and he
+persisted in speaking of it as "The Dairy Show."
+
+"Don't you begin to feel excited about it? I do!" Miss Petterick said
+to Beth. "I wish it were to-night."
+
+"I am indifferent," Beth answered blandly, "because I am not going."
+
+"Not going!" Dan exclaimed. "Then who's to chaperon me?"
+
+"I should scarcely suppose," Beth answered, looking at him
+meditatively, "that you are in the stage of innocence which makes a
+chaperon necessary. Bertha, how you are loving that new bracelet!
+You've done nothing but fidget with it ever since we sat down."
+
+"Ah!" Bertha answered archly, "you want to know where I got it, Madam
+Curious! Well, I'll tell you. It was sent me only to-day--by my young
+man!"
+
+Dan looked at his plate complacently, but presently Beth saw a glance
+of intelligence flash between them--a glance such as she had often
+seen them exchange before, but had not understood; and she was
+thankful that she had not!--thankful that she had been able to live so
+long with Dr. Maclure without entertaining a single suspicion, without
+thinking one low thought about him. It was a hopeful triumph of
+cultivated nice-mindedness over the most evil communications.
+
+When they were at dessert, the postman's knock resounded sharply. Dr.
+Maclure, who had been anxiously listening for it, and was peeling a
+pear for Miss Petterick at the moment, waited with the pear and the
+knife upheld in his hands, watching the door till the servant entered.
+She brought a letter on a salver, and was taking it to her master,
+when Beth said authoritatively, "That letter is for me, Minna; bring
+it here."
+
+The girl obeyed.
+
+Dan put down the knife and the pear. "What's yours is mine, I
+thought," he observed, with a sorry affectation of cheeriness.
+
+"Not on this occasion," Beth answered quietly, taking up the letter
+and opening it as she spoke. "This happens to be peculiarly my own."
+
+"Why, it's a cheque," he rejoined, with an affectation of surprise.
+"What luck! I haven't been able to sleep for nights thinking of the
+butcher's bill."
+
+"For shame!" Beth said, bantering--"talking about bills before your
+guest! But since you introduced the subject I may add that the butcher
+must wait. I want this myself. I am going to stay with Mrs. Kilroy at
+Ilverthorpe on Wednesday, and it will just cover my expenses."
+
+"This is the first I have heard of the visit," Dan ejaculated.
+
+"I only decided to go this afternoon," Beth replied.
+
+"You decided without consulting me? Well--I'm damned if you shall go;
+I shall not allow it."
+
+"The word 'allow' is obsolete in the matrimonial dictionary, friend
+Daniel," Beth rejoined good-humouredly.
+
+"But you are bound to obey me."
+
+"And I'm ready to obey you when you endow me with all your worldly
+goods," she said; then, suddenly dropping her bantering tone, she
+spoke decidedly: "I am going to stay with Mrs. Kilroy on Wednesday,
+understand that at once, and do not let us have any vulgar dispute
+about it."
+
+"But you can't leave Miss Petterick here alone with me!" he
+remonstrated.
+
+"No, but she can go home," Beth answered coolly. "Her mother wants
+her, you know, and I have written to tell her to expect her to-morrow.
+Now, if you please, we will end the discussion."
+
+She put the letter in her pocket, and began to crack nuts and eat
+them. But Dan could not keep away from the subject. "Gad!" he
+ejaculated, "I thought they'd get hold of you, that lot, and flatter
+you, and make a convenience of you--that's what they do! _I_ know
+them! They think you're clever--how easy it is to be mistaken! But
+you'll see for yourself in time, and then you'll believe me--when it's
+too late. For then you'll have got your name mixed up with them, and
+you'll not get over that, I can tell you--they are well known for a
+nice lot. Your Mrs. Kilroy was notorious before she married. She was
+Angelica Hamilton-Wells, and she and her brother were called the
+Heavenly Twins. They are grandchildren of that blackguard old Duke of
+Morningquest. Nobody ever speaks of any of the family with the
+slightest respect. It's well known that Miss Hamilton-Wells asked old
+Kilroy to marry her, and when a girl has to do that, you may guess
+what she is! But they are all besmirched, that lot," Dan concluded
+with his most high-minded manner on.
+
+"I never believe anything I hear against anybody," said Beth,
+unconsciously quoting Ideala; "so please spare me the recital of all
+invidious stories."
+
+"You'll only believe what suits yourself, I know," he said. "And I've
+no doubt you'll enjoy yourself. Galbraith will be there, and Mr.
+Theodore Hamilton-Wells, the fair-haired 'Diavolo,' who will suit your
+book exactly, I should think."
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Beth politely.
+
+Dan poured himself out another glass of wine, and said no more.
+
+He and Bertha managed to have a moment's conversation together before
+they retired that night.
+
+"What does it mean?" Bertha anxiously demanded. "Does she suspect
+anything?"
+
+"God knows!" Dan said piously, then added, after a moment's
+consideration, "How the devil can she? We've played our cards too well
+for that! No, she's just bent on making mischief; that's the kind of
+pill she is. If she keeps that money it will be downright robbery. But
+now you see what I have to put up with, and you can judge for yourself
+if I deserve it."
+
+When he went to Beth, however, he assumed a very different tone. He
+entered the room with an air of deep dejection, and found her sitting
+beside her dressing-table in a white wrapper, reading quietly. She
+smiled when she saw his pose. It was what she had expected.
+
+"I can't do without that money, Beth, on my word," he began
+plaintively. "I've been reckoning on it. I wouldn't take it from you,
+God knows, if I could help it; but I'm sore pressed." He took out his
+handkerchief and wiped his eyes, imagining that he still had to deal
+with the gentle sensitive girl, upon whom he had imposed so long and
+so successfully.
+
+Beth watched him a moment with contempt, and then she laughed.
+
+"It is no use, friend Daniel," she said in her neat, incisive,
+straightforward way. "I am not going to take you seriously any more. I
+am neither to be melted by your convenient tears, nor dismayed by your
+bogey bills. I have never seen any of those bills, by the way; the
+next time you mention them, please produce them. Let us be
+business-like. And in the meantime, just understand, once for all,
+like a good man, that I am not going to be domineered over by you as
+if I were a common degraded wife with every spark of spirit and
+self-respect crushed out of me by one brutal exaction or another. I
+shall do my duty--do my best to meet your reasonable wishes; but I
+will submit to no ordering and no sort of exaction." She rose and
+faced him. "And as we are coming to an understanding," she pursued,
+"just explain. Why did you tell me that Miss Petterick was to be a
+paying patient?"
+
+"I never told you anything of the kind," said Dan, losing his head,
+and lying stupidly in his astonishment.
+
+Beth shrugged her shoulders. "It is your own business," she
+rejoined--"at least it is you who will have to pay for her
+entertainment."
+
+She returned to her book as she spoke, and continued to read with
+apparent calmness.
+
+Now that she had taken up her position, she found herself quite strong
+enough to hold it against any Dan Maclure or Bertha Petterick. But
+Beth was being forced into an ugly and vulgar phase, and she knew and
+resented it, and was filled with dismay. She was taking on something
+of the colour of her surroundings involuntarily, inevitably, as
+certain insects do, in self-defence. She had spoken to Dan in his own
+tone in order to make him understand her; but was it necessary? Surely
+if she had resisted the impulse to try that weapon, she might have
+found another as effective, the use of which would not have
+compromised her gentlehood and lessened her self-esteem. Her
+dissatisfaction with herself for the part she had played was a cruel
+ache, and she thanked Heaven for the chance which would mercifully
+remove her from that evil atmosphere for a while, and prayed for time
+to reflect, for strength to be her better self. She was angry with
+herself, and grieved because she had fought Dan with his own weapons,
+and it did not occur to her for her comfort that she had only done so
+because he was invulnerable to that which she would naturally have
+used--earnest, reasonable, calm discussion--and that fight him she
+must with something, somehow, or sink for ever down to the degraded
+level required of their wives by husbands of his way of thinking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+Ilverthorpe was at the other side of the county, and Beth had to go
+from Slane to Morningquest by train in order to get there. Dan
+continued to be disagreeable in private about her going, but he took
+her to the station, and saw her off, so that the public might know
+what an admirable husband he was.
+
+On his way from the station he met Sir George Galbraith, and greeted
+him with effusion.
+
+"I hope you were coming to see us," he said, "for that would show that
+you don't forget our humble existence. But my wife isn't at home, I am
+sorry to say. She has just gone to stay with Mrs. Kilroy."
+
+Sir George looked keenly at him. "I hope she is quite well," he said
+formally.
+
+"Not too well," Dan answered lugubriously; "and that is why I
+encouraged her to go. The fact is, Sir George, I think I've been
+making a mistake with Beth. My mother was my perfection of a woman.
+She didn't care much for books; but she had good sound common-sense,
+and she attended to her husband and her household, and preferred to
+stay at home; and I confess I wanted my wife to be like her.
+Especially I wanted to keep her pure-minded and unsuspicious of evil;
+and _that_ she could not remain if she got drawn into Mrs. Kilroy's
+set, and mixed up with the questions about which women are now
+agitating themselves. I know you're with them and not with me in the
+matter, but you'll allow for my point of view. Well, with regard to
+Beth, I find I've made a mistake. I should have let her follow her own
+bent, see for herself, and become a woman of the day if she's so
+minded. As it is, she is growing morbid for want of an outlet, and
+hanging back herself, and it is I who have to urge her on. It's an
+heroic operation so far as I'm concerned, for the whole thing is
+distasteful to me; but I shall go through with it, and let her be as
+independent as she likes."
+
+"This sounds like self-sacrifice," said Sir George. "I sincerely hope
+it may answer. We are going different ways, I think. Good-morning." He
+raised his hand to his hat in a perfunctory way, and hurried off. The
+next time he saw Mrs. Kilroy, he described this encounter with Dr.
+Maclure.
+
+"This is a complete change of front," said Angelica; "what does it
+mean?"
+
+"When a man of that kind tells his wife to make the most of her life
+in her own way and be independent, he means '_Don't bother me; another
+woman is the delight of my senses!_' When he says to the other woman
+'_Be free!_' he means '_Throw yourself into my arms!_'"
+
+Angelica sighed. "Poor Beth!" she said, "what a fate to be tied to
+that plausible hog!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From having been so much shut up in herself, Beth showed very little
+of the contrasts of her temperament on the surface,--her joy in life,
+her moments of exaltation, of devotion, of confidence, of harshness,
+of tenderness; her awful fits of depression, her doubts, her fears,
+her self-distrust; her gusts of passion, and the disconnected impulses
+wedged into the well-disciplined routine of a consistent life, ordered
+for the most part by principle, reason, and reflection. Few people,
+meeting her casually, would have suspected any contrasts at all; and
+even of those who knew her best, only one now and then appreciated the
+rate at which the busy mind was working, and the changes wrought by
+the growth which was continually in progress beneath her equable
+demeanour. Those about her, for want of discernment, expected nothing
+of her, and suffered shocks of surprise in consequence, which they
+resented, blaming her for their own defects.
+
+But it was of much more importance to Beth that she should be able to
+pass on with ease from one thing to another than that she should have
+the approval of people who would have had her stay where they found
+her, not for her benefit, but for their own convenience in classifying
+her. Beth made stepping-stones of her knowledge of other people rather
+than of her own dead self. She picked to pieces the griefs they
+brought upon her, dissected them, and moralised upon them; and, in so
+doing, forgot the personal application. While in the midst of what
+might have been her own life tragedy, she compared herself with those
+who had been through theirs and did not seem a bit the worse or the
+better, which observation stimulated her fortitude; when she
+contemplated the march of events, that mighty army of atoms, any one
+of which may be in command of us for a time, none remaining so for
+ever under healthy conditions, she perceived that life is lived in
+detail, not in the abstract. The kind of thing that makes the backbone
+of a three-volume novel, is but a phase or an incident; everything is
+but an incident with all of us, a heart-break to-day, a recollection
+to-morrow, a source of encouragement and of inspiration eventually
+perhaps; the which, if some would remember, there would be less
+despair and fewer suicides. The recognition of this fact had helped
+Beth's sense of proportion and was making her philosophical. She
+believed that life could be lived so as to make the joys as inevitable
+as the sorrows. We are apt to cultivate our sense of pleasure less
+than our sense of suffering, by appreciating small pleasures little,
+while heeding small pains excessively. Beth's deliberate intention, as
+well as her natural impulse, was to reverse this in her own case as
+much as possible; she would not let her physical sense of well-being
+on a fine morning and her intellectual delight in a good mood for work
+be spoilt because of some trouble of the night before. The trouble she
+would set aside so that it might not detract from the pleasure.
+
+But fine mornings and good moods for work had not come to her aid
+since she discovered the mean treachery of Dan and Bertha, and when
+she left Slane she was still oppressed by the sense of their hypocrisy
+and deceit. As the train bore her swiftly away from them both,
+however, her spirits rose. The sun shone, the country looked lovely in
+its autumn bravery of tint and tone; she felt well, and the
+contemplation of such people as Dan and Bertha was not elevating; they
+must out of her mind like any other unholy thought, that she might be
+worthy to associate with the loyal ladies and noble gentlemen whose
+hands were outheld to help her. The people we cling to are those with
+whom we find ourselves most at home. It is not the people who amuse us
+that we like best, but those who stir our deeper emotions, rouse in us
+possibilities of generous feeling which lie latent for the most part,
+and give form to our higher aspirations; and Beth anticipated with a
+happy heart that it was with such she was bound to abide.
+
+Mrs. Kilroy met her at the station at Morningquest. "What a bonny
+thing you are!" she exclaimed in her queer abrupt way. "I didn't
+realise it till I saw you walking up the platform towards me. There's
+a cart to take your luggage to Ilverthorpe. Do you mind coming to
+lunch with Mrs. Orton Beg? She has a dear little house in the Close,
+and we thought you might like to see the Cathedral. Here's the
+carriage. No, you get in first."
+
+"But does Mrs. Orton Beg want me?" Beth asked when they were seated.
+
+"We all want you," said Mrs. Kilroy, "if you will forgive our first
+mistake with regard to you, and come out of yourself and be one of us.
+And you'll be specially fond of Mrs. Orton Beg when you know her, I
+fancy. She's just sweet! She used to hate our works and ways, and be
+very conventional; but Edith Beale's marriage opened her eyes. She
+would never have believed that men countenanced such an iniquity had
+she not seen it herself. The first effect of the shock was to narrow
+her judgment and make her severe on men generally; but she will get
+over that in time. Man, like woman, is too big a subject to generalise
+about. He has his faults, you know, but he must be educated; that is
+all he wants. He must be taught to have a better opinion of himself.
+At present, he wallows because he thinks he can't keep out of the
+mire; but of course he can when he learns how. He's not a bit worse
+than woman naturally, only he has a lower opinion of himself, and that
+keeps him down. With his training we shouldn't be a bit better than he
+is. In all things that concern men and women, you dear, you will find
+that, when they start fair, one is not a bit better or worse than the
+other. Here we are."
+
+Mrs. Orton Beg came into the hall to greet her guest. She was a
+slender, elegant, middle-aged woman, in graceful black draperies, with
+hair prematurely grey, and a face that had always been interesting,
+but never handsome--a refined, intellectual, but not strong face; the
+face of a patient, self-contained, long-enduring person, of settled
+purpose, slowly arrived at, and then not easily shaken. She welcomed
+Beth cordially, and placed her at table so that she might look out at
+the old grey Cathedral. It was the first time Beth had seen it, and
+she could have lost herself in the sensation of realising its
+traditions, its beauty, and its age; but the conversation went on
+briskly, and she had to take her part. Lady Fulda Guthrie, an aunt of
+Mrs. Kilroy's, was the only other guest. She was a beautiful saint,
+with a soul which had already progressed as far as the most spiritual
+part of Catholicism could take it, and she could get no farther in
+this incarnation.
+
+"I hope you are prepared to discuss any and every thing, Mrs.
+Maclure," Mrs. Orton Beg warned Beth; "for that is what you will find
+yourself called upon to do among us. The peculiarity of man is that he
+will do the most atrocious things without compunction, but would be
+shocked if he were called upon to discuss them. Do what you like, is
+his principle, but don't mention it; people form their opinions in
+discussion, and opinions are apt to be adverse. Our principle is very
+much the opposite."
+
+"I have just begun to know the necessity for open discussion," Beth
+answered tranquilly. "I do not see how we can arrive at happiness in
+life if we do not try to discover the sources of misery. I know of
+nothing that earnest men and women should hesitate to discuss openly
+on proper occasions."
+
+"Oh, I'm thankful to hear you say 'men and women,'" Angelica broke in.
+"That is the right new spirit! Let us help one another. Any attempt to
+separate the interests of the sexes, as women here and there, and men
+generally, would have them separated, is fatal to the welfare of the
+whole race. The efforts of foolish people to divide the interests of
+men and women make me writhe--as if we were not utterly bound up in
+one another, and destined to rise or fall together! But this woman
+movement is towards the perfecting of life, not towards the
+disruption of it. I asked a sympathetic woman the other day why she
+took no part in it, and she answered profoundly, 'Because I am a part
+_of_ it.' And I am sure she was right. I am sure it is evolutionary.
+It is an effort of the race to raise itself a step higher in the scale
+of being. For see what it resolves itself into! Men respond to what
+women expect of them. When warriors were the women's ideal, men were
+warriors. When women preferred knights, priests, or troubadours, a
+man's ambition was to be a knight, priest, or troubadour. When women
+thought drunkenness fine, men were drunken. Now women want husbands of
+a nobler nature, strong in all the attributes, moral and physical, of
+the perfect man, that their children may be noble too, and thus the
+ascent of man to higher planes of being become assured."
+
+"Great is the power of thought," said Lady Fulda. "By thinking these
+things the race is evolving them. Thought married to suggestion is a
+creative force. If the race believed it would have wings; in the
+course of ages wings would come of the faith."
+
+"And discussion is not enough," Beth resumed. "We should experiment.
+It is very well to hold opinions and set up theories, but opinions and
+theories are alike valueless until they are tested by experiment."
+
+"I see you are a true radical," said Mrs. Orton Beg. "You would go to
+the root of the matter."
+
+"Oh yes, I am a radical in that sense of the word," Beth answered. "I
+have a horror of conservatism. Nothing is stationary. All things are
+always in a state of growth or decay; and conservatism is a state of
+decay."
+
+"Yes," said Angelica. "That is very true, especially as applied to
+women--if they are ever to advance."
+
+"Then don't you think they are advancing?" Beth asked.
+
+"Yes," said Angelica, "but not as much as they might. When you mix
+more with them in the way of work you will be disheartened. Women are
+their own worst enemies just now. They don't follow their leaders
+loyally and consistently; they have little idea of discipline; their
+tendency is to go off on side issues and break up into little cliques.
+They are largely actuated by petty personal motives, by petty
+jealousies, by pettinesses of all kinds. One amongst them will arise
+here and there, and do something great that is an honour to them all;
+but they do not honour her for it--perhaps because something in the
+way she dresses, or some trick of manner, does not meet with the
+approval of the majority. Women are for ever stumbling over trifling
+details. To prove themselves right pleases them better than to arrive
+at the truth; and a vulgar personal triumph is of more moment than
+the triumph of a great cause. In these things they are practically not
+a bit better than men."
+
+"They seem worse, in fact, because we expect so much more of them in the
+way of loyalty and disinterestedness," said Mrs. Orton Beg; "and their
+power is so much greater, too, in social matters; when they misuse it,
+they do much more harm. This will not always be so, of course. As their
+minds expand, they will see and understand better. At present they do
+not know enough to appreciate their own deficiencies--they do not
+measure the weakness of their vacillations by comparing it with the
+steady strength of purpose that prevails; and, for want of
+comprehension, they aim their silly animadversions to-day at some one
+whose work they are glad enough to profit by to-morrow; they make the
+task of a benefactress so hard that they kill her, and then they give
+her a public funeral. I pity them!"
+
+"Oh, do not be hasty," said Lady Fulda. "Human beings are not like
+packs of cards, to be shuffled into different combinations at will and
+nobody the worse. There are feelings to be considered. The old sores
+must be tenderly touched even by those who would heal them. And when
+we uproot we must be careful to replant under more favourable
+conditions; when we demolish we should be prepared to rebuild, or no
+comfort will come of the changes. These things take time, and are best
+done deliberately, and even then the most cautious make their
+mistakes. But, still, I believe that the force which is carrying us
+along is the force that makes for righteousness. We women have in our
+minds now what will culminate in the recognition by future generations
+of the beauty of goodness. Woman is to be the mother of God in Man."
+
+Beth's heart swelled at the words. This attitude was new to her; and
+yet all that was said she seemed to have heard before, and known from
+the first. And she knew more also, away back in that region beyond
+time and space to which she had access, and where she found herself at
+happy moments transported by an impulse outside herself, which she
+could not control by any effort of will. That day, with those new
+friends, she felt like one who returns to a happy home after weary
+wanderings, and is warmly welcomed. A great calm settled upon her
+spirit. She said little the whole time, but sat, sure of their
+sympathetic tolerance, and listened to them with that living light of
+interest in her eyes to which the heart responds with confidence more
+surely than to any spoken word. The evil influences which had held her
+tense at Slane had no power to trouble her here. She was high enough
+above Dan and Bertha to look down upon them dispassionately, knowing
+them for what they were, yet personally unaffected by their turpitude.
+It was as if she had heard of some bad deed, and knew it to be
+repulsive, a thing intolerable, meriting punishment; yet, because it
+did not concern her, it had lapsed from her thoughts like a casual
+paragraph read in a paper which had not brought home to her any
+realisation of what it recorded.
+
+During the afternoon her mind was stored with serene impressions--service
+in the venerable Cathedral; the fluting of an anthem by a boy with a
+birdlike voice; some strong words from the pulpit, not on the dry bones
+of doctrine, nor the doings of a barbarous people led by a vengeful
+demon of perplexing attributes whom they worshipped as a deity, but on
+the conduct of life--a vital subject. Then, as they drove through the
+beautiful old city, there came impressions of grey and green; grey
+gateways, ancient buildings, ivy, and old trees, and, over all, sounding
+slow, calm, and significant, the marvellous chime, the message which
+Morningquest heard hourly year by year, and heeded no more than it
+heeded death at a distance or political complications in Peru.
+
+The same party met again at Ilverthorpe, but there were others there
+as well--Ideala, Mrs. Kilroy's father and mother Mr. and Lady Adeline
+Hamilton-Wells, and Lady Galbraith, but not Sir George.
+
+In the drawing-room after dinner, Beth was intent upon a portfolio of
+drawings, and Ideala, seeing her alone, went up to her.
+
+"Are you fond of pictures?" she said to Beth.
+
+"Yes, that is just the word," Beth answered. "I am so 'fond' of them
+that even such a collection as this, which shows great industry rather
+than great art, I find full of interest, and delight in. Happy for me,
+perhaps, that I don't know anything about technique. Subject appeals
+to my imagination as it used to do when I was a child, and loved to
+linger over the pictures on old-fashioned pieces of music. Those
+pictures lure me still with strange sensations such as no others make
+me feel. I wish I could realise now as vividly as I realised then the
+beauty of that lovely lady on the song, and the whole pathetic
+story--the gem that decked her queenly brow and bound her raven hair,
+remained a sad memorial of blighted love's despair; and that other
+young creature who wore a wreath of roses on the night when first we
+met; and the one who related that we met, 'twas in a crowd, and I
+thought he would shun me; he came, I could not breathe, for his eye
+was upon me, and concluded that 'twas thou that had caused me this
+anguish, my mother. There was the gallant corsair, too, just stepping
+out of a boat, waving his hat. His curly hair, open shirt collar, and
+black tie with flying ends remain in my mind, intimately associated
+with Byron, young love, some who never smiled again, the sapphire
+night, crisp, clear, cold, thick-strewn with stars, all sparkling
+with frosty brightness--impressions I would not exchange for art
+understood, or anything I am capable of feeling now before the
+greatest work of art in the world--so strangely am I blunted."
+
+"What, already!" Ideala said compassionately. "But that is only a
+phase. You will come out of it, and be young again and feel strongly,
+which is better than knowing, I concede. The truest appreciation of a
+work of art does not take place in the head, but in the heart; not in
+thinking, but in feeling. When we stand before a picture, it is not by
+the thoughts formulated in the mind, but by the appreciation which
+suffuses our whole being with pleasure that we should estimate it."
+
+"But isn't that a sensuous attitude?" Beth objected.
+
+"Yes, of the right kind," Ideala rejoined. "The senses have their uses,
+you know. And it is exactly your attitude as a child towards the
+pictures on the songs. You felt it all--all the full significance--long
+before you knew it so that you could render it into words; and felt
+more, probably, than you will ever be able to express. Feeling is the
+first stage of fine thought."
+
+Mr. Hamilton-Wells strolled towards them. He was a rather tall,
+exceedingly thin man, with straight, thick, grey-brown hair, parted in
+the middle, and plastered down on either side of his head. He was
+dressed in black velvet. His long thin white hands were bedecked with
+handsome antique rings, art treasures in their way. One intaglio,
+carved in red coral, caught the eye especially, on the first finger of
+his right hand. As he talked he had a trick of shaking his hands back
+with a gesture that suggested lace ruffles getting in the way, and in
+his whole appearance and demeanour there was something that recalled
+the days when velvet and lace were in vogue for gentlemen. He spoke
+with great preciseness, and it was not always possible to be sure that
+he at all appreciated the effect of the extraordinary remarks he was
+in the habit of making; which apparent obliviousness enabled him to
+discourse about many things without offence which other people were
+obliged to leave unmentioned.
+
+"Nowadays, when I see two ladies together in a corner, talking
+earnestly," he observed, "I always suspect that they are discussing
+the sex question."
+
+"Oh, the sex question!" Ideala exclaimed. "I am sick of sex! Sex is a
+thing to be endured or enjoyed, not to be discussed."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mr. Hamilton-Wells, nodding slowly, as if in profound
+consideration, and shaking back his imaginary ruffles. "Is that your
+opinion, Mrs. Maclure?"
+
+"I keep a separate compartment in my mind for the sex question," Beth
+answered, colouring--"a compartment which has to be artificially
+lighted. There is no ray of myself that would naturally penetrate to
+it. When I take up a book, and find that it is nothing but _she was
+beautiful, he loved her_, I put it down again with a groan. The
+monotony of the subject palls upon me. It is the stock-in-trade of
+every author, as if there were nothing of interest in the lives of men
+and women but their sexual relations."
+
+"Indeed, yes," said Mr. Hamilton-Wells, with bland deliberation, "but
+society thinks of nothing else. Blatant sexuality is the predominant
+characteristic of the upper classes, and the rage for the sexual
+passion is principally set up and fostered by a literature inflated
+with sexuality, and by costumes which seem to be designed for the
+purpose. In the evening, now, just think! Even quite elderly ladies,
+with a laudable desire to please, offer themselves in evening
+dress--and a very great deal of themselves sometimes--to the eye that
+may be attracted."
+
+When he had spoken, he shook back his imaginary ruffles, brought his
+hands together in front of him with the fingers tip to tip in a pious
+attitude, and strolled up the long room slowly, shaking his head at
+intervals with an intent expression, as if he were praying for
+society.
+
+"What a bomb!" Beth gasped. "Is he always so?"
+
+"Generally," Ideala rejoined. "And I can never make out whether he
+means well, but is stupid and tactless, or whether he delights to
+spring such explosives on inoffensive people. He sits on a Board of
+Guardians composed of ladies and gentlemen, and the other day, at one
+of their meetings, he proposed to remove the stigma attaching to
+illegitimacy. He said that illegitimacy cannot justly be held to
+reflect on anybody's conduct, since, so he had always understood,
+illegitimacy was birth from natural causes."
+
+"And what happened?"
+
+Ideala slightly shrugged her shoulders. "The proposition was seriously
+discussed, and a parson and one or two other members of the board
+threatened to retire if he remained on it. But remain he did, and let
+them retire; and I cannot help fancying that his whole object was to
+get them to go. Sometimes I think that he must have a peculiar sense
+of humour, which it gives him great gratification to indulge, as
+others do good, by stealth. He makes questionable jests for himself
+only, and enjoys them alone. But apart from this eccentricity, he is a
+kind and generous man, always ready to help with time and money when
+there is any good to be done."
+
+When Beth went to her room that night, she experienced a strange sense
+of satisfaction which she could not account for until she found
+herself alone, with no fear of being disturbed. It seemed to her then
+that she had never before known what comfort was, never slept in such
+a delightful bed, so fresh and cool and sweet. She was like one who
+has been bathed and perfumed after the defilements of a long dusty
+journey, and is able to rest in peace. As she stretched herself
+between the sheets, she experienced a blessed sensation of relief,
+which was a revelation to her. Until that moment, she had never quite
+realised the awful oppression of her married life; the inevitable
+degradation of intimate association with such a man as her husband.
+
+The next day the ladies went out to sit on the lawn together in the
+shade of the trees, with their books and work. There were no sounds
+but such as, in the country, seem to accentuate the quiet, and are
+aids, not to thought, but to that higher faculty which awakes in the
+silence, and is to thought what the mechanical instrument is to the
+voice.
+
+"How heavenly still it is!" Beth ejaculated. "It stirs me--fills me--how
+shall I express it?--makes me cognisant in some sort--conscious of
+things I don't know--things beyond all this, and even better worth our
+attention. The stillness here in these surroundings has the same benign
+effect on me that perfect solitude has elsewhere. What a luxury it is,
+though--solitude! I mean the privilege of being alone when one feels the
+necessity. I am fortunate, however," she added quickly, lest she should
+seem to be making a personal complaint, "in that I have a secret chamber
+all to myself, and so high up that I can almost hear what the wind
+whispers to the stars to make them twinkle. I go there when I want to be
+alone to think my thoughts, and no one disturbs me--not even my nearest
+neighbours, the angels; though if they did sometimes, I should not
+complain."
+
+"They come closer than you think, perhaps," said Lady Fulda, who had
+just strolled up, with a great bunch of lilies on her arm. "Consider
+the lilies," she went on, holding them out to Beth. "Look into them.
+Think about them. No, though, do not think about them--feel. There is
+purification in the sensation of their beauty."
+
+"Is purification always possible?" Beth said. "Can evil ever be cast
+out once it has taken root in the mind?"
+
+"Are you speaking of thoughts or acts, I wonder?" Lady Fulda rejoined,
+sitting down beside Beth and looking dreamily into her flowers. "You
+know what we hold here: that no false step is irretrievable so long as
+we desire what is perfectly right. It is not the things we know of,
+nor even the things we have done, if the act is not habitual,--but the
+things we approve of that brand us as bad. The woman whose principles
+are formed out of a knowledge of good and evil is better, is more to
+be relied upon, than the woman who does not know enough to choose
+between them. It is not what the body does, but what the mind thinks
+that corrupts us."
+
+"But from certain deeds evil thoughts are inseparable," Beth sighed;
+"and surely toleration of evil comes from undue familiarity with it?"
+
+"Yes, if you do not keep your condemnation side by side with your
+knowledge of it," Lady Fulda agreed.
+
+The night before she returned to Slane, Beth attended a meeting of the
+new order which Ideala had founded. It was the first thing of the kind
+she had been to, and she was much interested in the proceedings. Only
+women were present. Beth was one of a semicircle of ladies who sat on
+the platform behind the chair. There were subjects of grave social
+importance under discussion, and most of the speaking was exceedingly
+good, wise, temperate, and certainly not wanting in humour.
+
+Towards the end of the evening there was an awkward pause because a
+lady who was to have spoken had not arrived. Mrs. Kilroy, who was in
+the chair, looked round for some one to fill the gap, and caught
+Beth's eye.
+
+"May I speak?" Beth whispered eagerly, leaning over to her. "I have
+something to say."
+
+Angelica nodded, gave the audience Beth's name, and then leant back in
+her chair. The shorthand writers looked up indifferently, not
+expecting to hear anything worth recording.
+
+Beth went forward to the edge of the platform with a look of
+intentness on her delicate face, and utterly oblivious of herself, or
+anything else but her subject. She never thought of asking herself if
+she could speak. All she considered was what she was going to say. She
+clasped her slender hands in front of her, and began, slowly, with the
+formula she had heard the other speakers use: "Madam Chairman,
+ladies--" She paused, then suddenly spoke out on _The Desecration of
+Marriage_.
+
+At the first resonant notes of her clear, dispassionate voice, there
+was a movement of interest, a kind of awakening, in the hall, and the
+ladies on the platform behind her, who had been whispering to each
+other, writing notes and passing them about, and paying more attention
+to the business of the meeting generally than to the speakers, paused
+and looked up.
+
+Suddenly Ideala, with kindling eyes, leant over to Mrs. Orton Beg,
+grasped her arm, and said something eagerly. Mrs. Orton Beg nodded.
+The word went round. Beth held the hall, and was still rising from
+point to point, carrying the audience with her to a pitch of
+excitement which finally culminated in a great burst of applause.
+
+Beth, taken aback, stopped short, surprised and bewildered by the
+racket; looked about her, faltered a few more words, and then sat down
+abruptly.
+
+The applause was renewed and prolonged.
+
+"What does it mean?" Beth asked Ideala in an agony. "Did I say
+something absurd?"
+
+"My dear child," Ideala answered, laughing, "they are not jeering, but
+cheering!"
+
+"Is that cheering?" Beth exclaimed in an awe-stricken tone, overcome
+to find she had produced such an effect. "I feared they meant to be
+derisive."
+
+"I didn't know you were a speaker," Mrs. Orton Beg whispered.
+
+"I am not," Beth answered apologetically. "I never spoke before, nor
+heard any one else speak till to-night. Only I have thought and
+thought about these things, and I could not keep it back, what I had
+to say."
+
+"That is the stuff an orator is made of," some strange lady muttered
+approvingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+When Beth returned to Slane, Dan received her so joyously she wondered
+what particularly successful piece of turpitude he had been busy
+about. He was always effusive to her when evil things went well with
+him. At first she had supposed that this effusiveness was the outcome
+of affection for her; but when she began to know him, she perceived
+that it was only the expression of some personal gratification. He had
+been quite demonstrative in his attentions to her during the time that
+Bertha Petterick stayed in the house.
+
+"By the way, there is a letter for you," he said, when they were at
+lunch.
+
+"Is there?" Beth answered. "Who from?"
+
+"How the devil am I to know?" he rejoined, glancing up at the
+mantelpiece. "I can't tell who your correspondents are by instinct."
+
+Beth's eye followed his to the mantelpiece, where she saw a large
+square envelope propped up against an ornament in a conspicuous
+position, and recognised the unmistakable, big, clear, firm hand of
+Bertha Petterick, and the thick kind of paper she always used.
+
+Beth had been thinking about Bertha on the way home. She knew that, if
+Bertha had been as wrong in body as in mind and moral nature, she
+would have had compassion on her; and she had determined to tolerate
+her as it was, to do what she could for her maimed soul, just as she
+would have ministered to her had her malady been physical. But Dan's
+hypocrisy about the letter ruffled her into opposition. He knew
+Bertha's handwriting as well as she did, and was doubtless equally
+well acquainted with the contents of the letter; and this affectation
+of ignorance must therefore mean something special. Probably he was
+anxious to propitiate her with regard to whatever Bertha might be
+writing about. But Beth was not to be managed in that way, and so she
+let the letter be.
+
+As she was leaving the room after lunch, Dan called after her: "You
+have forgotten your letter."
+
+"It doesn't matter," Beth answered. "Any time will do for that."
+
+The letter was left there for days unopened, and it had the effect of
+stopping the conversation at meals, for although Dan did not allude to
+it again, he constantly glanced at it, and it was evident that he had
+it on his mind.
+
+At last, one day, when he came in, he said, "I have just seen Mrs.
+Petterick, and she tells me Bertha wrote to you days ago, and has had
+no answer."
+
+"Indeed," Beth observed indifferently. "I shouldn't think she could
+have anything to say to me that specially required an answer."
+
+Dan fidgeted about a little, then burst out suddenly, "Why the devil
+don't you open the girl's letter?"
+
+"Because you pretended you didn't know who it was from," Beth said.
+
+"I declare to God I never pretended anything of the kind," Dan
+answered hotly.
+
+Beth laughed. Then she went to the mantelpiece, took down the letter,
+turned it over and displayed the huge monogram and scroll with
+"Bertha" printed on it, with which it was bedizened, laughed again a
+little, and threw the letter unopened into the fire, "There!" she
+said. "Let that be an end of the letter, and Bertha Petterick too, so
+far as I am concerned. She bores me, that girl; I will not be bothered
+with her."
+
+"Well, well!" Dan exclaimed pathetically, looking hard at the ashes of
+the letter on the coals: "that's gratitude! I do my best to make an
+honest living for you, and you repay me by affronting one of my best
+patients. And what the unfortunate girl has done to offend you, the
+devil only knows. I'm sure she would have blacked your boots for you
+when she was here, she was so devoted."
+
+"She _was_ pretty servile, I grant that," Beth answered dispassionately.
+"But that is enough of Bertha Petterick, please. Here is the butcher's
+bill for the last month, and the baker's, the milk, the wine, the
+groceries, all nearly doubled on Bertha's account. If adding to your
+expenses in every way makes a good patient, she was excellent,
+certainly. I'll leave you the bills to console you; but, if you value
+your peace of mind, don't dare to worry _me_ about them. You were quite
+right when you said I was too young to be troubled about money matters,
+and I shall not let myself be troubled--especially when they are
+matters, like these bills, for which I am not responsible." She was
+leaving the room as she spoke, but stopped at the door: "And, Dan," she
+added, quoting his favourite phrase, "I'd be cheery if I were you.
+There's nothing like being cheery. Why, look at me! I never let anything
+worry me!"
+
+She left Dan speechless, and went to her secret chamber, where she sat
+and suffered for an hour, blaming herself for her lightness, her
+contrariness, her want of dignity, and all those faults which were the
+direct consequence of Dan's evil influence. She was falling farther
+and farther away from her ideal in everything, and knew it, but seemed
+to have lost the power to save herself. The degeneration had begun in
+small matters of discipline, apparently unimportant, but each one of
+consequence, in reality, as part of her system of self-control. From
+the moment we do a thing thinking it to be wrong, we degenerate. If it
+be a principle that we abandon, it does not matter what the principle
+is, our whole moral fibre is loosened by the gap it makes. Beth, who
+had hitherto shunned easy-chairs, as Aunt Victoria had taught her,
+lest she should be enervated by lolling, now began to take to them,
+and so lost the strengthening effect of a wholesome effort. Other
+little observances, too, little regular habits which discipline mind
+and body to such good purpose, slipped from her,--such as the care of
+her skin after the manner of the ladies of her family, who had been
+renowned for their wonderful complexions. This had been enjoined upon
+her by her mother in her early girlhood as a solemn duty, and had
+entailed much self-denial in matters of food and drink, quantities
+being restricted, and certain things prohibited at certain times,
+while others were forbidden altogether. She had had to exercise
+patience, also, in the concoction and use of delicately perfumed
+washes of tonic and emollient properties, home distilled, so as to be
+perfectly pure; all of which had been strictly practised by her, like
+sacred rites or superstitious observances upon the exact performance
+of which good fortune depends. In such matters she now became lax.
+And, besides the care of her person, she neglected the care of her
+clothes, which had been so beneficial to her mind; for it must be
+remembered that it was during those long hours of meditation, while
+she sat sewing, that her reading had been digested, her knowledge
+assimilated, her opinions formed, and her random thoughts collected
+and arranged, ready to be turned to account on an emergency. Until
+this time, too, she had kept Sunday strictly as a day of rest. Books
+and work, and all else that had occupied her during the week, were put
+away on Saturday night, and not taken out again until Monday morning;
+and the consequence was complete mental relaxation. But now she began
+to do all kinds of little things which she had hitherto thought it
+wrong to do on Sunday, so that the sanitary effect of the day of
+rest--or of change of occupation, for sometimes Sunday duties are
+arduous--was gradually lost, and she no longer returned to her work on
+Monday strengthened and refreshed. Little by little her "good reading"
+was also neglected, and instead of relying upon her own resolution, as
+had hitherto been her wont, she began to seek the prop of an odd cup
+of tea or coffee at irregular hours, to raise her spirits if she felt
+down, or stimulate her if she were out of sorts and work was not easy;
+all of which tended to weaken her will. Then, by degrees, she began to
+lose the balance of mind which had been wont to carry her on from one
+little daily doing to another, with calm deliberation, taking them
+each in turn without haste or rest, and finding time for them all.
+Now, the things that she did not care about she began to do with a
+rush, so as to get to her writing. She wanted to be always at that;
+and the consequence was a wearing sensation, as of one who is driven
+to death, and has never time enough for any single thing.
+
+But it was in these days, nevertheless, that she began to write with
+decision. Hitherto, she had been merely trying her pen--feeling her
+way; but now she unconsciously ceased to follow in other people's
+footsteps, and struck out for herself boldly. She had come back from
+Ilverthorpe with a burning idea to be expressed, and it was for the
+shortest, crispest, clearest way to express it that she tried. Foreign
+phrases she discarded, and she never attempted to produce an eccentric
+effect by galvanising obsolete words, rightly discarded for lack of
+vitality, into a ghastly semblance of life. Her own language, strong
+and pure, she found a sufficient instrument for her purpose. When the
+true impulse to write came, her fine theories about style only
+hampered her, so she cast them aside, as habitual affectations are
+cast aside and natural emotions naturally expressed, in moments of
+deep feeling; and from that time forward she displayed, what had
+doubtless been coming to her by practice all along, a method and a
+manner of her own.
+
+She produced a little book at this time, the first thing of any real
+importance she had accomplished as yet; and during the writing of it
+she enjoyed an interval of unalloyed happiness, the most perfect that
+she had ever known. The world without became as nothing to her; it was
+the world within that signified. The terrible sense of loneliness,
+from which she had always suffered more or less, was suspended, and
+she began to wonder how it was she had ever felt so desolate, that
+often in the streets of Slane she would have been grateful to anybody
+who had spoken to her kindly. Now she said to herself, sincerely,
+"Never less alone than when alone!" And up in the quiet of her secret
+chamber, with the serene blue above, the green earth and the
+whispering trees below, and all her little treasures about her: the
+books, the pictures, the pretty hangings, and little ornaments for
+flowers; things she had indulged in by degrees since her mother's
+death had left her with the money in her hands which she had made to
+discharge Dan's debt--up there at her ease in that peaceful shrine,
+secure from intrusion, "There is no joy but calm!" was her constant
+ejaculation. Then again, too, she felt to perfection the fine wonder,
+the fine glow of a great inspiration, and realised anew that therein
+all the pleasures of the senses added together are contained; that
+inspiration in its higher manifestations is like love--that it is
+love, in fact--love without the lover; there being all the joy of love
+in it, but none of the trouble.
+
+But, like most young writers when they set up a high ideal for
+themselves, and are striving conscientiously to arrive at it, because
+the thing came easily she fancied she had not done her best, and was
+dissatisfied. She talked to herself about fatal facility, without
+reflecting that in time ease comes by practice; nor did she
+discriminate between the flow of cheap ideas pumped up from any source
+for the occasion, which satisfies the conceit of shallow workers, and
+the deep stream that bubbles up of itself when it is once released,
+and flows freely from the convictions, the observations, and the
+knowledge of an earnest thinker. Diffidence is a help to some, but to
+Beth it was a hindrance, a source of weakness. There was no fear of
+her taking herself for a heaven-born genius. Her trouble had always
+been her doubt of the merit of anything she did. She should have been
+encouraged, but instead she had always been repressed. Accordingly,
+when she had finished her little masterpiece, she put it away with the
+idea of rewriting it, and making something of it when she should be
+able; and then she began a much more pretentious work, and thought it
+must be better because of the trouble it gave her.
+
+Gradually, from now, she gave up all her time to reading and writing,
+and she overdid it. Work in excess is as much a vice as idleness, and
+it was particularly bad for Beth, whose constitution had begun to be
+undermined by dutiful submission. The consulting rooms of specialists
+are full of such cases. There are marriages which for the ignorant
+girl preached into dutiful submission, whose "innocence" has been
+carefully preserved for the purpose, mean prostitution as absolute, as
+repugnant, as cruel, and as contrary to nature as that of the streets.
+Beth's marriage was one of those. Until she went to Ilverthorpe, she
+had never heard that there was a duty she owed to herself as well as
+to her husband; and, as Sir George Galbraith had said, her brain was
+too delicately poised for the life she had been leading. Work had been
+her opiate; but unfortunately she did not understand the symptoms
+which should have warned her that she was overdoing it, and her nerves
+became exceedingly irritable. Noises which she had never noticed in
+her life before began to worry her to death. Very often, when she was
+spoken to, she could hardly answer civilly. At meals everything that
+was handed to her was just the very thing she did not want. She
+quarrelled with all her food, drank quantities of strong coffee for
+the sake of the momentary exhilaration, and even tried wine; but as it
+only made her feel worse, she gave that up. Writing became a rage with
+her, and the more she had to force herself, the longer she sat at it.
+She would spend hours over one sentence, turning it and twisting it,
+and never be satisfied; and when she was at last obliged to stop and
+go downstairs lest she should be missed, she went with her brain
+congested, and her complexion, which was naturally pale and
+transparent, all flushed or blotched with streaks of crimson.
+
+"What's the matter with your face?" Dan said to her one day, apt, as
+usual, to comment offensively on anything wrong.
+
+"I should like you to tell me," Beth answered.
+
+"You'd better take some citrate of iron and quinine."
+
+"You've prescribed citrate of iron and quinine for everything I've
+ever had since I knew you," said Beth. "If I have any more of it, I
+shall be like the man in the quack advertisement, who felt he could
+conscientiously recommend a tonic because he had taken it for fourteen
+years. I should like something that would act a little quicker."
+
+Dan left the room and banged the door.
+
+That afternoon Beth, up in her shrine at work, suddenly began to
+wonder what he was doing. As a rule, she did not trouble herself about
+his pursuits, but now all at once she became anxious. The thought of
+all the unholy places that he might be at (and the unfortunate girl
+knew all about all of them, for there was no horror of life with which
+her husband had not made her acquainted), filled her with dread--with
+a sensation entirely new to her, and absolutely foreign to her normal
+nature. Her feeling for Dan and Bertha, when she discovered their
+treachery, had been one of contempt. Their disloyalty, and the petty
+mean deceits which it entailed, made it difficult to tolerate their
+presence, and she was always glad to get rid of them, wherever they
+might go. Now, however, she was seized upon with a kind of rage at the
+recollection of their intrigue, of the scene in the garden, the
+glances she had intercepted, their stolen interviews, clandestine
+correspondence, and impudent security. It was all retrospective this
+feeling, but the torment of it was none the less acute for that. She
+recalled the scene in the garden, and her heart throbbed with anger.
+She regretted her own temperate conduct, and imagined herself stealing
+out upon them, standing before them, and pouring forth floods of
+invective till they cowered. She wished she had refused to let Bertha
+enter the house again, and had threatened to expose Dan if he did not
+meekly submit to her dictation. She ought to have exposed him too. She
+should have gone to Bertha's mother. But where was Dan at that moment?
+She jumped up, rushed down to her room, put on her outdoor things in
+hot haste, and ran downstairs determined to go and see; but as she
+entered the hall at one end of it, Dan himself came in by the
+hall-door at the other. The relief was extraordinary.
+
+"Hallo! where are you off to?" he said.
+
+"Just going for a little walk," she answered, speaking ungraciously
+and without looking at him. Now that she saw him, her ordinary feeling
+for him returned; but instead of being quiet and indifferent as usual,
+she found herself showing in her manner something of the contempt she
+felt, and it pleased her to do it. She was glad to go out, and be in
+the open air away from him; but she had not gone far before the
+torment in her mind began again. Why had he come in so unusually
+early? Was there anything going on in the house? He was always very
+familiar with the servants.
+
+She stopped short at this, turned back, and went in as hurriedly as
+she had gone out. In the hall she stood a moment listening. The house
+seemed unusually quiet. A green baize door separated the kitchen and
+offices from the hall. She opened it, and saw Minna in the butler's
+pantry, cleaning the plate. Minna was parlour-maid now, a housemaid
+having been added to the establishment when Miss Petterick came, so
+that that young lady might be well waited on.
+
+"I think we should give the girl full value for her money, you know,
+even if we do without something ourselves," Dan had said, in the
+generous thoughtful way that had so often imposed upon Beth.
+
+Beth asked Minna where Drew, the housemaid, was.
+
+"It's her afternoon out, ma'am," Minna answered.
+
+"So it is," said Beth. "I had forgotten."
+
+"Do you want anything, ma'am?" Minna asked. "You're looking poorly.
+Would you like a cup o' tea?"
+
+"No, thank you," Beth rejoined, then changed her mind. "Yes, I should,
+though. Get me one while I'm taking my things off, and bring it to me
+in the dining-room. Where is your master?"
+
+"I don't know, ma'am. I've not heard if he's come in; but it's full
+early for him yet," Minna replied, as she took off her working apron.
+
+While she was talking to the girl, the worry in Beth's head stopped,
+and she felt as usual. Going quietly upstairs, she fancied she heard
+some one moving in her bedroom, and, entering it by way of the
+dressing-room, she discovered Dan on his knees on the floor, prying
+into one of the boxes she had had with her at Ilverthorpe, and kept
+locked until she should feel inclined to unpack it. He seemed to have
+had all the contents out, and was just deftly repacking it. As he
+replaced the dresses, he felt in the pocket of each, and in one he
+found an old letter which he read.
+
+Beth withdrew on tiptoe, and went downstairs again, wondering at the
+man. She took off her hat and jacket, and ensconced herself with the
+newspaper in an easy-chair. Minna came presently with fragrant tea and
+hot buttered toast, and talked cheerfully about some of her own
+interests. Beth treated her servants like human beings, and rarely had
+any trouble with them. She had learnt the art from Harriet, who had
+awakened her sympathies, and taught her practically, when she was a
+child, what servants have to suffer; and "well loved and well served"
+exactly described what Beth was as a mistress. When Minna withdrew,
+and Beth had had her tea and toast, she felt quite right again, and
+read the paper with interest. The shock of the real trouble had ousted
+the imaginary one for the moment.
+
+The next morning, however, as she toiled with flushed face and weary
+brain, stultifying her work with painful elaboration, she was seized
+with another fit of jealous rage, just as she had been the day before.
+Her mind in a moment, like a calm sea caught by a sudden tempest,
+seethed with horrible suspicions of her husband. His gross ideas,
+expressed in coarse language, had hitherto been banished from her mind
+by her natural refinement; but now, like the works of a disordered
+machine, whirling with irresponsible force, thoughts suggested by him
+came crowding in the language he habitually used, and she found
+herself accusing him with conviction of all she had ever heard others
+accused of by him. For a little she pursued this turn of thought, then
+all at once she jumped up and rushed downstairs, goaded again to
+act--to avenge herself--to dog him down to one of his haunts, and
+there confront him, revile him, expose him.
+
+It was a tranquil grey day in early autumn, the kind of day, full of
+quiet charm, which had always been grateful to Beth; but now, as she
+stood on the doorstep, with wrinkled forehead, dilated eyes, and
+compressed lips, putting her gloves on in feverish haste, she felt no
+tranquillising charm, and saw no beauty in the tangled hedgerows
+bright with briony berries, the tinted beeches, the Canadian poplars
+whispering mysteriously by the watercourse at the end of the meadow,
+the glossy iridescent plumes of the rooks that passed in little
+parties silhouetted darkly bright against the empty sky; it was all
+without significance to her; her further faculty was suspended, and
+even the recollection of anything she had been wont to feel had
+lapsed, and she perceived no more in the scene surrounding, in the
+colours and forms of things, the sounds and motions, than those
+perceive whose eyes have never been opened to anything beyond what
+appears to the grazing cattle. In many a heavy hour she had found
+delight in nature; but now, again, she had lost that solace; the glory
+had departed, and she had sunk to one of the lowest depths of human
+pain.
+
+Not understanding the frightful affliction that had come upon her, she
+made no attempt to control her disordered fancy, but hurried off into
+the town, and hovered about the places which Dan had pointed out as
+being of special evil interest, and searched the streets for him,
+acting upon the impulse without a doubt of the propriety of what she
+was doing. Had the obsession taken another form, had it seemed right
+to her to murder him, the necessity would have been as imperative, and
+she would have murdered him, not only without compunction, but with a
+sense of satisfaction in the deed.
+
+She pursued her search for hours, but did not find him; then went
+home, and there he was, standing on the doorstep, looking out for her.
+
+"Where on earth have you been?" he said.
+
+"Where on earth have you been yourself?" she rejoined.
+
+"Minding my own business," he answered.
+
+"So have I," she retorted, pushing past him into the hall.
+
+He had never seen her like that before, and he stood looking after her
+in perplexity.
+
+She went upstairs and threw herself on her bed. The worry in her head
+was awful. Turn and toss as she would, the one idea pursued her, until
+at last she groaned aloud, "O God! release me from this dreadful man!"
+
+After a time, being thoroughly exhausted, she dropped into a troubled
+sleep.
+
+When she awoke, Dan was standing looking at her.
+
+"Aren't you well, Beth?" he said. "You've been moaning and muttering
+and carrying on in your sleep as if you'd got fever."
+
+"I don't think I am well," she answered in her natural manner, the
+pressure on her brain being easier at the moment of awakening.
+
+He felt her pulse. "You'd better get into bed," he said, "and I'll
+fetch you a sedative draught. You'll be all right in the morning."
+
+Beth was only too thankful to get into bed. When he returned with the
+draught, she asked him if he were going out again.
+
+"No, not unless I'm sent for," he said. "Where the devil should I be
+going to? It's close on dinner-time."
+
+Beth shut her eyes. "If he is sent for and goes," she reflected, "I
+shall know it is a ruse to deceive me; and I shall get up and follow
+him."
+
+He left her to sleep and went downstairs. But Beth could not sleep.
+The draught quieted her mind for a little; then the worry began again
+as bad as ever, and she found herself straining her attention to
+discover to whom he was talking, for she fancied she heard him
+whispering with some one out in the passage. She bore the suspicion
+awhile, then jumped out of bed impetuously and opened the door. The
+gas was burning low in the passage, but she could see that there was
+no one about. Surely, though, there were voices downstairs?
+Barefooted, and only in her night-dress, she went to see. Yes, there
+were voices in the dining-room--now! She flung the door wide open. Dan
+and another man, a crony of his, who had dropped in casually, were
+sitting smoking and chatting over their whiskeys-and-sodas.
+
+Beth, becoming conscious of her night-dress the moment she saw them,
+turned and fled back to her bed; greatly relieved in her mind by the
+shock of her own indiscretion.
+
+"What a mad thing to do!" she thought. "I hope to goodness they didn't
+see me."
+
+_A mad thing to do!_
+
+The words, when they recurred to her, were a revelation. What had she
+been doing all day? Mad things! What was this sudden haunting horror
+that had seized upon her? Why, madness! Dan was just as he had always
+been. The change was in herself, and only madness could account for
+such a change. There was madness in the family. She remembered her
+father and the "moon-faced Bessie"--the familiarities with servants,
+too; surely her mother had suffered, and doubtless this misery which
+had come upon her had been communicated to her before her birth.
+Jealous-mad she was; that was what it meant, the one idea goading her
+on to do what would otherwise have been impossible, possessing her in
+spite of herself, and not to be banished by any effort of will.
+
+"Heaven help me!" she groaned. "What will become of me?"
+
+Then, as if in reply, there rose to her lips involuntarily the
+assurance which recurred to her now for her help and comfort in every
+hard moment of her life like a refrain: "I shall succeed."
+
+And she set herself bravely to conceal her trouble, whatever it cost
+her, and to conquer it.
+
+But it was a hard battle. For months the awful worry in her head
+continued, the same thoughts haunted her, the same jealous rage
+possessed her, and she knew no ease except when Dan was at hand. The
+trouble always passed when she had him under observation. She could
+not read, she could not write, she was too restless to sit and sew for
+more than a few moments at a time. Up and down stairs she went, out of
+the house and in again, fancying always, when in one place, that she
+would be better in another, but finding no peace anywhere, no
+brightness in the sunshine, no beauty in nature, no interest in life.
+Through the long solitary hours of the long solitary days she fought
+her affliction with her mouth set hard in determination to conquer it.
+She met the promptings of her disordered fancy with answers from her
+other self. "He and Bertha Petterick are together, that is why he is
+so late," the fiend would asseverate. "Very likely," her temperate
+self would reply. "But they may have been together any day this two
+years, and I knew it, and pitied and despised them, but felt no pain;
+why should I suffer now? Because my mind is disordered. But I shall
+recover! I shall succeed!"
+
+She would look at the clock, however, every five minutes in an agony
+of suspense until Dan came in. Then she had to fight against the
+impulse to question him, which beset her as strongly as the impulse to
+follow him, and that was always upon her except when his presence
+arrested it. Never once through it all, however, did she think of
+death as a relief; it was life she looked to for help, more life and
+fuller. She could interest herself in nothing, care for nothing; all
+feeling of affection for any one had gone, and was replaced by
+suspicion and rage. In her torment her cry was, "Oh, if some one would
+only care for me! for me as I am with all my faults! If they would
+only forgive me my misery and help me to care again--help _me_ also to
+the luxury of loving!"
+
+Forgive her her misery! The world will forgive anything but that; it
+tramples on the wretched as the herd turns on a wounded beast, not to
+put it out of its pain, but because the sight of suffering is an
+offence to it. If we cannot enliven our acquaintances, they will do
+little to enliven us. Sad faces are shunned; and signs of suffering
+excite less sympathy than repulsion. The spirit of Christ the Consoler
+has been driven out from among us.
+
+Beth poured herself out in letters at this time rather more than was
+her habit; it was an effort to get into touch with the rest of the
+world again. In one to Jim, speaking of her hopes of success, she said
+she should get on better with her work if she had more sympathy shown
+her; to which he replied by jeering at her. What did she mean by such
+nonsense? But that was the way with women; they were all sickly
+sentimental. Sympathy indeed! She should think herself devilish lucky
+to have a good husband and a home of her own. Many a girl would envy
+her. He wrote also to other members of the family on the subject, as
+if it were a rare joke worth spreading that Beth wanted more sympathy;
+and Beth received several letters in which the writers told her what
+their opinion was of her and her complaints as compared to that good
+husband of hers, who was always so bright and cheery. All their
+concern was for the worthy man who had done so much for Beth. They had
+no patience with her, could scarcely conceal their amusement with this
+last absurdity, but thought she should be laughed out of her fads and
+fancies. That was the only time Beth sought sympathy from any of her
+relations. Afterwards she took to writing them bitter letters in which
+she told them what she thought of them as freely as they told her.
+"What is the use," she said to Jim, "what is the use of sisters and
+wives being refined and virtuous if their fathers, brothers, husbands,
+are bar-loafers, men of corrupt imagination and depraved conversation?
+Surely, if we must live with such as these, all that is best in us
+adds to our misery rather than helps us. If we did not love the higher
+life ourselves, it would not hurt us to be brought into contact with
+the lower."
+
+On receiving this letter, Jim wrote kindly to Dan, and said many
+things about what women were coming to with their ridiculous notions.
+But men were men and women were women, and that was all about it,--a
+lucid conclusion that appealed to Dan, who quoted it to Beth in
+discussions on the subject ever afterwards.
+
+Beth broke down and despaired many times during the weary struggle
+with her mental affliction. She felt herself woefully changed; and not
+only had the light gone out of her life, but it seemed as if it never
+would return. When she awoke in the morning, she usually felt better
+for awhile, but the terrible torment in her mind returned inevitably,
+and rest and peace were banished for the day. It was then she learnt
+what is meant by the inner calm, and how greatly to be desired it
+is--desired above everything. The power to pray left her entirely
+during this phase. She could repeat prayers and extemporise them as
+of old, but there was no more satisfaction in the effort than in
+asking a favour of an empty room. Sometimes, and especially during the
+hideous nights, when she slept but little, and only in short snatches,
+she felt tempted to take something, stimulant or sedative; but this
+temptation she resisted bravely, and, the whole time, an extra cup of
+tea or coffee for the sake of the momentary relief was the only excess
+she committed. If she had not exercised her will in this, her case
+would have been hopeless; but, as it was, her self-denial, and the
+effort it entailed, kept up her mental strength, and helped more than
+anything to save her.
+
+To beguile the long hours, she often stood in the dining-room window
+looking out. The window was rather above the road, so that she looked
+down on the people who passed, and she could also see over the hedge
+on the opposite side of the road into the meadow beyond. Small things
+distracted her sometimes, though nothing pleased her. If two rooks
+flew by together, she hoped for a better day; if one came first, she
+would not accept the omen, but waited, watching for two. By a curious
+coincidence, they generally passed, first one for sorrow, then two for
+mirth, then three for a wedding; and she would say to herself, first,
+bad luck, then good luck, then a marriage; and wonder how it would
+come about, but anyhow--"I shall succeed!" would flash from her and
+stimulate her.
+
+One day, as she stood there watching, she saw a horseman come slowly
+down the road.
+
+    "A bowshot from her bower-eaves,
+     He rode between the barley sheaves,
+     The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
+     And flamed upon the brazen greaves
+             Of bold Sir Launcelot."
+
+Beth's attention sharpened to sudden interest. As he came abreast of
+the window, the rider looked up, and Beth's heart bounded at the sight
+of his face, which was the face of a man from out of the long ago,
+virile, knightly, high-bred, refined; the face of one that lives for
+others, and lives openly. He had glanced up indifferently, but, on
+seeing Beth, a look of interest came into his eyes. It was as if he
+had recognised her; and she felt herself as if she had seen him
+before, but when or where, in what picture, in what dream, she could
+not tell.
+
+With the first flush of healthy interest she had experienced for a
+long time, she watched him till he was all but out of sight, then shut
+her eyes that she might not see him vanish, for fear of bad luck; a
+superstition she had not practised since she was a child. When he had
+gone, she found herself with a happy impression of him in her mind, an
+impression of quiet dignity, and of strength in repose. "A man to be
+trusted," she thought; "true and tender, a perfect knight." The flash
+of interest or recognition that came into his countenance when he saw
+her haunted her; she recalled the colour of his blue eyes, noted the
+contrast they were to his dark hair and clear dark skin, and was
+pleased. In the afternoon she sat and sewed, and smiled to herself
+over her work with an easy mind. Her restlessness had subsided; Dan
+scarcely cost her a thought; the tension was released and a reaction
+had set in; but, at the time, she herself was quite unaware of it. All
+she felt was a good appetite for her tea.
+
+"Minna," she said to the parlour-maid, "bring me a big cup of tea and
+a good plate of buttered toast. I'm famishing."
+
+"That's good news, ma'am," Minna answered, for it was long since Beth
+had had any appetite at all.
+
+The next day Beth stood at the window again, but without intention.
+She was thinking of her knight of the noble mien, however, and at
+about the same hour as on the day before, he came again, riding slowly
+down the road; and again he looked at Beth with a flash of interest in
+his face, to which she involuntarily responded. When he was out of
+sight she opened the window, and perceived to her glad surprise that
+the air was balmy, and on all things the sun shone, shedding joy.
+
+The horrid spell was broken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+    "A bowshot from her bower-eaves,
+     He rode between the barley-sheaves."
+
+The words made music in Beth's heart as she dressed next morning, and,
+instead of the torment of mind from which she had suffered for so
+long, there was a great glad glow. Dan went and came as usual, but
+neither his presence nor absence disturbed her. She had recovered her
+self-possession, her own point of view, and he and his habits resumed
+their accustomed place in her estimation. During that dreadful phase
+she had seen with Dan's suspicious eyes, and seen evil only, but had
+not acquired his interest and pleasure in it; on the contrary, her own
+tendency to be grieved by it had been intensified. Now, however, she
+had recovered herself, her sense of proportion had been restored, and
+she balanced the good against the evil once more, and rejoiced to find
+that the weight of good was even greater than she had hitherto
+supposed.
+
+But although the spell had been broken in a moment, her right mind was
+not permanently restored all at once. It was only gradually, as the
+tide goes out after a tempest, and leaves the storm-beaten coast in
+peace, that the worry in her head subsided. She had lapse after lapse.
+She would lie awake at night, a prey to horrible thoughts, or start up
+in the early morning with her mind all turgid with suspicions which
+goaded her to rush out and act, act--see for herself--do something.
+But the great difference now was that, although she was still seized
+upon by the evil, it no longer had the same power to grieve her. She
+had valiantly resisted it from the moment she recognised its nature,
+but now she not only resisted it, she conquered it, and found relief.
+When her imagination insisted on pursuing Dan to his haunts, she
+deliberately and successfully turned her attention to other things.
+She turned her attention to the friends she loved and trusted, she
+dwelt on the kindness they had shown her, she forced herself to sit
+down and write to them, and she would rise from this happy task with
+her reason restored, the mere expression of affection having sufficed
+to exorcise the devils of rage and hate.
+
+But it was the strange exalted sentiment which her knight had inspired
+that began, continued, and completed her cure. Day after day he came
+riding down the road, riding into her life for a moment, then passing
+on and leaving her, not desolate, but greatly elated. She had known no
+feeling like this feeling, no hope or faith like the hope and faith
+inspired by that man's mien. She did not know his name, she had never
+heard his voice; their greeting--which was hardly a greeting, so
+restrained was the glance and the brightening of the countenance which
+was all the recognition that passed between them--was merely
+momentary, yet, in that moment, Beth was imbued with joy which lasted
+longer and longer each time, until at last it stayed with her for
+good, restored the charm of life to her, re-aroused her dormant
+further faculty, and quickened the vision and the dream anew. She
+prayed again in those days fervently, and in full faith, as of old;
+for when we pray with love in our hearts our prayers are granted, and
+her heart was full of love--a holy, impersonal love, such as we feel
+for some great genius, adored at a distance, for the grace of goodness
+he has imparted to us. And her heart being full of love, her brain
+teemed with ideas; the love she lived on, the ideas she held in
+reserve, for she had been so weakened by all she had suffered that the
+slightest exertion in the way of work exhausted her. In any case,
+however, great ideas must simmer long in the mind before they come to
+the boil, and the time was not lost.
+
+In those days fewer people than ever came to the house. For weeks
+together Beth never spoke to a soul except the servants and her
+husband, and through the long hours when her head troubled her and she
+could not work, she felt her isolation extremely. Mrs. Kilroy and her
+other new friends sent her pamphlets and papers and hurried notes to
+keep her heart up and inform her of their progress, and Beth, knowing
+what the hurry of their lives was, and not expecting any attention,
+was grateful for all they paid her. She had no fear of losing touch
+with such friends after they had once received her into their circle
+as one of themselves, however seldom she might see them, and it was
+well for her mental health that she had them to rely on during that
+time of trial, for without them she would have had no sense of
+security in any relation in life.
+
+She was gradually growing to be on much more formal terms with Dan
+than she had been, thanks to her own strength of character. She found
+she was able to reduce the daily jar, and even to keep his coarseness
+in check, by extreme politeness. In any difference, his habit had been
+to try and shout her down; but the contrast of her own quiet dignified
+demeanour checked him in that. Beth had the magnetic quality which,
+when steadily directed, acts on people and forces them into any
+attitude desired; and Dan accommodated his manner and conversation to
+her taste more now than he had ever done before; but he felt the
+restraint, and was with her as little as possible, which, as she began
+to recover, was also a relief--for his blatant self-absorption, the
+everlasting I, I, I, of his conversation, and his low views of life,
+rasped her irritable nerves beyond endurance.
+
+One day, coming into the drawing-room about tea-time, with muddy boots
+and his hat on, he found her lying on the sofa, prostrated with
+nervous headache. The days closed in early then, and she had had the
+fire lighted and the curtains drawn, but could not bear the gaslight
+because of her head.
+
+"Well, this isn't brilliant," he began, at the top of his voice. "A
+little more light would suit me." He struck a match and turned the gas
+full on. "That's better," he said; "and some tea would be refreshing
+after my walk. I've done the whole trudge on foot this afternoon, and
+I consider that's a credit to me. You won't find many rising young men
+economising in the matter of horseflesh as I do, or in anything else.
+I'll undertake to say I spend less on myself than any other man in the
+diocese." He went to the door instead of ringing the bell, and shouted
+down the passage to Minna to bring him some tea.
+
+Beth shut her eyes and groaned inwardly.
+
+When the tea came, Dan poured some out for himself, remarking, "I
+suppose you've had yours." Beth had not, but she was beyond making any
+effort to help herself at the moment. Dan, who always ate at a greedy
+rate, left off talking for a little; and during the interval, Beth was
+startled by something cold touching her hand. She opened her eyes, and
+found a dainty little black-and-tan terrier standing up, with its
+forepaws on the couch, looking at her.
+
+"You're a pretty thing," she said. "Where have you come from?"
+
+"Oh, is that the dog?" said Dan, looking round to see to whom she was
+talking. "He followed me in. I don't know who he belongs to; but as I
+happen to want a little dog, he's welcome."
+
+"But he's very well-bred, isn't he," said Beth, "and valuable? Look at
+his pencilled paws, and thin tail, and sharp ears pricked to
+attention. He's listening to what we are saying with the greatest
+intelligence. I'm sure he's a pet, and his owners will want him back."
+
+"Let them come and fetch him, then," said Dan.
+
+Then it occurred to Beth that Dan had probably bought him to present
+to somebody, but chose to lie about it for reasons of his own, so she
+said no more.
+
+The next night, about ten o'clock, Dan was called out, and did not
+return. Beth, being very wideawake, sat up late, playing patience
+first of all, and then reading a shilling shocker of Dan's, which she
+had taken up casually and become interested in. The story was of an
+extremely sensational kind, and she found herself being wrought up by
+it to a high pitch of nervous excitement. At the slightest noise she
+jumped; and then she became oppressed by the silence, and found
+herself peering into the dark corners of the room, and hesitating to
+glance over her shoulder, as if she feared to see something. She
+supposed the servants had not yet gone to bed, for she heard at
+intervals what seemed to be a human voice. After a time, however, it
+struck her that there was something unusual in the regularity of the
+sound, and, although she continued to read, she found herself waiting
+involuntarily, with strained attention, for it to be repeated. When it
+occurred again, she thought it sounded suspiciously like a cry of
+pain; and the next time it came she was sure of it. Instantly
+forgetting herself and her nervous tremors, she threw down her book
+and went to see what was the matter. She stood a moment in the hall,
+where the gas had been left burning, and listened; but all was still.
+Then she opened the door of communication into the kitchen regions,
+and found that that part of the house was all in darkness. The
+servants had gone to bed. Holding the door open, she stood a little,
+and listened again; but, as she heard nothing, she began to think her
+fancy had played her a trick, when, just beside her, as it seemed,
+some one shrieked. Beth, gasping with terror, ran back into the hall,
+and struck a match to light one of the bed-candles that stood on a
+table, her impulse being to go to the rescue in spite of her deadly
+fright. It seemed an age before she could get the candle lit with her
+trembling hands, and, in the interval, the horrible cry recurred, and
+this time she thought it came from the surgery. Could any sick person
+have been left there locked up? Dan always kept the room locked up,
+and Beth had hardly ever been in it. She went to the door now, bent on
+breaking it open, but she found that for once the key had been left in
+the lock. She turned it and entered boldly; but her candle flickered
+as she opened the door, so that, at first, she could see nothing
+distinctly. She held it high above her head, however, and as the flame
+became steady she looked about her. There was no one to be seen. The
+room was large and bare. All that it contained was a bookcase, some
+shelves with books on them, a writing-table and chair, an arm-chair, a
+couch, and another table of common deal, like a kitchen table, on
+which was a variety of things--bottles, books, and instruments
+apparently--all covered up with a calico sheet.
+
+Beth, checked again in her search, was considering what to do next,
+when the horrid cry was once more repeated. It seemed to come from
+under the calico sheet. Beth lighted the gas, put down her candle, and
+going to the table, took the sheet off deliberately, and saw a sight
+too sickening for description. The little black-and-tan terrier, the
+bonny wee thing which had been so blithe and greeted her so
+confidently only the evening before, lay there, fastened into a sort
+of frame in a position which alone must have been agonising. But that
+was not all.
+
+Beth had heard of these horrors before, but little suspected that they
+were carried on under that very roof. She had turned sick at the
+sight, a low cry escaped her, and her great compassionate heart
+swelled with rage; but she acted without hesitation.
+
+Snatching up her candle, she went to the shelves where the bottles
+were, looked along the row of red labels, found what she wanted, went
+back to the table, and poured some drops down the poor little tortured
+creature's throat.
+
+In a moment its sufferings ceased.
+
+Then Beth covered the table with the calico sheet mechanically, put
+the bottle back in its place, turned out the gas, and left the room,
+locking the door after her. Her eyes were haggard and her teeth were
+clenched, but she felt the stronger for a brave determination, and
+more herself than she had done for many months.
+
+Maclure only came in to bathe and breakfast next morning, and she
+scarcely exchanged a word with him before he went out again; but in
+the afternoon he came into the drawing-room, where she was writing a
+letter, and began to talk as if he meant to be sociable. He had his
+usual air of having lavished much attention on his personal
+adornment--too much for manliness; and, in spite of the night work,
+his hair shone as glossy black, his complexion was as bright and
+clear, and his general appearance as fresh and healthy, as care of
+himself and complete indifference to other people, except in so far as
+his own well-being might be affected by them, could make it. Beth
+watched him surveying himself in the glass from different points of
+view with a complacent smile, and felt that his physical advantages,
+and the superabundant vitality which made the business of living such
+an easy enjoyable farce to him, made his inhuman callousness all the
+more repulsive.
+
+"I should go out if I were you," he said, peering close into the glass
+at the corner of his eye, where he fancied he had detected the faint
+criss-cross of coming crows' feet "I'd never stay mugging up in the
+house, withering. Look at me! I go out in all weathers, and I'll
+undertake to say I'm a pretty good specimen both of health and
+spirits."
+
+It was so unusual for Dan to recommend Beth to do anything for her own
+good that she began to wonder what he wanted; she had observed that he
+always felt kindly disposed towards people when he was asking a favour
+of them.
+
+"And, by-the-bye," he pursued, turning his back to the mirror and
+craning his neck to see the set of his coat-tails, "you might do
+something for me when you are out. Wilberforce is worrying for his
+money. It's damned cheek. I sent him a large order for whisky the
+other day to keep him quiet, but it hasn't answered. I wish you would
+go and see him--go with a long face, like a good girl, and tell him
+I'm only waiting till I get my own accounts in. Have a little chat
+with him, you know, and all that sort of thing--lay yourself out to
+please him, in fact. He's a gentlemanly fellow for a wine-merchant,
+and has a weakness for pretty women. If you go, I'll take my dick
+he'll not trouble us with a bill for the next six months."
+
+"It seems to me," said Beth in her quietest way, "that when a husband
+asks his wife to make use of her personal appearance or charm of
+manner to obtain a favour for him from another man, he is requiring
+something of her which is not at all consistent with her
+self-respect."
+
+Dan stopped short with his hand up to his moustache to twist it, his
+bonhomie cast aside in a moment. "Oh, damn your self-respect!" he said
+brutally. "Your cursed book-talk is enough to drive a man to the
+devil. Anybody but you, with your 'views' and 'opinions' and fads and
+fancies generally, would be only too glad to oblige a good husband in
+such a small matter. And surely to God _I_ know what is consistent
+with your self-respect! _I_ should be the last person in the world to
+allow you to compromise it! But your eyes will be opened, and the
+cursed conceit taken out of you some day, madam, I can tell you!
+You'll live to regret the way you've treated me, I promise you!"
+
+"My eyes have been pretty well opened as it is," Beth answered. "You
+left the key in the surgery door last night."
+
+"And you went in there _spying_ on me, did you? That was honourable!"
+he exclaimed in a voice of scorn.
+
+"I heard the wretched creature you had been vivisecting crying in its
+agony, and I thought it was a human being, and went to see," Beth
+answered, speaking in the even, dispassionate way which she had found
+such an effectual check on Dan's vulgar bluster.
+
+"You killed that dog, then!" he exclaimed, turning on her savagely.
+"How dare you?"
+
+Beth rose from the writing-table, and went and stretched herself out
+on the sofa, deliberately facing him.
+
+"How dare _you_?" she inquired.
+
+"How dare I, indeed, in my own house!" he bawled. "Now, look here,
+madam, I'm not going to have any of your damned interference, and so I
+tell you."
+
+"Please, I am not deaf," she remonstrated gently. "And now, look here,
+sir, I am not going to have any of your _damnable_ cruelties going on
+under the same roof with me. I have endured your sensuality and your
+corrupt conversation weakly, partly because I knew no better, and
+partly because I was the only sufferer, as it seemed to me, in the
+narrow outlook I had on life until lately; but I know better now. I
+know that every woman who submits in such matters is not only a party
+to her own degradation, but connives at the degradation of her whole
+sex. Our marriage never can be a true marriage, the spiritual,
+intellectual, physical union of a man and a woman for the purpose of
+perfect companionship. We have none of the higher aspirations in
+common, we should be none the happier for tender experiences of
+parenthood, none the holier for any joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure,
+that might come to us to strengthen and ennoble us if rightly enjoyed
+or endured. And this, I think, is not altogether my fault. But however
+that may be, it is out of my power to remedy it now. All I can do is
+to prevent unedifying scenes between us by showing you such courtesy
+and consideration as is possible. On this occasion I will show you
+courtesy, but the consideration is due to me. A woman does not marry
+to have her heart wrung, her health destroyed, her life made wretched
+by anything that is preventable, and I intend to put a stop to this
+last discovered hellish practice of yours. I will not allow it, and if
+you dare to attempt it again, I will call in the townsfolk to see you
+at your brutal work."
+
+She spoke with decision, in the tone of one who has determined on her
+plan of action and will fearlessly pursue it. A great gravity settled
+on Daniel Maclure. He stood still a little reflecting, then came to
+the fire, beside which Beth, who had risen restlessly as she spoke,
+was now sitting in an arm-chair. He drew up another chair, and sat
+down also, having resolved, in face of the gravity of the situation,
+to try some of his old tactics, and some new ones as well. His first
+pose was to gaze into the fire ruefully for awhile, and then his fine
+eyes slowly filled with tears.
+
+"It must have been a brutal sight," he said at last, "and I can't tell
+you how sorry I am you saw it. I don't wonder you're shaken, poor
+little girl, and it's natural that the shock should have made you
+unreasonable and uncharitable--unlike yourself, in fact, for I never
+knew a more reasonable woman when you are in your right mind, or a
+more charitable. I'm not so bad, however, as you think me. I never
+intended to inflict suffering on the creature. I didn't know he'd
+recover. I had given him a dose of curare."
+
+"The drug that paralyses without deadening the sense of pain," Beth
+interposed. "I have heard of the tender mercies of the vivisector. He
+saves himself as much as he can in the matter of distracting noises."
+
+Dan had mentioned curare to give a persuasive touch of scientific
+accuracy to his explanation, not suspecting that she knew the
+properties of the drug, and he was taken aback for a moment; but he
+craftily abandoned that point and took up another.
+
+"These experiments must be made, in the interests of suffering
+humanity, more's the pity," he said, sighing.
+
+"In the interests of cruel and ambitious scientific men, struggling to
+outstrip each other, and make money, and win fame for themselves
+regardless of the cost. They were ready enough in old days to vivisect
+human beings when it was allowed, and they would do it again if they
+dared."
+
+"Now look here, Beth; don't be rabid," said Dan temperately. "Just
+think of the sufferings medical men are able to relieve nowadays in
+consequence of these researches."
+
+"Good authorities say that nothing useful has been discovered by
+vivisection that could not have been discovered without it," Beth
+rejoined. "And even if it had been the means of saving human life,
+that would not justify your employment of it. There never could be a
+human life worth saving at such an expense of suffering to other
+creatures. It isn't as if you made an experiment and had done with it
+either. One generation after another of you repeats the same
+experiments to verify them, to see for yourselves, for practice; and
+so countless helpless creatures are being tortured continually by
+numbers of men who are degraded and brutalised themselves by their
+experiments. Had I known you were a vivisector, I should not only have
+refused to marry you, I should have declined to associate with you. To
+conceal such a thing from the woman you were about to marry was a
+cruel injustice--a fraud."
+
+"I concealed nothing from you that you were old enough to understand
+and take a right view of," Dan protested.
+
+"According to custom," said Beth. "Anything that might prevent a woman
+accepting a man is carefully concealed from her. That kind of cant is
+wearisome. You did not think me too young to put at the head of a
+house, or to run the risk of becoming a mother, although I have heard
+you dilate yourself on the horrors of premature motherhood. But that
+is the way with men. For anything that suits their own convenience
+they are ingenious in finding excuses. As a rule, they see but one
+side of a social question, and that is their own. I cannot understand
+any but unsexed women associating with vivisectors. Don't pretend you
+pursue such experiments reluctantly--you delight in them. But,
+whatever the excuse for them, I am sure that the time is coming when
+the vivisector will be treated like the people who prepared the dead
+for embalming in ancient Egypt. You will be called in when there is no
+help for it; but, your task accomplished, you will be driven out of
+all decent society, to consort with the hangman--if even he will
+associate with you."
+
+"Well, well!" Dan ejaculated, gazing into the fire sorrowfully. "But I
+suppose this is what we should expect. It's the way of the world. A
+scientific man who devotes all his time and talents to relieving his
+fellow-creatures must expect to be misunderstood and reviled by way of
+reward. You send for us when you want us--there's nobody like the
+doctor then; but you'll grudge every penny you've got to give us, and
+you'd not pay at all if you could help it. I should know."
+
+"I was not speaking of doctors," Beth rejoined. "I was speaking of
+vivisectors. But after all, what is the great outcome of your
+extraordinary science? What do you do with it? Keep multitudes alive
+and suffering who would be happily dead and at rest but for you! If
+you practised with the honest intention of doing as much good as you
+could, you would not be content merely to treat effects as you do for
+the most part; you would strike at causes also; and we should hear
+more of prevention and less of wonderful cures. You dazzle the
+blockhead public with a showy operation, and no one thinks of asking
+why it is that the necessity for this same operation recurs so often.
+You know, probably, but you disclaim responsibility in the matter. It
+is not your place to teach the public, you modestly protest."
+
+"I don't know how you can say that in the face of the effort we have
+made to stamp out disease. Why, look at zymotic diseases alone!"
+
+"Exactly!" Beth answered. "Zymotic diseases alone! But why draw the
+line there? And what are you doing to improve the race, to strengthen
+its power to resist disease? You talk about Nature when it suits you;
+but it is the cant of the subject you employ, for you are at variance
+with Nature. Your whole endeavour is to thwart her. Nature decrees the
+survival of the fittest; you exercise your skill to preserve the
+unfittest, and stop there--at the beginning of your responsibilities,
+as it seems to me. Let the unfit who are with us live, and save them
+from suffering when you can, by all means; but take pains to prevent
+the appearance of any more of them. By the reproduction of the unfit,
+the strength, the beauty, the morality of the race is undermined, and
+with them its best chances of happiness. Yes, you certainly do your
+best to stamp out measles, smallpox, scarlet fever, and all that
+group--diseases that do not necessarily leave any permanent mark on
+the constitution; but at the same time you connive at the spread of
+the worst disease to which we are liable. About that you preserve the
+strictest professional secrecy. Only to-day, in the _Times_, there is
+the report of a discussion on the subject at a meeting of the
+International Congress of Legal Medicine--where is it?" She took up
+the paper and read:--"'There was an important debate on the spread of
+an infamous disease by wet nurses. This question is all the more
+urgent because, though the greatest dangers and complications are
+involved, _it is very generally neglected_.... When a doctor knows
+that the parents of a child are tainted, should he so far disregard
+the professional secrecy to which he is bound as to warn the nurse of
+her danger in suckling the child?' Apparently not! The poor woman must
+take her chance, as the child's unfortunate mother had to do when she
+married."
+
+"Ah, now you see for yourself, and will become reasonable, it is to be
+hoped," he interrupted, rubbing his hands complacently; "for it is
+precisely in order to check that particular disease that appointments
+like mine are made."
+
+"It is precisely in order to make vice safe for men that such
+appointments are made," she answered. "Medical etiquette would not
+stop where it does, at the degradation of those unfortunate women, if
+you were honestly attempting to put a stop to that disease. You would
+have it reported, irrespective of the sex of the sufferer, like any
+other disease that is dangerous to the health of the community. It is
+not contrary to etiquette to break your peculiar professional secrecy
+in the case of a woman, but it would be in the case of a man; so you
+punish the women, and let the men go free to spread the evil from one
+generation to another as they like. O justice! O consistency! I don't
+wonder we have been shunned since we came to Slane. A man in your
+position is a mere pander, and right glad am I of what I have suffered
+from the scorn and contempt of the people who would not associate with
+us. It shows that the right spirit is abroad in the community."
+
+"Pander!" Dan ejaculated. "I am sorry to hear you use such a word,
+Beth."
+
+"It is the right word, unfortunately," she answered.
+
+"You oughtn't to know anything about these things," the chaste Daniel
+observed, with an air of offended delicacy. "Women can't know enough
+to see the matter from the right point of view, and so they make
+mischief."
+
+"Ah, you don't appreciate that women have grown out of their
+intellectual infancy," Beth said, "and have opinions and a point of
+view of their own in social matters, especially where their own sex is
+concerned. You are still in the days of old Chavasse, who expatiates
+in his 'Advice to a Wife' on the dangers of men marrying unhealthy
+women, but says not a word of warning to women on the risk of marrying
+unhealthy men. You would keep us blindfolded as we were in his day,
+and abandon us to our fate in like manner; but it can't be done any
+more, my friend. You can hide nothing from sensible women now that
+concerns the good of the community. We know there is no protection for
+women against this infamous disease, and no punishment for the men who
+spread it; and we consider the fact a disgrace to every medical man
+alive."
+
+"You have a nice opinion of the men of your husband's profession!" Dan
+observed sarcastically.
+
+"I have the highest opinion of medical men--such medical men as Sir
+George Galbraith," she replied. "I have seen something of their
+high-mindedness, their courage, their devotion, and their genuine
+disinterestedness; and I feel sure that in time their efforts will
+leaven the whole mass of callousness and cruelty against which they
+have to contend in their profession. The hope of humanity is in the
+doctors, and they will not fail us. Like Christ, they will teach as
+well as heal."
+
+"Rubbish!" said Dan. "As I've told you before, it isn't our business
+to mind the morals of the people. It's for the parsons to fight the
+devil."
+
+"But," said Beth, "as I answered you before, you cannot attend to the
+health of the community properly without also minding its morals. The
+real old devil is disease."
+
+Dan left his seat and walked to the window, where he stood with his
+hands in his pockets, looking out for awhile.
+
+"Well, this is enough jawbation for one day, I hope," he said at last,
+turning round. "Marrying a woman like you is enough to drive a man to
+the devil. I've a jolly good mind to go and get drunk. I declare to
+God if I could get drunk overnight and feel all right again in the
+morning, I'd be drunk every night. But it can't be done," he added
+regretfully. "There are drawbacks to everything."
+
+Beth looked at him imperturbably while he was speaking, then turned
+her attention to the fire.
+
+"You know my views now on the subject of vivisection," she said at
+last. "If there is any more of it here, I shall leave the house, and
+publish the reason. And you also know what I consider I owe myself in
+the way of self-respect. You must beguile your creditors by other
+means than my personal appearance."
+
+She had spoken all through in the most temperate tone, and now, when
+she had finished, she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands
+with a sigh, as of one who had finished a hard task and would rest.
+
+Dan looked at her with evident distaste, and considered a little,
+searching for something more to say that might move her, some argument
+that should persuade or convince; but, as nothing occurred to him, he
+left the room, banging the door after him in his ill-conditioned way,
+because he knew that the noise would be a racking offence to her
+overwrought nerves.
+
+But from that time forward everything he did was an offence to Beth, a
+source of irritation. In spite of herself, she detected all the
+insincerity of his professions, the mean motives of his acts. Up to
+this time she had been more kindly disposed towards him than she
+herself knew. All she had wanted was to be able to care for him, to
+find some consistency in him, something to respect, and to which she
+could pin her faith; but now she knew him for what he was
+exactly--shallow, pretentious, plausible, vulgar-minded, without
+principle; a man of false pretensions and vain professions; utterly
+untrustworthy; saying what would suit himself at the moment, or just
+what occurred to him, not what he thought, but what he imagined he was
+expected to say. Beth had never heard him condemn a vice or habit
+which she did not afterwards find him practising himself. She used to
+wonder if he deceived himself, or was only intent on deceiving her;
+but from close observation of him at this period, she became
+convinced that, for the time being, he entered into whatever part he
+was playing, and hence his extreme plausibility. Beth found herself
+studying him continually with a curious sort of impersonal interest;
+he was a subject that repelled her, but from which, nevertheless, she
+could not tear herself away. His hands in particular, his handsome
+white hands, had a horrid sort of fascination for her. She had admired
+them while she thought of them as the healing hands of the physician,
+bringing hope and health; but now she knew them to be the cruel hands
+of the vivisector, associated with torture, from which humanity
+instinctively shrinks; and when he touched her, her delicate skin
+crisped with a shudder. She used to wonder how he could eat with hands
+so polluted, and once, at dessert, when he handed her a piece of
+orange in his fingers, she was obliged to leave it on her plate, she
+could not swallow it.
+
+After that last scene the days dragged more intolerably than ever; but
+happily for Beth there were not many more of them without a break, for
+just as it seemed that endurance must end in some desperate act, Mrs.
+Kilroy sent her a pressing invitation to go and pay her a long visit
+in London; and Beth accepted it, and went with such a sense of relief
+as an invalid feels who, after long suffering, finds herself well, and
+out in the free fresh air once more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+When Beth went to stay with the Kilroys in London, it was a question
+whether she might not end by joining the valiant army of those who are
+in opposition to everything; but before she had been there a week, she
+had practically recovered her balance, and began to look out upon life
+once more with dispassionate attention. Her depression when she first
+arrived was evident, and the Kilroys were concerned to see her looking
+so thin and ill; but, by degrees, she expanded in that genial
+atmosphere, and although she said little as a rule, she had begun to
+listen and to observe again with her usual vivid interest. She could
+not have been better situated for the purpose, for people of all kinds
+came to the Kilroys; and in moving among them merely as an onlooker,
+she was bound to see and hear enough to take her out of herself. Her
+own personality was too distinct, however, for her to remain for long
+an onlooker merely. That mesmeric quality in her which, whether it
+fascinates or displeases, attracts or repels, marks a distinct
+personality which is not to be overlooked, made people ask at once who
+she was, in the hope that her acquaintance might be worth
+cultivating. For there was a certain air of distinction about her
+which made her look like a person with some sort of prestige, whom it
+might be useful to know--don't you know.
+
+One afternoon soon after Beth's arrival, Mrs. Kilroy being at home to
+visitors, and the rooms already pretty full, Beth noticed among the
+callers an old-looking young man whose face seemed familiar to her. He
+wore a pointed beard upon his chin, and a small moustache cut away
+from his upper lip, and waxed and turned up at the ends. His face was
+thin and narrow, his forehead high and bald; what hair he had grew in
+a fringe at the back of his head, and was curly, and of a nondescript
+brown colour. Had he worn the dress of the Elizabethan period, he
+might have passed for a bad attempt to look like Shakespeare; and Beth
+thought that that perhaps might be the resemblance which puzzled her.
+While she was looking at him a lady was announced, a most
+demure-looking little person in a grey costume, and a small,
+close-fitting princess bonnet, tied under her chin, and trimmed with a
+big Alsatian bow in front. She entered smiling slightly, and she
+continued to smile, as if she had set the smile on her lips as she put
+the bonnet on her head, to complete her costume. After she had shaken
+hands with Angelica, she looked round as if in search of some one
+else, and seemed satisfied when she discovered the old-looking young
+man of Shakesperian aspect. He was watching her, and their eyes met
+with a momentary significance, but they took no further notice of each
+other. Most people would have perceived no more in the glance than
+showed on the surface:--a lady and gentleman who looked at each other
+and then looked away, like indifferent acquaintances or casual
+strangers; but Beth's infallible intuition revealed to her an
+elaborate precaution in this seeming unconcern. It was clear to her
+that the two had expected to meet each other there, and their apparent
+insensibility to each other's presence was a pose, which, however,
+betrayed to her the intimacy it was affected to conceal. She hated
+herself for seeing so much, and burned with blame of Dan for opening
+her eyes to behold the inward wickedness beneath the conventional
+propriety of the outward demeanour; but therein she was unjust to Dan.
+He had opened her eyes sooner than they should have been opened, but
+in any case she must have seen for herself eventually. Nothing in life
+can be concealed from such a mind. What books could not teach her, she
+discovered from people by sympathy, by insight, by intuition; but she
+did not come into full possession of her faculties all at once. The
+conditions of her life had tended rather to retard than to develop the
+best that was in her, and the wonder was that her vision had not been
+permanently distorted, so that she could see nothing but evil in all
+things--see it, too, till her eyes were accustomed and her soul
+corrupted, so that she not only ceased to resent it, but finally
+accepted it as the inevitable order to which it is best to accommodate
+oneself if one is to get any good out of life. This is the fate of
+most young wives situated as Beth had been, the fate she had only
+narrowly escaped by help of the strength that came of the brave
+self-contained habits she had cultivated in her life of seclusion and
+thought. It was the result of this training, and her constancy in
+pursuing it, that her further faculty, hitherto so fitful, at last
+shot up a bright and steady light which made manifest to her the
+thoughts of others that they were not all evil, and helped her by the
+grace in her own heart to perceive hidden processes of love at work in
+other hearts, all tending to purification, and by the goodness of her
+own soul to search out the goodness in other souls as the elements
+find their constituent parts in the atmosphere.
+
+Beth was looking her best that afternoon, although she had taken no
+pains with herself. She seemed well dressed by dint of looking well in
+her clothes; but she had not chosen to make herself look well. In the
+exasperated phase of revolt through which she was passing, she could
+not have been persuaded to dress so as to heighten the effect of her
+appearance, and so make of herself a trap to catch admiring glances.
+To be neat and fresh was all her care; but that was enough. The young
+man with the pointed beard, who had been looking about the room
+uneasily, seemed to have found what he wanted when he noticed her. He
+asked an elderly man standing near him who the young lady of
+distinguished appearance might be. "A friend of Mrs. Kilroy's, I
+believe," the gentleman answered, and moved off as if he resented the
+question.
+
+But Pointed Beard was persistent. He asked two or three other people,
+strangers, who did not know either, and then he made his way to Mrs.
+Kilroy, but she was so surrounded he could not get near her. At last
+he bethought him of the servants who were handing tea about, and
+learnt Beth's name from one of them.
+
+When Beth next noticed him, he was making his way towards her with a
+cup of tea in one hand and a plate of cakes in the other.
+
+"I have ventured to bring you some tea," he said, "but I do not know
+if it is as you like it. I can easily get you some more, however, if
+it is not."
+
+"Thank you; I do not want any," Beth answered somewhat coldly.
+
+"I'll put it here, then, on this console," he rejoined. "If I move
+away I shall not be able to get near you again in this crowd. I wonder
+why Mrs. Kilroy has so many people. Now, _I_ like just a few, eight or
+ten for a dinner, you know, and twenty or so on these sort of
+occasions. And they must all be interesting people, worth talking to.
+I am exceedingly fastidious about the kind of people I know. Even as a
+boy I was fastidious."
+
+As he uttered that last sentence, Beth was again aware of something
+familiar in his appearance, and she felt sure she had heard him make
+that same remark more than once before--but when? but where?
+
+"That is Lord Fitzkillingham," he continued, "that tall man who has
+just come in--see, there!--shaking hands with Mrs. Kilroy. He looks
+like a duke, don't you know. I admire people of distinguished
+appearance much more than good-looking people--people who are merely
+good-looking, I mean, of course. I saw _you_ directly I came into the
+room, and was determined to find out who you were; and I asked I can't
+tell you how many people, whether I knew them or not. What do you
+think of that for perseverance?"
+
+"You certainly seem to be persistent," Beth answered with a smile.
+
+"Oh, I'm nothing if not persistent," he rejoined complacently. "I'll
+undertake to find out anything I want to know. Do you see that lady
+there in black? I wanted to know her age, so I went to Somerset House
+and looked it up."
+
+"What did you do that for?" Beth asked.
+
+"I wanted to know."
+
+"But did she want you to know?"
+
+"Well, naturally not, or she would have told me. But it is no use
+trying to conceal things from me. I am not to be deceived."
+
+"You must be quite a loss to Scotland Yard," Beth ventured. "You would
+have been admirably fitted for that--er--delicate kind of work."
+
+"Well, I think I should," he rejoined. "You see I found _you_ out, and
+it was not so easy, for--er--no one seemed to know you. However, that
+does not matter. We'll soon introduce you."
+
+Beth smiled. "Thank you," she said drily, "that will be very nice."
+
+"I'll bring Fitzkillingham presently; he'll do anything for me. He was
+one of our set at the 'Varsity. That's the best of going to the
+'Varsity. You meet the right kind of people there, people who can help
+you, you know, if you can get in with them as I did. You'll like
+Fitzkillingham. He's a very good fellow."
+
+"Indeed!" said Beth. "What has he done?"
+
+"Done!" he echoed. "Oh, nothing that I know of. Consider his position!
+The Earl of Fitzkillingham, with a rent-roll of fifty thousand a year,
+has no need to do; he has only to be. There, he's caught my eye. I'll
+go and fetch him."
+
+"Pray do nothing of the kind," said Beth emphatically. "I have no wish
+to know him."
+
+The young man, disconcerted, turned and looked her full in the face.
+"Why not?" he gasped.
+
+"First of all, because you were going to present him without asking my
+permission," Beth said, "which is a liberty I should have had to
+resent in any case by refusing to know him; and secondly, because a
+man worth fifty thousand a year who has done no good in the world is
+not worth knowing. I don't think he should be allowed to _be_ unless
+he can be made to _do_. Pray excuse me if I shock your prejudices,"
+she added, smiling. "You do not know, perhaps, that in _our_ set,
+knowing people for position rather than for character is quite out of
+date?"
+
+The young man smiled superciliously. "That is rather a bourgeois
+sentiment, is it not?" he said.
+
+"On the contrary," said Beth, "it is the other that is the huckster
+spirit. What is called knowing the right people is only the commercial
+principle of seeking some advantage. Certain people make a man's
+acquaintance, and pay him flattering attentions, not because their
+hearts are good and they wish to give him pleasure, but because there
+is some percentage of advantage to be gained by knowing him. That is
+to be bourgeois in the vulgar sense, if you like! And that is the
+trade-mark stamped upon most of us--selfishness! snobbishness! One
+sees it in the conventional society manners, which are superficially
+veneered, fundamentally bad; the outcome of self-interest, not of good
+feeling; one knows exactly how, where, and when they will break down."
+
+"What are you holding forth about, Beth?" said Mrs. Kilroy, coming up
+behind her.
+
+"The best people," Beth answered, smiling.
+
+"You mean the people who call themselves the best people--Society,
+that is to say," said Mrs. Kilroy cheerfully. "Society is the scum
+that comes to the surface because of its lightness, and does not
+count, except in sets where ladies' papers circulate."
+
+"I am surprised to hear _you_ talk so, Mrs. Kilroy," said Pointed
+Beard in an offended tone, as if society had been insulted in his
+person.
+
+"I am sorry if I disappoint you," said Mrs. Kilroy. "And I confess I
+like my own set and their pretty manners; but I know their weaknesses.
+There is no snob so snobbish as a snob of good birth. The upper
+classes will be the last to learn that it is sterling qualities which
+are wanted to rule the world,--head and heart."
+
+"This gentleman will tell you that all that is bourgeois," said Beth.
+
+"I believe that at heart the bourgeois are sound," said Angelica.
+"Bourgeois signifies good, sound, self-respecting qualities to me, and
+steady principles."
+
+"But scarcely 'pretty manners,' I should suppose," said Pointed Beard
+superciliously.
+
+"Why not?" said Angelica. "Sincerity and refinement make good manners,
+and principle is the parent of both."
+
+"Don't you think that for the most part Englishwomen are singularly
+lacking in charms of manner?" he asked precisely.
+
+"Just as Englishmen are, and for the same reason," said Angelica;
+"because they only try to be agreeable when it suits themselves. A
+good manner is a decoration that must be kept on always if it is to be
+worn with ease. Good manners are rare because good feeling is rare,
+for good manners are the outcome of good feeling. Manners are not the
+mere society show of politeness, but the inward kindly sympathy of
+which politeness is the natural outward manifestation; given these,
+grace and charm of manner come of themselves."
+
+She moved off as she spoke to attend to other guests.
+
+"Mrs. Kilroy is obvious," said Pointed Beard, in a tone that suggested
+sympathy with Beth for being bored. "I wonder she did not give us 'For
+manners are not idle,' et cetera, or something equally banal--the kind
+of thing we are taught in our infancy----"
+
+"And fail to apply ever after," said Beth.
+
+"I see you are ready," he observed fatuously, striking the personal
+note again, which she resented.
+
+"I dislike that cant of the obvious which there is so much of here in
+town," she rejoined. "It savours of preciosity. All that is finest in
+thought is obvious. A great truth, well put, when heard for the first
+time, is so crystal clear to the mind, one seems to have known it
+always. No one fears to be obvious who has anything good to say."
+
+He stroked his beard in silence for some seconds. "I suppose you go in
+for politics, and all that sort of thing," he said at last.
+
+"Why?" Beth asked in her disconcerting way.
+
+"Oh, judging by your friends."
+
+"Not a safe guide," she assured him. "My friends have the most varied
+interests; and even if they had not, it would be somewhat monotonous
+for them to associate exclusively with people of the same pursuits."
+
+"Then you do not take an interest in politics?" he jerked out, almost
+irritably, as if he had a right to know.
+
+For a moment Beth had a mind to baffle him for his tasteless
+persistency, but her natural directness saved her from such
+small-mindedness. "If I must answer your catechism," she said,
+smiling, "social subjects interest me more. I find generalisations
+bald and misleading, and politics are a generalisation of events. I
+rarely read a political speech through, and remember very little of
+what it is all about when I do. Details, individuals, and actions
+fascinate me, but the circumstances of a people as a state rarely
+interest me much."
+
+"Ah, I fear that is--er--a feminine point of view, rather--is it not?"
+he rejoined patronisingly.
+
+"Yes," she said, "and a scientific method. We go from the particular
+to the general, and only draw broad conclusions when we have collected
+our facts in detail. But excuse me, I see a friend," she broke off
+hastily, seizing the chance to escape.
+
+A little later Beth saw that the demure-looking little person in the
+princess bonnet was taking her leave. She passed down the room with
+her set little smile on her lips, looking about her, but apparently
+without seeing any one in particular till she got to the door, when
+her eye lighted on the young man of Shakesperian mien, and her smile
+flickered a moment, and went out. The young man turned and looked at a
+picture with an elaborately casual air, then sauntered across the room
+to Mrs. Kilroy, shook hands with her, spoke to one or two other
+people, and finally reached the door and opened it with the same
+solemn affectation of not being in a hurry, and disappeared. Beth
+wondered if he kept his caution up before the footmen in the hall, or
+if he made an undignified bolt of it the moment he was out of sight of
+society.
+
+At dinner that evening she asked Mrs. Kilroy who and what that
+thin-nosed man, that sort of reminiscence of Shakespeare, was.
+
+"He is by way of being a literary man, I believe," Angelica answered.
+"He is not a friend of ours, and I cannot think why he comes here. I
+never ask him. He got himself introduced to me somehow, and then came
+and called, which I thought an impertinence. Did you notice that woman
+with an Alsatian bow in her bonnet, that made her look like a horse
+with its ears laid back? Her pose is to improve young men. She
+improves them away from their wives, and I object to the method; and I
+do not ask her here either. Yet she comes. His wife I have much
+sympathy with; but he keeps her in the country, out of the way, so I
+see very little of her."
+
+"What is his name?" Beth asked.
+
+"Alfred Cayley Pounce."
+
+"Why!" Beth exclaimed. "He must be a youth I knew long ago, when I was
+a child. I was sure I had seen him before. But what a falling off! I
+wondered if he were an old young man, or a young old man when I first
+saw him. He was refined as a boy and had artistic leanings; I should
+have thought he might have developed something less banal in the time
+than a bald forehead."
+
+"That kind of man spends most of his time in cultivating acquaintances,"
+said Mr. Kilroy. "When he hasn't birth, his pose is usually brains. But
+Pounce took a fair degree at the University. And he's not such a bad
+fellow, really. He's precious, of course, and by way of being
+literary--that is to say, he is literary to the extent of having written
+some little things of no consequence, upon which he assumes the right to
+give his opinion, with appalling assurance, of the works of other
+people, which are of consequence. There is a perfect epidemic of that
+kind of assurance among the clever young men of the day, and it's
+wrecking half of them. A man who begins by having no doubt of the worth
+of his own opinion gets no further for want of room to move in."
+
+Next day Beth was alone in a sunny sitting-room at the back of the
+house, looking out into grounds common to the whole square. It was
+about tea-time. The windows were wide open, the sunblinds were drawn
+down outside, and the warm air, fragrant with mignonette, streamed in
+over the window boxes. Angelica had given this room up to Beth, and
+here she worked or rested; read, wrote, or reflected, as she felt
+inclined; soothed rather than disturbed by the far-off sounds of the
+city, and eased in mind by the grace and beauty of her surroundings.
+For the room was a work of art in itself, an Adams room, with carved
+white panels, framing spaces of rich brocade, delicately tinted, on
+the walls; with furniture chosen for comfort as well as elegance, and
+no more of it than was absolutely necessary, no crowding of chairs and
+tables, no congestion of useless ornaments, no plethora of pictures,
+putting each other out--only two, in fact, one a summer seascape, with
+tiny waves bursting on shining sands; the other a corner of a
+beautiful old garden, shady with trees, glowing with flowers, whence
+two young lovers, sitting on an old stone seat, looked out with dreamy
+eyes on a bright glimpse, framed in foliage, of the peaceful country
+beyond. Angelica had thought that room out carefully for Beth, every
+detail being considered, so that the whole should make for rest and
+refreshment, and she had succeeded perfectly. Nothing could have eased
+Beth's mind of the effect of her late experiences, or strengthened it
+again more certainly, than the harmony, the quiet, and the convenience
+of everything about her--books on the shelves, needlework on the
+work-table, writing materials in abundance on the bureau, exquisite
+forms of flowers, and prevailing tints of apple-blossom, white, and
+pink, and green; music when she chose to play; comfort of couch and
+chairs when she wished to repose; and, above all, freedom from
+intrusion, the right to do as she liked gladly conceded, the respect
+which adds to the dignity of self-respect, and altogether the kind of
+independence that makes most for pleasure and peace. Before she had
+been there three weeks she was happily released from herself by the
+recovery of her power to work. She began to revise the book she had
+thought so little of when it was first written. She had brought it to
+town because it was not very bulky, rather than because she had any
+hope of it; but when she took it out and read it here alone in peace,
+it seized upon her with power, and, in her surprise, like Galileo, she
+exclaimed: "But it does turn round!" The book was already "radiant
+with inborn genius," but it still lacked the "acquired art," and
+feeling this, she sat down to it regularly, and rewrote it from
+beginning to end, greatly enriching it. She had no amateur impatience
+to appear in print and become known; the thought of production induced
+her to delay and do her utmost rather than to make indiscreet haste;
+her delight was in the doing essentially; she was not one to glory in
+public successes, however great, or find anything but a tepid
+satisfaction therein compared to the warm delight that came when her
+thoughts flowed, and the material world melted out of mind.
+
+She had been busy with her book that afternoon, and very happy, until
+tea came. Then, being somewhat tired, she got up from the bureau at
+which she worked, and went to the tea-table, leaving her papers all
+scattered about; and she was in the act of pouring herself out a cup
+of tea, when the door opened, and the footman announced, "Mr. Alfred
+Cayley Pounce."
+
+Very much surprised, she put the teapot down deliberately and looked
+at him. He held his hat to his breast, and bowed with exaggerated
+deference, in an affected, foreign way.
+
+"I insisted on seeing you," he began, as if that were something to
+boast of. "Perhaps I ought to apologise."
+
+Beth, not knowing what to say, asked him to sit down. Then there was a
+little pause. He looked at the tea-table.
+
+"I see that you do take tea," he observed. "Why did you refuse it when
+I offered you some yesterday?"
+
+"I am afraid I am not prepared to give you a reason," Beth answered
+stiffly.
+
+"Would it be out of place if I were to ask for some tea?" he said.
+
+Beth silently poured him out a cup, and he got up, took what he
+wanted in the way of sugar and cream and cake, and sat down again,
+making himself very much at home.
+
+"Do take some yourself," he pleaded. "You are making me feel such an
+outsider."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Beth, helping herself.
+
+She did not know whether to be annoyed or amused by his assurance. Had
+she not known who he was she would certainly have been annoyed; but
+the recollection of their days together, when the world was young and
+life was all pure poetry, came upon her suddenly as she found
+something of the boy in the face and voice of the man before her,
+making it impossible for her to treat him as a stranger, and melting
+her into a smile.
+
+"Confess that you were surprised to see me," he said.
+
+"I was," she answered.
+
+"And not glad, perhaps," he pursued.
+
+"Surprised means neither glad nor sorry," she observed.
+
+"D'you know, the moment I saw you----" he began sentimentally; "but
+never mind that now," he broke off. "Let me give you my reason for
+coming, which is also my excuse. I hope you will accept it."
+
+Beth waited quietly.
+
+"I told you I could always find out anything I wanted to know about
+anybody," he pursued, "and last night I happened to sit next a lady at
+a dinner-party who turned out to be a great friend of yours. I always
+talk to strange ladies about what I've been doing; that kind of thing
+interests them, you know; and I described the party here yesterday
+afternoon, and said I only met one lady in the whole assembly worth
+looking at and worth speaking to, and that was Mrs. Maclure, who was
+staying in the house. 'Oh, I know her quite well,' the lady said.
+'She's a neighbour of mine at Slane. Her husband is a doctor, but I
+hear _she_ is connected with some of the best county people in the
+north. She's very clever, I believe, and by way of being literary and
+all that sort of thing, don't you know. But I don't think she has any
+one to advise her.'"
+
+"Oh," said Beth, enlightened, "I know who my great friend is
+then--Mrs. Carne!"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Pounce, "and when I heard you were literary, I felt a
+further affinity, for, as I daresay you have heard, I am a literary
+man myself."
+
+"Yes; I heard you were 'by way of being literary,' too," Beth
+rejoined.
+
+"Who told you so?" he demanded quickly, his whole thought instantly
+concentrated on the interesting subject when it concerned himself.
+
+"I do not feel at liberty to tell you," she replied.
+
+"Was it Mrs. Kilroy?"
+
+Beth made no sign.
+
+"Was it Mr. Kilroy?" he persisted.
+
+"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 assured 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 ejaculated. "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
+pronounce 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 passage 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 passage?"
+
+"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 assume they are competent
+to advise, prayed that she herself might always be modest enough to
+wait at least until her advice was asked.
+
+"I hope I have not discussed your opinion impolitely," she said. "Pray
+excuse me if you think I have."
+
+Mollified, he turned his attention once more to the littered bureau.
+
+"You have a goodly pile of manuscript there," he remarked; "may I ask
+what it is?"
+
+"It is a little book into which I am putting all my ignorance," she
+said.
+
+"I hope you are not going to be diffident about letting me see it?" he
+answered encouragingly. "I could certainly give you some useful
+hints."
+
+"You are too kind," she said; and he accepted the assertion without a
+suspicion of sarcasm. She rose when she had spoken, drew the lid of
+the bureau down over her papers, and locked it deliberately; but the
+precaution rather flattered him than otherwise.
+
+"You need not be afraid," he said. "I promise to be lenient. And if we
+are as fast friends when the book appears as I trust we shall be, the
+_Patriarch_ itself shall proclaim its merits; if not----"
+
+"I suppose it will discover my faults," Beth put in demurely. "I
+wonder, by the way," she added, "who told you you are so much cleverer
+than I am?"
+
+But fortunately Mrs. Kilroy came in and interrupted them before he had
+had time to grasp the remark, for which Beth, from whom it had slipped
+unawares, was devoutly thankful.
+
+When he had gone, she sat and wondered if she had really understood
+him aright with regard to the _Patriarch_. Certainly he had seemed to
+threaten her, but it was hard to believe that he had sunk so low as to
+be capable of criticising her work, not on its own merits, but with
+regard to the terms he should be on with its author. She was too
+upright herself, however, to think such dishonest meanness possible,
+so she put the suspicion far from her, and tried to find some
+charitable explanation of the several signs of paltriness she had
+already detected, and to think of him as he had seemed to her in the
+old days, when she had endowed him with all the qualities she herself
+had brought into their acquaintance to make it pleasant and of good
+effect.
+
+Beth had taken to rambling about alone in the quiet streets and
+squares for exercise; and as she returned a few days later from one of
+these rambles, she encountered Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce coming out of
+a florist's with a large bouquet of orchids in his hand.
+
+"You see I do not forget you," he said, holding the bouquet out to
+her. "Every lady has her flower. These delicate orchids are for you."
+
+But Beth ignored the offering. "You are still fond of flowers then?"
+slipped from her.
+
+"We do not leave a taste for flowers behind us with our toys," he
+rejoined. "If we like flowers as children, we love them as men. The
+taste develops like a talent when we cultivate it. To love flowers
+with true appreciation of their affinities in regard to certain
+persons, is an endowment, a grace of nature which bespeaks the most
+absolute refinement of mind. And what would life be without refinement
+of mind!"
+
+Beth had walked on, and he was walking beside her.
+
+"And how does the book progress?" he inquired.
+
+"It is finished," she answered.
+
+"What! already?" he exclaimed. "Why, it takes _me_ a week to write
+five hundred words. But then, of course, my work is highly
+concentrated. I have sent home for some of it to show you. You see I
+am pertinacious. I said I would help you, and I will. I hope you will
+live to be glad that we have met. But you must not write at such a
+rate. You can only produce poor thin stuff in that way."
+
+Beth shrugged her shoulders, and let him assume what he liked on the
+subject.
+
+They walked on a little way in silence, then he began again about the
+flowers. "Flowers," he informed her, "were the great solace of my
+boyhood--the sole solace, I may say, for I had no friends, no
+companions, except a poor little chap, a cripple, on whom I took pity.
+My people did not think me strong enough for a public school, so they
+sent me to a private tutor, a man of excellent family, Rector of a
+large seaside parish in the north. He only took me as a favour; he had
+no other pupils. But it was very lonely in that great empty house. And
+the seashore, although it filled my mind with poetry, was desolate,
+desolate!"
+
+Beth, as she listened to these meanderings of his fancy, and recalled
+old Vicar Richardson and the house full of children, thought of Mr.
+Pounce's remarks about feminine accuracy.
+
+"But had you no girl-friend?" she asked.
+
+"Only the lady of my dreams," he answered. "There was no _other_ lady
+I should have looked at in the place. I was always refined. I met the
+lady of my dreams eventually. It was among the mountains of the Tyrol.
+Imagine a lordly castle, with drawbridge and moat, portcullis and
+pleasaunce, and sauntering in the pleasaunce, among the flowers, a
+lady--dressed in white----"
+
+"Samite?" Beth ventured, controlling her countenance.
+
+"I cannot recall the texture," he said seriously. "How could one think
+of textures at such a moment! That would have been too commercial! All
+I noted was the lily whiteness--and her eyes, dark eyes! All the
+poetry and passion of her race shone in them. And on the spot I vowed
+to win her. I went back to the 'Varsity, and worked myself into the
+best set. Lord Fitzkillingham became, as you know, my most intimate
+friend. He was my best man at the wedding."
+
+"Then you married your ideal," said Beth. "You should be very happy."
+
+He sighed. "I would not say a word against her for the world," he
+asserted. "When I compare her with other women, I see what a lucky man
+I must be thought. But," he sighed again, "I was very young, and youth
+has its illusions. As we grow older, mere beauty does not satisfy,
+mere cleverness and accomplishments do not satisfy, nor wealth, nor
+rank. A man may have all that, and yet may yearn for a certain
+something which is not there--and that something is the one thing
+needful."
+
+They were opposite to the house by this time, and he looked up at the
+windows sentimentally. "Which is yours?" he asked. "I pass by daily
+and look up."
+
+They had stopped at the door. "I cannot ask you in," Beth said
+hastily. "Please excuse me. This is my time for work."
+
+"Ah, the time and the mood!" he ejaculated. "I know it all so well!
+Inspiration! Inspiration comes of congenial conversation, as I hope
+you will find. You will take my flowers. I cannot claim to have culled
+them for you, but at least I chose them."
+
+As the door had been opened, and the footman in the hall stood looking
+on, Beth thought it better to take the flowers in a casual way as if
+they belonged to her. A card tied to the bouquet by a purple ribbon
+fell out from among the flowers as she took them. On it was written:
+"Mrs. Merton Merivale." Beth held the flowers out to Mr. Pounce, with
+the card dangling, and raised her eyebrows interrogatively.
+
+"Ah, yes," he began slowly, detaching the card as he spoke to gain
+time, and changing countenance somewhat. "I confess some one else had
+had the good taste to choose these orchids before I saw them; but I
+always insist on having just what _I_ want, so I took them, and
+suggested that another bouquet might be made for the lady. I
+overlooked the card."
+
+Beth bowed and left him without further ceremony.
+
+She tossed the flowers under the table in the hall on her way
+upstairs, and never knew what became of them. Later in the day she
+described her morning's adventure to Angelica, and asked her if she
+knew who Mrs. Merton Merivale was.
+
+"Oh, that woman in the princess bonnet with the big Alsatian bow, you
+know," Angelica said. "Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce's sometime
+intellectual affinity."
+
+"Poor Alfred! he is too crude!" Beth ejaculated. "How I have outgrown
+him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ideala called next day, and found Angelica alone. "I hear that Beth is
+with you?" she said. "What is she doing?"
+
+"Writing a book."
+
+"What kind of a book?"
+
+"Not a book for babes, I should say," said Angelica. "She does not
+pretend to consider the young person in the least. It is for parents
+and guardians, she says, not for authors, to see to it that the books
+the young person reads are suitable to her age. She thinks it very
+desirable for her only to read such as are; but personally she does
+not see the sense of writing down to her, or of being at all cramped
+on her account. She means to address mature men and women."
+
+"That is brave and good," said Ideala. "What is the subject?"
+
+"I don't know," said Angelica; "but she is certain to put some of
+herself into it."
+
+"If by that you mean some of her personal experiences, I should think
+you are wrong," said Ideala. "Genius experiences too acutely to make
+use of its own past in that way; it would suffer too much in the
+reproduction. And besides, it can make better use and more telling of
+what it intuitively knows than of what it has actually seen."
+
+"I do not think you believe that Beth will succeed," said Angelica.
+
+"On the contrary," Ideala rejoined, "I expect her success will be
+unique; only I don't know if it will be a literary success. Genius is
+versatile. But we shall see."
+
+Having finished her book, Beth collected her friends and read it aloud
+to them. "I don't know what to think of it," she said. "Advise me. Is
+it worth publishing, or had I better put it aside and try again?"
+
+"Publish it, by all means," was the unanimous verdict; and Mr. Kilroy
+took the manuscript himself to a publisher of his acquaintance, who
+read it and accepted it.
+
+"Oh," Beth exclaimed, when she heard the reader's report, "I do know
+now what is meant by all in good time! If I had been able to publish
+the first things I wrote, how I should have regretted it now! And I
+did think so much of myself at that time, too! You should have heard
+how I dogmatised to Sir George Galbraith; and he was so good and
+kind--he never snubbed me. But I believe I am out of the amateur stage
+now, and far advanced enough to begin all over again humbly and learn
+my profession. But I find my point of view unchanged. Manner has
+always been less to me than matter. When I think of all the
+preventable sin and misery there is in the world, I pray God give us
+books of good intention--never mind the style! Polished periods put
+neither heart nor hope in us; theirs is the polish of steel which we
+admire for the labour bestowed upon it, but by which we do not
+benefit. The inevitable ills of life strengthen and refine when they
+are heroically borne; it is the preventable ones that act on our evil
+passions, and fill us with rage and bitterness; and what we want from
+the written word that reaches all of us is help and advice, comfort
+and encouragement. If art interferes with that, then art had better
+go. It would not be missed by the wretched--the happy we need not
+consider. I am speaking of art for art's sake, of course."
+
+"We need not trouble about that," said Ideala. "The works of art for
+art's sake, and style for style's sake, end on the shelf much
+respected, while their authors end in the asylum, the prison, and the
+premature grave. I had a lesson on that subject long ago, which
+enlarged my mind. I got among the people who talk of style
+incessantly, as if style were everything, till at last I verily
+believed it was. I began to lose all I had to express for worry of the
+way to express it! Then one day a wise old friend of mine took me into
+a public library; and we spent a long time among the books, looking
+especially at the ones that had been greatly read, and at the queer
+marks in them, the emphatic strokes of approval, the notes of
+admiration, the ohs! of enthusiasm, the ahs! of agreement. At the end
+of one volume some one had written: 'This book has done me good.' It
+was all very touching to me, very human, very instructive. I never
+quite realised before what books might be to people, how they might
+help them, comfort them, brighten the time for them, and fill them
+with brave and happy thoughts. But we came at last in our wanderings
+to one neat shelf of beautiful books, and I began to look at them.
+There were no marks in them, no signs of wear and tear. The shelf was
+evidently not popular, yet it contained the books that had been
+specially recommended to me as best worth reading by my stylist
+friends. 'There is style for you!' said my friend. 'Style lasts, you
+see. Style is engraved upon stone. All the other books about us wear
+out and perish, but here are your stylists still, as fresh as the day
+they were bought.' 'Because nobody reads them!' I exclaimed.
+'Precisely,' he said. 'There is no comfort in life in them. They are
+the mere mechanics of literature, and nobody cares about them except
+the mechanicians.' After that I prayed for notable matter to indite,
+and tried only for the most appropriate words in which to express it;
+and then I arrived. If you have the matter, the manner will come, as
+handwriting comes to each of us; and it will be as good, too, as you
+are conscientious, and as beautiful as you are good."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce called on Beth continually. He was announced
+one day when she was sitting at lunch with the Kilroys.
+
+"Really I do not think I ought to let you be bored by that man," Mr.
+Kilroy exclaimed. "I once had ten minutes of the academic platitudes
+of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce, and that was enough to last me my life.
+You are too good-natured to see him so often. It is a weakness of
+yours, I believe, to suffer yourself rather than hurt other people's
+feelings, however much they may deserve it. But really you must snub
+him. There is nothing else for it. Send out and say you are engaged."
+
+"If I do, he will wait until I am disengaged, or call again, or write
+in an offended tone to ask _when_ I can be so good as to make it
+convenient to see him!" Beth answered in comical despair.
+
+"I don't believe he bores her a bit at _present_," Angelica observed.
+"He is merely an intellectual exercise for Beth. She watches the
+workings of his mind quite dispassionately, draws him out with little
+airs and graces, and then adjusts him under the microscope. It
+interests her to dissect the creature. When she has studied him
+thoroughly, she will cast him out, as a worthless specimen."
+
+"Oh, I hope that isn't true," said Beth, with a twinge of conscience.
+"I own it has interested me to see what he has developed into; but
+surely that isn't unfair?" She looked at Mr. Kilroy deprecatingly.
+
+"It is vivisection," said Angelica.
+
+"But under such agreeable anaesthetics that I should think he enjoys
+it," said Mr. Kilroy. "I should have no objection myself."
+
+"Daddy, be careful!" Angelica cried. "A rare specimen like you is
+never safe when unscrupulous naturalists are about."
+
+"But no microscope is needed to demonstrate Mr. Kilroy's position in
+the scale of being," Beth put in. "It is writ large all over him."
+
+"Good and true, Beth!" said Angelica, smiling. "You can go and gloat
+over your worthless specimen as a reward, if you like. But the
+scientific mind is a mystery to me, and I shall never understand how
+you have the patience to do it."
+
+Beth found Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce pacing about her sitting-room,
+biting his nails in an irritable manner.
+
+"You were at lunch, I think," he said. "I wonder why I was not asked
+in?"
+
+Beth said nothing.
+
+"I consider it a slight on Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy's part," he pursued
+huffily. "Why should _I_ be singled out for this kind of thing?"
+
+"Aren't you just a little touchy?" Beth suggested.
+
+"I confess I am sensitive, if that is what you mean," he replied.
+
+"Well, yes, if you like," she said, "hyper-sensitive. But I thought
+you asked for me."
+
+"It is true I came to see you; but that is no reason why I should be
+slighted by your friends--especially when I came because I think I
+have something to show you that will interest you." He took a little
+packet from the breast-pocket of his coat as he spoke, and began to
+undo it. "I took the trouble to go all the way home to get them to
+show you. My mother was the only person who had them. They are
+photographs of myself when I was a boy."
+
+"I wonder your mother parted with them," Beth said.
+
+"I persuaded her with difficulty," he rejoined complacently. "I have
+often tried before, but nothing would induce her to part with them,
+until this time, when a bright idea occurred to me. I told her they
+were to be published among portraits of celebrated people when my new
+book comes out, and naturally she liked the idea. Her only son, you
+know!"
+
+"And are they to be published?" Beth asked.
+
+"Oh--well--of course I hope so--some day," he answered, smiling and
+hesitating. "But the truth is I got them for you."
+
+Beth did not thank him, but he was too engrossed with his own
+portraits to notice the omission. She was interested in them, too,
+when at last he let her look at them.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he asked, showing her a good likeness of
+himself as she remembered him. "I was a pretty boy then, I think, with
+my curls! Burning the midnight oil had not bared my forehead in those
+days, and my beard had not grown. Life was all poetry then!" he sighed
+affectedly. What had once been spontaneous feeling in him had become a
+mere recollection, only to be called up by an effort.
+
+"Later it became all excesses, I suppose," said Beth.
+
+"Ah!" he ejaculated in a tone of pleased regret. "I had to live like
+other men of my standing, you know, and I had to pay for it. The boy
+was lost, but the man developed. You may think the change a falling
+off----"
+
+He waited for Beth to express an opinion; but as it was impossible for
+her to say what she thought of the difference between the conceited,
+dissipated-looking, hysterical man of many meannesses, and the
+diffident unspoilt promising boy, she held her peace.
+
+When she had seen the photographs, and he had looked at them himself
+to his heart's content, he did them up again, and then formally
+presented her with the packet. "Will you keep them?" he said solemnly.
+
+"Oh no!" she answered with decision. "I am not the proper person to
+keep them. If they did not belong to your mother, they would be for
+your wife and children."
+
+"Ah, my wife!" he ejaculated bitterly. "I haven't a word to say
+against my wife, remember that! Only--you are the one to whom I would
+confide them."
+
+"I decline the responsibility," Beth said, keeping her countenance
+with difficulty.
+
+He returned the packet to the breast-pocket of his coat. "I shall
+carry them here, then," he said, tapping his chest with the points of
+his fingers, "until you ask for them."
+
+As usual, he stayed a preposterous time that day, and when at last he
+went, even Beth's kindly forbearance was exhausted, and she determined
+to see no more of him. He was not the man to take a hint, however, and
+it was no easy matter to get rid of him. He sent her flowers, for
+which she did not thank him, books which she did not read; wrote her
+long letters of the clever kind, discussing topics of the day or
+remarks she herself had made, which she left unanswered; called, but
+never found her at home, yet still persisted, until she was fain to
+exclaim: "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?"
+
+"It is your own fault," said Angelica. "I warned you that good-nature
+is wasted on that sort of man."
+
+"But surely he must see that I wish to avoid him," Beth exclaimed.
+
+"Of course he sees it," Angelica rejoined, "but you may be sure that
+he interprets your reluctance in some way very flattering to himself."
+
+"I shall really be rude to him," Beth said desperately. "He is a most
+exasperating person, the kind of man to drive a woman mad, and then
+blame her for it. I pity his wife!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beth stayed with the Kilroys until the end of June, when the season
+was all but over and everybody was leaving town; and it was the
+busiest and happiest time she had ever known. She had enjoyed the
+work, the play, the society, the solitude, and had blossomed forth in
+that congenial atmosphere both mentally and physically, and become a
+braver and a better woman.
+
+The Kilroys were to go abroad the day that Beth returned to Slane. The
+evening before, she went with Angelica to a theatre. But Angelica,
+being much occupied at the moment with arrangements that had to be
+made for the carrying on of her special work during her absence, was
+not able to stay for the whole performance, so she left Beth alone at
+the theatre, and sent the carriage back to take her home.
+
+Beth, sitting in the corner of a box, had eyes for nothing the whole
+time but the play, which, being one of those that stimulate the mind,
+had appealed to her so powerfully that even after it was over she
+remained where she was a little, deep in thought. On leaving the
+theatre, she found the footman on the steps looking out for her, and
+he remained, standing a little behind her, till the carriage came up.
+While she waited, she was annoyed to see Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce
+making his way towards her officiously. "You are alone!" he exclaimed,
+with a note of critical disapproval in his voice, as if the
+circumstance reflected on somebody.
+
+"Hardly!" Beth said, glancing up at her escort. "But even if I were,
+Mr. Pounce, I am in London, not in the dark ages, and as sure of
+respect here, at the doors of a theatre, as I am in my own
+drawing-room. I believe, by the way," she added lightly, not liking to
+hurt him by too blunt a snub, "I believe this is the only big city in
+Europe of which so much can be said; and English women may thank
+themselves for it. We demand not protection, but respect. Here is the
+carriage. Good night!" She stepped in as she spoke, and took her
+seat.
+
+"Oh pray, you really must allow me to see you safe home," he
+exclaimed, following her into the carriage and taking the seat beside
+her before she could remonstrate. The servant shut the door, and they
+drove away. Beth boiled with indignation, but she thought it more
+dignified not to show it, and she dreaded to have a scene before the
+servants. Her demeanour was somewhat frigid, and she left him to open
+the conversation; but when he spoke she answered him in her usual
+tone. He, on the contrary, was extremely formal. He stroked his
+pointed beard, looked out of the window, and made remarks about the
+weather and the people in the streets, not avoiding the obvious, which
+was a relief.
+
+The hall-door was opened as soon as the carriage stopped, and they got
+out.
+
+"Thank you for your escort, and good night," Beth said, holding out
+her hand to him, but he ignored it.
+
+"I feel faint," he said, and he looked it. "Will you let me come in
+and sit down a minute, and give me a glass of water?"
+
+"Why, of course," Beth said. "But have something stronger than water.
+Come this way, into the library. Roberts, bring Mr. Pounce something
+to revive him."
+
+"What will you have, sir?" the butler asked.
+
+"A glass of water, nothing but a glass of water," Mr. Pounce said,
+most preciously, sinking into an easy-chair as he spoke.
+
+The butler brought the water, and told Beth that Mr. and Mrs. Kilroy
+had not come in. She ordered some tea for herself.
+
+Mr. Pounce sipped the water and appeared to revive.
+
+"I have suffered terribly during the last three weeks," he said at
+last.
+
+"Have you really?" Beth rejoined with concern. "What was the matter?"
+
+"Need you ask!" he ejaculated. "Why, why have you treated me so?"
+
+"Really, Mr. Pounce, I do not see that you have any claim on my
+special consideration," Beth answered coldly.
+
+"I have the claim of one who is entirely devoted to you," he said.
+
+"I have never accepted your devotion, and I will not have it forced
+upon me," Beth answered decidedly. "I should like you better, to tell
+the truth, if you were a little more devoted to your duty."
+
+"You allude to my wife," he said. "Oh, how can I make you understand!
+But you have said it yourself--duty! What is duty? The conscientious
+performance of uncongenial tasks. But if a man does his duty, then he
+deserves his reward. I do my duty with what heart I have for it. No
+fault can be found with me either as a husband or a citizen.
+Therefore, as a man, I consider myself entitled to claim my reward."
+
+"I am afraid you are not well," Beth said. "Don't you think you had
+better go home and rest?"
+
+"Not until we come to an understanding," he answered tragically.
+
+Beth shrugged her shoulders resignedly, folded her hands, and waited,
+more interested in him as a human specimen in spite of herself than
+disturbed by anything his attitude foreboded.
+
+There was a bright wood fire burning on the hearth. Mrs. Kilroy liked
+to have one to welcome her when they had been out late, not for warmth
+so much as for cheerfulness. The summer midnight was chilly enough,
+however, for the gentle heat to be grateful; and Beth turned to the
+blaze and gazed into it tranquilly. The clock on the mantelpiece
+struck one. Roberts brought in a tray with refreshments on it, and set
+it down on a small table beside Beth. Before she helped herself she
+asked Mr. Pounce what he would have, but he curtly declined to take
+anything. She shrugged her shoulders, and fell-to herself with a
+healthy appetite.
+
+"How can you--how can you?" he ejaculated several times.
+
+"I'm hungry," she said, laughing, "and I really don't see why I
+shouldn't eat."
+
+"You have no feeling for me," he complained.
+
+"I have a sort of feeling that you are posing," she answered bluntly;
+"and I wish you wouldn't. You'd better have some sandwiches."
+
+"How terribly complex life is!" he muttered.
+
+"Life is pretty much what we make of it by the way we live it," she
+rejoined, taking another sandwich. "We are what we allow ourselves to
+be. The complexities come of wrong thinking and wrong doing. Right and
+wrong are quite distinct; there is no mistaking one for the other. In
+any dilemma we have only to think what is right to be done, and to do
+it, and there is an end of all perplexities and complexities.
+Principle simplifies everything."
+
+"I see you have never loved," he declared, "or you would not think the
+application of principle such a simple thing."
+
+"It is principle that makes love last," Beth answered, "and introduces
+something permanent into this weary world of change. There is nothing
+in life so well worth living for as principle; the most exquisite form
+of pleasure is to be found in the pain of sacrificing one's
+inclinations in order to live up to one's principles--so much so that
+in time, when principle and inclination become identical, and we cease
+to feel tempted, something of joy is lost, some gladness that was wont
+to mingle with the trouble."
+
+"But principles themselves are mutable," he maintained. "They get out
+of date. And there are, besides, exceptional characters that do not
+come under the common law of humanity; exceptional temperaments, and
+exceptional circumstances to which common principles are inapplicable,
+or for which they are inadequate."
+
+"That is the hypocrisy of the vicious," Beth said, with her eyes fixed
+meditatively on the fire, "the people who lay down excellent
+principles, and publicly profess them for the sake of standing well
+with society, but privately make exceptions for themselves in any
+arrangement that may suit their own convenience. Your people of
+'exceptional temperament' settle moral difficulties by not allowing
+any moral consideration to clash with their inclinations, and misery
+comes of it. The plea of exceptional character, exceptional
+circumstances, exceptional temperament, and what not, is merely
+another way of expressing exceptional selfishness and excusing
+exceptional self-indulgence."
+
+"Surely _you_ are not content to be a mere slave to social
+convention!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I am talking of fundamental principles, not of social conventions,"
+she replied; "please to discriminate. Self-control is not slavery, but
+emancipation; to control our passions makes us lords of ourselves and
+free of our most galling bonds--the bonds of the flesh."
+
+"What a drawback the want of--er--a proper philosophic training is,"
+he observed. "Culture does a great deal. It makes us more modest, for
+one thing. I don't suppose you know, for instance, that you are
+setting up an opinion of your own in opposition to such men as
+Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer maintained that as the man of genius gave
+his whole life for the profit of humanity, he had a license of conduct
+which was not accorded to the rest of mankind."
+
+"If culture leaves us liable to be taken in by a false postulate of
+any man's, however well turned the postulate or able the man, then I
+have no respect for culture. The fact that Schopenhauer said such a
+thing does not prove it true. An assertion like that is a mere matter
+of opinion. Half the worry in the world is caused by differences of
+opinion. Let us have the facts and form our own opinions. Have the men
+of genius who allowed themselves license of conduct been any the
+better for it? the happier? the greater? Schopenhauer himself, for
+instance!" She smiled at him with honest eyes when she had spoken, and
+took another sandwich. "But don't let us talk sophistry and
+silliness," she proceeded, "nor the kind of abstract that serves as a
+cover for unrighteousness. Those tricks don't carry conviction to my
+uncultivated mind. I know how they're done."
+
+"You are lowering yourself in my estimation," he said severely.
+
+"And what comes after that?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head and gazed at her reproachfully. "How can you be so
+trivial," he said, "in a moment like this?--you who are situated even
+as I am. If we were to die now, in six months it would be as though we
+had never been. No one would remember us."
+
+"But what have we done for any one," Beth asked, in her equable way,
+"that we should be specially remembered?"
+
+He made no reply, and Beth went on with the sandwiches.
+
+"I thought," he began at last, "I did think that you at least would
+understand and feel for me."
+
+Beth stopped eating and considered a moment.
+
+"Are you in any real trouble?" she asked at last.
+
+He rose and began to pace up and down. "I will tell you," he said,
+"and leave you to judge for yourself."
+
+Beth looked somewhat ruefully at the tray, and wished that the
+conversation had been more suited to the satisfaction of an honest
+appetite.
+
+"I have made it plain to you what my marriage is without blaming
+anybody," he proceeded. "It is the rock upon which all my hopes were
+wrecked. I found my ideal. I won her like a man. I haven't a word to
+say against her. She is a woman who might have made any ordinary man
+happy; but she has been no help to me. It is not her fault. She has
+done her best. And it is not my fault."
+
+"Then whose fault is it?" said Beth; "it must be somebody's. I think
+of marriage as I think of life; it is pretty much what people choose
+to make it. It does not fail when husband and wife have good
+principles, and live up to them; and good manners in private as well
+as in public--not to mention high ideals. When we are not happy in the
+intimate relations of life, it is generally for some trivial
+reason--as often as not because we don't take the trouble to make
+ourselves agreeable, as because we fail in other duties. I consider it
+a duty to be agreeable. In married life happiness depends on loyalty,
+to begin with, the loyalty that will not even let its thoughts stray.
+All that we want in everyday intercourse is truth and affection,
+kindness, consideration, and unvarying politeness. If people practised
+these as a duty from the first, sympathy would eventually come of the
+effort. Marriage is the state that develops the noblest qualities, and
+that is why happily married people are the best worth knowing, the
+most delightful to live amongst. You have no fault to find with your
+wife, therefore the fault must be in yourself if you are not happy. Do
+your duty like a man, and cure yourself of it."
+
+"It surprises me to hear you talk in that way," he exclaimed, "you who
+have suffered so much yourself!"
+
+"I make no pretence of having suffered," she answered. "I have no
+patience with people who do. We have our destiny in our own hands to
+make or mar, most of us. If we fail in one thing we shall succeed in
+another. Life is a fertile garden, full of plants that bud and blossom
+and bear fruit not once but every season while it lasts. If the crop
+of happiness fails one year, we should set to work bravely, and
+cultivate it all the more diligently for the next."
+
+"All this is beside the mark," he responded peevishly. "You are
+offering me the generalisations that only apply to ordinary people.
+Allowance _must_ be made for exceptional natures. Look at me! I tell
+you if I had met the right woman, I should have been at the top of the
+tree by this time. I have the greatest respect for woman. I believe
+that her part in life is to fertilise the mind of man; and if the able
+man does not find the right woman for this purpose, he must remain
+sterile, and the world will be the loser. I never knew such a woman
+till I met you; but in you I have discovered one rich in all womanly
+attributes, mental, moral, and physical; and, beyond these, dowered
+also with genius, the divine gift--the very woman to help a man to do
+his best."
+
+"And what is the man going to do for me?" Beth inquired with a twinkle
+in her eyes.
+
+"He would surround you with every comfort, every luxury--jewels----"
+
+"Like a ballet-girl!" she interjected. "I am really afraid you are
+old-fashioned. You begin by offering me gewgaws--the paltry price
+women set on themselves in the days of their intellectual infancy. We
+know our value better now."
+
+"You should have all that an ideal woman ought to have," he put in.
+"What more can a woman require?"
+
+"She would like to know what all she ought to have consists of," Beth
+replied. "As a rule, a man's ideal woman is some one who will make him
+comfortable; and he thinks he has done all that is necessary for her
+when he allows her to contribute to his happiness."
+
+"Ah, be serious!" he ejaculated. "You should be above playing in that
+cruel way with a man who is in earnest. Hear what I have to say.
+Remember _we_ are the people who make history. You talk about knowing
+your own value! You do not know it. Without me you never will know it.
+You do not know what is being said already about your unpublished
+work. Those who have read it tell me you promise to be to England what
+Georges Sand was to France when she appeared, a new light on the
+literary horizon. But where would Georges Sand have been without De
+Musset? They owe half their prestige to each other. While they were
+alive every one talked of them, and now that they are dead reams are
+written about them. Let us also go down to posterity together. All I
+want is you; what you want is me. Will you--will you let me be to
+you--De Musset?"
+
+"What you really do want," said Beth, "is a sense of humour."
+
+"For God's sake, do not be trivial!" he exclaimed. "You cannot think
+what this means to me--how I have set my heart on it--how I already
+seem to hear the men at the clubs mention my name and yours when I
+pass. Night after night I have paced up and down outside this house,
+looking up at your window, thinking it all out."
+
+Beth flushed angrily. "I consider that a most improper proceeding,"
+she said, "and I do not know how you can excuse it to yourself."
+
+"I--much may be excused when a man feels as strongly as I do," he
+protested.
+
+"And how about your wife?" said Beth, "where do you place her in your
+plans? Has she no feelings to be considered?"
+
+"I shall not hurt her feelings, I assure you, I never do," he
+answered. "I keep her in a quiet country place so that she may hear no
+gossip, and I excuse my long absences from home on the plea of work.
+She understands that my interests would suffer if I were not on the
+spot."
+
+"In other words, you lie to your wife," said Beth, aghast at the
+shabby deceit.
+
+"That is scarcely polite language," he rejoined in an offended tone.
+
+"It is correct language," she retorted. "We shall understand what we
+are talking about much better if we call things by their right names.
+But are you never afraid of what your wife may be driven to in the
+dulness of the country, while you are here in town, dancing attendance
+on other men's wives?"
+
+"Never in the least," he answered complacently. "She is entirely
+devoted to me and to her duty. Her faith in me is absolute."
+
+"And so you deceive her."
+
+"I am not bound to tell her all my doings," he protested.
+
+"You are in honour bound not to deceive her," Beth said; "and if you
+deceive her it is none the less low because she does not suspect you.
+On the contrary. It seems to me that one of the worst things that can
+happen to a man is to have docile women to deal with."
+
+"I am grieved to hear you talk like that," he said. "I am really
+grieved. It shows a want of refinement that surprises and shocks me. I
+maintain that I do her no injury. These things can always be arranged
+so that no one is injured; that is all that is necessary."
+
+"These things can never be arranged so that no one is injured," Beth
+replied. "We injure ourselves, if no one else. We are bound to
+deteriorate when we live deceitfully. How can you be honest and manly
+and lead a double life? The false husband in whom his wife believes
+must be a sneak; and for the man who rewards a good faithful wife by
+deceiving her, I have no term of contempt sufficiently strong."
+
+"I am disappointed in you," he said. "I should never have suspected
+that you were so narrow and conventional."
+
+"Are you prepared to defy public opinion?" Beth asked.
+
+"No, that would be gross," he said. "Outwardly we must conform. Only
+the _elite_ understand these things, and only the _elite_ need know of
+them. You are of the _elite_ yourself; you must know, you must feel
+the power, the privilege conferred by a great passion."
+
+"Pray do not class me with the _elite_ if passion is what they
+respect," Beth said. "Passion at the best--honourable passion--is but
+the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The passion that has no
+honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift
+and sure to decay."
+
+"Passion is more than that, the passion of which I speak. It is a
+great mental stimulant," he declared.
+
+"Yes," said Beth, "passion is a great mental stimulant--passion
+resisted."
+
+"Georges Sand, whom I would have you follow, always declared that she
+only wrote her best under the influence of a strong passion," he
+assured her.
+
+"But how do we know that she might not have written better than that
+best under some holier influence?" Beth rejoined. "George Eliot's
+serener spirit appeals to me more. I believe it is only those who
+renounce the ruinous riot of the senses, and find their strength and
+inspiration in contemplation, who reach the full fruition of their
+powers. Ages have not talked for nothing of the pains of passion and
+the pleasures of love. Love is a great ethical force; but passion,
+which is compact of every element of doubt and deceit, is cosmic and
+brutal, a tyrant if we yield to it, but if we master it, an obedient
+servant willing to work. I would rather die of passion myself, as I
+might of any other disease, than live to be bound by it."
+
+Pounce, who had been pacing about the room restlessly until now, sat
+down by the fire, and gazed into it for a little, discomfited. He had
+come primed with the old platitudes, the old sophistries, the old
+flatteries, come to treat amicably, and found himself met with armed
+resistance, his flatteries and platitudes ridiculed, his sophistries
+exposed, and his position attacked with the confidence and courage of
+those who are sure of themselves.
+
+"Have you no feeling for me?" he said at last, after a long pause,
+speaking somewhat hoarsely.
+
+"I feel sorry for you," was the unexpected answer.
+
+"Pity is akin to love," he said.
+
+"Pity is also akin to contempt," she rejoined. "And how can a woman
+feel anything else for a man who is false to the most sacred
+obligations? who makes vows and breaks them according to his
+inclination? If we make a law of our own inclinations, what assurance
+can we give to any one that we shall ever be true?"
+
+"I have found at last what I have yearned for all my life long," he
+protested. "I know I shall never waver in my devotion to you."
+
+"That may be," she answered. "But what guarantee could you give me
+that _I_ should not waver? What comfort would your fidelity be if I
+tired of you in a month?"
+
+Again he was discomfited, and there was another pause.
+
+"If you did change," he said at last, "I should be the only sufferer."
+
+Beth sat silent for a little, then she said slowly, "What you have
+ventured to propose to me to-night, Mr. Cayley Pounce, is no more
+credit to your intelligence than it is to your principles. You come
+here and find me living openly, in an assured position, with powerful
+friends, whose affection and respect for me rest on their confidence
+in me, and with brilliant prospects besides, as you say, which,
+however, depend to a great extent upon my answering to the
+expectations I have raised. You allow that I have some ability, some
+sense, and yet you offer me in exchange for all these----"
+
+"I offer you _love_!" he exclaimed fervently.
+
+"Love!" she ejaculated with contempt, "you offer me yourself for a
+lover, and you seek to inspire confidence in me by deceiving your
+wife. You would have me sacrifice a position of safety for a position
+of danger--one that might be changed into an invidious position by the
+least indiscretion--and all for what?"
+
+"For love of you," he pleaded, "that I may help you to develop the
+best that is in you."
+
+"All for the prestige of having your name associated with mine by men
+about town in the event of mine becoming distinguished," she
+interrupted.
+
+He winced.
+
+"I only ask you to do what George Eliot did greatly to her advantage,"
+he answered reproachfully.
+
+"You asked me to do what Georges Sand did greatly to her detriment,"
+Beth said. "George Eliot is an after-thought. And you certainly have
+no intention of asking me to do what she did, for she acted openly,
+she deceived no one, and injured no one."
+
+"And you do not blame her?" he exclaimed with a flash of hope.
+
+Beth answered indirectly: "When I think about that, I ask myself have
+Church and State arranged the relations of the sexes successfully
+enough to convince us that they cannot be better arranged? Are
+marriages holier now than they were in the days when there were no
+churches to bless them? or happier here than in other countries where
+they are simple private contracts? And it seems to me that we have no
+historical proof that the legal bond is necessarily the holiest
+between man and woman, or that there is never justification for a more
+irregular compact. I know that 'holy matrimony' is often a state of
+absolute degradation, especially for the woman; and I believe that two
+honourable people can live together honourably without the
+conventional bond, so long as no one else is injured, no previous
+compact broken. But all the same I think the legal bond is best. It is
+a safeguard to the family and a restraint on the unprincipled. And, at
+any rate, all my experience, all my thought, all my hope argue for the
+dignity of permanence in human relations. Anything else is bad for the
+individual, for the family, for the state. As civilisation, as
+evolution advances from lower to higher, we find it makes more and
+more for monogamy. Our highest types of men and women are monogamous.
+Those whose contracts are lightly made and lightly broken are trivial
+people. That useful Oneida Creek experiment proved that the instinct,
+if not the ideal, of modern humanity is monogamous."
+
+"What was that?" he asked.
+
+"A number of people formed a community at Oneida Creek to live
+together in a kind of ordered promiscuity, but the experiment failed
+because it was found eventually that the members were living together
+secretly in pairs. No. The more I know of life the less I like the
+idea of allowing any laxity in the marriage relation. In certain cases
+of course there is good and sufficient reason for two people to
+separate. But I believe that right-minded people can generally, and
+almost always do, make their marriages answer. Marriage is compact of
+every little incident in life, it is not merely made up of one strong
+feeling, otherwise men and women would be as the animals who pair and
+part casually; therefore, if two people are disappointed in each other
+in some things, they must have other things in common to fall back
+upon. My ideal of life is love in marriage and loyal friends."
+
+"It is interesting to hear you express these views," he said bitterly,
+"considering what your experience has been."
+
+"I don't see that my petty personal experience has anything to do with
+the truth of the matter," said Beth, bridling somewhat. "You really
+have a poor opinion of me if you think I shall allow my judgment to be
+warped by anything that may happen to myself. Because my own
+experience is not a happy one, you would have me declare that family
+life is a mistake! Doubtless many an outcry is raised for no better
+reason. But do you not see yourself that the tranquil home-life is the
+most beautiful, the most conducive to the development of all that is
+best in us--that there is nothing like the delight of being a member
+of a large and united family. Can you come into a house like this and
+not see it?"
+
+"This house was not always a model of domestic felicity," he sneered.
+
+"That proves my point," she rejoined. "The difficulties can be lived
+down if people are right-minded."
+
+"Your argument does not alter the fact that I am a miserable man," he
+said dejectedly.
+
+"You were not born to be a miserable man," she answered gently, "and
+'we always may be what we might have been.' But you have lost much
+ground, Alfred Cayley Pounce, since the days when you roamed about the
+cliffs and sandy reaches of Rainharbour with Beth Caldwell, making
+plans. You had your ideals then, and lived up to them. You cultivated
+your flowers for delight in their beauty, and went to your modelling
+for love of the work. You gave your flowers to your friends with an
+honest intention to please; you modelled with honest ambition to do
+good work. In those days you were above caring to cultivate the
+acquaintance of the best people. You had touched the higher life at
+that time; you had felt such rapture in it as has never come to you
+since--even among the best people--I am sure; yet you fell away; you
+deserted Beth--not basely, perhaps, but weakly; and you have been
+deteriorating ever since."
+
+He had started straight in his chair when she mentioned Beth Caldwell,
+and was staring at her now with puzzled intentness.
+
+"What do you know about Beth?" he said quickly. "Have you ever met
+her?"
+
+She smiled. "I can honestly say I never have," she answered. But she
+looked away from him into the fire as she spoke, and he recognised the
+set of her head on her shoulders as she turned it; he had noted it
+often.
+
+"God!" he exclaimed, "what a blind idiot I have been--Beth! Beth!" He
+threw himself down on his knees beside her chair, caught her hand, and
+covered it with kisses.
+
+Beth snatched her hand away, and he returned embarrassed to his seat
+and sat gazing at her for a little, then took out his handkerchief and
+suddenly burst into tears.
+
+"What a mess I have made of my life!" he exclaimed. "Everything that
+would have been best for me has been within reach at some time or
+other, but I invariably took the wrong thing and let the right one go.
+But, Beth, I was only a boy then, and I suffered when they separated
+us."
+
+This reflection seemed to ease his mind on the subject. That she might
+also have suffered did not occur to him; as usual his whole concern
+was for himself.
+
+"Yes, you are right, Beth," he proceeded. "I _have_ deteriorated; but
+'we always may be what we might have been'--and you have been sent to
+me again as a sign that it is not too late for me. You were my first
+love, my earliest ideal, and I have not changed, you see, I have been
+true to you; for, although I never suspected you were Beth, I
+recognised my rightful mate in you the moment we met. Yes, I was on
+the right road when we were boy and girl together, but the promise of
+that time has not been fulfilled. All the poetry in me has lain
+dormant since the days when you drew it forth. I gave up modelling
+when I went to the 'Varsity because they didn't care for that kind of
+thing in my set, you know. They were all men of position, who wouldn't
+associate with artists unless they were at the top of the tree; clever
+fellows, and good themselves at squibs and epigrams. If you'd ever
+been to the 'Varsity you'd know that a man must adapt himself to his
+environment if he means to get on. My dream had been to make my
+visions of beauty visible, as you used to suggest; but I had to give
+that up, there was nothing else for it. Still, I was not content to do
+nothing, to be nobody; therefore, when I abandoned the clay, I took to
+the pen; I gave up the marble for the manuscript. Many men of position
+have written, you know, and so long as you didn't mug, fellows didn't
+mind. In fact, they thought you smart if they fancied you could dash
+things off without an effort. You understand now why I am a literary
+man instead of a sculptor."
+
+"Perfectly," Beth said drily. "It was in those days, I suppose, that
+you were bitten by French literature, and began to idealise mean
+intrigues, and to delight in foul matter if the manner of its
+presentation were an admirable specimen of style."
+
+"Ah," he said solemnly, "style is everything."
+
+"It is all work of word-turning and little play of fancy with those
+who make style everything," said Beth, glad to get away from love,
+"and that makes your Jack-of-style a dull boy and morbid in spite of
+his polish. Less style and more humour would be the saving of some of
+you, the making of others."
+
+"Flaubert wrote 'Madame Bovary' six times," he assured her
+impressively.
+
+"I wonder how much it lost each time," said Beth. "But you know what
+Flaubert himself said about style before he had done--just what I am
+saying!"
+
+"I cannot understand your being insensible to the charms of style," he
+said, evading the thrust.
+
+"I am not. I only say it is not of the most vital importance.
+Thackeray was a Titan--well, look at his slipshod style in places, his
+careless grammar, his constant tautology. He knew better, and he could
+have done better, and it would have been well if he had, I don't deny
+it; but his work would not have been a scrap more vital, nor he
+himself the greater. I have seen numbers of people here in town
+studying art. They go to the schools to learn to draw, not because
+they have ideas to express, apparently, but in the hope that ideas
+will come when they know how to express them. And I think it is the
+same in literature. One school talks of style as if it were the end
+and not the means. They form a style, but have nothing to express that
+is worth expressing. It would be better to pray the gods to send them
+the matter; if the matter is there in the mind it will out, and the
+manner will form itself in the effort to produce it--so said the
+great."
+
+There was a pause, during which Alfred Cayley Pounce sighed heavily
+and Beth looked at the clock.
+
+"You were stimulating as a child, Beth," he said at last, "and you are
+stimulating still. Think what it would be to me to have you always by
+my side! I cannot--I cannot let you go again now that I have found
+you! We were boy and girl together."
+
+"That does not alter anything in our present position," Beth answered;
+"nor does it affect my principles in any way. But even if I had been
+inclined--if I had had no principles, I should have been just clever
+enough to know better than to run any risk of the kind you suggest.
+You do not know perhaps that you have injured your own standing
+already--that there are houses in which you are not welcome because
+you are suspected of intrigue."
+
+"_Me_--suspected of intrigue!" he exclaimed. "It isn't possible!"
+
+Beth laughed. "If it is so disagreeable to be suspected," she said,
+"what would it be to be found out! And what have you gained by it?
+What says the Dhammapada? '_There is bad reputation, and the evil way
+(to hell); there is the short pleasure of the frightened in the arms
+of the frightened, and the king imposes heavy punishment; therefore
+let no man think of his neighbour's wife._'"
+
+"It is evident that you don't trust me," he said in an injured tone.
+"Ah, Beth! does the fact that we were boy and girl together not weigh
+with you?"
+
+"Well, it would," Beth said soberly, "even if worldly wisdom were my
+only guide in life. I should think of the time that we got into that
+scrape, and you wriggled out of it, leaving me to shift for myself as
+best I could; and I should remember the boy is father to the man. But
+I have been trying to show you that worldly wisdom is not my only
+guide in life. I have professed the most positive puritan principles
+of conduct, and given you the reasons upon which they are based, yet
+you persist; you ignore what I say as if you had not heard me or did
+not believe me, and pursue the subject as if you were trying to weary
+me into agreement. And you have wearied me, but not into agreement;
+so, if you please, we will not discuss it any longer."
+
+"You will be sorry, I think, some day for the way you have treated
+me," he exclaimed, showing temper; "and what you expect to gain by it
+I cannot imagine."
+
+"Oh, please," Beth protested, "I am not imbued with the commercial
+spirit of the churches. I do not expect a percentage in the way of
+reward on every simple duty I do."
+
+"Virtue is its own reward," he sneered.
+
+"It has been said that 'the pleasure of virtue is one which can only
+be obtained on the express condition of its not being the object
+sought,'" she rejoined good-naturedly. "Try it, Alfred, and see if you
+do not become a happier man insensibly. Order your thoughts to other
+and nobler ends, for thoughts are things, and we are branded or
+beautified by them. An American scientist has been making experiments
+to test the effect of thought on the body, and has found that a
+continuous train of evil thought injures the health and spoils the
+personal appearance, but high and holy thoughts have a beautifying
+effect. Be a man and embrace a manly creed. _Live for others, live
+openly._ Deceit is treachery, and treachery is cowardice of the most
+despicable kind. Life has to be lived. It might as well be lived
+earnestly. Life is better lived when it is held earnestly. Personally
+I detest all flippancy and cynicism, all cheapening of serious
+subjects by lack of reverence. Irreverence portends defects of
+character and poverty of intellect. All serious subjects are sacred
+subjects, and to treat them with levity or insincerity is to prove
+yourself a person to be avoided."
+
+Alfred Cayley Pounce was stooping forward with his elbows on his knees
+and his face between his hands, gazing blankly into the fire. The
+light shone on his bald forehead and accentuated the lines which
+wounded vanity, petty purposes thwarted, and an ignoble life had
+written prematurely on his face, and his attitude emphasised the
+attenuation of his body. He looked a poor, peevish, neurotic specimen;
+and although he had only himself to thank for it, Beth, remembering
+the promise of his youth, felt a qualm of pity.
+
+"What a mistake my marriage has been!" he ejaculated at last. "But I
+doubt if I should ever have found a woman who would have understood me
+enough to be all in all to me. For a man of my temperament there is
+nothing but celibacy."
+
+"I don't believe in celibacy at all," Beth said cheerfully. "Celibacy
+is an attempt to curb a healthy instinct with a morbid idea. He is the
+best man and the truest gentleman who honourably fulfils every
+function of life. And I don't believe your marriage was of necessity a
+mistake either. But if you must be miserable, be loyal as well. You
+will find that the best in the end. If, being miserable, we are also
+disloyal, then we are insensibly degraded--so insensibly, perhaps,
+that we are not conscious of any part of the process, and only become
+aware of what has been going on when we have to face a crisis, and
+find ourselves prepared to act ignobly, and to justify the act with
+specious excuses." She glanced up at the mantelpiece. "Come," she
+said, "it is four o'clock, and I am sleepy. I must go to bed."
+
+He started to his feet. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed, "you can talk of
+being sleepy when I----"
+
+"Never mind about that now," said Beth, yawning frankly. "Everybody
+has gone to bed and forgotten us, I suppose. I shall have to let you
+out."
+
+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
+refreshing 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 assurance 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 passed 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 succumb 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 appetites 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."
+
+"Speak for yourself," said Dan complacently. "Personally, I feel good
+enough and happy enough. We have our differences, like other people, I
+suppose; but whose fault is that, I should like to know?"
+
+"Partly mine," Beth acknowledged. "I don't think I should have been so
+defiant. But if you had been different, I should have been different."
+
+"If _I_ had been different!" he ejaculated, knocking the ash from the
+end of his cigar. "Well, I'd like to know what fault you have to find
+with me? Different indeed!"
+
+"That is the principal one," Beth answered, smiling. "Your great fault
+is that you don't believe you have any faults."
+
+"Oh, well," he conceded, "of course I know I've my faults. Who hasn't?
+But I'll undertake to say that they're a _man's_ faults. Now, come!"
+
+This reflection seemed to deepen his self-satisfaction, as if it must
+be allowed that he was all the better for the faults to which he
+alluded. As he spoke, Beth seemed to see him at her wardrobe with his
+hand in the pocket of one of her dresses, hunting for treasonable
+matter to satisfy his evil suspicions, and she sighed. She would not
+acknowledge to herself that she was fighting for the impossible, yet
+even at the outset she half despaired of ever making him understand.
+It is pitiful to think of her, with her tender human nature, seeking a
+true mate where human law required that she should find one, only to
+be repulsed and baffled and bedraggled herself in the end if she
+persevered. A good man might have failed to comprehend Beth, but a
+good man would have felt the force of goodness in her, and would have
+reverenced her. Maclure recognised no force in her and felt no
+reverence; all that was not animal in her was as obscure to him as to
+the horse in his stable that whinnied a welcome to her when she came
+because he expected sugar. It is pleasant to give pleasure; but there
+must be more in marriage for it to be satisfactory than free scope to
+exercise the power to please.
+
+"Well, look here, Dan," Beth pursued. "I'll make a bargain with you.
+If you will do your best to correct your faults--what _I_ think your
+faults--I'll do my best to correct all you find in me. Only let us
+discuss them temperately, and try conscientiously to live up to some
+ideals of thought and conduct."
+
+Dan smoked on silently for a little, then he said, with some show of
+irritation tempering his self-satisfaction, "Well, all I can say is, I
+cannot for the life of me see what you have to complain of."
+
+"I have to complain of your conduct with Bertha Petterick, for one
+thing," Beth answered desperately. "Let us be frank with each other. I
+know that you have not been loyal to me. I saw you together here on
+this seat the day you gave her the bracelet. I saw you put it on her
+arm and kiss her; and that decided me to go to Ilverthorpe."
+
+Dan looked round about him with an altered countenance, but nothing
+that he knew to be a window overlooked the spot, neither was it
+possible to see through the thickness of the privet hedge, nor from
+any other point, without being seen.
+
+"You must have imagined it!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I did not imagine that bracelet," Beth replied.
+
+"Well, even if I did give her the bracelet," he said, "you're not
+going to be nasty-minded enough to insinuate that there was anything
+in that!"
+
+"There was deceit in it," Beth answered, "and in your whole attitude
+towards that girl while she was under this roof. If we act so that we
+cannot be open and honest about our dealings with people, then there
+must be something wrong. Life would be intolerable if it had to be
+lived among people any one of whom, while professing friendship for
+us, was deceiving us in some vital particular. From the moment that we
+act on our own inclinations rather than up to what the noblest of our
+friends expect of us, we have gone wrong. But you and I are both young
+enough, Dan, to put the past behind us, and forget it. Let us start
+together afresh in another place, where there will be no evil
+associations, nothing to vex us by reminding us of unhappy days; and
+let us be loyal to each other, and honest and open in every act,
+making due allowance for each other, and doing our best to help and
+please each other. We shall be happy, I am sure. You will see we shall
+be very happy."
+
+Dan took his cigar out of his mouth, and flicked the ash from the end
+of it with his little finger: "You'd have me give up my appointment
+here, I suppose, and the half of my income with it?"
+
+"Most of all I would have you give up your appointment here," she
+answered earnestly. "No honest woman can endure to have her husband
+pandering to vice. It would not be so much of a sacrifice either," she
+added, "for the next session will end this iniquity."
+
+"Thanks to the influence of you cursed women," he exclaimed.
+
+"Thanks to our influence, yes," she answered dispassionately, "and to
+some sense of justice in men."
+
+"If you knew how men talk about women who meddle in these matters," he
+said, "you would keep out of them, I think."
+
+"Oh, I know the kind of thing they say," she answered, smiling; "but
+the people you mean have no influence nowadays. The blatant protest of
+the debauched against our demand for a higher standard of life is not
+the voice of the community. It is the cry of those who feel their
+existence threatened, who only live upon lies, and must be
+extinguished when the inevitable day of reckoning comes which shall
+expose them. Even now the kind of man who catches at every straw of
+opinion which shall secure to him his sacred carnal rights, at no
+matter what cost of degradation and disease to women, is out of date,
+and we pay no attention to him."
+
+"Oh, women!" Dan jeered. "That is all very fine! But who the devil
+cares what women think?"
+
+"Now don't be old-fashioned, Dan," Beth answered, laughing. "When
+women only did what they were told, men used to vow at their feet that
+there was nothing they couldn't accomplish, their influence was so
+great. But now that women have proved that what they choose to do they
+can do, men sneer at their pretensions to power, and try to depreciate
+them by comparing the average woman with men in the front rank of
+their professions. Really, men are disheartening."
+
+The evening calm had deepened about them, a big bright star was
+shining above the belt of trees, and waves of perfume from the flowers
+made the air a delight to inhale.
+
+"What a heavenly night!" Beth pursued. "Who would live in London when
+they might be here?"
+
+"Well, that's consistent!" he exclaimed, "after entreating me to leave
+the place!"
+
+"This is not the only peaceful spot in the world," she said with a
+little sigh; "and I would rather live in London even than have you
+here in an invidious position. Dan, give it up, there's a good fellow!
+and learn to look on life from this newer, wider point of view. You
+will find interests and pleasures in it you have never even suspected,
+I assure you, and you will never regret it."
+
+"For the life of me," he said again, throwing the end of his cigar
+into the bushes with an irritated jerk of his arm,--"for the life of
+me, I cannot see what you have to complain of; and I shall certainly
+not give up any bird in the hand for two such birds in the bush as you
+promise me." He rose as he spoke, and shook out first one leg and
+then the other to straighten his trousers. "I'm going out," he added.
+"I've a patient to see. Ta! ta! Take care of yourself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some little time after Beth's return, they were sitting at lunch
+together, and Maclure was reading a daily paper.
+
+"Matters look bad for that fellow, Cayley Pounce," he observed.
+
+"Why, what has he been doing?" Beth asked.
+
+"Poking a fellow's eye out with his umbrella," Dan answered. "He was
+talking to a girl in the street one night, and got into a row with
+some roughs, and jabbed one in the eye with his umbrella, and the
+fellow died. The inquiry is now going on, and it's likely the
+coroner's jury will bring in a verdict of manslaughter against Mr.
+Cayley Pounce. His defence is that he wasn't anywhere near that part
+of London on that particular night, and it's a case of mistaken
+identity; but as he refuses to say where he was, and produces no
+evidence by way of an alibi, that story won't avail him much."
+
+"What night was it?" said Beth.
+
+"On the 30th, just after midnight," Dan read out of the paper.
+
+"Why, that was the night he insisted on escorting me home from the
+theatre," Beth exclaimed. "He did not leave the Kilroys' until four
+o'clock in the morning."
+
+"Then why on earth doesn't he say so?" Dan asked.
+
+"I can't imagine," Beth said. "I let him out myself; everybody else
+had gone to bed. And I'm sure of the time, because I thought he was
+never going away, and I was tired; and I looked at the clock and said,
+'It's four o'clock, and I must go to bed.'"
+
+Dan's face had darkened. "Do you mean to say you were sitting up with
+him alone?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes, for my sins!" Beth answered in a tone of disgust. "The Kilroys
+were out when I returned from the theatre, and did not come in till
+very late; and they went straight upstairs, supposing I had gone to
+bed. As a rule they come into the library first. So Mr. Cayley Pounce
+was left on my hands."
+
+"Then," said Dan, pushing his plate away from him with a clatter, "it
+is obvious why he is holding his tongue. He is determined not to
+compromise you."
+
+"Thank you!" said Beth, bridling. "I should think I am not so easily
+compromised."
+
+"Gad!" Dan ejaculated, "I don't know what you call easily compromised!
+A man takes you home from a theatre, and stays with you alone till
+four o'clock in the morning; if that isn't compromising I don't know
+what is. No jury in the world would acquit you, and the fellow knows
+that perfectly well, and is holding his tongue to screen you."
+
+"I should think it's a great deal more likely he's holding his tongue
+in order to get the credit of it," Beth observed drily. "It is a mere
+pose. He knows I shall have to come forward to clear him if he doesn't
+explain himself. I suppose I must go at once and stop the case; but if
+it were not for his wife I declare I should hesitate. What is the form
+of procedure? You will come with me, of course?"
+
+"_I_ go with you!" Dan exclaimed brutally, "and see you make a public
+exhibition of yourself, and bring disgrace on my name in a court of
+justice! I'm damned if I do! And what's more, if you go, you don't
+return to this house. I've too much self-respect for that. You hadn't
+much of a reputation when I married you, and if you lose the little
+you've got, you can go and I shall divorce you. My wife must be above
+suspicion."
+
+Beth folded her serviette slowly while he was speaking, and, when he
+stopped, she rose from the table.
+
+"It is unfortunate for me," she said, "that the Kilroys have gone
+abroad. They know the man and the facts of the case, and would have
+advised me. In their absence I must do what seems right without
+advice. I cannot see that I have any choice in the matter. You could
+make it perfectly easy for me by supporting me; if you do not support
+me I must go alone. I shall pack up and go to town at once in order to
+appear in court to-morrow morning, and I shall telegraph to Roberts,
+the Kilroys' butler, to meet me there, and confirm my story. There are
+the coachman and footman too, and the police constable--witnesses
+enough, in all conscience."
+
+"You are determined to go?" Dan demanded angrily.
+
+"I must go," she rejoined.
+
+"It is going to the devil, then," said Dan deliberately; "and I always
+said you would. Remember, you don't return to this house!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Beth arrived in town, she found that there would be no need to
+appear in the case at all, for the Kilroys' old butler Roberts had
+seen the name of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce in the papers, and had
+unwittingly frustrated his manoeuvre by going to the coroner's court
+himself and volunteering to give evidence. He was accompanied by the
+footman who had been out with the carriage on the night in question,
+and the two together had no difficulty in proving an alibi. Thus, in
+an ordinary commonplace manner, what had promised to be the triumph of
+his life, the moment when he should stand confessed to the world a
+chivalrous gentleman, sacrificing himself to save a lady of
+prepossessing appearance, was converted into another of the many
+failures of Mr. Alfred Cayley Pounce. This ended the case so far as he
+and Beth were concerned; but with regard to Dan, Beth recognised that
+her position remained the same. There was no return for her from the
+step she had taken, and she would have to begin her life anew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+Beth went out into the world alone, knowingly and willingly. The
+prospect had no terrors for her, neither did she feel any regret for
+the past. She took it all as a matter of course. The days with Dan at
+Slane were over, but life had still to be lived, and she set to work
+to arrange it and live it to the best of her ability; what she most
+urgently felt being merely that there were things she must see to at
+once and settle about, and that she was rather pushed for time. The
+first thing she did in London was to buy a map so that she might find
+her way about economically, and some newspapers recommended to her by
+the stationers as likely to have advertisements of respectable
+lodgings in them. She studied these over a cup of coffee and a roll,
+cut all the promising addresses out of the papers, found on the map
+the best way to go by omnibus or railway, and then set off on her
+quest, taking the red Hammersmith 'bus first of all, and explored West
+Kensington. Her efforts in that direction were not successful.
+Everything she saw at first was dear, dingy, and disheartening.
+Landladies, judging her by her appearance, would only show her their
+best rooms. When she explained that all she wanted was a nice, clean,
+roomy attic because she was poor, they became suspicious, and declared
+that she wasn't likely to get anything of that sort in a good
+neighbourhood. Beth wondered what the bad neighbourhoods were like if
+the one she was in were a good one. Later in the afternoon she found
+herself on the Bayswater side in a street of tall houses off the main
+thoroughfare. They were good houses, that must have been built for the
+families of affluent people, and Beth was afraid it would be useless
+to ask at any of them for the modest kind of accommodation which was
+all she could afford. While she hesitated, however, standing in the
+street before the one she had come to find, the hall-door opened, and
+a young man came out. He and Beth looked at each other as he ran down
+the steps, and Beth saw something so attractive in his face that she
+spoke to him without hesitation.
+
+"Can you tell me," she said, "if they have any attics to let at a
+moderate price in this house?"
+
+"Well, _I_ got one out of them," he said, smiling, "and I guess
+there's another empty that would just about hold you, dress boxes and
+all. I'll ring the bell, if you'll allow me, and get Ethel Maud Mary
+to show you up. You'll make a better bargain with her than with her
+ma."
+
+The door was opened at this moment by a grimy servant.
+
+"Gwendolen, will you give my compliments to Miss Ethel, if you
+please," the young man said with grave formality, "and ask her if she
+will be so good as to speak to me here for a moment."
+
+Gwendolen nodded and retired to the back regions, whence presently a
+plump, fair-complexioned, yellow-haired young person came hurrying
+with a look of inquiry on her face.
+
+"Oh, Miss Ethel," the young man began, taking off his hat, "I'm real
+sorry to trouble you, but I want to introduce this young lady. I've
+been recommending her to get a room here. I know she'll find you
+moderate and comfortable, and the situation is one of the best for
+getting into town."
+
+Beth recognised the wording of the advertisement that had brought her
+to the house.
+
+"It _is_ handy," Miss Ethel agreed. "But we've nothing but an attic
+unlet. Are you in Art, miss?"
+
+"No, Literature," Beth answered, with presence of mind.
+
+"_Lady's_, I suppose?" Ethel Maud Mary observed, meaning lady's
+papers, and glancing at Beth's dress. "You've got to be smart for
+that, and it doesn't leave much for living. Come this way, miss,
+please. And thank you, Mr. Brock, for mentioning us."
+
+She led the way upstairs, talking all the time with cheerful
+inconsequence. "He's a real gentleman is Mr. Brock, as doubtless you
+know, though an American, and dry, and you never know which is his
+fun; and in Art, which is not much to reckon on, and that's why I
+thought that you might be, though you do look more like Fashion. Art
+is apt to be towzled, but why, goodness knows. You're not used to the
+stairs, I see. I wish it wasn't such a height up."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind the height, if the price is proportionately low,"
+Beth said. "I must live within my means, and keep out of debt, you
+know."
+
+"That's a rhyme--low and you know. Did you do it on purpose?" Ethel
+Maud Mary asked with interest.
+
+"No," said Beth.
+
+"Then that's for luck," said Ethel. "You'll keep out of debt all
+right. I see it in your face. And I know a face when I see it. They'll
+keep you on the _Lady's_ for the sake of your appearance, even if
+you're not much use. You're elegant and speak nice, and that's what
+they want to go about for them, particularly if it's a man."
+
+"If what is a man?" Beth asked.
+
+"The editor, you know. We 'ad a young lady here who used to say she'd
+undertake to get an extra half-sovereign out of any editor in town;
+but editresses there was no managing. Which is yours?"
+
+"I don't know yet," said Beth. "I've only just arrived."
+
+"What are you getting?"
+
+"A pound a week," Beth answered, that being her exact income; "but I
+have a little by me besides, to keep me going till I get started, you
+know."
+
+Ethel Maud Mary nodded her yellow head intelligently, and began to
+climb the narrow flight of stairs which led to the attics, moving her
+lips the while, as if she were making calculations. There was no
+carpet on this last flight of stairs, but the boards were well washed,
+and the attic itself smelt sweet and clean.
+
+"This is it," Ethel explained. "Mr. Brock is in the other, next door.
+There's only two of them. This is the biggest room, but the other is
+north, and has the biggest window, and being in Art, he's got to think
+of the light. If you look out there to the right, you'll see some
+green in the Park. You'll like the Park. It's no distance if you're a
+walker. Now, just let's see. I've been calculating about the money.
+Mr. Brock pays fourteen shillings, but you'll not be able to afford
+more than seven out of a pound. You shall have it for seven."
+
+"But surely that will be a loss to you!" Beth exclaimed.
+
+Ethel sat herself down on the side of the bed and smiled up at her.
+"I'll not pretend we couldn't get more if we waited," she said; "but
+waiting's a loss, and we're doing very well downstairs, and can afford
+to pick and choose. You'll find in business that it pays better in the
+end to get a good tenant you can trust, who'll stay, than one who
+gives you double the amount for a month, and then goes off with the
+blankets."
+
+"You don't deceive me a bit," said Beth, sitting down opposite to her
+on a cane-bottomed chair. "Your good-heartedness shines out of your
+face. But I'm not going to take a mean advantage of it. There's an
+honest atmosphere in this house that would suit me, I feel, and I am
+sure I shall do well here; but all the same I won't come unless you
+make a bargain with me. If I take the rooms for such a small sum now,
+while I am poor, will you let me make it up to you when I succeed? I
+shall succeed!" The last words burst from her involuntarily, forced
+from her with emphasis in spite of herself.
+
+"That's what _I_ like to hear; that's spirit, that is!" Ethel Maud
+Mary exclaimed, nodding approvingly. "You'll do all right. So it's a
+bargain. Washing's included, you know. You didn't bring your box, did
+you?"
+
+"No, I left my luggage at Charing Cross when I arrived last night. I
+slept at the hotel," Beth answered.
+
+"At the Charing Cross Hotel? Gracious! that must have cost you a small
+fortune."
+
+"I didn't know what to do," Beth explained apologetically.
+
+"You should have tried the Strand, Surrey Street, and there. You'd
+have got bed and breakfast for five shillings, and that's more than
+enough. However, it's no use crying over spilt milk. You'll have to
+fetch your luggage, I suppose. You can go by train from Nottinghill
+Gate to Charing Cross. It's about as cheap as the 'bus, and much
+quicker. I'll come with you, and show you the way, if you like. A
+breath of fresh air will do me good."
+
+"Yes, do come," Beth answered gratefully, glad of the kindly human
+fellowship. "What is your name, may I ask?"
+
+"Ethel Maud Mary Gill; and what is yours, if you please?"
+
+"Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure."
+
+Beth had emptied her secret chamber and packed all her little
+possessions before she left Slane. She had sometimes suspected that
+Dan would be glad of an excuse to get rid of her, to relieve himself
+of the cost of her keep; and that he would do it in some gross way,
+and so as to put all the blame of it upon her, if possible, she also
+expected. She was therefore prepared to consider the matter settled
+the moment he threatened her, and would have felt it useless to
+remonstrate even had she been inclined. But she was not inclined. She
+had for years done everything patiently that any one in any code of
+morality could expect of her in such a marriage, and no good had come
+of it. As Daniel Maclure was, so would he remain for ever; and to
+associate with him intimately without being coarsened and corrupted
+was impossible. Beth had fought hard against that, and had suffered in
+the struggle; but she had been lowered in spite of herself, and she
+knew it, and resented it. She was therefore as glad to leave Maclure
+as he was to get rid of her; and already it seemed as if with her
+married life a great hampering weight had fallen from her, and left
+her free to face a promising future with nothing to fear and
+everything to hope. Poverty was pleasant in her big bright attic,
+where all was clean and neat about her. There she could live serenely,
+and purify her mind by degrees of the garbage with which Dan's
+habitual conversation had polluted it.
+
+The settling-in occupied her for some days, and the housekeeping was a
+puzzle when she first began. She had only been able to bring the most
+precious of her possessions, her books and papers, and clothes enough
+for the moment, away with her from Slane; the rest she had left ready
+packed to be sent to her when she should be settled. When she wrote to
+Maclure for them, she sent him some housekeeping keys she had
+forgotten to leave behind, and an inventory of everything she had had
+charge of, which she had always kept carefully checked. He
+acknowledged the receipt of this letter, and informed her that he had
+gone over the inventory himself, and found some of the linen in a bad
+state and one silver teaspoon missing. Beth replied that the linen had
+been fairly worn out, but she could not account for the missing spoon,
+and offered to pay for it. Dr. Maclure replied by return of post on a
+post-card that the price was seven shillings. Beth sent him a postal
+order for that amount. He then wrote to say that the cost of the
+conveyance of the luggage to the station was half-a-crown. Beth sent
+him half-a-crown, and then the correspondence ended. She received
+letters from some of her relations, however, to whom Maclure had
+hastened to send his version of the story. Poor old Aunt Grace Mary
+was the only one, who did not accept it. "Write and tell me the truth
+of the matter, my dear," she said. The others took it for granted that
+Beth could have nothing to say for herself, and her brother Jim was
+especially indignant and insulting, his opinion of her being couched
+in the most offensive language. Having lived with disreputable women
+all his life, he had the lowest possible opinion of the whole sex, his
+idea being that any woman would misconduct herself if she had the
+chance and was not well watched. He warned Beth not to apply to him if
+she should be starving, or to claim his acquaintance should she meet
+him in the street. Beth's cheeks burned with shame when she read this
+letter and some of the others she received, and she hastened to
+destroy them; but the horror they set up in her brought on a nervous
+crisis such as she had suffered from in the early days when Dan first
+brought her down to his own low level of vice and suspicion, and
+turned her deadly sick. She answered none of these letters, and, by
+dint of resolutely banishing all thought of them and of the writers,
+she managed in time to obliterate the impression; but she had to live
+through some terrible hours before she succeeded.
+
+Once settled in her attic home, she returned to the healthy, regular,
+industrious habits which had helped her so much in the days when she
+had been at her best. Her life was of the simplest, but she had to do
+almost everything for herself, such time as Gwendolen could command
+for attendance being wholly insufficient to keep the attic in order.
+Her daily duties kept her in health, however, by preventing indolence
+either of mind or body, and so were of infinite use. She had added a
+few things to the scanty furniture of her attic--a new bath, a
+second-hand writing-table, book-shelves with a cupboard beneath for
+cups, saucers, and glasses, and a grandfather chair--all great
+bargains, as Ethel Maud Mary assured her. Ethel Maud Mary's kindness
+was inexhaustible. She took Beth to the second-hand shop herself, and
+showed her that the writing-table and book-shelves would be as good as
+new when they were washed and rubbed up a bit; and all the grandfather
+chair wanted was a new cretonne cover at sixpence a yard--four yards,
+two shillings, and she could make it herself. She also advised Beth to
+buy a little oil-stove, the only one she knew of that really didn't
+smell if you attended to it yourself; and a tin to hold oil for
+it--crystal oil at sevenpence a gallon, the best.
+
+"You can do all you want with that, and keep yourself warm enough too
+when the weather's bad," she said; "and there's no waste, for you can
+turn it out when you've done with it. Fires are too dear for you at
+sixpence a scuttle for coals, and they're dirtier besides, and a
+trouble to light and look after. You'll find it as good as a lamp,
+too, if you're doing nothing particular at night."
+
+When Beth had made a cosy corner of the window for work, arranged her
+books, put her ornaments about on mantelpiece and brackets, hung her
+pictures and the draperies she had used in her secret chamber, spread
+the rugs and covered the grandfather chair, her attic looked inviting.
+The character of her little possessions gave the poor place a
+distinction which enchanted Ethel Maud Mary.
+
+Beth fetched up the water overnight for her bath in the morning, and
+made coffee for her breakfast on the little oil-stove. She lived
+principally on bread and butter, eggs, sardines, salad, and slices of
+various meats bought at a cook-shop and carried home in a paper.
+Sometimes, when she felt she could afford it, she had a hot meal at an
+eating-house for the good of her health; but she scarcely required it,
+for she never felt stronger in her life, and so long as she could get
+good coffee for her breakfast and tea for her evening meal, she missed
+none of the other things to which she had been accustomed. She made
+delicious coffee in a tin coffee-pot, and brewed the best tea she had
+ever drunk in brown earthenware, which Ethel Maud Mary considered the
+best thing going for tea. She used to join Beth in a cup up in the
+attic, but she never came empty-handed. Dull wet days, likely to be
+depressing, were the ones on which her yellow head appeared oftenest
+at the top of the attic stairs.
+
+"Miss Maclure, may I come in?" she would say, after knocking.
+
+And Beth would answer, rising from her work with a smile of welcome,
+"Yes, by all means. I'm delighted to see you. You take the big chair
+and I'll make the tea. I'm dying for a cup."
+
+Then Ethel Maud Mary would uncover something she held in her hand,
+which would prove to be cakes, or hot buttered toast and watercresses,
+or a bag of shrimps and some thin bread and butter; and Beth,
+sparkling at the kindness, would exclaim, "I never was so spoilt in my
+life!" to which Ethel Maud Mary would rejoin, "There'll not be much to
+boast about between two of us."
+
+Beth was busy with another book by this time, but found the work more
+of a task and less of a pleasure than it used to be. Ethel Maud Mary
+still took it for granted that she was a journalist, and showed no
+interest in her work beyond hoping that she got her pay regularly, and
+would soon be making more. Beth wondered sometimes when the little
+book which had been accepted in the summer would appear, and what she
+would get for it, if anything, and she thought of inquiring, but she
+put it off. Her new work took all her time and strength, and wearied
+her, so that nothing else seem to signify.
+
+Besides Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen, the only person she had to talk
+to was Arthur Milbank Brock, the young American, her neighbour in the
+next attic. She met him coming upstairs with his hat in his hand soon
+after her instalment, and was even more attracted by his face than she
+had been when she first saw him in the street.
+
+"You've settled in by this time, I hope," he said.
+
+"Yes, and very comfortably too, thanks to you," Beth answered.
+
+"Ah, Ethel Maud Mary's a good sort," he replied, "golden hair, blue
+eyes, and all. She has the looks of a lady's novel and the heart of a
+holy mother. Her grammar and spelling are defective, but her sense is
+sound. I wouldn't give much for her opinion of a work of art, but I'd
+take her advice in a difficulty if it came anywhere within range of
+her experience. She knows this world well, but picks her steps through
+it in such a way that I guess she'll reach the threshold of the next
+with nice clean shoes."
+
+He stepped aside for Beth to pass when he had spoken, and stood a
+moment watching her thoughtfully as she descended. "And may you too,"
+he said to himself as he turned to go up, then, perceiving that the
+hope implied a doubt, he began to wonder whence it came.
+
+As Beth went out, she reflected on his face, on a certain gravity
+which heightened its refinement. It was a young face, but worn, as by
+some past trial or present care, and with an habitually sober
+expression which contrasted notably with the cheery humour of his
+speech, adding point to it, as is frequently the case with his
+countrymen. He wore his thick brown hair rather longer than is usual,
+but was clean shaven. His features were delicate and regular, his
+eyes deep and dark, his head large and finely formed. In figure he was
+tall and slim, and in his whole appearance there was something almost
+ethereal, as of a young poet or philosopher still moving among his
+fellow-men, yet knowing himself to be prematurely smitten, set apart,
+and consecrated to death, by some insidious slow disease from which
+there is no escape. This was Beth's first notion of him, but she
+always hoped it was fanciful. She thought about him a good deal in the
+solitary walks which were her principal recreation. When she was tired
+of working or wanted to think, she used to go out and wander alone. At
+first she was afraid to venture far, for she had always been assured
+that she had no head for topography, and would never be able to find
+her way; and so long as she went about under escort, with some one to
+save her the necessity of observing, she never knew where she was.
+Now, however, that she had to look after herself, she found no
+difficulty after her first timidity wore off; and this little
+experience taught her why it is that the intelligence of women seems
+childishly defective as regards many of the details of the business of
+life. They have the faculty, but when they are not allowed to act for
+themselves, it remains imperfectly developed or is altogether
+atrophied for want of exercise.
+
+It was in these days of peace that the ugly downward droop of the
+corners of Beth's mouth, which had always spoilt the expression of her
+face, entirely disappeared, and her firm-set lips softened into
+keeping with the kindliness of her beautiful grey eyes; but she still
+wanted much loving to bring out the natural tenderness which had been
+so often and so cruelly nipped back in its growth. Beth had been born
+to be a woman, but circumstances had been forcing her to become a
+career. Strangely enough, some of the scenes she saw during her
+rambles in London helped to soften her. While she was under her
+husband's influence, she saw the evil only, and was filled with
+bitterness. London meant for her in those days the dirt and squalor of
+the poor, the depravity of the rich, the fiendish triumph of the lust
+of man, and the horrible degradation of her own sex; but now that her
+mind was recovering its tone, and she could see with her own eyes, she
+discovered the good at war with the evil, the courage and kindliness
+of the poor, signs of the growth of better feeling in the selfish and
+greedy rich, the mighty power of purity at war with the license of
+man, and the noble attitude of women wherever injustice was rife, the
+weak oppressed, and the wronged remained unrighted; then her heart
+expanded with pity, and instead of the torment of unavailing hate, she
+began to revive in the glow of strengthening gleams of hope. It was in
+those days too that she learnt to appreciate the wonder and beauty of
+the most wonderful and beautiful city ever seen; and her eyes grew
+deep from long looking and earnest meditating upon it. She
+occasionally experienced the sickening sensation of being followed
+about by one of those specimens of mankind so significantly called
+"sly dogs" by their fellow-men. They made themselves particularly
+objectionable in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park; but she found that
+an appeal to a policeman or a Park-keeper, or to any decent workman,
+was enough to stop the nuisance. Genuine respect for women, which is
+an antidote to the moral rottenness that promotes the decay of
+nations, and portends the indefinite prolongation of the life of a
+race, is of slow growth, but it is steadily increasing among the
+English-speaking peoples.
+
+During her rambles, Beth composed long letters to her friends, but
+somehow none of them were ever written. She had managed to send a few
+hurried lines of explanation to Mrs. Kilroy in the midst of her
+packing before she left Slane. As she had not known where she would
+be, she had asked Angelica to address her letters to Slane to be
+forwarded; but no reply had come as yet, and Beth was just a little
+sore and puzzled about it. However, she knew that, what with her
+public and private duties, Angelica was overwhelmed with work, and
+might well have overlooked the fact that she had not answered Beth's
+letter, so Beth determined to write again. Time passed, however, and
+she got into such a groove of daily duties that anything outside the
+regular routine required a special effort which she always postponed,
+and letters were quite outside the regular routine. After the first no
+one wrote to her except the old lawyer who sent her half-yearly
+dividend; and she had written to no one. She had dropped altogether
+out of her own world, yet, because of her work and of her power to
+interest herself in every one about her, and to appreciate the
+goodness of her humblest friends, her life was full, and she had not
+known a moment's discontent. Little things were great pleasures now.
+To be able to get on the top of an omnibus at Piccadilly Circus when
+the sun was setting, and ride to Hammersmith Broadway, engrossed in
+watching the wonderful narrow cloudscape above the streets, changing
+from moment to moment in form and colour; the mystery of the hazy
+distances, the impression of the great buildings and tall irregular
+blocks of houses appearing all massed together among the trees from
+different points of view, and taking on fine architectural effects,
+now transformed into huge grey palaces, large and distinct, now
+looming in the mist, sketchily, with uncertain outlines, and all the
+fascination of the fabrics, innocent of detail, that confront the
+dreamer in enchanted woods, or lure him to the edge of fairy lakes
+with twinkling lights all multiplied by their own reflection in the
+water. Beth had rolled in that direction in luxurious carriages often,
+and never joyed in the scene, her mind being set on other
+things--things prosaic, such as what she should wear, or whether she
+was late, scraps of society gossip, conversations which had satiated
+without satisfying her, and remained in her mind to be items of
+weariness if not of actual irritation. She had noticed in those days
+how very seldom she saw a happy face in a carriage, unless it was a
+very young face, full of expectation. Even the very coachmen and
+footmen in the Park looked enervated, as the long lines of carriages
+passed in wearisome procession. And in everything there had been that
+excess which leaves no room for healthy desire. At first, the shop
+windows, set out with tasteless profusion, no article in the
+heterogeneous masses telling, however beautiful, each being eclipsed
+by the other in the horrible glut, had interested her, and she had
+looked at everything. But she soon sickened at the sight. The vast
+quantities of things, crowded together, robbed her of all pleasure of
+choice, and made her feel as if she had eaten too much. Occasionally
+she would see two or three things of beauty displayed with art in a
+large window; but everywhere else excessive quantity produced
+indifference, disgust, or satiety, according to the mood of the
+moment. And even in the days of her poverty and obscurity, when her
+faculties were sharpened into proper appreciation by privation, those
+congested windows teeming with jewels, with wearing apparel, with all
+things immoderately, set up a sort of mental dyspepsia that was
+distressing, and she was glad to turn away to relieve the consequent
+brain-fag. But by degrees she became accustomed to the tasteless
+profusion. It did not please her any better, but at all events it did
+not afflict her by always obtruding itself upon her attention. She saw
+it, not in detail, but as a part of the picture; and she found in the
+new view of London and of London life from the top of omnibuses more
+of the unexpected, of delight, of beauty for the eyes and of matter
+for the mind, of humour, pathos, poetry, of tragedy and comedy,
+suggestive glimpses caught in passing and vividly recollected, than
+she could have conceived possible when she rolled along with society
+on carriage cushions, soothed by the stultifying ease into temporary
+sensuous apathy.
+
+Winter set in suddenly and with terrible severity that year. London
+became a city of snow, cruelly cold, but beautiful, all its ugliness
+disguised by the white mantle, all its angles softened, all its charms
+enhanced. Commonplace squares, parks, gardens, and dirty streets were
+transformed into fairyland by the delicate disposition of snow in
+festoons on door-post and railing, ledge and lintel, from roof to
+cellar. The trees especially, all frosted with shining filigree, were
+a wonder to look upon; and Beth would wander about the alleys in
+Kensington Gardens, and gaze at the glory of the white world under the
+sombre grey of the murky clouds, piled up in awesome magnificence,
+until she ached with yearning for some word of human speech, some way
+to express it, to make it manifest.
+
+She returned one afternoon somewhat wet and weary from one of her
+rambles. The little window of her attic was half snowed up, and the
+gloom under the sloping roof struck a chill to her heart as she
+entered; but when she had lighted the lamp (a new investment that
+helped up the temperature besides giving light), and set her little
+oil-stove going with the kettle on it, her surroundings took on an air
+of homely comfort that was grateful. As she busied herself preparing
+the tea, she noticed that her neighbour in the next attic was coughing
+a good deal, and then it occurred to her that she had not seen him
+about lately, and she wondered if he could be ill. The thought of a
+young man of small means, ill alone in a London lodging, probably
+without a bell in the room, and certainly with no one anxious to
+answer it if he should ring, though not cheering, is stimulating to
+the energy of the benevolent, and Beth went downstairs to ask as soon
+as the notion occurred to her.
+
+"Mr. Brock? there now!" Gwendolen exclaimed in dismay. "If I didn't
+forget altogether! I've so much to see to, and the missus ill in bed
+with bronchitis, and Miss Ethel run off her feet, and not too fit
+'erself with that cold as 'ud be called influenza if it wasn't for
+frightening the lodgers. Whatever it is, it's going through the 'ouse,
+and Mr. Brock seems to have got it bad. 'E ast me when I went wiv 'is
+shyving-water this morning to tike 'im some coals and mike 'im some
+tea, an' I never thought no more about it--I clean forgot."
+
+"This morning!" Beth cried. "Why that was at eight o'clock, and now it
+is four!"
+
+"I'll get 'em at once," Gwendolen said with contrition. But the girl
+herself looked worn to death. She had been on her feet since early
+morning, and had no prospect of a rest till she dropped on her bed
+late at night, too exhausted to undress.
+
+"Never mind," Beth said. "Give me the coals, and I'll carry them up,
+and see to the rest. I have nothing else to do."
+
+"Bless you," Gwendolen muttered.
+
+Beth found Mr. Brock in bed, with bright eyes, and burning spots of
+colour on each cheek. A lamp was burning beside him. When he saw who
+it was, he raised his eyebrows; but smiled at the same time, as if he
+were both surprised and pleased. The room struck cold to Beth.
+
+"What! no fire?" she exclaimed.
+
+"I tried to light the pesky thing," he said, "but it wouldn't burn."
+
+"Gwendolen forgot you altogether," Beth said. "She has far too much to
+do, poor girl, and I have only just heard that you were ill. Why
+didn't you call me?"
+
+He smiled again.
+
+"We are all of the same family here, you know," Beth said, "the great
+human family. You had only to say 'Sister!' and I should have come."
+
+The smile faded from his lips, but it was replaced by another
+expression, which, when she saw it, caused Beth to ejaculate inwardly,
+"Surely of such are the Kingdom----"
+
+Each had seen in the other's face at the same time something there is
+no human utterance to describe, and, recognising it, had reverently
+held their peace.
+
+Beth fetched her oil-stove first, with the kettle on it, and, while
+the water was boiling, she cut bread and butter and lighted the fire.
+
+"We'll have tea together, if you please," she said cheerfully. "I've a
+horrible suspicion that you've had nothing to eat or drink all day."
+
+Her sympathy recalled his pleasant, patient smile.
+
+"My appetite is not devouring," he said, "but my thirst is. Talk about
+selling one's birthright! I'd sell my brains, I believe, for a cup of
+tea at this moment."
+
+"There's a bowl full for nothing, then," Beth rejoined. "Sip it while
+I boil you an egg."
+
+He took the bowl in both hands and tried the tea.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed with a long-drawn sigh, "it's nectar! it's mead!
+it's nepenthe! it's all the drinks ever brewed for all the gods in
+one! But I'm afraid to touch it lest I should finish it."
+
+"Don't be afraid, then," said Beth, "for you'll find it like liquor
+for the gods in another respect; it will be to be had whenever you
+want it. What's the matter?"
+
+"Did I make lament?" he asked. "I didn't know it. But I'm all one
+ache. I can't lie still for it, and I can't move without adding to it.
+I've been watching the ice-floes on the river from the Embankment and
+bridges by all lights lately; I never saw finer effects--such colour!
+It's wonderful what colour there is under your sombre sky if you know
+how to look for it; and it has the great advantage over the colour
+other countries teem with of being unexpected. It's not obvious; you
+have to look out for it; but when you have found it, you rejoice in it
+as in something rare and precious, and it excites you to enthusiasm
+beyond your wont--which should prevent chills, but it doesn't, as
+witness my aches."
+
+Beth felt his hand and found it dry and burning.
+
+"The doctor is the next and only thing for you, young man, after this
+frugal meal," she said, "and I'll go and fetch him. I hope to goodness
+these are the right things to give you."
+
+He objected to the doctor, but she paid no attention to his
+remonstrance, and when she had done all she could think of for the
+moment, she put on her wet boots and walking things again, got the
+address of a good man from Ethel Maud Mary, and sallied out into the
+snow once more.
+
+Rheumatic fever was the doctor's diagnosis, and his directions to Beth
+concluded with a long list of expensive medical comforts which it
+seemed were absolutely necessary. She went out again when he had gone,
+and brought back everything, toiling up the long flights of stairs
+with both arms full, breathless but cheerful; and having set all in
+order for use--sheets of medicated cotton-wool, medicines, Valentine's
+extract, clinical thermometer and chart--she settled herself to watch
+the patient, the clock, and the temperature of the room, which had to
+be equable, with the exactness and method of a capable nurse. Before
+the household retired, she went downstairs to fetch more coals,
+fearing they might run short in the night.
+
+"He's 'ad one scuttle to-day," Gwendolen reminded her, warningly.
+
+"He must have two more, then, if necessary," said Beth.
+
+"They're sixpence a scuttle, you know," Gwendolen remonstrated.
+
+"Two for a shilling, and no charge for delivery," said Beth as she
+toiled up the long ascent once more with her heavy burden.
+
+"Eh! it would be a gay glad world if they all took it like you,"
+Gwendolen muttered, as she stood, with the pencil in her mouth,
+studying the slate that hung outside the coal-cellar, and let her
+generosity war with her accuracy and honesty for a little before she
+made two more strokes on the line that began with the name of Brock;
+and no sooner done than regretted.
+
+"I wish to goodness I'd put 'em down to old Piggot and Mother
+Hauseman," she thought. "They'd never miss the money, and it 'ud be a
+good deed for the likes of them to help their betters, and might
+likely profit their own souls, though unbeknown."
+
+For many weeks Beth watched beside the sick man's bed, doing all that
+was possible to ease his pain day and night, snatching brief intervals
+of rest when she could, and concealing her weariness at all times. She
+used to wonder at the young man's uncomplaining fortitude, his
+gentleness, gratitude, and unselfish concern about her fatigue. Even
+when he was at his worst, he would struggle back to consciousness in
+order to entreat her to lie down; and when, to please him, she had
+settled herself on a little couch there was in his room, he would make
+a superhuman effort to keep still as long as his flickering
+consciousness lasted. There was only one thing he was ever exacting
+about--to keep her in sight. So long as he could see her he was
+satisfied, and would lie for hours, patiently controlling himself for
+fear of disturbing her by uttering exclamations or making other signs
+of suffering; but when she had to leave him alone, he broke down and
+moaned in his weakness and pain for her to come back and help him.
+
+The doctor having declared that the north-east aspect of his attic was
+all against the patient, Beth insisted on changing with him, and, as
+soon as he could be moved, she, Ethel Maud Mary, and Gwendolen, with
+the doctor's help, carried him into her room in a sheet; an awkward
+manoeuvre because of his length, which made it hard to turn him on
+the narrow landing; his weight was nothing, for he was mere skin and
+bone by that time--all eyes, as Beth used to tell him.
+
+It was Christmas Eve when they moved him, and late that night Beth kept
+her vigil by him, sitting over the fire with her elbows on her knees and
+her face between her hands, listening dreamily to the clang and clamour
+of the church-bells, which floated up to her over the snow, mellowed by
+distance and full-fraught with manifold associations. As she sat there she
+pondered. She thought of the long way she had drifted from the days when
+she knelt in spirit at the call of the bells and lost herself in happy
+prayer. She thought of her husband's hypocrisy, and the way in which, when
+it dawned upon her, her own faith had melted from her; and she pondered on
+the difference it would have made if only she had been married early--just
+to a good man. It would not have been necessary for her to have loved
+him--not with passion--only to have relied upon him. Some one to trust,
+she craved for, more than some one to love; yet she allowed that a
+loveless marriage is a mock marriage. She did not regret the loss of her
+conventional faith, but she wished she could join the congregation just
+for the human fellowship. She felt the need of union, of some central
+station, a centre of peace, unlike the church, the house of disunion.
+Without knowing it, she leant to Quaker-Catholicism, the name assumed
+for her religious principles by Caroline Fox--Quaker-Catholicism having
+direct spiritual teaching for its distinctive dogma.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" Arthur Brock said suddenly from the
+bed.
+
+Beth started. She thought he was asleep.
+
+"God," she said; with a gasp, "and going to church," she added,
+laughing at her own abruptness. "I was wanting a church to go to."
+
+"You don't belong to the Established Church, then," he said. "Well, I
+don't go to church myself; but I make a difference on Sundays. I don't
+work, and I read another kind of book. It is my day for the plains of
+heaven. I should like to be there all the time, if I could manage it;
+but I can't, not being a monk in a cell. When I can, I make the
+ascent, however, with the help of the books that take one there."
+
+"I used to read religious books too," said Beth; "but I found little
+illumination in them, most of them being but the dry husks of the
+subject, uninformed of the spirit, containing no vital spark, and
+stained with blood."
+
+"How?" he exclaimed.
+
+"This God of the Hebrews," Beth began, looking dreamily into the fire,
+"what is his history? He loved cruelty and bloodshed. The innocent
+animals first suffered in his service; but, not content with that, he
+went from bad to worse, as men do, and ended by demanding human
+sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own son. And for that specially we are
+required to adore him, although it must be clear to the commonest
+capacity to-day that the worship of such a deity is devil-worship. I
+do not say there is no God; I only say this is not God--this
+blood-lover, this son-slayer, this blind omniscience, this impotent
+omnipotence, this merciful cruelty, this meek arrogance, this peaceful
+combatant; this is not God, but man. The mind of man wars with the
+works of God to mar them. Man tries to make us believe that he is made
+in the image of God; but what happened was just the reverse. Man was
+of a better nature originally, a more manifold nature. He had
+intellect for a toy to play with on earth, and spirit for a power to
+help him to heaven. But instead of toiling to strengthen his spirit,
+he preferred to play with his intellect; and he played until he became
+so expert in the use of it, and so interested in the game, that he
+forgot his origin. And then it was that he projected an image of
+himself into space, and was so delighted with his own appearance from
+that point of view, that he called it God and fell down and worshipped
+it. If you would understand man, consider God; if you would know his
+God, study man."
+
+Arthur Brock reflected for a little.
+
+"What you say sounds real smart," he said at last, "and there's a kind
+of glamour in your words that dazzles and prevents one seeing just how
+much they mean at first. It is true that religion culminates in human
+sacrifice both here and in Africa, and, for refinement of horror, we
+have here the literal bloody sacrifice of a son by his father. But
+that is not God, as you say; that is the ultimate of the priest. And
+the priest is the same at all times, in all ages, beneath all veneers
+of civilisation. His credit depends upon a pretence to power. He is
+not a humble seeker after truth, but a bigoted upholder of error and
+an impudent time-server. He destroys the scientific discoverer in one
+age; in the next he finds his own existence is threatened because he
+refuses to acknowledge that the discoverer was right; then he
+confesses the truth, and readjusts his hocus-pocus to suit it. He does
+not ask us to pin our faith to fancies which seem real to a child in
+its infancy, yet he would have us credulous about those which were the
+outcome of the intellectual infancy of the race. What he can't get
+over in himself is the absence of any sense of humour. I'm real sorry
+for him at times, and I tell him so."
+
+Beth smiled. "I could not be so kindly courteous," she said. "Some
+things make me fierce. The kingdom of heaven is or is not within us, I
+believe; and half the time I know it is not in me, because there is no
+room for anything in me but the hate and rage that rend me for horror of
+all the falsehood, injustice, and misery I know of and cannot prevent. A
+sense of humour would save the church perhaps; but I'm too sore to see
+it. All I can say is: your religion to me is horrifying--human sacrifice
+and devil-worship, survivals from an earlier day welded on to our own
+time, and assorting ill with it. I would not accept salvation at the
+hands of such futile omnipotence, such cruel mercy, such blood-stained
+justice. The sight of suffering was grateful to man when the world was
+young, as it still is to savages; but we revolt from it now. We should
+not be happy in heaven, as the saved were said to be in the old tales,
+within sight of the sinners suffering in hell."
+
+"Which is to say that there is more of Christ in us now than there was
+in the days of old," he said, speaking dispassionately, and with the
+confident deliberation of one who takes time to think. "I believe
+those old tales were founded on muddle-headed confusion of mind in the
+days when dreams were as real to mankind as the events of life. There
+are obscure tribes still on earth who cannot distinguish between what
+they have done and what they have only dreamt they did, and probably
+every race has gone through that stage of development. I don't know if
+excessive piety be a disease of the nerves, as some say, although what
+is piety in one generation does appear to be perversity in the next,
+as witness the sons of the clergy, and other children of pious people,
+who don't answer to expectation, as a rule. And I don't go much on
+churches or creeds, or faith in this personality or that. The old
+ideas have lost their hold upon me, as they have upon you; but that is
+no reason why we should give up the old truths that have been in the
+world for all time, the positive right and wrong, which are facts, not
+ideas. I believe that there is good and evil, that the one is at war
+with the other always; and that good can do no evil, evil no good.
+I've got beyond all the dogma and fiddle-faddle of the intellect with
+which the church has overlaid the spirit, and all the ceremonial so
+useful and necessary for individual souls in early stages of
+development. I used to think if I could find a religion with no blood
+in it, I would embrace it. Now I feel sure that it does not matter
+what the expression of our religious nature is so that it be
+religious. Religion is an attitude of mind, the attitude of prayer,
+which includes reverence for things holy and deep devotion to them. I
+would not lose that for anything--the right of appeal; but now, when I
+think of our Father in heaven, I do not despise our mother on earth."
+
+Beth sat some time looking thoughtfully into the fire. "Go to sleep,"
+she said at last, abruptly. "You ought not to be talking at this time
+of night."
+
+"I wish you would go to sleep yourself," he said, as he settled
+himself obediently; "for I lose half the comfort of being saved, while
+you sit up there suffering for me."
+
+The expression was not too strong for the strain Beth had to put upon
+herself in those days; for she had no help. Ethel Maud Mary and
+Gwendolen felt for her and her patient, as they said; but there of
+necessity their kindness ended. The other lodgers kept Gwendolen for
+ever running to and fro; each seemed to think she had nobody else to
+look after, and it was seldom indeed that any of them noticed her
+weariness or took pity on her. Beth did everything for herself,
+fetched the coals from the cellar, the water from the bath-room, swept
+and dusted, cleaned the grate, ran out to do the shopping, and
+returned to do the cooking and mending. Ethel Maud Mary stole the time
+to run up occasionally to show sympathy; but her own poor little hands
+were overfull, what with her mother ill in bed, both ends to be made
+to meet, and lodgers uncertain in money matters. She lost all her
+plumpness that winter, her rose-leaf complexion faded to the colour of
+dingy wax, and her yellow hair, so brightly burnished when she had
+time to brush it, became towzled and dull; but her heart beat as
+bravely-kind as ever, and she never gave in.
+
+She climbed up one day in a hurry to Mr. Brock's room, which Beth
+occupied, snatching a moment to make inquiries and receive comfort;
+and as soon as she entered she subsided suddenly on to a chair out of
+breath.
+
+"How you do it a dozen times a day, Miss Maclure, I can't think," she
+gasped.
+
+"Those stairs have taught me what servants suffer," Beth said, as if
+that, at all events, were a thing for which to be thankful.
+
+"You'd not have driven 'em, even if you hadn't known what they
+suffer," said Ethel Maud Mary. "That's the worst of this world. All
+the hard lessons have got to be learnt by the people who never needed
+them to make them good, while the bad folk get off for nothing."
+
+"I don't know about not needing them," said Beth. "But I do know this:
+that every sorrowful experience I have ever had has been an advantage
+to me sooner or later."
+
+"I wish I could believe that Ma's temper would be an advantage to me,"
+Ethel Maud Mary said, sighing; "she's that wearing! But there, poor
+dear! she's sick, and there's no keeping the worries from her. There's
+only you and Mr. Brock in the house just now that pays up to the day,
+so you may guess what it is! He's getting on nicely now, I suppose;
+but you shouldn't be sitting here in the cold. A shawl don't make the
+difference; it's the air you breathe; and you ought to have your
+oil-stove going. Isn't the fire enough for him? I can't think so many
+degrees it need be in his room always, when there's no degree at all
+in yours."
+
+"Oh, I'm hardy," said Beth. "I never was better."
+
+"You look it," Ethel Maud Mary said sarcastically, "like a pauper just
+out of prison. What are you worrying about?"
+
+"Beef-tea," said Beth. And so she was, and bread and butter, fuel,
+light, and lodging--everything, in fact, that meant money; for the
+money was all but done, and she had had a shock on the subject lately
+that had shaken her considerably.
+
+She had spread out a newspaper to save the carpet, and was kneeling on
+the floor, one morning, in front of the window, cleaning and filling
+the little oil-stove, and Arthur was lying contentedly watching
+her--"superintending her domestic duties," he used to call it, that
+being all that he was equal to in his extreme weakness just then.
+
+"You're a notable housekeeper," he said. "I shouldn't have expected
+you from your appearance to be able to cook and clean as you do."
+
+"I used to do this kind of thing as a child to help a lazy servant we
+had, bless her," Beth answered. "The cooking and cleaning she taught
+me have stood me in good stead."
+
+"If you had a daughter, how would you bring her up?" he asked.
+
+Beth opened the piece of paper with which she was cleaning the oil off
+the stove, and regarded it thoughtfully. "I would bring her up in
+happy seclusion, to begin with," she said. "She should have all the
+joys of childhood; and then an education calculated to develop all
+her intellectual powers without forcing them, and at the same time to
+fit her for a thoroughly normal woman's life: childhood, girlhood,
+wifehood, motherhood, each with its separate duties and pleasures all
+complete. I would have her happy in each, steadfast, prudent,
+self-possessed, methodical, economical; and if she had the capacity
+for any special achievement, I think that such an education would have
+developed the strength of purpose and self-respect necessary to carry
+it through. I would also have her to know thoroughly the world that
+she has to live in, so that she might be ready to act with discretion
+in any emergency. I should, in fact, want to fit her for whatever
+might befall her, and then leave her in confidence to shape her own
+career. The life for a woman to long for--and a man too, I think--is a
+life of simple duties and simple pleasures, a normal life; but I only
+call that life normal which is suited to the requirements of the
+woman's individual temperament."
+
+"You don't clamour for more liberty, then?"
+
+"It depends upon what you mean by that. The cry for more liberty is
+sometimes the cry of the cowardly anxious to be excused from their
+share of the duties and labours of life; and it is also apt to be a
+cry not for liberty but for licence. One must discriminate."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"By the character and principles of the people you have to deal
+with--obviously."
+
+She had lighted her little oil-stove by this time, and set a saucepan
+of water on it to boil. Then she fetched a chopping board and a piece
+of raw beef-steak, which she proceeded to cut up into dice and put
+into a stone jar until it was crammed full. Her sensitive mouth showed
+some shrinking from the rawness, and her white fingers were soon dyed
+red; but she prepared the meat none the less carefully for that. When
+the jar was filled and the contents seasoned, she put it in the pot on
+the stove for the heat to extract the juice.
+
+"What is it going to be to-day?" he asked.
+
+"Beef-jelly," she said. "You must be tired of beef-tea."
+
+"I'm tired of nothing you do for me," he rejoined. "This is the
+homiest time I've had in England."
+
+Beth smiled. In spite of poverty, anxiety, and fatigue, it was the
+"homiest time" she had had since Aunt Victoria's death, and she loved
+it. Now that she had some one she could respect and care for dependent
+on her, whose every look and word expressed appreciation of her
+devotion, the time never hung heavily on her hands, as it used to do
+in the married days that had been so long in the living. It was all as
+congenial as it was new to her, this close association with a man of
+the highest character and the most perfect refinement. She had never
+before realised that there could be such men, so heroic in suffering,
+so unselfish, and so good; and this discovery had stimulated her
+strangely--filled her with hope, strengthened her love of life, and
+made everything seem worth while.
+
+She went on with her work in silence after that last remark of his,
+and he continued to watch her with all an invalid's interest in the
+little details of his narrow life.
+
+"It would be a real relief to me to be able to get up and do all that
+for you," he finally observed. "I don't feel much of a man lying here
+and letting you work for me."
+
+"This is woman's work," Beth said.
+
+"Woman's work and man's work are just anything they can do for each
+other," he rejoined. "I wonder if I should get on any quicker with a
+change of treatment. Resignation is generally prescribed for
+rheumatism, and a variety of drugs which distract attention from the
+seat of pain to other parts of the person, and so relieve the mind. My
+head is being racked just now by that last dose I took. I should like
+to try Salisbury."
+
+"What is Salisbury?" Beth asked.
+
+"Principally beef and hot water, to begin with," he replied. "You'll
+find a little work on the subject among my books."
+
+Beth read the volume, and then said, "You shall try Salisbury. It is
+easy enough."
+
+"Yes," he answered. "It is easy enough with a nurse like you."
+
+But in order to carry out the treatment some things had to be bought,
+and this led to the discovery which was a shock to Beth. Arthur's
+income depended principally upon the pictures he sold, and no more
+money came in after he fell ill. He had had some by him, but not
+nearly so much as he supposed, and it was all gone now, in spite of
+the utmost economy on Beth's part. Her own, too, was running short,
+but she had not troubled about that, because she still had some of her
+secret hoard to fall back upon. She had left it in one of the boxes
+which were sent on after her from Slane--a box which she had not
+opened until now, when she wanted the money. The money, however, was
+not there. She searched and searched, but in vain; all she found was
+the little bag that had contained it. She was stunned by the
+discovery, and sat on the floor for a little, with the contents of the
+box all scattered about her, trying to account for her loss. Then all
+at once a vision of Maclure, as she had seen him on one occasion with
+the bunch of duplicate keys, peering into her dress-basket with horrid
+intentness, flashed before her; but she banished it resolutely with
+the inevitable conclusion to which it pointed. She would not allow her
+mind to be sullied by such a suspicion. And as to the money, since it
+was lost, why should she waste her time worrying about it? She had
+better set herself to consider how to procure some more. She had still
+some of Arthur Brock's, but that she kept that she might be able to
+tell him truthfully that it was not all done when he asked about it--a
+pious fraud which relieved his mind and kept him from retarding his
+recovery by attempting to begin work again before he was fit for it.
+What money she had of her own would last but a little longer, and how
+to get more was the puzzle.
+
+Her evening dresses had been in the box which she had just unpacked,
+and while she was still sitting on the floor amongst them cogitating,
+Ethel Maud Mary came into the attic out of breath to ask how she was
+getting on.
+
+"Why," she exclaimed in admiration of Beth's finery, "you've got some
+clothes! They'd fetch something, those frocks, if you sold them."
+
+"Then tell me where to sell them, for money I must have," Beth
+rejoined precipitately.
+
+"And it's no use keeping gowns; they only go out of fashion," Ethel
+Maud Mary suggested, as if she thought Beth should have an excuse.
+"Gwendolen would manage it best. She's great at a bargain; and there's
+a place not far from here. I'd begin with the worst, if I was you."
+
+"Advise me, then, there's a dear," said Beth, and Ethel Maud Mary
+knelt down beside her, and proceeded to advise.
+
+Only a few shillings was the result of the first transaction; but the
+better dresses had good trimmings on them, and real lace, which
+fetched something, as Ethel Maud Mary declared it would, if sold
+separately; so, with the strictest self-denial, Beth was still able to
+pay her way and provide for the sick man's necessities.
+
+From the time she put him on the Salisbury treatment, he suffered less
+and began to gain strength; but the weather continued severe, and Beth
+suffered a great deal herself from exposure and cold and privations of
+all kinds. She used to be so hungry sometimes that she hurried past
+the provision shops when she had to go out, lest she should not be
+able to resist the temptation to go in and buy good food for herself.
+If her sympathy with the poor could have been sharpened, it would have
+been that winter by some of the sights she saw. Sometimes she was
+moved by pity to wrath and rebellion, as on one occasion when she was
+passing a house where there had evidently been a fashionable wedding.
+The road in front of the house, and the red cloth which covered the
+steps and pavement, were thickly strewed with rice, and on this a band
+of starving children had pounced, and were scraping it up with their
+bony claws of hands, clutching it from each other, fighting for it,
+and devouring it raw, while a supercilious servant looked on as though
+he were amused. Beth's heart was wrung by the sight, and she hurried
+by, cursing the greedy rich who wallow in luxury while children starve
+in the streets.
+
+In a squalid road which she had often to cross there was a butcher's
+shop, where great sides of good red beef with yellow fat were hung in
+the doorway. Coming home one evening after dark, she noticed in front
+of her a gaunt little girl who carried a baby on her arm and was
+dragging a small child along by the hand. When they came to the
+butcher's shop, they stopped to look up at the great sides of beef,
+and the younger child stole up to one of them, laid her little hand
+upon it caressingly, then kissed it. The butcher came out and ordered
+them off, and Beth pursued her way through the mire with tears in her
+eyes. She had suffered temptation herself that same evening. She had
+to pass an Italian eating-house where she used to go sometimes, before
+she had any one depending on her, to have a two-shilling dinner--a
+good meal, decently served. Now, when she was always hungry, this was
+one of the places she had to hurry past; but even when she did not
+look at it, she thought about it, and was tormented by the desire to
+go in and eat enough just for once. Visions of thick soup, and fried
+fish with potatoes, and roast beef with salad, whetted an appetite
+that needed no whetting, and made her suffer an ache of craving
+scarcely to be controlled. That day had been a particularly hungry
+one. The coffee was done, every precious tea-leaf she had to husband
+for Arthur, and the butter had also to be carefully economised because
+a good deal was required for his crisp toast, which was unpalatable
+without it. Beth lived principally on the crusts she cut off the
+toast. When they were very stale, she steeped them in hot water, and
+sweetened them with brown sugar. This mess reminded her of Aunt
+Victoria's bread-puddings, and the happy summer when they lived
+together, and she learnt to sit upright on Chippendale chairs. She
+would like to have talked to Arthur of those tender memories, but she
+could not trust herself, being weak; the tears were too near the
+surface.
+
+That day she had turned against her crusts, even with sugar, and had
+felt no hunger until she got out into the air, when an imperious
+craving for food seized upon her suddenly, and she made for the
+Italian restaurant as if she had been driven. The moment she got
+inside the place, however, she recovered her self-possession. She
+would die of hunger rather than spend two precious shillings on
+herself while there was that poor boy at home, suffering in silence,
+gratefully content with the poorest fare she brought him, always
+making much of all she did.
+
+Beth got no farther than the counter.
+
+"I want something savoury for an invalid," she said.
+
+That evening, for the first time, Arthur sat up by the fire in the
+grandfather chair with a blanket round him, and enjoyed a dainty
+little feast which had been especially provided, as he understood, in
+honour of the event.
+
+"But why won't you have some yourself?" he remonstrated.
+
+"Well, you see," Beth answered, "I went to the Italian restaurant when
+I was out."
+
+"Oh, did you?" he said. "That's right. I wish you would go every day,
+and have a good hot meal. Will you promise me?"
+
+"I'll go every day that I possibly can," Beth answered, smiling
+brightly as she saw him fall-to contentedly with the appetite of a
+thriving convalescent. Practising pious frauds upon him had become a
+confirmed habit by this time--of which she should have been ashamed;
+but instead, she felt a satisfying sense of artistic accomplishment
+when they answered, and was only otherwise affected with a certain
+wonderment at the very slight and subtle difference there is between
+truth and falsehood as conveyed by the turn of a phrase.
+
+But now the money ran shorter and shorter; she had nothing much left
+to sell; and it was a question whether she could possibly hold out
+until her half-year's dividend was due. Perhaps the old lawyer would
+let her anticipate it for once. She wrote and asked him, but while she
+was waiting for a reply the pressure became acute.
+
+Out of doors one day, walking along dejectedly, wondering what she
+should do when she came to her last shilling, her eye rested on a
+placard in the window of a fashionable hairdresser's shop, and she
+read mechanically: "A GOOD PRICE GIVEN FOR FINE HAIR." She passed on,
+however, and was half-way down the street before it occurred to her
+that her own hair was of the finest; but the moment she thought of it,
+she turned back, and walked into the hairdresser's shop in a
+business-like way without hesitation. A gentleman was sitting beside
+the counter at one end of the shop, waiting to be attended on; Beth
+took a seat at the other end, and waited too. She sat there, deep in
+thought and motionless, until she was roused by somebody saying, "What
+can I do for you, miss?"
+
+Then she looked up and saw the proprietor, a man with a kindly face.
+
+"Can I speak to you for a moment?" she asked.
+
+"Come this way, if you please," he replied, after a glance at her
+glossy dark-brown hair and shabby gloves.
+
+When she went in that day, Arthur uttered an exclamation.
+
+"Do you mean to say you've had your hair cut short?" he asked,
+speaking to her almost roughly. "Are you going to join the unsexed
+crew that shriek on platforms?"
+
+"I don't know any unsexed crew that shriek on platforms," she
+answered, "and I am surprised to hear you taking the tone of cheap
+journalism. There has been nothing in the woman movement to unsex
+women except the brutalities of the men who oppose them."
+
+He coloured somewhat, but said no more--only sat looking into the fire
+with an expression on his face that cut Beth to the quick. It was the
+first cloud that had come to overshadow the perfect sympathy of their
+intercourse. She was getting his tea at the moment, and, when it was
+ready, she put it beside him and retired to his attic, which she
+occupied, and looked at herself in the glass for the first time since
+she had sacrificed her pretty hair. At the first glance, she laughed;
+then her eyes filled with tears, and she threw herself on the bed and
+sobbed silently--not because she regretted her hair, but because he
+was hurt, and for once she had no comfort to give him.
+
+Just after she left him, an artist friend of his, Gresham Powell, came
+in casually to look him up, and was surprised to find he had been so
+ill.
+
+"I missed you about," he said, "but I thought you had shut yourself up
+to work. Who's been looking after you?"
+
+Brock gave him the history of his illness.
+
+Powell shook his head when he heard of Beth's devotion.
+
+"Take care, my boy," he said. "The girls you find knocking about town
+in these sort of places are not desirable associates for a promising
+young man. They're worse than the regular bad ones--more likely to
+trap you, you know, especially when you're shorn of your strength and
+have good reason to be grateful. You might think you were rewarding
+her by marrying her; but you'll find your mistake. Look at Simpson!
+Could a man have done a girl a worse turn than he did when he married
+Florrie Crone? They haven't a thought in common except when he's ill
+and she nurses him; but a man can't be always getting ill in order to
+keep in touch with his wife. I don't know, of course, what this girl's
+like; but half of them are adventuresses bent on marrying gentlemen.
+Is she a clergyman's daughter, by any chance?"
+
+"I know nothing about her but her name," Brock answered coldly. "She
+has never tried to excite sympathy in any way."
+
+"Well, they are of all kinds, of course," said Powell temperately.
+"But you'd better break away in any case. Nothing will set you up so
+soon as a change. Come with me. I'm going into the country to see the
+spring come in, and the fruit trees flower, and to hear the
+nightingales. I know a lovely spot. Come!"
+
+"I'll think about it, and let you know," Arthur Brock answered to get
+rid of him.
+
+When he had gone Beth appeared. To please Arthur, she had covered her
+cropped head with a white muslin mob-cap bound round with a pale pink
+ribbon, and put on a high ruffle and a large white apron, in which she
+looked pretty and prim, like a sweet little Puritan, in spite of the
+pale pink vanity; and Arthur smiled when he saw her, but afterwards
+grumbled: "Why did you cut your pretty hair off? I shouldn't have
+thought you could do such a tasteless thing."
+
+Beth knelt down beside his chair to mend the fire, and then she began
+to tidy the hearth.
+
+"Am I not the same person?" she asked.
+
+"No, not quite," he answered. "You have set up a doubt where all was
+settled certainty."
+
+She had taken off the gloves she wore to do the grate, and was about
+to pull herself up from her knees by the arm of his chair when he
+spoke, but paused to ponder his words. It was with her left hand that
+she had grasped the arm of his chair, and he happened to notice it
+particularly as it rested there.
+
+"You wear a wedding-ring, I see," he remarked. "Do you find it a
+protection?"
+
+"I never looked at it in that light," she answered. "In this vale of
+tears I have a husband. That is why I wear it."
+
+There was a perceptible pause, then he asked with an effort, "Where is
+your husband?"
+
+"At home, I suppose," said Beth, her voice growing strident with
+dislike of the subject. "We do not correspond. He wishes to divorce
+me."
+
+"And what shall you do if he tries?" Brock asked.
+
+"Nothing," she replied, and was for leaving him to draw his own
+conclusions, but changed her mind. "Shall I tell you the story," she
+said after a while.
+
+"No, don't tell me," he rejoined quickly. "Your past is nothing to me.
+Nothing that you may have done, and nothing that you may yet do, can
+alter my feeling--my respect for you. As I have known you, so will you
+always be to me--the sweetest, kindest friend I ever had, the best
+woman I ever knew."
+
+Men are monotonous creatures. Given a position, and ninety-nine out of
+a hundred will come to the same conclusion about it, only by diverse
+methods, according to their prejudices; and this is especially the
+case when women are in question. Woman is generally out of focus in
+the mind of man; he sees her less as she is than as she ought or ought
+not to be. Beth did not thank Arthur Brock for his magnanimity. The
+fact that he should shrink from hearing the story bespoke a doubt that
+made his generous expression an offence. It may be kind to ignore the
+past of a guilty person, but the innocent ask to be heard and judged;
+and full faith has no fear of revelations.
+
+Beth rose from her knees, and began to prepare the invalid's evening
+meal in silence. Usually they chattered like children the whole time,
+but that evening they were both constrained. One of those subtle
+changes, so common in the relations of men and women, had set in
+suddenly since the morning; they were not as they had been with each
+other, nor could they continue together as they were; there must be a
+readjustment, which was in preparation during the pause.
+
+"You have heard me speak of Gresham Powell?" Brock began at last. "He
+was here this afternoon. He thinks I had better go away with him into
+the country for a change as soon as I can manage it."
+
+"It is a good idea," said Beth--"inland of course, not near the sea
+with your rheumatism. I will get your things ready at once."
+
+This immediate acquiescence depressed him. He played with his supper a
+little, pretending to eat it, then forgot it, and sat looking sadly
+into the fire. Beth watched him furtively, but once he caught her
+gazing at him with concern.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked, with an effort to be cheerful.
+
+"The matter is the pained expression in your eyes," she answered. "Are
+you suffering again?"
+
+"Just twinges," he said, then set his firm full lips, resolute to play
+the man.
+
+But the twinges were mental, not bodily, and Beth understood. Their
+happy days were done, and there was nothing to be said. They must each
+go their own way now, and the sooner the better. Fortunately the old
+lawyer had consented without demur to let Beth have her half-year's
+dividend in advance, so that there was money for Arthur. He expressed
+some surprise that there should be, but took what she gave him without
+suspicion, and did not count it. He was careless in money matters, and
+had forgotten what he had had when he was taken ill.
+
+"You're a great manager," he said to Beth. "But I suppose you haven't
+paid up everything. You must let me know. It _will_ be good to be at
+work again!"
+
+"Yes," Beth answered; "but don't worry about it. You won't want money
+before you are well able to make it."
+
+"I wish I knew for certain that you would go somewhere yourself to see
+the spring come in," he said, looking at her wistfully.
+
+"All in good time," she answered in her sprightliest way.
+
+When the last morning came, Beth attended to her usual duties
+methodically. She had made every arrangement for him, packed the
+things he was to take, and put away those that were to be left behind.
+When the cab was called, she went downstairs with him, and stood with
+Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen on the doorstep in the spring sunshine,
+smiling and waving her hand to him as he drove off. Her last words to
+him were, "You will go home before we meet again. Give my love to
+America--and may she send us many more such men," Beth added under her
+breath.
+
+"Amen!" Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen echoed.
+
+When the cab was out of sight, Beth turned and went into the house,
+walking wearily. At the foot of the stairs she looked up as if she
+were calculating the distance; then she began the long ascent with the
+help of the banisters, counting each step she took mechanically. The
+attic seemed strangely big and bare when she entered it--it was as if
+something had been taken away and left a great gap. There was
+something crude and garish about the light in it, too, which gave an
+unaccustomed look to every familiar detail. The first thing she
+noticed was the chair beside the fire, the old grandfather chair in
+which he had been sitting only a few minutes before, resting after the
+effort of dressing--the chair in which she had seen him sit and suffer
+so much and so bravely. She would never see him there again, nor hear
+his voice--the kindest voice she had ever heard. At his worst, it was
+always of her he thought, of her comfort, of her fatigue; but all that
+was over now. He had gone, and there could be no return--nothing could
+ever be as it had been between them, even if they met again; but meet
+again they never would, Beth knew, and at the thought she sank on the
+floor beside the senseless chair, and, resting her head against it,
+broke down and cried the despairing cry of the desolate for whom there
+is no comfort and no hope.
+
+The fire she had lighted for Arthur to dress by had gone out; there
+were no more coals. The remains of his breakfast stood on the table;
+she had not touched anything herself as yet. But she felt neither cold
+nor hunger; she was beyond all that. The chair was turned with its
+back to the window, and as she cowered beside it, she faced the
+opposite whitewashed wall. A ray of sunshine played upon it, wintry
+sunshine still, crystal cold and clear. Beth began to watch it. There
+was something she had to think about--something to see to--something
+she must think about--something she ought to see to, but precisely
+what it was she could not grasp. It seemed to be hovering on the
+outskirts of her mind, but it always eluded her. However, she had
+better not move for fear of making a noise. And there was far too
+much noise as it was--the wind rising and the waves breaking
+
+    "All down the thundering shores of Bude and Bos----"
+
+No, though; it was a procession of camels crossing the desert, and in
+the distance was an oasis surrounded by palms, and there was white
+stonework gleaming between the trees in the wonderful light. And those
+great doors that opened from within? They were opening although she
+had not knocked. She was expected, then--there, where there was no
+more weariness, nor care, nor hunger. But that was not where she
+wished to go. No! no! that did not tempt her.
+
+"Take me where I shall not remember," she implored.
+
+Poor Beth! the one boon she had to ask of Heaven at five-and-twenty
+was oblivion: "Let me be where I shall forget."
+
+Downstairs on the doorstep, Ethel Maud Mary and Gwendolen lingered a
+while before they turned to follow Beth into the house, and, as they
+did so, they noticed that a lady had stopped her carriage in the
+middle of the road, jumped out impetuously, and was running towards
+them, regardless of the traffic.
+
+"That was Mrs. Maclure who was standing with you here just now and
+went into the house?" she exclaimed.
+
+"_Miss_ Maclure," Ethel Maud Mary corrected her.
+
+"Oh, Miss or Mrs., what does it matter?" the lady cried. "It was
+Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure looking like death--where is she? Take me
+to her at once!" She emphasised the request with an imperious stamp of
+her foot.
+
+A few minutes later, Angelica, kneeling on the attic floor beside
+Beth, cried aloud in horror, "Why, she is dead!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+One warm morning when the apple-trees were out, Arthur Brock was
+sitting with Gresham Powell in the garden of the farm-house where they
+were lodging in the country, turning over a portfolio full of Powell's
+sketches, and Powell was looking at them over his shoulder, and
+discussing them with him. Arthur had just come upon a clever study of
+the head of a girl in a hat, and was looking hard at it.
+
+"That's a study in starvation," Powell explained. "It's an interesting
+face, isn't it? She came into a hairdresser's one day when I was
+there, and sat down just in that attitude, and I sketched her on the
+spot. She was too far through at the moment to notice me. Look at her
+pretty hair particularly. You'll see why in the next sketch, which is
+the sequel."
+
+Brock took up the next sketch hurriedly. It was the same girl in the
+same hat, but with her hair cut short.
+
+"I asked the barber fellow about her when she'd gone," Gresham
+pursued. "He'd taken her into an inner room, and when she came out she
+was cropped like that. She told him she had come to her last shilling,
+and she had an invalid at home depending on her entirely, and she
+entreated him to give her all he could for her hair. I believe the
+chap did too," he seemed so moved by her suffering and gentleness.
+"What's the matter?"
+
+Brock had risen abruptly with the sketches still in his hand. The
+colour had left his face, and he looked as pinched and ill as he had
+done during the early days of his convalescence.
+
+"The matter!" he ejaculated. "I've just discovered what a blind fool I
+am, that's what's the matter; and I'll keep these two studies with
+your permission to remind me of the fact. Choose amongst mine any you
+like instead of them, old chap, but these you must let me have."
+
+Without waiting for an answer, he took the sketches away with him into
+the house. When he returned a short time afterwards, he was dressed
+for a journey, and had a travelling bag in his hand.
+
+"I'm going to town," he said, "to see the original of these sketches.
+I've run up an account with her I shall never be able to settle, but
+at all events I can acknowledge my debt, dolt that I am! _I_ was that
+invalid. And I thought myself such a gentleman too! not counting my
+change and asking no questions, trusting her implicitly: that was my
+pose from the day you came and poisoned my mind. Before that I had
+neither trusted nor distrusted, but just taken things for granted as
+they came, beautifully. I was too self-satisfied even to suspect that
+she might be imposing her bounty upon me, starving herself that I
+might have all I required, and sending me off here finally with the
+last penny she had in the world. I told you I was wondering she did
+not answer my letters. I expect she hadn't the stamp. But you said it
+was out of sight out of mind, and she'd be trying it on with some one
+else in my absence. If I'd the strength, I'd thrash you, Gresham, for
+an evil-minded bounder."
+
+"I'll carry your bag to the station, old chap," Gresham replied with
+contrition, "and take the thrashing at your earliest convenience."
+
+Ethel Maud Mary was standing on the steps in the sunshine looking out
+when Arthur Brock arrived, just as she had stood to watch him depart,
+but in the interval a happy change had pleasantly transformed her. Her
+golden hair was brightly burnished again, her blue eyes sparkled, and
+her delicate skin had recovered its rose-leaf tinge. She wore a new
+frock, a new ring, a new watch and chain, and there was a new look in
+her face, one might say, as if the winter of care had passed out of
+her life with the snow and been forgotten in the spring sunshine of
+better prospects.
+
+"O Mr. Brock!" she exclaimed; "you back! But none too well yet,
+judging by appearances."
+
+"Where is Mrs. Maclure?" he demanded.
+
+"I wish I knew!" Ethel Maud Mary rejoined, becoming important all at
+once. "She's gone for good, that's all I can tell you. O Mr. Brock!
+fancy her being tip-top all the time, and us not suspecting it, though
+I might have thought something when I saw the dresses she sold when
+you were ill, only I'd got the fashion papers in my mind, and didn't
+know but what she'd been paid in dresses! Come into the parlour; you
+look faint."
+
+"You said she sold her dresses?"
+
+"Yes; sit down, Mr. Brock. A glass of port wine is what you want, as
+she'd say herself if she was here; and you'll get it good too, for
+it's been sent for Ma. My! the things that have come! Look at me--all
+presents--everything she ever heard me say I'd like to have; and
+Gwendolen the same."
+
+She got out the wine and the biscuits from a chiffonier as she
+chattered, and set them before him.
+
+"Yes, she sold her dresses, and her rings, and her books, and every
+other blessed thing she possessed except what had belonged to an old
+aunt. She got _them_ out too, one day, but cried so when it came to
+parting with them, I persuaded her to wait. I said something would
+turn up, I was sure. And something did, for _you_ went away, and
+directly after--the next minute, so to speak, for you were scarcely
+out of sight--a lady stopped her carriage--a fine carriage and pair
+and coachman and footman all silver-mounted--and ran up the steps in a
+great way. She'd seen Mrs. Maclure go into the house, and she said
+she'd been hunting for her everywhere for months, and all her friends
+were in a way about her, not knowing what had happened to her. I took
+the lady up to the attic, and there was Mrs. Maclure lying on the
+floor looking like death, with her head up against the big chair where
+you used to sit. We thought she _was_ dead at first, but the doctor
+came and brought her round. He said it was just exhaustion from
+fatigue and starvation."
+
+Arthur Brock uttered an exclamation.
+
+"You needn't reproach yourself, Mr. Brock," Ethel Maud Mary pursued
+sympathetically. "You weren't worse than the rest of us. I saw her
+every day, and never suspected she was denying herself everything, she
+was always so much the same--happy, you know, in her quiet way."
+
+"Do you think she was happy?" he groaned.
+
+"Yes, she was happy," Ethel Maud Mary said simply. "She's that
+disposition--contented, you know; and she was happy from the first;
+but she was happier still from the time she had you to care for. I'd
+read about ladies of that kind, Mr. Brock, but had not seen one
+before. It's being good does it, I suppose. Do you know she'd not have
+told a lie was it ever so, Mrs. Maclure wouldn't!"
+
+"And she went away with that lady?" Arthur asked, after a pause.
+
+"Yes, if you can call it going," Ethel Maud Mary replied; "for the
+lady didn't ask her leave, but just rolled her up in wraps, and had
+her carried down to the carriage and took her off. And that's all we
+know about her. She's written me a letter I'd like to show you, and
+sent me money, pretending she owed it, because I'd let her have her
+attic too cheap. She sent the presents afterwards, but no address. The
+lady came back once alone, and had the attic photographed, with
+everything arranged just as Mrs. Maclure used to have it. And she
+bought all the things in it that belonged to us, and had them and all
+Mrs. Maclure's own things taken away to keep, she said. She sat a long
+time in the attic, looking at it, just as if she was trying to imagine
+what living in it was like, and she kept dabbing her eyes with a
+little lace handkerchief, and then she got up and sighed and said,
+'Poor Beth! poor Beth!' several times. She talked to me a lot about
+Mrs. Maclure. She seemed to know all about me, and treated me as if
+we'd been old friends. And she knew all about you too, and asked after
+you kindly. She said Mrs. Maclure was going to be a great woman--a
+great genius or something of that sort--and do a lot for the world;
+and she wanted to know if you'd ever suspected it. I told her I
+thought not. The two letters you wrote she took to give Mrs. Maclure,
+so she'd get _them_ all right."
+
+"And see the particular kind of fatuous ass I am set down clearly in
+my own handwriting!" he said to himself.
+
+Then he rose. "I'll just go up and look at the attics," he said.
+
+Ethel Maud Mary waited below, and waited long for him. When at last he
+came down, he shook hands with her, but without looking at her.
+
+"I'm going to find that lady--Mrs. Maclure," he said, jamming his hat
+down on his head, "if I have to spend the rest of my life in the
+search."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+Beth, surrounded by friends, saw the spring come in that year at
+Ilverthorpe, and felt it the fairest spring she could remember.
+Blackbird and thrush sang in an ecstasy by day, and all night long the
+nightingales trilled in the happy dusk. She did not ask herself why it
+was there was a new note in nature that year, nor did she trouble
+herself about time or eternity. Her eternity was the exquisite
+monotony of tranquil days, her time-keepers the spring flowers, the
+apple-blossom and quince, daffodil, wallflower, lilac and laburnum,
+the perfumed calycanthus, forget-me-nots, pansies, hyacinths,
+lilies-of-the-valley in the woods, and early roses on a warm south
+wall; and over all the lark by day, and again at night the
+nightingale. In a life like hers, after a period of probation there
+comes an interval of this kind occasionally, a pause for rest and
+renewal of strength before active service begins again.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"I have just the sort of 'neat little cot in a quiet spot, with a
+distant view of the rolling sea' that you yearn for, Beth," he said,
+smiling, when she paused, "and I have come to ask you and Angelica to
+drive over with me to see it."
+
+"You mean Ilverthorpe Cottage," said Angelica, jumping up. "O Daddy!
+it's the very place. Two storeys, Beth, ivy, roses, jasmine, wisteria
+without; and within, space and comfort of every kind--and the sea in
+sight! Such a pretty garden, too, grass and trees and shrubs and
+flowers. And near enough for us all to see you as often as you wish.
+Beth, be excited too! I must bring my violin, I think, and play a
+triumphal march on the way."
+
+Ilverthorpe Cottage was all and more than Angelica had said, and Beth
+did not hesitate to take it. It was Mr. Kilroy's property, and the
+rent was suspiciously low, but Beth supposed that that was because the
+house was out of the way. She and Angelica spent long happy days in
+getting it ready for occupation, choosing paper, paint, and
+furnishments. Mr. Kilroy saw to the stables, which he completed with a
+saddle-horse and a pony-carriage. There was a short cut across the
+fields, a lovely walk, from Ilverthorpe House to the Cottage, and when
+Angelica could not accompany her, Beth would stroll over alone to see
+how things were getting on, and wander about her little demesne, and
+love it. Outside her garden, in front of the house, the highroad ran,
+a sheltered highroad, with a raised footpath, bordered on either side
+with great trees, oak and elm, chestnut and beech, and a high hawthorn
+hedge just whitening into blossom. The field-path came out on this
+highroad, down which she had to walk a few hundred yards to her own
+gate. Day after day there was an old Irish labourer, a stonebreaker,
+by the wayside, kneeling on a sack beside a great heap of stones, who
+gave her a cheery good-morrow as she passed. Once she went across the
+road and spoke to him. He had the face of a saint at his devotions.
+
+"You kneel there all day long," she said, "and as you kneel you pray,
+perhaps. Will you pray for me? Pray, pray that I may"--she was going
+to say succeed, but stopped--"that I may be good."
+
+The man raised his calm eyes, and looked her in the face. "You _are_
+good, lady," he said simply.
+
+"Yet pray," she entreated; "and pray too that all I do may be good,
+and of good effect."
+
+"All you do is good, lady," he answered once more, in the same quiet
+tone of conviction.
+
+"But I want all I do to be the best for the purpose that can be done."
+
+She put some money in his hand and turned away, and as she went he
+watched her. She had touched him with her soft gloveless fingers in
+giving him the money, and when she had gone, he was conscious of the
+touch; it tingled through him, and he looked at the spot on which the
+impression remained, as if he expected it to be in some sort visible.
+
+"Now Our Lady love you and the saints protect you, bless your sweet
+face," he muttered; "and may all you do be the best that can be done
+for every one. Amen."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few months in her lovely little house sufficed to restore Beth's
+mind to its natural attitude--an attitude of deep devotion. She even
+began to work again, but rather with a view to making herself useful
+to her friends than to satisfy any ambition or craving of her own.
+Whatever she did, however, she approached in the spirit of the great
+musician who dressed himself in his best, and prayed as at a solemn
+service, when he shut himself up to compose. Beth had stepped away
+from the old forms by this time. She had escaped from the bondage of
+the letter that killeth into the realm of the spirit that giveth life.
+It is not faith in any particular fetish that makes a mind religious,
+but the quality of reverence. Churches Beth had come to look upon, not
+with distrust, but with indifference, as an ineffectual experiment of
+man's. She could find no evidence of a holier spirit or a more divine
+one in the church than in any other human institution for the
+propagation of instruction. The church has never been superior to the
+times, never as far advanced as the best men of the day, never a
+leader, but rather an opposer of progress, hindering when ideas were
+new, and only coming in to help when workers without had proved their
+discoveries, and it was evident that credit would be lost by refusing
+to recognise them. There is no cruelty the church has not practised,
+no sin it has not committed, no ignorance it has not displayed, no
+inconsistency it has not upheld, from teaching peace and countenancing
+war, to preaching poverty and piling up riches. True, there have been
+great saints in the church; but then there have been great saints out
+of it. Saintliness comes of conscientiously cultivating the divine in
+human nature; it is a seed that is sown and flourishes under the most
+diverse conditions.
+
+Beth thought much on religion in those quiet days, and read much,
+looking for spiritual sustenance among the garbage of mind with which
+man has overlaid it, and finding little to satisfy her, until one
+night, quite suddenly, as she sat holding her mind in the attitude of
+prayer, there came to her a wonderful flash of illumination. She had
+not been occupied with the point that became apparent. It entered her
+mind involuntarily, and was made clear to her without conscious effort
+on her part; but it was that which she sought, the truth that moves,
+makes evident, makes easy, props and stays, and is the instigator of
+religious action, the source of aspiration, the ground of hope--the
+which was all contained for Beth in the one old formula interpreted in
+a way that was new to her: _The communion of saints_ (that
+inexplicable sympathy between soul and soul), _the forgiveness of
+sins_, (working out our own salvation in fear and trembling), _the
+resurrection of the body_ (reincarnation), _and the life everlasting_
+(which is the crown or glory, the final goal).
+
+"But God?" Beth questioned.
+
+"God is love," she read in the book that lay open on the table before
+her.
+
+Then she clasped her hands over the passage and laid her head on them,
+and for a long time she sat so, not thinking, but just repeating it to
+herself softly: "God is love," till all at once there was a blank in
+her consciousness; thought was suspended. When it returned, she looked
+up, and in herself were the words: "God is Love--no! _Love is God!_"
+
+In the joy of the revelation, she arose, and, going to the window,
+flung it wide open. Far down the east the dawn was dimly burning; the
+faint sweet breath of it fanned her cheeks; her chest expanded with a
+great throb, and she exclaimed aloud: "I follow, follow--_God_--I know
+not where."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beth had a task before her that day which she did not relish in the
+anticipation. She was going as a stopgap to speak at a large meeting
+to oblige Angelica. She had the credit of being able to speak, and she
+herself supposed that she could in a way, because of the success of
+her first attempt; but she did not consent to try again without much
+hesitation and many qualms, and she would certainly not have consented
+had not her friends been in a difficulty, with no one at hand to help
+them out of it but herself. But to be drawn from her hallowed
+seclusion into such a blaze of publicity, even for once, was not at
+all to her mind, and much of her wakefulness of the night before had
+been caused by her shrinking from the prospect.
+
+Late that night after the meeting she returned to her cottage alone,
+cowering in a corner of the Kilroys' carriage. She was cowering from
+the recollection of a great crowd that rose with deafening shouts and
+seemed to be rushing at her--cowering, too, from the inevitable which
+she had been forced to recognise--her vocation--discovered by
+accident, and with dismay, for it was not what she would have chosen
+for herself in any way had it occurred to her that she had any choice
+in the matter. There were always moments when she would fain have led
+the life which knows no care beyond the cultivation of the arts, no
+service but devotion to them, no pleasure like the enjoyment of
+them,--a selfish life made up of impersonal delights, such as music,
+which is emotion made audible, painting, which is emotion made
+visible, and poetry, which is emotion made comprehensible;--and such a
+life could not have been anything but grateful to one like Beth, who
+had the capacity for so many interests of the kind. She was debarred
+from all that, however, by grace of nature. Beth could not have lived
+for herself had she tried. So that now, when the call had come, and
+the way in which she could best live for others was made plain to her,
+she had no thought but to pursue it.
+
+The carriage put her down at her garden-gate, and she stood awhile in
+the moonlight, listening to it as it rolled away with patter of
+horses' hoofs and rattle of harness, listening intently as if the
+sound concerned her. Then she let herself in, and was hurrying up to
+her room, but stopped short on the stairs, cowering from the crowd
+that rose and cheered and cheered and seemed to be rushing at her.
+
+Her bedroom had windows east, west, and south, so that she had sunrise
+and sunset and the sun all day. When she went in now, she found the
+lamps lighted and all the windows shut, and she went round and flung
+them open with an irritable gesture. Her nerves were overwrought; the
+slightest contrariety upset her. The sweet fresh country air streamed
+in and the tranquil moonlight. These alone would ordinarily have been
+enough to soothe her, but now she paid no heed to them. When she had
+opened the windows, she began to take off her things in feverish
+haste, pacing about the room restlessly the while, as if that helped
+her to be quicker. Everything she wore seemed too hot, too heavy, or
+too tight, and she flung hat and cloak and bodice down just where she
+took them off in her haste to get rid of them. Throwing her things
+about like that was an old trick of her childhood, and becoming
+conscious of what she was doing, she remembered it, and began to think
+of herself as she had been then, and so forget her troubled self as
+she was at that moment--fresh from the excitement and terror of an
+extraordinary achievement, a great success. For she had spoken that
+night as few have spoken--spoken to a hostile audience and fascinated
+them by the power of her personality, the mesmeric power which is part
+of the endowment of an orator, and had so moved them that they rose at
+last and cheered her for her eloquence, whether they held her opinions
+or not. Then there had come friendly handshakes and congratulations
+and encouragement; and one had said, "Beth is launched at last upon
+her true career."
+
+"But who could have thought that that was her bent?" another had
+asked.
+
+Beth did not hear the answer, but she knew what it should have been.
+She had been misled herself, and so had every one else, by her pretty
+talent for writing, her love of turning phrases, her play on the music
+of words. The writing had come of cultivation, but this--the last
+discovered power--was the natural gift. Angelica had said that all the
+indications had pointed to literary ability in Beth, but there had
+been other indications hitherto unheeded. There was that day at
+Castletownrock when Beth invited the country people in to see the
+house, and, for the first time, found words flowing from her lips
+eloquently; there were her preachings to Emily and Bernadine in the
+acting-room, of which they never wearied; her first harangue to the
+girls who had caught her bathing on the sands, and the power of her
+subsequent teaching which had bound them to the Secret Service of
+Humanity for as long as she liked; there was her storytelling at
+school, too, and her lectures to the girls--not to mention the charm
+of her ordinary conversation when the mood was upon her, as in the
+days when she used to sit and fish with the bearded sailors, and held
+them with curious talk as she had held the folk in Ireland,
+fascinating them. And then there was the unexpected triumph of her
+first public attempt--indications enough of a natural bent, had there
+been any one to interpret them.
+
+Beth, as she thought on these things, wandered from window to window,
+too restless and excited to sit still; but, even occupied as she was,
+after she had changed her dress the old trick came upon her, and she
+was all the while observing.
+
+It was autumn, and on the south she overlooked a field of barley,
+standing in stooks, waiting to be carted. She noticed how the long,
+irregular rows and their shadows showed in the moonlight. Across the
+field the farm to which it belonged nestled in an apple-orchard. From
+the east end of the house she obtained a glimpse of the sea, which was
+near enough, for the drowsy murmur of it reached her even in calm
+weather. To the west the highroad ran, and in her wanderings from
+window to window Beth paused to contemplate it, to follow it in
+imagination whither it led, to think of the weary way it was to so
+many weary feet, to mourn because she could not offer rest and
+refreshment to every one that passed.
+
+The night was clear and the air was crisp, with a suspicion of frost
+in it, such as sometimes comes in the late autumn. The moon was
+sinking, and the stars shone out ever more brightly. Down in the
+roadway a little brazier burned, where the road had been taken up and
+blocked for repairs, and over the brazier the old watchman, who should
+have been guarding the tools and materials that had been left lying
+about, dozed in a sort of sentry-box. It occurred to Beth that the
+task was long and dreary, and that the air grew chilly towards the
+dawn. Surely some food would cheer and refresh him, and help to pass
+the time. She went down to the pantry and got some, then carried it
+out on a tray. But the old man was sound asleep, and, standing there
+in her long white wrapper, she had to call him several times, "Old
+man! old man!" before she roused him.
+
+He awoke at last with a start, and seeing the unexpected apparition in
+the dim light, exclaimed, "Holy Mother! why have you come to me?"
+
+Beth silently set the tray before him and slipped away, leaving him in
+the happy certainty that a heavenly vision had been vouchsafed him.
+
+But the moon set, the stars paled, and, from her window to the east,
+Beth watched the dark melt to dusk, and the dusk pale to an even grey,
+into which were breathed the burnished colours of the happy dawn.
+Then, when the sun was high, and the accustomed sounds of life and
+movement that held her ear by day had well begun, down the long road
+beneath the old gnarled trees the postman came beladen, and there were
+brought to her pamphlets, papers, cards, letters, telegrams, a fine
+variety of praise, abuse, sympathy, derision, insults, and admiration.
+Quietly Beth read, and knew what it meant, all of it--success! and
+the success she had most desired: that her words should come with
+comfort to thousands of those that suffer, who, when they heard, would
+raise their heads once more in hope. In one paper that she opened she
+read: "A great teacher has arisen among us, a woman of genius--"
+Hastily she put the paper aside, burning with a kind of shame,
+although alone, to see so much said of herself. Beth was one of the
+first swallows of the woman's summer. She was strange to the race when
+she arrived, and uncharitably commented upon; but now the type is
+known, and has ceased to surprise.
+
+When she was dressed that morning, she went down to her bright little
+breakfast parlour. Before her was the harvest-field, looking its
+loveliest in the early morning sunlight. As she contemplated the
+peaceful scene, she thought that she should feel herself a singularly
+fortunate being. The dead would be with her no more, alas! except in
+the spirit; but all else that heart could desire, was it not hers? The
+answer came quick, No! Something was wanting. But she did not ask
+herself what the something was.
+
+The harvesters were not at work that morning, and she had not seen a
+soul since she sat down to breakfast; but before she left the table, a
+horseman came out from the farm, and rode towards her across the long
+field, deliberately. She watched him, absently at first, but as he
+approached he reminded her of the Knight of her daily vision, her
+saviour, who had come to rescue her in the dark days of her deep
+distress at Slane--
+
+    "A bowshot from her bower-eaves,
+     He rode between the barley-sheaves."
+
+"The barley-sheaves!" suddenly Beth's heart throbbed and fluttered and
+stood still. The words had come to her as the interpretation of an
+augury, the fulfilment of a promise. It seemed as if she ought to have
+known it from the first, known that he would come like that at last,
+that he had been coming, coming, coming through all the years. As he
+drew near, the rider looked up at her, the sun shone on his face, he
+raised his hat. In dumb emotion, not knowing what she did, Beth
+reached out her hands towards him as if to welcome him. He was not the
+Knight of her dark days, however, this son of the morning, but the
+Knight of her long winter vigil--Arthur Brock.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The following have been changed, as they appear to be typesetter's
+errors. All other colloquialisms, non-standard spelling, grammar
+and punctuation have been left as they appear in the original book.
+
+
+Page 2
+
+"I had quite forgotten the whisky," she said to the
+maid-of [hyphen added] all-work,
+
+
+Page 34
+
+"What does she do it for? [added "]
+
+
+Page 220
+
+Do I separate myself from Count Bartahlinski [changed to Bartahlinsky]?
+
+
+Page 290
+
+Miss Bey had had great experience of girls, and her sharp
+manner, which was mainly acquired in the effort to maintain
+displine, [changed to "discipline"] somewhat belied her kindly nature.
+
+
+Page 395
+
+"I calcalute [changed to calculate?] that they come to just three
+hundred pounds,"
+
+
+Page 468
+
+If we were to die now, in six
+months it would be as though we had never bee [added n]
+
+
+Page 469
+
+I never knew such a woman tiil [changed to till?] I met you;
+
+
+Page 522
+
+bordered on either side with great trees, oak and elm, chestnut
+and beech, and a high hawthorn hedge just whitening into
+blosom. [changed to blossom]
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BETH BOOK***
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