The Beth Book

"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."