The Beth Book

"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.