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.