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.