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.