When Dan came to see her the next morning, he found her in a mixed
mood. Half-a-dozen times during the night she had declined to marry
him in a painful scene, but just as often her imagination would run on
into the unknown life she would have to lead with him. She saw herself
in white satin and lace and pearls, a slender figure at the head of a
long dining-table, interesting to everybody, and Dan was at the foot,
looking quite distinguished in evening dress, with his glossy black
hair and wonderful clear skin. She had gathered the nicest people in
the neighbourhood about her, and on her right there was a shadowy
person, a man of mark, and knightly, who delighted in her
conversation.
When she came downstairs to receive Dan she was coughing, and he
showed his devotion by being greatly concerned about her health. He
said she must have port wine and a tonic, and be out in the air as
much as possible, and suggested that they should go for a walk at once
as it was a lovely day, though still wet under foot.
"I would not ask you to walk if I had a carriage to offer you," he
said, "for I hate to see a delicate lady on foot in the mud. But you
shall have your carriage yet, please God, all in good time!"
"Where shall we go?" said Beth when they left the house.
"Oh, anywhere," he answered. "Take me to one of your own favourite
haunts."
She thought of the Fairholm cliffs for a moment, but felt that they
were sacred to many recollections with which she would not care to
associate this new experience. "I'll show you the chalybeate spring,"
she said.
They turned out of Orchard Street, and went down the hill to the Beck,
a broad, clear, shallow rivulet, that came round a sharp green curve
between high banks, well wooded with old trees, all in their heavy,
dark-green, summer foliage. As they crossed the rustic wooden bridge
Beth paused a little to look up at the trees and love them, and down
into the clear water at the scarlet sticklebacks heading up stream.
Her companion looked at her in surprise when she stopped, and then
followed the direction of her eyes. All he saw, however, was a shallow
stream, a green bank, and some trees.
"This is not very interesting," he observed.
Beth made no reply, but led the way up the hill on the other side,
and, to the right, passed a row of cottages with long gardens at the
back running down to the brow of the bank that overhung the Beck. In
most of these cottages she was an object of suspicion because of her
uncanny words and ways, and she knew it, and the thought of it was a
grief to her. She wanted the people to like her as she would have
liked them had they let her. The wish to win them fired her
imagination. She looked on ahead into futurity, and was a beautiful
lady, driving a pair of ponies down a wooded lane, with a carriage
full of good things for the cottagers, and they all loved her, and
were very glad to see her.
"What are you thinking about?" Dan asked.
"How nice it would be to be rich," she replied.
"But you will be well off when you're twenty-one, I am told."
"I suppose there's a chance of it," she answered dreamily.
(The ponies had arrived at the village by this time, and she was
looking up at an old grey church with a red roof.)
"Do you know what your aunt's income was?" he asked.
"Seven or eight hundred a year," she answered absently.
(The sexton's little house stood by the gate leading into the
churchyard. His wife came out when the carriage stopped, wiping
soap-suds from her bare arms with her apron. Beth leaned forward and
held out her hand to her, and the woman smiled a cordial welcome. She
had a round flat face and fair hair. Then Beth handed her a mysterious
package from the carriage, which she received half in delight and half
in inquiry.)
But Beth's imagination stopped there, for she perceived that she had
passed the gate of the garden in which was the chalybeate spring.
There was a cottage in the garden, and Beth turned back, and went up
to the door, where a woman was standing holding a plump child, whose
little fat thigh, indented by the pressure, bulged over her bare arm.
"May we have a drink, please?" Beth asked.
"Yes, and welcome," the woman answered. "I'll fetch you a glass."
"Let me hold the baby," said Beth.
The woman smiled, and handed him to her. Beth took him awkwardly, and
squeezed him up in her arms as a child holds a kitten.
"Isn't he nice?" she said.
"That's a matter of taste," Dan answered. "I don't like 'em
fat-bottomed myself."
Beth froze at the expression. When the woman returned, she handed the
child back to her carefully, but without a smile, took the glass, and
went down to the spring by a narrow winding path which took them out
of sight of the cottage directly. Here it was old trees again, and
green banks, with the Beck below. When they were under the trees Beth
looked up at a big elm, and her companion noticed her lips move.
"What are you saying to yourself?" he asked.
"Nothing to myself," she answered. "I'm saying, 'Oh, tree, give me of
thy strength!' the Eastern invocation."
He laughed, and wanted to know what rot that was; and again Beth was
jarred.
"You'll have no luck if you don't respect the big trees," she said.
"Oh, by Jove, if we wait for the big trees to make our luck, we shan't
have much!" he rejoined, picking up a pebble and firing it into the
Beck below.
They were on a narrow path now, about half-way down the bank, and
here, in a hollow, the chalybeate spring bubbled out, and was gathered
by a wooden spout into a slender stream, which fell on the ground,
where, in the course of time, it had made a basin for itself that was
always partly full. The water was icy cold, and somewhat the colour of
light on steel. Beth held the glass to the spout, rinsed it first,
then filled it, and offered it to Dan, but he dryly declined to take
it "Not for me, thank you," he said; "I never touch any medicinal
beastliness."
For the third time Beth was jarred. She threw the water on the ground,
refilled the glass, and drank. Dan saw he had made a mistake.
"I'll change my mind and have some too," he said, anxious to mollify
her.
Beth filled the glass again, and handed it to him in silence, but no
after-thought could atone for the discourtesy of his first refusal,
and she looked in another direction, not even troubling herself to see
whether he tried the water or not.
There was a rustic seat in the hollow of the bank, and he suggested
that they should sit there a while before they returned. Beth
acquiesced; and soon the sputter of the little spring bubbling into
its basin, the chitter of birds in the branches above, the sunbeams
filtering from behind through the leaves, the glint of the Beck below
slipping between its banks, soundless, to the sea, enthralled her.
"Isn't this lovely?" she ejaculated.
"Yes, it's very jolly--with you," he said.
"You wouldn't like it so well without me?" Beth asked.
"No, I should think not," he rejoined. "And you wouldn't like it as
well without me, I hope."
"No," Beth responded. "It makes it nicer having some one to share it."
"Now that's not quite kind," he answered in an injured tone. "Some one
is any one; and _I_ shouldn't be satisfied with anybody but you."
"Well, but I am satisfied with you," Beth answered dispassionately.
He took her hand, laid it in his own palm, and looked at it. It was a
child's hand as yet, delicately pink and white.
"What a pretty thing!" he said. "Oh, you smile at that." He reached up
to put a lock of her brown hair back from her cheek, and then he put
his arm round her.
Next day he was obliged to go away--Beth never thought of inquiring
why or wherefore; but she heard her mother and Lady Benyon talking
about the very eligible appointment he was hoping to get. He took an
affectionate leave of her. When he had gone she went off to the sands,
and was surprised to find how glad she was to be alone again. The tide
was far out, and there were miles and miles of the hard buff sand, a
great, open space, not empty to Beth, but teeming with thought and
full of feeling. Some distance on in front of her there was a
solitary figure, a man walking with bent head and hands folded behind
him, holding a stick--Count Gustav Bartahlinsky's favourite attitude
when deep in meditation. Beth hurried on, and soon overtook him.
"Would you rather be alone, Count Gustav?" she said.
He turned to look at her, then smiled, and they walked on together.
"So they are going to marry you off," he said abruptly.
"Yes," Beth answered laconically.
"Do you wish to be married?"
"No, I do not."
"Then why do you consent?"
"Because I'm weak; I can't help it," she said.
"Nonsense!"
"I can't," she repeated. "I'm firm enough about some things, but in
this I vacillate. When I am alone I know I am making a mistake, but
when I am with other people who think differently, my objection
vanishes."
"What is your objection?" he asked.
"That is the difficulty," she said. "I can't define it. Do you know
Dr. Dan?"
"I can't say I know him," he answered. "I have met him and talked to
him. He expresses the most unexceptional opinions; but it is premature
to respect a man for the opinions he expresses--wait and see what he
does. Words and acts don't necessarily agree. Sometimes, however, a
chance remark which has very little significance for the person who
makes it, is like an aperture that lets in light on the whole
character." He cogitated a little, then added, "Don't let them hurry
you. Take time to know your man, and if you are not satisfied
yourself, if there is anything that jars upon _you_, never mind what
other people think, have nothing to do with him."
When Beth went home, she found her mother sitting by the drawing-room
window placidly knitting and looking out. "I am afraid I am very
late," Beth said. "I have been on the sands with Count Gustav."
"Ah, that was nice, I should think," Mrs. Caldwell observed
graciously. "And what were you talking about?"
"Being married, principally," Beth answered.
Mrs. Caldwell beamed above her knitting. "And what did he say?"
"He strongly advised me not to marry if I didn't want to."
Mrs. Caldwell changed countenance. "Did he indeed?" she observed with
a sniff. Then she reflected. "And what had you been saying to draw
such a remark from him?"
"I said I didn't want to be married," Beth blurted out with an effort.
"How could you tell Count Gustav such a story, Beth?" Mrs. Caldwell
asked, shaking her head reproachfully.
"It was no story, mamma."
"Nonsense, Beth," her mother rejoined. "It is nothing but perverseness
that makes you say such things. You feel more interesting, I believe,
when you are in opposition. If I had refused to allow you to be
married, you would have been ready to run away. _I_ know girls! They
all want to be married, and they all pretend they don't. Why, when I
was a girl I thought of nothing else; but I didn't talk about it."
"Perhaps you had nothing else to think about," Beth ventured.
"And what have you to think about, pray?"
Beth clasped her hands, and her grey eyes dilated.
"Beth, don't look like that," her mother remonstrated. "You are always
acting, and it _is_ such a pity--as you will find when you go out into
the world, I am afraid, and people avoid you."
"I didn't know I was doing anything peculiar," Beth said; "and how am
I to help it if I don't know?"
"Just help it by only doing as you are told until you are able to
judge for yourself. Look at the silly way you have been talking this
afternoon! What must Count Gustav have thought of you? Never be so
silly again. You _must_ be married now, you know. When a girl lets a
man kiss her, she _has_ to marry him."
Beth had been watching her mother's fingers as she knitted until she
was half mesmerised by the bright glint of the needles; but now she
woke up and burst out laughing. "If that be the case," she said, "he
is not the only one that I shall have to marry."
Mrs. Caldwell's hands dropped on her lap, and she looked up at Beth in
dismay. "What do you mean?" she said.
"Just that," Beth answered.
"Do you mean to tell me you have allowed men to kiss you?" Mrs.
Caldwell cried.
Beth looked up as if trying to keep her countenance.
"You wicked girl, how dare you?"
"Well, mamma, if it were wicked, why didn't you warn me?" Beth said.
"How was I to know?"
"Your womanly instincts ought to have taught you better."
Unfortunately for this theory, all Beth's womanly instincts set in the
opposite direction. Her father's ardent temperament warred in her with
Aunt Victoria's Puritan principles, and there was no telling as yet
which would prevail.
Beth made no reply to that last assertion of her mother's, but
remained half sitting on the table, with her feet stretched out in
front of her, and her hands supporting her on either side, which
brought her shoulders up to her ears. It was a most inelegant
attitude, and peculiarly exasperating to Mrs. Caldwell.
"Oh, you wicked--you bad--you _abandoned_ girl!" she exclaimed, losing
her temper altogether. "My heart is _broken_ with you. Go to your
room, and stay there. I feel as if I could never endure the sight of
you again."
Beth gathered herself together slowly, and strolled away with an air
of indifference; but as soon as she found herself alone in her own
room with the door shut, she dropped on her knees and lifted her
clasped hands to heaven in an agony of remorse for having tormented
her mother, and in despair about that wretched engagement. "O Lord,
what am I to do?" she said; "what am I to do?" If she could make up
her mind once for all either way, she would be satisfied; it was this
miserable state of indecision that was unendurable.
Presently in the room below, she thought she heard her mother sob aloud.
She listened, breathless. Her mother was sobbing. Beth jumped up and
opened her door. What should she do? Her unhappy mother--heart-broken,
indeed. What a life hers was--a life of hard privation, of suffering
most patiently borne, of the utmost self-denial for her children's sake,
of loss, of loneliness, of bitter disappointment! First her husband
taken, then her dearest child; her ungrateful boys not over-kind to her;
and now this last blow dealt her by Beth, just when the prospect of
getting her well married was bringing a gleam of happiness into her
mother's life. The piteous sobs continued. Beth stole downstairs, bent
on atoning in her own person by any sacrifice for all the sorrows, no
matter by whom occasioned, which she felt were culminating in this final
outburst of grief. She found her mother standing beside the high
old-fashioned mantelpiece, leaning her poor head against it.
"Mamma," Beth cried, "do forgive me. I never meant to--I never meant
to hurt you so. I will do anything to please you. I was only teasing
you about kissing men. I haven't been in the habit of kissing any one.
And of course I'll marry Dan as soon as you like. And we'll all be
happy--there!"
Mrs. Caldwell held out her arms, and Beth sprang into them, and hugged
her tight and burst into tears.