The Beth Book
the mountains, women in close white caps with goffered frills, short
petticoats, and long blue cloaks; and men in tail-coats and
knee-breeches, with shillalahs under their arms, which they used very
dexterously. They talked Irish at the top of their voices, and
gesticulated a great deal, and were childishly quarrelsome. One
market-day, when Beth was looking out of the sitting-room window, her
mother came and looked out too, and they saw half-a-dozen countrymen
set upon a young Castletownrock man. In a moment their shillalahs were
whirling about his head, and he was driven round the corner of the
house. Presently he came staggering back across the road, blubbering
like a child, with his head broken, and the blood streaming down over
his face, which was white and distorted with pain. They had knocked
him down, and kicked him when he was on the ground.
"Oh! the cowards! the cowards!" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed. Beth felt
sick, but it was not so much what she saw as what she heard that
affected her--the man's crying, and the graphic description of the
nature and depth of the wound which another man, who had been present
while the doctor dressed it, stopping at the window, kindly insisted
on giving them, Mrs. Caldwell being obliged to listen courteously for
fear of making herself unpopular. The man's manner impressed
Beth--there was such a solemn joy in it, as of one who had just
witnessed something refreshing.
There were two priests in the place, Father Madden and Father John.
Captain Caldwell said Father Madden was a gentleman. He shook hands
with everybody, even with the curate and Mr. Macbean; but Father John
would not speak to a protestant, and used to scowl at the children
when he met them, and then Mildred would seize Bernadine's hand and
drag her past him quickly, because she hated to be scowled at; but
Beth always stopped and made a face at him. He used to carry a long
whip, and crack it at the people, and on Sunday mornings, if they did
not go to mass, he would patrol the streets in a fury, rating the
idlers at the top of his voice, and driving them on before him. Beth
used to glance stealthily at the chapel as she went to church; it had
the attraction of forbidden fruit for her, and of Father John's
exciting antics--nothing ever happened in church. Chapel she
associated with the papists, and not at all with Kitty, whose tender
teaching occupied a separate compartment of her consciousness
altogether. There she kept the "Blessed Mother" and the "Dear Lord"
for her comfort, although she seldom visited them now. Terms of
endearment meant a great deal to Beth, because no one used them
habitually in her family; in fact, she could not remember ever being
called dear in her life by either father or mother.
Since the day when she had run away from the great green waves,
however, her father had taken an interest in her. He often asked her
to brush his hair, and laughed very much sometimes at things she said.
He used to lie on the couch reading to himself while she brushed.
"Read some to me, papa," she said one day. He smiled and read a
little, not in the least expecting her to understand it, but she soon
showed him that she did, and entreated him to go on; so he gradually
fell into the habit of reading aloud to her, particularly the
"Ingoldsby Legends." She liked to hear them again and again, and would
clamour for her favourites. On one occasion when he had stopped, and
she had been sitting some time at the foot of the couch, with the
brush in her hand, she suddenly burst out with a long passage from
"The Execution"--the passage that begins:--
"God! 'tis a fearsome thing to see
That pale wan man's mute agony."
Captain Caldwell raised his eyebrows as she proceeded, and looked at
his wife.
"I thought a friend of ours was considered stupid," he said.
"People can do very well when they like," Mrs. Caldwell answered
tartly; "but they're too lazy to try. When did you learn that, Beth?"
"I didn't learn it," Beth answered.
"Then how do you know it?"
"It just came to me," Beth said.
"Then I wish your lessons would _just come_ to you."
"I wish they would," said Beth sincerely.
Mrs. Caldwell snapped out something about idleness and obstinacy, and
left the room. The day was darkening down, and presently Captain
Caldwell got up, lit a lamp at the sideboard, and set it on the
dining-table. When he had done so, he took Beth, and set her on the
table too. Beth stood up on it, laughing, and put her arm round his
neck.
"Look at us, papa!" she exclaimed, pointing at the window opposite.
The blinds were up, and it was dark enough outside for them to see
themselves reflected in the glass.
"I think we make a pretty picture, Beth," her father said, putting his
arm round her.
He had scarcely spoken, when there came a terrific report and a crash;
something whizzed close to Beth's head; and a shower of glass fell on
the floor. In a moment Beth had wriggled out of her father's arm, slid
from the table, and scrambled up on to the window-seat, scattering the
flower-pots, and slapping at her father's hand in her excitement, when
he tried to stop her.
"It's Bap-faced Flanagan--or Tony-kill-the-cow," she cried. "I can
see--O papa! why did you pull me back? Now I shall never know!"
The servants had rushed in from the kitchen, and Mrs. Caldwell came
flying downstairs.
"What is it, Henry?" she cried.
"The d----d scoundrels shot at me with the child in my arms," he
answered, looking in his indignation singularly like Beth herself in a
stormy mood. As he spoke he turned to the hall door, and walked out
into the street bareheaded.
"For the love of the Lord, sir," Riley remonstrated, keeping well out
of the way himself.
But Captain Caldwell walked off down the middle of the road alone
deliberately to the police station, his wife standing meanwhile on the
doorstep, with the light behind her, coolly awaiting his return.
"Pull down the blind in the sitting-room, Riley, and keep Miss Beth
there," was all she said.
Presently Captain Caldwell returned with a police-officer and two men.
They immediately began to search the room. The glass of a picture had
been shattered at the far end. Riley pulled the picture to one side,
and discovered something imbedded in the wall behind, which he picked
out with his pocket-knife and brought to the light. It looked like a
disc all bent out of shape. He turned it every way, examining it, then
tried it with his teeth.
"I thought so," he said significantly. "It wouldn't be yer honour
they'd be afther wid a silver bullet. I heard her tell 'em herself to
try one."
"And I said if they missed they'd be damned," Beth exclaimed
triumphantly.
"Beth!" cried her mother, seizing her by the arm to shake her, "how
dare you use such a word?"
"I heard it in church," said Beth, in an injured tone.
"Look here, Beth," said her father, rescuing her from her mother's
clutches, and setting her on the table--he had been talking aside with
the police officer--"I want you to promise something on your word of
honour as a lady, just to please me."
Beth's countenance dropped: "O papa!" she exclaimed, "it's something I
don't want to promise."
"Well, never mind that, Beth," he answered. "Just promise this one
thing to please me. If you don't, the people will try and kill you."
"I don't mind that," said Beth.
"But I do--and your mother does."
Beth gave her mother a look of such utter astonishment, that the poor
lady turned crimson.
"And perhaps they'll kill me too," Captain Caldwell resumed. "You see
they nearly did to-night."
This was a veritable inspiration. Beth turned pale, and gasped: "I
promise!"
"Not so fast," her father said. "Never promise anything till you hear
what it is. But now, promise you won't say bad luck to any of the
people again."
"I promise," Beth repeated; "but"--she slid from the table, and nodded
emphatically--"but when I shake my fist and stamp my foot at them
it'll mean the same thing."
It was found next morning that Bap-faced Flanagan and Tony-kill-the-cow
had disappeared from the township; but Murphy remained; and Beth was not
allowed to go out alone again for a long time, not even into the garden.
All she knew about it herself, however, was, that she had always either
a policeman or a coastguardsman to talk to, which added very much to her
pleasure in life, and also to Anne's.
CHAPTER IX
One of the interests of Captain Caldwell's life was his garden. He
spent long hours in cultivating it, and that summer his vegetables,
fruits, and flowers had been the wonder of the neighbourhood. But now
autumn had come, vegetables were dug, fruits gathered, flowers
bedraggled; and there was little to be done but clear the beds, plant
them with bulbs, and prepare them for the spring.
Now that Captain Caldwell had made Beth's acquaintance, he liked to
have her with him to help him when he was at work in the garden, and
there was nothing that she loved so much.
One day they were at work together on a large flower-bed. Her father
was trimming some rose-bushes, and she was kneeling beside him on a
little mat, weeding.
"I'm glad I'm not a flower," she suddenly exclaimed, after a long
silence.
"Why, Beth, flowers are very beautiful."
"Yes, but they last so short a time. I'd rather be less beautiful, and
live longer. What's your favourite flower, papa?"
She had stopped weeding for the moment, but still sat on the mat,
looking up at him. Captain Caldwell clipped a little more, then
stopped too, and looked down at her.
"I don't get a separate pleasure from any particular flower, Beth;
they all delight me," he answered.
Beth pondered upon this for a little, then she asked, "Do you know
which I like best? Hot primroses." Captain Caldwell raised his
eyebrows interrogatively. "When you pick them in the sun, and put them
against your cheek, they're all warm, you know," Beth explained; "and
then they _are_ good! And fuchsias are good too, but it isn't the same
good. You know that one in the sitting-room window, white outside and
salmon-coloured inside, and such a nice shape--the flowers--and the
way they hang down; you have to lift them to look into them. When I
look at them long, they make me feel--oh--feel, you know--feel that I
could take the whole plant in my arms and hug it. But fuchsias don't
scent sweet like hot primroses."
"And therefore they are not so good?" her father suggested, greatly
interested in the child's attempt to express herself. "They say that
the scent is the soul of the flower."
"The scent is the soul of the flower," Beth repeated several times;
then heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction. "I want to sing it," she
said. "I always want to sing things like that."
"What other 'things like that' do you know, Beth?"
"The song of the sea in the shell,
The swish of the grass in the breeze,
The sound of a far-away bell,
The whispering leaves on the trees,"
Beth burst out instantly.
"Who taught you that, Beth?" her father asked.
"Oh, no one taught me, papa," she answered. "It just came to me--like
this, you know. I used to listen to the sea in that shell in the
sitting-room, and I tried and tried to find a name for the sound, and
all at once _song_ came into my head--_The song of the sea in the
shell_. Then I was lying out here on the grass when it was long,
before you cut it to make hay, and you came out and said, 'There's a
stiff breeze blowing.' And it blew hard and then stopped, and then it
came again; and every time it came the grass went--swish-h-h! _The
swish of the grass in the breeze._ Then you know that bell that rings
a long way off, you can only just hear it out here--_The sound of a