The Beth Book
"Yes, it's a queer pixie," her father said. "But it's going to do
something some day, or _I'm_ much mistaken."
"It's going to make a nuisance of itself if you put such nonsense into
its head, or I'm much mistaken," Mrs. Caldwell observed.
"I shall _not_ make a nuisance of myself," Beth indignantly protested.
"I shall never be able to make you understand, Caroline," Captain
Caldwell exclaimed. "Little pitchers are generally bad enough, but
when there is large intelligence added to the long ears, they're the
devil."
Before the doctor left he said to Mrs. Caldwell, "We must keep our
patient amused, you know."
"O doctor!" Beth exclaimed, clasping her hands in her earnestness, "do
you think if Sophie Keene came?"
The doctor burst into a shout of laughter, in which Captain Caldwell
also joined. "Just stay here yourself, Beth," he said, when he had
recovered himself. "For amusement, neither Sophie Keene nor any one
else I ever knew could hold a candle to you."
"What's 'hold a candle to you'?" Beth instantly demanded.
And then there was more laughter, in which even Mrs. Caldwell joined;
and afterwards, when the doctor had gone, she actually patted Beth on
the back, and stroked her hair, which was the first caress Beth ever
remembered to have received from her mother.
"Now, mamma," she exclaimed, with great feeling, in the fulness of her
surprise and delight, "now I shall forget that you ever beat me."
Her mother coloured painfully.
Her father muttered something about a noble nature.
"And that was the child you never wanted at all!" slipped, with a ring
of triumph, from Mrs. Caldwell unawares--an interesting example of the
complexity of human feelings.
Captain Caldwell soon went back to his duty--all too soon for his
strength. The dreadful weather continued. Day after day he returned
soaking from some distant station to the damp and discomfort of the
house, and the ill-cooked, unappetising food, which he could hardly
swallow. And to all this was added great anxiety about the future of
his family. His boys were doing well at school by this time; but he
was not satisfied with the way in which the little girls were being
brought up. There was no order in their lives, no special time for
anything; and he knew the importance of early discipline. He tried to
discuss the subject with his wife, but she met his suggestions
irritably.
"There's time enough for that," she said. "_I_ had no regular lessons
till I was in my teens."
"But what answered with you may be disastrous to these children," he
ventured. "They are all unlike you in disposition, more especially
Beth."
"You spoil that child," Mrs. Caldwell protested. "And at any rate I
can do no more. I am run off my feet."
This was true, and Captain Caldwell let the subject drop. His patience
was exemplary in those days. He suffered severely both mentally and
physically, but never complained. The shadow was upon him, and he knew
it, but he met his fate with fortitude. Whatever his faults, they were
expiated in the estimation of all who saw him suffer now.
Mrs. Caldwell never realised how ill he was, but still she was uneasy,
and it was with intense relief that she welcomed a case of soups and
other nourishing delicacies calculated to tempt the appetite, which
arrived for him one day from one of his sisters in England.
"This is just what you want, Henry," she said, with a brighter look in
her face than he had seen there for months. "I shall soon have you
yourself again now."
Captain Caldwell's spirits also went up.
In the evening they were all together in the sitting-room. Mrs.
Caldwell was playing little songs for Mildred to sing, Baby Bernadine
was playing with her bricks upon the floor, and Beth as usual was
hanging about her father. He had shaken off his despondency, and was
quite lively for the moment, walking up and down the room, and making
merry remarks to his wife in Italian, at which she laughed a good
deal.
"Come, Beth, fetch 'Ingoldsby.' We shall just come to my favourite,
and finish the book before you go to bed," he said.
Beth brought the book, and then climbed up on his knee, and settled
there happily, with her head on his shoulder.
"As I laye a-thynkynge, the golden sun was sinking,
O merrie sang that Bird as it glitter'd on her breast,
With a thousand gorgeous dyes,
While soaring to the skies,
'Mid the stars she seem'd to rise,
As to her nest;
As I laye a-thynkynge, her meaning was exprest:--
'Follow, follow me away,
It boots not to delay,'--
'Twas so she seemed to saye,
'HERE IS REST!'"
After he had read those last lines, there was a moment's silence, and
then Beth burst into a tempest of tears. "O papa--papa! No, no, no!"
she sobbed. "I couldn't bear it."
"What _is_ the matter with the child?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed,
starting up.
"'The vision and the faculty divine,' I think," her father answered.
"Leave her to me."
* * * * *
Beth was awake when Anne entered the nursery next morning to call the
children.
"Get up, and be good," Anne said. "Your pa's ill."
Mrs. Caldwell came into the nursery immediately afterwards, very much
agitated. She kissed Beth, and from that moment the child was calm;
but there settled upon her pathetic little face a terrible look of age
and anxiety.
When she was dressed, she ran right into her father's room before any
one could stop her. He was moaning--"O my head, my head! O my head, my
head!" over and over again.
"You mustn't stay here, little woman--not to-day," the doctor said.
"It will make your father worse if you do."
Beth stole from the room, and returned to the nursery. There, however,
she could still hear her father moaning, and she could not bear it, so
she took her prayer-book, by way of life-saving apparatus, and went
down to the kitchen to "see" what the servants were thinking--her own
significant expression. They were all strangely subdued. "Sit down,
Miss Beth," Biddy said kindly. "Sit down in the window there wid your
book if you want company. It's a sore heart you'll be having, or I'm
much mistaken."
Beth sat in the window the whole morning, reading prayers to herself,
while she watched and waited. The doctor sent Riley down from the
sick-room several times to fetch things, and each time Beth consulted
his countenance anxiously for news, but asked no questions. Biddy
tried to persuade her to eat, but the child could not touch anything.
Late in the afternoon Riley came down in a hurry.
"Is the master better, Pat?" Biddy demanded.
"'Deed, thin, he isn't," Riley replied; "and the doctor's sending me
off on the horse as hard as I can go for Dr. Jamieson."
"Och, thin, if the doctor's sending you for Dr. Jamieson it's all up.
He's niver sent for till the last. The Lord himself won't save him
now."
Beth shuffled over the leaves of her prayer-book hurriedly. She had
been crying piteously to God in her heart for hours to save her
father, and He had not heard; now she remembered that the servants
said if you read the Lord's Prayer backwards it would raise the devil.
Beth tried; but the invocation was unavailing. Before Riley could
saddle the horse, a message was sent down to stop him; and then Anne
came for Beth, and took her up to her father's room. The dreadful
sounds had ceased at last, and there was a strange silence in the
house. Mrs. Caldwell was sitting beside her husband's bed, rocking
herself a little as if in pain, but shedding no tears. Mildred was
standing with her arm round her mother's neck crying bitterly, while
Baby Bernadine gazed at her father wonderingly.
He was lying on his side with his arms folded. His eyes were shut, and
there was a lovely look of relief upon his face.
"I sent for you children," their mother said, "to see your father just
as he died. You must never forget him."
Ellis and Rickards, two of papa's men, were in the room, and Mrs.
Ellis too, and the doctor, and Riley, and Biddy, and Anne; and there
was a foot-bath, with steaming hot water in it, on the floor; some
mustard on the table; and the fire burnt brightly. These details
impressed themselves on Beth's mind involuntarily, as indeed did
everything else connected with that time. It seemed to her afterwards
as if she had seen everything and felt nothing for the moment--nothing
but breathless excitement and interest. Her grief was entirely
suspended.
Mrs. Ellis and the doctor led mamma down to the sitting-room; they
didn't seem to think that she could walk. And then Mrs. Ellis made her
some tea, and stood there, and coaxed her to drink it, just as if
mamma had been a child. Mrs. Caldwell sat on the big couch with her
back to the window, and Mildred sat beside her, with her arm round
her, crying all the time. Bernadine cried too, but it was because she
was hungry, and no one thought of giving her anything to eat. Beth
fetched her some bread-and-butter, and then she was good. People began
to arrive--Mr. Macbean, Captain and Mrs. Keene, the Smalls, the
curate--Father Madden even. He had heard the news out in the country,
and came hurrying back to pay his respects, and offer his condolences
to Mrs. Caldwell, and see if there was anything he could do. He hoped
it was not taking a liberty to come; but indeed he came in the fulness
of his heart, and because he couldn't help it, for he had known him
well, and a better man and truer gentleman never breathed. The widow
held out her hand to the priest, and looked up at him gratefully.
Beth opened the door for Mrs. Small, who exclaimed at once: "Oh, my
dear child, how is your poor mother? Does she cry at all? I do hope
she has been crying."
"No," Beth answered, "nobody cries but Mildred."
When Mrs. Small went in, Mrs. Caldwell spoke to her quite collectedly.
"He was taken ill at eight o'clock this morning with a dreadful pain
in his head," she told her. "He had suffered fearfully from his head
of late. I sent for the doctor at once. But nothing relieved him. From
ten o'clock he got worse and worse, and at four he was gone. He always
wished to die suddenly, and be spared a lingering illness. He has been
depressed of late, but this morning, early, he woke up quite brightly;
and last night he was wonderfully better. After the children had gone
to bed, he read aloud to me as he used to do in the old days; and he
looked so much more like his old self again that I thought a happier
time was coming. And so it was. But not for me."
"Poor lady!" Mrs. Small whispered. "It has been a fearful shock."
Mrs. Caldwell showed strength of character in the midst of the
overwhelming calamity which had fallen upon her with such awful
suddenness. She had a nice sense of honour, and her love was great;
and by the help of these she was enabled to carry out every wish of
her dead husband with regard to himself. He had had a fastidious
horror of being handled after death by the kind of old women who are
accustomed to lay out bodies, and therefore Mrs. Caldwell begged Ellis
and Rickards to perform that last duty for him themselves.
When the children went to bed, she took them to kiss their father. The
stillness of the chamber struck a chill through Beth, but she thought
it beautiful. The men had draped it in white, and decorated it with
evergreens, there being no flowers in season. Papa was smiling, and
looked serenely happy.
"Years ago he was like that," mamma said softly, as if she were
speaking to herself; "but latterly there has been a look of pain. I am
glad to see him so once more. You are at peace now--dearest." She