The Beth Book
"Is it?" said Beth, in pleased surprise. She had never stolen anything
before, and it was a new sensation.
"But don't you know stealing is very wicked?" Mildred asked
impressively.
Beth looked disconcerted: "I never thought of that. I'll put it back."
"How can you? You'll never be there again," Mildred rejoined. "You've
done it now. You've committed a sin."
Beth slipped the bright thing into her pocket. "I'll repent," she
said, and seemed satisfied.
It was a lovely day, and the passage from Kingstown to Holyhead was so
smooth that everybody lounged about the deck, and no one was ill. Beth
was very much interested, first in the receding shore, then in the
people about her. There was one group in particular, evidently of
affluent people, dressed in a way that made her feel ashamed of her
own clothes for the first time in her life. But what particularly
attracted her attention were some bunches of green and purple grapes
which the papa of the party took out of a basket and began to divide.
Beth had never seen grapes before except in pictures, and thought they
looked lovely. The old gentleman gave the grapes to his family, but in
handing them, one little bunch fell on the deck. He picked it up,
looked at it, blew some dust off it; then decided that it was not
good enough for his own children, and handed it to Bernadine, who was
gazing greedily.
Beth dashed forward, snatched it out of her hand, and threw it into
the sea.
"We are not beggars!" she cried.
"Well done, little one," a gentleman who was sitting near exclaimed.
"Won't pick up the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table, eh?
That's a very proper spirit. And who may you be?"
"My father was a gentleman," Beth answered hotly.
CHAPTER XII
Uncle James Patten sent a landau to meet his sister and her family at
the station, on their arrival from Ireland. Mildred was the first to
jump in. She took the best seat, and sat up stiff and straight.
"I do love carriages and horses, mamma," she said, as they drove
through Rainharbour, the little north-country seaside place which was
henceforth to be their home. "I wonder which is to be our house. There
are several empty. Do you think it is that one?" She had singled out
one of the largest in the place.
"No," said Mrs. Caldwell rather bitterly, "more likely this," and she
indicated a tiny two-storied tenement, wedged in between tall houses,
and looking as if it had either got itself there by mistake, or had
been put in in a hurry, just to fill up.
"That _is_ the one," Beth said.
"How do you know?" Mildred snapped.
"Because we're going to live in Orchard Street, opposite the orchard;
and this is Orchard Street, and there's the orchard, and that's the
only house empty."
"I'm afraid the child is right," Mrs. Caldwell said with a sigh.
"However," she added, pulling herself up, "it is exceedingly kind of
Uncle James to give us a house at all."
"He might have given us something nicer," Mildred remarked
disdainfully.
"Oh!" Beth exclaimed, "he's given us the best he has, I expect. And
it's a dear little place, with a little bow-window on either side of a
little front door--just like the one where Snowdrop found the empty
beds when the bears were out."
"Don't talk nonsense, Beth," Mildred cried crossly.
But Beth hardly heard. She was busy peopling the quaint little town
with the friends of her fancy, and sat smiling serenely as she looked
about her.
They had to drive right through Rainharbour, and about a mile out
into the country on the other side, to arrive at Fairholm, Uncle James
Patten's place. The sun had set, and the quaintly irregular red-brick
houses, mellowed by age, shone warm in tint against the gathering grey
of the sky, which rose like a leaden dome above them. At one part of
the road the sea came in sight. Great dark mountainous masses of
cloud, with flame-coloured fringes, hung suspended over its shining
surface, in which they were reflected with what was to Beth terrible
effect. She sat and shivered with awe so long as the lurid scene was
in sight, and was greatly relieved when the carriage turned into a
country lane, and sea and sombre sky were blotted out.
It was early spring. Buds were bursting in the hedgerows, birds were
building, songsters sang among the branches, and the air was sweet and
mild. Fairholm lay all among fertile fields, well wooded and watered.
It was a typical English home, with surroundings as unlike the great,
bare, bald mountains and wild Atlantic seas Beth had hitherto
shuddered amongst, as peace is unlike war. Certain natures are
stimulated by the grandeur of such scenes; but Beth was too delicate
an instrument to be played upon so roughly. Storms within reflected
the storms without only too readily. She was tempest-tossed by
temperament, and, in nature, all her yearning was for repose; so that
now, as they drove up the well-ordered avenue to the house, the tender
tone of colour, green against quiet grey, and the easy air of
affluence, so soothing after the sorrowful signs of a hard struggle
for life by which her feelings had hitherto been harrowed, drew from
her a deep sigh of satisfaction.
The hall-door stood open, but no one was looking out for them. They
could hear the tinkle of a piano in the distance. Then a servant
appeared, followed by a stout lady, who came forward to greet them in
a hurried, nervous way.
"I'm glad to see you," she said, kissing Mrs. Caldwell. She spoke in a
breathless undertone, as if she were saying something wrong, and was
afraid of being caught and stopped before she had finished the
sentence. "I should like to have gone to meet you, but James said
there were too many for the carriage as it was. He says more than two
in the carriage makes it look like an excursion-party. But I was
listening for you, only I don't hear very well, you know. You remember
me, Mildred? This is Beth, I suppose, and this is Bernadine. You don't
know who I am? I am your Aunt Grace Mary. James begs you to excuse him
for a little, Caroline. It is his half-hour for exercises. So
unfortunate. If you had only come a little later! But, however, the
sooner the better for me. Come into the dining-room and see Aunt
Victoria. We must stay there until Uncle James has finished practising
his exercises in the drawing-room."
Great-Aunt Victoria Bench was sitting bolt upright on a high chair in
the dining-room, tatting. Family portraits, hung far too high all
round the room, seemed to have been watching her complacently until
the travellers entered, when they all turned instantly and looked hard
at Beth.
Aunt Victoria was a tall thin old lady, with a beautiful delicate
complexion, an auburn front and white cap, and a severely simple black
dress. She rose stiffly to receive Mrs. Caldwell, and kissed her on
both cheeks with restrained emotion. Then she shook hands with each of
the children.
"I hope you had a pleasant journey," she was beginning formally, when
Mrs. Caldwell suddenly burst into tears. "What is the matter,
Caroline?" Aunt Victoria asked.
"Oh, nothing," the poor lady answered in a broken voice. "Only it does
seem a sad home-returning--alone--without _him_--you know."
Aunt Grace Mary furtively patted Mrs. Caldwell on the back, keeping an
eye on Aunt Victoria the while, however, as if she were afraid of
being caught.
All this time the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of "Hamilton's Exercises for
Beginners" on the piano had been going on; now it stopped. Aunt Grace
Mary slipped into a chair, and sat with a smile on her face; Aunt
Victoria became a trifle more rigid over her tatting; and Mrs.
Caldwell hurriedly wiped her eyes. Then the door opened deliberately,
and there entered a great stout man, with red hair sprinkled with
grey, large prominent light-coloured eyes, a nondescript nose, a wide
shapeless gash of a mouth, and a red moustache with straight bristly
hairs, like the bristles of a broom.
"How do you do, Caroline?" he said, holding out his big, fat, white
hand, and kissing her coldly on the forehead. He drawled his words out
with a decided lisp, and in a very soft voice, which contrasted oddly
with his huge bulk. Having greeted his sister, he turned and looked at
the children. Mildred went up and shook hands with him.
"Your sisters, I perceive, have no manners," he observed.
Beth had been beaming round blandly on the group; but upon that last
remark of Uncle James's the pleased smile faded from her face, and she
coloured painfully, and offered him a small reluctant hand.
"You are Elizabeth, I suppose?" he said.
"I am Beth," she answered emphatically.
She and Uncle James looked into each other's eyes for an instant, and
in that instant she made a most disagreeable impression of
fearlessness on the big man's brain.
"I hope, Caroline," he said precisely, "that you will not continue to
call your daughter by such an absurd abbreviation. That sort of thing
was all very well in the wilds of Ireland, but here we must have
something rational, ladylike, and recognised."
Mrs. Caldwell looked distressed. "It would be so difficult to call her
Elizabeth," she pleaded. "She is not at all--Elizabeth."
"You may call me what you like, mamma," Beth put in with decision;
"but I shall only answer to Beth. That was the name my father gave me,
and I shall stick to it."
Uncle James stared at her in amazement, but Beth, unabashed, stared
back obstinately; and so they continued staring until Aunt Grace Mary
made a diversion.
"James," she hurriedly interposed, "wouldn't they like some
refreshment?"
Uncle James pulled the bell-rope. "Bring wine and cake," he lisped,
when the servant answered.
Then he returned to his seat, crossed one great leg over the other,
folded his fat hands on his knee, and inspected his sister.
"You certainly do not grow younger, Caroline," he observed.
Mrs. Caldwell did not look cheered by the remark; and there was a
painful pause, broken, happily, by the arrival of the cake and wine.
"You will not take more than half a glass, I suppose, Caroline, at
_this_ time of the day," Uncle James said playfully, as he took up the
decanter; "and marsala, _not_ port. I know what ladies are."
Poor Mrs. Caldwell was exhausted, and would have been the better for a
good glass of port; but she meekly held her peace.
Then Uncle James cut the cake, and gave each of the children a very
small slice. Beth held hers suspended half-way to her mouth, and gazed
at her uncle.
"What _is_ that child staring at?" he asked her mother at last.
"I think she is admiring you," was Mrs. Caldwell's happy rejoinder.
"No, mamma, I am not," Beth contradicted. "I was just thinking I had
never seen anything so big in my life."
"_Anything!_" Uncle James protested. "What does she mean, Caroline?"
"I don't mean this slice of cake," Beth chuckled.
"Come, dear--come, dear," Aunt Grace Mary hurriedly interposed. "Come
upstairs, and see--and see--the pretty room you're to have. Come and
take your things off, like a good child."
Beth rose obediently, but before she followed her aunt out of the room
she said: "Here, Bernadine; you'd better have my slice. You'll howl if
you don't get enough. Cakes are scarce and dear here, I suppose."
Aunt Victoria had tatted diligently during this little scene. Now she
looked up over her spectacles and inspected Uncle James.
"I like that child," she said decidedly.
"In which respect I should think you would probably find yourself in a
very small minority," Uncle James lisped, spreading his mouth into
what would have been a smile in any other countenance, but was merely
an elongation of the lips in his.
Mrs. Caldwell rocked herself forlornly. Mildred nestled close to her
mother; while Baby Bernadine, with a slice of cake in each hand, took