The Beth Book
eyes wide open, deeply interested. Her mind at this time, acting
without conscious effort, was a mere photographic apparatus for the
registration of impressions on the brain. Every incident stored and
docketed itself somewhere in her consciousness for future use, and it
was upon this hoard that she drew eventually with such astonishing
effect.
Rousseau in "Emile" chose a common capacity to educate, because, he
said, genius will educate itself; but even genius would find its
labours lightened by having been taught the use of some few tools,
such as are supplied by the rudiments of a conventional education.
Beth was never taught anything thoroughly; very few girls were in her
day. A woman was expected at that time to earn her livelihood by
marrying a man and bringing up a family; and, so long as her face was
attractive, the fact that she was ignorant, foolish, and trivial did
not, in the estimation of the average man, at all disqualify her for
the task. Beth's education, at this most impressionable period of her
life, consisted in the acquisition of a few facts which were not made
to interest her, and neither influenced her conduct nor helped to form
her character. She might learn in the morning, for instance, that
William the Conqueror arrived 1066, but the information did not
prevent her being as naughty as possible in the afternoon. One cannot
help speculating on how much she lost or gained by the haphazard of
her early training; but one thing is certain, had the development of
her genius depended upon a careful acquisition of such knowledge as is
to be had at school, it must have remained latent for ever.
As it was, however, being forced out into the life-school of the
world, she there matriculated on her own account, and so, perhaps,
saved her further faculty from destruction. For theoretical knowledge
would have dulled the keenness of her insight probably, confused her
point of view, and brought in accepted commonplaces to spoil the
originality of her conclusions. It was from practical experience of
life rather than from books that she learnt her work; she saw for
herself before she came under the influence of other people's
observations; and this was doubtless the secret of her success; but it
involved the cruel necessity of a hard and strange apprenticeship.
From the time of their arrival in Rainharbour she lived three lives a
day--the life of lessons and coercion which was forced upon her, an
altogether artificial and unsatisfactory life; the life she took up
the moment she was free to act for herself; and a life of endless
dreams, which mingled with the other two unwholesomely. For the rich
soil of her mind, left uncultivated, was bound to bring forth
something, and because there was so little seed sown in it, the crop
was mostly weeds.
When we review the march of events which come crowding into a life,
seeing how few it is possible to describe, no one can wonder that
there is talk of the difficulty of selection. Who, for instance, could
have supposed that a good striped jacket Jim had outgrown, and Mrs.
Caldwell's love of grey, would have had much effect upon Beth's
career? And yet these trifles were epoch-making. Mrs. Caldwell thought
grey a ladylike colour, and therefore bought Beth a carmelite dress of
a delicate shade for the summer. For the first few weeks the dress was
a joy to Beth, but after that it began to be stained by one thing and
another, and every spot upon it was a source of misery, not only
because she was punished for messing the dress, but also because she
had messed it; for she was beginning to be fastidious about her
clothes; and every time she went out she was conscious of those
unsightly stains, and fancied everybody was looking at them. She had
to wear the frock, however, for want of another; and in the autumn,
when the days began to be chilly, a cast-off jacket of Jim's was
added to the affliction. Mrs. Caldwell caught her trying it on one
day, and after shaking her for doing so, she noticed that the jacket
fitted her, and the bright idea of making Beth wear it out, so that it
might not be wasted, occurred to her. To do her justice, Mrs. Caldwell
had no idea of the torture she was inflicting upon Beth by forcing her
to appear in her soiled frock and a boy's jacket. The poor lady was in
great straits at the time, and had nothing to spend on her daughters,
because her sons were growing up, and beginning to clamour for
pocket-money. Their mother considered it right that they should have
it too; and so the tender, delicate, sensitive little girl had to go
dirty and ashamed in order that her brothers might have the
wherewithal to swing a cane, smoke, drink beer, play billiards, and do
all else that makes boys men in their own estimation at an early age.
Rainharbour was little more than a fishing village in those days,
though it became a fashionable watering-place in a very few years.
When Mrs. Caldwell first settled there, a whole codfish was sold for
sixpence, fowls were one-and-ninepence a pair, eggs were almost given
away, and the manners of the people were in keeping with the low
prices. The natives had no idea of concealing their feelings, and were
in the habit of expressing their opinions of each other and things in
general at the top of their voices in the open street. They were as
conservative as the Chinese too, and thought anything new and strange
ridiculous. Consequently, when a little girl appeared amongst them in
a boy's jacket, they let her know that they resented the innovation.
"She's getten a lad's jacket on! oh! oh! she's getten a lad's jacket
on!" the children called aloud after her in the street, while their
mothers came to the cottage-doors, wiping soap-suds from their arms,
and stood staring as at a show; and even the big bland sailors
lounging on the quay expanded into broad grins or solemnly winked at
one another. Beth flushed with shame, but her courageous little heart
was instantly full of fight. "What ignorant people these are!" she
exclaimed haughtily, turning to Bernadine, who had dropped behind out
of the obloquy. "What ignorant people these are! they know nothing of
the fashions." The insinuation stung her persecutors, but that only
made them the more offensive, and wherever she went she was jeered
at--openly if there were no grown-up person with her, covertly if
there were, but always so that she understood. After that first
explosion she used to march along with an air of calm indifference as
if she heard nothing, but she had to put great constraint upon herself
in order to seem superior while feeling deeply humiliated; and all the
time she suffered so acutely that at last she could hardly be induced
to go out at all.
Mrs. Caldwell, who never noticed the "common people" enough to be
aware of their criticism, would not listen to anything Beth had to say
on the subject, and considered that her objection to go out in the
jacket was merely another instance of her tiresome obstinacy.
Punishments ensued, and Beth had the daily choice whether she should
be scolded and beaten for refusing to go out, or be publicly jeered at
for wearing a "lad's jacket."
Sometimes she preferred the chance of public derision to the certainty
of private chastisement; but oftener she took the chastisement. This
state of things could not last much longer, however. Hitherto her
mother had ruled her by physical force, but now their wills were
coming into collision, and it was inevitable that the more determined
should carry her point.
"Go and put your things on directly, you naughty, obstinate child,"
her mother screamed at her one day. Beth did not move.
"Do you hear me?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed.
Beth made no sign. And suddenly Mrs. Caldwell realised that if Beth
would not go out, she could not make her. She never thought of trying
to persuade her. All that occurred to her was that Beth was too big to
be carried or pulled or pushed; that she might be hurt, but could not
be frightened; and that there was nothing for it, therefore, but to
let her have her own way.
"Very well, then," said Mrs. Caldwell, "I shall go without you. But
you'll be punished for your wickedness some day, you'll see, and then
you'll be sorry."
Mildred had gone to be educated by a rich sister of her father's by
this time, Aunt Victoria and Bernadine usually went out with Mrs.
Caldwell, so it came to pass that Beth began to be left pretty much to
her own resources, of which Harriet Elvidge in the kitchen was one,
and a considerable one.
Harriet was a woman of well-marked individuality and brilliant
imagination. She could never separate fact from fiction in any form of
narrative, and narrative was her speciality. She was always recounting
something. Beth used to follow her from room to room, as she went
about her work, listening with absolute faith and the deepest interest
to the stream of narrative which flowed on without interruption, no
matter what Harriet was doing. Sometimes, when she was dusting the
drawing-room mantelpiece, she would pause with a china cup in one hand
and her duster in the other, to emphasise a thrilling incident, or
make a speech impressive with suitable gesticulation; and sometimes,
for the same purpose, she would stop with her hand on the yellowstone
with which she was rubbing the kitchen-hearth, and her head in the
grate almost. Often, too, Beth in her eager sympathy would say, "Let
me do that!" and Harriet would sit in an arm-chair if they were in the
drawing-room, and resign the duster--or the dishcloth, if they were in
the kitchen--and continue the recital, while Beth showed her
appreciation, and encouraged her to proceed, by doing the greater part
of her work for her. Mrs. Caldwell never could make out why Beth's
hands were in such a state. "They are all cracked and begrimed," she
would exclaim, "as if the child had to do dirty work like a servant!"
And it was a good thing for Beth that she did it, for otherwise she
would have had no physical training at all, and would have suffered as
her sister Mildred did for want of it. Mildred, unlike Beth, held her
head high, and never forgot that she was a young lady by right of
descent, with an hereditary aptitude for keeping her inferiors in
their proper place. She only went into the kitchen of necessity, and
would never have dreamed of dusting, sweeping, bed-making, or laying
the table, to help the servant, however much she might have been
over-tasked; neither would Harriet have dared to approach her with the
familiar pleading: "I say, miss, 'elp uz, I'm that done," to which
Beth so readily responded. Mildred was studious; she had profited by
the good teaching she had had while her father was alive, and was able
to "make things out" for herself; but she cultivated her mind at the
expense of her body. She was one of those delicate, nervous, sensitive
girls, whose busy brains require the rest of regular manual exercise;
and for want of it, she lived upon books, and very literally died of
them eventually. She was naturally, so to speak, an artificial product
of conventional ideas; Beth, on the contrary, was altogether a little
human being, but one of those who answer to expectation with fatal
versatility. She liked blacking grates, and did them well, because
Harriet told her she could; she hated writing copies, and did them
disgracefully, because her mother beat her for a blot, and said she
would never improve. For the same reason, long before she could read
aloud to her mother intelligibly, she had learnt all that Harriet
could teach her, not only of the house-work, but of the cooking, from
cleaning a fish and trussing a fowl to making barley-broth and
puff-pastry. Harriet was a good cook if she had the things, as she
said herself, having picked up a great deal when she was kitchen-maid