The Beth Book
paralysed with horror for a moment, expecting to see the child roll
off into the street. She was a sensible woman, however, and quickly
recovering herself, she ran across the road, with her spectacles on,
and rapped at Mrs. Caldwell's door. Beth, hacking away at the lead
with the carving-knife, did not heed the rap. Presently, however, she
heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, and climbed back into the attic
incontinently, putting her spoils in her pocket. When Mrs. Davy, her
mother, and Harriet, all agitated, burst open the door, she was
standing at the window looking out tranquilly.
"What were you doing on the roof, Beth?" her mother demanded.
"Nothing," Beth answered.
"Mrs. Davy says she saw you get out of the window."
Beth was silent.
"You're a bad girl, giving your mother so much trouble," Mrs. Davy
exclaimed, looking at her under her spectacles sternly. "If you was my
child I'd whack you, I would."
Beth was instantly a lady, sneering at this common woman who was
taking a liberty which she knew her mother would resent as much as she
did.
"And what were you doing with the carving-knife, Miss Beth?" cried
Harriet, spying it on the floor, and picking it up. Criminals are only
clever up to a certain point; Beth had forgotten to conceal the
carving-knife. "Oh dear! oh dear! If you 'aven't 'acked it all the way
along!"
"Oh dear! oh dear!" Mrs. Caldwell echoed. It was her best
carving-knife, and Beth would certainly have been beaten if Mrs. Davy
had not suggested it. As it was, however, Mrs. Caldwell controlled her
temper, and merely ordered her to go downstairs immediately. In the
management of her children she would not be dictated to by anybody.
This was Beth's first public appearance as a disturber of the peace,
and the beginning of the bad name she earned for herself in certain
circles eventually. But she was let off lightly for it. Mrs.
Caldwell's punishments were never retrospective. She was thunder and
lightning in her wrath; a flash and then a bang, and it was all over.
If she missed the first movement, the culprit escaped. She could no
more have punished one of her children in cold blood than she could
have cut its throat.
Beth ran down to the acting-room, so called because the boys had
brought home the idea of acting in the holidays, and they had got up
charades there on a stage made of boxes, with an old counterpane for a
curtain, and farthing candles for footlights. It was a long, narrow
room over the kitchen, with a sloping roof. Three steps led down into
it. There was a window at one end, a small lattice with an iron bar
nailed to the outside vertically. Beth swung herself out round the
bar, dropped on to the back-kitchen roof, crept across the tiles to
the chimney at the far corner, stepped thence on to the top of the old
wooden pump, and from the top to the spout, from the spout to the
stone trough, and so into the garden. Then she ran round to the
kitchen, and got a candle, a canister, and some water in a pail, all
of which she took up to the acting-room by way of the back-kitchen
roof. The canister happened to contain allspice, but this was not to
be considered when she wanted the canister, so she emptied it from the
roof on to Harriet's head as she happened to be passing, and so got
some good out of it, for Harriet displayed strong feeling on the
subject both at the moment and afterwards, when she was trying to get
the stuff out of her hair; which interested Beth, who in some such way
often surprised people into the natural expression of emotions which
she might never otherwise have discovered. Bernadine had been playing
alone peaceably in the garden, but Beth persuaded her to come
upstairs. She found Beth robed in the old counterpane, with her hair
dishevelled, and the room darkened. Beth was Norna now in her cell on
the Fitful Head, and Bernadine was the shrinking but resolute Minna
come to consult her. Beth made her sit down, drew a magic circle round
her with a piece of chalk, and, in a deep tragic voice, warned her not
to move if she valued her life, for there were evil spirits in the
room. The pail stood on a box draped with an old black shawl, and
round this she also drew a circle. Then she put some lead in the
canister, melted it over the candle, dropped it into the water, and
muttered--
"Like snakes the molten metal hisses,
Curses come instead of kisses."
She plunged her hand into the water--
"I search a harp for harmony,
But daggers only do I see;
I search a heart for love and hope,
But find a ghastly hangman's rope.
Woe! Woe!"
Three times round the pail she went, moaning, groaning, writhing her
body, and wringing her hands--
"Woe! Woe!
Thy courage will be sorely tried,
Thou shalt not be the pirate's bride."
At this Bernadine, whose nerves were completely shaken, set up such a
howl that Harriet came running to see what was the matter. She soon
let light into the acting-room. Mrs. Caldwell and Aunt Victoria had
gone to see Aunt Grace Mary, so Harriet was in charge of the children,
and to save herself further trouble, she took them up to a black-hole
there was without a window at the top of the house, and locked them
in. The place was quite empty, so that they could do no harm, and they
did not seem to mind being locked up. Harriet intended to give them a
little fright and then let them out; but, being busy, she forgot them,
and when at last she remembered, it was so dark she had to take a
candle; and great was her horror, on opening the door, to see both
children stretched out on the bare boards side by side, apparently
quite dead. One glance at their ghastly faces was enough for Harriet.
She just looked and then fled, shrieking, with the candle alight in
her hand, right out into the street. Several people who happened to be
passing at the time stopped to see what was the matter. Harriet's
talent for fiction furnished her with a self-saving story on the
instant. She said the children had shut themselves up and got
smothered.
"We'd better go and see if there's nothing can be done," a respectable
workman suggested.
Harriet led the way, about a dozen people following, all awe-stricken
and silent. When they came to the door, they peeped in over each
other's shoulders at the two poor children, stretched out stiff and
stark, the colour of death, their jaws dropped, their glazed eyes
shining between the half-closed lids, a piteous spectacle.
"Just let's see the candle a moment," the workman said. He took it
from Harriet, and entered stooping--the place was a mere closet just
under the roof, and he could not stand upright in it. He peered into
the children's faces, then knelt down beside them, and felt their arms
and chests. Suddenly he burst out laughing.
"You little devils," he said, "what 'a' ye done this for?"
Beth sat up. "Harriet locked us in to give us a fright, so we thought
we'd frighten Harriet," she said.
The walls were whitewashed, and the children had made themselves
ghastly by rubbing their faces all over with the whitening.
"You've getten yer 'ands full wi' them two, I'm thinkin', missis," the
workman remarked to Harriet as he went off chuckling.
"Did you hear, Beth?" Bernadine complained; "he called us little
devils."
"All right," Beth answered casually. But Bernadine was disgusted. She
was one of those pious children who like to stand high in the
estimation of the grown-up people; and she disapproved of Beth's
conduct when it got her into trouble. She was like the kind of man who
enjoys being vicious so long as he is not found out by any one who
will think the less of him for it; when he is found out he excuses
himself, and blames his associates. Bernadine never resisted Beth's
eloquent persuasions, nor the luring fascination of her schemes; but
when she had had her full share of the pleasures of naughtiness, and
was tired and cross, her conscience smote her, and then she told
mamma. This did her good, and got Beth punished, which made Bernadine
feel that she had expiated her own naughtiness and been forgiven, and
also made her feel sorry for Beth--a nice kind feeling, which she
always enjoyed.
Beth despised her for her conscientious treachery, and retaliated by
tempting her afresh. One day she lured her out on to the tiles through
an attic window in the roof, at the back of the house. It would be
such fun to sit astride on the roof-ridge, and look right down into
the street, she said, and across Mrs. Davy's orchard to the fields on
that side, and out to sea on the other.
"And things will come into our minds up there--such lovely things,"
she proceeded, beguiling Bernadine to distract her attention as she
helped her up. When they were securely seated, Bernadine began to
grumble.
"Things don't come into my mind," she whined.
"Don't they? Why, I was just thinking if we were to fall we should
certainly be killed," Beth answered cheerfully. "We should come down
thump, and that would crack our skulls, and our brains would roll out
on the pavement. Ough! wouldn't they look nasty, just like a sheep's!
And mamma and Aunt Victoria would rush out, and Harriet and Mrs. Davy,
and they'd have to hold mamma up by the arms. Then they'd pick us up,
and carry us in, and lay us out on a bed, and say they were beautiful
in their lives, and in death they were not divided; and when they shut
the house up at night and it was all still, mamma would cry. She'd be
always crying, especially for you, Bernadine, because you're not such
a trouble as I am. And when you were buried, and the worms were eating
you, she would give all the world to have you here again."
This sad prospect was too much for the sensitive Bernadine. "Don't,
Beth," she whimpered. "You frighten me."
"Oh, you mustn't be frightened," said Beth encouragingly. "When people
up on a height like this get frightened, they always roll off. Do you
feel as if the roof were moving?" she exclaimed, suddenly clutching
hold.
Bernadine fell down flat on her face with a dismal howl.
"Let's be cats now," said Beth. "I'll say miew-ow-ow, and you
oo-oo-owl-hiss-ss-ss."
"Don't, Beth. I want to go back."
"Come along then," said Beth.
"I can't. I daren't move."
"Oh, nonsense," said Beth; "just follow me. I shall go and leave you
if you don't. You shouldn't have come up if you were afraid."
"You made me," Bernadine whimpered with her eyes shut.
"Of course it was me!" said Beth, on her way back to the skylight.
"You haven't a will of your own, I suppose!"
"You aren't leaving me, Beth!" Bernadine cried in an agony. "Don't go!
I'm frightened! Help me down! I'll tell mamma!"
"Then there you'll sit, tell-pie-tit," Beth chanted, as she let
herself down through the skylight.
Presently she appeared on the other side of the street, and performed
a war-dance of delight as she looked up at her sister, prone upon the
roof-ridge.
"You do look so funny, Bernadine," she cried. "Your petticoats are
nohow; and you seem to have only one leg, and it is so long and thin!"
Bernadine howled aloud. Mrs. Caldwell was not at home; but the cry
brought Mrs. Davy out in her spectacles. When she saw the child's
dangerous predicament, she seized Beth and shook her emphatically.
"Oh, thank you," said Beth.
"What 'a' you bin doin' now, you bad girl?" said Mrs. Davy. "Hold on,
missy," she called up to Bernadine. "We'll soon 'ave ye down. You're
all right! You'll not take no 'arm."
Harriet now came running out, wringing her hands, and uttering
hysterical exclamations.
"Shut up, you fool," said Mrs. Davy.
Doors opened all the way down the street, and a considerable crowd had
soon collected. Beth, quite detached from herself, leant against the
orchard-wall and watched the people with interest.