The Beth Book
"Ah, that was only last night after I went to bed," Beth answered. "It
makes you cry when people aren't saved, doesn't it? Are you saved? If
you're not it will be awful for me."
"Why?"
"'Cos it would hurt so here to think of you burning in hell"--Beth
clasped her chest. "It always begins to ache here--in the evening--for
the people who aren't saved, and when I go to bed it makes me cry."
"Who told you about being saved, and that?"
"Aunt Victoria. She lives with us, you know. She's going away now to
pay a visit, because the boys are coming home, and Mildred, for the
holidays, and there wouldn't be room for her. I'm dreadfully sorry;
but I shall go to church, and read the Bible just the same when she's
away."
Count Gustav sat down on the end of the saloon-table and reflected a
little; then he said--"I wouldn't read anything, if I were you, while
Aunt Victoria's away. Just play about with Mildred and the boys, and
come out fishing with me sometimes. God doesn't want _you_ to save
people. He does that Himself. I expect He's very angry because you cry
at night. He thinks you don't trust Him. All He wants you to do is to
love Him, and trust Him, and be happy. That's the creed for a little
girl."
"Do you think so?" Beth gasped. Then she began to reflect, and her big
grey eyes slowly dilated, while at the same time a look of intense
relief relaxed the muscles of her pinched little face. "Do you think
so?" she repeated. Then suddenly she burst into tears.
Count Gustav, somewhat disconcerted, hurriedly handed her a
handkerchief.
Another gentleman came into the saloon at the moment, and raised
inquiring eyebrows.
"Only a little martyr, momentarily released from suffering, enjoying
the reaction," Count Gustav observed. "Come on deck, and let her
sleep. Do you hear, little lady, go to sleep."
Beth, docile to a fault when gently handled, nestled down among the
blankets, shut her eyes, and prepared to obey. The sound of the water
rippling off the sides of the yacht as it glided on smoothly over the
summer-sea both soothed and cheered her. Heavenly thoughts came
crowding into her mind; then sleep surprised her, with the tears she
had been shedding for the sufferings of others still wet upon her
cheek. When she awoke, her clothes were beside her, ready to put on.
She jumped up instantly, dressed, and went on deck. The yacht was
almost stationary, and the two gentlemen, attended by the black Dane,
Gard, were fishing. Away to starboard, the land lay like a silver mist
in the heat of the afternoon. Beth turned her sorrowful little face
towards it.
"Are you homesick, Beth?" Count Gustav asked.
"No, sick of home," Beth answered; "but I suppose I shall have to go
back."
"And what then?"
"Mamma will punish me for jumping into the harbour, I expect."
"_Jumping_ in!" he ejaculated, and then a great gravity settled upon
him, and he cogitated for some time. "Why did you jump in?" he said at
last.
"Because mamma--because mamma--" her chest heaved. She was ashamed to
say.
Count Gustav exchanged glances with the other gentleman, and said no
more. But he took her home himself in the evening, and had a long talk
with mamma and Aunt Victoria; and after he had gone they were both
particularly nice to Beth, but very solemn. That night, too, Aunt
Victoria did not mention death and the judgment, but talked of heaven
and the mercy of God until Beth's brow cleared, and she was filled
with hope.
It was the next day that Aunt Victoria left them to make room for
Mildred and the boys. Beth went with her mother to see the old lady
off at the station. On account of their connections the little party
attracted attention, and Mrs. Caldwell, feeling her importance,
expected the officials to be obsequious, which they were; and, in
return, she also expected Aunt Victoria to make proper acknowledgment
of their attentions. She considered that sixpence at least was
necessary to uphold the dignity of the family on such occasions; but,
to her horror, when the moment came, Aunt Victoria, after an exciting
fumble, drew from her reticule a tract entitled "The Man on the
Slant," and, in the face of everybody, handed it to the expectant
porter.
Mrs. Caldwell assured Lady Benyon afterwards that she should never
forget that moment. Beth used to wonder why.
CHAPTER XVIII
The end of the holidays found Beth in a very different mood. Jim had
come with the ideas of his adolescence, and Mildred had brought new
music, and these together had helped to take her completely out of
herself. The rest from lessons, too--from her mother's method of
making education a martyrdom, and many more hours of each day than
usual spent in the open air, had also helped greatly to ease her mind
and strengthen her body, so that, even in the time, which was only a
few weeks, she had recovered her colour, shot up, and expanded.
Most of the time she had spent with Jim, whom she had studied with
absorbing interest, his point of view was so wholly unexpected. And even
in these early days she showed a trait of character for which she
afterwards became remarkable; that is to say, she learned the whole of
the facts of a case before she formed an opinion on its merits--listened
and observed uncritically, without prejudice and without personal
feeling, until she was fully informed. Life unfolded itself to her like
the rules of arithmetic. She could not conjecture what the answer would
be in any single example from a figure or two, but had to take them all
down in order to work the sum. And her object was always, not to prove
herself right in any guess she might have made, but to arrive at the
truth. She was eleven years old at this time, but looked fourteen.
It was when she went out shooting with Jim that they used to have
their most interesting discussions. Jim used to take her to carry
things, but never offered her a shot, because she was a girl. She did
not care about that, however, because she had made up her mind to take
the gun when he was gone, and go out shooting on her own account; and
she abstracted a certain amount of powder and shot from his flasks
each day to pay herself for her present trouble, and also to be ready
for the future. Uncle James had given Jim leave to shoot, provided he
sent the game he killed to Fairholm; and sometimes they spent the day
wandering through the woods after birds, and sometimes they sat on the
cliffs, which skirted the property, potting rabbits. Jim expected Beth
to act as a keeper for him, and also to retrieve like a well-trained
dog; and when on one occasion she disappointed him, he had a good deal
to say about the uselessness of sisters and the inferiority of the sex
generally. Women, he always maintained, were only fit to sew on
buttons and mend socks.
"But is it contemptible to sew on buttons and mend socks?" Beth
asked, one day when they were sitting in a sandy hollow waiting for
rabbits.
"It's not a man's work," said Jim, a trifle disconcerted.
Beth looked about her. The great sea, the vast tract of sand, and the
blue sky so high above them, made her suffer for her own insignificance,
and feel for the moment that nothing was worth while; but in the hollow
where they sat it was cosy and the grass was green. Miniature cliffs
overhung the rabbit-holes, and the dry soil was silvered by sun and wind
and rain. There was a stiff breeze blowing, but it did not touch them in
their sheltered nook. They could hear it making its moan, however, as if
it were vainly trying to get at them; and there also ascended from below
the ceaseless sound of the sea. Beth turned her back on the wild
prospect, and watched the rabbit-holes.
"There's one on the right," she said at last, softly.
Jim raised his gun, aimed, and fired. The rabbit rolled over on its
back, and Beth rose in a leisurely way, fetched it, carrying it by its
legs, and threw it down on the bag.
"And when all the buttons are sewed on and all the socks mended, what
is a girl to do with her time?" she asked dispassionately, when she
had reseated herself. "The things only come home from the wash once a
week, you see."
"Oh, there's lots to be done," Jim answered vaguely. "There's the
cooking. A man's life isn't worth having if the cooking's bad."
"But a gentleman keeps a cook," Beth observed.
"Oh yes, of course," Jim answered irritably. "You would see what I
mean if you weren't a girl. Girls have no brains. They scream at a
mouse."
"_We_ never scream at mice," Beth protested in surprise. "Bernadine
catches them in her hands."
"Ah, but then you've had brothers, you see," said Jim. "It makes all
the difference if you're taught not to be silly."
"Then why aren't all girls taught, and why aren't we taught more
things?"
"Because you've got no brains, I tell you."
"But if we can be taught one thing, why can't we be taught another?
How can you tell we've no brains if you never try to teach us?"
"Now look here, Miss Beth," said brother Jim in a tone of
exasperation, "I know what you'll be when you grow up, if you don't
mind. You'll be just the sort of long-tongued shrew, always arguing,
that men hate."
"Do you say 'that men hate' or 'whom men hate'?" Beth interrupted.
"There you are!" said Jim; "devilish sharp at a nag. That's just what
I'm telling you. Now, you take my advice, and hold your tongue. Then
perhaps you'll get a husband; and if you do, make things comfortable
for him. Men can't abide women who don't make things comfortable."
"Well," said Beth temperately, "I don't think I could 'abide' a man
who didn't make things comfortable."
Jim grunted, as though that point of view were a different thing
altogether.
By degrees Beth discovered that sisters did not hold at all the same
sort of place in Jim's estimation as "the girls." The girls were other
people's sisters, to whom Jim was polite, and whom he even fawned on
and flattered while they were present, but made most disparaging
remarks about and ridiculed behind their backs; to his own sisters, on
the contrary, he was habitually rude, but he always spoke of them
nicely in their absence, and even boasted about their accomplishments.
"Your brother Jim says you can act anything," Charlotte Hardy, the
doctor's daughter, told Beth. "And you recite wonderfully, although
you've never heard any one recite; and you talk like a grown-up
person."
Beth flushed with surprise and pleasure at this; but her heart had
hardly time to expand before she observed the puzzling discrepancy
between what Jim said to her and what he had been saying to other
people, and found it impossible to reconcile the two, so as to have
any confidence in Jim's sincerity.
Before the end of the holidays she had learned to enjoy Jim's
companionship, but she had no respect for his opinions at all. He had
taught her a good deal, however. He had taught her, for one thing, the
futility of discussion with people of his capacity. The small
intellect should be treated like the small child--with tenderest
consideration. It must not hear too much of anything at a time, and
there are certain things that it must never be told at all. Simple
familiar facts, with obvious little morals, are the right food for it,
and constant repetition of what it knows is safe; but such heavy
things as theories, opinions, and arguments must be kept carefully
concealed from it, for fear of causing congestion or paralysis, or,
worse still, that parlous condition which betrays itself in
distressing symptoms such as one sees daily in society, or sits and
shudders at in one's own friends, when the victim, swelling with
importance, makes confident mis-statements, draws erroneous
conclusions, sums up and gives advice so fatuous that you blush to be
a biped of the same species.